HORSE PLAY: Surveillance video captured the moment a runaway horse galloped into a French café after escaping her racing stable -- bucking, kicking and spooking several customers; no one, including the horse, was injured. https://t.co/b1xc3q32yi pic.twitter.com/MbvduwuRFk

— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) October 1, 2018

This time it's not a joke: a horse did walk - or rather gallop and buck into a bar in Chantilly, France.

Credit: Stephanie Jasmin

This happy heifer is definitely playing fetch and obviously having a wonderful time! She can't pick that big ball up in her mouth like a dog would, so she soccer-kicks it back to the woman. As the top commenter at YouTube says, this is the type of thing that makes you go vegan. -via Laughing Squid

Mountain goats are being airlifted out of Olympic National Park in Washington State because according to the National Park Service:

the fluffy ungulate has begun harassing visitors at campsites “where they persistently seek salt and minerals from human urine.” Goats are known to “paw and dig” where people have relieved themselves, causing the animals to become a nuisance.

They are attracted to sources of salt and minerals to supplement their diet. These nutrients are a lot harder to come by for this non native species in Olympic National Park.

The mountain goats are being relocated to the Cascade Mountain Range of Washington State, where they are a native species. As of September 28th, 98 mountain goats had been relocated and released. Read more at Motherboard.

You know about Tokyo Rose, but did you know the Nazis had their own woman on the radio, feeding propaganda along with popular music? “Axis Sally” was the nickname of American citizen Mildred Gillars, who had dreams of becoming an actress. Instead, she followed a series of lovers to various countries and ended up broadcasting in Berlin.

For her part, Gillars vacillated easily between playing hot swing-era, big-band hits and denouncing the Jews, Franklin Roosevelt and the British on air. “One thing I pride myself on,” she’d say in a typical broadcast, “is to tell you American folks the truth and hope one day that you’ll wake up to the fact that you’re being duped; that the lives of the men you love are being sacrificed for the Jewish and British interests!”

She was very calculating, though, pushing back whenever she worried the text she was given to read on air went too far—“If she had something in the script that she thought was going to make her liable for treason in the future she fought it,” Lucas says.

It didn't work, and Gillars was convicted of treason in 1948. Read the short version of Axis Sally's life as told by Richard Lucas, author of the book Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany, at Smithsonian.

When the #WrigleyRallyRat gets the biggest cheer of the night? I think it was rigged by the piRATes! It’s been a rough game! @barstoolsports @BarstoolBigCat @Deadspin @SarahSpain pic.twitter.com/H8PrgnLqtI

— Will Byington (@willbyington) September 26, 2018

Chicago Cubs fans didn't have a lot to cheer about last week as their team lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-0 at Wrigley Field. But if you're a fan, you gotta cheer! When a rat tried to jump a wall, an entire section rallied to give the rodent some encouragement. It took him three tries, but he did it, as the crowd celebrated the small victory. Will Byington caught the incident on video. -via Digg

"Home sweet home" is the literal truth in case of this chocolate house, made by artisan chocolatier Jean-Luc Decluzeau as a promo for the travel aggregator Booking.com.

Approximately 3,000 pounds of chocolate was used to create the 200-square foot home - and yes, everything is made out of chocolate!

Actually that's Asteroid 2015 TB145 as spotted by NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, when it zipped past Earth - missing it by just 300,000 miles - on Halloween three years ago.

It's making the rounds again on the Internet, but its likely won't come that close to Earth when it comes around again this year.

The YND239-20 cafe (named after its street address in Seoul, the capital of South Korea) looks like an optical illusion: everything in it - from the walls to the chairs and even the dishes - look like hand drawn black and white cartoon!

Lonely Planet has the scoop:

“We wanted to supply a place that looked like a cartoon to our customers,” the cafe’s marketing manager, JS Lee, told Lonely Planet. He also said they’re all happy to see that guests take pictures and make good memories in the cafe because that is “exactly what we wanted.”

Turns out that this little corner of black and white design and stellar Instagrammability gained its popularity exclusively through word-of-mouth. “Famous bloggers, Facebook stars, magazines and TV programs all talked about us,” JS Lee remembered. “Then we became famous very naturally.”

When Jeremy and Krista lost their wedding venue before the big day, they decided to have the wedding ceremony over at Jeremy's place of work: a fire station in St. Paul Park, Minnesota.

"We talked about it, 'What if there's a call?'" Krista told KARE11, and said "You can let the other guys go; you're not leaving our wedding."

But after the ceremony, there was an urgent "all call" request to fight a nearby fire ... and Jeremy had to go.

Read about what happened over at KARE11.

(Photo: December Orpen Photography)

You might see this picture around the internet claiming that these are the same people as the original stock image, just a few years later. That's not it at all. This spot-on recreation came about almost by accident. Charlie Todd, the guy in the middle, explained what really happened.

