The English language has a multitude of terms for insanity, although few of them are diagnostic terms for mental illness. Slang terms for "crazy" are used when a person has lost control or just doesn't make sense to those around him. These terms aren't confined to people, since a wild party or an unconventional building or a nonsensical movie can all be "bananas." But bananas, crackers, and nuts are the only food terms that came to mean crazy. Let's learn how that happened.  

The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English traces the idea of bananas relating to craziness only back to the late 1910s; The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English roughly agrees, with its own etymology going back to 1924. These sources claim that the crazy banana meaning comes from the phrase “banana oil,” which, in flapper slang, meant “nonsense.”

Typically, the substance referred to as banana oil is amyl acetate, which is, insanely, used as both a paint solvent and as a flavoring. (It smells strongly, but not precisely, of bananas, which is partly why banana-flavored candies are distinct but not really banana-flavored.) Why did flappers like to use the phrase “banana oil” to mean “nonsense”? Possibly it’s related to “snake oil,” but I suspect it’s also because the word “banana,” coming from a language that has not given English very many words, sounds unusual to the ears of English speakers.

"Banana oil" fell out of use, but came back later, oil free. And what about nuts and crackers? Both terms mean things other than food, which makes their evolution into slang all the more difficult to trace. You can read the history of the food terms used for craziness at Atlas Obscura.

Nathan Pyle has given us some great comics over the years. Today, he posted a gallery of the "58 funniest drawings I have drawn as a drawer." It wasn't easy to select just a few from the 58 comics, so you'll want to go see the rest of them.

You can follow Pyle's work at Facebook and on Instagram.

-via reddit

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Two young cats made their way across a door frame in Russia in opposite directions, so they of course ran into each other. There's no room to turn around, so what can they do? Oh yeah, they could just jump to the floor, but that would be admitting defeat. The goats that got stuck on a ledge the other day could learn a thing or two from these kittens. -via Boing Boing

The trick to playing an airport arrival prank is to be subtle enough for plausibility. Redditor ron1337 felt the need to explain that his family doesn't normally dress like this. Yet if any of these people were seen individually, one would assume that's their everyday appearance. Commenters who are familiar with Edmonton assured us that they wouldn't stand out all that much. One would also assume that the sign remained folded until the plane disembarked. His daughter Cindy had only been gone for three months, and found her welcome quite humorous. She's the one holding the dog.

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Jeff Goldblum has a particular talent for making the characters he portrays sound like real people. Scripts don't often contain stammers, fillers, or wordless vocal responses, but real life communication is full of them. While these strange vocalizations are perfectly normal in their place, and do a lot to lend credence to a character, they are hilarious compiled together with no context. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Unless you live near a commercial harbor or work in the industry, you might not know the ins and outs of the shipping business. And that's most of us. But tugboat operators see giant container ships up close and personal. They not only know how to haul those big ships around, they know how to read their secret language.

Tugboat crews routinely encounter what few of us will ever see. They easily read a vessel’s size, shape, function, and features, while deciphering at a glance the mysterious numbers, letters, and symbols on a ship’s hull. To non-mariners, the markings look like hieroglyphs. For those in the know, they speak volumes about a particular ship and also about the shipping industry.

The numbers, marks, and even the color scheme of a ship can tell strangers the ship's size, depth, underwater shape, origin, and how much of its capacity is loaded. There are special marks to help tugboat operators, maintenance crews, and inspectors do their work. If you've ever wondered what all that stuff on the outside of a ship means, you'll find an explanation at Hakai magazine. -via TYWKIWDBI

(Image credit: David Webster Smith)

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Don't blame the weatherman for the weather. Garry Frank is the meteorologist at WXMI in Grand Rapids, Michigan. That's a thankless job, as Michigan can be pretty cold. On Tuesday, he'd had enough of it. Hey, he only reports the weather forecast, he doesn't cause it. If you shoot the messenger over bad weather, you'll end up with no forecast at all. The real kicker is that Tuesday's forecast was for somewhat warmer temperatures and his co-workers still complained!  -via Digg

We've featured rainbow grilled cheese before on Neatorama back in 2016 - that time it was in Hong Kong. It seems that the culinary creation has now hit the States. Here's one by Ice Cream Garden LA.

