Did you know the third Thursday of every April is National High Five Day? That would be April 21 this year. While the best way to celebrate High Five Day is simply to give out your fair share of celebratory slaps, it can also help to know your history and when it comes to the high five, that history is actually rather recent.

The Gesture’s Low Reaching Roots

Long before the high five, there was the low five, although, at the time it was known as “giving skin” and “slapping skin.” The low five started way back in the jazz age and while there seems to be no detailed record of how it was started, it was a fairly popular gesture amongst jazz musicians. This was immortalized throughout history when Al Jolson gives a low five in the 1927 film The Jazz Singer. The 1941 Abbot and Costello film In the Navy takes note of this with the Andrews Sisters song, “Gimme Some Skin, My Friend.”

Slapping five continued to be a popular gesture in the African American culture and you can see black characters slapping hands in movies all the way up to blaxploitation films from the seventies

Making the Five High

Image via Outsports The high five that most people credit as the first took place in 1977. It was exchanged between Dusty Baker and Glen Burke at a Los Angeles Dodgers game. Burke gave Baker a raised hand to slap in celebration after Baker scored a home run. Murray State University basketball player Lamont Sleets has challenged this story though, claiming that he developed the gesture while playing on his college team in the 1960’s. This isn’t the only high five challenge between basketball and baseball players. A number of basketballers claim to have started using the term “high five” during their 1979/1980 season. University of Louisville baseball player Derek Smith disputes this though and claims that he is the originator of the term. No matter who originated or named it though, the gesture was an immediate success in sports circles as soon as Baker and Burke’s slap was seen around the country. It was soon being used by teams across the country, most notably the 1980 Louisville Cardinals basketball team, who high fived each other throughout their run for the title and helped bring it to the forefront of American consciousness. Image via bgubitz [Wikipedia] By 1980, the noun “high five” was in the Oxford English Dictionary and by 1981, it was added as a verb as well.

Making A Good Thing Into A National Holiday

In the eighties, the gesture took on a life of its own and it seemed like every sitcom character was high fiving someone at least once per episode. It isn’t surprising that the high five took a dive in popularity through the nineties and popular culture tried to cleanse itself of the over saturation of the gesture. Even so, the high five has always continued to have its fans and in 2002, three University of Virginia Students decided to give the high five its due. The three students decided they wanted to start their own holiday and they agreed that honoring the lost art of the high five would be the perfect reason to celebrate. The ultimate goal of the holiday was to better people’s days by giving high fives to strangers, who might then be inspired to give high fives to others. While the headquarters of the holiday started on the university campus, it quickly spread thanks to the power of the internet. By 2005, the idea had gained enough momentum that the City of San Diego actually agreed to recognize National High Five Day as an official city celebration. (Being a long-term resident of America’s Finest City, I admit that I was highly upset that I had never heard of the city’s decree until I started writing this article.) So now that you know about National High Five Day and about the gesture’s respectable origin story, it is up to you, dear readers to spread the word, and the skin. Share your support of high fives on April 21 and every day. Just remember to do it sparingly. After all, an overused high five is worse than no high five at all and we don’t want this great cultural connection to fade away every again. Sources: Wikipedia, High Five Me, National High Five Project

Alphabet Ice Cube Tray - $29.95

Think of all the wonderful words you could spell with your very own Alphabet Ice Cube Tray from the NeatoShop!  The possibilities are endless.  The best part is that the evidence just melts away.  No one will ever know how naughty you really are or how badly you spell.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more cool Ice Trays!

Photo: James Balog

The tree in the photo above is pretty tall - so tall, in fact, that it used to be the tallest known tree in the world. Until people found other trees that are even taller. NPR's Robert Krulwich has a very neat post about the discovery of the world's tallest tree: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/04/08/135206497/the-worlds-tallest-tree-is-hiding-somewhere-in-california

See also: 10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World

Photo link

Gallery 1988 in L.A. is currently exhibiting covers to classic books... but not the covers you've seen lining shelves at Barnes & Noble. Forty-five artists have re-imagined the art with amazing results. I love Anne Benjamin's Pride and Prejudice, above, but The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Dirk Fowler is also awesome and James Flames' The Velveteen Rabbit gives me chills. You can check it out online, but if you're in the L.A.-area, the Melrose exhibition runs through April 30.

http://nineteeneightyeight.com/index.php/la/bookpost.html?limit=all via Flavorwire

Instructables user bbstudio doesn't reveal how he does it, but the results of his egg carving are amazing! He's participating in a competition using the Egg-bot, so presumably that factors into the process.

