Animals That Changed History
The Boy Who Saved Batman
The KLF: A Tale of Creative Destruc
Jerry Lewis' Flop TV Talk Show
Body Parts Research Review
6 Amazing Geoglyphs
Sweating the Smell Stuff
Bad Education: Schools of the Past
The Germiest Item in the Bathroom
Tips from a Master
This morning, redditor twilling8 found a skunk wandering around his neighborhood in Ontario with a Coke can stuck on his head. What to do? he could ignore the skunk, and go about his business, but that could return to haunt him later. Or he could risk getting sprayed.
He is indeed a brave man, and did the right thing. Now if people would only keep their trash picked up and lids on their garbage cans, this would have never happened.
Right now signs are littering lawns across the U.S. urging us to vote in the upcoming election, but we don't have to restrict the statements made by our lawn signage to political matters- we can tell people to scram too.
Signs are put up to tell people what not to do and signs are put up to tell people to go away, but sometimes signs are put up just to give people a good laugh and perhaps initiate a trade.
And when you're able to combine two or more message types on one epic sign you have officially earned the title "master signer".
See 30 Yard Hilarious Yard Signs That Will Totally Get Your Attention here
Plain or fancy, the addition of crown molding can make a cheap home suddenly look established and well-built, but only if it’s done right. There are a lot of factors to consider: the size and shape of the room, the size and shape of the molding, the cost of the materials and labor, and the final look you are aiming for. Get some design tips and see 100 examples of what crown molding can do for a room at Housely.
If you love video games, Harry Potter, Star Wars, proper grammar or anatomy, then you officially have a geeky side. We at Neatorama support the geekification of the public and encourage anyone with even one of those interests to check out this fun Distractify article with over 20 awesome things for geeks to bring into their home.
A few highlights from the list include the marauder's map scarf and respect the chemistry spice rack seen above, as well as this Super Mario light and this set of Pokemon gym pins. Of course, this hatching dinosaur candle is pretty lovable as well.
Japanese comedian Kosaka Daimaou, whose real name is Kazuhiko Kosaka, has a character he does named Piko-Taro. Here, Piko-Taro sings a little ditty about pens and pineapples. It doesn’t make a bit of sense, but since he posted it one month ago, it’s been covered and remixed by dozens of YouTubers.
Now if you see the abbreviation PPAP or these emoji, 
you'll know what it means. Well, good luck getting that tune out of your head the rest of the day. -via Metafilter
Yoshi had been on a permanent vacation after winning the Mario Kart tournament and becoming a very wealthy dinosaur, but downtime was not good for Yoshi. After being cooped up in the house for six long months eating mushrooms and watching old samurai flicks he was starting to believe he was some kind of ronin, a deadly dino swordsman who was out for revenge against the Koopas. Mario tried to call Yoshi but he wouldn't answer, so he drove over to his house to make sure his old pal was okay. But when he walked up the stairs and saw Yoshi standing on the porch wearing a samurai costume, large sword on his hip, Mario knew Yoshi was starting to go bonkers...
Bring home this super Yoshimbo t-shirt by Nicko Designs and watch your wardrobe go from a negative zone to a total 1-UP!
Visit Nicko Designs's Facebook fan page, official website, Tumblr and Instagram, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more geek-tastic designs:
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| Singin' in the Stars | Clint McCree | Law of the Jungle | Main Street Road |
View more designs by Nicko Designs | More Video Game T-Shirts | New T-Shirts
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!
If a pop culture character is properly created, meaning complete with an unique personality and a backstory, fans can predict what that character is thinking and willing to do.
But nobody could have predicted how many perfectly crafted pop culture characters would end up needing psychological treatment!
Cartoonist Lee Gatlin imagines what pop culture characters like Superman, The Hulk and Tarzan would say if they had a psych session with Sigmund Freud, and for most of them one sentence says it all.
-Via io9
The following article is from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids.
FLEAS AND RATS
Impact: Plagues, ending the Middle Ages
From 1347 to 1350, the a virulent disease ravaged the populations of Asia and Europe, killing more than 25 million in Europe alone— about a third of the population. Most people died just three days after becoming infected. Scientists remain perplexed by the outbreak, but many agree that the disease was probably the bubonic plague (or the “black death”) and it was probably spread all over the world by infected fleas traveling on rats. In those days, rats thrived among people— on ships and in cities. Infected fleas, the thinking goes, simply hopped off of dying rats and onto people.
