Five artists from the art collective Cube Works in Toronto recreated Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper out of 4,050 cubes, in all measuring 8.5 by 17 feet. The work was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records and sold to a collector in Florida.

Link via Popped Culture | Artists’ Website (Warning: self-starting audio)

Like The Last Supper or the Abbey Road album cover, Stonehenge is such an iconic image that people the world over recognize it, even if it’s made of bamboo or old refrigerators. Web Urbanist has collected 20 Stonehenge recreations from all over. Some try to faithfully resemble the original in England, others are art pieces using recycled materials. Pictured is Phonehenge in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Link -via Interesting Pile

Jeremy Barker at Popped Culture has compiled 101 satirical versions of da Vinci’s The Last Supper, covering everything from Popeye to Mario Brothers to Gordon Ramsay.

Link

Gaily coloured peppers almost make you forget you’re eating beans again.

Pizza is topped with canned spaghetti and a lattice of anchovy fillets and processed cheese.

Link -via Everlasting Blort

Link via Oddee

US Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson won a silver medal in the all-around competition yesterday in Beijing, but she has an even bigger honor awaiting her back in the States. Johnson’s likeness is on display at the Iowa State Fair, carved in butter!

Butter Shawn Johnson will share the spotlight with the butter cow in the Agriculture Building Aug. 7-17. Butter sculptor Sarah Pratt of West Des Moines plans to incorporate a balance beam into Johnson’s pose, and possibly an American flag.

The butter cow is a tradition at the fair.

There has been an Iowa State Fair butter cow since the early 1900s, according to fair officials.

Johnson will join an elite butter list that includes Tiger Woods, Elvis, Grant Wood’s “American Gothic,” Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” actor John Wayne and country singer Garth Brooks.

Pratt said she and Iowa fair organizers discussed options such as Indiana Jones and the 50th anniversary of the Doctor Seuss classic “The Cat in the Hat” before picking Iowa’s 4-foot-81/4 Olympic favorite.

Link -via YesButNoButYes

Jeremy Barker of Popped Culture blog wrote to us about this: a compendium
of 50 pop culture versions of Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic painting The Last Supper.

This one above is The Simpsons Last Supper:

Depicting Homer Simpson with his beer-swilling disciples at Moe’s is inspired, but my one complaint is how many minor characters there are in the bar, making some guy I don’t even recognize as Judas. The image comes from the end of Thank God It’s Doomsday.

Link – Thanks Jeremy!

That’s the Last Supper … in balloons as twisted (right?) by Mr. Bubbles and fellow balloon twisters at the Fellowship of Christian Magicians in 2004.

Link – Thanks Emperor!

More Last Supper posts on Neatorama

Pic: kiddrunkadelic14 [Flickr] (Biggify)

We’ve posted a number of Last Supper posts on Neatorama before, but never this one: The Battlestar Galactica Last Supper!

… and just like the Leonardo da Vinci version, there are hidden clues in this one: Link

Iranian filmmaker Nader Talebzadeh directed a movie that some consider as Iran’s answer to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ: a life of Jesus as seen through the Islamic eyes.

Lara Setrakian of ABC News interviewed the filmmaker:

LS: While production on this movie was happening, Mel Gibson’s "Passion of the Christ" came out. What did you learn from watching that film?

NT: We were almost finished filming when Mel Gibson started shooting. I saw the film, and it’s the first time the Gospel of John has ever been depicted. It was nice. But it was the wrong story. In my film, I respect that common belief with all the good intentions the Christians have … according to what Islam says. Yet, Jesus, at the night of the last supper, ascends to heaven [without being crucified]. A beautiful man, a beautiful prophet. Why should he be bloodied that way?

Link

Photo: Stewart Canham

Amateur photographer Stewart Canham snapped this amazing photo of a cormorant swallowing a foot-long pike:

With its rows of needle-sharp teeth, the pike is a feared predator in the water world. But this one hadn’t a hope when a hungry cormorant decided it was supper time. The bird pounced on the foot-long pike with its hooked bill and pulled it to the surface of a lake.

The two antagonists grappled for a few seconds before, in one swift movement, the magnificent bird extended and twisted its neck in preparation for supper. Its highly elastic throat allowed the cormorant to gobble the pike down whole within seconds.

Link

LEGO is 50 years old today (precisely at 1:58 pm, actually, when the original patent was filed in Denmark). The plastic toy building brick is everywhere – LEGO has thousands of sets with all sorts of themes, from Star Wars to Harry Potter models. To commemorate the half century mark of the popular toy, Neatorama has compiled a 10 Neatest LEGO Facts and Links:

1. LEGO’s Humble Beginnings

The LEGO toy empire got started in 1932 when Ole Kirk Christiansen, a Danish carpenter, almost went bankrupt. During a depression, he had lost so much carpentry business that he started making wooden toys and selling them from his workshop. Two years later, he named his company LEGO (from Danish words "leg godt" meaning "play well". Incidentally, lego also means "I put together" in Latin.)

