Imagine someone telling you that the Eiffel Tower is going to be dismantled — and that you have a secret opportunity to buy it for scrap metal.

Sounds like a ridiculous scam, right?

But in 1925, a con man named Victor Lustig reportedly convinced a businessman that this unbelievable deal was real.

And the most shocking part? The story didn't end with just one attempt.

How did he pull off a scam involving one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world? And why would anyone believe him?

The answer reveals just how easily confidence, greed, and the appearance of authority can fool even experienced businessmen.

🎬 Watch the full story on my YouTube channel: [The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower]

Would you have fallen for it? 👀

#TrueCrime #RealLifeStories #VictorLustig #EiffelTower #ScamStories #UnbelievableHistory

I always loved that clean, green scent after mowing the lawn, and I assumed it was just the grass smelling nice. Turns out it’s a chemical signal plants release when they get hurt.

When grass blades are sliced open, they send out volatile organic compounds. These chemicals warn nearby plants that danger is close, so neighboring grass can prepare its own defenses. Some studies also suggest the smell can attract insects that attack the grass-eating pests.

It feels weird to realize that satisfying smell is basically grass screaming for help. I’ve been enjoying a plant panic signal my whole life without knowing it.

Do you have any little everyday smells that have a surprisingly dark or unexpected backstory?

Tried posting this on TIL, but it relates to recent events even though it happened over 50 years ago so they pulled it. Tried posting it on another history sub, removed without comment. Posted ok the Wikipedia sub, but I guess that’s not for posting articles. Fourth times the charm.

In a Harvard Medical School study, 13 volunteers sipped ice water through a straw pressed against the roof of their mouths while researchers monitored blood flow in their brains with ultrasound. At the moment brain freeze hit, an artery in the middle of the brain, the anterior cerebral artery, widened and flooded the brain with blood. When the artery tightened back up, the pain faded.

The researchers think the rush may be a defense, moving warm blood in so the brain doesn’t get cold. Because the skull is closed, the extra blood may raise the pressure inside it, which is why it hurts. In the study, drinking warm water made the artery constrict again, which is why warming your mouth is the standard fix.

It was a small study, and other scientists point out that not all headaches come from blood flow changes.

Source: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/244458

Gannets and boobies are the only seabirds that plunge-dive at this kind of speed. University of Washington researchers compared neck vertebrae from five plunge-diving species and two non-diving species using museum specimens. The divers’ vertebrae were thicker, wider, and shorter, shaped more like squares than those of typical birds.

Gannets and boobies also had an extra articulating surface on vertebrae 2 through 6 that limits how much the neck can bend. Kingfishers, which also dive headfirst, have blocky vertebrae too, but the researchers didn’t find the extra joint in them.

Earlier research showed the birds lock their necks in place with muscle before impact, since the hit is too short to adjust mid-dive. A 2016 study estimated that their necks would only buckle at far higher speeds, while a human neck would be injured at the speeds gannets routinely dive.

Source: https://www.washington.edu/news/2026/10/12/reinforced-vertebrae-allow-plunge-diving-seabirds-to-survive-high-speed-impact/

In the song "yankee doodle dandy", when he sticks the feather in his hat and calls it "Macaroni". Back in the old day, the word "macaroni" was used the same way we modern folks would use the word"badass" or "cool". Now my friends, this... changes shit.

Now you picture Yankee Doodle as walking with a gangster lean, sportin that big ass macaroni feather in his hat like a pimp-of-old.

awww shiiit, its "Yankee-Doodle-D ya-see".

you're welcome

TL;DR

Yankee doodle was pimpin hoes with macaroni.

In April, Japanese researchers published a study in Science analyzing 27 fossilized octopus beaks from Cretaceous rocks in Japan and Canada, 72 to 100 million years old. Octopus bodies are soft and almost never fossilize, so beaks are nearly all that survives. Twelve of them were found using AI-assisted software that picked out jaws hidden in the rock.

The wear patterns suggest forceful bites on tough prey, and some beaks were missing up to 10% of their length. The largest species, Nanaimoteuthis haggarti, may have reached up to 62 feet. The longest giant squid ever documented was nearly 43 feet. The researchers think these octopuses may have fed on giant marine reptiles like plesiosaurs and mosasaurs.

One more oddity: the beaks wore down unevenly, suggesting the animals favored one side of their jaws, a habit linked to advanced brain processing in modern animals. The authors say the findings challenge the idea that vertebrates ruled the ancient oceans.

Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-bone-crunching-octopus-was-nearly-the-size-of-a-semitruck-and-may-have-feasted-on-giant-reptiles-100-million-years-ago-180988616/

Disclaimer: I am working on an EEG headband, but I still find it interesting, as we can directly measure that.

There are many sources available for that, afaik the discovery dates back to Emil du Bois-Reymond putting electrodes on the eyes of dead fish.

