Max Chappell was a chess whiz as a kid, but as he got older, it became boring. He didn't lose his love for the game, but it seemed too easy. So he looked into 3D chess -which has been tried in many different ways, but none were really enjoyable. So Chappell set out to design a way to do chess on multiple levels right: a game that was playable, logical, challenging but winnable, and stayed true to the original idea of chess. Still, none of his ideas worked. Then he saw the version of chess played on Star Trek. Not only was it pretty, it was not symmetrical, and that sent Chappell in a new direction with his game. The TV prop was there for looks, and not really playable. Others had tried to make the Star Trek version work as a game, with little success. Chappell, on the other hand, already knew the challenges of 3D chess and adapted the asymmetrical idea he'd seen on the show.   

Chappell hoped his version would maintain chess’s integrity, but coming up with a design was more complicated than you’d think. He spent approximately two decades hammering out the specifications of his invention. He was 22 when he jerry-rigged the first Hyperchess prototype from plywood and aluminum in his father’s garage, and 45 when he sold the first manufactured unit. In the years between, he did a lot of work on the game, redesigning the setup countless times, filing various patents, and trying in vain to remove bubbles from Formica laminate, which he planned to use to coat the transparent boards.

The next challenge was getting people to play it. Read the history of Hyperchess at Motherboard.

The Ark of the Covenant sure is purrrty, but anyone who has seen Raiders Of The Lost Ark (meaning everyone) knows you're not supposed to open that sucker up unless you're looking to get a really, really deep tan.

But if a maker of YouTube unboxing videos got their hands on the Ark I guarantee it would play out exactly like this Gone Into Rapture comic, to be quickly followed by two remixes and ten really dumb reaction videos. Kids these days, what with the YouTubing and the unboxing and the reacting, phooey!

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

Last year, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus went out of business after 147 years. It wasn't the last traveling circus, but the entertainment medium isn't what it once was. Still, you can relive those glory days with some genuine memorabilia of your own, whether it's a photograph, poster, or an actual circus prop. How about a motorcycle that rode on a tight wire? Or a giant pair of clown shoes? On Saturday (January 20), these items and more are going up for auction. Brian Hollifield of Freedom Auction Company talked to Collectors Weekly about the one-day sale.

With more than 700 items from around 30 different sources, it’s a remarkable collection, particularly since all of the props, costumes, and signage are original to actual circus and carnival performances. “They’ve come directly from traveling shows, seamstresses, and the closets of little old ladies’ houses,” Hollifield says. Most of the items are from the early 20th century, though the collection includes pieces dating to the late 1800s up to contemporary shows. Bidding will take place online and at the Showfolks Club in Sarasota, Florida, with a portion of the auction proceeds benefitting Showfolks of Sarasota, an organization for active and retired members of the circus world, and CATS (Circus and Traveling Shows) Retirement Project. “My wife and I cast the idea out to members of the Showfolks Club last year, and we had enough merchandise to put together a sale,” Hollifield explains. “It was such a success that people got on board without solicitation for this upcoming auction.”

You will be able to bid online. Read about the auction and see a gallery of the items for sale at Collectors Weekly.

Calavera Cafe by EmuChicken 

The dead don't really need to eat or drink anything to stay dead, but many of them still long to enjoy the things they did in life- which is why there's always a queue at the Calavera Cafe. You can never make coffee too hot or food too salty for a skeleton, so the Calavera Cafe isn't what you'd consider an upscale eatery. But the club and casino portion of the cafe cater to the upscale citizens of Rubacava, so if you're looking for a fancy fandango fiesta then you'd better hit the Calavera Cafe at night!

Add a symbol of gamer goodness to your geeky wardrobe with this Calavera Cafe t-shirt by EmuChicken, it's a tasteful addition that'll make your fellow Grim fans grin with delight!

Visit EmuChicken's NeatoShop for more inspirationally geeky designs:

View more designs by EmuChicken | 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!

Bathtubs aren't made to move because most bathers don't want to be slipping and sliding around the bathroom as they try to relax in the tub, but tubs do make surprisingly good vehicles once wheels are attached.

