Pictured above is a Robertson screw, invented by the Canadian Peter Lymburner Robertson and patented in 1907. It was brilliantly designed to avoid cam out and was far superior to other screws available at the time.

We Americans might still be using them widely if Robertson hadn't gotten into a dispute with Henry Ford. Road & Track magazine traces the history of the screw and the downfall of the Robertson:

But unless you’re Canadian, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of Robertson screws. That’s because Henry Ford wanted to use Robertsons in all of his plants, and he wanted more control over how they were made. Robertson, by most accounts a stubborn man, wouldn’t agree. No deal was struck, and the Canadian lost an important part of his business. Meanwhile, other engineers worked on their own types of screw heads.

The eventual replacement for the Robertson was the now-ubiquitous Phillips:

A Phillips screw offers many of the benefits of a Robertson and can be driven by a traditional slotted screwdriver in a pinch. Phillips licensed his design to the giant American Screw Company, which got General Motors to use the screw in the 1936 Cadillac. Within the decade, almost all automakers were using Phillips screws.

A Phillips is, arguably, not a better screw than a Robertson. Consumer Reports once wrote that “compared with slotted and Phillips-head screwdrivers, the Robertson worked faster, with less cam-out.” However, cam-out was good for automakers increasingly relying on automation, as it meant screws wouldn’t be overtightened. Today the Phillips is the standard, except in Canada, where the Robertson remains popular, and in Japan, which has its own cruciform screw, the Japanese Industrial Standard.

Next time you strip out a Phillips, shake your fist at Henry Ford.

-via Instapundit | Photo: Safforest

Arnold Schwarzenegger (champion bodybuilder, actor, businessman, and politician) recently turned 73. To celebrate the occasion, Redditor /u/Radonlab carved this magnificent pipe showing the Governor in his most famous acting role: the Terminator.

Schwarzenegger is an active redditor known for his jovial interactions on that forum. He asked Radonlab to sell the pipe. Radonlab gave it to him, and Schwarzenegger responded with a photo of him using it!

-via Born in Space

In April of 2019, fire ripped through Paris' Notre Dame cathedral. Its magnificent pipe organ was not burned, but it was covered with smoke and toxic dust, and then exposed to the elements. So the organ and its 8,000 pipes are in the process of cleaning and restoration -which is expected to take five years.  

To see an organ being dismantled is to watch men work in the belly of a colossal beast. Pipes of wood or metal come out like ribs and must be carefully placed and ordered in containers for storage and transport. At Notre Dame, the largest pipe is 32 feet long (representing the lowest bass note), and the smallest about half the length of a pencil. The organ is essentially based on medieval technology; the earliest incarnations at Notre Dame date as far back as the 14th century, though the current instrument dates to 1733 and has undergone a number of modifications since.

But the music that comes from such an organ is not only reliant on the pipes. The architecture around it, the organist who plays it, and even the care that goes into its maintenance all affect the sound. Read about the ins and out of the world's greatest pipe organs at Atlas Obscura.

From a man who can’t keep his forklift and boat in the place where he parked them, to a grandpa who is not afraid of fireworks, Ozzy Man compiles clips of men and women who have arrived at Destination F, and lived to tell the tale.

(Video Credit: Ozzy Man Reviews/ YouTube)

It’s not only humans who fear the unknown; animals fear it, too.

When his humans bought a new net to keep bugs from going inside their house, this dog named Sterling Newton thought that he was stuck inside the house. He always stops whenever he comes close to the net.

Can he ever overcome his fear?

Watch the video over at The Dodo to find out.

(Image Credit: Sterling Newton/ The Dodo)

One of the practices that is frowned upon in the gaming world is rage-quitting, or the event in which the losing player suddenly disconnects from the online match. But why do people disapprove of such practice? The answer is because “it results in difficult team experiences” (just imagine if someone from your squad decides to leave all of you), and the loss of rewards and time (such as in games in which a definite win grants you experience points).

Quitting games mid-match, typically when a player is losing, is a persistent problem in competitive games. In fighting games, developers have tried a variety of solutions to deter players from quitting matches, including putting them in quitter’s jail, shaming them with display badges, and making their heads explode (in game, of course).

An update for Bandai Namco fighting game Dragon Ball FighterZ is threatening players who… rage-quit… with extensive bans. In some cases, players who disconnect from matches may find themselves permanently banned from online play.

More details about this over at Polygon.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Bandai Namco Entertainment/ Wikimedia Commons)

Rizwan Mithawala loved taking pictures of moths and butterflies in the many parks and forests in India. As a conservation writer, editor, and photographer for the Indian Wildlife Conservation Trust, he was sent to the national parks of India.

Most weekends, he can be found at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, a sprawling, 40-square-mile forest that boasts as many as 170 species of butterflies in the metropolis of Mumbai.

But then the lockdowns were implemented across the world, including India, and this confined Mithawala inside his home. But…

For Mithawala, there was one bright spot. “I had a 16-foot window,” he says cheerfully. His lockdown project was to tend to a butterfly garden, eight floors up and not far from the busy Mohammed Ali Road in South Mumbai.

The seed of the project was planted more than a year ago, when Mithawala and his mother Naeema were looking for ways to enjoy nature in the concrete jungle. As a photographer, Mithawala hoped to capture the life cycle of butterflies in colorful images. But he had a busy schedule, so the effort took a backseat until the [lockdowns]. Only then did Mithawala find the time to meticulously document the births of dozens of butterflies from his window.

