Neatorama readers are familiar with Colma, the town built as a graveyard to store San Francisco's dead when the city ran out of room around 1900. The same thing happened even earlier in London. Even though Europe's burial practices included exhuming the dead so that graves could be used again, there was a limit to how many could be interred at once. London decided to solve the problem by opening a huge graveyard outside the city.    

As a result a proposal was drawn up to use the emerging technology of mechanised transport to resolve the crisis. The scheme entailed buying a single very large tract of land around 23 miles from London to be called  the London Necropolis (now Brookwood Cemetery). At this distance, the land would be far beyond the maximum projected size of the city's growth. If the practice of only burying a single family in each grave were abandoned and the traditional practice for pauper burials of ten burials per grave were adopted, the site was capable of accommodating 28,500,000 bodies. Even with the prohibition of mass graves it would take over 350 years to fill a single layer of this monstrous cemetery!

Using parts of the existing London and South Western Railway, trains could ship bodies and mourners from London to the site easily and cheaply. Its founders envisaged dedicated coffin trains, each carrying 50–60 bodies, travelling from London to the new Necropolis in the early morning or late at night, and the coffins being stored on the cemetery site until the time of the funeral. Mourners would then be carried to the appropriate part of the cemetery by a dedicated passenger train during the day.

The scheme found widespread support, although the Bishop of London considered it inappropriate that the families of people from very different backgrounds would potentially have to share a train, and felt that it demeaned the dignity of the deceased for the bodies of respectable members of the community to be carried on a train also carrying the bodies and relatives of those who had led immoral lives.

The new cemetery opened in 1854. Funerals and transport varied in price depending on one's station in life. Read about the rise and fall of London's Necropolis Railway at  HistoryASM. -via Strange Company

With no humans visiting the zoo to keep them occupied, staff at the Newquay Zoo in Cornwall, England had been looking for ways to keep their resident penguins entertained. Thankfully, a patron donated a bubble machine to the zoo, and the zoo staff used the device wisely.

Penguin caretaker Dan Trevelyan said the bubbles help to keep the penguins’s predatory reflexes sharp.

“In the wild, these guys are marine predators who are very sensitive to objects and movement,” said Trevelyan. “The bubble machine is fantastic, as all the movement and new shapes and colors really stimulate these guys. They have a great time chasing them around. And all these donations are really appreciated.”

The bubbles, which cause no harm to the animals, have in the past also proved popular with the Zoo’s squirrel monkeys and Sulawesi crested macaques.

Wholesome!

(Image Credit: SWNS/ Good News Network)

Back in March, toilet paper suddenly disappeared from stores. The demand skyrocketed as the US locked down against the pandemic. Business Insider explains why that happened, and how TP companies responded to try to meet the demand. -via Damn Interesting

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A post shared by Tamara (@toucheconomy) on Jun 15, 2020 at 7:42am PDT

Photographer and designer Tamara invents new uses for common objects, including her braided pigtails. They're ideal for holding small items, such as earbuds and eating utensils, so that she can keep her hands free.

Batman vs. Predator is a three-part comic series written by Dave Gibbons and illustrated by Andy and Adam Kubert. Before you judge the comic for being a simple cash grab from two fandoms, this particular comic won an Eisner award (yes, it won a prestigious comic award)! Of course, preference is subjective, so if you want to read for yourself to know if the crossover comic is really good, you can still catch it on digital platforms. 

image via Polygon

If you’ve noticed a few days ago that verified accounts on Twitter were unable to post for a few hours, that’s because of a massive hack targeted to verified users. Hackers took control of dozens of accounts and made them post a tweet to send bitcoins to a wallet with an unlikely promise to send back more cryptocurrency. Twitter was able to regain control and return the control back to the original owners of the accounts, as Vice detailed: 

In an email sent to victims of the massive hack, Twitter apologizes, informs them of what happened, and suggests a series of actions to keep their accounts safe.

Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Mike Bloomberg, Apple, Jeff Bezos, Wiz Khalifa, as well as several cryptocurrency companies are among the victims of the massive hack. On Wednesday, Twitter reached out directly to the victims via email informing them of the hack, apologizing for it, and suggesting a series of actions to make sure the compromised accounts stay safe. As Motherboard reported, hackers used an internal user administration tool to take control of the accounts.

Earlier Thursday, Twitter revealed that the hackers accessed the Direct Messages inbox of up to 36 of the 130 targeted accounts, and they downloaded the accounts’ “Your Twitter Data”—an archive of information on the account, including tweets, DMs, Moments, media, and more—of eight of all the hacked accounts, according to a series of updates on its Twitter Support account.

image via Vice

Can you solve Rubik’s cubes while juggling them? I can’t juggle nor solve one, and it’s impressive to see one person do these actions at the same time! Que Jianyu set the Guinness World Record for the fastest time to solve three Rubik’s cubes while juggling at two minutes and forty-three seconds.

It isn’t a Super Mario game, or any of the retro titles you were familiar with. The first ever video game in history was a 1958 tennis game similar to the 1970s game Pong. Tennis For Two was created in 1985 by physicist William Higinbotham, as Ryan Fan detailed: 

He wanted to capture visitors’ interests by creating an interactive demonstration, later telling reporters that:

“It might liven up the place to have a game that people could play, and which would convey the message that our scientific endeavors have relevance for society.”

The game simply involved players adjusting a knob to alter the angle of the ball, and then pushing a button to hit it to another player. They couldn’t miss the ball as long as they pressed the button when it was on their side of the net, but if they angled it poorly, it could hit the net or be out of bounds.

