The Bosphorus, also known as the Strait of Istanbul, is a waterway that cuts through Istanbul, Turkey, connects the the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, and separates Europe from Asia. That's a lot to ask of a small strait. It forms a historically important trade route for international navigation. But it's not a river. At least, not all of it is. The water flows both north and south, depending on the depth.

...in modern times, local boatmen know that the surface current flows south into the Sea of Marmara and thence into the Aegean/Mediterranean.  If they want to take a boat north, they can lower a bucket of rocks on a long rope to the bottom, where the northward current of seawater is located; it will carry the bucket north and thus tow their boat on the surface.

There's a scientific explanation at Wikipedia. Read how a horrific event in history took advantage of this weird flow at TYWKIWDBI.

(Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory)

Due to the timing of their births, these twin siblings were born in completely different years. Alfredo Antonio Trujillo entered the world first at 11:45 PM at the Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, California on New Year's Eve. Fifteen minutes later and seconds after midnight, his sister, Aylin Yolanda Trujillo, emerged. As a result, they have not only different birthdays, but different birth years.

A press release from the hospital says that the odds of twins being born in separate years is about 1 in 2 million births.

The twins are healthy and strong. The hospital expects for them to go home soon with their parents to meet their three older siblings.

-via My Modern Met | Photo: Natividad

I've just discovered the wonderful (and occasionally obscene) Twitter account Threatening Music Notation. It's filled with pictures of strange slices of musical notation, such as instructions to consume cocaine, mooing like a cow, slapping a fish, and producing fart-like sounds.

What's going on in the above selection? Twitter user @ONEiROSEB says that it's taken from the works of Victor Borge, a Danish-American musical comedian.

Borge was famous for his physical comedy while playing the piano on stage. In this recording, he plays Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody #2 with the help of Şahan Arzruni, classical pianist. At the 2:00 mark, Borge stands up, sits on the keyboard, then sits back down to continue playing with his fingers.

-via Rebecca Baumann

🍔 Who needs a gym? In this McDonald's restaurant in China, you can exercise and eat a Big Mac at the same time.

🚽 Watch this unreleased cold open scene from The Office featuring a toilet mishap by Michael Scott (you and I would say it's toilet humor but Michael called it a "toilet tragedy").

🎬 120 years of cinema in 120 seconds: see how many scenes from these 75 iconic films you recognize.

🐍 One more reason not to move to Florida: pythons trying to hitch a ride in your car. Thank goodness that Mom was there to save the day.

🏛️ To instantly appear older (like by "thousands of years") and thus more established, colleges in the USA built buildings that look straight out of the Middle Ages. The style became known as collegiate gothic architecture.

More neat posts over at our new sites: Pictojam, Laughosaurus, Pop Culturista, Supa Fluffy and Homes & Hues.

The Madness Equation by indie artist glitchygorilla.

👕 For a limited time from the NeatoShop: Save up to 20% off all Funny T-shirts, Funny Sayings T-Shirts and Cute & Kawaii T-Shirts.

Sometimes you just want to delete your last search queries. Maybe it’s to avoid any weird or invasive questions or to save yourself from sheer embarrassment the next time you type into a Google search bar. For whatever reason you have for wanting to delete your Google search history, that’s none of our business. But here’s a way to delete your recent search history, courtesy of CNET: 

Step 1: Tap on your profile picture to access your menu.

Step 2: Click Delete last 15 minutes.

Image credit: Firmbee.com

Don’t underestimate its size! This salt grain-sized camera can snap sharp, full-color images. Created by researchers at Princeton and the University of Washington, this camera is capable of capturing images measuring 720 x 720 pixels in full color, wavelengths between 400 and 700 nanometers in natural light with a spatial resolution of 214 line pairs per millimeter. According to the researchers, these images are on par with those captured with a conventional camera lens that’s way bigger than their new sensor. 

Image credit: Princeton University 

Did you know that having a morning routine can lead to a night of better sleep? According to neurologist W. Chris Winter, MD, certain components of a routine, such as light, temperature, food, schedule, and social interaction, can influence and regulate our circadian rhythm. This rhythm is the 24-hour body clock that prompts us to sleep at night and be awake during the day. Learn more about regulating your body clock here! 

Image credit: bruce mars

This streamer spent two weeks building a giant Oreo in the hit sandbox video game Minecraft. The player, NomALlama built the structure with all the constraints of a survival run. He used up 46,727 blocks of concrete, and a lot of candles (to keep the mobs from spawning). As for his next masterpiece, the streamer explains that he is never doing that to himself again. 

Image via PCGamesN 

The song "Creep" by Radiohead is a classic, but as far as I know, it's never been done honky-tonk style. The YouTuber we know and love, There I Ruined It (previously at Neatorama), has fixed that with a performance by Tommy Yorke and the Radiohead Boys. While the cognitive dissonance might make you laugh, the music is actually quite good. And the best part is the video editing. You may or may not recognize the background singers, but the lip-synching is astonishing; it must have been a lot of work. Don't miss special appearance by Conway Twitty, Loretta Lyn, Buck Owens, Dolly Parton, and some stars that don't sing. Go ahead and listen to it, the F-bomb is censored. -via reddit

Most of the industrial spills we hear about are dangerous because of traffic disruptions or the toxic nature of what was spilled. While floods are dangerous, industrial accidents rarely have enough liquid to drown anyone. But the London beer flood of 1814 not only drowned people, the biggest danger was the sheer explosiveness of the brewery's failure.