The disruption to medieval society was immense and the outbreak helped bring about the end of the feudalism. Muslims in Crimea, in what’s now the Ukraine, blamed Christians and expelled them from trading cities, spreading the disease deep into Europe. The Christians blamed Jews and burned many of them alive, killing crucial tradesmen and leaving towns without blacksmiths, innkeepers, bakers, millers, and weavers. Many towns and farms were abandoned, leading to food shortages. Ultimately, the nobles couldn’t enforce control on their surviving peasant laborers. So, despite laws aimed at keeping serfs’ wages low, the desperate noblemen began doubling and tripling wages, encouraging the serfs of other noblemen to jump ship. Over time, the serfs were able to demand and get a higher standard of living and new rights, loosening the binds that kept them enslaved to one estate and bringing an end to the economic system of feudalism.
DOGS
Impact: Hunting, herding, self-defense
Any scenario in which someone wears the inflatable T-Rex costume is funny just because, and even funnier because they are so awkward. But this T-Rex managed to be funny and leave the awkwardness behind as he goes out on the lake on a jet ski!
This T-Rex is professional jet skier Mark Gomez, doing what he does best even inside a dinosaur costume. Guillermo Casas recorded him using a drone. A good time was had by all. -via Tastefully Offensive
Imagine a theme park where life-size dinosaur statues exist in the middle of Civil War battles. Dinosaur Kingdom II in Virginia harkens back to the kind of attractions that popped up on roadsides between the rise of the American road trip and the construction of the interstate highways that bypassed so much of it. All you need are things people want to see, and that means dinosaurs and Civil War soldiers. Mark Cline is the owner of the new theme park which just opened this summer, but it’s far from his first. His bizarre vision depends little on historical accuracy and a lot on wacky entertainment. Read more about Dinosaur Kingdom II at Ozy.
Edward Grant of Middletown, New Jersey, caught this fish Sunday in Raritan Bay. It’s a fluke, in more ways than one. It appears that something, possibly a bluefish or shark, had taken a bite out of the fish. The fluke's massive injury was completely healed.
"We were very shocked," Grant said, adding, "We used a few other words, too."
Grant tossed the 18.5 inch fluke back into the bay, deciding it had been through enough already and deserved to live.
"I felt bad for it," he said.
Would you call the fish lucky for both surviving such a bite and also being tossed back by a fisherman? Or would you call him unlucky for being bitten and then being hooked? -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Edward Grant)
Killing stuff is a big part of any roleplaying game, and RPG systems generally use enemy kills as the main source of experience points, so it's hard to imagine an RPG system that doesn't involve killing stuff.
It's even harder to imagine a game in which characters are penalized for resorting to violence, but somehow the new tabletop RPG Lotus Dimension makes that concept seem appealing.
Lotus Dimension forces players to figure out how to solve problems and conflict without violence, using powers like "sleight of hand" or "curl up like an armadillo" to peacefully resolve encounters.
The game was created by Scott Wayne Indiana as an interesting alternative to games like D&D, with a character advancement structure based on Buddhism's noble eightfold path and the concept of karma.
And while it probably won't appeal to your power gamer buddies who are all about loot and XP Lotus Dimension will definitely broaden the horizons of gamers who are sick of the same old RPGs.
-Via Laughing Squid
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was not as well received as expected. How should they improve the next movie? Screen Rant had a genius idea: Batman against Batman. Specifically, Batman played by Christian Bale vs. Batman played by Ben Affleck.
Oh yeah, Michael Keaton gets thrown into the mix, too. And George Clooney. Did you see Val Kilmer? I didn’t. Anyway, Batman vs. Batman would be a much more evenly matched fight, and probably pretty dirty, too. On top of all that, you can see they are secretly rooting for each other. -via Geeks Are Sexy
I'm not sure what the situation is in other cities/states/countries but Boston has more than enough Irish pubs to keep its thirsty citizens satisfied.
However, there are a few parts of Boston that are lacking Irish pubs, namely parks, backyards and other grassy lots, and that's where the PaddyWagon pub comes in.
