‘Share tables’ help keep kids from going hungry and reduce food waste in schools across the US.

When schools set up share tables in their lunchrooms, anyone can leave their unopened food and drinks on the table instead of throwing them away, other kids can stop by and take whatever they’d like, and the leftovers are usually donated to food banks or used in after-school programs.


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https://www.scarymommy.com/school-share-tables/

The Brutal Murders at Hinterkaifeck, Germany


The morning of April 4, 1922, dawned upon the sleepy German hamlet of Kaifeck like any other - the ground was still cold from the previous winter's frost, the postman made his rounds, and friends and neighbours all rose to greet each other as they went about their day.



Before the day was done, however, a sequence of gruesome discoveries would set the whole town buzzing with rumours and accusations, eventually becoming one the most notorious cold cases in German criminal history.



Our story centres around a small farmstead known as Hinterkaifeck located less than a mile behind ("hinter" in German) the village of Kaifeck. The farm was occupied by 63-year-old Andreas Gruber, his wife Cäzilia (72), his widowed daughter Viktoria Gabriel (35), Viktoria's two children Cäzilia (7) and Josef (2), and the maid, Maria Baumgartner (44) - all whom were discovered on that fateful morning as victims of a brutal mass murder.

The bloody corpses of Andreas, Viktoria, and both Cäzilias were found buried under a haystack in the barn, while Maria and young baby Josef were both found murdered in their respective beds. All six victims had been bludgeoned to death with a mattock, a type of pickaxe used in farming. Despite multiple investigations over the subsequent decades and several arrests made, no suspect has ever been brought to trial due to lack of conclusive evidence.



On the surface, it may appear to be like any cold case, but it's the details surrounding the case that truly make the Hinterkaifeck incident so unique.

After examining the crime scene, it was determined that the victims were likely murdered on the evening of March 31, 1922 - several days before concerned neighbours discovered the bodies. Authorities found remnants of meals that had been recently cooked and eaten and neighbours had also reported seeing smoke from the chimneys, which is part of the reason they didn't stop by to check on the family until they did. This means that whoever murdered the Grubers made themselves right at home after they were done the killing, likely walking around the still-fresh bodies of Maria and baby Josef for several days as if they were little more than decorations. They also fed and tended to the farm animals, demonstrating at least some regard for life.



Police were also able to rule out robbery as a motive - although the Grubers were a decently wealthy family for the area, their money and valuables were left virtually untouched despite being fairly easy to find.



Then there's the fact that the Grubers' previous maid abruptly quit six months before the murders, having complained about hearing ghosts in the attic for several months before finally handing in her notice. Indeed, the new maid, Maria Baumgartner, had literally arrived at Hinterkaifeck for her first day of work on March 31, only to meet an untimely end a few hours later.

Curiously, there are some accounts from locals and neighbours that say 7-year-old Cäzilia had also made passing comments that the attic was haunted. Could it be that the killer was hiding out up there the whole time?



A few days before the murders, Andreas had also told some of the villagers about a set of footsteps he found leading from the forest behind the farm to the barn - but curiously, he could find no corresponding footsteps leading away from the property. He'd also noticed scratches on the lock to his tool shed - as if someone had attempted to pick the lock - as well as discovering a newspaper on the property that none of his neighbours subscribed to and that the postman had no recollection of ever delivering. Although his friends tried to give him a rifle for protection, Andreas seemingly thought little of these odd events and declined the offer.

Another curious and disturbing wrinkle to the case comes from the incestuous relationship between Andreas and his widowed daughter, Viktoria. Both Andreas and Viktoria had served jail time for it, and the fact that Andreas was sleeping with his daughter was an open secret around the community. There were even rumours that baby Josef was actually the product of this coupling - the boy was reported to bear a strong resemblance to his grandfather.



It's important to note here that Andreas Gruber was well-known to be an angry, ill-tempered man. Multiple villagers claimed his wrath was the reason that, although Andreas had multiple children with his wife, Viktoria was the only one who survived to adulthood. There is a strong possibility, therefore, that Viktoria was not an entirely willing participant in the relationship.



