Last week, NASA astronomers monitoring the Moon saw an explosion larger than anything they've seen before. On March 17, 2013, an object about the size of a small boulder hit the lunar surface in the Mare Imbrium area at an astounding speed of 56,000 mph. The resulting explosion packed as much energy as 5 tons of TNT and left a crater that could be as wide as 65 feet.

NASA astronomer Bill Cooke said:

"On the night of March 17, NASA and University of Western Ontario all-sky cameras picked up an unusual number of deep-penetrating meteors right here on Earth," he says. "These fireballs were traveling along nearly identical orbits between Earth and the asteroid belt."

This means Earth and the Moon were pelted by meteoroids at about the same time.
“My working hypothesis is that the two events are related, and that this constitutes a short duration cluster of material encountered by the Earth-Moon system," says Cooke.

Why, NeatoShop artist Wirdou has the perfect T-shirt for you to commemorate this event:

The Bodyguard | View more Funny T-shirts over at the NeatoShop

It's got to be the beard. Or perhaps the stovepipe hat (which may actually be a fake). Or his poetry. Or his vampire-fighting prowess. But there's no argument that Lincoln is hot (much to the consternation of the Lincoln haters), as this Bizarro comic from Dan Piraro illustrated.

Previously on Neatorama: A Few Things You Might Not Have Known About Abraham Lincoln

Artist Gris Grimly of Mad Creator Productions lived up to his name when he created the spookiest Mickey you've ever seen. Behold, Mickey the Conjurer, as inspired by the Sorcerer's Apprentice from Fantasia. Via Geektyrant.

The Interweb isn't all lolcats and fail memes, in fact it has given us a few new and very interesting words. Tom Chatfield wrote about them in his new book Netymology:

2. Hashtags

In 1920s America, the # sign served as a shorthand for weight in pounds (and they still call it the pound sign). It was first brought to a wider public thanks to its adoption by telephone engineers at Bell Labs in the 1960s as the generic function symbol on their new touch-tone phones – and if you're looking to sound clever, you could call it an "octothorpe", the tongue-in-cheek term coined at Bell to describe it. It's on Twitter, though, that hashtags have really come into their own, serving as a kind of function code for social interaction #ifyoulikethatkindofthing.

8. Meh

There's a special place in my heart for the supremely useful three letters of "meh", which express an almost infinitely flexible contemporary species of indifference. In its basic exclamatory form, it suggests something along the lines of "OK, whatever". As an adjective, it takes on a more ineffable flavour: "it was all very meh". You can even use it as a noun: "I stand by my meh." Apparently first recorded in a 1995 episode of The Simpsons, some theories trace meh back to the disdainful Yiddish term mnyeh. Its ascent towards canonical status, though, embodies a thoroughly digital breed of boredom.

9. Cupertinos

Also known as "auto-correct errors", a Cupertino error occurs when your computer thinks it knows what you're trying to say better than you do. The name comes from an early spell checker program, which knew the word Cupertino - the Californian city where Apple has its headquarters - but not the word "cooperation". All the cooperations in a document might thus be automatically "corrected" into Cupertinos. Courtesy of smartphones, Cupertinos today are a richer field than ever – a personal favourite being my last phone's determination to transform "Facebook" into "ravenous".

Tom has a few more examples over at The Guardian: Link

So this is what living in M.C. Escher's Relativity feels like! Play the Cardboard Box Assembler flash game by Fernando Ramallo and Miguel Ángel Perez Martínez: Link [Flash game] - via Look At This

Sara Rosso loves Nutella. In fact, she loved it so much that seven years ago, the hazelnut chocolate spread superfan founded World Nutella Day, a celebration of all things Nutella.

Over the years, the event grew from a few food bloggers posting recipes to thousands of participants Tweeting, pinning recipes on Pinterest, making songs, poems, and short films.

It's not surprising, because, as you know, yummy Nutella goes with everything. Well, almost everything. There's one thing that doesn't mix well with Nutella and its fans: lawyers.