The PaddyWagon is an inflatable structure that can be blown up wherever an Irish pub is needed, with room for 80 guests, food service and a full bar which the company supplies upon request.
This service is currently only available in the Boston area, but I could easily see this idea catching on here in Southern California, where we have perfect inflatable pub crawl weather all year long!
-Via design you trust
The world’s largest elevator opened just last weekend to carry ships up and down the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in central China. Previously, ships could only surmount the dam by using a system of five locks, which took hours. Now they can just be lifted up or down, water and all, in just 40 minutes!
The dam is 600 feet tall, and the elevator can life up to 6.7 million pounds. You can read more about the elevator and its specs at the YouTube page. -via mental_floss
Spicy foods are really hard to eat, so it makes sense for manufacturers to sell them in smaller quantities since nobody really needs more than their mouth can handle.
But if you're going to sell your spicy chips one chip at a time they'd better live up to your claim that they're "the hottest chip in the world".
Paqui Chips is standing by the claim that their Carolina Reaper Madness chip is hot enough to be sold individually, and just to make sure foodies get the point they're selling each one in a little coffin box.
Seeing as how the Carolina Reaper is currently the hottest pepper in the world the Carolina Reaper Madness should come with the slogan "bet you can't even eat just one!"
-Via That's Nerdalicious
Cat Exist | Coexist Parody Typography by Boots
Cats may seem antisocial at times, and they often act as if they don't get along with other animals, but those are just assumptions we've made based on our interpretation of their behavior. Because as it turns out cats are actually the most peaceful creatures on the planet, like little furry zen buddhist monks who strive to make the world a more cohabitable place by killing all that bothers us. Rodents break into our homes and steal our food, birds chirp and disturb our sleeping, and bugs just plain bug us, so if you think about it cats are just helping us chill out by killing all those pests. And if you fill a room with cats you'll see how peaceful they can be, as they coexist in feline harmony and show the humans how to live together peacefully here on Earth...or am I thinking of dogs?
Share your message of peace, love and purr-fect coexistence by wearing this Cat Exist t-shirt by Boots, it's guaranteed to make fellow feline fans grin with delight!
Visit Boots's Facebook fan page, official website, Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr, then head on over to her NeatoShop for more meow-velous designs:
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| Supermom | Superhero Mom Gift | What the Bark is THAT? | Funny Tree | Gotta Get Back to School | #Extra Lives Matter | 8 Bit Geek Gamer Slogan |
View more designs by Boots | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!
Do you recall the Staten Island Ferry Disaster of 1963? The news flew under the radar because it happened on the morning of November 22, and the media became overwhelmingly focused on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But now there’s a memorial and a museum dedicated to the memory of the disaster and those who lost their lives. From the memorial page:
It was close to 4am on the quiet morning of November 22, 1963 when the Steam Ferry Cornelius G. Kolff vanished without a trace. On its way with nearly 400 hundred people, mostly on their way to work, the disappearance of the Cornelius G. Kolff remains both one of New York’s most horrific maritime tragedies and perhaps its most intriguing mystery. Eye witness accounts describe “large tentacles” which “pulled” the ferry beneath the surface only a short distance from its destination at Whitehall Terminal in Lower Manhattan. Nobody on board survived and only small pieces of wreckage have been found…strangely with large “suction cup-shaped” marks on them. The only logical conclusion scientists and officials could point to was that the boat had been attacked by a massive octopus, roughly half the size of the ship.
You can find out more about the memorial and the attached museum at its website. See a short documentary on the incident here. You can even get a memorial t-shirt. Residents of Staten Island were surprised by the sudden opening of the memorial, but that’s to be expected, because after all it was 53 years ago. It also didn’t happen. The story is a hoax by artist Joe Reginella, a Staten Island native who has been handing out brochures for the memorial (he is also the one who designed the Jaws Baby Bed). The memorial does exist, if you can find it, but the museum does not. Workers at other Staten Island museums have been busy fielding questions from people looking for it. The ferry Cornelius G. Kolff existed at one time, but was not attacked by a giant octopus. The t-shirts, of course, are real. The brochures, t-shirts, and the actual statue depicting a ferry being devoured by a tentacled monster will go a long way toward perpetuating the urban legends city dwellers like to tell tourists. -via Metafilter
Cartoon characters like Pikachu, Mickey Mouse and the Minions are drawn to be adorable, and we can't help but think happy thoughts when we look at them because of their round shapes and smiley features.
