Before the United States became widely electrified, it was not practical to build individual street lights in many cities. That’s why some cities built “moonlight towers,” which were enormous carbon arc lamps rising hundreds of feet into the air and projecting light as far as 1,500 feet away.
They were called moonlight towers because their enormous lights served to replace the light of an obscured moon. They were useful, but ultimately not as practical as the street lights which replaced them. These provided more consistent illumination than moonlight towers, which could not illuminate any area blocked by a building. Changing the carbon rods could also be difficult.
In 1990, Helen Ackley put her lovely old home in Nyack, New York up for sale. Patrice and Jeffrey Stambovsky bought it. Then they learned something disturbing about the house: it was haunted.
The Stambovskys did not discover this fact by witnessing ghosts themselves. Rather, they learned that the house had a strong local reputation as haunted. In their assessment, this lowered the value of their home. Ms. Ackley should have disclosed this important piece of information, therefore they sued her.
In Stambovsky vs. Ackley, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York ruled that “as a matter of law, the house is haunted.” Ms. Ackley had failed to fulfill a legal requirement to inform the Stambovkys that the house was known to be haunted.
The ruling goes on to describe the problem that Ms. Ackley had created for the Stambovskys:
From the perspective of a person in the position of plaintiff herein, a very practical problem arises with respect to the discovery of a paranormal phenomenon: "Who you gonna' call?" as a title song to the movie "Ghostbusters" asks. Applying the strict rule of caveat emptor to a contract involving a house possessed by poltergeists conjures up visions of a psychic or medium routinely accompanying the structural engineer and Terminix man on an inspection of every home subject to a contract of sale. It portends that the prudent attorney will establish an escrow account lest the subject of the transaction come back to haunt him and his client — or pray that his malpractice insurance coverage extends to supernatural disasters. In the interest of avoiding such untenable consequences, the notion that a haunting is a condition which can and should be ascertained upon reasonable inspection of the premises is a hobgoblin which should be exorcised from the body of legal precedent and laid quietly to rest.
According to pseudoscience, today is Blue Monday: the most depressing day of the year. That's because many people are returning to work after a long Christmas vacation. Do you need an emotional pick up? Certainly sugar-filled foods would help, but let's find another way.
Cartoonist Kelly Angel, whose work we've previously featured, made these Snapchat images and sent them to her roommate. You can find more here. Remember to be the cat that you want to see in the world.
Ewoks are little teddy bears, right? People think of these creatures from Return of the Jedi as adorable, furry little friends. Shoot, we even sell Ewok plushes in the NeatoShop!
But remember that before they joined forces with the Rebel Alliance, the Ewoks were about to eat Luke, Han and Leia. You may think of an Ewok as a friend, but he thinks of you as food. You think of him as tender-hearted, but he thinks of you as tenderized.
This video by Brotherhood Workshop shows a scene deleted from Return of the Jedi. It gives the film a darker ending.
Would you like to have a marriage filled with rancor? Then maybe you should get a wedding ring shaped like one. These are 2 of several ring designs by J.A.P., a Japanese design firm. Others show Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Ackbar, Boba Fett, Jabba the Hutt and more. Personally, I'd go for the C-3PO ring because that guy knows how to express love in more than 6 million forms of communication.
In 2009, physicist Stephen Hawking held a party for time travelers. He announced it 3 years later to ensure that only people with the ability to travel back in time could attend. No one showed up.
Robert Nemiroff, a physicist at Michigan Technological University, and graduate student Teresa Wilson also looked for evidence of time travelers at work in the world. They recently published a paper on the results of their search. To find time travelers, they looked for evidence of online content that only people who could travel backward in time would be able to create:
They looked for signs of foreknowledge about specific events on the Internet, or in Twitter tweets. The two events they chose were the discovery of Comet ISON in September 2012, and the selection of Pope Francis in March 2013. Looking for the evidence was trickier than it might sound: For example, search engines such as Google and Bing can misinterpret time stamps for Web pages, and it's also possible to back-date blog entries or Facebook posts.
The researchers found Twitter searches to be the most reliable tools, because tweets can't be back-dated. "No clearly prescient content involving 'Comet ISON,' '#cometison,' 'Pope Francis' or "#popefrancis' was found from any Twitter tweet — ever," they reported.
They also issued a request for time travelers to send tweets using either the hashtag "#ICanChangeThePast2" or "#ICannotChangeThePast2" by the end of August 2013. The trick was that the request was issued in September. No such tweets were found that predated the deadline. (Some have been received since, however, including this one from Thursday: "Your future laws forbid me from giving you any proof of our technologies. But be sure that we're watching you. #ICanChangeThePast2")
Dr. Nemiroff and Ms. Wilson are trying to get their paper published in a scholarly journal. So far, they have not been successful:
Nemiroff told NBC News that the time-travel paper was submitted to three journals, but was rejected by all three. "At this point, I don't know if it will ever appear in a refereed journal," he said. If there are any time travelers out there who can let him know, he'd appreciate hearing about it. And while you're at it, he'd also appreciate receiving "a large sum of money in negotiable currency."
How long a scarf could you knit while running a full marathon? For David Babcock, it's 12 feet, 1 and 3/4 inches long. He set this record in October in Kansas City, breaking the previous record of 6 feet, 9 inches set by Susie Hewer in London last April. The task took Mr. Babcock 5 hours, 48 minutes and 27 seconds.
Mr. Babcock, who is a graphic design professor at the University of Central Missouri, used to knit and run as separate activities. But in order to avoid monotony, he combined them. Here's how he does it:
It took experimentation. The yarn, which he keeps in a pack on his waist, had to be acrylic; natural fibers pick up sweat. Babcock devised a technique for tying the lengthening scarves around his waist and cinching them to a carabiner.
