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House renovation reveals a hidden hilarious 136-yr-old feud between construction workers

Carpenter Smith spilled the tea on his boss, "McBride the Bulldog," in beautiful penmanship on the back of a shingle.

Photo credit: Canva

A Plymouth homeowner found a note under a shingle

When you renovate an old home, you never know what you're going to find. Some unexpected discoveries are a bummer (hello, asbestos) but sometimes you can get some delightful glimpses into the past. Maybe a forgotten stash of cash or an old tool or a note from a previous owner.

But if you're like one lucky Plymouth family, you get the dish on a petty spat between co-workers from over a century ago.

Someone on Reddit shared a photo of a framed piece of wood with handwriting on it, with the caption "136-year-old note found on a shingle when my parents renovated their house." They added that the text, which is written in beautiful penmanship, reads:

"I was discharged from work on this house by McBride the Bulldog for being drunk only once, when he is drunk all the time. Carpenter Smith, Plymouth March 27, 1888.”

Well, well, well. Mr. Smith had his drunken pantaloons in a twist that day, didn't he.

People wanted to get to the bottom of the shingle story

Just one sentence tells a story that people in the comments were dying to get to the bottom of. Who was this Carpenter Smith and McBride the Bulldog? What's with the nickname? Was is complementary or insulting? Was Smith really only drunk one time on the job or was he just angry at being discharged? Did I imagine someone, someday, turning over that shingle and finding his note?

One thing is for sure—Smith definitely couldn't have imagined a bunch of strangers discussing his note on a Reddit thread on the internet on their computers or mobile phones. Those words wouldn't even have meant anything to him in 1888, a little over a decade after the first basic telephone was patented by Alexander Graham Bell.

via GIPHY

One super sleuth did a little digging and found out who Smith and McBride may actually have been. Self-professed amateur genealogist "digginroots" shared:

"McBride the Bulldog was probably Thomas C McBride, a carpenter who was listed in Hull, Plymouth, Massachusetts in the 1880 census (which is right by Nantasket) and in Nantasket in the 1900 census. He was born in Maine in 1830 and died in Boston of heart failure on 5 Jan 1911. He had a son, William, who was also a carpenter and died in 1913, and his wife Harriet died in 1885.

I’m guessing Smith was James William Smith, who was born in Oak Island, Nova Scotia in 1830 and was also listed as a carpenter in Hull in the 1880 census. His father was from Scotland. He died in Hull on 24 Nov 1892 of nephritis (his love of the drink possibly being a contributing factor)."

Ah, the beauty of Reddit bringing together people of various niche interests. The original poster was elated to have this unproven-but-entirely possible little history to add to the shingle's story. "I can’t wait to show this to my parents, they’re going to be thrilled," they wrote.

Home renovations can be full of surprise treasures

Potentially finding hidden treasures is one of the joys of owning an old home. One couple found that their old home renovation turned up all kinds of happy surprises, from antique trinkets to cast iron stoves to beautiful four-panel doors that had been covered up by 1960s space-age stylings.

via GIPHY

But even homes that aren't that old can have some delightful discoveries. Another couple was having their bathroom remodeled in 2015 when they found a photo of the previous owners hidden behind the walls along with a note, dated 1995, that read, "What's wrong with the way we did it?" HA.

All of these tales are reminders that buildings tell stories. Our homes have a million stories to tell about the people who lived there, the people who built them, and the people who dreamed them into existence. What a fun gift to get a small glimpse of a bigger story written on a single shingle.

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This chemotherapy-free treatment could be a breakthrough in the fight against cancer.

Cancer. Just saying the word on its own can be scary, especially if you've ever lost a loved one to the disease or if you've faced it yourself.

And a big reason for that has to do with one of its common treatments — chemotherapy — which causes intense side effects like hair loss, nausea, and weakened immune systems. (And that's when it works!)

But a new breakthrough treatment cured cancerous tumors in 97% of mice during recent trials at Stanford University. Now researchers are soliciting around 35 human patients for tests that are expected to begin before the end of 2018.

Unlike other cancer treatments, this immune-system-based approach is potentially low-impact, avoiding chemotherapy altogether.

"The thing to understand is how much of a game changer this is," said Dr. Michelle Hermiston, director of pediatric immunotherapy at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, the first hospital in the state to implement a different immunotherapy treatment for lymphoma and leukemia patients. "If it's your kid, it makes a huge difference," she said.