-via reddit

House-moving wasn't uncommon in the early era of photography. When you've spent years building a nice, roomy home for your family, you'll do whatever it takes to save it. For some, that meant moving the entire house with horse power. Maybe it was an urban renewal project. Maybe the railroad was coming through your land. In one case, the railroad came, but not close enough.   

In the 1920’s Lake Saskatoon was a bustling little community. When the railway bypassed the town by a few kilometres, that meant the end for Lake Saskatoon as a regional hub. The residents did what any sensible community would– put their houses and shops on sleds and had teams of horses pull them a few kilometres up the road.

See pictures from the history of house-moving, both before and after the switch to engines, at Messy Messy Chic.

The strength of the Earth's magnetic field is about 30 microtesla. The magnets in an MRI machine clock in at about 3 tesla, and the approximate magnetic field of a white dwarf star is about 100 tesla.

So just think about how powerful this 1,200-tesla magnet created by Shojiro Takeyama and his colleagues at the Institute for Solid State Physics at the University of Tokyo.

Rafi Letzter of Live Science writes:

To achieve that intensity, Takeyama and his team pump megajoules of energy into a small, precisely engineered electromagnetic coil, the inner lining of which then collapses on itself at Mach 15 — that's more than 3 miles per second (5 kilometers per second). As it collapses, the magnetic field inside gets squeezed into a tighter and tighter space, until its force peaks at a tesla reading unimaginable in conventional magnets. Fragments of a second later, the coil collapses entirely, destroying itself.

The last time Takeyama switched on his super-strong magnet, it blew out the heavy door of the lab that contained the machinery!

Hotels are touting free hot breakfast to drum up business, but they may have lured in more than just travelers.

A few hotels in Dalton, Georgia, have been targeted by a daring thief that came in to eat at the breakfast buffet. Locals have dubbed him the Breakfast Bandit:

“He’s definitely still on the loose and we think he’s still hungry,” a Dalton police spokesperson told Thrillist over the phone. “I don’t know what he ate, exactly, but he definitely ate a lot of it.”

The low-stakes criminal reportedly told a Holiday Inn Express employee that he was “just checking how easy it is to get into hotels and get free stuff.” He was spotted wandering into locations across Dalton, pocketing bottles, towels, and plastic silverware, before demolishing the most holy of all hotel accomodations: the breakfast buffet. We’re talking pancakes, bacon, Cocoa Puffs, the whole charade.

Eliza Dumais of the Thrillist has the story.

When students at the University of Bristol learned that their beloved janitor Herman Gordon hadn't seen his family in Jamaica for more than a decade, they decided to do something about it.

Spearheaded by medical student Hadi Al-Zubaidi, the college students raised £1,500 so Gordon and his wife could visit his family in Jamaica as well as stay at a resort there for a vacation.

Now, isn't that a neat and kind thing to do?

Photo: Sandals UK

An October 4th auction at Sotheby's will feature 309 items from the collection of the late Robin Williams and his second wife Marsha. It will include several prized works of art, including three paintings by Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli, who was noted for being certifiably insane.

...a doctor at Waldau published a monograph on his patient in 1921 titled “A Mentally Ill Artist,” and even made the link between Wölfli’s “illness” and his creativity explicit by observing that “the effect of illness which dissociated and ravaged the superficial layers of his psyche, enabling the deeper layers, including his latent artistry, to develop.”

The same sort of thing is often said about all sorts of creative people—that their demons, if not their named “illnesses,” are also their sources of brilliance. When it comes to Robin Williams, it is hardly controversial to remark upon the unbridled, over-the-edge nature of his comedy. Indeed, many of us believed him to be at his best when he was on the verge of being out of control.

Read some musings on Robin Williams and his possible connection with Adolf Wölfli at Collectors Weekly. You'll also see the other two Wölfli artworks from the auction. 

A gas pump will shut off when the tank is full; we've always taken that for granted. It's a fine feature that keeps gas from spilling all over us. But how does it know? The mechanism is a low-tech yet surprisingly complicated system. It's easy to understand the way Brain Stuff explains it in this video, but later on when you try to explain it to someone else, you'll end up just showing them this video. -via Geeks Are Sexy

The Detroit Meat Strike began in Hamtramck, Michigan, on July 27, 1935. The 500 women who swarmed the shopping district with signs and banners were not only protesting high prices, they blockaded the stores and attacked those who would cross the picket line. They were led by a 100-pound housewife named Mary Zuk.

In a state where unemployment topped 25 percent, and where layoffs by the burgeoning auto industry devastated working-class households, women like Zuk were still expected to put food on the table and stretch the family budget as far as it would go. Over the last three years, the price of meat had jumped 62 percent, according to author Ann Folino White’s Plowed Under. Butchers claimed it wasn’t their fault — they blamed President Roosevelt and the increased processing taxes caused by the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) — but the women of the country would not be placated.

