upworthy
Heroes

25 years ago, this dino was discovered. $8.4 million later, it was ready for the world to see.

Reflecting on the story of how Sue found a way home, a quarter-century after discovery.

On August 12, 1990, a fossil hunter named Susan Hendrickson spotted what appeared to be bones in the side of a South Dakota cliff.

While working at the Black Hills Institute, a South Dakota-based company that excavates fossils and minerals, Hendrickson made the find of a lifetime: a 65-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex in excellent condition, more than 90% complete.

In honor of Hendrickson, the dinosaur was named Sue.


Hendrickson attends the unveiling of Sue at the dinosaur's eventual permanent home in Chicago in 2000. Photo by John Zich/AFP/Getty Images.

But it turned out finding the skeleton was only part of the battle. Then came the legal fight.

Black Hills Institute's president, Peter Larson, originally planned to keep Sue as an exhibit at the institute's private museum. Larson paid Maurice Williams, who owned the land on which the fossil was buried, $5,000 for the right to excavate; his team extracted the dinosaur over the next few weeks.

Photo by Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images.

Within two years, though, the FBI seized Sue from the museum, alleging that the dinosaur was "stolen property." The FBI claimed the land on which the fossil was found belonged to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and that Williams didn't technically have the power to sell excavation rights. In 1993, a judge ruled that Williams was Sue's rightful owner.

Sue was eventually put up for private sale at Sotheby's auction house.

In 1997, Williams was exploring the idea of selling his prized fossil and reached out to Sotheby's. Paleontologists grew concerned that should the dinosaur be put up for auction, it was possible that a private buyer would swoop in, and Sue would never be seen by the public again.

With that in mind, Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History launched a massive fundraising operation in hopes of winning the auction and keeping Sue accessible to the public. On Oct. 4, 1997, Sue was put up for auction, and the museum's plan was put to the test.

Photo by Mark Wilson/Newsmakers via Getty Images.

At a cost of $8.36 million, Sue was sold to the Field Museum.

With the help of corporate sponsors like Disney, McDonald's, and the California State University system, Chicago's Field Museum claimed victory after six and a half minutes of bids.

On May 17, 2000, after workers spent more than 30,000 hours on preparing and assembling Sue's more than 250 bones and teeth, the museum unveiled a newly restored Sue to the public.

The story of Sue the T. rex is a testament to the power and importance of education.

When you look at the amount of time, energy, and money the people most passionate about Sue invested in making sure the public could see it, it's hard not to appreciate the awesomeness of the world as it was millions of years ago; it's hard not to ask yourself what more is out there for us to find.

Photo by Mark Wilson/Newsmakers via Getty Images.

If just 25 years ago, a nearly complete 42-foot long, 12-foot high T. rex can turn up in the side of a cliff, there has to be more we can learn. Sue the T. rex is an inspiration.

Modern Families

Fed up parents explain why they 'never want to bring the kids over' to visit

Can't you guys come to us for once?

Photo by Johnny Cohen on Unsplash

It's a good news/bad news situation for parents of young kids. The good news? Everyone wants to spend time with the kids! Grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends. They all want a relationship and lots of special moments with the little ones.

The bad news? One phrase: "When are you bringing them over?" Parents have been frustrated by the expectations of orchestrating stressful visits for generations — loading the kids in a car or on an airplane only to spend hours chasing them around in an un-baby-proofed environment and watching routines go to hell.

Now they're sounding off on social media and airing their grievances.

Why visiting grandparents and other relatives is so challenging for parents

A mom recently took to Reddit to vent about everyone in her life wanting her to "bring the kids to them."

"My parents live 30 mins away and always bug me about not coming to visit them," she writes. They constantly ask, "Why don't you bring our granddaughter to come see us?"

The fascinating discussion highlights a few things that make arranging visits with young kids a potential nightmare for parents.

