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Dutch architects MVRDV designed these skyscrapers planned for South Korea. It’s called The Cloud, and is described as “a pixelated cloud” with towers rising through it.
Okay, now that you’ve seen the picture, what are you thinking? The architectural firm was caught off-guard by complaints from those who looked at the plan and saw the World Trade Center towers exploding. That’s the first thing I thought of, but MVRDV insists that the resemblance is coincidental. Read more about the controversy at Co.Design. Link -via The Daily What
Ten years ago, America suffered the worst terrorist attack in the nation’s history. For most people, the memories inspire both pain and patriotism, but for some, they inspire thoughts of cold hard cash. Cracked has a collection of the most shameless attempts to cash in on the day of suffering, from video games to wine to cartoons, the money-making schemes are so tasteless they are simply depressing.
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I
*always* get lost in those Halloween corn mazes, but never that lost that
I had to call for help. That's what a family did after getting lost inside
a 7-acre Salem, Massachusetts,
corn maze:
A voice recording of the 911 call was made available to the media on Wednesday. The exchange:
Woman: "Hi, I just called. I'm still stuck at Connors Farms. I don't see anybody. I am really scared. It's really dark and we've got a 3-week-old baby with us."
Dispatcher: "Just relax. Calm down. Your husband is with you right?"
Woman: "Yes, but my baby?"
Dispatcher: "OK. I understand and the police officer is on the way."
Woman: "We thought this would be fun. Instead it's a nightmare. I don't know what made us do this. It was daytime when we came in. And I never take my daughter out. This is the first time. Never again."
Can't you just trample some maize and force your way out of the maze?
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, people in countries all over the world showed sympathy, solidarity, and support for the US as we mourned those we lost. Mental_floss has a roundup of the international reactions to the events. Here’s a small sample:
In London, the Star Spangled Banner played during the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, while traffic came to a standstill in The Mall nearby.
In Beijing, tens of thousands of people visited the U.S. Embassy, leaving flowers, cards, funeral wreaths and hand-written notes of condolence on the sidewalk out front.
In Moscow, women who spoke no English and had never been to the U.S. were captured on film sobbing in front of a makeshift tribute on a sidewalk, and every single church and monastery in Romania held a memorial prayer.
In France, a well-known newspaper, Le Monde, ran a headline reading, “We Are All Americans.”
In the Middle East, both the Israeli president and the Palestinian leader condemned the attacks, and made a show of donating blood.
Read the rest in a post by Haley Sweetland Edwards. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Thomas Ormston)
This image of Manhattan was taken by the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) aboard the Landsat 7 satellite, about 27 hours after the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. It was uploaded to Flickr only a couple of hours ago. Link -via Gizmodo
(Image credit: Flickr user NASA Goddard Photo and Video)
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Sunday is the ten-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania. Since then, children have grown up, wars have been fought, and new buildings are rising in New York City. But we will never forget the victims. In 2005, the folks at StoryCorps began recording the stories of people affected by the events of September 11, 2001 for a project called the September 11th Initiative.
We’ve recorded over 1,100 September 11th Initiative interviews to-date. Inviting family members, friends, and coworkers to share and record memories of their loved ones offers a meaningful way to memorialize and celebrate the lives that were lost or impacted by the events of September 11th. In September 2008, we were invited to the Pentagon to collect over 30 stories in two days from office staff and family members of the victims of the Pentagon attack.
Three of these stories have been illustrated in video. Continue reading to see all of them.
more …
The National September 11 Memorial will open this fall in New York City. The names of 3,500 victims of the terrorist attacks that day will be inscribed on the wall surrounding the fountains. Instead of arranging the names alphabetically, they will be grouped by affinity: police officers together, firefighters together, passengers on each plane together, and for those who were in the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, friends and co-workers will be grouped together.
“It’s about making meaning not just for the people who know the individuals, but for the people who are going there,” says Jake Barton, Local Projects’ founder. “In that way, people can learn the human relationships and stories underneath the names themselves.” If, for example, you see the 650 employees from Cantor Fitzgerald together, you realize that an entire company was nearly wiped out. Had they been arranged alphabetically, that bit of meaning would have been lost.