Whether it was consensual or not, one thing is clear - Viktoria fell pregnant with Josef not long after her father was released from prison, and her husband had already been reported as having died fighting for Germany in the trenches of WWI. There was, however, another candidate who could have been Josef's father - the Grubers' neighbour, Lorenz Schlittenbauer.



He had once engaged in a romantic relationship with Viktoria and had even tried unsuccessfully asking Andreas for her hand in marriage (Andreas declined as he was strongly against their relationship). After Josef was born, Viktoria had even sued him for child support! Lorenz tried to contest that charge at first, but eventually settled the matter and paid up.

Schlittenbauer was also among the first group of worried neighbours who decided to check in on the Grubers after none of them had been seen around town for several days. Upon arriving on the scene, the group first discovered the bodies in the barn, stacked up on top of one another and covered in hay. Schilttenbauer immediately started to un-pile the bodies - a serious breach of crime scene protocol, even in those early days of forensics. He also decided to go into the house on his own while the other members of his search party waited outside out of fear that the killer might still be on the scene.



When asked why he decided to barge into the house and further contaminate the crime scene, Schilttenbauer mentioned a fatherly concern for baby Josef and claimed that he was worried about the boy, even if he may not have been his own son.



Could it be that Schlittenbauer, heartbroken and publicly humiliated, decided to take his revenge on the family responsible for his troubles? His farm shared a property line with the Grubers', and he certainly had the opportunity, the motive, and the kind of agricultural knowledge that subsequent investigation determined the killer must've had. However, despite being questioned extensively by police, Schlittenbauer was acquitted as a suspect and went on to win numerous civil claims for slander against multiple people who kept saying that he was the murderer of Hinterkaifeck.

Another, more outlandish theory claims that the killer might've been Viktoria's dead husband, Karl. His body was never actually recovered, he'd never gotten along with Andreas, and he'd often made references to running away to Russia before his death. There were also German POWs in WWII who claimed they'd met a Soviet officer who spoke German and claimed to be the killer of Hinterkaifeck. It could be that Karl managed to fake his death, then returned home over seven years later to see that his wife had had another baby in his absence and killed everyone in rage. TThis theory holds little weight, however, since several of Karl's platoon members testified to having seen him fall in battle. His motive is also muddy - the farm was in Viktoria's name, so if he hoped to inherit it, he'd have had to officially come back from the dead.



Among other suspects were a pair of brothers whose sister claimed they did it on her deathbed and an escaped mental patient who may have been in the area roughly around the time of the murders, but police investigations couldn't find enough evidence to actually prove that any of them had done it.



A far more intriguing theory comes from writer Bill James and his daughter, Rachel McCarthy James. In their book, The Man From The Train, they claimed that the murders of Hintrekaifeck shared several key elements with another set of mysterious murders in America a few years prior. Much like Hinterkaifeck, the Villisca Axe Murders took place in an isolated home not far from a railroad track, saw an entire family murdered by a farming tool, and didn't include any form of robbery as a potential motive.

Based on his research, James says a German immigrant called Paul Meuller was likely responsible for the Villisca murders, and possibly fled back to Germany in the aftermath, where he resumed his murderous habits.



The murders at Hinterkaifeck remain unsolved to this day despite having been investigated multiple times by police, as well as true crime enthusiasts all over the globe.



In 2007, a German forensic academy had students investigate the case using modern techniques, but they determined that the absolutely horrendous techniques used by investigators of the time as well as the fact that the crime scene had been contaminated by curious townspeople (and Lorenz Schlittenbauer) and poor records made it virtually impossible to come to a conclusive answer. Although the students were able to narrow down the list of suspects to just one name, they never released that name out of respect for the person's living relatives.



If you'd like to dive deeper into the strange and mysterious events of Hinterkaifeck, check out the video below:


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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r93z8MH_eg8

The inventor of rolled toilet paper filed an original patent in 1891 that included illustrations of the paper hanging OVER the roll, not under it.


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https://patents.google.com/patent/US447419

Incompetent people are often so incompetent, they don’t even realize their own incompetence. According to the Dunning-Kruger effect, people who are ignorant or unskilled in any area are too inept to notice, so they end up thinking they’re far more competent than they actually are.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, was known for smoking in public, swearing at officials, riding in cars with men, late-night partying, and owning a pet snake during an era where women were expected to conform.

