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The Jaws of Life are hydraulic tools used by rescue workers to extract people trapped behind heavy objects. One common use is to cut people out of crashed, mangled cars. This machine can snip right through a car frame with enough pressure.

Andrew MacDonald of Victoria, British Columbia fell asleep while driving on January 11. He crashed, breaking several bones in the process, including a femur, both ankles and both kneecaps. While firefighters cut him out of his car, MacDonald turned on his phone and recorded the incident.

He's remarkably chipper, despite suffering grave injuries that would ultimately require major surgery and a month-long stay in the hospital. MacDonald expresses interest in the "hot nurses" that he anticipates meeting at the hospital.

Content warning: a bit of foul language.

-via Jalopnik

Go ahead. Pop it. You know that you want to. It’s so satisfying to feel the bubbles snap beneath your fingers.

Bubble wrap is irresistible. So the ad agency that came up with this promotion for the video game Dragon Quest deserves great praise for its creativity and ingenuity. Kotaku reports that the Shinjuku train station in Tokyo has a wall covered with bubble wrap. Each bubble contains a picture of Slime, the mascot of the game. Passersby can’t help themselves: they’ve got to pop the Slimes.

(Photos: Manchester Evening News)

Pedro is a Shetland Pony that lives at the Ebony Horse Club in London. He lives in a stall with a normal-sized stall door. He has to stretch high up to just barely look over the edge at the world outside. So members of the club commissioned a periscope that lets Pedro see at his own height. They call it the Pedroscope.

Print and Cut, a fabrication shop, designed and built the Pedroscope based on a sketch sent in by the club. The Manchester Evening News reports:

Andy Morris, owner of Print and Cut, said: “We got an email from the Ebony Horse Club who were asking for our help, it was so nice, and a little bit funny, that we decided to give it a go."

And being experts in 3D printing, workers at the Stockport company knew a small and relatively easy gesture would mean the world to Pedro.

Andy, 38, said: “The sketch was sent to us and then I turned it into a 3D sketch with some software, and then it was sent to be made. It was all quite easy, and we did it for free to help Pedro.

Etsy seller RoobyLane calls it a prom dress, but it would be perfect for everyday wear, too! Just expect that when you wear it, people will be able to read you like a book. It contains the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which is the first book in the Harry Potter series.

With a sufficiently elaborate dress—say, one with a massive hoopskirt—she could reproduce the entire novel.

-via Fashionably Geek

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Nichelle Nichols is the actress who played Lt. Nyota Uhura on the original Star Trek. Prior to running the communications systems on the Enterprise, she attended the Chicago Ballet Academy. She sometimes found work as a dancer, including as a background performer in the 1959 film version of Porgy and Bess.

Nichols kept up with her dancing skills. The Geek Twins has a collection of behind-the-scenes photos of uncertain provenance showing Nichols in costume on the bridge set demonstrating how flexible she is.

Think of it as a low-tech selfie sombrero. You get to wear a selfie-producing machine, but people won’t look at you like you’re weird when you do it.

Lithuanian photographer Ignas Kutavicius built a head-mounted device that takes simple shots using a pinhole camera. These were the earliest cameras in photographic history. So by using one to take a selfie, users can reflect on “what selfies could of looked like at the beginning of photographic history.”

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Kutavicius describes his project in this video for BBC.

-via Junkculture

(Michael A. Parker)

Design Within Reach is a home furnishings company. Every year, it holds a contest that invites artists to build chairs using only 2 champagne corks. The only materials that contributors may use are the wire frames, the metal wrappers, and, of course, the cork wood itself. The results are marvelously creative. 

(Taryn)

Tomáš Gabzdil Libertíny is an artist who collaborates with bees. By building hive structures in certain shapes, he enlists the cooperation of bees in creating sculptures out of beeswax. We’ve previously seen one that looks like the crucified Jesus. 

This one titled Thousand Years takes the form of a teapot. Christofle, a French silver maker, commissioned the piece.

-via Inhabitat

(Photo: Fritz von der Schulenburg)

The Italian fashion designer Elsa Peretti purchased an old watchtower on the coast of Tuscany as a vacation home. It was called La Torre. The Sixteenth Century structure was built for military purposes, so Peretti had to have it redesigned with comfort in mind. So she hired architect Renzo Mongiardino to renovate it.

