We know that quite a bit of what Americans see as Chinese food is not really Chinese. In China, you won't get fortune cookies at the end of a meal, and you won't find General Tso's Chicken on the menu, either. And now we learn that the ubiquitous folding takeout box we are so familiar with isn't Chinese, either!
The design was patented by an American named Frederick Weeks Wilcox in 1894. But the box wasn't for Chinese takeout at all. Its purpose was to carry oysters. The oyster pail was designed to be waterproof, easy to assemble, and able to allow steam to escape from the top. When it was invented, oysters were sold all over New York City, because they were plentiful and therefore affordable. The transition to carrying Chinese food in them happened due to changes in the oyster market and in the rise of Chinese restaurants occurring at the same time. Today, it's hard to think of anything else when we see that small folded paper box with its distinct bucket shape. Read how the Chinese takeout box came about at The Dieline. -via Kottke
I built a mechanical table with a hidden table top for puzzles. pic.twitter.com/BtZcuzw4EO
— Simone Giertz (@SimoneGiertz) September 29, 2021
Roboticist Simone Giertz loves to assemble jigsaw puzzles. And if you've spent lockdown time on one, then you know that they take up a lot of room. Giertz applied her genius to this problem and designed an elegant table that is perfect for jigsaw assembly. Yes, there might have been simpler solutions, but Giertz says, "...I was, like, no, let's make it more complicated and overengineered than that."
It was two gearing systems taken from bicycles. The first rolls the top on and off. The second lifts and lowers the surface. So in addition to protecting the puzzle from damage during the long assembly process, the table space remains useful for other purposes.
Here is a long, often funny video illustrating the demanding build process.
From our new Picto network of sites, here are some extra neat posts:
The 2021 Federal Duck Stamp Contest had a rule that the entries must have a hunting theme, but didn't specify who is hunting whom, so an artist drew this clever image: The Hunting Duck.
The Traveler Statue is a middle-aged guy asleep on his travel bag in Orlando International Airport that has been missing his flight since 1986.
Someone spared no expense to create the ultimate Jurassic Park game room.
This 8 bit music video is 9 years in the making and is a LEGO masterpiece!
What's more badass than a katana? How about a chainsaw katana!
Can't wait for Cybertruk? Meet its DIY plywood version, Plybertruck. Elon, eat your heart out.
As clever as you are, you're nowhere near as clever as this cat who cons people into buying it some food in the grocery store.
Scientists found 12 new species of jellyfish under the Antarctic Sea-Ice. Now that's cool!
Now something sweet: an edible cherry blossom tree made out of candy floss by the MilkCake Man.
These neat posts are brought to you by Pictojam (science & tech), SupaFluffy (cute animals!), Pop Culturista (everything pop-culture) and Homes & Hues (our home decor site). Please check 'em out!
J. Kenji López-Alt, a professional chef, has spent years studying the fine art of boiling eggs. Although he written about the subject in the past, López-Alt is updating us with the latest research.
And, yes, he means data-driven research. He's not speaking from just anecdotal experience.
López-Alt informs us that the age of the egg doesn't really matter, nor does adding vinegar or salt help make the eggs easier to peel. What does help is setting the eggs in the water after it's boiling to prevent the white from fusing to the shell. He also suggests using a needle to puncture the air pocket to relieve pressure inside the egg during cooking.
In this demonstration video, López-Alt demonstrates his perfect 9-minute eggs, which peel cleanly and without any difficulty.
-via Laughing Squid
From 1961 to 1989, the Berlin Wall separated the city into sectors controlled by Communist East Germany and by West Germany. West Berlin was completely surround by East Germany, but was considered part of West Germany as agreed when the country was partitioned by Allied forces after World War II. For decades, people risked their lives to cross into West Berlin. Many were shot, but others were successful. Of several clandestine tunnels dug underneath the wall, Tunnel 57 was the deepest, at 30 feet below ground. It led from a backyard outhouse to an abandoned bakery in West Berlin. In October of 1964, a daring escape took 57 East Berliners through the tunnel, but not without bloodshed.
Andreas Springer was one of the 57 people who escaped by crawling several hundred feet on all fours through the narrow tunnel. For decades he rarely spoke of how he got out of East Germany. Now 78 years old, Springer tells us about that fateful night in an article at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: N-Lange.de)
Personally, as a coffee lover, coffee stains on mugs are not really a big problem that I have. Maybe it’s because I use instant coffee, or because I’m blind and I haven’t noticed the stains yet. Either way, if coffee stains in mugs are a big problem for you, The Kitchn’s Ever Meister might be of help!
Meister tested five different methods for clearing said stains in order to find out the most effective way. Check the results of her experiment here!
Image credit: Sarah Crowley
Australia is sometimes called "British Texas". That's fair, but I'd like to propose that Florida is "Australian America," if for no other reason than due to the extremely dangerous wildlife.
Florida Man Roy Bonilla recorded video of fellow Florida Man Eugene Bozzi capturing an alligator by maneuvering it into a trash can. Toward the end, the gator fights with all his might to escape. Bozzi did not, though, kill and eat the gator (they taste like fish, by the way), but instead rolls the trash can down to a lake to set it free.
