Best Of MetaFilter

NYC Subway 80s by Olivier Nade (cc by-nc)

What was it like to be alive on September 15, 1985? "from the mundane to the profound, what do you remember about that time?"

FGR: Belly by bloody marty mix (cc by-nc-nd)

The oldest use of the f-word has been discovered, dating the word some 165 years earlier that had ever been seen. It appeared in the name "Roger Fuckebythenavele"

and in the dream-jobs-you-never-knew-you'd-kill-to-have department, litlnemo offers, "I teach a class on dirty surnames (yes, really) and this one so has to go into my list. Those medieval English people were not the most delicate of speech, let's just put it that way."

In other deep thoughts on names and other things, MCMikeNamara asks, Has Axl Rose ever commented on the fact that his stage name is an anagram for "oral sex"?

Delia Derbyshire

A polyphony of music past recently in the blue:

11+ documentaries on the history of electronic music; Larry Chung talks about and plays a 1934 Gibson L-5; A three-hour mixtape of Goth history, nearly 50 tracks of early-to-mid eighties Goth classics; Pitchfork's 200 Best Songs of the 1980s; Anton Karas plays the Theme from the Third Man, on zither; Using Spotify plays to quantify how old music has stood the test-of-time; "massive chords of intemperate savagery" – the strange story of Jón Leifs' Organ Concerto; great highlights from This is Tom Jones, a variety show that ran from 1969-1971; "Old Weird America", you say? I got some right here for ya

Copper engraving from 1755 shows Lisbon in ruins and in flames

Remembrances of things past via recent history posts on the blue:

More than 600 secret societies in the US, documented in 1899: here is "The Cyclopædia of Fraternities"; a compilation of existing authentic information and the results of original investigation

"Count Pier Francesco Orsini was a man much given to melancholy": Orsini's Sacro Busco, or the Park of Monsters

Ghosts at the Banquet: "Martin Gusinde documented the life and rituals of the Selk'nam people of Tierra del Fuego ... They had been nearly wiped out by a genocide led by Julius Popper, the Tyrant of Tierra del Fuego"

"In 1986, workers in Sichuan province in China were digging for clay for bricks when they stumbled onto an archaeological treasure: a major site for a Bronze Age civilization previously only guessed at"

Road tripping back in time on the Old Spanish Trail: "Today, you can still find remnants of that road, and there's a group of people who are trying to revive this historic highway."

"after the earthquake, King Joseph I was so afraid of buildings he moved out of Lisbon; his claustrophobia was so severe he lived in tents for the rest of his life. Artists depicted the chaos of the city in the aftermath of the disaster": The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755

Lego Firefox by Johnath (cc by-sa)

... but a distressing number of our users wind up making some unwise choices and/or installing some dodgy third-party software that a guy on the corner said would be perfectly safe and legal and also a good time, and wake up with a headache and no wallet and some addons that don't _quite_ do what that guy on the corner said they would. And when they try to figure out why their computer is suddenly so slow, process monitor isn't going to tell them it's because that download-accelerator that ad on the torrent site said to install is mining bitcoins on the side, it's going to say "Firefox, 99% CPU".

Mozillian MeFite Mhoye adds insight and answers questions in Rhaomi's recent multi-link Crazy like a (Fire)Fox post.

Isleworth riverside settlement image via thamesdiscovery.org

Yankeefog's question about fragments of old London still visible in modern London is a great place to fall down a rabbithole of curiosities, from Bronze Age fish traps on the Thames to bits of HMS Temeraire recycled into ecclesiastical furniture for St Mary's Church.

Helix desertorum. Forskal. From a living specimen in the British Museum, March, 1850.

In the mid-1800s, a snail spent years glued to a specimen card in the British Museum (now the Natural History Museum) before scientists realized it was still alive. What became of this snail? Ask Metafilter found out!

nicebookrack tracks down a gastropodean mystery and reports back on the amazing story of the snail that came back to life after years glued to a specimen card in the British Museum... and what happened next.

Clifford Dale Rinear was a carpenter. No word on whether he incited any riots.

Mudpuppie exercises her sleuthing skills and shares some post-HS bios of the 1911 Spokane High School Yearbook students.

Antwerp dog-cart by seriykotik1970 (cc by-nc-sa)

Sangermaine speaks truly: Members sciatrix and Iridic put the cart before the hordes with great posts on the history of the dog cart and a glossary of carriages (in which we learn that a "dog-cart" is not a dog cart, except when it is).

Sari Cloth Seller in New Delhi by Peter Rivera (cc by)

If you ever wondered what the lifecycle of a sari is like, MeFi member peacheater gave an amazing answer for how her mother has maintained a collection of saris over decades.

Another thing to note it that because saris are meant to be kept in the family and handed down (there are simply no sizing problems, if you think about it, since the blouse and underskirt can always be restitched for another person and the sari itself is just one big piece of cloth), women of the middle classes and above are willing to spend way more on a sari than one would imagine - if my mother really loves a sari, she'll go ahead and fork over thousands of dollars for it. However, it will remain pristine for decades, as she gets her saris pressed, and she has amazing taste, so even her old saris still look stunning.

analogue modem by secretlondon123 (cc by-sa)

It's interesting to read the very first thread about (The) Facebook from 2005, the first thread about Netflix from 2002, and the night-before-launch of Apple's first iPod. It's also interesting to look back at less successful things like 2003's launch of Microsoft's first tablet computer and read what members thought.

Ottonischer Winter 2013/2014 by Hiltibold (cc by)

Dontjumplarry asks, "What strategies were used by peasants of medieval Europe to prepare for and survive the harsh winter months?" and gets some interesting answers about food preservation technologies and construction, heating and cooking techniques, as well as complicated laws governing foraging rights.

Cat scan by zircon3035 (cc by)

MetaFilter is 14 years old today, and tradition dictates a reposting of the first thing ever posted to the site.

Page 66 - Orchid specimen, article on Dr. Chapin's mission by Smithsonian Institution

Fame is not that important to historians. Famous people's lives are generally well documented in sources other than a journal - newspapers, proceedings, parodies, letters, legislative records, etc. PRivate people's lives are, in fact, a lot harder to find out about and lot more interesting to people practicing history today. What we know about events like the Civil War or even World War II, life aboard an American whaleship or on the frontier, we mostly know by the writings of non-famous people who simply observed and recorded the detail of daily life.

At some level it's impossible to say what historians of the future will find important and interesting about our time, and it will change, anyway. Diaries of non-famous people were scoffed at for a long time before they began to be taken seriously as sources of historical evidence. But I think there are some general principles.

Miko gives an in-depth answer from a historians perspective.

soldiergrafitti3 by dkmonkey

My ancestral home was requisitioned by the US army to house many soldiers. My great-grandmother cooked for them and became fond of many of them. Enclosed is a sample, I know it is difficult to read but it says: "Edw Clark 9cd Co. 114th US INf, Camp McClellan, Anniston Ala. In nov, in Berlin."

I wanted to send these inscriptions left by their ancestors while serving in that horrible war, but have not been able to trace anyone, unless I am willing to pay for a research service. I do not know the hometown of these soldiers in the US. Camp McClellan, in Ala, was formed in 1917, so I should be able to obtain enrollees names and details, but no success.

A mystery AskMe with a very happy ending.