Alan Robinson and Walter Macfarlane were born in Hawaii 15 months apart. The duo met in 6th grade and have been friends for 60 years. While they’ve shared a very close bond, they never thought they were related, until a DNA website revealed their relationship. Robinson was adopted, and Macfarlane did not know who his father was, so the pair were always searching individually for information on their families. For years, Macfarlane had tried unsuccessfully to find clues about his father. With the help of his daughter, they began sifting through matches he got on a DNA website. One of the top matches was username Robi737. Macfarlane-Flores told KHON-TV, that her father’s best friend, Robinson, flew 737 airplanes for Aloha Airlines, and his nickname was Robi. The pair soon learned that they shared a birth mother. (via USA Today)
Archeologists have found honey in 3,000-year-old Egyptian tombs that is still edible
Modern archeologists, excavating ancient Egyptian tombs, have often found something unexpected amongst the tombs’ artifacts: pots of honey, thousands of years old, and yet still preserved. Through millennia, the archeologists discover, the food remains unspoiled, an unmistakable testament to the eternal shelf-life of honey. There are a few other examples of foods that keep–indefinitely–in their raw state: salt, sugar, dried rice are a few. But there’s something about honey; it can remain preserved in a completely edible form, and while you wouldn’t want to chow down on raw rice or straight salt, one could ostensibly dip into a thousand year old jar of honey and enjoy it, without preparation, as if it were a day old. Moreover, honey’s longevity lends it other properties – mainly medicinal – that other resilient foods don’t have. Which raises the question: what exactly makes honey such a special food? (via The Smithsonian)
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