Engineers have developed a new approach to plastic recycling. The new method was presented in a study as a proof-of-concept. The approach is inspired by how nature naturally ‘recycles’ organic polymers into different proteins. These building blocks within organic polymers are broken down into parts and reassembled. Following this thought, researchers established the “nature-inspired circular-economy recycling", or NaCRe.
Through NaCRe, the scientists involved in the study were able to turn the proteins from silk into green fluorescent protein, which is a glowing tracer used in biomedical research. Learn more about this new method of recycling here!
Image credit: Marc Newberry/Unsplash
Dust is annoying. It’s everywhere, and no matter how many times you keep cleaning, it will always come back! So instead of just mindlessly cleaning up after this unwelcome visitor, maybe it’s time to understand what dust is and its origins. Macquarie University in Australia launched the DustSafe program to learn more by analyzing different dust samples sent by people from all around Australia. According to the program’s analysis, house dust can include elements like trace metals, radioactive elements, antibiotic-resistant genes, and microplastics. In addition, they estimated that one-third of trace element contaminants in household dust originate from sources inside the home.
Check out The Conversation’s full piece on house dust to learn more!
Image credit: Mika Baumeister/Unsplash
When you look at the sky during the night, how do you tell the exact location of the different celestial objects that you see? Similarly, how do scientists determine where the planets are located? A concept called spacetime was implemented by experts.
Spacetime is a way to describe an object’s location at a specific point in time. Combine the three-dimensional space with time and you have a total of four coordinates. Physicist Mike Evans further explains (and lowkey complains about it) here!
Image credit: BBC
The Liberal was a British journal which published between 2004 and 2012. For one of its earliest issues, the editors invited a contribution by Michael Finnissey, a British musical composer and pianist. The music blog 5:4 reports that the subject of that issue was space exploration. So Finnissey’s response was an ensemble piece that, in written notation form, resembles arms of the rings of Saturn.
Finnissey titled his work Back on Earth, inspired by childhood memories of his father saying, “Michael, please come back to Earth.” Perhaps, in this composition, we can hear the sounds of a celestial journey from Saturn to Earth. Listen and judge for yourself:
-via Futility Closet
In 1954, schoolchildren in the Gorbals section of Glasgow, Scotland, heard that a vampire had killed two local boys. Angered and hoping to be heroes, several hundred children made their way to the Southern Necropolis, the neighborhood's largest cemetery, because where else would a vampire hide? They climbed the cemetery walls carrying homemade weapons and making plenty of noise. Glasgow police were astonished to find who was making the ruckus. There were so many children that the event went down in history, although it wasn't the only time that Glasgow children went hunting for monsters.
What spurred the children into such a stunt? It couldn't possibly be a distraction from the misery of the poverty-stricken Gorbals area. It couldn't possibly be the long tradition of Scottish ghosts and monsters the children heard about all their lives. It must have been the comic books. Read how the Gorbals Vampire Hunt led to a Scottish ban on horror comics that is still on the books (yet rarely enforced) at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Magnus Hagdorn)
Yes, the Philly Taco is exactly what it looks like. It is a quintessentially Philadelphia experience, where the city of brotherly love lovingly combines two perfect food items. Despite the seemingly simple recipe and the cheap paper plates, though, the creation of a Philly Taco is an art that has been carefully refined since its invention over ten years ago.
The first step, the Philadelphia Inquirer explains, is to visit Jim's Steaks, which is famous for its cheesesteak sandwiches. Some creativity in the toppings is permissible with the Philly Taco while remaining canonically correct. What is essential is to immediately proceed 436 feet away to Lorenzo and Sons' Pizza. There, buy a huge slice of cheese pizza and wrap it around the sandwich. Fans disagree about whether the taco should be eaten from one end or cut down the middle, but they agree that the combination is awesome.
-via Atlas Obscura | Photo: Al Dia
Sada Yacco introduced kabuki theater to the West and became a sensation as the only female member of her troupe. Her life story reads like that of Forrest Gump. Born under unfortunate circumstances, Yacco was sold to a geisha house when she was only four years old. Yet she was singled out to be trained in not only the arts, but martial arts and other manly pursuits as well. She was also taught to read and write, a rarity for Japanese women of the time. In 1893 she married experimental showman Otojiro Kawakami and continued her lifelong series of alternating bad luck and celebrity interactions that made her a star when Kawakami took his kabuki theater to the United States and then Europe.
A Western fascination with Japan at the time helped launch Yacco into stardom, but it was tinged with pressure to perform stereotypical Japanese tropes to satisfy the audiences' notions of Japanese theater. Eventually, Yacco and Kawakami returned to Japan, where they introduced Western theater, particularly Shakespeare, to their homeland -with an experimental twist, of course. Read about Sada Yacco and her multicultural adventures at Messy Nessy Chic.
The city of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, calls this special bus pass a 'health ticket". You can pay a regular fare or do twenty squats in front of a camera. If you do so, you get to ride for free for the next seven days.
The news website Romania Insider reports that this service, which is so far available at only one station in the city, has been very popular. When it was installed last year, users completed about one million squats total over a three month period. The system has been reinstalled and is again available for residents who would like an incentive to exercise.
Would you use this service if it was available in your area?
-via Debby Witt | Photo: Sports Festival