This intentional and inherent appeal makes it hard to turn cutesy characters into something truly nightmarish without causing the character to lose their core essence, but illustrator Disse86 has proven he's up to the challenge.
Disse86 has turned the Minions into grinning mutant monstrosities, Totoro into a scary woodland creature, Pooh into a ghoulish little blood eating bear-thing and poor little Tweety Bird into a fang-faced horror.
And yet each character remains instantly recognizable and somehow manages to retain elements of their original personality despite their gruesome new look.
-Via Nerd Approved
The perfect thing to start a Sunday morning, a little Rammstein! But this isn’t like anything you’ve heard from them before. Is that Rammstein or Jazzstein? The effect is a little like the time you had to stop cold in the grocery store when you realized that Muzak was playing some jam you rocked out to when you were 17.
Andy Rehfeldt (previously at Neatorama) did all the music and perfectly synched it to Rammstein’s concert video. -via Viral Viral Videos
Who came up with the insane idea of playing polo while driving cars? That would be Ralph “Pappy” Hankinson, a Ford dealer in Topeka, Kansas, who was looking for a way to sell more cars. The sport lasted from 1912 to sometime in the early ’20s. We know about polo played on horse or camels, but those are sentient animals that try to avoid crashing into each other while the guy riding worries about the game. In Auto Polo, paying attention to the game meant crashing one’s car into other players quite often. However, it did mange to sell cars, probably because players needed replacements.
Not only did Hankinson’s plan work, it quickly became a hugely popular sporting event in which not only the participants were at risk of injury or death but so were the spectators who flocked to such events. The matches were held across the country and the world, with the very first major auto polo exhibition being held in Washington D.C. in 1912. The outright brutality of the uncompromising sport also meant that cars would have to be routinely replaced since they would often give up the ghost in the middle of a match and because the main attraction of the sport was the very high probability that cars would crash into each other.
In other words auto polo was a bit like the 1985 film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome only with cars operated by those insane enough to careen them around an arena armed with ball-smashing mallets at 40 miles per hour. So dangerous was the game of auto polo that an actual surgeon was onsite during the matches just in case anyone was injured (which according to most historical resources on the topic was shockingly rare). But deaths on the field did happen and those infrequent occurrences caused the sport to be banned in numerous states despite its rabid fan base.
Read more about the short-lived sport of Auto Polo and see plenty of pictures and a video at Dangerous Minds.
Duncan de Heusden has a squeaky glove box in his car. It’s more than that. When the glove box is opened, it plays a jazzy little riff that sounds a bit like a French horn. So he recorded it.
And then he started playing around with the recording. Soon, he was singing along and mixing in other sounds. Before you know it, he had a full-blown composition built around his squeaky glove box. You can hear it anytime SoundCloud. -via Laughing Squid
Your world map is wrong when it comes to Australia. It’s not just the Mercator distortion, so your globe is wrong, too. Australia sits on the world’s fastest-moving tectonic plate, and manages to constantly drift relative to the world’s other land masses, about 2.7 inches a year. That does’t seem like much, but for GPS coordinates, it soon becomes a lot.
Four times in the last 50 years, Australia has reset the official coordinates of everything in the country to make them more accurate, correcting for other sources of error as well as continental drift. The last adjustment, in 1994, was a doozy: about 656 feet, enough to give the delivery driver an alibi for ringing your neighbor’s doorbell instead of yours.
What I want to know is, how wrong does my globe look? The globe itself is at least 50 years old, and was probably based on maps that are now 100 years old. Read more about Australia and its place in the world at the New York Times. -via Digg
(Image credit: Sasha Portis)
Videos of cats and dogs riding around the house atop a Roomba became an internet "thing" because people love to watch animals do strange, silly and downright ridiculous things.
But the pets in the videos generally look either unimpressed or terrified by the ride, most likely because their humans have them riding on a regular old Roomba.
So if you want your cat to look like a total boss while they ride on a Roomba you've gotta put a shoebox on top, so they can roll around supine style.