The Horse Shoe Brewery was one of London's biggest. It participated in a game of one-upmanship to see who could boast the largest beer fermentation vats. These ever-bigger vats were made of wood held together by iron hoops. The Horse Shoe Brewery's biggest vat held 18,000 barrels of beer. When it suddenly failed on October 17, the force was great enough to wreck the vats beside it. Combined, they sent 323,000 imperial gallons of beer surging, with enough force to break through the brewery's brick wall and into the neighborhood. Eight women and children were killed by the ghastly accident. Read an account of the beer flood at Amusing Planet.

CS Lewis describes his new book to JRR Tolkien pic.twitter.com/agaxO9TBqW

— Eleanor Morton (@EleanorMorton) December 17, 2021

Comedian Eleanor Morton has a lot to say about the writing quality of The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis.

To be fair, this matchup is drastically uneven. J.R.R. Tolkein was so committed to the task for his novels that he invented languages and composed lengthy histories to provide a narrative backdrop for The Lord of the Rings. Lewis grabbed a scattering mythological and folkloric elements like was he wandering through a narrative version of the Golden Corral while still tipsy from a late night meeting of the Inklings.

In his defense, Lewis was attempting to compose an allegory akin to John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress rather than an epic fantasy series like The Lord of the Rings. These are very different writing tasks.

Content warning: foul language.

Some cultures tend to celebrate military victories, weddings, holidays, sports victories, and/or random events by firing guns into the air. This includes the United States. These events can be extremely dangerous just because firearms are present, and even more so when the participants are already inebriated, but when someone is just firing towards the sky, what's the harm? As physicists will tell you, what goes up must comes down, even though they weren't all that sure ablout it when firarms were first developed. Those bullets will have to come down somewhere, and it's almost impossible to determine where that will be ahead of time. Debunked explains the physics of shooting into the air and the consequences of falling bullets. The ad in the middle is about 1:15 long, and can be fast-forwarded.  -via Digg

🥫 This is what an American food section looks like in a grocery store in Ireland. Well, to be fair, the Irish food section at my local grocery store is jus that box of Lucky Charms.

🤣 2022 got you down already? If you need a laugh, check out the Best News Bloopers of 2021.

🎬 These completely made-up Star Trek episodes are better than the real episodes!

📷 Best selfie ever: Man takes selfie with a snowy owl.

🌎 Tired of the view outside your window? Here's how to make a fake window with LED screen to display live views from around the world.

Photo: u/yozzeralloy

🐇 Follow the White Rabbit and take the red pill!

From the NeatoShop: Save up to 20% off all 😂 Funny T-Shirts and Cute & Kawaii T-Shirts

More neat stories from our new sites: Pictojam, Laughosaurus, Pop Culturista, Supa Fluffy and Homes & Hues. Please check 'em out!

You might have noticed that there are fewer diet sodas in stores. This is not a supply chain issue (at least not in most places) but a production decision. While manufacturers are making and selling less diet soda, they are producing more "zero sugar" sodas. What's the difference? Mainly the words.

The word "diet" technically only means what one consumes, but consumers are used to "diet" meaning fewer calories so that you can lose weight. It has a connotation of a poor self-image and a regimen of deprivation. Who wants that? Younger consumers (i.e. Millennials) prefer to "eat healthier" instead of going on a diet. Less sugar is a draw for them, even if the same artificial sweeteners are used.

So is there a difference between "diet" sodas and "zero sugar" sodas? The ingredients may vary slightly, and some people consider zero sugar brands to more closely resemble the original sugary soda. The actual difference between Diet Coke and Coke Zero is explained here. Read about the shift in consumer preferences and the labels that cater to them at All Recipes. -via Digg

(Image credit: Ben Schumin)

Modern hospitals are designed to use the latest technology and systems for providing top-notch health care efficiently to as many people as possible. In the US, those systems assume short stays and unlimited resources. Those assumptions do not always translate well to other parts of the world. The country of Rwanda has been busy growing and modernizing since the genocidal war of 1994, and in 2008 was ready to build new hospitals. However, existing hospitals built with Western architectural designs were not working, and a new approach was needed.

Many hospital patients in Rwanda battle tuberculosis and other highly communicable diseases. They were spreading antibiotic-resistant microbes to each other while waiting to be seen. Ventilation systems used in Western hospitals were prone to breaking down, repairs are hard to come by, and they were often disabled to save power costs. Another problem was isolated inpatients in closed rooms with few staff members and even fewer monitoring devices.

To tackle these problems, architect Michael Murphy looked back in time, to Florence Nightingale's writings on how hospitals should work. He incorporated many of her ideas into the design of a new hospital in Butaro, which is now being copied across the country. Read how hospital design can be adapted for local conditions at Fast Company.