Redditor Fidget08 snapped this photo of a tree with its bark blown off after it was hit by a lightning. Now who's gonna carve a baseball bat out of it? Via Laughing Squid
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A juvenile fox takes advantage of a golf ball coming his way. This hazard wasn't explained back at the club house. Still, watching him play was probably more fun than the game. -via Daily of the Day
An unnamed 16-year-old boy was sentenced to a juvenile curfew for conspiracy to commit burglary in Gloucester, England. He was fitted with an electronic ankle bracelet so his movements could be monitored. But when the security company set up with monitor -over the phone- he had an idea to get around the business of staying in his home.
The teenager was asked over the phone by an official from G4S to walk around the perimeter of his home so they could map the curfew zone they had to monitor.
But the quick-thinking lad decided to give himself a lot more freedom – by running as fast as he could down the road and back.
His speedy dash meant that the G4S official inadvertently gave him a much bigger area to roam around during his curfew hours.
Normally a criminal who is electronically tagged has to stay indoors or in the immediate garden area of his home during curfew hours.
The 16 year-old's ploy meant he could still venture down the road without triggering the tag.
The scheme was only uncovered about five weeks later, when the delinquent's landlady reported him not in the home. The security company had not received any alarms from the anklet bracelet, so they investigated and found out what he'd done to increase his restricted area. Link -via Geekosystem
(Image credit: Rex Features)
Zero to 60 in three seconds! The "features" of a cheetah are presented in this video in the manner of new model of sports car. Everything that makes a cheetah different from other cats is about the acceleration. One fact that floored me: one stride of a cheetah can be 25 feet long. Imagine tracking a cat like that -you'd never know which way to look for the next paw print! -via Viral Viral Videos
To celebrate the premier of Star Trek Into Darkness, the artists behind The Joy of Tech assembled their best Star Trek cartoons. At the link, you can find their slideshow hosted by a reasonable facsimile of J.J. Abrams.
A child's personal project turned into a documentary Yuck: A 4th Grader's Short Documentary About School Lunch. The film is 19 minutes long and has won several film festival awards. The trailers here are just short clips, but you can find a schedule of screenings at the film site.
In the fall of 2011, fourth grader Zachary Maxwell began asking his parents if he could start packing and bringing his own lunch to school. Unfortunately, they kept insisting that he take advantage of the hot lunch being served at the school. After all, the online menu sounded delicious and the NYC Department of Education (DOE) website assured parents that the meals were nutritious. Zachary wanted to convince his parents that the online menu did not accurately represent what was really being served at his school.
In an effort to prove his point, Zachary started sneaking a small HD camera into the lunchroom to show his parents the truth. Over the next six months, Zachary would continue to gather "inside" footage and research the claims being made by the DOE and the media about the City's public school lunch program.
To the surprise of no one besides his parents, the published menus differed quite a bit from the actual lunches served in schools. To be fair, all the lunches at his elementary school are free, and I've seen much worse. But Zachary Maxwell has a wonderful career ahead of him in filmmaking, journalism, or whatever he decides to do.
The film has a website. Link -via Boing Boing
By the way, Zachary now gets to bring lunch from home. Read more about his experience at the New York Times. Link
Brian G. reminds us that no matter where you are in the cycle, you're wrong. Keep running and worrying!
Link -via Joe Carter
Woe unto the man who comes between Korra and her ice cream cone! That man is Mike Reeves, who finally just gave up. Good move. Korra like potato chips, too. I see a weight problem in the future. -via Laughing Squid
Cally makes plushes--a lot of them. She has a wide assortment of Marvel characters, Gundams and an apparently exhaustive collection of Transformers. Cally calls her creations puggles, a word that is unfamiliar to me in this context but totally fits.
