What happens when your contractor takes construction plan a little too literally?
This: Link – Thanks justelite!
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This "real life Shrek" was Maurice Tillet (1903 – 1954), a professional wrestler who had acromegaly, a rare disease that caused bones to grow uncontrollably and led to severe disfigurement:
In his twenties, he developed acromegaly, a rare disease that causes bones to grow wildly and uncontrollably. Soon his whole body was disfigured as a result. This led to much pain for Tillet as this gentle man was being called names, berated and forced to flee the place he loved so much.
Seeking a new identity to fit his chronic disfigurement, Tillet fled to America where he made a living on his appearance by becoming a professional wrestler, and was dubbed as the “freak ogre of the ring”. His villain persona (”the French Angel”) was an instant success with the crowds. Perhaps the highlight of his career was on August 1, 1944, when The French Angel defeated Steve “Crusher” Casey for the American Wrestling Association World championship.
Link | Maurice Tillet [wiki] | More pic at WrestlingClassics – via reddit (Update 3/26/07: also at The Human Marvel)
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Neatorama reader Tiffany wrote:
When I opened my copy of ‘Writers Dream Kit’ (part of the Write Brothers ‘Dramatica‘ line), I found a 32-page comic book inside. I think it’s their version of an instruction booklet. Here’s a page explaining about ’storyforming.’
What a creative way to get people to read the instructions! (If only text books were set up like that!)
Thanks Tiffany!
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That’s an artist rendering of VentureOne, a plug-in hybrid vehicle designed to achieve 100 miles per gallon with top speed of over 100 mph! Link
Venture Vehicles, the company behind the car, will be at the Cool Product Expo, a Stanford University event that showcase new and innovative products. If you’re in the area, the Expo is on April 11, 2007 12-5pm at the Arrillaga Alumni Center, Stanford University. Attendance is completely free.
David Abramson of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the lead organizer of the event, said that notable products will include Tesla’s Roadster, Aliph’s Jawbone Bluetooth Headset, Linden Lab’s Second Life, Lexus’ self-parking LS460 and NeuroSky’s brainwave reader.
Awesome stuff! For more info on the Stanford Cool Product Expo, see: Link – Thanks David!
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HopeLab has created a PC-based video game called Re-Mission for young cancer patients. In the game, the patient controls a nanobot named Roxxi that destroys cancer cells and battles infection.
The video game, which stays true to the actual science of cancer as a disease and to the realities of cancer therapies, builds a sense of confidence and teaches children about cancer and the medications they’re taking to fight the disease.
Science Roll has more info (and a video clip): Link | HopeLab’s website | Re-Mission website – Thanks Bertalan Meskó!
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While traversing the world over five years and eight months, Garside ran across 30 countries on six continents, covering more than 30,000 miles.
During that time, he slept in the snow in the Himalayas, and at a monastery in Tibet, and also had to out-run thieves in Mexico and gunmen in Panama. He even spent five nights in a Chinese jail for not having the right travel documents.
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Okay, I’m not one who thinks other peoples pain is “neat”, but this guy free falls from 5000 feet and, although he’s hurt, manages to survive.
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Sorry, this may not be neat at all, but… I can’t help but to share it.
In the Jurassic Museum of Asturias (wiki), they’ve arranged two fiber replicas of T. Rex skeletons in a particularly erotic pose, as explained by the image in the background.
Link to the Official Jurassic Museum page | Image Source Asturlink
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Today’s collaboration with Cellar Image of the Day brings us this gruesome yet fascinating image of a whale shark being sliced for its meat.
Daily Mail has the story:
More likely to eat than be eaten, this giant whale shark was caught off the coast of China by hardcore fishermen who managed to harness the ten-metre, eight-tonne whopper.
Link – Remember to check out Cellar IotD for more amazing pictures!
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This awesome desk is made by Dutch designer Dolph Bode from part of a 1944 DC-3 airplane wing! Link | 12 Ways to Pimp Your Office at PositiveSharing.
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From US News and World Report, authorities made two extraordinary seizures not long ago: the largest drug cash seizure and the largest maritime drug seizure in history.
On March 15, Mexican authorities raided a villa in one of Mexico City’s poshest neighborhoods and found what they say is the largest drug cash seizure on record– anywhere – $205 million in cash, most of it in $100 bills. Total weight of all that cash: at least 4,500 pounds. "This is like law enforcement hitting the ultimate jackpot," said DEA top cop Karen Tandy. Also seized were 200,000 euros, 158,000 pesos, eight luxury vehicles, and a small arsenal. Officials say the money is tied to Chinese and Indian suppliers of raw materials for methamphetamine, which is brewed in Mexican superlabs and then exported to the United States.
