It was thousands of years ago when people of the Americas learned to isolate cocoa from the cacao plant. They drank it as a liquid for energy and nutrition, and even though it wasn't sweetened, we can imagine that some of them just liked it. Cocoa came to Europe, where it competed with coffee and tea as an energizing drink. Then someone got the bright idea to add sugar. Score!

While chocolate has been used as a medicine off and on, it was mainly useful for masking the awful taste of opium, cocaine, and other everyday medicines. The easiest way to blend it with these drugs was to make chocolate into a syrup. When medicine stopped being elixirs and became pills, pharmacists needed to find new ways to use the chocolate syrup they were already making, and that's how we got all kinds of soda fountain treats. Weird History Food weaves together the history of chocolate and chocolate syrup with the history of medicines, which intersect at several points.

The season 6 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation titled "Inner Light" is widely regarded as the greatest or one of the greatest stand-alone episodes of the entire franchise.

In it, Captain Picard learns to play a Ressikan flute. As the episode closes, he plays it while mourning the lifetime that he gained and lost in just twenty minutes. The tune was written by Jay Chattaway, a prolific composer for the franchise.

Several years ago, the Filmová Filharmonie orchestra of Prague performed a wide selection of Star Trek compositions. Among them is a haunting reflection upon the Ressikan flute tune.

-via reddit

Michael Hinson is the General Sessions and Juvenile Court Judge for Lewis County, Tennessee. From his courtroom in the county seat of Hohenwald, Judge Hinson ajudicates many matters, including traffic violations.

When Judge Hinson was issued a citation for using a cellphone while driving, he represented himself in court and presided over his own case. He pled guilty to the charge without any excuse and then sentenced himself to a $60 fine--the maximum available under the law.

Audrey Hepburn was born in the Netherlands in 1929. She trained as a ballerina in her childhood and was quite good. But under the Nazi occupation, Hepburn was so malnourished that she was never strong enough to make a career of it, and became an actress instead. During World War II, she went against her parents' beliefs and helped the Dutch resistance. 

Anne Frank was also born in 1929 and lived in the Netherlands. The big difference between them was that Frank was Jewish and had to hide from the Nazis, while Hepburn, although traumatized, survived the war. The two young girls never met, but Hepburn read the first draft of Frank's book that would become Diary of a Young Girl in 1947, five years before it was available in the US. It had a profound effect on her. Read about Hepburn's experiences during the war, and how they informed her acting choices later in life at People magazine. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image source: Wikipedia) 

Cyclingflash tells us that some competitive cyclists participating in the Tour de France have been caught wearing oversized bras and stuffing them in order to improve their athletic performance.

Why does this work? It appears that in the prone position that these athletes use, larger breasts (or their equivalent in excess fabric) improve wind resistance by redirecting airflow away from the body. This is called a "chest fairing." According to research, an optimal chest fairing, whether natural or artificial, can reduce drag by 3.6%.

In a long distance race like the Tour de France, that's a sufficient advantage to raise concerns. Some teams suggest that a solution would be to have female officials check riders in a closed tent prior to a race to ensure that no competitor is making use of artificial enhancements.

Image: ERO Sports

When your friend travels abroad on vacation, or even worse, lives in some other country for a semester as an exchange student or something, they come back acting a little different. They can't pass up a chance to show you how it's done in ...whatever place they went to. Yeah, we get it, you've broadened your horizons and learned a few new things, but that doesn't make you an expert. Your friends will love to hear those stories for about a week and that's it. Besides, we've seen movies and we've read books, so your second-hand enlightenment isn't all that enlightening to the rest of us. 

Alasdair Beckett-King wanted to illustrate this behavior without pointing to any particular exotic destination, so he selected Toon Town. We've all seen the movies and we've all laughed our way through them, so there's an extra layer of ridiculousness in this demonstration. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

It's true that medieval peasants ate whatever was available, or whatever mama served. But physicians and thinkers of the time had their own theories of what foods were healthy. These ideas were published, and became known to professional chefs for the aristocracy, and spread to everyone else if they were responsible for a family's diet. Foods were categorized as cold or hot and wet or dry. Too much of any of these properties was not healthy, but you could change them with cooking methods. For example, fish was cold and wet, so it should be fried instead of boiled, and spiced to make it warmer. Beef was dry, so it should be boiled. Most vegetables were dry, except onions, which should be fried to make them dryer. Eggs were considered wet, but the yolks were warm and nutritious, while the whites were cold. 

Beyond those categorizations, each food had its own reputation for helping or harming different body organs. And some were considered either good or bad for you depending on what sequence you placed them in a meal. Read up on which foods were best and how a cook could improve on what was available for dinner at Literary Hub. -via Strange Company 

I was a big fan of Star Trek: The Original Series as a kid, and Star Trek: The Next Generation as an adult. Then I lost track of the franchise while raising children. There were several more TV series and movies, which John Farrier can tell you all about. Then something happened. For one thing, Gene Roddenberry died in 1991. But even more important, streaming TV services came about. CBS All Access debuted in 2014, and rebranded as Paramount+ in 2021. They took a note from what Disney was doing with Star Wars and used their premiere science fiction property, the Star Trek universe, to drum up new subscribers. That meant offering a lot more Star Trek content in a hurry to draw the millions of fans who had followed Star Trek for up to fifty years.