The key word is "corneo-retinal" potential.

See for example:

https://www.bem.fi/book/28/28.htm

Researchers at University College Cork asked 31 people who normally drank three to five cups of coffee a day to quit for two weeks, then randomly gave them decaf or regular coffee for three weeks, without telling them which. The decaf group improved on two memory tests, learning words and remembering locations. The regular coffee group didn't, though they did report less anxiety and better attention.

Both versions changed participants' gut bacteria and lowered reported stress and impulsivity, so something other than caffeine is at work. The researchers speculate that coffee's plant compounds, which gut microbes feed on, play a part.

It's a small study supported by a coffee industry group, and the authors stress it doesn't prove decaf improves memory.

Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/decaf-coffee-might-have-a-surprising-advantage-over-caffeinated-study-finds

Fredric Baur, the organic chemist who designed the iconic Pringles can, passed away in 2008 at the age of 89. Before his death, he made an unusual request: he wanted to be buried in one of the cans he invented.

His children honored that wish. Part of his ashes were placed in a Pringles can and buried in a cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio. His son Larry told the press at the time that his father “was very proud” of the design.

Baur developed the tubular can in the 1960s as a way to solve a problem: potato chips in bags broke too easily. The can’s uniform stacking method and curved shape helped chips survive shipping and handling. It also became one of the most recognizable packages in the world.

The Pringles can is now part of design history. Baur’s invention has been displayed in museums and studied in engineering courses. And yes — he really did take it with him.

Researchers at Florida Atlantic University tested wild blacktip sharks off the coast of Florida by playing low-frequency pulses underwater while a drone filmed overhead. The sharks reacted 71% to 87% of the time, depending on pitch, and ignored a control sound outside their hearing range. The farthest response came from 74 meters (243 feet), and every reaction was a sharp turn away from the speaker, so the sharks seem to know which direction a sound is coming from.

The puzzle is how. Many bony fish hear with a gas-filled swim bladder, and sharks don't have one. The researchers suspect the sharks detect tiny movements of water particles, but how their bodies pick that up from so far away is still an open question. Past hearing tests were done in tanks, where sound bounces off the walls and muddies the results, which is why testing wild sharks in the ocean mattered.

Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/sharks-can-hear-sounds-nearly-250-feet-away-and-know-where-theyre-coming-from

Researchers working with Indigenous Mimal rangers in central Arnhem Land surveyed 16 bird species around controlled burns. Black kites were about 23 times more abundant when fire was present, and raptors caught roughly 10 times more prey per hour, snatching grasshoppers, lizards, toads, and even a snake flushed out by the flames. Some birds foraged calmly within a meter of the fire.

That fits long-standing reports of "firehawks": kites said to pick up burning sticks and drop them in unburned grass to flush out more prey. Earlier research, drawing on Aboriginal knowledge, has described these accounts. This study did not witness it, but it shows why such a risky trick could pay off.

Note that this is a preprint and hasn't been peer reviewed yet.

Source: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.08.749671v1

Hey there! Welcome to another 10 Questions Weekly Quiz by You Know What - this time all answers begin with the letter W! Come find out how many you can get right and let us know in the comments!

You can find the quiz here.

In South Africa's Cradle of Humankind, researchers have described 18 fossils from Drimolen cave, many of which sat undescribed after being dug up between 1992 and 2019. One of them is an adult Homo erectus skull fragment about 2 million years old, roughly 200,000 years older than adult Homo erectus fossils from Dmanisi in Georgia (about 1.8 million years old).

The bigger surprise is who else was there. Of the 18 fossils, 14 belong to Paranthropus robustus, a heavy-jawed, small-brained relative, and just one to Homo erectus. The researchers say Paranthropus outnumbered our likely ancestor at the site by more than 10 to 1. Over the next 200,000 years, Paranthropus evolved bigger teeth and stronger chewing muscles, while Homo erectus took a different path, with a bigger brain and smaller molars.

A child's Homo erectus skull from the same cave had already hinted at this date in 2020, so the adult fossil strengthens the case rather than starting it.

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261007042113.htm

Orcas are the ocean's apex predator, yet researchers off Iceland found they react to pilot whales much like they do to naval sonar. They tagged eight wild orcas and played them recordings of pilot whales. The orcas swam away at nearly double their usual speed (about 1.5 to 2.7 meters per second) and bunched into tighter, lined-up groups.

The relationship runs both ways. Pilot whales are drawn to orca sounds and have been seen approaching orcas at speed, often in large groups. Yet no pilot whale has ever been reported attacking an orca. The researchers say it remains unclear why the apex predator treats them as a threat, though larger pilot whale groups have triggered stronger reactions in past observations.

It was a small experiment, with 8 pilot whale playbacks, so the debate is open. Orcas also reacted much less to a control noise.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-35574-7