“The Memorial Finder, covers the gap,” says Barton. “It tells you the specific panel and number, where you can find an individual, but begins to reveal the connections between the names themselves. As you move around the site itself, a smartphone app will reveal adjacencies as well as the stories behind the names.” While the project makes intuitive sense, wrangling 3,500 victims’ names was anything but simple.
An algorithm created by programmer Jer Thorp allows, for instance, the names of firefighter John T. Vigiano II and his brother, police officer Joseph Vincent Vigiano to be placed next to each other, while both are grouped with the other victims in their respective units. Read more about this project at Fastco Design. Link -Thanks, Joe Jalbert!
Kids do it, dogs do it. And now, a house has called 911. Here’s the strange case of how an empty house that has sprung a leak called emergency services:
A house that endured a leaking pipe for many months dialed 911 on Wednesday, finally bringing town officials to the rescue.
The homeowner gone — no one yet knows where — the house likely sprang a leak during a past freeze and began spraying water all over. "Water came down inside the walls and through the ceiling," said Health Director Wayne Attridge. "The (wood) floors have buckled. The ceilings are sagging. It filled the basement with (5 feet of) water."
Worse yet, potentially toxic mold is everywhere. "It’s a horrific mess," said Attridge, who said the inside of the structure may have to be gutted.
The 911 call went out to police, apparently, when water short-circuited the phone system. Police recorded it as a 911 hang-up, and when they tried to return the call they got only static. Officers were sent to the location, 31 Rockaway Ave. According to the police log, they determined that something inside was leaking before they requested permission from higher-ups to make a forced entry through the back door.
Comments Off Pre-1869 A HEARSE WITH NO NAME
Long before ambulances hit the scene, hearses served as the first responders to emergencies. The people who decide if a critically-injured patient goes to the hospital or the morgue are, for the most part, funeral directors and morticians.
1869 DOCTORS GET ON BOARD
New York City’s Bellevue Hospital becomes the first hospital to put doctors in ambulances, which also come equipped with tourniquets, bandages, handcuffs, a straitjacket, and a quart of brandy.
1966 THE UNITED STATES BECOMES LESS DANGEROUS THAN VIETNAM
The National Academy of Sciences publishes a landmark study, “Accidental Death and Disability: The Neglected Disease of Modern Society,” which shows that U.S. Soldiers in Vietnam are more likely to survive an injury than drivers on American highways. The study prompts Congress to create the Department of Transportation, to regulate mobile emergency services across the country.
1968 AMERICANS LEARN TO DIAL 911
(Image credit: Wikipedia user Dhscommtech)
In conjunction with the Federal Communications Commission, AT&T announces that 9-1-1 will be the new number for emergency services everywhere in the United States. The digits are chosen because they’re easy to memorize, and because 9 and 1 are far apart on the dial of a rotary phone, making misdials less likely.
1970 HELP FROM ABOVE
(Image source: FH1100 manufacturing Corp.)
As part of a new government program, critically ill patients in remote areas of the United States are transported to hospitals in military helicopters. Many of the pilots are returning Vietnam vets, some of whom can’t get enough action. After dropping off patients, a few pilots pull dangerous stunts, such as landing in football stadiums, flying under bridges, and buzzing neighborhood pools.
2001 MAN TAKES DIRECTIONS FROM MACHINE, WITH MIXED RESULTS
(Image source: TeleNav)
Global Positioning Systems quickly become standard in ambulances across the country. But during the next few years, the novelty of GPS fades. Several accounts emerge of the devices giving faulty directions, leading ambulance drivers minutes-or even hours-off course. (Although GPS is still widely used today, most ambulances also keep good, old-fashioned neighborhood maps in the front seat, just in case.)
2005 TRULY MOBILE UPLOADS
More and more ambulances begin using cell phones to transmit their patients’ EKG heart-monitor readings to ER doctors before they reach the hospital. The new technology significantly improves the time it takes to diagnose and treat heart attack patients, but unfortunately, it’s also vulnerable to the ill-timed dropped call.
