Girl Scout cookies are not made from real Girl Scouts, but the first cookies they sold were made by real Girl Scouts. The sole recipe, published in 1922, was for sugar cookies, simple and fairly cheap.   

But simplicity was likely necessary, as the scouts baked the cookies themselves. According to the Girl Scouts, this recipe was distributed to 2,000 scouts in the Chicago area who likely needed something quick, simple, and inexpensive to sell. The ingredients for a batch of six to seven dozen cookies clocked in at 26 to 36 cents, which in today’s money is less than six dollars. The scouts could sell a dozen cookies for about the same amount, making a tidy profit.

Things changed over time, and the Girls Scouts eventually abandoned the baking part to focus on the business part of cookie sales. Read the story of the first girl scout cookies at Atlas Obscura.

SpaceX launched the most powerful rocket on earth from Cape Canaveral today. The Falcon Heavy contains 27 engines producing five million pounds of thrust at liftoff. The launch was conducted from launchpad LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center, which SpaceX has leased from NASA, the same launchpad that Apollo 11 and the space shuttle used. The payload on this unmanned flight is Elon Musk's personal red Tesla car, which the rocket will deploy into an orbit around the sun -if everything goes as planned.    

(YouTube link)

The two side boosters returned to earth in a beautiful simultaneous landing. The third center booster did not land as planned on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

(YouTube link)

The Falcon Heavy mission has been years in coming, and the successful launch puts the private company SpaceX ahead in its plans for taking a manned mission to Mars. You can read more about the Falcon Heavy mission at The Verge. As of now, the rocket is in orbit. You can follow the rest of the mission in a livestream from SpaceX. 

Commercials for As Seen On TV products are often laughably bad, and the products themselves tend to be shoddily made overpriced junk that falls apart or flat out doesn't work as advertised.

But when the products work well they go from being Not Sold In Stores to As Seen In Lots of Stores, and we start to wonder how we ever lived without them.

The Ronco Food Dehydrator has been a product my family can't live without since we first got one in the 90s, and it makes great jerky, delicious dried fruit and homemade fruit leather!

And who wants to stand there chopping onions and peppers all day when you can use the Mueller Onion Chopper Pro and dice 'em up fast? It's not super durable, but it does make perfect dicing a breeze.

And speaking of not super durable but very useful- the Wonder Hanger works just as advertised, and really helps clear up your closet provided you have a strong rod and don't hang anything too heavy on the hangers.

See 29 As-Seen-On-TV Products That Are Actually Worth The Money here

Forever Young by Getsousa!

There has never been a bad boy quite like Bart, and even though decades have passed since we were first introduced to Bart he's still the baddest boy on the block- and we wouldn't have it any other way! The citizens of Springfield think their town would be better off without Bart Simpson rolling around causing trouble, but they have no idea how boring their town would be without the presence of El Barto!

Prove that Bart is your homeboy by wearing this Forever Young t-shirt by Getsousa!, it's the fun way to show the world you've been a Simpsons fan since way back!

Visit Getsousa!'s Facebook fan page, official website, Instagram and Twitter, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more retro-tastic designs:

View more designs by Getsousa! | More Cartoon 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!

How much fun could a 12-foot inflatable beach ball be? Sol Coastal sells one through Amazon, if you want to start saving up for summer fun. But reviewers let us know that it takes a long time to inflate unless you have a powerful air compressor. For his review of the product, Reid Hamlin told a story.

We took this ball to the beach and after close to 2 hours to pump it up, we pushed it around for about 10 fun filled minutes. That was when the wind picked it up and sent it huddling down the beach at about 40 knots. It destroyed everything in its path. Children screamed in terror at the giant inflatable monster that crushed their sand castles. Grown men were knocked down trying to save their families. The faster we chased it, the faster it rolled. It was like it was mocking us. Eventually, we had to stop running after it because its path of injury and destruction was going to cost us a fortune in legal fees. Rumor has it that it can still be seen stalking innocent families on the Florida panhandle. We lost it in South Carolina, so there is something to be said about its durability.