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Thomas Mason and Carlos Hernandez of UCLA created the world’s smallest alphabet soup: the alphabets are about 10 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair!
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Think you can teach your pet stupid tricks? How about teaching your goldfish how to synchronize swim? Check it out: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks Lee!
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Artists Nigel Peterson and Deborah Walsh [flickr] used grass and jelly as theirmedia of choice for their artwork. Specifically, they’re interested in how the jelly bloat or shrivel in the sun as the art installation progressed.
Link | Flickr set – Thanks Nigel!
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That’s Texas Congressman Ron Paul [wiki] sitting behind his desk, which happens to have an interesting sign on it. Link – via digg
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Albert Einstein in a famous 1951 photo by Arthur Sasse.
So you think you know Albert Einstein: the absent-minded genius who gave us the theory of relativity (two of them, in fact, special theory and general theory of relativity), but did you know that Einstein was born with such a large head that his mother thought he was deformed? Or that Einstein had a secret child before he was married?
Read on for more obscure facts about the life of the world’s smartest genius:
When Albert’s mother, Pauline Einstein gave birth to him, she thought that Einstein’s head was so big and misshapen that he was deformed!
As the back of the head seemed much too big, the family initially considered a monstrosity. The physician, however, was able to calm them down and some weeks later the shape of the head was normal. When Albert’s grandmother saw him for the first time she is reported to have muttered continuously "Much too fat, much too fat!" Contrasting all apprehensions Albert grew and developed normally except that he seemed a bit slow. (Source)
Earliest Known Photo of Albert Einstein (Image credit: Albert Einstein Archives,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
As a child, Einstein seldom spoke. When he did, he spoke very slowly – indeed, he tried out entire sentences in his head (or muttered them under his breath) until he got them right before he spoke aloud. According to accounts, Einstein did this until he was nine years old. Einstein’s parents were fearful that he was retarded – of course, their fear was completely unfounded!
One interesting anecdote, told by Otto Neugebauer, a historian of science, goes like this:
As he was a late talker, his parents were worried. At last, at the supper table one night, he broke his silence to say, "The soup is too hot."
Greatly relieved, his parents asked why he had never said a word before.
Albert replied, "Because up to now everything was in order." (Source)
In his book, Thomas Sowell [wiki] noted that besides Einstein, many brilliant people developed speech relatively late in childhood. He called this condition The Einstein Syndrome.
When Einstein was five years old and sick in bed, his father showed him something that sparked his interest in science: a compass.
When Einstein was five years old and ill in bed one day, his father showed him a simple pocket compass. What interested young Einstein was whichever the case was turned, the needle always pointed in the same direction. He thought there must be some force in what was presumed empty space that acted on the compass. This incident, common in many "famous childhoods," was reported persistently in many of the accounts of his life once he gained fame. (Source)
In 1895, at the age of 17, Albert Einstein applied for early admission into the Swiss Federal Polytechnical School (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule or ETH). He passed the math and science sections of the entrance exam, but failed the rest (history, languages, geography, etc.)! Einstein had to go to a trade school before he retook the exam and was finally admitted to ETH a year later. (Source)
In the 1980s, Einstein’s private letters revealed something new about the genius: he had an illegitimate daughter with a fellow former student Mileva Marić (whom Einstein later married).
In 1902, a year before their marriage, Mileva gave birth to a daughter named Lieserl, whom Einstein never saw and whose fate remained unknown:
Mileva gave birth to a daughter at her parents’ home in Novi Sad. This was at the end of January, 1902 when Einstein was in Berne. It can be assumed from the content of the letters that birth was difficult. The girl was probably christianised. Her official first name is unknown. In the letters received only the name “Lieserl” can be found.
The further life of Lieserl is even today not totally clear. Michele Zackheim concludes in her book “Einstein’s daughter” that Lieserl was mentally challenged when she was born and lived with Mileva’s family. Furthermore she is convinced that Lieserl died as a result of an infection with scarlet fever in September 1903. From the letters mentioned above it can also be assumed that Lieserl was put up for adoption after her birth.