When an offended dignitary asked the president if he could control his daughter, he replied, “I can do one of two things. I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both.”


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http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,950286,00.html?promoid=googlep

There are tea bags shaped like little goldfish that swim around in your mug.


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https://www.amazon.com/Goldfish-Tea-Single-Champagne-Oolong/dp/B018Y1R6W6/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=sl1&tag=did09-20&linkId=f4c58db812b063e9356fdd961008d37d

Abstinence-only-until-marriage programs are statistically ineffective.

Studies show they reinforce gender stereotypes, undermine public health programs, violate adolescent human rights by withholding accurate medical information, and they don’t actually delay sexual activity.


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https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(17)30297-5/fulltext

In Switzerland, you can be denied citizenship if your neighbours think you’re too annoying.


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http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/becoming-a-citizen/29288376

The vocal distress signal ‘Mayday!’ comes from the French term ’M'aider,’ which means ‘help me.’

If you need to use it to call for help, be sure to say it 3 times in a row so potential first responders will know it’s a legitimate distress call.


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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayday

Bigmo...
In 1964, a Swedish art gallery displayed 4 paintings by unknown artist Pierre Brassau.

Every single art critic praised the ‘avant-garde’ work- except one, who said, ‘only an ape could have done this’ …and he was right. It was all a hoax by a journalist who wanted to put art critics to the test, and ‘Brassau’ was actually a 4-year-old chimpanzee named Peter. …and he was right. It was all a hoax by a journalist who wanted to put art critics to the test, and ‘Brassau’ was actually a 4-year-old chimpanzee named Peter.

Wasn't it Brian Sewell, the art critic that made the statement?

‘Pakistan’ is an acronym.

The word translates as ‘land of the pure’- but that’s just a coincidence, because the country’s name is based on the Muslim territories of Northern India in the 1930s: (P)unjabi, (A)fghani, (K)ashmiri, (S)indhi, and Balochis(TAN), with an extra ‘I’ to make it easier to pronounce.


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http://mentalfloss.com/article/12447/why-do-so-many-countries-end-stan

Keeping a strong social life can lead to significantly improved memory in old age.


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https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0186413

The more biological older brothers a man has, the stronger his chances are of being gay.

It’s called the fraternal birth order effect, and it has to do with the mother’s immune response to certain male antigens while pregnant, which increases with each pregnancy.


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https://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/11/health/men-older-brothers-gay-study/index.html

Leading a sedentary lifestyle with prolonged sitting can build up excess fat around your internal organs.


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https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.22034

Breaking eye contact makes you a better conversationalist.

Studies show people who are forced to maintain eye contact take longer to recall words than those who are allowed to take a break from the mental stimulation of staring into someone else’s eyes. Though maintaining eye contact is important for building emotional connections, looking away is key for having focused and productive conversations.


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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027716302360?via%3Dihub

People who are genuinely happy in their relationships usually don’t post about it on social media.

Studies show that someone who’s always gushing about their partner on Facebook is tied to how insecure they are in their relationship - while those who are more secure spend time enjoying their relationships instead of trying to convince other people (and themselves) how happy they are.


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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167214549944

Studies show humblebragging comes off as insincere and makes people like you less than if you just shamelessly self-promote.


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https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-40996-001

According to some 40-million-year-old bones that were found in Antarctica, penguins used to be over 6 feet tall and weighed more than 250 pounds.


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https://phys.org/news/2014-08-klekowskii-penguin-size-title-emperor.html

Vito Corleone’s cat in The Godfather was a stray the film’s writer/director, Francis Ford Coppola, found on the Paramount lot. It purred so loudly that some of Marlon Brando’s dialogue had to be dubbed.


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http://mentalfloss.com/article/62427/15-things-you-didnt-know-about-godfather

Bananas are curved because they grow against the pull of gravity. They start off hanging downwards, but as they get bigger, they start trying to grow upwards to get more sun and end up having a curved shape.


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http://www.dole.eu/dole-earth/farmtour/bananito/hotspot/banana-curved.html