When a Cat Co-Authored a Paper in a Leading Physics Journal (1975)

in Physics, Random | October 19th, 2026

Back in 1975, Jack H. Het­her­ing­ton, a physics pro­fes­sor at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, wrote a research paper on low–temperature physics for the respect­ed sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal Phys­i­cal Review Let­ters. Before send­ing it off, Het­her­ing­ton asked a col­league to review the paper, just to make sure it cov­ered the right bases. What hap­pened next Het­her­ing­ton explained in the 1982 book, More Ran­dom Walks in Sci­ence:

Before I sub­mit­ted [the arti­cle], I asked a col­league to read it over and he said, ‘It’s a fine paper, but they’ll send it right back.’ He explained that that is because of the Edi­tor’s rule that the word “we” should not be used in a paper with only a sin­gle author. Chang­ing the paper to the imper­son­al seemed too dif­fi­cult now, and it was all writ­ten and typed; there­fore, after an evening’s thought, I sim­ply asked the sec­re­tary to change the title page to include the name of the fam­i­ly cat, a Siamese called Chester, sired one sum­mer by Willard (one of the few unfixed male Siamese cats in Aspen, Col­orado). I added the ini­tials F D in front of the name to stand for Felix Domes­ti­cus and thus cre­at­ed F D C Willard.

The edi­tors even­tu­al­ly accept­ed the paper, “Two‑, Three‑, and Four-Atom Exchange Effects in bcc 3 He.” And the ruse last­ed until, remem­bers Het­her­ing­ton, “a vis­i­tor [came to the uni­ver­si­ty and] asked to talk to me, and since I was unavail­able asked to talk with Willard. Every­one laughed and soon the cat was out of the bag.” (Pun sure­ly intend­ed.) Appar­ent­ly only the jour­nal edi­tors did­n’t find humor in the joke.

Above, you can see F.D.C. Willard’s sig­na­ture (a paw print) on the front page of the arti­cle. The web­site, Today­I­Found­Out, has much more on this enchant­i­ng lit­tle sto­ry.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Short­est-Known Paper Pub­lished in a Seri­ous Math Jour­nal: Two Suc­cinct Sen­tences 

The Famous Schrodinger’s Cat Thought Exper­i­ment Gets Brought to Life in an Off-Kil­ter Ani­ma­tion

Insane­ly Cute Cat Com­mer­cials from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, Hayao Miyazaki’s Leg­endary Ani­ma­tion Shop

Nick Cave Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Film about the Cat Piano, the Twist­ed 18th Cen­tu­ry Musi­cal Instru­ment Designed to Treat Men­tal Ill­ness

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Watch Peter Tork Quietly Mouth Other Actors’ Lines in The Monkees: A Strange Quirk You’ll Never Unsee

in Random, Television | March 11th, 2026

And now for some­thing entire­ly ran­dom. As not­ed on Metafil­ter, “Peter Tork from the Mon­kees had a strange lit­tle quirk. Some­times, when oth­er actors … were deliv­er­ing their lines Tork would unthink­ing­ly mouth their dia­logue along with them, as seen in this YouTube com­pi­la­tion. Once you spot it, it makes the show (which was already kin­da weird) weird in a whole new way.” The YouTu­ber who cre­at­ed this com­pi­la­tion spent count­less hours star­ing at Peter’s lips. Giv­en the alter­na­tive these days, it’s not a bad use of time.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Jimi Hen­drix Opens for The Mon­kees on a 1967 Tour; Then Flips Off the Crowd and Quits

How the 1968 Psy­che­del­ic Film Head Destroyed the Mon­kees & Became a Cult Clas­sic

Watch Frank Zap­pa Play Michael Nesmith (RIP) on The Mon­kees–and Vice Ver­sa (1967)

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Hunter S. Thompson Sets His Christmas Tree on Fire, Nearly Burning His House Down (1990)

in Literature, Random | December 19th, 2025

It was some­thing of a Christ­mas rit­u­al at Hunter S. Thomp­son’s Col­orado cab­in, Owl Farm. Every year, his sec­re­tary Deb­o­rah Fuller would take down the Christ­mas tree and leave it on the front porch rather than dis­pose of it entire­ly. That’s because Hunter, more often than not, want­ed to set it on fire. In 1990, Sam Allis, a writer for the then for­mi­da­ble TIME mag­a­zine, vis­it­ed Thomp­son’s home and watched the fiery tra­di­tion unfold. He wrote:

I gave up on the inter­view and start­ed wor­ry­ing about my life when Hunter Thomp­son squirt­ed two cans of fire starter on the Christ­mas tree he was going to burn in his liv­ing-room fire­place, a few feet away from an unopened wood­en crate of 9‑mm bul­lets. That the tree was far too large to fit into the fire­place mat­tered not a whit to Hunter, who was sport­ing a dime-store wig at the time and resem­bled Tony Perkins in Psy­cho. Min­utes ear­li­er, he had smashed a Polaroid cam­era on the floor.

Hunter had decid­ed to video­tape the Christ­mas tree burn­ing, and we lat­er heard on the replay the ter­ri­fied voic­es of Deb­o­rah Fuller, his long­time sec­re­tary-baby sit­ter, and me off-cam­era plead­ing with him, “NO, HUNTER, NO! PLEASE, HUNTER, DON’T DO IT!” The orig­i­nal man­u­script of Hell’s Angels was on the table, and there were the bul­lets. Noth­ing doing. Thomp­son was a man pos­sessed by now, full of the Chivas Regal he had been slurp­ing straight from the bot­tle and the gin he had been mix­ing with pink lemon­ade for hours.