Mongiardino took the old fort and turned it into a fairytale castle by covering the walls with three-dimensional images of fantasy scenes, including this stunning fireplace that looks like a giant’s mouth. You can see more photos of the home at The Art of the Room.

-via Messy Nessy Chic

The American rock band Blue Öyster Cult’s iconic song “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” features, oddly, the use of a cowbell. This led to the development of More Cowbell, one of the greatest Saturday Night Live sketches ever. In it, the album producer, played by actor Christopher Walken, insisted that despite all doubts, what the song needed was not less, but more cowbell.

Maple the dog agrees. As his human, Trench, plays “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” Maple rings the cowbell.

More cowbell, Maple. Please.

-via Tastefully Offensive

(James Chapman)

Millénium Condor? That totally would have worked, even in English. And Chewie is a Chico for sure. But Jabba the Woodsman? Maybe the French version has a different backstory for him.

Cartoonist James Chapman publishes many cartoons showing how different words and expressions are conveyed in languages other than English, including the sound of frying bacon and how to answer the phone. In a recent production, he took us back to il ya longtemps dans une galaxie lointaine, très lointaine.

-via Blame It on the Voices

(Photo: Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland)

Alberto Frigo (warning: not safe for sanity) documents his life. Specifically, he records images of what is right hand is doing. For 11 years, Frigo has carried a camera. Whenever his right touches something, Frigo photographs it. 

(Photo: Cianan Brennan/TheJournal.ie)

He has used the resulting collection to build a massive repository of images now on display at the Science Gallery in Dublin, Ireland. The exhibit is named Lifelogging: Do You Count. With magnifying glasses, visitors can see the long history of Frigo's right hand.

How do people respond to his practice? Frigo responds:

I generally try not to speak too much about it and first let them talk about their lives. Obviously, once somebody gets to know me, he or she will become curious about all my procedures, but in the long run I think the general feeling is that my lifelogging practice is rather unobtrusive.

He hopes to continue the practice until he's ready to retire in 2040. With an average of 76 photos a day, that's about 970,900 more pictures.

-via Flowing Data

The Wellington Greenway is a hiking and biking path in Boston, Massachusetts. The MBTA, which is the local government transportation network, removed much of the show that blocked train traffic. It did so by piling the snow into the Greenway.

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This angered local cyclists. But the MBTA did nothing. So the cyclists took action on their own. Working in shifts, over 8-10 hours, they dug a tunnel through the snowbank. The 40-foot structure re-opened the Wellington Greenway. The cyclists call it the "Big Dig II," which references a 16-year tunneling project in Boston.

You can see more photos of the snow tunnel at BDCwire.

-via Marilyn Terrell

Maximo Riera understands the importance of creating furniture designs that fit into any home or office. A good furniture maker knows that a piece that goes anywhere is more marketable than a weird oddity. That's why he's continuing to develop chairs and couches that look like large animals. In the past, we've seen his walrus chair and octopus chair. Now he's added to that line this couch that looks like a hippopotamus. It's made to a 1:1 scale with leather lined and creased like a real hippopotamus.

-via Marginal Revolution

This photograph, which was taken 70 years ago today, is instantly recognizeable by any American.

On February 19, 1945, United States Marines landed on the rocky volcanic island of Iwo Jima in the western Pacific Ocean. The plan was to capture this island, build air bases on it, then use those bases to bomb mainland Japan, beating it into submission.

18,000 dug-in Japanese soldiers defended this 8-square mile island. 70,000 Marines took responsibility for rooting them out. It took almost a month to do so. It was only on March 16 that it was finally secured. That victory cost the lives of 7,000 Americans with 20,000 wounded.

Before that time, the Americans had the opportunity to announce that they intended to stay. On the fifth day of the battle, the Marines took Mount Suribachi, a high point on the southwestern tip of the island. They raised the stars and stripes on a staff over the top. Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press was there to photograph it. They are, from left to right, Cpl. Ira Hayes, PFC Franklin Sousley, Sgt. Michael Strank, Cpl. Rene Gagnon, Pharmacist’s Mate John Bradley (USN), and Cpl. Harlon Block.

Sgt. Strank, PFC Sousley, and Cpl. Block later died in battle on Iwo Jima.

(Photo: Beverly & Pack)

This moment of their lives would live on in the historical memory of generations of Americans. It would also form the basis of the design of the US Marine Corps War Memorial outside of Washington, D.C.