7-year old Sean was visiting a zoo in Ireland with his family. The hungry tiger decided it was lunchtime and didn't notice the glass barrier. He lunged at Sean, much to the amusement of Rob, his father. The New York Post quotes the father:

Fortunately, Sean “reacted pretty calm,” Rob told Storyful. However, the dad adds that his other son “ran like the clappers” — UK slang for “very fast.”

-via The Daily Wire

Hayley Garbutt, a 52-year-old end-of-life carer from England, has figured out a way to make feeding her family more affordable — by charging them for dinner. She does this for good reason, however, and that reason is she gets to spoil her family at Christmas. She charges about $45-a head for a seat at her Christmas dinner table, according to the Sun.

Her guests include her three children, their partners and her four grandchildren. She also invites some friends as well.

“I get all of my family to put in before I go and do the shop,” she told the Sun. “This year I spent $388 online at Morrisons, doing the big shop and making sure I had a variety of things in. But it's not that I'm being tight - it means I get to spend more in other aspects then too like presents - this year the tree has so many presents stacked around it, that you can't even see it.”

So, while her family has to pay to eat dinner, Garbutt makes sure that they get their money’s worth.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Caters News Agency)

Christmas Island, Australia, is home to about 1,800 people and, annually, 50 million migrating red crabs. They swarm across the island, including on the roads. Local resident Chris Bray would like to avoid crushing them as he drives, so he built these wedges and mounted them in front of the wheels of his SUV. Traveller reports:

"I made a prototype two years ago and tested it last year. After making a few tweaks and improvements, the latest version was finished a week and a half ago," Mr Bray said. "If you can imagine little horseshoes on the front of the tyre, these work to lightly bump the crabs out of harm's way."

You can watch a video of the crab mobile in action at Traveller.

-via Jalopnik | Image: The Age

This is a story about a cat, and Christmas, and it's a horror story. That's Jólakötturinn, the Icelandic Yule cat. It's not pronounced anything like you'd guess. -via Laughing Squid

On December 23, 1927, 14-year-old Woody Harris was driving his family around Cisco, Texas, in their Oldsmobile. He had no idea that this Christmas would be different. And unforgettable.  

At a stoplight, Woody looked out his window and saw something that must have caused him a brief moment of amusement. There in the road was Santa Claus—not the Santa, obviously, but a Santa—and he appeared to be coming toward the Harris vehicle.

Before Woody could process what was happening, Santa brandished a gun. So did the two men with him. They ordered the Harris family out of their car, screaming for them to hurry. The men quickly loaded their belongings from a nearby Buick into the Oldsmobile, including a giant and cumbersome sack like the kind Santa toted for gifts. Santa also produced a moaning and bleeding man from the back seat of the Buick, who was summarily stuffed into the Oldsmobile. Two children were with him, but they didn’t appear to be there of their own volition. Down the road, dozens of men were running toward them, most bearing a firearm of some kind.

Woody Harris did not know why Santa had a gun, why he was accompanied by a badly injured man, why a mob appeared to want to kill him, or why he had carjacked his family. He and his relatives ran away, gunshots ringing in the air.

Well, that ruined Christmas for the Harris family. What they had fallen into was the aftermath of a bank robbery gone deadly wrong. Read the entire story at Mental Floss.


(Image source: Library of Congress)

Minneapolis’ ‘Green To Go Ordinance’ has managed to inadvertently  ban your favorite holiday cups. The Green To Go Ordinance aims to increase the amount of commercial waste that is recyclable or compostable. One of the banned materials is polyethylene, a material used as a liner in coffee cups to make them waterproof. In response to the ordinance, Starbucks retracted its holiday cups, sticking to the classic plain white cups, as Reason detailed:

A spokesperson for Starbucks tells Reason that the company reacted to the new Minneapolis requirements by switching to to-go coffee cups lined with polylactic acid, a bioplastic typically made from corn-starch. But these cups were only available in plain white.

image credit: via Reason

Mortal Kombat is an ongoing video games series, a fighting-themed game. It’s gruesome, violent, and filled with murderous characters. While some would rank the best characters in terms of stats or abilities, or their favourite characters, Polygon’s Brian David Gilbert takes a step in the other direction, as he finds which character can cuddle you the best. 

In NASA’s efforts to map the Milky Way galaxy, scientists captured an image of the galaxy’s central zone. The central zone is highlighted by a candy cane-shaped portion in the captured image. This galactic candy cane isn’t edible at all, as it is part of a set of radio-emitting filaments extending 190 light-years, Science Daily detailed: 

This image includes newly published observations using an instrument designed and built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Called the Goddard-IRAM Superconducting 2-Millimeter Observer (GISMO), the instrument was used in concert with a 30-meter radio telescope located on Pico Veleta, Spain, operated by the Institute for Radio Astronomy in the Millimeter Range headquartered in Grenoble, France.

"GISMO observes microwaves with a wavelength of 2 millimeters, allowing us to explore the galaxy in the transition zone between infrared light and longer radio wavelengths," said Johannes Staguhn, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who leads the GISMO team at Goddard. "Each of these portions of the spectrum is dominated by different types of emission, and GISMO shows us how they link together."