Grandparents' houses are rarely childproofed

Grandparents love their breakable decor! Ceramic doo-dads, glass vases everywhere. They can't get enough. And while they should be able to decorate their house however they see fit (they've earned the right!) that doesn't make it a good environment for toddlers and babies.

Ceramic bowlsThe breakable decor found in every grandparents' houseozalee.fr/Flickr

"Last week was the last straw, I took my daughter to my parents and of course she went EVERYWHERE! flooded their toilet, broke a vase, and tried multiple times to climb their furniture," the Reddit mom writes.

Parents in a foreign environment are on constant safety duty and can rarely sit down

Let's be honest. Sometimes these "visits" are hardly worth the effort. After all, it's hard to get much catch up time when you're dutifully chasing your kid around.

"They don’t understand that my 3 yo ... is absolutely wild," writes another user in the thread. "She has no self preservation and nothing we do works. She doesn’t listen, she throws, she bites, she refuses to use the potty. It’s exhausting and then ... they expect us to entertain them, when I’m trying to just keep my kid from jumping off the stairs and into an ER visit."

Even just putting the kids in the car for a 20-minute drive is more work than it seems

Taking the kids out of the house requires packing a bag, bringing extra clothes, loading up on snacks, etc.

It seems easy to "pop over" but it actually absorbs the majority of the day between prep, visit, and aftermath.

Naps and routines go to hell

Parents with babies and toddlers know all too well — there is a price to pay for taking the kids out of the house for too long.

Chances are, the baby won't nap in a strange environment and then you're stuck with a cranky kid the rest of the night.

Kids with special needs require even more consistency

Kids with autism or ADHD can really struggle outside of their zone of safety. They might become severely dysregulated, have meltdowns, or engage in dangerous behaviors.

Explaining and mediating the generational divide

man in gray sweater sitting beside woman in black and white floral long sleeve shirt Photo by Tim Kilby on Unsplash

Why is this a conflict almost all parents can relate to?

Is this a Boomer vs Millennials thing?

Some experts think that generational values and traditions might play a role.

"Many Boomers were accustomed to more traditional, hierarchical family dynamics, where visiting grandparents was a way for the younger generation to show respect," says Caitlin Slavens, a family psychologist.

But that's not to say this is a new problem. I can remember my own parents driving me and my brothers over an hour to visit my grandparents seemingly every other weekend, but very few occasions where they came to visit us. It must have driven my parents nuts back then!

Plus, it's easy to forget that it's hard for older people to travel, too. They may have their own issues and discomforts when it comes to being away from their home.

"But for today’s parents, balancing careers, kids’ routines, and the demands of modern parenting is a much bigger undertaking. Grandparents might not always see how childproofing their space or making the trip themselves could make a huge difference, especially considering how travel and disruption can impact younger kids' moods and routines," Slavens says.

"So yes, this divide often comes down to different expectations and life experiences, with older generations potentially not seeing the daily demands modern families face."

Is there any hope for parents and grandparents coming to a better understanding, or a compromise?

"First, open conversations help bridge the divide—explain how much of a difference it makes when the kids stay in a familiar space, especially when they’re very young," suggests Slavens.

"Share practical details about the challenges, like childproofing concerns or travel expenses, to help grandparents see it from a parent’s perspective. You might even work together to figure out solutions, like making adjustments to create a more child-friendly space in their home or agreeing on a shared travel plan."

Ultimately, it's a good thing when grandparents, friends, and other relatives want to see the kids.

We all have the same goal.

"It’s helpful to approach the topic with empathy, focusing on everyone’s goal: more quality time together that’s enjoyable and low-stress for everyone involved. For parents, it’s about setting boundaries that work, and for grandparents, it’s about recognizing that flexibility can really show the parents that you are ... willing to make adjustments for their children and grandchildren."

Enjoyable, low-stress quality time — that's something everyone can get behind.

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Nature

Here's the first ever footage of a baby sperm whale nursing from its mother

How baby sperm whales nurse has been a scientific mystery for decades.

