Mel Books, the great comic filmmaker, was born 100 years ago today as Melvin James Kiminsky to a poor family in Brooklyn. Brooks was a prodigious comedic talent even as a child. That early career was interrupted by the war, in which Brooks served as a combat engineer in the US Army at the Battle of the Bulge.

Brooks worked hard to develop his skills and entertainment appeal. In 1967, he won an Academy Award for The Producers--the first film that he produced. In the 70s and 80s, Brooks produced original masterpieces, including Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, and Spaceballs.

He's worked continuously in filmmaking for several decades. His star on the Walk of Fame, notable for having a sixth finger, is well-earned. People magazine tells us more about Brooks's astonishing life and work.

Photo: Nehrams2020

A new attraction in Nantan City, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan is dedicated to the importance of stuffed animals, or what Americans would call "plush toys" as opposed to taxidermy. It is Nuigurumi Jinja, referred to as the Holy Land of Mofumofu, a term that means soft, fluffy, and cuddly. The shrine is an extensive park wrapping through a forest, opening this summer. A dedication ceremony was held on June 20, and the shrine will welcome visitors beginning on July 7.  

This shrine is a place to bring your beloved stuffed toys or to express gratitude and honor the memory of bygone plush animals. It is also a Shinto religious site, so the activities are grounded in a sense of communion with the sacred nature of the forest. Founded by a plush toy hospital, the shrine has its own plush toys mascots, which you can see at Instagram. Read more about this shrine at Sora News24. -via Nag on the Lake 

We once thought that black-footed ferrrets were extict, but when a few specimens were later found, the rush was on to bring them back from the brink, which included breeding them in captivity. Releasing these kitten snakes into the wild is dangerous, though, because they eat prairie dogs, which have fleas, which carry plague. The evolution of the plague bacteria went through some real changes in order to become as virulent as it is, involving flea anatomy, and then follows a disgusting chain of infection that can give us all bubonic plague. In this video, Ze Frank takes us from a Yersinia pestis bacterium named Patricia through a chain of critters that aren't named, up to a black-footed ferret named Kenny. There are ways that people are trying to protect the ferrets from the plague that may look silly, but are important. And we have adorable ferret footage to make it all seem less grim. 

(Image credit: Lake Mead NRA Public Affairs)

The small Nevada town of St. Thomas grew and lost it population twice, and is now uninhabited, although it will not stay buried. The Mormons who founded St. Thomas in18t65 weren't sure whether it was in Utah or Arizona, but when the lines were formally drawn, it was determined to be in Nevada. That's when everyone but one couple left because they didn't want to pay Nevada taxes.Eventually, St. Thomas drew new residents. That is, until construction began on the Boulder Dam (now Hoover Dam) in the 1930s, which placed St. Thomas underneath the new Lake Mead.

(Image credit: Andrew Cattoir (Lake Mead National Recreation Area)) 

Lake Mead is subject to periodic droughts, and St. Thomas rose from the water off and on over the decades, exposing the stone foundations of the ice cream parlor and the school, plus cement porches and stairs from what were once houses. The erstwhile town remained underwater from 1972 to 2002. But since then, the ghostly remains of St. Thomas have been exposed, and are now a tourist draw. Read about the ghost town that keeps emerging at Mental Floss. 

Through most of civilization, people have been getting the majority of their calories from whatever carbohydrates were available: bread, potatoes, rice, or yams depending on location. But in the last couple hundred years, food technology and culture has upended that. This video from Data is Beautiful tracks the source of caloric intake among Americans aged 20-39 from 1930 to 2026. Keep in mind this does not take into account the total amount of food consumed; just a comparison of the calorie source. That's why fruits and vegetables stay so low- you can eat an awful lot of those and still get few calories. 

