David Rush was able to reclaim his previously-held Guinness World Record for most balloons popped with chopsticks in one minute. Rush was able to pop 40 balloons, beating previous record holder Ahsrita Furman’s record of 36 balloons. This isn’t even Rush’s only claim to fame. Actually, he has  broken more than 150 Guinness records to promote STEM education!

Image screenshot via UPI

The TV series Unsolved Mysteries kept us in suspense in the 1990s, and has been resurrected three times on TV. It's also survived on YouTube, Hulu, and now Netflix. In this parody video by Nerdist, the experts take on a cold case close to our hearts: Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Just like the original show, the case is presented with a combination of actual footage, recreations, and expert commentary. -via Laughing Squid

BoMcCready crunched the numbers and found out how common each day of the year is for birthdays. It appears that September is the time more people are born, which leads us to believe the cold of the winter solstice and the cheer of holiday parties may have an effect. The interactive version is here, in case you want to click on your birthday and see how far it diverges from the average. My birthday, September 27, is the 27th most common birthday on the calendar. You would think that February 29th is the least common, but it was apparently weighted for how often that date appears on the calendar. We can see that December 25 and 24, January 1, and July 4 are relatively rare ...possibly because inductions and non-emergency cesarians aren't scheduled on those days. -via Digg

The marvelously surreal world of artist Hugh Hayden now includes cast iron skillets and pots that are cast to resemble masks. Hayden explains that in his exhibition titled "American Food," the masks speak of the African diaspora offering a hazy look into the past:

The function and form of both the skillets as early African cookware and the masks’ ancestral and ceremonial origins are merged in a technique called sand-casting; Hayden adopts this rudimentary means of manufacture to celebrate the imperfectness of the materials, their colonial histories, and the inherent loss of detail in the reproduction process. Hayden likens the abstraction of the original objects that occurs in the sand-casting process as a form of diaspora that transforms the skillets into something layered and culturally syncretic. 

-via Colossal | Photo: Lisson Gallery

Are you looking for a good place to Netflix and chill? Or would you like to have a movie night with friends? The last standing Blockbuster Video rental store, which is located in Bend, Oregon, is open for business as an AirBnB rental property. There's a living room and an air mattress set up in front of a big screen TV among the rows of VHS cases on shelves. According to the hosts, the experience is authentic to its origins:

Whether you want to stay up until sunrise or pass out on the couch, we’ve created the perfect space complete with a pull-out couch, bean bags and pillows for you to cozy up with “new releases” from the ‘90s. Crack open a two-liter of Pepsi before locking into a video game, charting your future in a game of MASH, or watching movie after movie. But be wary of reciting “Bloody Mary” in the staff bathroom off of the break room, as you just may summon the ghost rumored to haunt the store. And help yourself to some NERDS, Raisinets and popcorn (heavy on the butter), but make sure you save room for a couple slices.

-via The Mary Sue | Photo: AirBnB

We've seen some amazing homemade and custom-made Halloween costumes for kids who use wheelchairs over the years. Now Disney is getting into the act with wheelchair covers to turn the conveyance into the Incredimobile from the movie Incredibles 2 or Cinderella's magical coach.  

Made from stiff felt printed with custom artwork, the decorative panels include various sections of hidden plastic piping which adds rigidity, and they attach to wheelchairs using adhesive fabric strips. They’re specifically designed for manually-operated wheelchairs with 24-inch wheels, and because they inhibit regular use of the chair, they do require a separate operator to push.

Disney is also offering three adaptive costumes with features that make them easier for special needs children to wear. Read more about them at io9.

(Image credit: shopDisney)

If you've been wondering about all that activity in your attic, it's probably a rave of some kind. All they needed was the right music. And pay no attention to Vlad; he's always showing off. -via Nag on the Lake

If you badly wanted to go to Europe but weren’t able to because of the current global situation, then you might consider going to these towns in the United States, which will make you feel like you’re in Europe! Smithsonian Magazine lists ten of these places.

Check them out over at the site.

(Image Credit: BazookaJoe/ Wikimedia Commons)

One side of the divided Cerro Lagoon turned purple and began emitting a foul odor. The other side has remained its natural blue. When one side of the lagoon turned purple, residents noticed that fish began dying. Experts believe that the cause of this phenomenon is pollution, not someone throwing purple ink on the river, no! Fox News has more details: 

“Three months ago, all the fish died in the lagoon, thousands and thousands of them,” resident Herminia Meza told the Associated Press. “The smell was unbearable, and we were overwhelmed by flies. About a month ago the herons died, and it turned a reddish color.”