There was nothing fancy about the game, and the graphics simply had a cathode ray tube display that had two lines, one representing the ground, and another representing the net. The ball was just a dot.

Players couldn’t even keep score. They had to do that themselves. The circuitry of the game involved resistors, capacitors, and relays, and it used some transistors for fast switching, especially when the ball was in play.

image via Medium

With extraordinary talent honed through countless hours of training, Taiwanese artist Han Tsu Tung makes wooden sculptures that seem to have come from another world, but unfortunately glitched as they arrived in our dimension.

Wow!

See his amazing masterpieces over at his Instagram account.

(Image Credit: han_tsu_tung/ Instagram)

With the anime Yu Yu Hakusho now available on Netflix, fans of the series can now watch the show again, and those who haven’t seen it yet now have a new series on their list of what to watch while they stay at home. With its great story and memorable characters, it is indeed a classic masterpiece, although a bit underrated, overshadowed by other shonen like Dragon Ball (DB). But what makes Yu Yu Hakusho a memorable show? It is how the story is told to the audience.

[It has] a one-two punch of arcs that both glorify anime violence and then call into question the glorification of it.

[...]

Yoshihiro Togashi's Yu Yu Hakusho took all of DB's messages about pride and angst… and ran with them, creating a seemingly effortless tale about warriors that find themselves in combat, but lose themselves as well.

More details about this over at Cracked.com.

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

In 1928, the first true antibiotic, penicillin, was discovered by Sir Alexander Fleming. This event inspired hope in people: hope that we had a chance to fight against deadly germs, enemies that cannot be seen by the naked eye. Between the 1950s and the 1970s, humanity was thrust into what was known as the antibiotic era, a time in history in which many antibiotic classes were discovered.

But much has changed since those times. The bacteria with which we have waged war against have become much stronger and resilient. If there was something that would disprove the phrase that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” it would be these microscopic organisms. And now, it seems that we’re losing this war, and immediate action is much needed.

How did bacteria become resistant in the first place, and what can we do about it? Scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York and the MRC Centre for Molecular Bacteriology and Infection at Imperial College London might have an answer.

More details about this over at MedicalXpress.

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

A shell is essential for a hermit crab. It helps him protect his soft abdomen, and helps him maintain the proper humidity level. At some point in time, however, a hermit crab has to abandon his home to search for another one, for many reasons. One is when the crab grows too big for its shell. Another reason is when some sort of fungus enters the shell, which makes the crab uncomfortable.

Watch as this hermit crab slowly moves to its new home.

(Video Credit: ViralHog/ YouTube)

Qantas said goodbye to its 747 today in style beginning with a low altitude tour of Sydney, a quick visit to retired fleet mate VH-OJA, and then a massive Qantas ‘Roo’ before heading across the Pacific. https://t.co/sDyfwbqKt3 pic.twitter.com/tDZIXChGh2

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) July 23, 2020

The Australian airline Qantas has retired its last Boeing 747 jumbo jet. As the last jet took off Wednesday with six pilots and no passengers, the flight path drew Qantas' distinctive kangaroo logo in the sky. 

Over the past week, Qantas operated three “Farewell Jumbo Joy Flights” touring Sydney, Brisbane, and Canberra with passengers on board for the final time. Today’s flight is taking the aircraft from Sydney to Los Angeles, where it will clear customs before continuing on to its final resting place in the California desert.

After making a scenic departure over Sydney and a low pass over the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) in Wollongong, which hosts a retired Qantas 747, QF7474 turned east over the Tasman Sea to draw Qantas’ iconic kangaroo.

The jet was taken to the Mojave Air and Space Port to be stripped for parts. -via BBC

While you've read Mark Twain's works and have probably quoted him, you might not know much about Samuel Clemens' personal life. Clemens made friends with Charles Langdon on his trip to the Holy Land in 1868, and later met his younger sister Olivia. Olivia was educated, devout, progressive, and chronically ill, possibly with tuberculosis.   

Eventually Samuel decided Olivia was the girl for him. He had earned a Bohemian reputation that was not necessarily good for a prospective husband and so when he came and stayed for two weeks and then asked Langdon for his daughter’s hand in marriage, he received a “chilled” response from her father. Moreover, Olivia gave him a resounding “no” when he proposed marriage.

The refusal by Olivia did not dishearten Samuel. He began a vibrant epistolary courtship writing 184 courtship letters. Their letters discussed their opinions of authors and books and they also expressed their ideas about what they thought a perfect marriage entailed. Relationships between the sexes and the elements that composed a perfect husband or wife were also among the things Olivia and Samuel debated at length. Interestingly, their opinions were often radically different, and yet despite these differences Samuel became determined to marry Olivia.

Olivia turned down Samuel's proposals twice more before they married in 1870. Read about their romance and the Clemens' family life at Geri Walton's blog. -via Strange Company

Four years ago, we posted the story of Taylor Ann Linko's wedding gown. Then there's a whole other story of what happened afterward. The newlyweds moved to San Diego, and Linko was having trouble turning her art into income.

We thankfully were given a free honeymoon and enough gift/saving money to get us through June…. then July………. things are getting tight now, August, not a single sale in the new city, September….. my time was running out. Trying to be a good wife, trying to get a gig face painting, or a sale at a craft fair, or into a gallery.

I had been so blessed my whole life to chase my dream, to try and be an Artist but time was running out.

I needed to contribute to the bills. No money to fund any new art ventures, no sales, “no followers”, no income, no hope left.

But then someone shared a photograph of her colorful wedding dress, and everything changed. The viral wedding pictures led to a full-time business customizing dresses and selling painted gowns. See more of Linko's work in her gallery.  -via reddit