And so he was able to turn his window into a safe haven for a red Pierrot butterfly, whose life cycle he was able to document. And this butterfly garden that he made only cost him 320 rupees — less than $5.

Know more about his project, and see the pictures, over at Atlas Obscura.

(Image Credit: Atlas Obscura)

Intel officially announced yesterday the launch of its 11th-gen mobile processors. Called Tiger Lake, the processor is said to make lighter and thinner laptops possible. The upcoming laptop, the Asus ExpertBook, for example, only weighs 1.9 pounds. The processor will be coming “‘with more than 150 designs’ from major manufacturers over the coming months.”

These new processors also sip on power, so expect up to nine hours of battery life, as well as improved performance across all areas like work productivity, gaming, and image and video processing.

Learn more details about this processor and its capabilities over at Gizmodo.

Cool!

(Image Credit: Intel/ Gizmodo)

There’s a new TikTok hack around, and it’s supposed to help you make your salad quicker than before. The hack is smashing the lettuce against the table, which would cause the leaves to fall out as if they’re flower petals. But is it true? LifeHackers Joel Kahn and Jordan Calhoun try out this hack so that we won’t have to. But I guess you already know the answer to the question.

See the video over at the site.

(Image Credit: LifeHacker)

Like London, Paris, and other large European cities, Lisbon grew from a small village over centuries until it was a huge village with narrow, winding streets and no citywide infrastructure. Portugal was led by the ineffectual Dom José I, but the real power was the Catholic church. Then came the earthquake on November 1, 1755.   

Around 9:30 a.m., tremors rumbled beneath the city, ringing Lisbon’s many church bells in unison. Some people recalled a “horrible subterranean noise” right before the ground began to shake in a six-minute-long upheaval that crumpled cathedrals and buried neighborhoods. Within the hour, a six-meter tsunami plowed into the waterfront and killed hundreds who had gathered there seeking safety. Meanwhile, hundreds of small fires, spread by overturned cooking hearths and votive candles, were building into what would become a five-day firestorm. This last blow was the most destructive and razed what was left of the jewel in Portugal’s crown.

The king had no idea what to do in the aftermath of the disaster, so his Minister of State, the Marquis de Pombal, took charge and rebuilt Lisbon with science and an iron hand. Read about the resurrection of Lisbon into the modern world at Hakai magazine. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Jurema Oliveira)

Usually scheduled for the first Saturday in May, the Kentucky Derby will finally take place this weekend, albeit with no spectators at Churchill Downs. Part of the tradition of the derby is the singing of "My Old Kentucky Home," the Kentucky state song. The Stephen Foster song has been considered problematic for decades, even though the original racist terms used in the lyrics have been altered. What you may not know is that the song was originally meant to be an abolitionist composition!  

“My Old Kentucky Home, Goodnight,” as it was originally titled, was written by Foster in the 1850s as an anti-slavery song, inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and following the same story arc as Stowe’s title character. His initial working title was “Poor Uncle Tom, Goodnight.”

The song emphasizes the humanity and close family ties of the enslaved population at a time when African Americans were routinely dehumanized and caricatured. The opening scene in Uncle Tom’s Cabin features a slave trader explaining that black people do not have the same tender emotions as white people, a rationalization for selling their children for profit. “My Old Kentucky Home” is a rebuke to that racist thinking.

In its many years of performance, the later verses were dropped and lyrics were altered, until the entire meaning of the song was pretty much forgotten. "My Old Kentucky Home" went from abolitionist to racist to traditional over its long history, which you can read at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: squirrel83)

Throughout the course of time, countless artists have come and gone on the world, leaving behind them the many sculptures that they have made. Over time, these pieces of art made from wood, marble, and bronze would become well-known and earn their place in history.

Acquaint yourself with some of these sculptures and their respective historical backgrounds over at My Modern Met.

(Image Credit: Xosema/ Wikimedia Commons)

It seems that automobile companies are slowly getting the hang of developing flying cars. Just recently, Japanese company SkyDrive tested their new SD-03 flying car model, and it was a success.

The flight took place at the Toyota test field, one of the largest in Japan boasting 10,000-square-meters and home to the company’s development base.

[...]

The aircraft has been designed to be the world’s smallest electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) model. It measures two meters in height and four meters long, requiring only as much space as two parked cars.

Details over at DesignBoom.

(Image Credit: SkyDrive/ DesignBoom)

Like many couples who have trouble producing children, Jake and Maxine Young pursued both adoption and fertility treatments. In 2017, they accepted an emergency placement of four foster children. Then Maxine became pregnant. They pursued the adoption of their foster children, which became final two years later, but their life went into overdrive soon afterward.  

“It was chaos,” she said. “We went from zero to five within less than a year.”

The family took things day by day, never expecting to add any more children to the mix, but mere weeks after finalizing the adoption in December 2019, Maxine and Jake were in for the surprise of a lifetime.

Maxine was pregnant – with quadruplets.

“I didn’t even think that I could get pregnant without doing IVF [in vitro fertilization] or IUI [intrauterine insemination], which we had to do with our son. I remember texting him and was like, ‘Oh my God,’” Maxine said.

You know what they say, when it rains, it pours. The quads were born in August, and are in a neonatal care unit. Read more about the family at WDBJ.  -via Fark

Matt Shirley has published a followup to his map of the worst attraction in every state, this time mapping the best attraction in each state, also according to a poll of his Instagram followers. It's very noticeable that the best attractions are overwhelmingly natural resources, as compared to manmade attractions in the map of the worst. It's sad that a few states have nothing to boast, at least among those who responded. I've been to quite a few of these, how about you?