Bread stays at the top during the Great Depression. Then when World War II vets came home, they continued to eat red meat every day like they did in the military, and their families did, too. Then the rise of fast food took over, and soda pop became an everyday drink. Chicken prices plunged with the rise of factory farming. Margarine fell out of favor in the '80s. Late in the 20th century, red meat became less popular and more expensive. You'll spot more trends on a second watch that can be linked to prices, trends, and health concerns. -via Born in Space 

Oddity Central tells us about a new and fresh take on ice cream from Iwate Prefecture in northeastern Honshu. It combines the Japanese love of seafood and creamy soft serve ice cream. Imagine the clamminess of, well, shellfish, the tang of soy sauce and the sweetness of the ice cream. Combinations of sweet and savory tend to do well, so I'd like to try it.

A few billion years ago, our earth was a blob of molten rock that eventually formed into a water-filled planet teeming with life. Where did the earth get that water? Scientists still don't know, but they are entertaining several possibilities. The first scientific theory, and the oldest, is that our water came from comets. Yeah, that would take a lot of comets, but it was the best theory up until recently, when actual comets could be analyzed. It was found that the water in comets is not like the water on earth. Unless there was something wrong with the analysis, which is a more recent possibility. 

Then scientists looked at asteroids, which are more common, but they don't have a lot of water. The third possibility is that the earth itself formed water, which would require massive amounts of hydrogen combining with the oxygen of molten rock under immense pressure. But exoplanets have been found with water, so it seemed like a possibility. The experiment to determine if that was possibile took five years to design, and was quite dangerous, but it produced a thousand times the expected amount of water! Read about that experiment and what it tells us at Quanta magazine. -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: NASA/Apollo 17 crew; taken by either Harrison Schmitt or Ron Evans) 

Listen to this super nostalgic mashup, new from Bill McClintock! It's a medley of disco hits from the 1970s, set to the tune of Huey Lewis and the News' 1985 song "The Power of Love." The first disco song is "Disco Inferno" by The Trammps. I was a little disappointed there, because it's my favorite disco song mainly because of the lush instrumentation. But that's just the beginning- you'll also hear "Lady (You Bring Me Up)" by the Commodores, "All Along the Watchtower" by Jimi Hendrix, and "Serpentine Fire" by Earth, Wind & Fire. 

The five songs are accompanied by a video that incorporates the music videos from each song, plus the movie Back to the Future, which is where we got "The Power of Love." You'll want to get up and dance, but keep in mind the disco hits are all a little slower to match the tempo of "The Power of Love." But that's okay, because if you recall all these songs, you probably dance a little slower than you used to. 

There is a $5,000 reward offered for information leading to the capture of an escaped giraffe in Texas. Gracie is a 3- to 4-year-old reticulated giraffe who went missing from Cedar Hollow Ranch, an exotic animal facility in Real County, Texas. Gracie is described as 10 to 11 feet tall with a case of wanderlust. She managed to escape from an area of the ranch that had an eight-foot gate and a rock slab barrier, although no damage to the gate was reported. A search by helicopter covered a 7,500-acre area, but no sign of the giraffe was found.

Ranch manager Vick Jones is not too concerned with Gracie's wellbeing while on the lam. The surrounding area offers plenty of vegetation a giraffe could eat, and she is unlikely to be bothered by native wildlife. One would imagine that native wildlife would be terrified by an 11-foot animal. The question that remains is how she managed to remain free for this long. Read about the case of the escaped giraffe at Smithsonian.  

Update: Gracie was found and recovered today. 

(Image credit: Real County Sheriff's Office) 

The usual way to make classic cartoons is to record the voices first, and then draw the animation to match. When Robin Williams recorded lines for the Genie in the 1992 film Aladdin, the crew knew that letting him loose with the script would produce magic. Williams recorded hours and hours of sound, playing around with each joke, adding his own ad libs, and doing them all over and over with different recognizable character voices. It had to be a real trip to witness, and a real struggle not to ruin every take with uncontrollable laughing.  

Of course, they didn't use all those hours of voice recordings, but they were too funny to discard. They were well worth adding artwork to them anyway. In this video, two directors and the supervising animator from Aladdin remember Robin Williams and bring us the Genie treasures we didn't get to see in the movie.  