Christiansen’s first product? A wooden toy duck.

2. LEGO Wasn’t the First to Invent Bricks

Ole Kirk didn’t invent those LEGO bricks. He was inspired by the "Kiddicraft Self-Locking Building Brick" patented by British inventor Hilary Fisher Page years earlier. LEGO’s first bricks, called the Automatic Binding Bricks, were released in 1947 and were almost exact copies of the Kiddicraft block.

Many years later, after Page committed suicide over business troubles, LEGO bought all the rights to the Kiddicraft block. (Source: Isodomos)

3. LEGO Patent

In 1961, LEGO was awarded its first US patent for "Toy Building Brick." The design calls for a hollow rectangular bricks with studs on top and a round hollow tube on the bottom. This was a marked improvement, as it allows for the precise "tube and stud" coupling. (source: Google Patents)

4. The First Minifigs

The first minifigures (or minifigs) were released in 1978 for the Town, Space, and Castle playsets. When they were first created, LEGO decided that their (always happy) faces should have only one color: yellow. Minifigs have no sex or race. Actually, they didn’t have any arms or movable legs either.

In the 1980s, with the arrival of the LEGO Pirates, new facial features (evil/good/happy/grumpy) were released. In 2003, the company released different skin colors for the LEGO Basketball.

5. LEGO Manufacturing Fun Facts

Every year, about 19 billion LEGO bricks are produced. That translates to 2.16 million LEGO elements are molded every hour, or 36,000 per minute! The LEGO manufacturing process is so precise that only 18 out of 1 million LEGO bricks produced is considered defective.

The melted ABS is struck at a pressure of 25 tons to 150 tons — depending on the type of brick being made — with the metal molds. The intense force is important to the process, as it ensures that the bricks are accurately shaped.

Oh, and did you know that LEGO manufactures about 306 million tiny rubber tires every year? That’s more than any other tire manufacturers in the world!

Link: The Making of a LEGO Brick, a photo gallery by Joseph Pisani at BusinessWeek

6. The Acronyms of LEGO

Perhaps it’s the company’s name, spelled in all capital letters, that inspired LEGO lovers to use a multitude of acronyms when they talk about their beloved toy. Here are some examples:

AFOL: Adult Fan of LEGO
BFC: Big Freaking Castle
BURP: Big Ugly Rock Piece
HOG: Hand of God, when you move your minifigs around, this is what they think of your hand
LF and NLF: LEGO Friend and Non-LEGO Friend
LS and NLS: LEGO Spouse and Non-LEGO Spouse (guess which one approves of the LEGO hobby)
MOC: My Own Creation

7. LEGO is Really, Really Popular

Consider these amazing statistics, courtesy of LEGO – Thanks Alisa Weinstein!

- There are about 62 LEGO bricks for every one of the world’s 6 billion inhabitants.
- Children around the world spend 5 billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks.
- More than 400 million people around the world have played with LEGO bricks.
- More than 400 billion LEGO bricks have been produced since 1949. Stacked on top of each other, this is enough to connect the Earth and the Moon ten times over.
- 7 LEGO sets are sold by retailers every second around the world.
- The LEGO bricks sold in one year would circle the world 5 times.

8. The LEGO Artist

While each LEGO creation is a testament of the builder’s creativity, Nathan Sawaya’s creations have elevated building with LEGO to an artform. The former corporate lawyer quit his job in 2001 to focus on becoming the world’s foremost LEGO artist. Sawaya’s art show The Art of the Brick is currently touring North American museums.

Nathan Sawaya posing with his sculpture titled Gray (2006)

Previously on Neatorama: posts featuring Nathan Sawaya.

9. LEGO World Records

Given people’s passion when it comes to the toy, it’s not surprising that there are many world records set with LEGO, for example:

- World’s tallest LEGO tower at 94.3 ft (28.7 m) with 465,000 bricks
- World’s Longest LEGO Construction at 5,179.8 ft (1,578.8 m) with 2.9 million bricks
- World’s Largest LEGO Image at 870.15 ft² (80.84 m²), with 1.2 million bricks

World’s Largest LEGO Image – see the guy in the middle of the 8 ft minifigs? That should give you an idea of how large the image is. Photo: Toy Museum Bellaire

See more LEGO world records at RecordHolders.org

10. The Brick Testament

The Last Supper, Photo: Brandan Powell Smith

Let’s end with one of my favorite stories about LEGO: In 2001, Brendan Powell Smith embarked on a project to tell the stories in the Bible using LEGO dioramas. The result was a website called The Brick Testament. Since then, it had grown to have over 3,600 illustrations that retell more than 300 stories.

Image: Giovanni Maria Pala

Musician Giovanni Maria Pala claimed to have discovered a hidden musical score for a solemn hymn in da Vinci’s masterpiece "The Last Supper." And what’s more, the musical notes themselves encode for a Hebrew text, and even a image of the chalice!