In a letter from Einstein to Mileva from September 19, 1903, Lieserl was mentioned for the last time. After that nobody knows anything about Lieserl Einstein-Maric. (Source)
After Einstein and Mileva married, they had two sons: Hans Albert and Eduard. Einstein’s academic successes and world travel, however, came at a price – he became estranged from his wife. For a while, the couple tried to work out their problems – Einstein even proposed a strange "contract" for living together with Mileva:
The relationship progressed. Einstein became estranged from his wife. The biography reprints a chilling letter from Einstein to his wife, a proposed "contract" in which they could continue to live together under certain conditions. Indeed that was the heading: "Conditions."
A. You will make sure
1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;
2. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;
3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.
B. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons…There’s more, including "you will stop talking to me if I request it." She accepted the conditions. He later wrote to her again to make sure she grasped that this was going to be all-business in the future, and that the "personal aspects must be reduced to a tiny remnant." And he vowed, "In return, I assure you of proper comportment on my part, such as I would exercise to any woman as a stranger." (Source)
After the divorce, Einstein’s relationship with his oldest son, Hans Albert, turned rocky. Hans blamed his father for leaving Mileva, and after Einstein won the Nobel Prize and money, for giving Mileva access only to the interest rather than the principal sum of the award – thus making her life that much harder financially.
The row between the father and son was amplified when Einstein strongly objected to Hans Albert marrying Frieda Knecht:
In fact, Einstein opposed Hans’s bride in such a brutal way that it far surpassed the scene that Einstein’s own mother had made about Mileva. It was 1927, and Hans, at age 23, fell in love with an older and – to Einstein – unattractive woman. He damned the union, swearing that Hans’s bride was a scheming woman preying on his son. When all else failed, Einstein begged Hans to not have children, as it would only make the inevitable divorce harder. … (Source: Einstein A to Z by Karen C. Fox and Aries Keck, 2004)
Later, Hans Albert immigrated to the United States became a professor of Hydraulic Engineering at UC Berkeley. Even in the new country, the father and son were apart. When Einstein died, he left very little inheritance to Hans Albert.
More about Hans Albert: Obituary by UC Berkeley
Einstein with his second wife and cousin, Elsa (Image credit)
After Einstein divorced Mileva (his infidelity was listed as one of the reasons for the split), he soon married his cousin Elsa Lowenthal. Actually, Einstein also considered marrying Elsa’s daughter (from her first marriage) Ilse, but she demurred:
Before marrying Elsa, he had considered marrying her daughter, Ilse, instead. According to Overbye, “She (Ilse, who was 18 years younger than Einstein) was not attracted to Albert, she loved him as a father, and she had the good sense not to get involved. But it was Albert’s Woody Allen moment.” (Source)
Unlike Mileva, Elsa Einstein’s main concern was to take care of her famous husband. She undoubtedly knew about, and yet tolerated, Einstein’s infidelity and love affairs which were later revealed in his letters:
Previously released letters suggested his marriage in 1903 to his first wife Mileva Maric, mother of his two sons, was miserable. They divorced in 1919, and he soon married his cousin, Elsa. He cheated on her with his secretary, Betty Neumann.
In the new volume of letters released on Monday by Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Einstein described about six women with whom he spent time and from whom he received gifts while being married to Elsa.
Some of the women identified by Einstein include Estella, Ethel, Toni and his "Russian spy lover," Margarita. Others are referred to only by initials, like M. and L.
"It is true that M. followed me (to England) and her chasing after me is getting out of control," he wrote in a letter to Margot in 1931. "Out of all the dames, I am in fact attached only to Mrs. L., who is absolutely harmless and decent." (Source)
Re-creation of Einstein and Szilárd signing the famous letter to President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939. (Image credit: Wikipedia)
In 1939, alarmed by the rise of Nazi Germany, physicist Leó Szilárd [wiki] convinced Einstein to write a letter to president Franklin Delano Roosevelt warning that Nazi Germany might be conducting research into developing an atomic bomb and urging the United States to develop its own.
The Einstein and Szilárd’s letter was often cited as one of the reasons Roosevelt started the secret Manhattan Project [wiki] to develop the atom bomb, although later it was revealed that the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 probably did much more than the letter to spur the government.
Although Einstein was a brilliant physicist, the army considered Einstein a security risk and (to Einstein’s relief) did not invite him to help in the project.
After his death in 1955, Einstein’s brain [wiki] was removed – without permission from his family – by Thomas Stoltz Harvey [wiki], the Princeton Hospital pathologist who conducted the autopsy. Harvey took the brain home and kept it in a jar. He was later fired from his job for refusing to relinquish the organ.
