Americans traditionally celebrate the Fourth of July with cookouts and fireworks, and sometimes a parade. Some towns tried something strange and different at one time or another, and the event was so popular it became a holiday tradition. In Hannibal, Missouri, they're celebrating Tom Sawyer Days in honor of Mark Twain. On the fourth you can see the National Fence Painting Contest, in which participants race to paint a section of a wooden fence faster than anyone else, just as Tom Sawyer tricked his friends into doing the chore for him. In Gatlinburg, Tennessee, you can catch the first Fourth of July parade of the year because it starts at midnight. In Bristol, Vermont, the holiday isn't complete until the Great Bristol Outhouse Race is run. And in Key West, Florida, they have the annual Key Lime Pie-eating Contest, a race to eat a whole pie the fastest without using your hands. 

Read about these oddball Independence Day traditions and more, ten of them in all, at Smithsonian. 

In 1975, a criminal court in Georgia convicted Terry Brown and sentenced him to seven years in prison at hard labor. There was apparently a personality conflict between the presiding judge and members of the appellate court because the judge "demanded that if Judge Randall Evans, Jr. ever again was so presumptious as to reverse one of his decisions, that the opinion be written in poetry."

The appellate court did precisely that. Judge Dunbar Harrison composed the reversal of Brown's conviction in proper rhyme. You can read the full poem/decision at Justia and an article about it and other instances of judical humor in the University of California Law Journal.

-via Jarvis Best

When John Adams wrote about American celebrating Independence day with bonfires and illuminations, he never dreamt it would be like this. CodyBPyrotechnics shows us the latest innovations in Roman candles. The ones available for consumer use are bigger than ever before. There's also a model of launcher that resemble a Gatling gun. Why would you need a rotating gun for fireworks? I guess because it just seems cool. The real innovation is that you can aim your massive fireworks somewhere other than straight up, which doesn't seem all that safe to me. He compares several of these guns in this video. 
 
The fireworks are pretty, but watching a video is as risky as I want to get with this. Not to mention I don't want to pay for such a single-use gun- although someone in the comments mentioned you can reload them. These should not be used near people, or forests, or homes, or after holiday drinking. (via Geeks Are Sexy) 

Anytime someone posts a list of the greatest songs or artists, it's an invitation for everyone to critique their taste, no matter what kind of criteria they use. Now we have a list of the best music, meaning the best 500 musical artists, the best 500 songs, and the best 500 albums, called The Greatest Music. 

This ranking was compiled by using other lists, with a weighed criteria that's explained here. Yes, you can argue that it's too 20th century, because songs that stand the test of time do well, and too English language, because, well it is. But, while you can kvetch about the rankings all day, you won't find any bad artists or songs here. Click on any of the titles to get a "resume" of the song's source lists. You can also sort the lists by decade. 

In the arguments at Metafilter, there's a list of the top songs in alphabetical order by artist to make it easy for you to check your favorites. 

Sora News 24 tells us about the opening of a new hotel outside of Osaka. The Hoshinoya Nara Prison is a beautiful historic penitentiary that now serves more voluntary guests and provides conditions that previous residents would envy.

The live action version of Moana will be released this weekend. It's a remake of the 2016 animated movie. But the first Moana that Disney produced was 100 years ago, in 1926! The full-length silent film was directed by directed by Robert J. Flaherty, who did Nanook of the North in 1922. Flaherty spent a year in Samoa recording footage. He had envisioned an exciting tale of a sea monster, but instead found happy people living peacefully with no dangerous sea creatures that could pass for an antagonist. But the film was completed anyway. 

Without a plot, Moana was not a hit. A critic coined the word "documentary" to describe the film in a review. However, the movie was not a documentary in the way we use the word today. Rather, it was a fictional collaboration between Flaherty and the Samoans to illustrate their world in a traditional and flattering way. Read about the first Moana at the Guardian. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: Paramount Pictures) 

If you enjoy those old Looney Tunes cartoons in which all rules of logic were suspended to build chaos, action, and suspense, then you'll love o28. A German couple on vacation take a ride on the well known Tram 28 (Eléctrico 28E) to see the historic sections of Lisbon, Portugal. Except he is more interested in a magazine than the sights, and she is occupied by taking pictures for Instagram. But once the streetcar goes completely out of control, their attention is focused. The driver is gone, the brakes are broken, and the track is jumped. On top of it all, there's a baby on board with a pronounced unibrow.   

The film o28 was made by a group of students at Rubika, an animation school based in Valenciennes, France. There are cultural references and easter eggs throughout the video that you might miss the first time around, and are pointed out at Kuriositas. 

