Mildly interesting
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Five parrots at Lincolnshire Wildlife Park were separated after they began swearing at visitors and laughing together. 🦜
The parrots, named Billy, Elsie, Eric, Jade, and Tyson, were adopted by the park and initially quarantined together before joining the larger colony of 200 grey parrots.
They quickly learned to swear at visitors and encourage each other to do so, finding it humorous.
To prevent them from teaching this behavior to the other parrots and to avoid further issues with visitors, especially children, the five were separated and placed in different areas of the park.
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In contrast to his roughneck public persona, Moe was, in private life, a quiet, dedicated family man, whose hobbies included reading, playing bridge and making hooked rugs.
Moe was the business-minded one of the group. He knew that Curly liked to spend his money on partying and women, and Larry liked to spend his at the racetrack. So, he drew up an agreement where Larry and Curly turned over a certain percentage of their salaries to him. He, in turn, invested it for them. The result was that, while Larry and Curly were not as wealthy as Moe was (he invested far more of his own money and was quite well off), he ensured that their spendthrift habits did not result in their being broke when their careers ended.
His famous "bowl" haircut came by accident. As a child, his mother always wanted a girl, and with Moe being the youngest at the time, she would play dress-up with him, putting him in dresses and bologna curling his long hair. One day, after being picked on for months in school, he and some friends hid in the shed, and he chopped all of the hair off, using a bowl as a guide. After doing so, he was so afraid to face his mother, he hid for hours. Finally coming out, after seeing his hair, she cried out that she was so happy he did so, simply because she couldn't bring herself to. His hair stuck with him all his life.
Howard got the idea for the notorious Stooge gag of eye-gouging one day when, during a game of bridge, Shemp Howard leaned over and poked Larry Fine in the eyes for not playing well. The result: Larry cried, Shemp apologized, Moe laughed until he fell out of his chair and walked through a glass door. He considered the eye-gouge the funniest thing he'd ever seen and decided to use it in their act.When The Three Stooges shorts began to appear on local children's shows in the late 1950s, there was a wave of kids poking each other in the eyes. When Moe heard about this, it was the Stooges who came to the rescue. They went on many local television shows, as well as national television, and showed how the eye-pokes were done in a way that nobody got hurt. To the kids watching, it was like learning a magic trick. (IMDb)
Happy Birthday, Moe Howard!
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Does having detailed conversations with my dogs qualify as dementia?
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This image displays the Complaint Tablet to Ea-nāṣir, considered to be the oldest known written customer complaint.
This clay tablet, written in Akkadian cuneiform around 1750 BCE, was found in the ancient city of Ur (modern-day Iraq).
It details a complaint from a customer named Nanni to a merchant named Ea-nāṣir, concerning the delivery of substandard copper ingots and mistreatment of Nanni's servant.
The tablet offers a unique glimpse into ancient Mesopotamian trade practices and consumer grievances, demonstrating that customer complaints are a long-standing human phenomenon.
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GOOD NEWS: America’s National Bird Thriving in the Buckeye State
Ohio can celebrate a milestone this Independence Day with 964 confirmed active bald eagle nests. 
️ More than 1,800 reports from citizen scientists statewide helped complete the 2025 bald eagle nest census. Our staff followed up on these reports and confirmed nest locations in 87 of Ohio’s 88 counties.️ Active nests were counted as those with an incubating eagle, eggs, or eaglets present. Given the high volume of nests, this nest census represents the most complete picture possible of Ohio’s breeding bald eagle population.
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ORNAMENTAL HERMITS were hired by wealthy landowners in the 18th century in Britain and Ireland to live on their landscaped estates.
Ornamental hermits were part living garden ornament, part conversation piece. They were meant to evoke a sense of ancient wisdom, solitude, and rustic wildness, aligning with the era’s fascination with nature, ruins, and the sublime. Sometimes the contracts were bizarrely specific: the hermit might be paid to grow out his hair and beard, wear rags or druid-like robes, never wash, avoid speaking to visitors, and remain on the estate for years, providing an atmosphere of poetic decay.
Some estates advertised for hermits in newspapers. One famous example is Charles Hamilton’s estate at Painshill Park in Surrey. He built a hermitage and offered a seven-year post to any man willing to live as a recluse under strict conditions. Legend says the first hired hermit was discovered at a local pub after only a few weeks and was promptly dismissed.