Sara Rosso wrote on World Nutella Day's website:

On May 25, 2013, I’ll be darkening the World Nutella Day site, nutelladay.com, and all social media presence (Facebook, Twitter), in compliance with a cease-and-desist I received from lawyers representing Ferrero, SpA (makers of Nutella).

Seven years after the first World Nutella Day in 2007, I never thought the idea of dedicating a day to come together for the love of a certain hazelnut spread would be embraced by so many people! I’ve seen the event grow from a few hundred food bloggers posting recipes to thousands of people Tweeting about it, pinning recipes on Pinterest, and posting their own contributions on Facebook! There have been songs sung about it, short films created for it, poems written for it, recipes tested for it, and photos taken for it.

The cease-and-desist letter was a bit of a surprise and a disappointment, as over the years I’ve had contact and positive experiences with several employees of Ferrero, SpA., and with their public relations and brand strategy consultants, and I’ve always tried to collaborate and work together in the spirit and goodwill of a fan-run celebration of a spread I (to this day) still eat.

I have hope that this is not a goodbye to World Nutella Day forever, for the fans’ sake, and hopefully it will live on in one form or another in the future.

Nutella dissing its fans? Now that's just plain nuts: Link

Photo: Miaow Miaow/Wikimedia

Love may just be a subway ride away. Ropid, Prague's public transport company, is planning to provide singles-only train cars:

The project's planners hope the single-only carriages will provide people with a rare opportunity to meet and form a relationship in an increasingly frantic world dominated by work.

"In the metro you can already read and learn, so why not find a partner?" said Filip Drapal, spokesman for Ropid, Prague's transport company. "We want to make life more pleasant. People today have no time to meet.

"We do not know yet whether the dating car will be the last carriage on each train and whether it will work day a week or one an hour," he added.
"We need to do some fine tuning."

Aneta Rehkova, spokeswoman for the metro system, said they were conducting surveys to find out what age groups would be interested in the special carriages and what times would be best to run them.

Link

We're not in Kansas anymore, Neatoramanauts. We're now in the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, which has the world's tallest indoor tornado.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] (via Techeblog) to see it in action:

It's a bird ... it's a plane ... it's ... SKYWHALE! The flying cetacean is a wonderful hot air balloon by sculptor and artist Patricia Piccinini. View more over at the Sky Whale's official website: Link

For an advertisement for Anchor milk, Damon Duncan of New Zealand's creative studio Assembly created a herd of glass cows. Glass cows? Yes, you read that right. Hit play or go to Link [vimeo] to watch:

Here's how it was done:

Photos: Henrik Petersson

Add this to the list of amazing cityscape art we've featured on Neatorama before: Still Life by Petter Johansson of PJADAD, made as an advertisement for Atelier Food. Link - via Dezeen

There's no KFC in the Gaza strip, a 140-square mile coastal strip 1.7 million Palestinians call home, but that doesn't mean that you can't get the Colonel's finger lickin' good chicken there.

Where there's a will, there's a way - and by way, we mean smuggling tunnels:

... after Mr. Efrangi brought some KFC back from El Arish for friends last month, he was flooded with requests. A new business was born. [...]

... whenever there is a critical mass of orders — usually 30 — he starts a complicated process of telephone calls, wire transfers and coordination with the Hamas government to get the chicken from there to here.

The other day, after Mr. Efrangi called in 15 orders and wired the payment to the restaurant in El Arish, an Egyptian taxi driver picked up the food. On the other side of the border, meanwhile, Ramzi al-Nabih, a Palestinian cabdriver, arrived at the Hamas checkpoint in Rafah, where the guards recognized him as “the Kentucky guy.”

From the checkpoint, Mr. Nabih, 26, called his Egyptian counterpart and told him which of the scores of tunnels the Hamas official had cleared for the food delivery. He first waited near the shaft of the tunnel, but after a while he was lowered on a lift about 30 feet underground and walked halfway down the 650-foot path to meet two Egyptian boys who were pushing the boxes and buckets of food, wrapped in plastic, on a cart.