The Apostles, represented in groups of three, gave him a hint that the piece should be played in 3/4-time, like much 15th-century music. But it was their hands, always in relation to the breads on the table, that provided the real score — to be read from right to left, in line with Leonardo’s writing.

"I marked the pieces of bread on the table and the Apostle’s hands as music notes. Then I drew a pentagram over the scene between the tablecloth and Jesus’ face. I couldn’t believe my ears when I played the music. It sounded really solemn, almost like a requiem," Pala said.

But there was much more. Pala noticed that the notes, in their position, produced strange symbols — similar to ancient cuneiform script — when united to each other by lines.

Examined by Father Luigi Orlando, a biblical scholar at the Antonianum Pontifical University in Rome, the cuneiform writing turned out to be a sentence written in ancient Hebrew: "bo nezer usbi," which means "with Him consecration and glory."

Link (with video) – Thanks Stratoblogster!

In her book "My Last Supper," Melanie Dunea asked 50 chefs: if they could have anything for their last supper, what would they eat?

TIME has a photo gallery and excerpt of their answers. This one above is Gary Danko, owner of a San Francisco restaurant that bears his name. He said:

This final feast, to be eaten by hand like at a Roman or Greek banquet, would comprise the finest foods from around the world, including caviar, spit-roasted suckling pigs, black truffles wrapped in salt pork and a roasted Bleu Bresse chicken.

Link – via Nag on the Lake

Now what would your last supper be?

An Italian technology firm, HAL9000, has created an online mega-composite of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper at an incredible 16 gigapixel resolution (about 2,000 times more detailed than a standard digital photograph). The picture above shows the hands of the person sitting next to Jesus in the Last Supper (the individual that Dan Brown claimed to be Mary Magdalene in The Da Vinci Code), at only a 6% zoom.

I chose this particular image for the benefit of any fellow conspiracy theorists … doesn’t it look a little like a wedding ring on “her” left middle finger?

Link to the Last Supper via Reuters

This Mortein ad was created by Euro RSCG in Santiago, Chile and has gotten a slew of comments over at Ads of the World. What do you think about it – love it, hate it, indifferent?

Link

See the full-sized image here. Via Super Punch.

When Neatorama reader Judy Goldberg saw our Star Wars Last Supper post, she just had to send us this: "The Last Lunch" as peformed by her son Oliver’s 2nd Grade Class from Saint Ann’s in Brooklyn. The kids were studying da Vinci, and were inspired to create their own version!

Thanks Judy!, the kids are very cute!

Update 8/21/07: Here’s a larger pic.

A Star Wars version of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous mural painting “The Last Supper”.

More like this in the following older Neatorama posts:
Zombie Last Supper, The Last Snack & The Bible Illustrated (with Legos!).

Link – via Uber-Review

The Erazm Baracz Chamber in the Wieliczka Salt Mine, Poland

The Last Supper carved in rock-salt, in the St. Kinga’s Chapel, Wieliczka Salt Mine
(Photo: Adam Kumiszcza, Wikipedia)

The Wieliczka Salt Mine near Krakow, Poland, is the world’s oldest salt mine – in fact, it’s the only mining site in the world that has operated continuously since the Middle Ages!

Today, the mine still produces table salt, as it has been since the 13th century (actually the mine was in operation long before that – the earliest written account of it was dated in the 1105 AD).

The mine is deep and long: it reaches a depth of 327 meters (1,072 feet) and has over 300 km (186 mi.) of tunnels and shafts. Many of its chambers are decorated and fashioned into chapels, complete with amazing artwork sculpted from the very rock salt that made the mine.

Links: Official site (with virtual tour) | Wikipedia entry – Thanks norberto!

Previously on Neatorama: Salt Hotel in Bolivia (this post was suggested in the comment by norberto)

More “modified” Last Supper at My Confined Space.

Boing Boing’s post on the Last Supper with dogs painting by Ron Burns titled "Dinner and Drinks with Son of Dog" reminded me of this photo by Tom Altany called The Last Snack, which was nominated for the International Color Award for color photography (Advertising category).

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:

1. Einstein Was a Fat Baby with Large Head

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)

2. Einstein Had Speech Difficulty as a Child

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.

3. Einstein was Inspired by a Compass

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)

4. Einstein Failed his University Entrance Exam

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)

5. Einstein had an Illegitimate Child

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)

6. Einstein Became Estranged From His First Wife, then Proposed a Strange "Contract"

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)

7. Einstein Didn’t Get Along with His Oldest Son

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

8. Einstein was a Ladies’ Man

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)

9. Einstein, the War Pacifist, Urged FDR to Build the Atom Bomb

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.

10. The Saga of Einstein’s Brain: Pickled in a Jar for 43 Years and Driven Cross Country in a Trunk of a Buick!

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)