December 1, 2018
 

There are Baby Boomer cakes, as well as Baby Boomer people. And GenX cakes and Millennial cakes too.
A couple of sites have figured out which cakes were most popular during which years (Mashed and Delish). My absolute favorite cake saw its heyday in the late 1950s. I don't actually remember eating German chocolate cake before the 1970s, but once I tasted it, my loyalty never wavered.
So what was the trendy cake when you were born? Pink champagne? Carrot?  Or the more recent red velvet?

Severed heads were once the hottest trend in home decor, at least for the Iron Age Celts. Of course, one couldn't have them smelling up the man cave, so the heads had to be preserved. New research shows that the disembodied craniums were dipped in conifer resin to keep them from rotting and falling apart. This article at Inverse goes into gory detail, and also has a brief video - not on beheading, but on the hill fort site in Southern France where the tested heads were found. 


Around 28 million years ago, a meteorite--or maybe even a comet--exploded above the Libyan desert and turned the pure quartz sand there into shards of a unique green glass, which we now call Libyan Desert Glass. Observe the stone scarab in the center of King Tut's breastplate, at right. That's the stuff.
Atlas Obscura showcased this, but you can read about the comet angle here. The glass was re-discovered and analyzed in the 20th century by explorers, 
You can even buy Libyan desert glass and own your little piece of history. Libyan desert glass (let's call it LDG) is available at #Etsy for $15, on up to over $1000. The cheaper pieces do not have that truly toxic green color, however.