The Blind Pelican is a seafood restaurant in Holly Springs, North Carolina. On the southwestern edge of Raleigh, it's quite far from the Atlantic Ocean. But guests can still enjoy massive quantities of seafood.

The eatery is locally famous for its cocktails. Each one is a meal--probably for four people. The margaritas come with food items on skewers, often more than just appetizers. Why not stick a whole lobster in the drink? And why not then add a Alaska King Crab? Put in some onion rings and a steak so that it's a balanced meal. Make the drink so large that it takes two people just to bring it to the table.

Sometimes school yearbooks request baby photos from graduating students. It appears that one prankster decided to submit a photo of Adolf Hitler as a baby instead of him/herself.

The New York Post reports that East Brook Middle School in Paramus, New Jersey has recalled all copies of the yearbook and apologized for the oversight in a letter sent to parents of all the students. The principal then condemned both the prank and Adolf Hitler.

-via Wade Stotts, who quips, "The school apologized saying, 'If we could go back in time to prevent this from happening, we would.'"

Photos: Josef Franz Klinger/Google Street view

We've featured Ghanian movie posters a few times here at Neatorama. They are hand painted, have little to do with the movie, and are often quite lurid. There were born from a homegrown business of showing films in villages that had no electricity and hiring local artists to produce promotional posters. The posters became quite popular in the US for their imaginative depictions of films the artists had not seen. They commonly include guns and severed heads for dramatic purposes, no matter the movie's actual subject matter. 



Americans can buy prints of these posters, and even painted originals, through Deadly Prey Gallery, a Chicago-based business that works with ten artists in or near Accra, Ghana. All profits go to the artists. The gallery stages pop-up exhibitions in cities around the US; check Instagram for their current schedule. Oh yeah, they accept commissions, too, in case you've ever wanted your own face enshrined in a Ghanian movie poster. -via Everlasting Blort 

How old is the sport of sumo wrestling? It's ancient, depending on your definition of "ancient." It also depends on your definition of "sumo." Of course, "wrestling" has been everywhere since the dawn of mankind, probably. Anyway, historical records of sumo first appeared in the 8th century, but you wouldn't recognize it as sumo wrestling from the perspective of today. What makes sumo wrestling different from other types of wrestling came a little at a time, and the impetus for most of those changes was money. There had to be things that distinguished professional sumo wrestlers from wannabes. 

Therefore, many of the ancient traditions surrounding sumo were invented about 300 years ago. Sure, all traditions were "invented" at one time or another, and 300 years seems pretty ancient now. But these practices were called ancient traditions even when they were new. This TED-Ed lesson explains how and why sumo wrestling became what it is today. -via Laughing Squid 

On June 28, 1957, 69 years ago today, Sharyn Felder's parents got married. Her mother was actress Willi Burke and her singer/songwriter father went by the name Doc Pomus. He had written many hit songs, including "Young Blood," "This Magic Moment," "Viva Las Vegas," and "Save the Last Dance for Me." The Drifters recorded "Save the Last Dance for Me" in 1960 and it went to #1. For Pomus, who collaborated with Mort Shuman (shown above) on the song, it was just the beginning of a string of notable hits. Then over time "Dance" became his most lasting composition because it resonated with anyone who heard it, and has been recorded by dozens of artists. 

It was only in 1991, when Sharyn Felder was going through her father's things after his death, that the inspiration for the song was revealed. She found some unused invitations to her parents' wedding, one with a hand-scribbled note on the side that said "Save the last dance for me." Was it a communication between her parents, an idea for a song, or just a random thought scribbled in a hurry? There were more song lyrics on the back that had been added later. In any case, it was the genesis of a song that became a hit three years later. Read why that note was significant, and what made it bittersweet, at the Library of Congress.  -via Metafilter 

The Night Witches was a name given to the pilots of the Soviet Union's all-woman 588th Night Bomber Regiment. They flew multiple missions every night to bomb German units on the Eastern Front, in tiny obsolete planes that flew low and almost silently. The pilots were young, fearless, and patriotic, like the kamikazes Japan deployed in the Pacific. The difference is that the Night Witches often survived their dangerous raids, while understanding that the odds against them were serious. 

Their story, as brought to us by Weird History, begins as if the Soviet Union only joined the war in 1941. The part they left out was that the USSR had a pact with Germany to divide the nations of Eastern Europe between them, and the Soviets invaded some of those countries themselves. Once Germany double-crossed them, the Soviets joined the Allies, and only afterward did women aviators lobby to serve. 

The funniest part of this video is the machine-generated captions. The algorithm has no idea what to do with Russian names, and cannot cope at all with the airplanes called Po-2s. 

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 directed. 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 hand prints in front of the TCL Chinese Theatre, 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