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John Speed’s collection of maps was published in 1611 as The theatre of the empire of Great Britaine: presenting an exact geography of the kingdomes of England, Scotland, Ireland, and the iles adioyning: with the shires, hundreds, cities and shire-townes, within ye kingdome of England. It is now available online at a website created by Dr. Maryanne Cline Horowitz of Occidental College. This is an extremely valuable resource for literary scholars and historians and simply a beautiful and instructive site to visit for anyone interested in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century Britain — Shakespeare’s world. I am particularly fond of Speed’s depiction of cities, like this amazing map of "Bathe."
This is the world’s smallest Pac Man game. Shown actual size. You have to be really fast on the keys to win this one! Warning: sound effects are as big as ever. Link -via Reddit
Shek Kip Mei Estate, Hong Kong’s oldest public housing estate, is composed of 100 rooms, each closet-like in size at only 100 square feet and built in response to a devastating fire in the 1950s that left thousands homeless. In a new series of photographs called “100 x 100,” Michael Wolf captures the residents of this housing complex who are almost enveloped by the diminishing space around them, their belongings stacked to the ceiling.
Link to story. Link to image gallery. -via All Night Surfing
Happy Father’s Day, everyone! Found at Miss Cellania (with excellent links on everything related to Father’s Day and Fatherhood).
Now that’s a dog cage! Created by designGO! studio: Link [Flash, you'd have to hunt around for it]
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Can’t use chopsticks? Here’s a 2-in-1 spoon and "chopsticks" utensil called froggetmee: Link – via Gizmodo
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What has elementary school’s come to these days? Indianapolis sixth-grader Matt Porter was awarded "Most Likely Not To Have Children" award … by his teachers!
The certificates were signed by the teachers who distributed them. Matt recalled what the ceremony was like.
"I was standing in the middle of (the two teachers), and they (were) reading them off," he said. "Everyone was laughing."
Matt felt humiliated.
"They (were) putting us down and everything," he said. "That is not what their job is for, to put kids down. They are supposed to teach us."
Link – via GorillaMask
Australian scientists are trying to create the world’s roundest objects: perfect silicon spheres to define a kilogram:
Scientists will use the spheres to determine how many silicon atoms make up a kilogram, and this will be used as the new definition — bringing the kilogram into line with other base units such as the metre and the second, which are all defined by physical constants.
"It’s really an atom-counting exercise … and we’ll come up with a new definition of the kilogram based on atoms, rather than based on the thing in Paris," explained Walter Giardini, of Australia’s National Measurement Institute.
That thing in Paris is a solid platinum-iridium cylinder kept at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM), which mass is, by definition, exactly 1 kilogram.
International Prototype (Image Credit: BIPM)
One thousand years before Disney created Mickey Mouse, a French artist got the same idea:
One thousand years before the cartoon character Mickey Mouse was even a glint in Walt Disney’s eye, a French artist created a bronze brooch that looks remarkably like the famous rodent, according to archaeologists at Sweden’s Lund Historical Museum, which houses the recent find.
The object, dated to 900 A..D., was excavated at a site called Uppåkra in southern Sweden.
Although made of bronze, the brooch ornament likely adorned the clothing of an Iron Age woman. Excavations at nearby sites, such as at Järrestad, have yielded other unusual pieces of jewelry, such as a necklace with a pail fob at the end and another necklace strung with 262 pieces of amber.
The bronze brooch may remind modern viewers of Mickey Mouse, but archaeologist Jerry Rosengren from Lund University told Discovery News that it actually represents a lion.
Link – via Boing Boing
A national manhunt in China finally captured Heng Tinghan, the owner of a brick kiln in Shanxi province, who is accused of enslaving his workers:
[Heng] has become a central villain in a national drama over possibly hundreds or more teenage and adult "slaves" forced or cheated into gruelling labour in kilns, mines and foundries across Shanxi and neighbouring Henan province.
When caught in the central province of Hubei, Heng apologised for mistreating workers but denied blame for the death of the mentally impaired man, a Hubei newspaper reported.
"I felt it was a fairly small thing, just hitting and swearing at the workers and not giving them wages," Heng said, according to the Shiyan Evening News. "The dead man had nothing to do with me."
Apparently he thought that “hitting, swearing, and not giving wages” are fairly small things. And you thought your boss was bad! Link
Seok Gyeong-Jae is a robot designer in South Korea. At his upcoming wedding, the master of ceremonies will be Tiro, a robot he helped design! Link
