President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act on July 29, 1958. That act transferred the duties of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) from the military to a new civilian agency called the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA came about as a response to the Soviet Sputnik program, and accelerated when President Kennedy challenged the US to go to the moon by the end of the '60s. NASA has accomplished a lot in 60 years! This video is one of a series celebrating big milestones in NASA's history. -via Digg
Darth Vader is at the top of many "greatest villain" lists, and near the top in the rest. Nerdwriter looks at the reasons why. You might think, duh, but there's a lot more to it than just a badass in a black mask. This video takes a close look at Vader's scenes in the original trilogy, which are fewer and shorter than we remember. -via Laughing Squid
The little triangle you see above is the result of the collision of New York City's street grid with New York City's attitude. And it happened over a hundred years ago. But the story begins a lot earlier, when Manhattan Island was a new and popular place to settle, long before city planners tried to make sense of the city.
While most of New York City’s streets are laid out in a neatly ordered grid, Lower Manhattan—the oldest part of the city—is, cartographically speaking, kind of a mess. That’s because the city didn’t implement an official master plan for the layout of new streets until 1811, more than a century after the Dutch established a settlement at the southern tip of the island. The earliest-built parts of the city still maintain some of the quirks of a pre-plan settlement where property owners built their own streets with nearly no official oversight, resulting in a haphazard array of oddly shaped, variably sized blocks and narrow, crooked streets.
The bit of property now known as Hess’s triangle is located in this latter part of Manhattan, where the street grid is still a little wonky. It was even more so in the 1910s, when the city decided it needed to extend Seventh Avenue, a wide thoroughfare that was first built as part of that landmark 1811 master plan. In order to make room for traffic and for the construction of a new subway line, the city condemned an 11-block stretch of the West Village, demolishing hundreds of buildings starting in 1913. The extension was finished in 1916.
David Hess owned one of those buildings that was condemned, and he didn't like the idea one bit. Read the story of the Hess Triangle at Mental Floss, and see an explanation of the maps that led to it in this Twitter thread.
(Image credit: Chris Hamby)
Crowds of people were celebrating Anzac Day in Australia on April 25, 1935, including quite a few who visited Coogee Aquarium south of Sydney. Their festive mood was ruined by a shark with an upset tummy.
There was a 14-foot tiger shark on display that had been caught the week before. The shark acted like it was in distress and was thrashing about. Then, in front of horrified onlookers, it threw up a human arm.
In an effort to identify the arm’s poor owner, police published pictures and a description of the dismembered appendage in newspapers throughout the region. The left arm had a tattoo of two boxers in a fighting stance, there was also a rope tied around the wrist.
The arm was identified by its tattoos and fingerprints as belonging to a former boxer named James ‘Jim’ Smith. The grisly public display by the shark would lead one to think that the fish had killed and eaten the man, but that wasn't the case at all. The shark was gutted and searched, and no other human remains were found. Furthermore, police determined the arm had been severed with a knife. The poor shark had not committed murder, but only presented evidence of one. Read the story of the shark arm murder investigation at Strange Remains. -via Strange Company
Further reading reveals that the tiger shark didn't even eat the arm. The tiger shark had eaten a smaller shark that had eaten the arm.
(Image credit: Albert kok)
Artist Charlie Wren shared the concept art for Mjolnir, Thor's mighty hammer, as it was developed for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Oh, these weren't the only ideas, but they are the many that were approved by Marvel as the process went along. Any of them would have been fine by me, but after three Thor movies and four Avengers movies, it would be hard to accept anything but the final Mjolnir. Click on the pictures to see them in full. -via io9
Pro surfer Koa Smith caught a wave off Namibia's Skeleton Bay that took him for a nearly a mile! He surfed a single wave for a distance of 1.5 kilometers for two minutes that took him through eight barrels. It was captured on video, both from a drone and from Smith's own GoPro POV. Both videos are mesmerizing.
My whole day surfing I try to InVision that one dream wave that I want to experience. I picture it clearly. What it will look like. How it will feel. The emotions pouring out of me when the wave is complete. Then this happen :)
-via Laughing Squid
In which Jhall and Andrew Bridgman at Dorkly explain why Darth gave up his entire reason for turning to the dark side. -via Geeks Are Sexy
We are coming to the end of another Shark Week, and once again we must confront the difference between real shark research and the exciting movies in which they play the villain. Jill McAndrew of the Long Island Aquarium knows sharks, and is happy to burst your bubble about the biggest shark films. -via Buzzfeed
Antique piano keys, scrimshaw, and those weird hooks that grandpa hangs his hat on... they are all made from the solid parts of animals. But what's the difference between ivory, bone, antler, and horn, and what makes some more valuable than others? Ivory, which is dental material from elephants, whales, and walruses, may be valuable because of scarcity due to legal restrictions, but there are other reasons it was once so popular.
Ivory is also valued and appreciated for its structural properties. The layers of dentine within the tusk form a wavy, interlacing pattern (or 'grain'). This offers different surface effects and also gives ivory its strength, making it suitable for long-lasting, detailed carving. An oily substance within the pattern's cavities helps reduce brittleness and give a smooth finish that can be enhanced with polishing to reveal a range of colours from bright white through to shades of yellow-brown. Indian elephant ivory is generally whiter and softer than African ivory. When soaked in warm water ivory expands very slightly making it easier to carve. In China master craftsmen may have used this process to ease the manufacture of the multi-layered 'puzzle' balls, where each ball is a detached layer carved within another, and which together represent principals of Chinese philosophy. The Northwest Coast Style drumstick-head is an excellent example of how the individual characteristics of one piece of ivory have been used to show off the skills and traditions of the Haida people of North America.
