Best Of MetaFilter

First NBL training run - Getting a feel for the suit. by AstroSamantha (cc by)

Did you enjoy last night's live thread watching the Jupiter mission?

Check out the big auction of space items like navigational globes -- alongside this video from (Mefi's own) engineerguy Bill Hammack on how some of that equipment worked. (Also don't miss his video series recreating Faraday's historical lectures on how a candle works.)

Flight history detectives: Who was the first child to fly in an airplane?

From backseatpilot and Eleven, some expert answers to that age-old question: Which has better aerodynamics, an X-Wing or a TIE fighter?

Bears and Codpieces by timkelley (cc by-nd)

Bits and bobs of recent-ish quirky questions on Ask MetaFilter:

What did historical laydeez think about those codpieces?

Films that occupy that "liminal space between being a bad movie and an art movie"?

Babushka lady behaviour? Examples, real or fictional, of people acting in noticeably strange or incongruous ways during important events or crowd scenes?

I vaaant to be alone! Temporarily deserted places that usually bustle during daylight hours?

No Chuck Tingle? What is the weirdest book in the history of English literature?

Not quite myself today. Is my body composed of a different set of atoms from when I was born?

Nathalia Holt's "Rise of the Rocket Girls"

Amaaaaazing post from filthy light thief on the women behind the Jet Propulsion Lab and NASA, and the book by Nathalia Holt that celebrates them. 🚀

Water drops by sama093 (cc by-nc)

We don't know for certain if the Gas! GAS! in Wilfred Owen's devastating poem was chlorine, but we do know that it can kill and maim in the way he described. But when his poem was written, chlorine had already begun to play a completely different, quietly heroic role, going on to save hundreds of millions of lives over the course of the 20th century.

Check out clawsoon's great, in-depth post "Chlorine probably saved your life today"

WC [toilet facilities] by State Records NSW

History pals!

Enjoy some newly-animated historical city photos, plus barnacles on the history of Australian public bathrooms "in case you're the sort of person that wants to see 115-year old survey sketches of toilets and urinal blocks".

Or listen to the meticulously recreated ambient sounds of 1700s Paris.

How about Marie Duval, 19th century woman cartoonist called 'one of the forgotten wonders of nineteenth-century art .. the bizarre dreamlike distortions of her comic world look like some steampunk 21st-century version of Victorian London."

Or the re-discovered ancient Chinese texts that rewrite the early history of Taoism and Confucianism.

Speaking of, what are some examples of historical events that are commonly misunderstood?

Did you catch teponaztli transcribing some diary pages from 1799-1804 New York City? "The most I've seen her write about anything was how much she hates games, which I love for its being an angry rant from 200+ years ago."

Or enjoy the brief video on the baseball fan Wild Bill Hagy, which is a time capsule of 1979 Baltimore.

Harking back to 1979, share some sense-memories in what was it like when everybody smoked?

Or looking further back - what was sugar like in 1631?

Finally, what are the best history nerds on Youtube?

inside elevation by parramitta (cc by)

Why does Wyoming have such a low population compared to neighboring states? barchan explains, jeb adds: "everything in the West comes back to water".

Ever wonder what a "nor'easter" is? Check out the great answers from Seymour Zamboni, plastic_animals, and weathergal in rules of thumb for weather patterns in the USA.

Lots of different places have unique colloquial weather terms too. (Gullywashers, the foxes' wedding, and lots of wind terms again from barchan.)

Also in language surveys: What are some antiquated place nicknames (like the Borscht Belt)? What do other languages call it when your foot "falls asleep"?

Different cultures also have their own languages of flower-meanings. Plus some cool info from sukeban on how new imported flowers like roses made their way into kimono designs in the late 19th century.

For geography/history detectives: How can I tell, just from clues in the document itself, when a world map was made or figure out when a photograph was taken?

Did you see the new photos from the formerly-hidden-from-visitors North Korean subway system?

Some great answers in travel threads recently: Italy: non-traditional but amazing?, and also Scotland: what not to miss.

