The Pascoe family’s pet chicken Gertie laid an egg – a big, big egg:

The one-year-old bird normally lays an egg a day but had not done so for almost 48 hours and was looking listless.

Kasha said: "When I saw the size of the egg I thought I must be dreaming. I could not believe it was real when I opened the hatch and looked in. It was twice the size of Gertie’s normal eggs and I did not believe it was real until I picked it up.

"Gertie had not been very well the day she laid it and I don’t think she will want to lay another egg that size again."

Link – via Arbroath

I love Wikipedia, but not as much as Simon Pulsifer, who is Wikipidia’s most prolific author:

Today Mr. Pulsifer, 24, is known internationally as the world’s most prolific author on the on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia, with 78,000 entries edited and 2,000 to 3,000 new articles to his name. He can’t remember the exact number.

Link – via digg

Mark Twain himself said: "One always look neat, in a hat made from meat."

So, here they are: meat hats. Link – via growabrain

Fantastic science cartoons by Nick Kim – You’ve gotta see more: Link

If you think your beach is crowded, at least you’re not on this beach in the northern China:

Somewhere under that lot, there’s a beach. This was the astonishing scene yesterday in the northern Chinese resort of Quindao as an estimated 200,000 people flocked to be beside the seaside as temperatures soared.

Link – Thanks Blurb!

Do you feel safe behind locked doors? Think again: Barry Wels explains an unbelievable security flaws in locks and why you can open almost any locked door by using a bumpkey in seconds with no skills at all.

Link – via digg

Mascots. You gotta love ‘em. They can make an intimidating team seem cuddly (Miami and its adorable dolphins), turn losers into lovable underdogs (Chicago Cubbies, anyone?), or make backwater minor-leaguers memorable (we’ve never seen the Montgomery Biscuits play, but we’re fans on principle). So it’s no wonder that countries capitalize on the phenomenon with mascots of their own. England has its bulldog, France has a beautiful warrior woman, and America … well, America has a New York meat packer. But you know him better as wacky, stilt-legged Uncle Sam. Allow us to explain.

Sam’s Club

Arguably America’s most famous eccentric relative, Uncle Sam is a fairly recent addition to our national consciousness. But that’s not to say the United States didn’t have its fair share of political personifications before Sam came along. Lady Liberty was one of the earliest. Usually depicted draped in a toga and donning an elaborate headdress, she represented the blending of classical ideals and new world spirit. Another early mascot, Brother Jonathan, served as the face of the common man. Appearing in countless political cartoons, plays, and novels, his character applied homespun wisdom, acerbic wit, and a generous dose of orneriness to both political issues and pop culture.

Then came Uncle Sam, the famous face of U.S. Army recruitment campaigns. And fittingly, he’s an icon born out of a military contract. During the War of 1812, a meat packer from Troy, N.Y., named Samuel Winslow won the right to supply beef to the American troops. Wilson (apparently more genial than your average butcher-slash-military contractor) was known to his neighbors as Uncle Sam. So when soldiers from the Troy area started spotting barrels of meat stamped with the initial “U.S.” they joked that the letters stood for Uncle Sam, rather than United States. Before long, even civilians were saying that “Uncle Sam was feeding the troops.” The phrase became common, and Sam-as-symbol made his debut in a 1838 political cartoon alongside Brother Jonathan. But, with his red stocking cap and conspicuously whisker-free face, ol’ “U.S.” didn’t look much like the poster-boy we know today.

Earning His Stripes (and Stars)

By the time the Civil War started, Uncle Sam had become representative of a united federal government. That meant he had more resonance in the Union than Brother Jonathan, who’d become more associated with individualism. Consequently, when the north won, so did Sam. In fact, over the course of the next two decades, Jonathan virtually disappeared from newspapers’ editorial pages.

With Uncle Sam’s new political symbolism came a new look. The nation desperate for leadership, he began to take on the characteristics of another famous icon, Abraham Lincoln. Interestingly, this transformation is widely credited to 19th-century illustrator Thomas Nast, who’s also responsible for our jolly, fat, red-suited image of Santa Claus as well as the use of donkey and elephant as political party symbols.

But Sam still had one last (extreme) makeover ahead of him. That came during World War I, when artist James Montgomery Flagg designated the famous “I want YOU” recruitment posters for the U.S. Army. In the process, he gave Uncle Sam a new face with a stern expression. That signature mug, ironically was made in Flagg’s own image. In order to save the hassle and expense of hiring a model, Flagg decided to paint a self-portrait. The result was a national icon that’s truly a cross-section of America – incorporating the face of an artist, the style of a president, and the name of a New York meat packer.