Bone, antler, and horn have their own unique properties, and are available from a larger number of species. Read more about these various materials at the Pitt River Museum. -via TYWKIWDBI
(Image credit: Victor H. Billings)
Star Wars: Episode IX, expected in December of 2019, will complete the nine-movie Skywalker saga. Filming is set to begin, so there's really no way to keep the working cast a secret. Therefore, Disney has announced who will be returning to work on the film, who will not, and who has been hired for new roles. That announcement contains spoilers, although you will probably encounter those same spoilers again and again in the next year-and-a-half. The biggest one, or maybe second biggest, is:
Show Quote
Read what we know so far at Star Wars. -via Digg
Yeah, America is big, so we developed four lane roads to get us from town to town faster. Then four-lane roads were extended into town to alleviate traffic. But do we really need four-lane roads in a city? City streets are safer with traffic going slower. To achieve that, some cities are putting their streets on a diet, making them smaller and slower. So far, that's making street use easier for pedestrians and cyclists, while still not causing worse traffic for drivers -in most places. Your mileage may vary, no pun intended. -via Laughing Squid
Source: WalletHub
This map shows which cities are the "most educated," meaning the percentage of educated adults combined with the measured quality of schools. And by "cities," they mean the 150 largest metropolitan statistical areas, which often combines nearby cities and their suburbs. The top five are no surprise.
1. Ann Arbor, MI
2. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
3. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
4. Durham-Chapel Hill, NC
5. San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA
What can you do with this information? It depends on what you want. If you are competing for a job, you may want to avoid an area with so many highly educated rivals, but if you want to cultivate a stimulating circle of friends, make a beeline for those places. You know what they say, "If you are the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room." You can see the complete ranked list and some explanation of the methodology at WalletHub. -via Thrillist
An apartment in San Francisco seems odder the more you look at it. It has three levels, and you enter into the apartment through the kitchen on the lowest level. To get through the kitchen, you need to avoid the diagonal building brace. Why is that in the middle of the kitchen? Was this a required addition for earthquake reinforcement, or a leftover from the original construction? The building is a conversion, but there's no reason to leave it out in the open like that. Why couldn't they have put a counter or a partial wall over the obstruction? That would have been as easy as customizing the cabinets around it. Imagine trying to evacuate the building in a hurry at night.
This is listed as a two-bedroom loft, but looking at the floor plan, I do not see a second bedroom. The top floor has a "sitting room" which could be used as a bedroom, but the occupant would have to go down two flights of stairs to reach the main bathroom, or else walk through the master bedroom on the floor below. There's an elevator listed, but I don't see it.
The real kicker is that this apartment recently sold for a little over a million dollars. You can explore the listing at Movoto. -via Boing Boing
The annual St. Teresa's Charity Pantomime Horse Race pits teams of humans dressed as four-legged beasts against each other in a mercifully short race.
The St. Teresa’s Charity Pantomime Horse Race at the UK’s Catterick Racecourse raises funds for St. Teresa’s Hospice in Darlington. In its third annual running, the race welcomed four entrants: Heavy Brigade in the cow suit, racing for the Royal Dragoon Guards; Unicorn on the Cob in the unicorn suit, racing for marketing agency Purple Creative; #Professionals in the horse suit, a last-minute entry from Racing UK; and Wonky Donkey, racing for Lookers Volkswagen.
Spectators will be forgiven for thinking that alcohol may have been involved. -via Metafilter
What makes a great special effects movie? Showing us things that aren't seen in real life, and making us believe them. Whether a movie is good at that depends on a lot of things, not the least of which is audience expectations. Seeing two copies of one actor in a frame isn't a big deal these days, but 100 years ago, it was a spectacular use of available technology. The emergence of the Imperial cruiser at the beginning of Star Wars was very impressive in 1977 because of the clever staging of the shot, but it only worked the first time you saw it. Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animation was amazing in its time, as was CGI in the '90s, before we got used to it. But special effects keep getting better. Just ask anyone who saw the 1958 movie The Fly (which was a great story) and then saw the 1986 version.
Most of the time, you’re lucky to get one good monster design out of a monster movie. The Fly, David Cronenberg’s remake of the ’50s sci-fi schlock programmer, offers half a dozen: all stages of horrific deterioration experienced by scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) after he accidentally splices his DNA with that of a housefly. Chris Walas’ Oscar-winning makeup work—all deformed flesh and detaching body parts—is unforgettably repulsive. But even as The Fly makes very literal the real-life horror of looking in the mirror and not recognizing what you see, the effects keep Goldblum himself recognizable even as he becomes more insect than man. In other words, he’s still able to act under all those prosthetics, which makes this the rare “special effects movie” that will drop your jaw and break your heart. [A.A. Dowd]
This progression of movie special effects over time is the reason why the AV Club put their top 50 picks for special effects movies in chronological order instead of ranking them. Reading through them is a lesson in film history that you're sure to enjoy.