Link via Make | Previously: Nutritional Labels for Eggs

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High school baseball player Caleb Walker of Tupelo, Mississippi, really didn't have a chance of making it to home. But as you can see, he outwitted the catcher in a very clever move.

http://www.wtva.com/news/local/story/Amazing-play-changes-momentum-of-baseball-game/8OcFHsFhn0eqAbWRE16LYQ.cspx via Deadspin

This darkened photo doesn't really do the project justice -- it just shows the neat lighting that illustrates why the class of this transport vessel was called Firefly. That was an important detail that Doyle didn't want to leave out. There's a complete minifig crew appropriately modified to look like the characters from Firefly, as well as articulated ship parts and a detachable shuttlecraft. Click on the link to see more photos.

Link via Walyou

Previously: Chris Doyle's Flying Spaghetti Monster LEGO Church

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The comedy troupe Half Day Today, which made the very funny trailer for an Oregon Trail movie, now envisions the board game Monopoly as a fast-paced thriller similar to The Devil's Advocate. It just might work as a real movie.

via Nerd Bastards | Troupe Website

The steam engine, lightbulb, the polio vaccine -- and now this modern marvel. Since the beginning of time, humanity has been unable to drink two different slurpee flavors from the same cup, let alone alternate between them. Now crack researchers at the convenience store chain 7-11 have solved the problem and bestowed upon the world their solution:

In June, 7-Eleven will be slapping Slurpees into cups with dual chambers, a special valve and two straws that let folks drink one or two Slurpee flavors at a time. One in three customers at 7-Eleven buys a drink, says Jesus Delgado-Jenkins, SVP of marketing.

Link via Geekosystem | Photo: 7-11

You Tube Link

Olivia Riley enjoys fishing for catfish in Kansas City's Troost Lake. On Saturday, however, she caught something a little more unusual than a catfish.

Instead of coming up with a catfish, Riley captured the biggest goldfish she's ever seen."

I don't know, it's beautiful!" Riley shouted as she smiled and showed her massive catch to a friend's camera.

Riley did throw the beautiful goldfish back.

Link

The length of a man's ring finger has been tied to success at financial trading, and its length in relation to the index finger is an indicator of exposure to testosterone in utero. Now a recent study suggests that men with long ring fingers are more likely to be considered attractive by women. Camille Ferdenzi of the University of Geneva explained:

"The aim was to understand what makes a man attractive," and whether at least some of those qualities "were in part conditioned by the foetal environment," Ferdenzi said in an interview.

For the visual test, the results were unambiguous. "The longer the ring finger compared to the index -- that is, the greater the exposure to testosterone -- the more attractive the face was rated," she said by phone.

Link via Glenn Reynolds | Photo by Flickr user marysecasol.com used under Creative Commons license

A fertility clinic in Copenhagen wanted an easy way to transport biological materials in insulated storage through the city, and so commissioned the construction of the Sperm Bullitt:

The Sperm Bike is, like the company's sperm donations, a Danish product and constructed around the Danish Bullitt cargo bike from Larry vs Harry.

Producing the Sperm Bike was no easy task. It was constructed by the Danish company 10 Tons - who specialise in zoological and botanical models as well as paleontologic reconstructions, including full-size whales and dinosaurs.

With the tail, the bike is 2.9 metres long and fully-loaded with... um... sperm... it weighs 50 kg. About the same as my cargo bike with two kids and a bag of groceries.

If you scroll to the bottom of the linked article, you can find links to images of other unique custom cargo bikes built by the same company.

Link via Marginal Revolution | Photo: Copenhagenize

Jason Vorhees Friday the 13th Pop! Bobblehead - $9.95

How do you make a scary film character cute?  You turn him into a bobblehead of course!  Just check out the Jason Vorhees Friday the 13th Pop! Bobblehead from the NeatoShop.  He's so sweet you almost want to pinch his cheeks. Almost.

Be sure to check all the other fantastic Bobbleheads from the NeatoShop!

Would you like to smell like an orc? You're most of the way already, but let's finish you off with this new scent from Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs. The company describes it as "Field grey courgette musk, roughly cured leather, and vetiver." It's one of several scents based on D&D races, character classes, and alignments. Oh, they don't call it D&D, of course, but that's the obvious inspiration.

Link via Atomic Nerds | Previously: Play-Doh Cologne

This doesn't seem like a good plan for a robbery. According to a local news report, the suspect:

[...] hid the game controller in his pocket and pretended it was a gun as he tried to rob the Sun Food Store on 62nd Avenue S.

He was arrested by a police officer who walked into the store in the middle of the robbery, police said.

Talk about bad luck! If only he brought a caulk gun instead, it might have worked.

Link via Say Uncle | Photo by Flickr user aldrin_muya used under Creative Commons license