National Geographic/YouTube

We know that mammals feed their young with milk from their own bodies, and we know that whales are mammals. But the logistics of how some whales make breastfeeding happen has been a bit of a mystery for scientists. Such has been the case with sperm whales.

Sperm whales are uniquely shaped, with humongous, block-shaped heads that house the largest brains in the animal world. Like other cetaceans, sperm whale babies rely on their mother's milk for sustenance in their first year or two. And also like other cetaceans, a sperm whale mama's nipple is inverted—it doesn't stick out from her body like many mammals, but rather is hidden inside a mammary slit.

Most whale and dolphin babies nudge the mammary slit to expose the nipple, allowing them to "suckle." A sperm whale baby's head and mouth aren't really designed for suckling in the traditional sense, obviously, as its massive nose protrudes over its much smaller lower jaw. But even in the whale sense of mom shooting milk into a baby's mouth, it's been unclear how it works for sperm whales due to their oddly shaped heads. Photos and observations have led researchers to believe that the mother whale expresses milk into the water for the baby to ingests outside of her body, but the real mechanics haven't been clearly understood.

With the proliferation of underwater photography and filmography, it may seem strange that we don't have more nursing whale evidence to examine, but because baby whales can't breathe and nurse at the same time, nursing events are usually quite short. Even being in the right place at the right time to observe a whale nursing is rare, much less capturing it on film.

A four-part documentary series from National Geographic has provided, for the first time, film footage of a sperm whale baby nursing. It shows how the baby actually inserting its lower jaw into the mother's mammary slit, and the milk—which contains ten times more fat than human milk and is the consistency of yogurt—shooting directly into the baby whale's mouth.

Sperm Whale Suckles | National Geographicwww.youtube.com

The documentary series containing this footage, "Secrets of the Whales," was conceived of by National Geographic Explorer and photographer Brian Skerry and follows the stories of five different whale species—narwhals, humpbacks, belugas, sperm whales, and orcas. It was filmed in 24 locations around the world and took three years to make. Produced by award-winning filmmaker and conservationist James Cameron (of "Titanic" and "Avatar" fame) and narrated by award-winning actress and conservationist Sigourney Weaver, the series is sure to please whale lovers and nature lovers alike.

In addition to sperm whale babies breastfeeding, the docuseries shows how beluga whales name themselves so groups can keep track of each other, how baby belugas share their moms' call signs, how 30,000 humpbacks travel together from Australia to Antarctica and use breeches to talk to each other, and how a beluga pod adopted a narwhal into their bod—apparently the first ever cross-species adoption ever recorded.

Executive Producer James Cameron called the series a "challenging, daunting project" in a SXSW Conference panel last month."It's also so important for people to understand and for this film to illuminate how these creatures think, how they feel, what their emotion is like, what their society is like," he said, "because we won't protect what we don't love."

The series premiers on streaming service Disney+ on Earth Day, April 22.

Secrets of the Whales | Official Trailer | Disney+www.youtube.com

The filmmakers hope that by sharing with people the unique identities of the whales they followed, they can inspire people to think about how these magnificent mammals can be better protected.

"It's inescapable that they're being poisoned by us, that they're being deafened by us, or their behaviors, all of their feeding strategies and mating strategies and reproductive strategies are being dismantled by all of this noise from shipping channels and military sonars and all that," Cameron said. "They're going to continue to decline. The right whales are down to about 300…We barely understand these animals, so I think we have to, as a society, we have to think about doing it better."

Indeed we do.


This article originally appeared four years ago.

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Modern Families

'SAHMs Listen up!': Texas UPS driver has pointed message about stay-at-home moms and entitlement

“You are so privileged to have a person who is willing to provide such a carefree life for you.”

via J.R. Minton (used with permission)

A Texas UPS driver has a strong opinion on stay-at-home moms.