Dr. Ronald Levy, a Stanford oncology professor who is leading the study, said that if the Food and Drug Administration approves the treatment after human trials, it could appear on the market within one to two years.

This chemotherapy-free treatment uses the body's own immune system to fight cancer cells.

Levy says the treatment is not a permanent cure, but it uses the body's defense mechanisms to attack certain types of cancer cells.

It works by using an injection that stimulates the body's T cells to attack tumors. Levy also said the current treatment is not a magic bullet for all types of cancers because different cancer cells behave differently. For this study, he and his team are focusing on people with low-grade lymphoma.

"Getting the immune system to fight cancer is one of the most recent developments in cancer," he said. "People need to know that this is in its early days, and we are still looking for safety and looking to make this as good as it can be."

In an era of bad news, scientists have reminded us how to be hopeful.

An estimated 7.6 million people die from cancer each year. More than 70,000 people are diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma each year, and while survival rates are relatively high, any progress on that front is great news. And during a time when our world can often feel overwhelmed with bad news, it's a welcome reminder that scientific progress continues to march forward.

This week alone, scientists announced the discovery of an entirely new organ in the human body, a development that could fundamentally alter our understanding of how diseases like cancer quickly spread to other parts of the body.

If we pay attention, science is bringing us good news practically every day with amazing progress in medicine, technology, exploration, and a greater understanding of human nature itself.

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These eerie sounds collected from the universe are a Halloween delight.

Werewolf cries in the night may be scary here on Earth, but the sound of howling planets (!) shrieking into the black abyss of space? Now that'll make your skin crawl.

Just in time for Halloween, NASA has compiled a handful of spooky sounds it's discovered on its many missions through outer space. The terrifying tunes, collected in a 22-track SoundCloud playlist, are (literally) out of this world.

An image of Saturn taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in 2002. Photo by NASA/Getty Images.

While you wouldn't technically hear these sounds floating through the solar system all on your own — remember, in space, no one can hear you scream — NASA created the playlist by converting radio emissions from its voyages into sound waves.

"The results are eerie to hear," according to the agency. And they're definitely not wrong.

These ghostly rumbles coming from Saturn are straight-up nightmare fuel, to be honest.

These unnerving soundbites were picked up while NASA's Cassini spacecraft orbited the planet and its ominous rings. Cassini launched in 1997 and, having just completed its final mission, took a farewell dive into Saturn's atmosphere on Sept. 15, 2017, never to be seen or heard from again.  

FYI, the spooky static noises emitted from Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, sound like a flock of ghost birds trying to communicate through a TV screen.

Jupiter is one spooktacular place, people (and ghosts and goblins). NASA's Juno spacecraft, tasked with observing the massive fifth planet from our sun, has discovered other sinister sounds while venturing around its orbit too; among them, the bone-chilling audio illustrating Jupiter's supersonic solar wind heating and slowing by the planet's magnetosphere: the "roar of Jupiter."

No joke, these menacing, high-pitched thuds picked up by Kepler could be the soundtrack to a new Michael Myers film.

You know, for the moment right before he starts stabbing.

The Kepler mission explores other solar systems in our neck of the Milky Way galaxy in hopes of spotting other Earth-like planets resting in their star's habitable zones (where liquid water could exist). After all, there's a really good chance we're not alone out there.  (*shivers run down spine*)

The entire Halloween playlist is worth a listen.

It might be useful too. Need a last-minute soundtrack to play on repeat in your community's haunted house? Or maybe just some eerie tunes to welcome the trick-or-treaters to your front porch? Either way, NASA has reminded listeners that while, yes, science is fascinating, important, and useful, it can also be downright spooky too.

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Sriracha and 30 other things you love you didn't know were made by refugees.

The Made by Refugee campaign updates products in an important way.

Did you know that Sriracha was the creation of a Vietnamese refugee named David Tran? Neither did art students Jillian Young and Kien Quan.

The Miami Ad School students were reading up on the refugee crisis and how refugees have so often been treated as unwelcome through history when they came to a realization: Refugees have probably contributed a lot to society in ways many of us don't even know about.

After stumbling upon the fascinating refugee history of Sriracha, they set out to find other refugee-created products that exist in the world around us.