So far, 2000 people have found this review helpful. -via reddit

Parents are always looking for some rest and relief from their busy and stressful lives, so they head out to happy hour after work or send the kids off for a night or two on the weekend so they can relax and decompress.

However, some parents can't handle the pressures of parental life without a little help from prescription drugs like Xanax, Ambien or Hydrocodone, but what they really need is to get high on life by taking some AphukenbrakE.

And once parents everywhere see this ad by The Dad they'll get hooked on that AphukenbrakE feeling too! (NSFW audio)

(YouTube Link)

-Via Laughing Squid

Artists, writers, content creators, everyone down the grocery store stock clerk and Mom making dinner, we all put our hearts and souls into what we do, because it's what we do. A little appreciation goes a long way, even when it's very little appreciation. We will take what we can get, so we should spread that appreciation around at every opportunity. It means a lot to those on the receiving end. This is the latest comic from Sarah Andersen at Sarah's Scribbles.

(Image Link)

The sword in the stone lies at the center of the King Arthur story, serving as both the instrument of fate that allowed him to assume the throne and his introduction to the supernatural world.

But King Arthur's sword in the stone is fiction inspired by a real life, and somewhat more boring, sword embedded in stone that was once wielded by a knight who saw the light too- St. Galgano Guidotti in the 12th century.

Guidotti was an arrogant and violent knight who did bad deeds until he started having holy visions:

The affluent nobleman is said to have had visions of the Archangel Michael, the warrior saint. One of these visions supposedly led him to the Twelve Apostles on the hill of what is now known as Rotonda di Montesiepi.

It is here that Michael suggested that Guidotti should give up his life of wealth and dedicate his existence to God instead. Guidotti snickered at the Archangel’s request and stated that the task would be as difficult as splitting a stone. To prove his point, the knight thrust his sword into a rock and, to his surprise, cut through it like butter.

Sometime after, while on horseback, he wandered to a hilltop much like the one he had seen in this dream. He was so struck that by the sight that he decided to plant a cross. However, without a cross or any wood handy, he unsheathed his sword plunged it into a stone, where it has remained ever since.

Guidotti's sword, and the stone it's still embedded within, resides in Montesiepi Chapel in Siena, Italy, which was built to house the relic after Pope Lucius III declared Guidotti a saint in 1185, just one year after his death.

Read The Legend Of The Real Sword In The Stone And The Person It Actually Belonged To here

The continuation of the Star Wars saga in the Disney era went through a lot of changes from concept to screen. JJ Abrams revealed his original storyboards for The Force Awakens, which had a different opening scene. No, it wasn't Luke's hand falling through space, but a more expository look at Jakku.

(YouTube link)

The Mary Sue explains.

Animator Tim Gray made the above video, based on J.J. Abrams’ own unused storyboards, which mirrors the opening of A New Hope to satisfying effect. The familiar scene has smaller ships being tailed by a looming Star Destroyer, but then it flips the script: They’re actually tugging the decrepit ship along to its final resting place on Jakku, where scavengers like Rey will inevitably harvest it for parts.

They did the right thing in going with a real battle to open the film. As the prequels taught us, action always trumps explanation.

As of yesterday, the Berlin Wall has been down longer than it stood. The lines were laid down on August 13, 1961, to separate West Berlin (which was part of free West Germany) from East Berlin and the surrounding Eastern Bloc country. The official fall of the wall occurred 28 years later, on November 9, 1989. The wall was a hated symbol of separation and repression, and was demolished by both citizens and officials of unified Germany until the erstwhile border is barely distinguishable.  

Except one small part. Christian Bormann, then a teenager, discovered a part of the original 1961 wall that remained in 1999 in the Pankow neighborhood in northern Berlin. He kept the find to himself for 18 years because he knew if the section was discovered, it would be destroyed. Now he hopes that enough time has passed that the section will be preserved as a reminder and a cautionary tale.

Bormann initially faced scrutiny by authorities and the media over his claim that the 260-foot stretch of the wall — publicized on his blog in mid-January — was once part of the first Berlin Wall, hastily erected in 1961 after East Germans were barred from leaving their country. When East Germany later decided to make the barrier more permanent, it expanded provisional brick walls into massive concrete barriers with watchtowers and mines. Many of the initial parts of the wall were destroyed in the process, but one appears to have survived in Pankow.