That spring, black and Jewish housewives in New York closed 4,000 butcher shops with picket lines, and housewives marched against rising meat prices in Chicago. They were peaceful; their aims were modest. The Hamtramck women felt no such restraint. They were cutthroat, boisterous, even militant. With Zuk at their helm, they would strike back hard, and change the nature of consumer activism in America.

Within a week of that first protest in Hamtramck, Zuk organized a crowd of 5,000 people in Detroit. Some butchers were forced out of business, and eventually Washington got involved. Read about the Detroit Meat Strike at Narratively.

(Image credit: Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University)

The World Snail Racing Championships were held in July in Congham, England. Yes, the report was slow getting here, but "slow" is what the sport is all about. Snails are placed in a circle and head toward an outer circle as a finish line that is 13 inches away.

“We take this seriously,” snail racer John McClean told Reuters.

“We have got training slopes. We look at diet, we are drug compliant as well. It is the whole thing when you look at elite sports.”

The competition has been held since the 1960s with each race lasting several minutes. Competitors are able to select a snail from the organizers’ stash or bring their own.

There were 190 snails participating, and 11 in the final heat. The eventual champion was Hosta, a snail Jo Waterfield of Grimston found in her garden.

"He spent all summer eating my hostas. I told him that if he didn't win I'd squash him!"

A good time was had by all. -via Boing Boing

Previously: A much faster snail race. 

Evolution of Hokusai's "Great Wave".
1. When he was 33 (1792).
2. When he was 44 (1803).
3. When he was 46 (1805).
4. When he was 72 (1831). pic.twitter.com/hUXkjNjGxh

— tkasasagi (@tkasasagi) September 26, 2018

You've seen the iconic artwork everywhere, The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai. It is both simple and intricate, colorful and calming, and infinitely meme-able. Hokusai created the woodblock print when he was 72 years old, after drawing sea waves for half his life, although he also illustrated many other subjects. Japanese literature PhD tkasasagi shows us Hokusai's other waves, and how they evolved through his career.

Springtime in Enoshima 1792

View of Honmoku off Kanagawa 1803

First Cargo Boat Battling the Waves 1805

The Great Wave off Kanagawa 1831

-via Digg

Bass player Davie504 (previously at Neatorama) shows us how you don't have to know how to play an instrument to make a great music video. All you need is the time to edit. Yeah, it would help if you had an ear for music, otherwise your edit will be a mess. This reminds me of Amateur by Lasse Gjertsen.

-via Digg

She even responded in the form of a question. They truly are a match made in heaven!pic.twitter.com/se12NVG4m8

— Jeopardy! (@Jeopardy) September 27, 2018

Jeopardy contestant Michael Pascuzzi bet it all on national TV and asked his girlfriend Maria for her hand in marriage in this Jeopardy proposal. And best of all, she even answered in the form of a question.

The chiropractor had a walk-in clinic, but this guy decided to use the drive-through anyway.

A traffic accident in Atlanta was caught on surveillance cameras. But stitched-together footage from two different cameras still had people scratching their heads. The driver walked away unhurt. The accident starts to make a little sense when you see the location. The clinic roof is level with the adjacent parking lot, and the garage is underneath the lot. -via Boing Boing

It doesn't look like much, but this low-tech mosquito trap called the Gravid Aedes Trap (GAT) may just be what's needed to help get rid of the Asian tiger mosquitoes.

Scott Ritchie of the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine at James Cook University explained in this All Things Considered feature by Joe Palca from NPR:

The trap doesn't look particularly impressive — it's basically three plastic buckets stacked together. The top and bottom buckets are black. The mosquitoes fly into the trap through a hole in the top bucket, but they seem to have a hard time flying back out through the hole. To make matters worse (for the mosquito) you can dangle a piece of sticky paper inside the top bucket to catch a wayward pest that happens to land there.

The bottom bucket contains water with some rotting grass floating in it. Aedes mosquitoes typically lay their eggs in stagnant water. The middle bucket has a net to trap any mosquitoes that hatch in the water.

Photo: Joe Palca

An army marches on its stomach, as Napoleon supposedly said ... and what better food to feed the troops than pizza?

Now, after two decades and hundreds of failed attempts, the Army's Combat Feeding Directorate has finally created the combat-ready Meal, Ready to Eat (M.R.E.) pizza.

Dave Philipps of The New York Times has the scoop:

Now being shipped to military bases around the world, the newest of 24 current M.R.E. options is a humble three-by-five-inch Sicilian-style slice, scattered with melt-proof shreds of mozzarella and pebbles of mild pepperoni, sealed in a dun-colored laminate pouch.