Image: Monterey Bay Aquarium

"In the past, penguins and sea otters have periodically received fan mail," said Ken Peterson, the communications director of Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California, "but this very could well be the first fish fan letter."

Let's call it fin mail then! (I love how it's addressed as "Attn: Fish")

We've featured many wonderful machines by Festo before on Neatorama (including this robotic bird), but the robotics and technology company may just have created its most fantastic flying robot yet.

Meet the BionicFlyingFox, an ultra-lightweight flying robot that can fly semi-autonomously with the beats of its flying membranes.

Mr. E.T. - 80s Retro Vintage Mash-Up by Captain RibMan

I pity the fool who doesn't think E.T. dressed up as Mr. T is the toughest and gnarliest mashup in nerd history- because that fool's sense of humor is broken! Imagine the look on Elliot and Gertie's face when they see E.T. strolling in, his long neck covered in gold chains and his turtle-y head covered with a mohawk, they would flip their wigs! Of course, once they find out E.T. is now an alien enforcer who has come to collect the twenty bucks Elliot owes Billy the bully the costume won't seem so funny after all...

Get dressed up for geeky fun with this Mr. E.T.- 80s Retro Vintage Mash-Up t-shirt by Captain RibMan, and you'll make people smile wherever you go!

Visit Captain RibMan's Facebook fan page, official website and Twitter, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more out of this world designs:

View more designs by Captain RibMan | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

image: @peliman

Love Shiba Inu and coffee? Take a look at these wonderful Shiba latte art by Mr. R Drinks in Taipei, Taiwan. The mini Shiba Inu head is actually marshmallow, which floats in the drink and watch you with its serene smile as you slurp your coffee.

The Pacific and Indian oceans are dangerous places, so the stonefish is always ready for a fight. It's even packing a switchblade ... in its face.

W. Leo Smith was dissecting a stonefish that was once his own pet, when discovered a switchblade-like device in the cheeks of the fish. Fifteen years later, he and his colleagues at The University of Kansas published the research paper that explained the mechanism behind the "lachrymal saber" of stonefish.

To help the stonefishes deploy the switchblade, an unusually large number of muscles and ligaments attach to bones comprising the lachrymal saber system compared with species outside the stonefish family, according to the researchers.

“There can’t be any other reason for those muscles and ligaments except to control this mechanism,” said the KU researcher.

Read the rest of the story over at KU News (Image: William Leo Smith/The University of Kansas)

After her mother died two years ago, 11-year-old Isabella Pieri went to school with messy and tangled hair. Her father tried to help, but styling a girls' hair was well outside his area of expertise.

Enter Isabella's bus driver, Tracy Dean.

Every morning, Dean takes the time to brush and braid Isabella's hair before she drives the girl to school.

Zoe Weiner of TODAY has the story:

After more than a year of riding on Dean’s bus, Isabella noticed that the driver had been helping a fellow classmate style her braids before school every morning. She eventually approached Dean and asked if she could have help with her hair, too. “Isabella just said, ‘Hey, will you do mine if I bring a brush?'" Dean recalled. "And I was just thinking to myself, 'Oh thank you, Lord.'"

(Image: Tracy Dean)

Bad news, night owls! Turns out that we're going to die sooner than those annoying morning people.

A new study by researchers at the University of Surrey and Northwestern University found that people who liked to stay up late were more likely to die within the six and a half year-long study period than those who were early risers.

"Night owls trying to live in a morning lark world may have health consequences for their bodies," Dr. Kristen Knutson of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine to The Telegraph. "It could be that people who are up late have an internal biological clock that doesn't match their external environment."

Sarah Knapton of The Telegraph has the full story.

You know what this means: time to adapt and change our sleeping habits into mid-afternoon narwhals (Image: Hoot! Night Owl by ivejustquitsmoking)