J.R. Minton, a 33-year-old UPS driver from the Dallas, Texas area, ruffled some feathers recently with a viral TikTok video titled “SAHMs Listen up!” that begins with him asking, “I mean, how entitled could you be?” At first, Minton appears to fail to appreciate the enormous amount of emotional, mental, and physical labor that stay-at-home moms provide.

“I truly cannot imagine the amount of arrogance you must have to sit there and complain when you are so privileged to have a person who is willing to provide such a carefree life for you,” Minton continues. “Let’s get real! What do you do all day? Your spouse is taking care of everything so you can take care of one thing. How complicated could it be: all you do is go to work?”

At this point, legions of stay-at-home mothers and those who love them considered trucking themselves to Dallas to find this unappreciative UPS driver. However, it was soon apparent that Minton was referring to himself.

@minton__jr

Grow tf up—You should be doing more. #sahm #sahmlife #momlife #mom #momsoftiktok #sahmsoftiktok #sahmtok #momtok

“For 10 hours a day, you get to live the life of a single, childless, carefree man because your wife was willing to take the financial risk of allowing you to be successful in your career while she takes care of everything else,” he continues. “She provides childcare services, home cleaning services, medical services, food services, scheduling services, and a list that goes on and on. And you provide... a paycheck? And you have the nerve to call yourself the provider! What is it going to take for you to realize that, bro, everything you have in your life is because of a stay-at-home mom.”

The commenters on the video breathed sighs of relief and then praised Minton, a father of 4, for publicly appreciating his wife’s work.



"My sleeves were rolled up, earrings were off, hair tied up.... I was so ready...." one commenter joked. "I thought I landed in enemy territory for a min..." another added. "You have just made me realize after all these years that *I* am the freaking provider and that feels amazing,” a stay-at-home mother wrote.

People appreciate Minton’spost because he praised stay-at-home mothers and placed his wife’s work above his, which he characterized as merely bringing home a paycheck. Minton has one job, delivering packages, but as he noted, his wife is an expert in over five different professions. In a world where stay-at-home moms are fighting to be seen as equals to their working spouses, Minton places them on a pedestal and owes his “carefree life” to them.

"Married life, with children, is bound to be chaotic," Minton told Upworthy. "It’s bound to have its ups and downs; It’s made me question myself a thousand times. However, the marriage my wife and I share has given me the space to find peace."

Minton may be sharing an opinion we don't hear often enough, but he doesn't think he's the only one who thinks that way. "The last thing I am is rare or unique. There’s nothing special about the way that I feel or the things that I say. I have the same thoughts, feelings, frustrations and problems that any other husband or father might be struggling with," he told Upworthy. "The only difference that might be apparent is how I choose to react to the same situations any other man might encounter."

This post isn’t the first time Minton has pulled the bait and switch on his followers. Last year, he made a video where he appeared to take pride in the fact that he never “helps” his wife with chores.

The twist in this video was that he doesn’t “help” his wife with chores because they are also his responsibility. "Because I do what I am supposed to do as a father and a husband. I cook. I clean. I do the laundry. I take care of the kids. I can't help my wife do those things because they are my job, too,” he reveals.

He then urged men to change their perspectives on how they view stay-at-home moms. “Change the way you speak, change the way you think, and grow the f*** up and be a man," he added.

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Pop Culture

19 super-specific memories that are giving people instant childhood nostalgia

Certain sensations bring up incredible memories.

via Seattle Municipal Archives/Flickr

Memories of childhood get lodged in the brain, emerging when you least expect.

There are certain pleasurable sights, smells, sounds and tastes that fade into the rear-view mirror as we grow from being children to adults. But on a rare occasion, we’ll come across them again and it's like a portion of our brain that’s been hidden for years expresses itself, creating a huge jolt of joy.

It’s wonderful to experience this type of nostalgia but it often leaves a bittersweet feeling because we know there are countless more sensations that may never come into our consciousness again.