And if comedies and cartoons like Wacky Racers have taught us anything it's that a tub on wheels looks really funny as it rolls down the road, but as it turns out a flying bathtub looks even funnier as it soars through the sky!

(YouTube Link)

Inventors Philipp and Johannes Mickenbecker of The Real Life Guys felt they needed a new and more interesting form of transportation, because going grocery shopping in a car is so 2012.

So they created a 120-horsepower 'Flying Bathtub' drone and soared to the bakery in style, wowing all the non-bathers in the parking lot.

-Via DesignTAXI

ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) gives us a lesson in why we shouldn't be afraid of sharks, spiders, and snakes ...all those things that we joke are keeping us from visiting Australia. There are other things you can select as your top three fears, and the app will explain what your odds of dying from each one are.

So how much do cold, hard facts change that rush of adrenaline at the sight of, say, a spider? There have been no confirmed deaths from spider bites in Australia since 1979, while falling out of bed (a sub-category of falling deaths shown in the chart) killed 523 people between 2007 and 2016. Does knowing this mean you’ll now be more afraid of beds than spiders?

Probably not. Most people with irrational fears are well aware that the object of their terror isn’t likely to kill them. In fact, awareness that the fear is “out of proportion” to the actual threat or danger posed is one of the criteria for diagnosing phobias, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).

So if we know they’re irrational, why do we cling to these fears?

And that's where they lost me. Yeah, we'll learn about the odds of dying, but while dying may be the great equalizer, it's not the only reason to fear something. I know I won't die of wasp stings, but an experience last summer taught me that a dozen angry wasps can make you wish you were dead for several days. At any rate, the site is geared toward summer safety, because it's the middle of summer in Australia. Check your fears here. -via Digg

It must be difficult for keepers to weigh all the different animals that come to their zoo, especially the ones that don't take kindly to being cornered by humans.

But 3-week-old Winsol the aardvark is probably a pleasure compared to the really feisty critters found at the Cincinnati Zoo, even though he refuses to sit still long enough to get weighed.

(YouTube Link)

Winsol was born on the same day as the Winter Solstice, December 21, 2017, hence his strange name, and he hasn't left his mom's side since he was born, which is probably why he was so squirrely while he was being weighed.

A post shared by Cincinnati Zoo (@cincinnatizoo) on Dec 30, 2017 at 7:34am PST

-Via Laughing Squid

Professor Pussycat is happy explain gravity to you, and other types of physics that you use in everyday life (if you are a cat). That doesn't mean Professor Pussycat isn't a typical cat who thinks you're an idiot for even asking. Cats are like that. The "why" question doesn't even deserve an answer. It's because he's a cat. This comic is from Einstein's Mama. There may still be a way to stop cats from knocking things onto the floor, if you are so inclined. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Playing a prank on police officers is a good way to get arrested or worse, but when the prank is both harmless and hilarious the prankster behind the stunt may actually get props from the cops for pulling it off.

Simon Laprise is a cabinet maker and machinist from Montreal who likes to flex his artistic muscle in his spare time under the name L.S.D. Laprise Simon Design, and Simon sees every pile of snow as a possible sculpture:

“It was a beautiful day,” Laprise told VICE. “So I decided to do something out of the mountain of snow, to do a little joke to the snow guys, and have fun sculpting a car. It’s not my first one, just the first I do in the street on snow removal day.”

“To me snow is a great free material to sculpt anything out of.”

Simon sculpted a snow Delorean on a street where nobody is supposed to park in order to prank the cops, but as awesome as his sculpture is it was only able to fool the cops thanks to one small yet crucial detail- the windshield wiper.

The cops left a note under the wiper that said "You made our night" so I guess they're not too mad about Simon parking his snow Delorean in a no parking zone.

-Via VICE

The City of Los Angeles needs to hire a graphic designer. They need one badly, as evidenced by the ad they posted to Facebook, presumably by some third-grader who stepped in when the old designer was fired. If you think you can do better than this, apply at the city website. The pay starts pretty low for someone who wants to live in Los Angeles, but could offer a bright future of pay increases -and as government jobs tend to have, benefits. There are qualification as to experience and education, but no mention of having to be competent in MS Paint.  -via Boing Boing

Album cover photos help create a band's image by showing members of the band as super cool, super tough or super sexy, but if we could see what's happening outside the frame the facts wouldn't measure up to the fiction.

