I remember reading in Roman History class back in college that during the reign of Emperor Trajan (r. 98-117 AD), the Roman Empire sent an emissary to China. This information was found not in Roman records, but Chinese....
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/04/ancient-east-asian-man-found-in-roman-empire/One family mourned the death of a daughter. Another family welcomed a new daughter. A few years later, Mary Lurancy Vennum "became" the deceased Mary Roth! Was it a case of multiple personality, reincarnation,...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/04/the-watseka-wonder-the-double-life-of-lurancy-venum/Mei Lan the panda is on her way to Chengdu, China. She was born at Zoo Atlanta in 2006 under an agreement that all pandas in American zoos belong to China. Today she is being shipped to Washington DC, where she will join...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/04/shipping-pandas-to-china/Photographer Nikki Graziano takes pictures and then creates graphs of mathematical functions which map nicely to elements of the image. It's a very neat and beautiful way of combining math, nature, and art together into...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/04/photographer-graphs-her-images/The Do Hit Chair by Marijn van der Poll turns you into a (very aggressive) designer, letting you (literally) bang out your own chair design. You get a metal box and a hammer, and how it ends it depends on your strong a...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/04/do-hit-chair/Well, whaddyaknow, it's time for our weekly collaboaration with the always awesome What is it? Blog. Today's mystery item is shown to the left: can you guess what it is used for?Place your guess in the comment section. O...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/04/what-is-it-game-126/That, my friends, is the Gizmo Skirt by Brian Lichtenberg. The skirt is in grey tweed and features "ear-pockets" with swarovski crystal eyes. It'll set you back $2,100 but that's the price of mogwai haute coutu...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/04/gizmo-skirt/[YouTube Link]Joe Peacock (previously on Neatorama) has been collecting Akira cells and production art since he was 14 years old, and now he has collaborated with ToonSeum to show the entire world why Akira is the pinn...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/04/the-art-of-akira/Urban art comes in all kinds of flavor, but this may be my favorite: "A Love Letter For You," a project by Stephen Powers where he paints various murals with lovey-dovey messages around Philadelphia (yes, the C...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/04/a-love-letter-for-you-murals-by-stephen-powers/SuperSeventies has a nice index of the top ten songs of each year in the decade I discovered music. That was mostly via radio, and that decade saw quite a shift in popular styles, as you can see at the link. Each son...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/a-comprehensive-guide-to-the-top-100-songs-of-the-70s/The context of the photo is explained at the White House's Flickr photostream: June 6, 2009 “After his speech in Normandy, a crush of people tried to get close to the President to shake his hand. I noticed this guy...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/a-normandy-veteran-meets-the-president/[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHRKkXtxDRA] YouTube link. Murray Hill Incorporated has just announced its intention to run for Congress in Maryland's 8th Congressional District. Murray Hill Inc. is believed t...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/a-corporation-has-announced-it-will-run-for-congress/Magic Frog to Prince - $3.95Here's a kitschy gift idea for Valentine's Day: a frog in a cup that magically transforms into a prince after you add a little bit of water!http://shop.neatorama.com/product-info.php?magic-fro...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/magic-frog-to-prince-toy/Our very own John Farrier of The Zeray Gazette has a neat round up of the various permutations of Abbot and Costello's classic "Who's on First?" comedy bit.While I'm sure many of you would like the Jar-Jar Bink...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/variations-of-the-whos-on-first-comedy-bit/Three years ago, Neatoramanaut Chris Garvey drew a punny doodle on a piece of sticky note and posted it on a co-worker's desk to cheer her up. He continued to draw one note a day and today has a collection of over 1,...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/sticky-moments/If democracy is rule by the people (from the Greek words "demos" for people and "kratos" for power), and theocracy is rule by religious body, then what about pornocracy? Yes it's real and no, it's not what you're thinkin...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/pornocracy-rule-by-harlots/What do you get when you cross Star Wars with disco and canned tuna? This ad for Hagoromo sea chicken tuna from Japan screams "crazy" in so many ways in just 30 seconds.Too strange too miss. The Zeray Gazette h...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/star-wars-disco-canned-tuna-so-wtf-its-awesome/I'm a little late in posting this, but it's too awesome to pass: Shaun Usher's Letters of Note has a copy of a 1905 letter sent by Mark Twain to a patent medicine salesman who tried to sell bogus medicine. Twain was furi...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/mark-twain-pwns-snake-oil-salesman/In his monthly neologism challenges before he retired in 2004, Washington Post columnist Bob Levey famously asked his readers to send in new words made by taking existing words and adding, substracting, or changing one l...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/bob-leveys-neologisms/I learned something new ... and disturbing about our neighbors to the North. It turns out that you can buy milk in plastic bags in Canada.How do you drink from plastic bags? Sheryl from Pinc Stuff explains in this short...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/milk-in-a-bag/Over 700 paired species of fig trees and wasps have symbiotic relationships. The fig tree host wasp eggs, and the wasps pollinate the fig trees in return. But according to a new study, if the wasps don't pollinate...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/fig-trees-retaliate-against-cheating-wasps/The man behind the blog Kitty Hell ("one man's life with cute overload") has brought to our attention this marvelous/disgusting instrument of household utility. He writes: While Hello Kitty fanatics...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/hello-kitty-chainsaw/Parents, be careful what you name your children. A case in point is Pakistan's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, whose name is, shall we say, boastful of his manhood. The Saudi government found the gentleman's name unaccepta...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/saudi-government-rejects-pakistani-ambassador-for-nsfw-name/Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo. Arev Manoukian of Spy Films delivers a knockout with this short, elegantly rendered in 1940s style black and white, and stunning visual effects. Love at first sight never look...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/nuit-blanche/Last year, Chesley Sullenberger saved the day when he landed a crippled passenger jet on the frigid Hudson River. This year we have Frank Vogt, a traffic reporter's pilot whose Cessna lost oil pressure 1200 feet off th...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/traffic-pilot-lands-on-jersey-turnpike/A man is accused of a crime. Is he guilty? Stick his hand in a pot of boiling water. If he is unharmed, God has proclaimed his innocence and protected him. If the suspect is burned, he's guilty and can be punished (f...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/did-trial-by-ordeal-actually-work/Natalie Dee of the webcomic Married to the Sea organized and categorized elemental smells into a periodic table. Sure, you can probably think of other smells, but they're really just compounds of these, rig...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/periodic-table-of-smellements/Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day shows the aftermath of powerful collision between two asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. They estimate the speed of the impact at "15,000 kilometers per hour -- fiv...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/a-cosmic-collision/At one time or another, almost everyone dreams about receiving an unexpected inheritance. Maybe you share DNA with a rich person you didn't know about. Maybe an ex has forgiven you for whatever reason you broke up. Maybe...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/10-unbelievable-inheritance-stories/This article at Discover Magazine has nothing to do with the science fiction stories we are so familiar with. Author Sean Carroll looks at time travel as a physicist. He says if time travel were possible (and it might be...
https://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/03/the-real-rules-for-time-travelers/