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This article was written by Mark S. Longo for the July-August 2005 issue of mental_floss magazine, and is featured in Neatorama in partnership with mental_floss. Be sure to visit mentalfloss.com for more cool stuff!

Related links: Historical images of Uncle Sam | Brother Jonathan’s images | Samuel Wilson [wiki], the original "Uncle Sam" | James M. Flagg [wiki]

Neatorama reader Steve Barker of Muscle Car BBQ Grills told us about his awesome custom-made grills, shaped like a muscle car engine block complete with exhaust ports that let smoke comes out, powder coated grill box that can withstand 900 degree of heat, pistons instead of knobs, and of course, diamond plates for side tables!

Steve uses real car parts where he can, and can install optional nitrous purge system with remote control, a 671 Blower on top with a power lid, LED lights and switches for night BBQ-ing, as well as CD and MP3 player with indoor/outdoor speakers and remote control. The grills comes in either charcoal or propane.

All of Steve’s grills are custom made – you can put any name or logo on the grill surface so you can char (brand?) a steak, like this one:

Perfect for any NASCAR lover – and starting at under $2,000, Steve’s grills are way more affordable than chopper bikes and will make you that much more popular (especially if you supply the steaks and beer!).

Serious interest only, please contact:

Steve Barker
Muscle Car BBQ Grills
350 Ontario St.
Huron, OH 44839
419-433-6130
zr2blazer at verizon dot net

Please let him know that you saw it on Neatorama.

Update 8/30/06:

Visit Steve’s website: Muscle Car BBQ Grills-Related Link: Top 10 Coolest BBQ Grill (And Then Some!)

Update 6/25/07: I’ve received some complaints that people who ordered custom BBQ from Steve Barker didn’t receive their grills and couldn’t get their money back. This post isn’t an advertisement, I didn’t get paid by Steve to post his grill nor do I have any business relationship with him. I have left the original post up, you can read the comments complaining about the grillmaker in the comment section.

Female praying mantids like to eat their mate – so, male praying mantids evolved so they are able to assess the risk of cannibalism and be more cautious in the presence of hungry females!

“We know that hungry females are more likely to cannibalize and a head-on orientation makes it easier for her to attack the male with her predatory front legs,” says Brown.

Lelito and Brown thus varied female hunger and physical orientation in order to assess how male mantids respond to variation in the risk of cannibalism. They found that males responded to greater risk by slowing their approach, increasing courtship behavior, and mounting from a greater – and possibly safer – distance.

“This shows that male mantids actively assess variation in risk and change their behavior to reduce the chance of being cannibalized,” explains Brown. “Males are clearly not complicit, and the act of sexual cannibalism in praying mantids is an example of extreme conflict between the sexes.”

Link

From the website:

Weird spider-like creatures that live at the bottom of the ocean and use a ‘straw’ to suck on their prey are baffling scientists.

Link | Sea Spider [wiki] – via digg

Turned out that global warming wasn’t all bad – 10,000 years ago, somewhere between 1,500 and 4,500 metric tonnes of carbon was released into the atmosphere over the course of several thousand years causing the Earth’s temperature to rise and lush forests to spring across the continents and mammals flourished, and "hopped" to the Americas from Asia:

As this picture suggests, it now appears that primates (or at least primates like Teilhardina) originated in Asia and moved to Europe. They then moved from Europe into Greenland and then into North America. The paleontologists suggest that a number of mammals may have taken the same path to North America (rather than going over the Bering Land bridge, as has been suggested in the past). Ocean levels dropped around 55 million years ago, and so the primates and other mammals may have been able to move over land bridges between the continents. Teilhardina’s particular way of life also implies that this journey had to have passed through a continuous belt of lush forests. Greenland would have had to have been very green indeed for primates to pass through it. The warm, humid climate would have suited such forests well. It just so happens that paleobotanists have been looking at what happened to plants 55 million years ago, and they’ve documented a swift spread of tropical trees northwards through North America over 10,000 years. So it appears that global warming laid down the path for the primates, and they raced along it.

Carl Zimmer summarizes a recent PNAS paper in his neat science blog: Link

Researchers at the Akishima Laboratories in Japan developed a device that uses waves to write on water:

The device, called AMOEBA (Advanced Multiple Organized Experimental Basin), consists of 50 water wave generators encircling a cylindrical tank 1.6 meters in diameter and 30 cm deep (about the size of a backyard kiddie pool). The wave generators move up and down in controlled motions to simultaneously produce a number of cylindrical waves that act as pixels. The pixels, which measure 10 cm in diameter and 4 cm in height, are combined to form lines and shapes. AMOEBA is capable of spelling out the entire roman alphabet, as well as some simple kanji characters. Each letter or picture remains on the water surface only for a moment, but they can be produced in succession on the surface every 3 seconds.

Link – via Boing Boing