Russian photographer Igor Lipchanskiy has been busy destroying the carefully cultivated images of famous musicians by giving us a peek at what's happening outside the frame of the album cover, and it's a real mess.

Sometimes Igor's additions take the musician's sexiness down a notch or two, other times his comical off-screen antics leave the artists looking all wet, but when he added to John and Yoko's cover the story became straight scandalous!

See more from Here's What's Happening Outside The Frames Of Famous Music Album Covers here

The 1973 Martin Scorsese crime drama Mean Streets starred young actors Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro. This was not De Niro's first film, but it came before The Godfather II and Taxi Driver. Critics raved about Mean Streets and De Niro won a Best Supporting Actor award from the National Society of Film Critics. Mean Streets, from the era before home video, has been overlooked relative to Scorsese's later films, but is well worth a watch 45 years later. Here's a bit more about the film:   

10. This was the first film in which Robert De Niro and Martin Scorcese worked together.

Obviously they would go on to collaborate in a lot of films after this. In fact it’s hard not to think of one or the other when you see their name on a film.

9. The music in the film took up half the budget.

There wasn’t much of a budget to begin with and getting the permission to use the music took a heavy toll on the expenses.

Learn more about the making of Mean Streets at TVOM.

The Great Fire of London destroyed the vast majority of the city in 1666. Of course, the river, the streets, and the property lines still remained, and the residents started rebuilding. But most city maps were gone, so work began on a new map.

The Morgan Map of 1682 was the first to show the whole of the City of London after the fire. Produced by William Morgan and his dedicated team of Surveyors and Cartographers it took 6 years to produce, and displayed a brighter perspective on city life for a population still mourning their loved ones, possessions, and homes.

Now the Morgan Map has been overlaid with aerial views of the city at the London Time Machine. A "spyglass" shows the city as it is today. You can move the spyglass around, zoom in and out, and pull the spyglass off the map the see how much bigger London is today. However, if you go too far, you can lose the older map and have to reload. Check it out here. -via Metafilter

Randy Gardner and Bruce McAllister needed an idea for a science fair project. They had heard about a man who'd just set a world record for staying awake, and decided they would beat it. The idea was to study the effects of sleep deprivation, whatever they were. A coin toss decided that Gardner would be the subject of the experiment, which was done over the Christmas 1963 school break. The story made the newspapers and drew the attention of Stanford University sleep researcher Dr. William Dement, who came to Gardiner's home to observe. That was a relief to the 17-year-old's parents, who were worried about their son's health and safety.

As all this was happening, attention from the media began to gain momentum and for a brief time the boys’ experiment became the third most written-about story in the American national press – after the assassination of John F Kennedy and a visit by The Beatles.

However, it was portrayed as a prank, in the same bracket as “telephone booth stuffing and goldfish swallowing”, according to McAllister. The students were very serious about it and pushed through. Eventually after 264 hours of no sleep, the world record was broken and the experiment was over.

Randy Gardner's world record still stands, mainly because Guinness no longer accepts record attempts due to the possible danger. Gardner's physical and cognitive functioning were tested throughout the experiment, and afterward he was sent to a naval hospital to have his brain scanned and his recovery documented. Read what they found in the boy who stayed awake for 11 days at BBC Future. -via Digg

(Image credit: Flickr user Don Johnson)

World's Okayest Welder TShirt by Metal Relic

Welding is pretty easy to pick up but can be difficult to master, especially if you have to weld underwater, but with time and practice you too can become the World's Okayest Welder! Now this might not seem like much of a title, but when you consider how few people on the planet know how to weld at all, then you factor that by how many of them will actually go on to do anything with their welding skills, you'll soon find you're in a pretty exclusive club. And it's always good to know your limitations...

Show the world you're mid-grade but always moving up with this World's Okayest Welder t-shirt by Metal Relic, it's the kind of shirt you can get attached to!

Visit Metal Relic's Facebook fan page, official website and Twitter, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more super hot designs:

View more designs by Metal Relic | 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!