Ain Manawir (VII) by isawnyu (cc by)

JoeZydeco on how a vending machine knows what coin you've put in (and why the Mars candy company spun off an electronics company)

seasparrow on ancient underground water-distribution systems called "qanats"... including diagrams

codacorolla on their academic research on Minecraft players

The evolution of thimble technology, as seen in artifacts found scattered across England

A nice discussion of the importance of the skills needed to maintain old systems

Pont en Royans by FrenchHope (cc by)

Recently on Mefi, people and places around the world, enchanting, mysterious and magnetic:

Good luck finding parking: "The Precarious Architecture of 7 European Cliff Cities"

The REMAINS of Greenland project is attempting to locate and preserve archaeological sites in Greenland before they are lost to the destructive effects of climate change

Italians Compare the Arrival of Starbucks to the Apocalypse: pjsky's roundup of the unthinkable

Grace's Guide to British Industrial History is a project publishing the history of industry in the UK and elsewhere

"Being Iceland, it gets complicated": Saga Thing is a podcast about the Sagas of the Icelanders

Roadtrip like it's 1966: 1966 video photolog trips of selected highways via BC Ministry of Transportation

No vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end: A short video from the British Geological Survey about Siccar Point

NYC - Metropolitan Museum of Art - George Washington by wallyg (cc by-nc-nd)

George Washington's hairstyle mystery -- how did he keep his white hair powder off his shoulders? Mefite nickyskye has the answer.

What happened when someone in the Middle Ages got pink eye, or someone in Elizabethan England got athlete's foot or crotch rot? Did the infections just hang around forever? Was everyone just infected with this type of stuff? (It's pretty well-known that basically everyone had lice and fleas, I believe.)

In Ask Me: Minor infections in the days before anti-biotics or anti-fungals? Many good answers, and Jane the Brown brings the serious history again.

17th Century commonplace book via themillions.com

Before Jezebel, The Toast, and Twitter there were wise and witty women handily perpetrating "epic feminist takedowns of the ages," as illustrated in yarntheory's interesting post about Mary Collier and her 18th century poem, "The Woman's Labour"

... and before Pinterest and Evernote and Tumblr, "there was the humble commonplace book, a space for gathering and reflecting on ideas, quotations, observations, lines from poems, and other information." MonkeyToes gives us a loving magpie's roundup of this "venerable tradition of idea curation."

Projection Booth by limecools (cc by-nc-sa)

"I set Anchorman on fire": Tales from Mefite film projectionists.

To make that sparkly tv logo without computers, the artists "stayed up all night doing drugs." - How they made animated graphics for tv before CGI.

Betamax nostalgia here - Plus how videotape and adhesive tape are made on the same machines.

Remember those 1-800- commercials from late-night tv? - I made those ads, and I worked in a call center, and we could tell when the ads aired.

Stock trader tech - lots of love for the bottomless Bloomberg terminal (internal Craigslist! extra emoji!), history of some alternatives to Bloomberg in the early 1980s, and extra tough phone equipment to survive frustrated smashing by floor traders.

Electronic medical records - A harder problem than it seems, how it's a pain for doctors, and why a lot of medical info systems still rely on fax or modem.

Cabinet constructed in 1716 contained a secret letter from its craftsman

Great post from bonobothegreat about a letter concealed three centuries ago in the secret compartment of an elaborately carved and constructed writing cabinet. (Mefites have also left hidden artifacts for future historians to analyze and puzzle over.)

Afternoon Tea Paskeston Hall, Pembrokeshire by Hippy-dippy

Food and drink from the Mefi larder: Can't find the ingredient you're missing from your native cuisine? Try these immigrant food substitutions. What should we do with our leftovers? The ingenuity of meatloaf. If you don't have leftovers for lunch, enjoy packed lunches from around the world.

How can I feed my picky child? A reassuring answer.

Washing in milk, historic mealtimes, and why food was served cold to the rich, explained in unexpected facts about everyday life in the past.

Let's get serious about tea or go to Kentucky for a tour guide to bourbon country.

Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium by paukrus (cc by)

Some great recent posts on the natural world:

A 17th-Century Woman Artist’s Butterfly Journey: gorgeous images and bio info on early entomologist-artist Maria Sibylla Merian

The inner life of the fig: documentary on the sycamore fig tree, focusing on the intricate mutualism between a fig tree and its fig wasp

A tree grows in Israel: an extinct Judean Date Palm is grown from an ancient jar of seeds unearthed by archaeologists

My hovercraft is full of Petromyzon marinus: science, lore, and more on the fearsome sea lamprey

Satan Put the Kettle On: the mystery of Devil's Kettle Falls' vanishing waterfall