In 1897, mail delivery in New York City sped up tremendously when a system of pneumatic tubes was laid underneath the streets. The same technology that allows multiple lanes at a bank's drive-through was harnessed to deliver messages and some surprising goods in the city in those same kind of cylinders.  

At 24-inches long and 8-inches wide, these cylinders could hold up to 600 letters. A team of 136 “Rocketeers” and dispatchers made sure the
system ran smoothly, transporting upwards of 95,000 letters per day.
The original tubes were less than a mile long, from the old General Post Office to the Produce Exchange. It quickly grew to cover both sides of Manhattan Island with a crosstown line. Extensions were added to the Bronx and Brooklyn using the Brooklyn Bridge. There is even a rumour that a popular Bronx sandwich shop used the system to send their sandwiches – the real submarine sandwiches! It took only 20 minutes for a canister to travel from the General Post Office to Harlem. A 40-minute mail wagon route was reduced to 7 minutes.

There was at least one case in which a cat was sent through the tubes, causing astonishment that the feline survived the trip. The New York pneumatic mail system ran until the 1950s, when it was discontinued due to the high expense of maintaining it. Read about the days of tube mail at Messy Messy Chic.

The Academy Awards were bestowed on the movies of 2020 on April 25th. As per custom, the annual Golden Raspberry Awards (Razzies) were announced the night before. If you think the Oscar nominations are full of movies you’ve never heard of, the Razzies took that even further. You have probably heard of Borat Subsequent Movie-Film, which was awarded two Razzies, but those were only because of Rudy Giuliani. The rest of the movies flew under our radars in a year that theaters were mostly closed. A film called Music led the awards with three Razzies, followed by Absolute Proof and Borat: Subsequent Movie Film with two each, and 365 Days and Dolittle each received one award. The year 2020 itself garnered a special award as “The Worst Calendar Year EVER!” Celebrate the worst in film by checking out all the awards at the Razzies site. Scroll down past the winners to see the nominees in each category from other movies you’ve never heard of.

There's a new roundabout in eastern Kentucky, specifically in Rowan County near the Bath County line. Luckily, traffic was not coming from all directions when this video was taken, because these are NOT one way streets! The roundabout was constructed to improve traffic flow and reduce accidents, so what could possibly go wrong? They will definitely have to improve signage or something. -via Jalopnik

The New York Times has broken open a scandal at NASA and other space agencies around the world. Have you ever eaten one of those sweetly-flavored food bars labelled in NASA gift shops as "astronaut ice cream"? Then you've accomplished something that no astronaut has done while in space:

With real ice cream available, there is no need in space for those blocks of chalky Neapolitan astronaut ice cream parents buy for their children at museum gift shops. Indeed, in the 60 years of the space age, no astronaut has ever eaten astronaut ice cream, at least not in space.

The freeze-dried ice cream was indeed developed in 1974 for NASA — for the gift shop in the agency’s Ames Research Center in California. The company that makes it, Outdoor Products of Boulder, Colo., now sells a couple million of them a year.

Sorry for linking to a paywalled article, but this is an important scandal for people to know about.

-via Super Punch | Photo: Ruth Hartnup

Fish sticks were introduced in 1953 by Birdseye, the company that made frozen food palatable and therefore popular. Fish sticks came to be extremely popular over the decades, believe it or not, because kids like them and families (and institutions) find them so convenient. An article at Hakai magazine explains why fish sticks were developed, how they are made, and why they've stayed with us so long. They are made from various kinds of mildly-favored fish with a battered coating that keeps them from sticking together in the freezer.  

The battered disguise may be needed because, at least in North America, seafood has often been second-tier. “We’ve mostly considered the eating of fish to be beneath our aspirations,” writes chef and author Barton Seaver in American Seafood. Traditionally, fish was associated with sacrifice and penance—food to eat when meat was unaffordable or, if you were Catholic, to eat on the many days when red meat is verboten. Fish also spoils fast, smells bad, and contains sharp bones that pose a choking hazard.

The advent of fish sticks made eating fish easier and more palatable for the seafood wary. “You can almost pretend that it isn’t fish,” says Ingo Heidbrink, a maritime historian at Old Dominion University in Virginia. In his native Germany, where a reported seven million people eat fish sticks at least once a week, companies changed the fish at least three times since its introduction, from cod to pollock to Alaska pollock, a distinct species. “Consumers didn’t seem to notice,” says Heidbrink.

Personally, while I served them to the kids at times, I avoid fish sticks because I ate them at school every Friday from first through sixth grade, and that's enough. But they proved to be quite popular among folks who stocked up for the pandemic. Read everything you ever wanted to know about fish sticks at Hakai magazine. -via Digg

Even if you are used to working alone from home, like cartoonist Simon Tofield, every once in a while you have to communicate with the outside world. That will be the one time the cat decides to butt in, so to speak. And so it is with Simon's Cat in this new animation.

Octopus Decanter
by Josh Dewall pic.twitter.com/DTbqqZpRgP

— 𝐀𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐬 𝐀𝐩𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐚 (@A_aphrodisia) April 25, 2021

The wine aerates as it flows through the eight legs of the octopus. It's an ingenious design by Joshua DeWall, a glass artist in Virginia. Look at his other extraordinary glass sculptures, many equally functional, on display on Instagram. I'm especially taken with DeWall's delicately composed arthropods.

-via Fabulous Weird Trotters

Tumblr user Glumshoe, if I understand their bio correctly, works in science communications on the Lake Michigan shore and thus knows something about how the mysterious and sometimes dangerous sand dunes in Indiana Dunes National Park work. It was in that location that, several years ago, a 6-year old boy sank into and almost died in the interior of this real-life sarlacc.

