Every year a masked man leaves roses and cognac at Edgar Allan Poe's grave!

Edgar Allan Poe is famous for his dark tales of mystery and terror. After living a life that would be difficult to classify as normal, he passed away in 1849 under mysterious circumstances, strangely enough wearing clothes that weren’t even his, that has been attributed to anything from cholera, rabies, alcohol, or even suicide. 

He died in Baltimore and was buried, yet in the 1930’s a tradition began that can be classified nearly as strange as Poe’s life. He’s called the “Poe Toaster.” The nickname was given to a mysterious man that dressed in black with a wide-brimmed hat, white scarf, roses, and a bottle of cognac. The unknown man shows up every year since the 1930’s on January 19th at Poe’s gravesite and pours himself a glass of cognac in which he toasts Poe’s memory. 

After the cognac, he arranges the roses in a very specific order on the tombstone and leaves the half-empty bottle as well. Attempts have been made several times to catch of glimpse of the unknown man and discover his true identity, yet each has been unsuccessful. Fans of the Toaster became nervous as the years went on that eventually the man would have to stop coming, yet after leaving several notes it is now assumed that a younger “son” has emerged to take on the Toaster’s responsibility! 

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Continuum, a magazine focused on AIDS denialism, was shut down when all of its editors died from AIDS.

Exactly what you would expect to happen happened here. While it might seem a strange idea in the US, there are a lot of people out there who deny AIDS is real, deny HIV is real, or deny that HIV causes AIDS. 

Still, there is a surprisingly large “denialist” movement to try and disprove the existence of AIDS. Continuum was a magazine written by denialists and focusing on denialism. At one point, Continuum offered a £1,000 reward to "the first person finding one scientific paper establishing actual isolation of HIV.” The challenge was quickly dismissed by various scientists. 

So the year 2007 came around, and aidstruth.org sought to counter denialist claims. By this point, Continuum had already shut down. Aidstruth.org published a list of HIV/AIDS denialists who had died of AIDS or related causes. The editors of Continuum were included in the list. In each case, the death was due to secret drug use or stress related to being a denialist. 

The founder of the magazine, Jody Wells, died in 1995. The editors Tony Tompsett and Huw Christie Williams died in 1998 and 2001, respectively. 

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Black panthers aren’t a real species!

So, what are they? oddly enough, they can be any kind of big cat! They’re the result of a big cat, most commonly a leopard or jaguar, being born with Melanism, a genetic disorder which causes more dark-coloured skin or fur pigment, or melanin, to form. 

It is also the opposite of being born an albino. Because of the genetics involved, a Jaguar born to one normal parent and one melanistic parent can still have spots, but with dark patches. 

This is because the chromosome isn’t completely dominant. Jaguars aren’t the only animals that can experience melanism. Most mammals, including squirrels, guinea pigs, cats, snakes,dogs and moths, can develop the condition. 

It is often seen as a positive adaptation and can often make the animal better suited to its environment. In fact, the peppered moth’s recent evolution is almost completely centered around melanism. 

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About 85% of people breathe out of only one nostril at a time!

There is a general pattern for which nostril a person breathes out of. Generally people switch the nostril they breathe out of every four hours. This can vary depending on your body position and nasal congestion, though. Richard Kayser, a nasal specialist, first recognized the “nasal cycle” in 1895. Your nose accomplishes the switch through erectile tissue in your nose. 

The erectile tissue is, in fact, similar to the erectile tissue found in the penis and clitoris. The erectile tissue swells in the nostril almost completely blocking the passage while the erectile tissue in the other nostril shrinks down, allowing you to breathe through it. 

The nostril that you are breathing out of can greatly affect your brain and body, too! A study done revealed that breathing through your right nostril can greatly increase your blood glucose levels while breathing through your left nostril has the opposite effect. 

Another study found that breathing through your right nostril makes you consume more oxygen than if you breathe through your left nostril. 

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Old Apple laptops used to have the logo upside down. It wasn't an oversight but a user-friendliness decision.

This should be interesting for those of you that like to think about usability in technology. The Apple logo on old Apple laptops used to be upside down when you opened the lid. Why would Steve Jobs, the perennial perfectionist permit that? 

The answer is that it was for the laptop owner's sake. Look at your current Apple laptops, which have the logo on the right side when open. If you close the computer, you'll notice that the logo is facing away from you.

In their studies, when a laptop had the logo facing away from the user (so it wasn't backwards when open) people would attempt to open the laptop from the wrong side. 

This brought up an interesting decision between usability (aka making it intuitive which side the laptop was supposed to be opened from) and design (making the laptop look pretty to others when it was open). In the beginning Steve Jobs decided usability came before design. 

Eventually the Apple design group (and Jobs) decided that while on one hand it's a usability problem to have the logo facing away from the users, most people will probably only attempt to open the laptop on the wrong way once or twice, and then learn how to open it.

On the other hand, the problem of having the logo facing the wrong way when the laptop was open lasted for a much longer time, and the decision (and the logo) were reversed. It's reported that this was a problem for tv- and filmmakers who would even sometimes put Apple stickers on products so that the logo was displayed the right way.

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