Experts suspect pollution from the Waltrading SA tannery on the banks of the lagoon to be the cause.

Image via Fox News

Dozens of times over the last decade, scientists from NASA have aimed laser beams towards the reflector panel attached to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter near the Moon, which is about 385,000 km from our planet. Out of all these attempts, however, these scientists were not able to receive a signal back. But just recently they succeeded.

[NASA scientists] and French colleagues have announced, in a paper in the journal Earth, Planets and Space, that a returning signal has been received, and this, they say, could help decide whether the last working science experiment from the Apollo era still has something to give.

The reflector is mounted on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which has been studying the Moon from its orbit since 2009. It was placed there as a target to test the reflecting power of panels left on the lunar surface half a century ago.

The panels have one job, but they’ve done it well. Aim a beam of light at them and measure the amount of time it takes for the light to come back, and you know how far away they are.

For decades, scientists have been doing this experiment (using the reflector panels on the Moon) and have made major discoveries.

One of the biggest [discoveries] is that the Earth and Moon are drifting apart at about the rate that fingernails grow: 3.8 centimetres a year. This is the result of gravitational interactions between the two bodies.

More details about this at Cosmos.

(Image Credit: NASA/ Cosmos)

If you ever go to China, consider looking for this certain store that serves yellowish brown smoothies, which are, for some reason, called PooPoo Smoothies. The said smoothies can come with a white swirl on top, which is more expensive, or the one without the swirl, which comes with diced mangoes.

Engrish user The_YongGrand says that the “Poo” in the “PooPoo” could mean “burst”, “pop”, or “explode.”

It sound[s] like “Pow-Pow” in Cantonese. Or if they are creative with it, they could use “Pop-pop” or “Boom-Boom”. “Pop-pop” sounds much more relevant to the drink since it’s all about bursting the little pearls when you are drinking it.

Would you drink one?

Image via Engrish.com

Have you ever had a brain fart and couldn't think of a word you really needed? Or more commonly, couldn't think of the word in your second language? It happens all the time, but often people can come up with a description using other words, often painting a delightfully funny picture. The example above wasn't so much a "lost" word, but one that the audience did not know. Others also had to go the long way around to convey their meaning.

Its like that video where this Arabic man try to explain the receptionist that there's mouse in his room. He was like "Jerry here is in my room, please bring Tom" you can find it on YouTube 😂

— ini inggrid (@inggridible) March 8, 2020

You can listen to that video here. See dozens of other funny examples of "what's the word for..." at Bored Panda.

(Image credit: echoingwhisper)

Kids are heavily affected by lockdowns across the world. With families encouraged to stay at home and not go somewhere else, unless it is an emergency, kids have nowhere to go, and they normally spend their day just looking at screens.

Television, apps, video games, video calls, social media, virtual playdates, and online classes. These are the methods of entertainment, communication, and education these days. The trend toward technology makes sense: with progress comes more tech, but, for years, pediatricians and mental health providers have warned against too much “screen time.” According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children under two should avoid screens except for video chatting and that children ages two to five should be limited to one hour of “high quality programming” a day. That would be two episodes of “Sesame Street,” or up to six single episodes of “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” episodes. Older kids can have up to two hours a day.

With parents having limited options, how should they deal with their kids having more screen time than pediatricians recommend? Pediatricians advise that parents monitor the content that their kids consume, ensuring that the content is meaningful.

More details about this over at JSTOR Daily.

(Image Credit: StockSnap/ Pixabay)

If you can't go on the vacation you planned, the next best thing may be to get a bunch of cheap props and pretend. Steve Price took that fun one step further and made a chain reaction involving his vacation destination (a tropical beach) that went kablooey. The sequence ends at 2:30, then we get a closeup of all the components you missed the first time around, then the testing procedures with failures. That's where we get a taste of hard difficult this kind of thing really is. -via Laughing Squid

Barbora Polivkova captured a cute moment in the rainforest. In his photo, a tiny frog, possibly only a few millimeters in length, can be seen sitting on a purple flower. In another photo, this time captured by Australian photographer named Peter Pullan, a knot can be found to have formed on a eucalyptus tree. Pullan cleverly makes the photo look like something from a drone shot.

These and other photos are the winners of the 2020 Macro Art Photo Awards.

The Macro Art Photo Awards are part of the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition, an annual global search for the best in garden, plant, flower and botanical photography. The primary competition is still open for entries but there are several annual smaller sub-contests including Black And White, Still Life, and Macro awards.

See the spectacular photos over at New Atlas.

(Image Credit: Barbora Polivkova/ New Atlas)