Mr. Nabih gave the boys about $16.50, and argued with them for a few minutes over a tip. A half-hour later, the food was loaded into the trunk and on the back seat of his Hyundai taxi, bound for Gaza City.

Fares Akram explains how one smuggles KFC from Egypt into Gaza in this story over at The New York Times: Link (Image: Wissam Nassar for the NY Times)

When aspiring rapper Baba Brinkman went to Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, he decided to mix a little rap into his studies in Medieval and Renaissance English Lit. In fact, he recreated Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in rap for his Master's thesis, thus making him the only peer-reviewed rapper in the world.

After graduating in 2003, Brinkman began his career as a rap troubadour and achieved great success with this clip above, The Rap Guide to Evolution.

View more of Brinkman's work over at this neat post by 'xim Sauriol over at Geeks Are Sexy: Link

Image: Igor Kolos/Shutterstock

For the fourteenth year in a row, Jacob is America's most popular baby boy name - but there are new entries in the list as compiled by the U.S. Social Security Administration. Here are the most popular baby names in 2012:

As we mentioned above, Jacob has been champ for 14 years since 1999 ("Michael" held that title from 1959 to 1998). This is the second year Sophia came at number one for girl names. Liam cracked the top 10 for the first time, perhaps because of recent movies starring Liam Neeson.

The US Social Security Administration also released the names that underwent the greatest change in popularity from 2011 to 2012:

From Social Security's press release:

Many pop-culture naming trends appear in a popular feature of Social Security’s baby names website--the “change in popularity” page.  This year’s winners for biggest jump in popularity in the Top 500 are Major and Arya.

The fastest riser on the girls’ list may have been influenced by the popular cable TV series “Game of Thrones.”  Arya is the daughter of a leader of one of the Seven Kingdoms.  She also is an expert sword fighter, so doubt her influence on the popular names list at your own risk.   

For the boys, parents may associate Major with the military title.  Acting Commissioner Colvin added “I have no doubt Major’s rising popularity as a boy’s name is in tribute to the brave members of the U.S. military, and maybe we’ll see more boys named General in the future.”  You also might trace Major’s increase in popularity to a cable TV show.  “Home by Novogratz” is a popular home design show featuring Major Novogratz, the youngest son of designers Robert and Cortney.

The second fastest riser for boys was Gael, and for girls, Perla.  Both names most likely are on the rise due to the increase in the Spanish-speaking population in the United States.  Perla is the Latinized version of Pearl and is popular among Hispanic-Americans.  Gael’s popularity could be tied to Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal.

Faced with the daunting prospect of having to sit through hours of commencement speeches, Dominique Zamora of Foodbeast came up with the perfect solution: she put a flask in her graduation cap.

Luckily, the process for making this thing is painless enough. Just pop off the top button with a pair of pliers, Velcro in the bladder (I took mine out of the Wine Rack Bra, secure the whole mess with bobby pins and drink up.

Head on over to Foodbeast to see how you can make your own (we're not responsible if you get thrown out of your graduation ceremony, mmkay?): Link

Oh, alcohol. The cause of and solution to all of life's problems.

Twister Champion by Naolito

Well, this is just fantastic! T-shirt designer extraordinaire Naolito illustrates how Mr. Fantastic is a natural champ at the game of Twister. View his designs over at his official website, Facebook page, Tumblr and deviantArt - then visit his NeatoShop page for more neat T-shirt designs: Link

Beakerful of Science	Evolution of Hypnotoad	Typical Tourist	Dragon Egg

View more designs by Naolito | All Funny T-shirts

Your purchase helps support indie artists, who get handsome royalties for each sale, and this blog. If you're a professional artist or T-shirt designer, let's talk! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get your website/FB page featured on the blog.

Night's Watch The Wall by Wirdou

Night gathers, and now my watch begins. T-shirt designer Wirdou has released another excellent Game of Thrones-inspired design, this time, mashed up with a bit of rock 'n roll.

