The BBC radio program Don’t Make Me Laugh has landed in hot water thanks to some rather vulgar jokes about Queen Elizabeth II. And during her birthday celebrations, at that.

Monday brings the annual July 4th Nathan’s Famous hot-dog eating contest on Coney Island, a spectacle teased 365 days of the year with a giant billboard outside the chain’s beautifully grimy mothership. So let’s revisit the scene at the stand one day in the 1950s.

Monday is July 4, the moment in my personal wheel of the year when I realize summer’s already a month gone and I’d better hurry myself to a public pool once or twice, lest Labor Day roll around and I feel like I wasted the season yet again. One of the surefire shortcuts I will take in my route to vibes: regularly…

This is Sophia Loren, holding a lion club named Sophia, on a 1973 outing to the newly opened West Midland Safari Park in Bewdley, Worcestershire, England. But it could be you, with a little attitude, openness to synthetic fibers, and access to exotic wildlife.

After twelve years, Nancy Grace is leaving HLN. Who will now canvass the court dockets of America for perfectly viral cases involving potentially villainous and somewhat conventionally attractive white women is an open question.

Everybody knows you’re “not supposed” to eat raw cookie dough, but everybody does it anyway. However, the FDA has just issued a warning that you really, really shouldn’t—just in case you’re the type of sheeple who lets the food safety authorities tell you how to live your life.

Fun fact from five millennia ago: The British Museum owns a tablet covered in cuneiform that’s essentially a Mesopotamian paystub—maybe the world’s oldest—and it shows that some dude in ancient Mesopotamia got paid in beer.

Jessica Williams is done at The Daily Show; her last episode will be Thursday. But don’t worry, she isn’t going far: she’s got a deal to develop her own show at Comedy Central.

Here’s a story that explains a bit about Kit Harington’s casting as Jon Snow: He was sporting a black eye, because he’d gotten into an altercation at McDonald’s late the night before. I now see Kit Harington in an entirely new light.

Sad to say I have truly dastardly doings to report this fine morning. Two trees overlooking a sea cliff in the UK’s Dorset have been poisoned. And it gets even darker—locals suspect wealthy flat owners seeking an improved view and, therefore, increased property values.

Feels like it’s been a while since we got some good corseted scares, right? Fortunately a promising source of chills and thrills has appeared on the horizon, by way of the UK.

No one has ever played himself as hard as David Cameron, and it doesn’t seem like there’ll be too many weeping mourners at his political funeral. A pressing question, though: what happens to 10 Downing Street resident Larry, Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office?

Much of this week’s episode was spent at one of two sickbeds—or rather, deathbeds. Or I suppose one of three, if we count the damage that the Battle of Culloden Moor will do to the Highlanders’ way of life.

Barnes & Noble plans to launch four “concept stores” featuring upgraded cafes, with proper food and, more importantly, beer and wine. Good place to get slowly plastered while contemplating the future of the book business!

Quick question: This postcard, circa 1902, is definitely sexual in nature, right?

On Wednesday, I attended the Christie’s auction of Joan Rivers’s private effects. I’m sorry to report that First Wives’ Club lied.

Skinny dippers in the vicinity of Scotland’s Glen Esk would be advised to stow their underwear securely, lest a bird of prey swoop down from the sky and steal their shorts.

On this day in 1982, Prince William made his first public appearance. If you could call it that, considering he could’ve easily been mistaken for a blanket-wrapped butternut squash.

I am unabashedly addicted to You Must Remember This, Karina Longworth’s podcast dedicated to “exploring the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century.” But either you are too, or will be soon—the podcast is increasingly popular and, more and more, name-checked as one of the best out there.

How would you celebrate your 87th birthday? Splitting an enormous cake with your 47 grandchildren and great-grandchildren? A pottery class? Jack Daniels? For Janis Lefebre’s 87th birthday, her family bought her a ticket to go skydiving.