__________________________
The above article by Maggie Koerth-Baker is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the September-October 2010 issue of mental_floss magazine.
Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!
StoryCorps interviewed retired NYC firefighter John Vigiano about his two sons, one a policeman, the other a firefighter, who both died on September 11, 2001. The audio is less than three minutes. Link -via mental_floss‘ newsletter
A woman was arrested for calling 911 five times over a three day period, asking for a husband:
The dispatcher was flabbergasted by the requests and asked Audrey Scott, of Alliance, Ohio “You need to get a husband?” The 57-year-old Scott responded, “Yes.”
Told that she could face arrest for misusing the emergency call line, Scott responded, “Let’s do it.”
Scott was convicted last week of improper use of the emergency system and was sentenced to the three days in jail, which she had already served since her arrest, according to The Review newspaper.
Thanks to a partnership between Google and the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, a full, 3D, accurate model of the upcoming memorial is visible on Google Earth. Even though the memorial isn’t slated to be finished until at least next September, visitors to Google will be able to see what awaits them next year. The model includes the 1,776 ft tall Freedom Tower, the two reflecting pools that serve as “footprints” of the twin towers, and even the 400 white oak trees that will grace the 16-acre memorial.
So razor-sharp and up-close are the visual details that family members will be able to hone in on the nearly 3,000 bronze nameplates that will identify the innocents who were massacred in the 2001 attacks.
Link to story. Link to virtual tour. – via gothamist
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
Jason Bonham answered a 911 call at the Hancock County, Indiana dispatch. On the line was a five-year-old named Savannah Hensley who reported that her father had trouble breathing. An ambulance was dispatched, and Frank Hensley’s life was saved by her calm but adorable call. Link -via Digg
You won’t regret listening for six minutes to hear what Savannah had to say. The YouTube video is audio only.
Chris Scott is training to be a 911 operator. His wife, at home with their infant son, found the child choking. She called 911, Scott answered the phone, and calmly talked her through the problem. The boy, Jacob, is again healthy and safe.
For 11 years, Mike Bowes has been working as a 911 dispatcher for the Quincy Police Department in Massachusetts. He’s heard of everything from baby deliveries to deaths, but this call was probably the most shocking to him: it was someone reporting that his own house was on fire!
My neighbor’s house just blew up, the caller said.
"What’s the address?" Mike Bowes asked patiently, just as he did with every emergency call for the past 11 years with the Quincy Police Department.
The caller frantically relayed the address, Bowes’ home address for 20 years.
"It was shocking," Mike Bowes said. "I thought she was kidding. It’s a long shot. I mean, what’s the chances it will be your house?"
Link (Photo: WHDH)
On September 11 2006, more than 3,000 bloggers joined together to honor the victims of 9/11 by remembering their lives as individuals. The project helped to put a face on each person instead of seeing them as a large group of people. You can access a list of those posts with links here. Project 2,996 will be repeated this year. If you would like to post a tribute on your own blog on 9/11, sign up now. Link -via Holtie’s House
Latreasa Goodman had an emergency. A food emergency: her local McDonald’s ran out of Chicken McNugget, so naturally she called 911!
Told McDonald’s was out of Chicken McNuggets after paying for a 10-piece meal, a local woman called 911.
Three times.
“This is an emergency, If I would have known they didn’t have McNuggets, I wouldn’t have given my money, and now she wants to give me a McDouble, but I don’t want one,” Latreasa L. Goodman told police. “This is an emergency.”
The McNugget meltdown happened last week at a McDonald’s in the 600 block of North U.S. 1 and ended with Goodman, 27, getting a notice to appear in court on a misuse of 911 charge, according to a recently released police report.
Goodman told investigators she tried to get a refund for the 10-piece McNuggets, but the cashier told her all sales are final.
“I called 911 because I couldn’t get a refund, and I wanted my McNuggets,” Goodman told police.
