Here’s the friendliest history lesson you’ll get all year. As the country geared up to turn 250 in July, an American reporter from CBS News walked into a British pub during a World Cup game and asked locals a simple question: What do you actually know about American independence and the 4th of July? Turns out… not much. The Brits knew close to nothing — but still wished us a happy birthday anyway. Americans grew up with the 4th of July. It’s embedded in our DNA: hot dogs on the grill, the flag waving, fireworks, summer cookouts. Red, white, and blue. Bald eagles screech, surely, somewhere in the distance. But across the Atlantic, that all barely registers. The gap isn’t about rudeness, though.  @cbsnews As America prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, @rileycallanan quizzed some visitors from across the pond on their knowledge of American independence. Here’s what they told us. ♬ original sound – cbsnews “England gave America away as a gift” When asked whether they’d learned about the American Revolution in school, the locals answered fast and gloriously honest. “In the U.K.? Not at all,” one person said. “The first thing I heard about it was a week ago.” Another just shrugged: “No, not really, no.” President George Washington and Marquis de Lafayette on horseback in Valley Forge. Credit: Canva Then came the showstopper. “Never heard of it,” one man offered, “except for I heard that England gave up America, we gave it to you as a gift. That’s all I know about it.” A gift. No Boston Tea Party, no “no taxation without representation,” no shot heard round the world — just the warm, fuzzy notion that Britain handed over a continent like a birthday present and everyone moved on. What are they banging on about?  So, what do Brits actually learn about American independence?  Turns out, this lot isn’t being cheeky. The information gaps are real, and they start in the classroom. In the United States, the Revolution is a foundational, mandatory part of history class, taught and re-taught for years. We know about Betsy Ross and the American flag, her nimble hands sewing myth-making into banners, repaired uniforms, and stitched-together tents. We’ve taken tests on the Liberty Bell, the original 13 colonies, and the Founding Fathers. Hamilton exists. National Treasure does, too.  Over in the U.K., this chapter of history is optional — one of several case studies students might cover for a few weeks around age 13, before history becomes an elective altogether. As one educator who has taught the subject across UK institutions put it, “Very few students learn anything about the American Revolution.” View this post on Instagram It may seem ridiculous sitting on this side of the pond, but you can’t really fault the Brits for not knowing much about the American Revolution. When it comes to history, this country has a lot going on. As it stands, 65 countries across the globe have declared independence from the United Kingdom (formerly known as the British Empire). Of those, 50 hold an annual holiday — like the 4th of July — which means independence from Britain is celebrated roughly every six days in places like Belize, Jamaica, Grenada, and Cypress. So, you’ll forgive these chaps at the pub for not knowing who Paul Revere is.  The tea situation  That context makes the original video much more endearing. Because, inevitably, the Boston Tea Party receives a shout out. When asked whether the British forgive us for dumping all that tea into the harbor, one man was playfully unconvinced — for about half a second. A depiction of the Boston Tea Party. Credit: Canva “Oh, when you dumped it in the harbor? No, no way,” he said, before pivoting to the warmest possible follow-up. “Since then, you’ve worked for us. When we’ve been in a world war, we’ve been like, ‘Yo, America, we need you.’ And you’re there. But that’s why we have such a good relationship now.” The interviewer asks: Can we put the Boston Tea Party behind us? And his answer made us smile: “I feel like we’re friends.” A little unsolicited advice  The reporter asked if a much older country had any advice for a younger one. The responses were pure dry British comedy. “It just gets shit as time goes on,” one deadpanned. Another turned reflective: “Maybe be a bit more open-minded to other countries — as the World Cup has taught.” And one, gesturing vaguely at 250 years of history, mused that America might “be in a better state if it had just stayed with the U.K.” Do you say that to every country? All 60 of them? Credit: Canva Right.  But it’s all in good fun. It’s the kind of ribbing you only get from someone who actually likes you. Sort of like… a friend.  The birthday wishes that stole the show When asked if they had any birthday wishes for America, the pub delivered. “Happy birthday, or whatever. Happy anniversary. I love you. Come on!” one person cheered. “Have a good time!” said another. And one summed up the whole vibe in three words: “Love you, America.” @jaseinamerica Thank you America… ♬ original sound – JaseInAmerica The timing makes it even sweeter. The clip landed as the U.S. geared up for its 250th birthday on July 4, 2026 — officially the Semiquincentennial — with part of the FIFA World Cup being hosted on American soil that same summer. The 250th marks the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. A pub full of Brits toasting America during a World Cup game is about as on-the-nose as it gets. The sweetest lesson of all  Before you feel too smug, be honest: most of us couldn’t pass a quiz on British history either. Ask an American to explain the Magna Carta (without referencing Jay Z) or name a single British prime minister before Churchill, and you’d get a lot of the same cheerful shrugs. It’s not that we don’t care — we just never took the time to learn their history. The blank spots run both ways. So does the affection. You don’t need to ace a history quiz to wish someone a happy birthday. Sometimes “I feel like we’re friends” says everything the textbook left out. The post Brits reveal what they think of American independence and it’s comical appeared first on Upworthy.

