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

If you love J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and LEGO, then The Brothers Brick blog has a feature that's perfect for you.

Behold The Third Age: Journey Through Middle Earth, a collaboration amongst 10 builders to create 13 iconic scenes from the the fantasy movies in LEGO.

Above is the Bag End, as built by Northern LEGO.

Goblin Town by Mountain Hobbit.

View the rest over at The Brothers Brick.

YouTube user TheDominoKing takes images from the Nintendo Switch game "Super Mario Odyssey" and translates them to dominoes, 148,777 to be exact.