Nostalgia is fleeting and that's a good thing because it’s best not to live in the past. But it does remind us that the wonderful feeling of freedom, creativity and fun from our childhood can still be experienced as we age.

A Reddit user by the name of agentMICHAELscarnTLM posed a question to the online forum that dredged up countless memories and experiences that many had long forgotten. He asked a simple question, “What’s something you can bring up right now to unlock some childhood nostalgia for the rest of us?”

It was a call for people to tap into the collective subconscious and bond over the shared experiences of youth. The most popular responses were the specific sensory experiences of childhood as well as memories of pop culture and businesses that are long gone.

Ready to take a trip down memory lane? Don’t stay too long, but it’s great to consider why these experiences are so memorable and still muster up warm feelings to this day.

Here are 19 of the best responses.

1. 

"An eraser that looks and smells like a very fake strawberry." — zazzlekdazzle

2. 

"Remember the warm, fuzzy static left on your tv screen after it was on for a while. A lot of you crazy kids WEAPONIZED the static to shock your siblings!" — JK_NC

3. 

"Waking up super early on Saturday morning before the rest of the family to watch cartoons." — helltothenoyo

4. 

"When you'd watch a vhs and it would say 'and now your feature presentation.'" — Mickthemmouse

5. 

"Eating one of those plastic-wrapped ice pop things after a long day of playing outside in your backyard with your friends." — onyourleft___

6. 

"Scholastic book fairs." — zazzlekdazzle

"The distinctive newspaper-y feel of those catalogues, the smell of them. Heaven. I would agonize over what books to get, lying on my living room floor, circling my options in different colored gel pens, narrowing it down to 2-4 from a dozen in an intense battle royale between slightly blurry one-line summaries. I know my mom's secret now. She would've bought me the whole damn catalogue. But she made me make my choices so that I really valued the books. I'd read them all immediately, reading all night if I had to, hiding in a tent under my covers with a flashlight I stole from the kitchen. I thought I was getting away with something. As an adult, I notice, now, that the flashlight never ran out of batteries." — IAlbatross

7. 

"Watching 'The Price Is Right' when you were sick at home." — mayhemy11

8. 

"That feeling of limitless freedom on the first day of summer vacation. That feeling of dreaded anticipation on the last day of summer vacation." —_my_poor_brain_

9. 

"Blockbuster." — justabll71

10. 

"The noise when picking up the phone when someone was surfing the web." — OhAce

11. 

"The TV Guide channel. You had to sit through and watch as the channels slowly went by so we could see what was on. It blew getting distracted by the infomercial in the corner and then realizing you barely just missed what you were waiting for so had to wait for it to start all over." — GroundbreakingOil

12. 


"Light Bright. I barely remember it myself but you’d take a charcoal-black board and poke different colored pegs through it. You plug it in to the electrical outlet and all the pegs light up creating whatever shape you made in lights." — 90sTrapperKeeper

13. 

"You knew it was gonna be a good day when you walk into PE class and see that huge colorful parachute." — brunettemountainlion

14. 

"Ripping handfuls of grass at recess and putting them on your friend." — boo_boo_technician

15. 

"In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum-security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem if no one else can help, and if you can find them....maybe you can hire The A-Team." — Azuras_Star8

16. 

"Watching 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.' There was something so special about the intro where he would sing Won't You Be My Neighbor while he changed his jacket and shoes. I loved every second of it, and would watch in utter content and fascination each time as if I'd never before seen him zip his cardigan up and back down to the right spot and change his shoes with the little toss of a shoe from one hand to the other." — Avendashar

17. 

"Somewhere between blowing on some cartridges and pressing the cartridge down and up in the NES to get it to play." — autovices

18. 

"That feeling when you are going as high as you can go on the swings. Power? Freedom? Hard to describe." — zazzlekadazzle

19. 

"Cap guns. But smashing the entire roll of caps at once with a hammer." — SoulKahn90


This article originally appeared three years ago.