There are a lot of personality tests out there, and we humans are endlessly fascinated by them. There are the ones popular in pop-psychology like Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram. There are highly clinical and academic models like the HEXACO and the MMPI. One of the most widely used and respected personality tests in academic and scientific circles is the Big Five, or OCEAN model. It scores people based on five traits—Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. It doesn’t group people into concrete buckets with snappy names, like “The Innovator,” but your collective scores in the five areas it measured come together to tell a story about you. But some people’s results don’t fit neatly into a story. It’s rare, but fewer than 10% of people have extremely unusual results that don’t fit within the usual personality maps. Scientific research uncovers “personality mutants” A 2018 study published in Frontiers in Psychology, conducted by researchers at the University of Tartu and the University of Warwick, coined the, admittedly provocative term after testing over 4,000 participants from the Czech Republic and Estonia. Each person completed a personality inventory and was also scored based on someone who knew them well in order to get the most accurate and realistic data. What the researchers realized was that a handful of personality traits, while all scored individually, are typically related: “When people describe their own or somebody else’s personality, many of the descriptors typically go hand-in-hand with each other. For instance, people who are often angry also experience many other negative emotions. Similarly, individuals who have vivid imaginations are regularly more open to trying new food and entertaining new ideas and values. And those who are motivated to achieve are usually also self-disciplined and methodical.” Most people have personality profiles that make logical sense. People who are highly Extroverted are usually Open to trying new things. People who are highly Neurotic often tend to be less Extroverted. But the researchers also discovered some fascinating outliers in their data. Fewer than one out of every 10 participants had a personality trait map that just… didn’t fit. For the purposes of their study, the researchers coined the term “personality mutants.” The 3 types of personality outliers Not only did about 10% of all people not fit neatly into the usual pattern of personality traits, the data showed that there were three specific personality combos that accounted for most of the “mutants.” They had multiple traits that didn’t seem to go naturally together, or had only one of a pair of traits that are almost always found in the same person. The clusters, sadly, did not receive a cool, grabby nickname like “mutants.” The first cluster, called H1, saw people who scored high in “Straightforwardness” also score low in “Trust.” These are straight-shooters who are usually frank and sincere, but don’t trust that others are returning the favor. These traits don’t usually go together in this combination. Most people who are highly honest and frank project that worldview onto others and trust easily. But some are more skeptical, and use their acute understanding of what honesty sounds like to easily sniff out people who are being deceptive. The H2 cluster features people who are highly Conscientious—that is, disciplined, organized, and responsible—and score high in Aesthetics, meaning they place a lot of value in their style and visual tastes. However, this cluster of people scores low in other areas of Openness. They are stubborn and extremely resistant to trying new things or changing their mind. Interestingly, this cluster also featured people who were highly Straightforward but distrustful, just like cluster H1. The third cluster, H3, is a fascinating one: These folks score low on Fantasy, Aesthetics, and Emotional Sensitivity. But they’re highly open to trying new things, exploring new ideas, and challenging conventional beliefs; even their own. They’re a cerebral bunch. Not big on imagination, art, or style. Deep thinkers who are more head than heart. It’s an unusual and rare combination. Even more fascinatingly, this group showed a different trust pattern than the other two: H3s were highly Trusting of others but less Straightforward themselves. The “mutant” personalities discovered in the research are not inherently good or bad. They simply exist as outliers, and the researchers cite about one in 3,000 people being born with an extra finger as a parallel. It’s the normal elements, just configured a little differently. Human personality is hard to classify It goes to show that even the most scientifically validated personality tests can’t perfectly capture the full spectrum of human individuality. Any test that claims all people fit into one of a handful of rigid “types” is missing the forest for the trees. The researchers put it best and beautifully: “Personality facets are more like Lego, which can be assembled into different configurations. In addition to the customary assembly of elements, several infrequent compositions of the same elements can emerge.” If you’ve ever felt like you weren’t quite like everyone else, like the personality tests could never quite peg you perfectly, well, you were probably right. The post 1 in 10 people have such unusual personality trait combinations that researchers call them ‘mutants’ appeared first on Upworthy.

