An air conditioner technician in Augusta, Georgia, spotted something odd on the roof of the Gordon Highway Waffle House. A man was making his home atop the restaurant! Police and firefighters responded to the report.
Another witness, Marvin Stone, says he “just pulled up to work, saw the fireman on the roof, saw a couple cops on the roof, started asking questions and came to find out there was a guy stuck on the roof.”
James Mayle, when asked if he’d seen anything like, said “No, you never expect anything like this, a person on top of the roof at a Waffle house? No, never that.”
We’re told the unidentified man was dehydrated and taken to a nearby hospital.
A museum in Rotterdam, Netherlands, has an art installation that consists of peanut butter covering 14 square meters of the floor. The smooth peanut butter "carpet" has no fence around it because museum directors believe it would detract from the art. You can guess it would be easy for a visitor to walk into it -and that's exactly what happened.
Bemused tourists watched as the man sank into the 1100 litres of peanut butter - enough to fill more than 2000 regular-sized jars. He has been asked to pay for the damage after leaving a trail of footprints.
"It is normal that people pay if they damage the art," spokeswoman Sharon Cohen told the Rotterdam-based newspaper.
The pricey installation - created by the artist Wim T. Schippers in 1962 and known as the Peanut Butter Platform - has suffered similar mishaps in the past.
He was the third person to step into the exhibit over the years. http://www.news.com.au/weird-true-freaky/man-wades-across-peanut-butter-art-exhibit/story-e6frflri-1226053768611 -via Arbroath
The Library of Congress has an extensive online collection of historic sound recordings going back over 100 years! Select from classical, ragtime, opera, gospel, and ethnic music, as well as spoken word recordings.
The National Jukebox debuts featuring more than 10,000 78rpm disc sides issued by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1900 and 1925.
Imagine your computer as a new Gramophone purchased for family and friends to enjoy in your home parlor. Audition popular recorded selections of the beginning of the 20th century years—band music, novelty tunes, humorous monologues, hits from the season's new musical theater productions, the latest dance rhythms, and opera arias.
And, unlike a jukebox, you don't have to insert quarters. Link-Thanks, Rich!
This French medical poster is from a exhibit called "Health for Sale: Posters from the William H. Helfand Collection" currently at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Strange how vintage art and the French language can make even syphilis seem somehow more benign. A dozen such posters can be seen at PBS. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/05/health-for-sale-a-closer-look.html -Thanks, Travis Daub!
It is once again time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog. Can you guess what the pictured item is? Do you know what it is?
Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.
Update:Timbering was the first with the correct answer: this is a grab maul or a rigging hammer. Jeffos won the award for the funniest answer: "It's a training device for that game where they make you put your forehead on a bat, spin around, and then try to run a straight line. The spike keeps it in place." Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!
George P. Burdell was a man born of a simple mistake. In 1927, someone in the admissions office at Georgia Tech accidentally sent student Ed Smith two registration forms instead of one. Sensing an opportunity for mischief, Smith filled out one form for himself and the other for George P. Burdell -a student he completely made up. When Smith arrived at the school, he kept the ruse going by enrolling Burdell in all his classes and even turning in assignments under his name. In fact, Smith did so much work on behalf of his imaginary friend that Burdell eventually graduated.
When other students found out about the hoax, they helped keep Burdell's story going. According to his resume, Burdell flew 12 missions over Europe during World War II and served on MAD magazine's Board of Directors from 1969 to 1981. In 2001, when Burdell was supposedly 90 years old, he nearly became TIME magazine's Person of the Year after garnering 57 percent of online votes. Today, Burdell is one of Georgia Tech's most celebrated alums. He even has a page on Facebook, where he keeps in touch with over 4,000 "friends."
THE FANTASY HOCKEY PLAYER
Like many hockey players drafted in the 11th round of the 1974 NHL draft, Taro Tsujimoto never actually made it to the big time. But unlike the other players drafted with him, Tsujimoto didn't exist. His name is in the record books because of Punch Imlach, the former general manager of the Buffalo Sabres. Imlach was so fed up with tedious late rounds of the draft that he decided to poke some fun at the league. He pulled a Japanese name from the local phone book and made up an imaginary team. Then, he simply told NHL president Clarence Campbell that his draft pick was Taro Tsujimoto of the Tokyo Kahanas. Sure, no one had ever heard of Tsujimoto, but that didn't stop the NHL from making the selection official. Several weeks later, Imlach revealed his prank, but Sabres fans didn't care. For years after the draft, Buffalo crowds would break into chants, demanding, "We want Taro!" (Image credit: twoeightnine design)
THE FICTION CRITIC
Very few film critics had anything nice to say about Rob Schneider's 2001 comedy The Animal. One exception: movie reviewer David Manning of the so-called Ridgefield Press, who called the movie "Another winner"! In reality, Sony marketing executives created the fictional critic to promote the company's worst films. In fact, The Animal was just one of many box office bombs that Manning enthusiastically praised. He also lent his critical support to Hollow Man, Vertical Limit, and The Patriot.
After reading about the deception in Newsweek, two California movie lovers, Omar Rezec and Ann Belknap, decided to sue Sony. They filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all filmgoers who saw the movies based on Manning's "reviews." In the end, Sony settled out of court, paying real money to anyone duped by the fake critic.