It isn't much to look at, even by free-pizza standards. But this is no ordinary slice. To quality for M.R.E. duty, a food item has to be able to survive years of storage in a dank ship's hold or a sun-baked shipping container, withstand Arctic freezes and tropical monsoons, stave off assaults by insects, and remain intact through a parachute airdrop or even a free fall from 100 feet.

Forget 30-minute dlievery - Army regulations say it has to stay fresh for 36 months. And after all that, the pizza still has to be tasty enough to eat.

Photo: Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times

If you dislike horror movies, you might want to shield your children from them, but sooner or later they're going to see something that might traumatize them while visiting friends. If you enjoy horror movies, you don't want to traumatize your child and turn them against the movies you love. There are films made for children that will introduce them to the thrill of being scared -but not too scared. Den of Geek has a list of movies that "offer children a safe, but interesting, introduction to the world of horror, with archetypal tropes, characters and even the odd jump scare." The trick here is to watch with your children, so you can pause, explain, and reassure when necessary.

When your child is older and has seen the movies made for kids, then what? Elementary students and tweens may get a thrill out of gore and jump scares, but to really appreciate the horror genre, they need to see well-made movies that engage the viewer. For that, you might consult the list of 81 Best Creepy Horror Movies, although you'll want to select movies you've already seen to ensure they are appropriate for your children. Older classics like Gaslight or The Uninvited will give them the creeps without the sex and violence of newer movies. Watching horror movies that are age-appropriate will help prepare your children for the time they are old enough to go to a theater without you.

Events take a lot of hard work, but when that work is done right, it can turn any celebration into an unforgettable event.
Book your next event, celebration or team bonding experience at the HUB. We know how to work it! https://t.co/x4jYACqyRt #TheHUBStadium#PartyattheHUB pic.twitter.com/Gppb7lz3Bi

— The HUB Stadium (@HUBStadium) September 21, 2018

The HUB Stadium is a bar in Michigan. They offer a variety of games in addition to liquor. They were recently visited by the Michigan Liquor Control Commission. The commission had some concerns.

Drinking alcohol while throwing axes, ax-throwers wearing open-toed shoes, a lack of monitoring by bar management and axes ricocheting off targets in the direction of participants were among the concerns listed by Michigan Liquor Control Commission investigators who visited the warehouse-style bar at 2550 Innovation Drive in Auburn Hills.

I mean really, what could possibly go wrong? The regulators slapped HUB Stadium with a severe penalty- they suspended their liquor license. For one day. Read about the suspension and the commission's list of additional concerns at Michigan Live.  -via Metafilter

In February 1978 a Dino 246 GTS Ferrari was unearthed from the front yard of a home in Los Angeles. Kids were digging in the mud outside a house in the West Athens section of Los Angeles when they hit something that felt like the roof of the car. Read about the mystery that involves idiot thieves and possible insurance fraud over at Jalopnik. and how the mystery was solved

That wasn't the only story that involved a Ferrari in the late 70's. Read about the socialite who is entombed in her Ferrari at a historic cemetery on San Antonio's East Side.

Princess Anne Antoinette Francois Charlotte was born to Prince René of Bourbon-Parma and Princess Margaret of Denmark in Paris in 1923. The family fled Europe ahead of World War II, which explains why the princess was educated in America and worked at Macy's. However, that was the the least interesting part of her story! Princess Anne eventually joined the war effort as an ambulance driver and nurse in several countries. Then King Michael I of Romania fell in love with her.   

It would seem the handsome young King had spotted Anne while watching a movie in the Royal Palace cinema hall. The princess was not there, nor herself ever an actress. So how did he see her? Before the movie there was a news real showing footage of the war, in this case specifically some footage from Morocco. In that footage was a few second clip of Princess Anne.

Infatuated with her, the young King had a small photograph made from the film reel of the princess which he kept. At some point, he seems to have clued his mother in on his choice of bride and the wheels were in motion.

Although they were second cousins once removed, it took a lot of effort to bring the two together, and even more effort for the king to convince the shy princess to marry him. When she finally said yes, communist forces deposed King Michael I, and Romania was no longer a monarchy. Read about the unusual life of the uncrowned Queen of Romania at Today I Found Out.

A minor drama played out Friday morning on reddit, as pezmonkey was getting ready to board a plane. A guy handed him this card, which no doubt also went to everyone on the plane -except the guy's companion. Pezmonkey immediately posted it, and readers held their breath (figuratively) for an hour until they heard the news. She said yes!

We wish Andrew and Rachel all the best. You can read a reverse-play-by-play of the flight in pezmonkey's comments. Linked videos are sure to follow.

One guy is obliviously talking on the phone while the other guy is recording the surroundings. Can you guess what will come by? This was recorded a week ago in Winfield, Kansas. -via Digg