If you lined up all of the planets in our solar system with the exception of Pluto, they would fit neatly between the Earth and the Moon with only about 2,729 miles to spare.
Redditor CapnTrip made this illustration of this fascinating fact. Frasier Cain of io9 came up with slightly different numbers from NASA, but found that CapnTrip was mostly correct.
Add in Pluto and the number drops to about 1,299 miles.
(Photo: RM Bradley, The Courant)
Johnsonville is a village in East Haddam, Connecticut. It used to be a small milltown until the 1970s, when a fire gutted the local economy. The owner, Raymond Schmitt, was an eccentric businessman in the aerospace industry. After the fire, he announced his intention to turn it into a tourist attraction.
Schmitt moved quaint, turn-of-the-century buildings from elsewhere in New England to Johnsonville. He envisioned it as a place where visitors could step back in time.
(Photo: DamnedCT)
The tourist town was never a financial success and, in 1994, after a dispute with the local government, Schmitt closed it. He died 4 years later. Now the current owners are selling off Johnsonville.
Would you like to own a ghost town? It's 52 acres of land and a 15-acre pond. There are a dozen buildings and a private waterfall. The opening bid is $800,000.
If you watched MTV during the 90s, you may have already seen Johnsonville. Billy Joel filmed part of the music video for his song "River of Dreams" there.
-via Messy Nessy Chic
(Photo: Austin Donisan)
This enormous sculpture reminiscent of the giant stone head from the movie Zardoz is a monument to Decebalus, the last king of Dacia before its conquest by the Roman Empire in 106 A.D. Dacia is the area now known as Romania (for the Romans thoroughly Romanized it) and Decebalus is a symbol of national identity to modern Romanians.
For 10 years, starting in 1994, stone carvers climbed a boulder along the Iron Gates, a gorge along the Danube near the Romanian-Serbian border. The face is 141 feet tall and 82 feet wide. Here, King Decebalus stands once again to resist foreign invasions of the Romanian homeland.
This is one of 10 incredible monuments and buildings carved into rock rounded up by Kuriositas. You can view them all here.
Baku Maeda is an artist in Sapporo, Japan. We've previously featured his animal sculptures made of fabric ribbons. They show how gifted he is at creating vivid impressions of animals using minimal forms.
He's been doing the same thing with leaves. With just a few alterations, his Japanese Bigleaf Magnolia tree leaves turn into animals of the autumn forest. You can see more of them here.
-via Lustik
Kristof Retezár, an industrial designer in Austria, designed this clever gadget called Fontus. When it's humid, the system draws water out of the air and pours it into a water bottle. It mounts on a bike frame, so if you're biking in swampy weather, you could use it to supplement your water supply.
Solar cells power the unit, which cools the top and heats the bottom. Perforated walls inside collect moisture, which flows down a tube into the bottle. It can produce roughly one drop of water per minute.
This is Feltépve, an enormous public sculpture by Hungarian artist Ervin Loránth Hervé. It appears to be a giant ripping out of the earth in a violent rampage.
(Photos: We Love Budapest)
Hervé made it out of polystyrene, which he painted to look like rock. He put it on display in the Széchenyi Square in Budapest, Hungary for Art Market Budapest, a recent art fair. Hervé says that his "goal was to show people that pieces of contemporary art can be integral parts of a city, that they can become one of its building blocks." He advocates for more contemporary sculptures in public places and hopes that Feltépve will help convince the public to support that goal.
You could travel into the past and see great events from history. Or you could peer into the far future, which is either a technological wonderland or a nightmarish dystopia.
But, to be practical, you're more likely to use the time machine as a free babysitter that is available whenever you need it.
There's one complication: although you'll be ready for bed at 10 PM, your child will think that it's just 7 o'clock.
This building is a museum in Meitan County, Guizhou, China. Can you guess the theme of the museum? Yes, it's tea! This is the National Tea Museum. Appropriately, the building is shaped like a teapot. It's 242 feet tall. If it was an actual teapot, it could hold approximately 749,253 gallons of tea. This museum is the largest teapot-shaped building in the world.
It's one of 18 strange buildings in China rounded up by The Guardian. The others include buildings shaped like an egg, a wheel, a ring, a cell phone, and a liquor bottle.
-via Marginal Revolution
If you need to use crutches to get around, you may find it difficult to carry anything in your hands. Instructables member Duncan Belew created this partial solution: a cup holder that bolts onto the side of a crutch. It's made of two concentric rings. The inner one swivels, so as the user swings the crutch forward and backward, the cup will stay level.
(Photo: Cameron Spencer)
This is Tamarama Beach in Sydney, Australia, where it must be hot enough to fry an egg on the sand--if you have the right equipment. Andrew Hankin has provided it by building this enormous sculpture that looks like a frying pan lodged in the sand. It's his contribution to the Sculpture by the Sea program. Hankin calls it We're Fryin' Out Here. You can see more photos of sculptures in the exhibit here (warning: auto-start video).
-via Amusing Planet
Although it looks like thinly sliced bacon ready to slide into your skillet, this is actually a silk scarf designed by Natalie Luder. She calls it Fou Lard, which means "insane bacon." It's about 6 feet long and 1 foot wide. Luder composed this story about its origin:
About 1500 years ago a Chinese silkworm found his way to France to produce silk in Europe. In the country of the « bon vivants » it accidently landed in a butcher’s shop on top of a slice of bacon. Hmm, so soft and tasty, thought the vegetarien with surprise and with verve started to build a cocoon.
As the cocoon grew more and more the butcher’s wife, a sophisticated lady, catched an eye on it. Is this bacon going insane, she thought but shortly after she spotted the little worm who found itself in a new paradise. I will make the most beautiful scarf from your silk, she promised and kept feeding the silkworm with the best bits of bacon she could find. After three month she was wearing proudly the most shiny silk scarf that she would call with affection my „foulard“.
-via Nag on the Lake
Photographer Bertrand Kulik snapped this fantastic shot. There was a hole in the leaf where the spider built his web. From the right angle, it looks like the spider patched up the hole. You can see a close-up shot here.
-via Colossal
(Photo: jessyfastfinger)
(Photo: unknown)
(Photo: unknown)
Alex once told me to change the sign in front of the Neatorama factory. "What should I write?" "Anything is fine."
It was the last time that Alex sent me out to change the sign.
What can you do with a business sign? 22 Words has a roundup of 30 funny signs that businesses put out front to attract or scare away customers.
Ugg boots may be popular among the living this time of year, but the typical ghost wouldn't be caught dead in them. Sure, you can just wear a sheet, but only if you're going with the relaxed fit look. And that's not always appropriate.
I like the cargo style because the pockets are practical. Most ghosts, though, seem to wear it ironically.
-via Tastefully Offensive
10 days ago, Twitter user ryooneokrock1 sent out this image of his pet rabbit serving as a smartphone case. That triggered a wave of similar images across Japan and China. Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku has a roundup of some of the cutest photos in the meme. He denies that the rabbits' ears improve the signal strength, but that claim should be subjected to empirical testing.