Visit Wirdou's website, then head on over to his NeatoShop page for more awesome T-shirts. Your purchase helps support the blog and indie artists:

The Gamer Inside of Me	The Hungering	Chemical Avengers	Become A Scientist

View more designs by Wirdou | Funny T-shirts

Guys, forget cute puppie - they're messy and poop a lot. Instead, grab a guitar when you're trying to meet women. A new study has proven that women love musicians:

According to the study’s abstract, they enlisted a young man to flirt with 300 women under three different scenarios: holding a guitar case, carrying a gym bag and appearing empty-handed.

Ultimately, the women were much more willing to give him their phone number when they saw the guitar case, “thus suggesting that musical practice is associated with sexual selection.”

Link - via Accordion Guy

Three years before his death, author David Foster Wallace gave a commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. In that speech, titled "This is Water," Wallace explained to the bright-eyed grads what real adult lives are like, and in the process, gave them an invaluable advice on life and a simple yet elegant explanation of the real value of education.

YouTube user The Glossary showcased Wallace's speech in the most interesting 10 minute video clip you'll see today: Link

First milk, butter, coffee and cornmeal ran short. Now Venezuela is running out of the most basic of necessities – toilet paper.

Blaming political opponents for the shortfall, as it does for other shortages, the government says it will import 50m rolls to boost supplies.

That was little comfort to consumers struggling to find toilet paper on Wednesday.

"This is the last straw," said Manuel Fagundes, a shopper hunting for tissue in Caracas. "I'm 71 years old and this is the first time I've seen this."

One supermarket visited by the Associated Press in the capital on Wednesday was out of toilet paper. Another had just received a fresh batch, and it quickly filled up with shoppers as the word spread.

"I've been looking for it for two weeks," said Cristina Ramos. "I was told that they had some here and now I'm in line."

Economists blame government price control that caused Soviet Union-like shortages of toilet paper and other basic commodities: Link

What is your cat thinking about? Dan Piraro of Bizarro Comics exposed the dark secret of pet psychic in this comic panel. Whaddayasay? Nailed it? Link

Donor egg held by pipette prior to nuclear extraction. Image: OHSU Photos/Flickr

A significant, and undoubtedly controversial, milestone in stem cell therapy was reached yesterday. Scientists at the Oregon Health and Science University managed to achieve the Holy Grail of stem cell research: they've cloned a human embryo.

OHSU cell biologist Shoukhrat Mitalipov led a team of 23 scientists who methodically culled the lessons learned from stem cell research on amphibians, mice and rhesus monkeys — as well as from the abundant failures of others in the field. They devised a welter of new techniques to use the DNA of a fully formed skin cell in its most primitive embryonic form. [...]

In past efforts to coax such an assemblage of components to life, researchers have burned through dozens of donor eggs without getting any embryos even to the 16-cell stage at which stem cells become a remote possibility.

This time, the researchers said their methods were so efficient that they could create at least one embryonic stem cell line from each batch of eggs donated by 10 female volunteers. In one case, a single donor produced eight eggs of such exceptional quality that researchers were able to derive four embryonic stem cell lines.

Some hailed the development as an important advance in the paving the way to treat a range of diseases, but others feared that it's one step closer to cloning humans.

Melissa Healy of the Los Angeles Times has the post: Link

If you're tired of being a working stiff and look forward to retirement, here's a study that will spoil your day: according to British think tank Institute of Economic Affairs, retirement is harmful to your health.

The study [...] found that retirement results in a "drastic decline in health" in the medium and long term.

The IEA said the study suggests people should work for longer for health as well as economic reasons. [...]

The study suggests there is a small boost to health immediately after retirement, before a significant decline in the longer term.

Retirement is found to increase the chances of suffering from clinical depression by 40%, while you are 60% more likely to suffer from a physical condition.

The effect is the same for men and women, while the chances of becoming ill appear to increase with the length of time spent in retirement.