Bormann's discovery is now drawing tourists and locals alike, even though the area has since been fenced off for preservation work.

When the first border wall was replaced by more substantial barriers, a section of the enclosed area was corner-cut, which is why this portion of the original wall was left to stand, forgotten in the woods. You can read a translation of Bormann's post here. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Guido Kunze)

Mario always looked cuter and more approachable when he was wearing an animal costume, so casting a cat to play Mario in a live action Super Mario Bros. short is a brilliant idea.

Then they cast a cat as the damsel in distress Princess Peach, which was a similarly perfect casting job, so why is Luigi played by a human in this MrTV Cow production?

Because somebody needed to wrangle the cats! All kidding aside SUPER MARIO CAT BROS. is seriously cute and very fun to watch, so hopefully it's the first in a new series!

(YouTube Link)

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

The 1974 film Benji is about a cute stray dog who ends up a hero when he foils a kidnapping plot. A wholesome film about a nondescript dog didn't seem cool in 1974, and producer/writer/director Joe Camp couldn't get any studio interested. But the film was a hit, and spawned four sequels. Now Benji is a beloved childhood memory for Gen X. Let's take a look behind the scenes of Benji.

4. Alfred Hitchcock liked this movie.

It’s hard to imagine Hitchcock sitting down to watch a film about a dog playing hero when you look at all the films he was responsible for and their very different content.

3. Higgins, the dog that played Benji, was buried with his trainer.

More accurately, his ashes were interred within an urn and buried with his trainer. Benji was Higgins’ last movie.

Read more about Benji at TVOM.

You can wear your heart on your sleeve, and you can wear your fandom on your feet! While you sit at your desk in everyday office attire, under that desk you have a piece of Doctor Who or a comic book superhero with you. And if someone notices your cool shoes at lunch, you'll find a kindred spirit. There's a pair of geeky shoes for every fantasy world, and you might find yours in this list: Wonder Woman, Doctor Who, Firefly, Marvel Comics, Mario, The Hobbit, R2D2, Harry Potter, dinosaurs, and Supernatural. See them all at Oddee. If you want a pair for some pop culture universe not listed, check out the linked vendors and you'll probably find it.

(Image credit: OrionsOriginals)

The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!

Research About Questions That Might Strike You As Being Strange
compiled by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Improbable Research staff

A Paper That Questions Its Existence
“Would This Paper Exist If I Hadn’t Written It?” Samuel Lebens, Philosophical Studies, vol. 172, no. 11, 2015, pp. 3059-3080. The author, at Rutgers University, writes:

This paper wants to know whether it would exist, or could exist, in worlds in which I didn’t write it. Before we can answer this question, we first of all have to inquire as to what, exactly, this paper is.... I shall argue that the term ‘this paper’ is actually infected with ambiguity. Does this paper need me? It depends upon what you mean by ‘this paper’.

Haddock: Do I Get Better Looking Each Day?

Fresh prince of all sayans by Pescapin

This is a story all about how Vegeta's life got flip turned upside down, so just sit still for a moment if you can and I'll tell you all about how Vegeta became the fresh prince of all Saiyans. Vegeta was a brat who liked to get in fights, so his mom said "that's it!" and locked him up tight. Then one day he broke out and hit the street, and who did Vegeta happen to meet? Goku, that's who, the coolest guy in school and the one who made Vegeta look like a total fool. Vegeta hated Goku passionately, so he thought to himself "time to show him the real me..." And just like that Vegeta flipped his wig, energy crackling in the air as Vegeta grew real big, and as he let his anger rise Goku saw that little twerp grow to super Saiyan size!

Add some silly anime aweseomeness to your geeky wardrobe with this Fresh Prince Of All Saiyans t-shirt by Pescapin, it's the mighty cool way to declare your love of DBZ and 90s TV shows at the same time!

Visit Pescapin's Facebook fan page, official website and Instagram, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more retro-tastic designs:

View more designs by Pescapin | 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!