GISMO detected the most prominent radio filament in the galactic center, known as the Radio Arc, which forms the straight part of the cosmic candy cane.

image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center via Science Daily

It appears that in Jerusalem, Santa Claus rides a camel. Santa Claus in Jerusalem? The nation of Israel is a Jewish state, and the Christians who make the pilgrimage to the Holy Land in December are focused on the birth of Jesus, not Santa Claus. But Jerusalem has a Santa Claus, and he's an Orthodox Christian Arab. Meet Issa Kassissieh.   

It was 14 years ago when Kassissieh found an old Santa Claus costume that had belonged to his father. He decided to amuse himself and tried it on. It fit so well that he went to the nearby Jaffa Gate, a historic portal in the Old City’s wall, while wearing it. Children happily gathered around, and it had an effect on him. “I realized that as a child I didn’t get to have this happiness, and that it’s time to give it to the children of Jerusalem,” he says. “While traveling the world during Christmas I realized how deep Santa is embedded in Western cultures, while here, in the place where Christmas began, we only know Santa through television and movies.” The following year, Kassissieh donned the costume again. The year after that he hired a camel. Since then, around Christmas, he has ridden the camel around the Old City spreading cheer, and then receives visits from children and their families in Santa’s House in the afternoon. At the height of the season, the line in front of “Santa’s House” can be two hours long. Kassissieh funds most of the operation himself, but he does get candy donations from Christian individuals and organizations worldwide.

Read about Kassissieh, his journey to become Santa, and his Christmas house at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Heidi Levine for Atlas Obscura)

Photographers Kelly Pratt and Ian Kreidich love dogs and love dancers. Every year, they do a photo shoot with the St. Louis Ballet, who perform The Nutcracker every year, and dogs and cats from Stray Rescue of St. Louis. They call it The Muttcracker.

It’s hard to find a more universally lovable piece of work than one that features orphaned pets taking part in a holiday classic. "The Muttcracker" has received tons of coverage over the years, which has opened up the adoption floodgates and led to most of the dogs and cats finding their forever homes.   

    We have gotten a lot of national coverage for 'Muttcracker!' Outlets like People Magazine and Hallmark Channel have covered the story. Last year, all of the dogs were adopted within a couple months of the project. And this year, at least nine of the dogs have found homes already — less than a month after we started.

Read about the project and see the photographs at Wonderful Machine. Don't miss the story of the blind chihuahua that was held by the Mouse King. -via Metafilter

Gargoyles are statuary carvings that serve as downspouts on buildings. In freezing but wet weather, they grow icicles in a hurry! And when a gargoyle looks funnier than usual, someone is going to be ready to take a picture. See a dozen such pictures (#1 is quite rude) at Bored Panda.

(Image source: Green Pepper)

Stanislav Petrov was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces and served at Serpukhov-15, a Soviet base. The aforementioned base monitored early warnings of ballistic missile launches.

Come the night of September 26, 1983. Petrov just replaced a colleague at the night shift. Fifteen minutes after midnight, the alert went off. The system has warned that the U.S. had launched a missile.

“Naturally, he began to check all the services in case there had been a software failure,” Dmitry Petrov, Stanislav’s son, recalls the story. “He trusted the visual services the most. After all, they could observe the launch of missiles via the satellite.”

Visual inspection, however, was impossible, as the sun was already setting at that moment. He only had less than half an hour to decide whether the launch was true or false.

Around that time, the air between the U.S. and the Soviet was very tense. “In such a situation, a wrong decision would have been enough,” German Gigolaev states.

What did Stanislav do? Find out on the full story over at BBC Reel.

(Image Credit: Queery-54/ Wikimedia Commons)

These are Christmas toy parodies made by Jeff Wysaski. He has them distributed in local stores. Why? Because it’s hilarious.

Some of these toys I can buy for my enemies, such as the frog that can tell him how much I hate him. Others I can buy for myself, like the crippling depression supervillain action figure.

See the other toys over at Sad And Useless.

Which toy do you like the most?

(Image Credit: Sad And Useless)

Architecture flirts with nature in expressive but subtle ways. Oftentimes, the idea behind this is to harmonize and not dominate the landscapes. When faced with steep slopes, cliff faces, and mountainsides, this could prove to be a challenge.

Check out these houses that have overcome this challenge, and where they can be found, over at CNN.

(Image Credit: Chen Hao / Bengo Studio)

After the recent incidents involving selfies, the US National Park Service wants to reinforce good and safe photo etiquette. There’s no better way to get the attention of your intended audience than to depict the possible effects of their bad selfie behavior through gingerbread cookies. These gingerbread cookies aim to convince all to stay a safe distance away from the wildlife, as Cnet.com details: 

"Use a zoom lens on your camera," the NPS tweeted on Friday. "If you are close enough to take a selfie with wildlife, you are wayyyy too close ... gingerly back away." 

The agency set the scene with photos showing a gingerbread man posing for a selfie with two bison. The next image shows the cookie flying through the air with a "WTF just happened" expression on its face.

The NPS doled out some more detailed advice in an Instagram version of the post. "Animals may appear to be calm and docile but are unpredictable and can easily be startled," the agency warned. It suggests sticking to trails and boardwalks and keeping your eye on the trail rather than your camera.

image via Cnet.com