Except for one fall early in his knitting-while-running career, when he didn’t notice a pothole, Babcock hasn’t had any mishaps running with needles.
By altering images from NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team, Tahar Abroudjameur created this stunning image of swirling stars and nebulae. He calls it The Universe Is in Us.
As an experiment, Cracked writer Alli Reed composed a fictitious but truly awful online dating profile. Her goal was to to create a persona that was truly despicable and that no one would ever consider dating:
In making this profile, I made sure my creation touched on every major facet of being truly horrible: mean, spoiled, lazy, racist, manipulative, and willfully ignorant, and I threw in a little gold digging just for funzies. I maintain that there is not a human on this planet who would read this profile and think, "Yes, I'd like to spend any amount of the fleeting time I'm given on my journey around the sun getting to know this person."
As you can see, she put a lot of thought into how truly offensive she could be. Her persona, aaroncarterfan, is despicable. She openly brags of engaging in paternity fraud and harassing homeless people.
But within a day, she received 150 responses from interested men. In their online conversations, she did her best to convey the impression that aaroncarterfan would be the worst possible girlfriend. She was unsuccessful. You can read them here.
Like pork rinds and loneliness, Mountain Dew and Cheetos are two flavors that just naturally belong together. Frito Lay and PepsiCo have now joined forces to accelerate your journey of self-loathing. Frito Lay already markets its flagship product with Pepsi and strawberry flavors, so this seems like a natural progression.
Redditor jumblebutt says that they are technically edible:
They taste like sweet lemon lime chips. While they're not as gross as I expected, they certainly aren't enjoyable. It's a pretty weird taste.
When I first saw this image, I thought that it was a ramen cup. I would think that Mountain Dew Cheetos ramen would also be a marketable product.
The stunt driver in this car has nerves of steel and a steady hand. Watch him take his car from a dead stop to driving in circles all while doing a side wheelie. Joey White of Twenty-Two Words writes, "I’m pretty sure this skill set has no practical purpose, but I’m impressed."
On the contary! He can fit inside very narrow parking spaces. And as we saw in The Dukes of Hazzard, a documentary about life in the South during the 80s, side wheelies could help honest citizens escape from tight spots with the law.
Until the 1970s, the Cosmovitral was an open marketplace for the people of Toluca, Mexico. After it shut down, the city built a huge and elaborate botanical garden. When it opened in 1990, the fountains, bridges and verdant life—now totaling 400 species—made it an attractive place. But the massive stained glass walls and ceilings made it stunning.
The stained glass collection consists of 71 distinct works by Leopoldo Flores, the most famous of which is the above piece entitled The Sun Man.
The most unusual baby name that I proposed was Svetlana. My wife vetoed it. I don't blame her and probably wouldn't have gone through with it anyway. A child should have perhaps an interesting baby name, but not a weird one. We live in an age in which Cheese is an actual baby name and some parents are selecting names from the erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey, so it's necessary to tell this to people.
Drew Magary of GQ has 9 helpful tips that future parents may want to keep in mind when thinking about naming their children. Here's a selection:
1. Do not invent a name. Most inventions fail. Many don't even make it past the patent stage. What makes you think a name you created out of thin air is gonna stand the test of time? There's a reason why "Jane" and "David" have hung around for so long. They're proven. They've been workshopped out in the field. That's not true of Kaydiss. You didn't even run it past a focus group. You're putting the responsibility for an entire new product launch on that poor baby's shoulders. That's a dick move. This also goes for any classic name that you deliberately mutilated. No one's gonna be dazzled that you took Christopher and turned it into Krystougher. [...]
6. Do not use double letters if you don't have to.Branlee. That's a real name. People have used it, just as they've used Kylee, Sandee, and thousands of other homemade names that deploy double e's and double n's wherever possible because…well, beecausee! It just looks betterr, doesn't it?! We're on the verge of triple letters. In two years, a Trissstyn will show up at your country day school and everyone's head will explode. [...]
7. Do not name your child after the following things:
A television network
An item in the Pottery Barn catalog
Some goddamn character in Twilight
A car
A type of New Age exercise method
Yourself
Food
Any celebrity baby. We already have one Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette. We don't need a second one.
No, it’s not a beer tasting or beer appreciation degree. Maybe there’s a class for that, but this degree from Blue Ridge Community College in North Carolina will instead teach people how to make alcoholic beverages at a professional level. The college anticipates that the state government will approve of its associate of applied science degree in brewing, distillation and fermenting before the program launches this fall.
The college hopes to train people to work in the region’s growing beer and wine industry. The program trains students in mechatronics and the practical skills of fermenting wine, brewing beer and distilling liquor.
Captain William Overstreet Jr. died in Roanoke, Virginia at the age of 92. During World War II, he flew a P-51 Mustang fighter plane. During the liberation of France, he performed one of the most daring fighter combat actions ever witnessed.
You can read an extensive wartime biography here. Captain Overstreet was a daring and aggressive pilot. During training, he did loops around the Golden Gate Bridge. Later, in Europe, during the spring of 1944, he had escort duty on a bomber mission. He chased after a German fighter plane through central Paris:
The German’s engine was hit, and Bill stayed on his tail braving the intense enemy flak. His desperation undoubtedly growing, the German pilot aimed his plane at the Eiffel Tower and in a surprising maneuver, flew beneath it. Undeterred, Bill followed right behind him, scoring several more hits in the process. The German plane crashed and Bill escaped the heavy flak around Paris by flying low and full throttle over the river until he had cleared the city’s heavy anti-aircraft batteries.
(Len Krenzler/Action Art)
For his wartime record, the French ambassador to the United States presented Captain Overstreet with the Legion of Honor in 2009.