Physically speaking, how is this possible? Glumshoe drew this comic and explained:

The current leading geological theory as to how this happened is that the organic material you engulf, like trees, slowly decompose beneath your slopes, leaving behind unstable voids held together only by the fragile remains of the decayed material. When these voids are walked over, they collapse, forming sudden sinkholes that can swallow visitors whole. The rules that typically govern stationary dunes, or wandering dunes in areas that are not forested, no longer apply to you. You are unpredictable and dangerous and have remained closed to visitors except on guided hikes ever since.

-via FYSS

From different kinds of merchandise, to animated series, to animated movies, and to games, the Pokemon franchise is well known all over the world. It’s not a surprise that the franchise collaborates with different establishments such as cafes and exhibits. A touring exhibition called Pokémon Kaseki Hakubutsukan (Pokemon Fossil Museum) will open in Japan, as Kotaku details: 

According to the official announcement, the exhibition will let visitors observe and compare fossils from dinosaurs and other creatures as well as extinct plants with Pocket Monsters, with the idea of hopefully showing how enjoyable paleontology is.

The Pokémon Fossil Museum will kick off this July at the Mikasa City Museum in Hokkaido, before wrapping up there in September and moving on to Shimane Prefecture, Tokyo and Aichi. Other locations will be added before the exhibition ends its run in summer 2023.

Image via Kotaku 

Although Americans tend to think of Sasquatch as a North American phenomena, there are legends of hidden giant apes or ape-men all around the word. These legends are fed by unexplained sightings, which are most surprising when they are made by those unfamiliar with the local legends, such as American troops in Vietnam. Gary Linderer of the 101st Airborne reported seeing a five-foot-tall creature with muscular arms when he was on patrol in the Kontum Province near the borders of Laos and Cambodia.

Like the Yeti in the Himalayas, and the Sasquatch sightings all over North America, the Nguoi Rung is a oft-told tale in the area, but despite endless the sightings and folklore attached to the semi-mythical creature, no concrete evidence exists. Linderer wasn’t the only witness, either. Army Sgt. Thomas Jenkins reported his platoon was attacked by these apes throwing stones.

Toward the end of the war, Viet Cong and NVA soldiers reported so many sightings of the reddish-brown hair-covered Nguoi Rung the North Vietnamese communist party secretariat ordered scientists to investigate.

Dr. Vo Quy, a respected ornithologist and environmental researcher from Hanoi, discovered a Nguoi Rung footprint on the forest floor and made a cast of it. The cast was wider than a human foot and too big for an ape.

Read about the experiences of American troops who believe they spotted the Nguoi Rung at We Are The Mighty. -via Strange Company

Miru-chan enjoys the walks his human servant takes him on. When it rains, he's protected from the elements with an appropriately-sized umbrella. The transparent materials lets him see all around himself without difficulty. Such is the good life.

-My Modern Met

Under Taiwanese law, companies must provide newly married couples 8 days of leave. So a married couple divorced and then immediately remarried and claimed those 8 days. They repeated the process. The bank where the husband works concludes that this was an unfair exploitation of the law. CTV News reports:

But an unnamed bank employee decided to game the system last year, claiming 32 days of leave using a novel ruse.

Over a period of 37 days, he and his wife got married four times and divorced three times, claiming the full eight days for each of their nuptials.

The bank balked and the employee appealed to Taipei city labour department, which initially fined his employer Tw$20,000 (US$670) for violating the leave regulations.

-via Marginal Revolution

Two lions that had just killed a zebra took a break to rehydrate at a watering hole in the MalaMala Private Game Reserve in South Africa. A terrapin swims right up to both of them! Was he curious? Was he trying to run the lions out of his watering hole? Or did he want a taste of that blood on their chins? We don't know, but the lions managed to get a good drink despite the annoyance and left without further violence. -via Metafilter

Horrible gelatos could be fined up to €10,000 ($12,030) in Italy. Italian politicians have proposed legislation that would fine ice cream makers  add excess air to gelato to give it a fluffier texture, or who rely on artificial flavors, synthetic dyes, and hydrogenated fats. In this new proposed law, the only permitted ingredients for a gelato would "milk and its derivatives," eggs, and fresh fruits: 

Italian ice cream has always been one of the gastronomic symbols of our country, recognized globally together with pizza and pasta, but our laws do not preserve artisanal ice cream and producers who make it." senator Riccardo Nencini said. "

Il Messaggero reports that currently, "artisanal" ice creams contain between 20 to 30 percent air which is a side effect of "vigorously mixing the ingredients," while "industrial" versions use compressed air, and might be up to 80 percent air. "Basically, you pay for the air," the outlet writes. (The proposed legislation would cap the amount of air allowed in gelato at 30 percent.)

Stefano Ferraro, who is considered one of Italy's 50 best ice cream makers, isn't opposed to legislation that recognizes and protects the work of true gelato artisans—and that distinguishes their products from those made by corner-cutters who use pre-made ice cream bases or compressed air. "A law that protects consumers and real artisans would be useful," he told Il Messaggero. "Many of us search for the best cocoa mass, the one that best fits our idea [for gelato]. But, at this point, it doesn't make any sense to compete with those who use much easier methods."

Image via wikimedia commons

滅多に見る事が出来ない激アツシーンがこちらです pic.twitter.com/ch7SyZGGfu

— 五条ミソる (@nakamanian) April 24, 2021

Gravity is for losers. The top seagull knows this fact. He can just take a break on his pal while the winds provide enough lift for both of them. We've all had co-workers like this (or are one).

-via Adrian Lozano