In case you didn't know it, the 1972 movie Jeremiah Johnson was based on a real person. The character was somewhat fictionalized, because no one wanted to see Robert Redford eating human livers. 

John Jeremiah Garrison, who later took the name Johnston and eventually dropped the "t," was born in New Jersey in 1824 and headed out west after deserting the military. He wanted to find gold, but instead sold wood in the mountains of Montana. He married a woman from the Flathead people, but she was killed by a band of Crow hunters. That's when Johnson went nuclear, and he spent the next 25 years hunting and killing Crow tribesmen. It was said that he killed more than 300 Crow and devoured their livers afterward, earning him the name "Liver-eating Johnson." He once escaped capture by the Blackfoot people by cutting off his guard's leg and beating everyone else with it. As hard to believe as that is, even more incredible is the story that all this brought Johnson respect among the Crow, and he eventually made peace with them.  

You can read a "just the facts" version of Johnson's story at Wikipedia, or a more dramatic and gruesome version at OldWest.  -via Boing Boing 

Your first bird feeder seems like a nice gift, but it can lead to some lifestyle changes. Suddenly, you are obsessed with the birds that actually come visit. You're taking pictures of them, identifying them, studying their favorite foods, and that leads to a serious obsession. There's nothing wrong with birdwatching, and I'm sure the birds appreciate the food. But you may start to seem a little odd to the neighbors and any friends that visit. 

Comedian Matt Lyons noticed this in his own neighborhood. He knows about as much about birds as you or I do- notice that the bird feeder in this video is empty, and no serious backyard birder would let that happen except to give it a good cleaning. You can also tell by the names of the birds, like the eastern bilirobin and the benihana boobies. He's glad to share knowledge with you, because it's all about that symbiotomy in the phylum, whatever that means. -via Laughing Squid 

In the mid-20th century, Cadillacs were the flashy car you bought when you wanted everyone to know you could afford a Cadillac. Elvis Presley bought an entire fleet of Cadillacs after he made it big, including a purple one and two pink Caddys. But it was a gold Eldorado that he deemed worthy of execution. 

Elvis was known to shoot his TV sets if he didn't like what it was showing. This habit became a comedy trope, but it also reveals a disturbing lack of self control. Elvis didn't need self control when he saw a '68 Cadillac Eldorado convertible painted in Topaz Gold Firemist at a Memphis dealership in December of 1967. He bought it on the spot and drove it for the next year. But one day it wouldn't start, so he pulled out a handgun and shot it, right in the fender. 

That single bullet hole branded the car as an authentic Elvis Cadillac to this day. Read the story of the car that was shot, and what happened to it afterward at Jalopnik. You can see pictures of the car here.  

Thomas Edison didn't have much in the way of a formal education. Once he learned to read, his mother encouraged him to learn on his own. And he read a lot, about a wide variety of subjects. As a business owner, Edison hired plenty of employees, but didn't really care whether they had a college degree, as he thought higher education was overrated. Instead, he screened potential employees with a test he made up himself. Edison's tests varied over time, and he never made them public. But they usually had 140 questions or more. Not many of the questions had anything to do with engineering, salesmanship, or the science behind the position. They were trivia questions, supposedly to reveal a well-rounded education. 

It wasn't easy. Out of 718 applicants, only 32 scored 90% or higher. While we don't have any copies of them, many who took the tests were happy to share questions they recalled from it when New York Times reporters asked. You wouldn't be able to pass the test, either, since 100 years have passed and many answers have changed or are hopelessly period-specific. But you might have fun trying, as you'll see at The Saturday Evening Post. -via Damn Interesting 

Danny Fonfeder is a musician and craftsman in Montreal. His shop, dubbed Blueberry Guitars, offers uniquely beautiful works that are a delight to both the eyes and the ears.

Among them is this lovely instrument made of Balinese rosewood. He's carved and painted into its surface characters from the original series, Enterprise, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine. Check out Fonfeder's gallery for other masterpieces.