THE ELUSIVE ARTIST
Sometimes life imitates art, and sometime life mocks it. In 1998, Scottish novelist William Boyd wrote a book called Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960. The book was pure fiction but Boyd released it as a biography because he wanted to see how long it would take the art world to figure out that Tate never existed. To help sell the story, Boyd enlisted some powerful friends, including author Gore Vidal (who is liberally quoted throughout the book) and rock star David Bowie. When the book debuted, Bowie threw a huge party in Tate's honor, inviting the most elite members of New York's art scene. Journalist David Lister, who knew that Tate was fake, made the rounds at Bowie's party and asked people what they thought of the artist. When they inevitably spoke of their familiarity with his work, Lister would hear them out, then let them in on the joke.
THE MYSTERIOUS ABORIGINES
In the early 1990s, two Australian artists had the same bad idea completely independently: to sell their work by pretending to be Aborigines.
One of the two artists was Leon Carmen, a cab driver living in Sydney. He invented a new identity for himself as Wanda Koolmatrie, an Aboriginal woman abducted from the bush in the 1950s and forced to live in white society. Carmen wrote an autobiography as Koolmatrie, and the book went on to win praise for its "distinctive new voice." But when Carmen tried to write a sequel in 1997, the publisher caught on, and the incident became a national scandal.
The other artist, painter Elizabeth Durack, had more luck with her fake identity. In 1994, she began signing her work Eddie Burrup, supposedly a male, Aboriginal ex-convict. The paintings were selected for indigenous art exhibitions and won numerous prizes. But when the paintings began to draw serious interest from art collectors, Durack revealed herself as Burrup, claiming that she understood Aborigines well enough to paint as one of them. Aborigines disagreed, and they demanded that galleries stop selling her work. Strangely, the artist continued to paint as Burrup until her death in 2000.
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The article above, written by Adam K. Raymond, is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the March-April 2011 issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a subscription to mental_floss and never miss an issue!
Be sure to visit mental_floss' website and blog for more fun stuff!
The Marquis Los Cabos resort in Mexico now offers a thousand-dollar popsicle. What makes it so pricey? It's made with 24-carat gold flakes and a luxury band of tequila that costs $1500 a bottle.
The icy treat is served poolside on a classic plastic stick and has a little sugar in it to take the edge off, though salt would seem to be more appropriate.
The patrician popsicle joins a world of fantasy foods that includes the $1,000 pizza served at Nino’s Bellisima restaurant in New York and the $1,200 Mai Tai mixed up at the the Merchant Hotel in Belfast, Ireland.
This cat may not have opposable thumbs, but he knows someone who does! As one commenter said, you know who wears the pants in this relationship. -via reddit
Are you timid by nature? Do you wish you could fool people into believing that you are brave and adventurous? Well, now you can with Fugu Mints from the NeatoShop! Tricking your friends into thinking you enjoy poisonous fish has never left your breath so minty fresh. Don't worry, Fugu Mints don't actually contain any of the deadly toxins found in real pufferfish.
Wellington R. Burt (d. 1919) amassed a vast fortune during his lifetime, but he didn't want it to spoil his children or grandchildren. They needed to make it on their own in the world, so he bequeathed to them comparatively small stipends and ordered that the rest of his fortune -- now measured at $100 million -- be distributed to members of his family only 21 years after the death of his last grandchild. That time has finally arrived:
Now that it's 21 years since the death of the last grandchild, the fortune is finally being turned over to Cameron and 11 others, including three great-grandchildren, seven great-great grandchildren and another great-great-great grandchild. The fortune is valued at more than $100 million. (She'll get a little more than $2.6 million, since those further up the family tree get more under a master agreement).
Michelangelo of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was noted for his preferences for grotesque pizza toppings, such as chocolate sprinkles with clam sauce. These dedicated fans took up the onerous task of preparing and then eating 29 of Michelangelo's recipies. Let us salute their courage.
Content warning: increasingly foul language through the video (which is perhaps understandable, given what they're consuming).
It's like you can't walk through Manhattan without tripping over a superhero. I guess you New Yorkers are pretty lucky that way, though you do end up attracting a lot of supervillains, too.
At the link, you can view more details about the locations of eight of these heroes (not Stan Lee).
Have you ever played one of those labyrinth games where you're trying to move a marble around a wooden maze by altering its pitch? This is a giant version which is played with a bowling ball and controlled with a tablet computer. It was on display yesterday at Google's I/O Conference.
Wouldn't it be great to sit on a chair of bubbles while you ponder whether we're in yet another Internet bubble? French designer Marie Galoyer has come up with a way to do just that. At a mere €4,000, the Sitting Bulles is practically a steal:
This seat is made by connecting inflatable “bubbles” (like beach balls, but sturdier) to a central unit and setting them at the angle that works for you. The whole design has a lot going for it: it is airy and cool and fun. It turns a piece of furniture into a true feature for an outdoor space. From a practical standpoint, assembly is easy and quick. The balloons are inflated with a regular pump and the process is sorted in under five minutes. A storage and transport case is included.