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Family

'Why women leave’: Wife who 'does everything' shares why she left her husband who did nothing

This is a common story in many households.

via Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels

A woman is upset with her husband and wants to leave him.

There are a few big reasons why 70% of divorces in the United States among heterosexual couples are filed by women. Women have more economic opportunities than in decades past and are better positioned to care for themselves and their children without a husband’s income.

Another big reason is that even though the world has become much more egalitarian than in the past, women still bear the brunt of most of the emotional labor in the home. Gilza Fort-Martinez, a Florida, US-based licensed couples’ therapist, told the BBC that men are socialized to have lower emotional intelligence than women, leaving their wives to do most of the emotional labor.

Secondly, studies show that women still do most of the domestic work in the home, so many are pulling double duty for their households.

A TikTokker with two children (@thesoontobeexwife) shared why she decided to leave her husband of two decades and her story recounts a common theme: She did all the work and her husband did little but complain.

The video, entitled “Why women leave,” has received over 2 million views.

@thesoontobeexwife

Y’all I laughed when I realized he truly does treat me better now then when he was trying to be in a marriage with me. How is this better?? How did I ever think before was ok?? #toxicrelationship #divorce #mentalloadofmotherhood #divorcetok #divorceisanoption #chooseyou #mentalhealth #mentalload #fyp #mentalload #emotionallabor

“So for the men out there who watch this, which frankly I kind of hope there aren’t any, you have an idea maybe what not to do,” she starts the video. “Yesterday, I go to work all day, go pick up one kid from school, go grocery shopping, go pick up the other kid from school, come home. Kids need a snack–make the snack. Kids want to play outside – we play outside.”

Her husband then comes home after attending a volunteer program, which she didn’t want him to join, and the self-centeredness begins. “So he gets home, he eats the entire carton of blueberries I just purchased for the children’s lunch and asks me what’s for dinner. I tell him I don’t know because the kids had a late snack and they’re not hungry yet,” she says in the video.

She then explains how the last time he cooked, which was a rare event, he nearly punched a hole in the wall because he forgot an ingredient. Their previous home had multiple holes in the walls. Dr. Gail Saltz, a psychiatrist and host of the Power of Different podcast, says that when punch walls it’s a sign that they haven’t “learned to deal with anger in a reasonable way.”

“Anyway, finally one kid is hungry,” the TikTokker continues. “So I offered to make pancakes because they’re quick and easy and it’s late. He sees the pancake batter and sees that there’s wheat flour in it and starts complaining. Says he won’t eat them. Now I am a grown adult making pancakes for my children who I am trying to feed nutritionally balanced meals. So yes, there’s wheat flour in the pancake mix.”

Then her husband says he’s not doing the dishes because he didn’t eat any pancakes. “Friends, the only thing this man does around this house is dishes occasionally. If I cook, he usually does the dishes. I cook most nights. But here’s the thing. That’s all he does. I do everything else. Everything. Everything.”

She then listed all of the household duties she handles.

“I cook, I clean the bathrooms, I make the lunches, I make the breakfasts, I mow the lawn, I do kids’ bedtime. I literally do everything and he does dishes once a day, maybe,” she says.

@thesoontobeexwife

I HAVE OFFICIALLY FILED FOR DIVORCE 🎉 #divorce #divorcetok #toxicrelationship #divorceisanoption #fyp #mentalhealth #chooseyou #iamenough #iwillnotbeafraid #mentalloadofmotherhood #emotionallabor

The video received over 8700 comments and most of them were words of support for the TikTokker who would go on to file for divorce from her husband.

"The amount of women I’ve heard say that their male partners are only teaching how to be completely independent of them, theirs going to be so many lonely men out there," Gwen wrote. "I was married to someone just like this for over 35 years. You will be so happy when you get away from him," BeckyButters wrote.

"The way you will no longer be walking on eggshells in your own home is an amazing feeling. You got this!" Barf Simpson added.


This article originally appeared two years ago.

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