Stephanie Brander had a ravine full of vines she was never going to beat on her own. So she hired sheep. Brander, who lives in Northern Virginia, first saw the flock working a July 4 parade in Fairfax City and booked them for her yard. When the trailer arrived, she kept her kids home from school to watch. “It was two hours, and they got more done than I could have in a week,” she told NBC4 Washington. “That’s pretty awesome. And they were fun to watch.” The sheep belong to Lamb Mowers, a licensed Fairfax County landscaping business run by Cory Suter, whose customers call him Shepherd Cory. The flock is made up of Babydoll Southdowns, an heirloom breed that tops out around knee height and looks, accurately, like a walking teddy bear. “These sheep are an heirloom breed that is people-friendly and easy to control,” Suter said. “So, for a suburban environment, they are ideal.” The business started by accident. Suter brought his first three Babydolls up from Illinois in his wife’s Prius in 2016, a trip he says the car never fully recovered from, and put them to work clearing poison ivy, wisteria, and multiflora rose around his farm south of Fairfax. They were good enough at it that he started renting them out. A two-hour session starts at $195 on weekdays, $295 on weekends, and brings anywhere from three to fifteen sheep. They eat what most homeowners pay chemicals to kill: poison ivy, kudzu, knotweed, Japanese honeysuckle, the stuff in the corners of the yard nobody wants to deal with. What comes out the other end is fertilizer, which Suter notes improves the soil’s water-holding capacity. Suter handles anything the sheep can’t reach. There are conditions. He won’t bring the flock to a yard treated with pesticides in the past six months. He’d rather you didn’t mow first. And it helps if you actually have a weed problem, because the sheep are there to eat. If a sheep doesn’t want to get in the trailer, that’s the end of it. “I never force them to come,” he said. The flock has names, assigned by Suter’s two young sons, which is how a working animal ends up being called Monster Truck. There’s also Elf, Sunny, and Clover. The matriarch is Cinnamon, seven years old and over 130 pounds. On properties larger than two acres, county rules let the sheep stay the night, a job Suter calls a sheepover. They also do parties. Preschools, community groups, Girl Scout events, birthdays, jobs where the weeds are secondary to the fact that fifteen small sheep have arrived. “We bring joy everywhere we go,” Suter said. “Our sheep are just really friendly, sweet animals that like to say hi to people and are just kind of lower your blood pressure when you get to be near them.” Margaret Bain, whose church in Vienna hired the flock to clear land, put the competitive advantage plainly. “We could have hired laborers,” she said, “but the sheep were more cute than anybody we could have brought.” The post Northern Virginia homeowners are hiring a flock of sheep instead of a lawn service appeared first on Upworthy.

John Mayer is most known for his mega music hits. But the 48-year-old singer has another passion: supporting veterans battling PTSD. Mayer founded The Heart and Armor Foundation in 2019, after first meeting wounded warriors in 2008. Deeply moved by who he met and what he saw, it planted the seed for a journey to help them heal. This week, Mayer also earned The Hollywood Reporter‘s honor for Philanthropist of the Year for his work with Heart and Armor—which has raised $13 million so far in scientific research towards veteran health, including earning a grant from the Department of Defense. Why Mayer began helping veterans Mayer first encountered wounded warriors during a 2008 visit to Marine Corps base Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina. Getting to know them had a deep impact on him. He told CBS News, “It was not set up as a celebrity visit. So, they didn’t know I was coming, but it was the most natural way to meet these veterans, and just immediately start talking and hearing their stories,” he said. “The humanness of it is what struck me.” On his foundation’s website, Mayer wrote more about how he gained a passion for helping veterans. He shared: “I am about the same age as the first wave of Iraq and Afghanistan military veterans. I have felt gratitude and discomfort about the disproportionately large burden that military service members carry in our society, and I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to ‘support the troops’ with real action instead of platitudes.” Mayer and his Heart and Armor Foundation are hoping to take a new approach to PTSD: to look at it not just as a mental injury, but a physical one. “If you can take it outside of the mystery of the mind and externalize it, people get very energized by seeing it as an empirical, objective challenge,” he told THR. View this post on Instagram Investing in veterans The experience prompted Mayer to begin funding research into PTSD and traumatic brain injuries. In 2012, Mayer began to commission studies to help veterans. In 2019, he officially launched Heart and Armor—which has produced 25 studies. These studies include cover a variety of topics related to veterans, including  “exercise and PTSD symptoms, military service and women’s eating habits, as well as the psychological effects of military sexual trauma.” Mayer told THR, “We didn’t get a Department of Defense grant because they said, ‘Oh, John Mayer’s a part of this.’ We got it because we passed all the levels of scientific skepticism and showed these departments that there were applicable results.” @cbsmornings @johnmayer opens up about his decade-long mission to address veterans’ mental health through his nonprofit foundation, HeartandArmor. #ptsd #johnmayer #mentalhealth #nonprofit ♬ original sound – CBS Mornings Heart and Armor has raised $13 million for scientific research, with a goal to raise $50 million for further veteran research by 2027. Mayer himself has donated $5 million of his own money to support research and veteran programs, per THR. Helping veterans is a bigger part of Mayer’s legacy and identity that he hopes transcends his celebrity status. “I approach things along the lines of, ‘If I wasn’t a celebrity, I would still be doing this,'” Mayer told THR. “I want to see myself as a person doing this stuff, which to me is more expansive than being ‘John Mayer the singer,’ and it makes sure I’m accountable the whole time.” The post A chance 2008 encounter with a wounded warrior led John Mayer to raise $13 million for veterans appeared first on Upworthy.

The fluffy birds are estimated to be between 40 to 50 days old. Source: Peterborough farm’s delight after six white owlets found nesting Cute.