Many years later, Harvey, who by then had gotten permission from Hans Albert to study Einstein’s brain, sent slices of Einstein’s brain to various scientists throughout the world. One of these scientists was Marian Diamond of UC Berkeley, who discovered that compared to a normal person, Einstein had significantly more glial cells in the region of the brain that is responsible for synthesizing information.
In another study, Sandra Witelson of McMaster University found that Einstein’s brain lacked a particular "wrinkle" in the brain called the Sylvian fissure. Witelson speculated that this unusual anatomy allowed neurons in Einstein’s brain to communicate better with each other. Other studies had suggested that Einstein’s brain was denser, and that the inferior parietal lobe, which is often associated with mathematical ability, was larger than normal brains.
The saga of Einsteins brain can be quite strange at times: in the early 1990s, Harvey went with freelance writer Michael Paterniti on a cross-country trip to California to meet Einstein’s granddaughter. They drove off from New Jersey in Harvey’s Buick Skylark with Einstein’s brain sloshing inside a jar in the trunk! Paterniti later wrote his experience in the book Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein’s Brain
In 1998, the 85-year-old Harvey delivered Einstein’s brain to Dr. Elliot Krauss, the staff pathologist at Princeton University, the position Harvey once held:
… after safeguarding the brain for decades like it was a holy relic — and, to many, it was — he simply, quietly, gave it away to the pathology department at the nearby University Medical Center at Princeton, the university and town where Einstein spent his last two decades.
"Eventually, you get tired of the responsibility of having it. … I did about a year ago," Harvey said, slowly. "I turned the whole thing over last year [in 1998]." (Source)
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From the indefatigable Miss Cellania, here’s Squirrels Gone Bad: Link
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Chinese people have customarily burned fake currency called Hell Money to honor (and equip) their ancestors in the afterlife.
Now, in keeping with modern times, they’re burning paper viagras!
Cemeteries in China are selling paper replicas of Viagra, which are to be burned for dead relatives so they can have sex in the afterlife, state media reported today.
According to the Nanjing Morning News, the paper Viagra is being snapped up by customers, along with images of condoms and heavily made-up bar girls, who are women employed by bars to act as companions to male customers and make them spend a lot of money.
Link – via Random Citations
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Evolutionary biologist susan Crockford of University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, hypothesized that changes in the thyroid hormones turned wolves into docile dogs.
… Crockford suggests the metamorphosis could have taken place over the span of a single human life — between 20 and 40 years.
Crockford points to a 40-year experiment by geneticist Dmitry K. Belyaev and his Siberian research group at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics, where silver foxes were selectively bred for gentleness.
As expected, each succeeding generation was more docile than the last.
What was not expected was that within 20 generations, changes in appearance emerged among the litters. Some pups displayed piebald markings, curled tails and drooping ears. Some also developed another distinctive dog behaviour: They barked.
Link – via Scribal Terror
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An egg five times the size of its mouth is absolute no problem for this snake!
See how a snake eats an egg: Link
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Authorities in Liverpool, UK, resorted to robotic falcons perched on roof tops to scare off pesky, fat pigeons!
The mechanical birds – called "Robops" – are to sit on the roofs of buildings, and can be moved around.
They look like a Peregrine Falcon, which is a natural predator of pigeons, and even squawk and flap their wings to scare off the birds.
Link – via Spluch, who has a larger picture.
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The Alnwick Garden in Northumberland County, UK, billed itself as the world’s largest all-wood treehouse (although you may argue it’s a house in the trees, not an actual treehouse):
In 2005, the world’s largest all-wood treehouse was built amongst the lime trees of the non-profit Alnwick Garden in Northumberland County, UK. This 6,000 square foot treehouse is comprised of walkways, cottages, shops, a restaurant, and play areas. It is even wheelchair accessible, and holds close to 1,000 people, so everyone can play.
Say No to Crack has more pics: Link
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Ah, Earth. Healthy strong and full of life. But wait, what’s you’ve got there? Looks like you’ve got a case of the humans …
An animation by Three Legged Legs: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via The Bad Rants
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This wine dispenser, called "Vin au Verre " or "wine with by the glass" in French, is like the grownup version of a soda dispenser (and classier than wine-in-a-box)! Link [Flash, click on Le Vin au Verre on the left] – via Random Good Stuff and Born Rich
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