Thank goodness that the world's economy has taken care of that pesky problem for many of us who now can't afford to retire! Link (Image: Warning Retiree - Knows Everything and has Plenty of Time to Tell You About It)

The Galaxy Guide by Warbucks Design

Forget towels and bring an EE-3 carbine rifle so we can properly welcome our newest T-shirt artist, Warbucks Design, to the NeatoShop. Check out his Facebook page to view his neat-o designs, then head on over to his NeatoShop page for more: Link

Wizneyland	You're a Zombie, Chuck!	Wampas, Inc.	Batzinga!

View more T-shirts by Warbucks Design | View all Funny T-shirts over at the NeatoShop

Are you a professional T-shirt designer, artist or illustrator? Get your tees listed on the NeatoShop and get your website/FB page featured here on the blog. We've got a great profit sharing program. Email us to get started!

Mustache-challenged? Do you feel like less of a man because you cannot grow a proper upper lipholstery? Fear not! Head over to Turkey, where you can get a mustache transplant:

The procedure uses a technique called follicle-hair extraction, in which doctors remove clusters of hair from the more hirsute areas of the body and implant them along the lip or cheeks to magnify a mustache or beef-up a beard.

Performed under local anesthetic, the surgery takes around five hours and can cost up to $5,000, cosmetic surgeons say. Tourism agencies have begun offering "transplant packages" combining facial-hair operations with a shopping vacation in Istanbul or beachside retreat on the Mediterranean coast.

Joe Parkinson of The Wall Street Journal explains: Link (Image: Fingerstache from the NeatoShop | View more strange and neat Mustache items there)

What lies beneath Moscow's most iconic buildings? These clever print ads are commissioned to promote the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow, Russia. Via Web Urbanist

Photo: Shelly Hayashi/Facebook

The giant inflatable duck, made by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman (previously), was swimming happily in Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour until it someone, or something, committed duckicide:

The 16.5-meter (54 feet) inflatable sculpture mysteriously lost its mojo overnight, deflated and bobbed lifelessly in Victoria Harbour.

Organizers called an urgent duck crisis meeting early Wednesday and didn't immediately respond to questions about the misfortunes of the duck or whether the deflation was part of regular maintenance, as reported in some local media. A tweet did appear however on the official Harbour City Twitter account, saying: "The Rubber Duck needs to freshen up. Stay tuned for its return."

Much later in the day, organizers responded and said it was a planned deflation. Why it took so long to clarify and why officials had to get senior management approval to make such a statement seems a little odd and naturally, this got Hong Konger's busy with the popular pastime of gossiping.

I smell a cover up! Quick, someone guard the giant inflatable poo against turdicide.

Link

The clothespin gravestone marked the grave of W. Jack Crowell, who owned the National Clothespin Company, the last wooden clothespin manufacturer in the United States (today it produces plastic clothespins and barrettes). Originally, Jack wanted a giant clothespin with real spring so children could teeter on it.

View 9 more of the world's most unusual graves over at Oddee: Link

Here's the perfect bait to catch the elusive Loch Ness monster. Behold the Lox-Ness Monster (Nessie can't possibly resist!), made by Sandwich Monsters. 'Tis but one of 17 fantastic photos of wonderful sandwich creations you can gawk at over at Instagram: Link or checkout the gallery over at Walyou

Non-smoking hotel rooms generally contained more third-hand smoke when they were part of hotels that allowed smoking in other, designated rooms. They had, on average, twice the amount of nicotine on surfaces and seven times as much 3EP (another cigarette byproduct) in the air. In smoking-permitted rooms, of course, the presence of these contaminants was much higher.

The women, after spending the night in a hotel that permitted smoking, even after requesting a non-smoking room, the next morning had significantly more nicotine on their fingers, and five to six times the amount of cotinine -- a biomarker of second-hand smoke exposure -- in their urine.

Lindsay Abrams of The Atlantic summarizes the study: Link | The paper over at Tobacco Control