Install some rocket launchers on the side of the shoebox and this calico cat could take over the world!
-Via Tastefully Offensive
If you own a white Ford Bronco, it has probably occurred to you to get personalized plate. Redditor DaFunktapus managed to get the simplest one in North Carolina. He was surprised that it was available. There is a kind of club for white Ford Bronco owners with personalized plates, although they are spread out over the 50 states. And for some reason, people take pictures of them. Continue reading to see some of them.
If you don't know who Die Antwoord are then check out the 2015 sci-fi film Chappie and you'll get a good idea of who Yolandi and Ninja are, or who their zef personas are anyway.
Die Antwoord creates niche music, meaning they have a far more select audience than, say, Taylor Swift, and some people say the Die Antwoord sound makes them want to stick pencils in their ears.
But is it the kind of music that makes open-minded Baby Boomers, who tend to like all kinds of music, want to Die? Fine Brothers Entertainment investigates:
I don't know about you but seeing the guy in the glasses jam out to the beat made my day!
The Chelsea bombing last week made headlines across the country, but fortunately no one was killed. Bombings are big news today, but New York City has always had them. Some in the past were never even heard of outside the city. In fact, there was an 18-month period in 1969-’70 in which 370 bombs went off in the city! New York bombings have been carried out by all kinds of groups and individuals for as many different reasons: targeted political statements, general terrorism, revenge, or just insanity.
…in November 1940, the city had its first encounter with a bomber who would haunt them for years: George Metesky, a disgruntled former ConEd employee who left a pipe bomb at a company building, along with a note: "CON EDISON CROOKS – THIS IS FOR YOU."
A similar bomb appeared several months later, before Metesky decided to pause because of World War II.
"I WILL MAKE NO MORE BOMB UNITS FOR THE DURATION OF THE WAR," Metesky wrote police. "MY PATRIOTIC FEELINGS HAVE MADE ME DECIDE THIS."
True to his word, Metesky didn't resume bombing until 1951, when he captivated the media with a string of bombings over several years, many at city landmarks like Grand Central Terminal, the New York Public Library, and Radio City Music Hall, some 33 in total which never killed anyone but, for a time, set the city on edge.
Metesky was eventually captured and committed to a mental institution. His is only one of the many stories told in a rundown of historical New York bombings at Atlas Obscura.
Stranger Peanuts by Boggs Nicolas
Things had been turned upside down since that stranger named Eleven moved to town, and even though Charlie Brown swore he saw a light in that little girl's eyes everyone else swore they saw darkness. One day Chuck came home from school to find Snoopy's dog house empty and his bloody collar sitting in his food bowl, but when he asked Eleven about the missing beagle she just got frustrated and stormed off. Charlie knew something wasn't right about that girl but she hardly seemed like the type who would gobble up a dog, so he let her stay a little while longer. A sharp cracking woke Charlie from his slumber later that night, and hoping Snoopy had come home he rushed downstairs to find a horrible creature standing in his living room, with a face like a flower full of teeth...
Give the peanut gallery something to giggle about by wearing this Stranger Peanuts t-shirt by Boggs Nicolas, it's twice the fun and sure to make your fellow fans very jealous!
Visit Boggs Nicolas's Facebook fan page and Twitter, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more delightfully geeky designs:
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| Memorise | Wakanda King | BAT-BAT | Ha! ha! |
View more designs by Boggs Nicolas | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!
T-shirts are the casual torso covering of choice for many people around the world, because they like how comfortable tees are to wear, how easy they are to wash, and what the print says to the world.
This is especially true for the young folks, because funny slogan t-shirts can crack up their classmates for them.
H. Caldwell Tanner created this visual guide to what our favorite t-shirts are actually saying during each stage of our lives, from the days when we can't dress ourselves to the age when we wish someone would dress us.
See What Your Favorite T-Shirt Means At Every Stage Of Your Life at CollegeHumor (contains NSFW language)
Mike Phirman does a snake puppet that lip-syncs (if a snake had lips) to the song Sterling Holloway sang in The Jungle Book. Actually, he doesn’t even have a puppet -he’s using just his two hands!
It’s a trick that’s as mesmerizing as the animated sequence, simply because he’s so good at it. -via reddit
