There's a lot of things you can sculpt out of the wood from a tree, but in his 2012 exhibition, "The Hidden Life Within," Italian artist Giuseppe Penone sculpted a tree inside a tree!
Photo above via Sphilbrick
Photo: Giuseppe Penone, Cedro di Versailles, 2000-2003 - Artribune
8yr old Saga Vanecek named 'Queen of Sweden' locally as she discovers a pre-Viking-era sword in a Swedish lake, "The cool thing is that I'm a huge Minnesota Vikings fan, and this looks just like a Viking sword!" said Vanecek. #queenofsweden #Viking #Sword #Archaeology #sweden pic.twitter.com/BLrW3DFVzv
— My Good Planet (@MyGoodPlanet) October 5, 2018
According to English folklore, Saga Vanecek might now be a queen or else a magical being who can confer royalty on another. Monty Python would beg to differ.
Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government! Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!
Either way, eight-year-old Swedish-American Vanecek has quite a story to tell. She found an ancient sword in Sweden's Lake Vidöstern as her family was vacationing there. The sword is now in the custody of the local museum.
It was initially reported that the sword was at least 1,000 years old, but the museum later contacted The Local to clarify that they believe it may be even older, estimated to date back to the 5th or 6th century AD, pre-Viking Age. The find has prompted huge interest from archaeologists and historians.
"It's about 85 centimentres long, and there is also preserved wood and metal around it," explained Mikael Nordström from the museum. "We are very keen to see the conservation staff do their work and see more of the details of the sword."
Anyone hoping to see the sword will have to wait at least a year, Nordström told The Local, explaining: "The conservation process takes quite a long time because it's a complicated environment with wood and leather, so they have several steps to make sure it's preserved for the future."
A search for more ancient relics is going on at the lake. Read the story at The Local.
This baby rhino has been hanging out with a lamb and has picked up its mannerisms. pic.twitter.com/DN19luHhmF
— Mindfulness Wellness (@HealingMB) October 3, 2018
As the saying goes, baby rhino see baby rhino do. And when baby rhino sees a lamb skipping and prancing about, well, it wants to do that too! via Digg.
This one is wonderful. Emily Barone, Jeffrey Kluger and Lon Tweeten created a wonderful chart showing the deep space launches of 60 years of NASA's deep space missions.
View the full graphic over at TIME - via Cool Hunting
In this clever series of ads featuring various animals in the white space between people, Mumbai, India-based World For All encouraged everyone to adopt a needy animal.
via The Dodo
Many people paint buildings, but not like David Louf aka Mr. June. He paints mind-bending geometric artwork on buildings!
From Colossal:
Challenged by the existing architectural elements and obstacles, Louf likes to construct creations that will interact with their environment. He uses a laser liner to sketch up the main directional lines. Then he paints his abstract designs in an almost organic way, typically filling the entire side of whatever structure he is working on. “I always hope I can create a moment of awareness,” Louf tells Colossal. “Awareness of the viewer at that spot at that moment.”
View more over at Mr. June's Instagram.
A custom leather interior is nice, but one Russian oligarch decided to take it to the next level: he commissioned a car to be completely clad in leather, including the engine compartment.
According to English Russia:
In fact this was a Toyota Crown, but it is so heavily modified you can’t recognize it anymore.
The whole body is covered by Canadian buffalo leather, and inside there is Siberian weasel leather. Also sable fur is used to trim the seats. It’s being said that the sable fur is the most expensive fur in the world.
When an Italian astronaut mentioned that he missed pizza, NASA sent some ingredients up to the International Space Station for a zero-gravity pizza party pic.twitter.com/TZu1SZmDlk
— Tech Insider (@techinsider) September 19, 2018
When Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli mentioned that he missed pizza, NASA didn't just deliver him some pies, they threw a pizza party for the entire International Space Station crew.
But how exactly do you make pizza in zero gravity? Just watch in the embedded tweet above.
Washington State Department of Transportation has changed the distances on the sign made famous by Nirvana's Curt Cobain & Krist Novoselić. The sign was changed for safety reasons as there has been ongoing road construction in the area and people were pulling over and crossing over the highway to take their own pictures. Local radio station KXRO has a picture of the updated sign.
Who is the greatest monster in horror movie history? Dracula? Frankenstein? Those guesses say you don't watch all that many horror films. The staff of The Ringer has constructed a list of the nine "best," meaning scariest, movie monsters, and there isn't one Universal Classic Monster on it. Only a few in the list are human or resemble humans. Most headline their own movie franchises, but one appears in movies that are completely unrelated to each other. See all of them at The Ringer.
Sam Fletcher must have been playing with a corkscrew and thought, "This looks like someone riding a rollercoaster." So he made it happen. This "stupid thing I made that went viral" is what the internet was made for. -via Boing Boing
If someone asks whether you want to have pizza, burger, or fries, you don't have to choose. Instead, answer, "yes - pizza, burger AND fries, please!"
When the Inubosaki Marine Park Aquarium in Japan closed down for business, a bunch of animals - including a dolphin and dozens of penguins - locked inside the abandoned facility.
Oddity Central has the story:
Although someone has reportedly been feeding them regularly, animal activists claim that Honey the dolphin is showing signs of stress due to loneliness and suffered serious sunburns this summer, while the penguins are living in crumbling pens, among debris. Park representatives could not be contacted about the situation and local authorities claim that their hands are tied.
Photos and videos taken by activists from a group called Put An End to Animal Cruelty and Exploitation (PEACE) show honey floating all alone in a small pool inside the abandoned water park, and dust-covered penguins perched on a crumbling structure. Hundreds of fish and reptiles are reportedly also locked inside the Inubosaki Marine Park Aquarium, and no one knows if or when they will be transferred to a facility where they can be properly taken care of.
(Photo: Put An End to Animal Cruelty and Exploitation/PEACE)
Here, watch something beautiful. Photographer Mark Ellis recorded images of the sky over Minnesota from 2010-2018, including the aurora borealis, and compiled the footage into this lovely video. The song is "Almost Too Late" BY Dan Schwartz. You can read about the art and the science of the video at the vimeo page. -via Bad Astronomy
Canada declared war on Germany more than two years before the United States did in World War II. The British Columbia Regiment was shipped out to a secret destination on on October 1, 1940.
Coming down Eighth Street in New Westminster, Canadian photographer Claude P. Dettloff of The Province newspaper positioned himself to photograph the whole column marching down the hill. As he was getting ready to take the picture, he saw a young boy run out onto the road; Wait for Me, Daddy captures the image of the boy, five-year-old Warren "Whitey" Bernard, running out of his mother's grasp to his father. The picture Dettloff captured was picked up all over the world, getting exposure in Life; it hung in every school in British Columbia during the war.[1]
Jack Bernard made it home from the war five years later. Dettloff captured the reunion of Bernard and his much-grown son. Warren Bernard tells his story here. Today, a bronze statue depicting the iconic photograph stands at Hyack Square in New Westminster, British Columbia. -via reddit