The wood­en man­tel above the fire­place appar­ent­ly still has burn marks on it today.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Free: Read the Orig­i­nal 23,000-Word Essay That Became Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Find­ing Mean­ing in Life

Hunter S. Thompson’s Ball­sy & Hilar­i­ous Job Appli­ca­tion Let­ter (1958)

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Skiing Down Mount Everest with No Oxygen: It’s a Wild Ride

in Life, Random | November 9th, 2025

From Red Bul­l’s YouTube Chan­nel: “Ski moun­taineer Andrzej Bargiel becomes the first per­son to climb Mount Ever­est and ski back to Ever­est Base Camp with­out sup­ple­men­tary oxy­gen. After near­ly 16 hours climb­ing in the high alti­tude “death zone” (above 8,000m where oxy­gen lev­els are dan­ger­ous­ly low), Bargiel clipped into his skis on the sum­mit of the tallest moun­tain on earth and start­ed his descent via the South Col Route. He reached Camp II that night and rest­ed — the sum­mit ridge and Hillary Step had tak­en longer than planned, mean­ing dark­ness made it dan­ger­ous and dif­fi­cult to nav­i­gate fur­ther that day. The next morn­ing, he skied through the treach­er­ous Khum­bu Ice­fall — guid­ed by a drone flown by his broth­er, Bartek — before safe­ly arriv­ing at Base Camp to become the first per­son to ascend and descend Mount Ever­est on skis with no sup­ple­men­tary oxy­gen.”

View­er be warned, it’s quite a ride!

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Benedict Cumberbatch Reads a Letter to a Man Blow-Drying His Balls at the Gym

in Comedy, Random | January 28th, 2025

We have fea­tured Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch read­ing let­ters by Kurt Von­negut, Alan Tur­ing, Albert Camus, and Nick Cave, along with pas­sages from Kafka’s Meta­mor­pho­sis and Melville’s Moby Dick. It’s all pret­ty heady stuff. And now it’s time for some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. Above, we have Mr. Cum­ber­batch read­ing, with clas­sic British under­state­ment, a com­i­cal let­ter writ­ten by Ross Bee­ley, back in 2011. The read­ing will help you get through anoth­er dystopi­an day.

Cum­ber­batch read this let­ter at an event called Let­ters Live, held in Lon­don’s Roy­al Albert Hall, in Decem­ber 2024.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Let­ter of Advice to Peo­ple Liv­ing in the Year 2088

Hear Moby Dick Read in Its Entire­ty by Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, Til­da Swin­ton, John Waters, Stephen Fry & More

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Nick Cave’s Beau­ti­ful Let­ter About Grief

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads a Let­ter Alan Tur­ing Wrote in “Dis­tress” Before His Con­vic­tion For “Gross Inde­cen­cy”

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Fred Armisen & Bill Hader’s Comedic Take on the History of Simon and Garfunkel

in Comedy, Random | January 20th, 2025

Dur­ing their days film­ing Doc­u­men­tary Now!, a mock­u­men­tary series that aired on IFC, Fred Armisen and Bill Had­er teamed up and cre­at­ed a fic­tion­al­ized “his­to­ry” of Simon and Gar­funkel, telling the “real” sto­ry behind the mak­ing of “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” and “Mrs. Robinson”–stories you’ve assured­ly nev­er heard before. Have a laugh. Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Paul Simon Tells the Sto­ry of How He Wrote “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” (1970)

Fred Armisen Teach­es a Short Sem­i­nar on the His­to­ry of Punk

Paul Simon Decon­structs “Mrs. Robin­son” (1970)

Clas­sic Punk Rock Sketch­es from Sat­ur­day Night Live, Cour­tesy of Fred Armisen

Art Gar­funkel Lists 1195 Books He Read Over 45 Years, Plus His 157 Favorites (Many Free)

Watch Simon & Gar­funkel Sing “The Sound of Silence” 45 Years After Its Release, and Just Get Haunt­ing­ly Bet­ter with Time

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Mary Tyler Moore Accidentally Nails a Perfect Pool Shot on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1962)

in Random, Television | December 2nd, 2024

Let’s rewind the video­tape and revis­it a clas­sic moment in The Dick Van Dyke Show. In the 1962 episode called “Hus­tling the Hus­tler,” Mary Tyler Moore (as Lau­ra Petrie) plays pool and sinks three balls in a sin­gle shot. The orig­i­nal plan was to splice in footage of a pro­fes­sion­al pool play­er mak­ing the shot, but Moore sur­prised every­one, includ­ing her­self, by nail­ing it on the first try. Watch­ing Moore and Van Dyke recov­er from their aston­ish­ment and impro­vise through the scene is priceless—a per­fect way to start your Mon­day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Zaibat­su and Slash Film

Relat­ed Con­tent

Joan Jett and the Black­hearts Per­form a Rol­lick­ing Cov­er of the Mary Tyler Moore Theme Song (1996)

Jack Ker­ouac Plays Pool, 1967

Dick Van Dyke Still Danc­ing at 96!

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Join Us on Bluesky. We Will Have Fun Together

in Random | November 18th, 2024

There’s an eXo­dus tak­ing place, and mil­lions are find­ing a new home on Bluesky. In recent days, the decen­tral­ized social media plat­form has been gain­ing 10,000 new users every 10–15 min­utes, or about 1 mil­lion new users per day. Open Cul­ture is already there, shar­ing the cul­tur­al posts you once enjoyed on Twit­ter. We hope you will join us. Find us at @openculture.bsky.social, or just click here.

PS. If you’re are on Threads, you can also find us there too.

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