David Tran's Sriracha. Photo via Jillian Young and Kien Quan, used with permission.

With a little research, the pair learned that not only have refugees created some iconic products, but it's almost unimaginable to think of a world without their contributions to art, literature, science, and technology.

Refugees are not "takers" or some sort of net-negative drain on whatever country takes them in. That couldn't be further from the truth.

Here are just 30 things refugees have made or done that you should know about:

German refugee(1) Albert Einstein helped shape the modern understanding of physics with his body of scientific work such as the theory of relativity and his role in developing quantum theory. Austrian-born refugee (2) Carl Djerassi helped invent the birth control pill. In 1922, (3) Alec Issigonis, fled Turkey before going on to design the iconic Mini Cooper.

#3: Carl Djerassi revolutionized family planning. Photo via Jillian Young and Kien Quan, used with permission.

(4) Enrico Fermi was instrumental in the development of the atomic bomb, (5) Sergey Brin co-founded Google, and (6) Max Born won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum mechanics. Millions of people around the world have read (7) Anne Frank's diary. Unfortunately, Frank and her family were turned away when they sought asylum in the U.S., just like (8) Felix Salten, the author of "Bambi," who fled Austria for Switzerland in 1936.

(9) Victor Hugo, author of works such as "Les Misérables" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," fled France. "Heart of Darkness" author (10) Joseph Conrad, 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature winner (11) Thomas Mann, and "The House of the Spirits" author (12) Isabel Allende were also refugees.

#7: Anne Frank's diary gave the world an inside look at wartime persecution. Photo via Jillian Young and Kien Quan, used with permission.

At 24 years old, (13) the Dalai Lama was forced to flee Tibet. A human rights advocate, the Dalai Lama won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize. Philosopher (14) Karl Marx fled Germany for London, philosopher and "The Open Society and Its Enemies" author (15) Karl Popper fled Austria as a child, and famed psychoanalyst (16) Sigmund Freud fled Austria to escape Nazi persecution.

#13: The Dalai Lama's reputation as a humanitarian is well-earned. Photo via Jillian Young and Kien Quan, used with permission.

Queen singer (17) Freddie Mercury was born in Zanzibar but fled with his parents to London amid a violent revolution. Composer (18) Bela Bartók sought refuge in the United States during World War II. Singer (19) K'nann was a refugee from Somalia, musician (20) Regina Spektor's family fled Russia for the United States when she was a child, and singer (21) Gloria Estafan was a Cuban refugee. Sri Lankan artist (22) M.I.A., Haitian (23) Wyclef Jean, Yugoslavian (24) Rita Ora, and Jamaican (25) Bob Marley all have histories as refugees as well.

#17: Freddie Mercury went from refugee to rock and roll legend. Photo via Jillian Young and Kien Quan, used with permission.

The world of politics has its own share of refugees, including South African President (26) Thabo Mbeki, U.S. Secretaries of State (27) Madeleine Albright and (28) Henry Kissinger, and Canadian politicians (29) Maryam Monsef and (30) Adrienne Louise Clarkson were all refugees before entering public service.

Is this the face of the next great scientist? Will he one day create art beloved around the world? Maybe. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

So how are you to know if a refugee is responsible for helping create something you love?

After all, it's not like every bottle of Sriracha or every Regina Spektor album comes with a handy label. Until now, that is.

Yong and Quan used their design skills to create exactly that — launching the label as part of their Made by Refugee campaign, a "product hijacking" operation. Using the orange and black refugee flag from the 2016 Olympics, the pair designed some simple stickers with a powerful message of recognition.

This easy awareness campaign has the power to change the world for the better. Photo via Jillian Young and Kien Quan, used with permission.

The sticker template is available for anyone to print out and place on refugee-made products to help spread awareness on their own.

In doing so, Quan and Young hope the stickers are able to shift how people see refugees as a group.

"People cast [refugees] as beggars, unassimilated foreigners, or burdens on a society’s resources," writes Quan in an e-mail. "[Refugees] are rarely emphasized for their individual talents or potential. We wanted to challenge the stereotype by highlighting the contributions they have made to our everyday lives."

Photo via Jillian Young and Kien Quan, used with permission.

For more about the campaign, check out their Facebook page and watch the product hijacking in action in their video below:

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