Nerdstalgic takes a look at what Paramount+ came up with for this assignment. They focus on the Paramount+ years, so you might want to check this handy franchise timeline to sort out the different series by when they were produced. Since these series are eventually made available elsewhere, it might help you to decide what Star Trek you really want to watch. -via Laughing Squid 

Did your delivery driver hide your package in the recycling bin? Did your friend cancel plans by text as you were driving to the meeting point? Does your boss have meetings about meetings? These are things that can enrage you, but no one you know really wants to hear them, much less consider them important. But on the internet, there may be a million people who suffer from the same injustice. That's why the satirical US Department of Miscellaneous Grievances and Minor Affairs has the Bureau of Minor Sufferings. You can register your grievance or peruse cases to see what others are going through. 

You can file your complaint free and receive a receipt acknowledging your grievance. Not that anything will be done about it. Your case will wind its way through the bureaucracy and then eventually be discarded. Still, it might make you feel better to let it all out without making your friends and family roll their eyes. You can even add your name (first name only) to another person's grievance. Or just read them to make you feel less alone in your misery. -via Nag on the Lake 

Well, it looks like your plan for hiding out in the wilderness during the robot apocalypse is not as sure-fire as you thought. This metal critter will come and find you! The Unitree As2-W uses a combination of legs and wheels to conquer any terrain, whether it's inclines, rocks, mountains, water, or stairs. On flat ground, it can dance to your heart's content! 

Sure, it's entertaining, but what is it really good for? This video eventually shows us that the Unitree As2-W (surely a nickname will follow soon) is good for carrying your backpack on long hikes. I could think of more possibilities, ranging from carrying disabled outdoorsmen like an extreme wheelchair to getting supplies to military units far from civilization. But looking at the robot's stats, that's not currently possible. Sure, it can hold 150 kilograms on its back, but that's only while standing still. On the move, it's limited to 16 kilograms, which isn't much more than lunch for today's mountain hike. But it looks cool dancing. -via Born in Space 

In the modern world, it's rare that a victim would attend a murder trial. In fact, it's unheard of. But a medieval trial procedure called cruentation, also called bier-right or the ordeal of the bier, required that the remains of the victim be brought into the proceedings. This is the belief that a corpse would begin to bleed when it is touched by, or even just brought near, the person who killed them. 

A corpse would be wheeled into the courtroom, usually in its coffin, and the accused would be ordered to touch it. If the body began to bleed from any orifice or wound, that was taken as a sign from God that he or she was guilty of the murder. Any forensic scientist will tell you that this doesn't happen because blood coagulates pretty soon after death, but fluids may still seep from a long-dead corpse. Documentation on cruentation goes back to about the year 1200, but it could be much older. And it didn't die out completely until the 19th century! Read about the gruesome practice of cruentation at Mental Floss. 

(Image credit: Diebold Schilling the Younger) 

In Kottayam, Kerala, India, there was grand double Catholic wedding that involved three sets of twins. Akhil K. Thomas married his bride, Magi Mary Thomas, as Nikhil K. Thomas married his bride, Maria Mary Thomas.

A double wedding is already a spectacle, but this one went further. There were two Catholic priests presiding over the wedding, Father Pezhumkattil and Father Ajo Pezhumkattil of the Kanjirappally Diocese.

NDTV tells us that the twin theme originated with the brides, who searched for twin priests for this event. This particular church is locally noted as a gathering place for twins.

-via Michael Knowles

If you had asked me yesterday what "Stayin' Alive" by The Bee Gees and Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt.2” had in common, I would have thought a while and came up with the fact that they were both written for movies. "Stayin' Alive" was featured in the 1978 movie Saturday Night Fever, and "Another Brick in the Wall" was in the 1982 film The Wall. But no, the song was written for Pink Floyd's 1979 concept album, which later became a movie. Okay, maybe they are both good for timing your CPR.  

But here comes Joshua Woo, who has convinced me that they are the same song. In this performance, he sings "Stayin' Alive" over the tune of “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt.2.” He's spot on with the guitar solo, too. maybe we can convince him to song Pink Floyd's lyrics over the disco song next. -via the Awesomer 

Back in May, Starbucks Korea did a promotion called Tank Day, to celebrate their reusable tumblers they call tanks. They planned it for May the 18th. People in South Korea remember May 18th as the day their military quashed a huge protest using armored vehicles in 1980, in which hundreds and possibly thousands of people died. Oops. There was immediate backlash and protests. Sure, the promotion was designed by a marketing team in a C-suite in some other country, but you'd think that someone who works for Starbucks Korea would have pointed out the blunder ahead of time. Maybe the marketing team is not used to listening to locals.

It's far from the first time global brands ended up with egg on their faces by not taking another culture into consideration. Mercedes-Benz launched in China with the name Bensi, which in Mandarin sounds like "rush to die." We know your Swedish vacuum cleaner sucks, but is that a good thing or a bad thing in English? And will machine translations and AI ensure this will happen even more? Read about these cultural screwups and more at the Conversation. 

How do you make a bike obstacle course so difficult that the best riders in the world can't do it? Red Bull seems to have cracked the code. First, you float it over water, so there's always some wiggling going on. Then you make the true course as narrow as possible. That way, if you waver, deviate, or fall, you can't just get back up because you're in the water (and so is your bike). They tested this ridiculous obstacle course with a bunch of BMX pros, with results that can be described as pratfalls. It's a good thing they had a boat ready to fish riders and bikes out of the lake.

Then they challenged renowned cyclists Danny MacAskill and Kriss Kyle. These are the guys who will try it over and over again until they succeed, no matter how exhausted they get. Or until it gets too dark to try. But can they finish it? -via Laughing Squid