A toy guillotine could be morbidly funny in modern times, but this toy dates back to 1794, during the Reign of Terror phase of the French Revolution. 50 Watts quotes Karl Grober's book Children's Toys of Bygone Days: A History of Playthings of All Peoples from Prehistoric Times to the XIXth Century:
The worst monstrosity of the kind was the outcome of the French Revolution, which indeed was over-rich in aberrations of taste. The toy shops put on the market little guillotines with which little patriots could behead figures of aristocrats. There still survive some specimens of this pretty and diverting machine, of which one bears the date 1794 [above]. These were not models but pure toys; and in proof of this we have king's evidence from one whom we should never suspect of wishing to give so bloodthirsty a toy to his little son. This was no other than Goethe. In December, 1793, he asks his mother in Frankfurt to get him such a toy guillotine for his son August; and in her reply he certainly got some home-truths. In her decisive manner she wrote to him by return post: 'Dear Son, Anything I can do to please you is gladly done and gives me joy;--but to buy such an infamous implement of murder--that I will not do at any price. If I had authority, the maker should be put in the stocks and I would have the machine publicly burnt by the common executioner. What! Let the young play with anything so horrible,--place in their hands for their diversion murder and blood-shedding? No, that will never do!"
Link -via The Oddment Emporium
Via Accordion
Guy
A hot tub, home gym, pool, roller skating area, arcade, race track, McDonald's and hot girls' room. What not to like about this dream home as drawn by a fifth grader?
Illustration by: Tucker Cullinan
Fact: In ancient China people committed suicide by eating a pound of salt.
Check out all of our illustrated facts here.
These specimens in jars look pretty nasty, and the labels make them seem even worse. But believe it or not, they are all not only edible, but tasty! They contain unfamiliar fruits, or foods cut into odd shapes. Your Halloween guests will be delighted, if they can get over the willies and try them out. Get the recipes at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. Link -via Buzzfeed
It’s that time of year, when we look to graveyards for tales that scare the Dickens out of us. You've read about 9 Creepy Places to Visit for a Good Scare and you've seen lists of haunted houses. Now how about cemeteries? These six stories don't all contain ghosts -some are about vampires, poltergeists, and unidentified flying objects! Shown here is Chesnut Hill Cemetery in Rhode Island, the site of a vampire exhumation in 1892.
Chesnut Hill Baptist Church Cemetery in Exeter, Rhode Island is reported to be haunted by a vampire named Mercy Lena Brown. She was preceded in death by her mother and sister, victims of tuberculosis, and Mercy would often visit their graves. In January 1892, 19-year-old Mercy herself fell to tuberculosis and was interred with her family members. Mercy’s father George claimed she haunted him every night, complaining of hunger. His son Edwin fell sick, also with tuberculosis, but as he experienced visits from Mercy, the family and townspeople considered the cause of his illness to be the restless dead. George Brown, with the help of others, dug up the graves of his wife and two daughters on March 17, 1892. Only Mercy, who died in January, was free of decomposition. This led George to believe she was a vampire.
Read what happened then, and other tales, at mental_floss. Link
If you’re the kind of person who finds commercial haunted houses boring and instead loves traveling to macabre places, then you’d better start booking your tickets because we’ve compiled some of the creepiest and scariest places on earth. Of course, if you’re squeamish and don’t like to read about death or look at pictures of long-dead bodies, then you should probably skip ahead because this article just isn’t for you.
At first glance, the Aokigahara Forest near Mount Fuji is an ideal nature destination, filled with stunning trees growing on hard volcanic rock, and icy, rocky caverns. But the forest has a much darker side, one that was popularized with the 1960 novel Nami no T?, where the main characters end up committing suicide in the area. While Aokigahara was always a destination for the forlorn to end their lives, Nami no T? made the idea much more popular and since the book was released, an average of 30 people kill themselves in the area every year, with a record-setting body count of 108 deaths in 2004.
The government has put out a number of signs in both Japanese and English urging people to reconsider their decision and seek psychiatric help. Once a year, a group of volunteers patrols the forest looking for bodies. These body hunters mark off the areas they are exploring with plastic tape that is never removed. Thus, even if you never see a dead body or ghost roaming the forest, you are still bound to see signs of the forest’s secrets wherever you happen to go.
Image Via Al Kaiser [Flickr]
Unless you already have a doll phobia, the idea of an island filled with dolls doesn’t sound all that creepy at first. It’s once you learn that the dolls are mutilated and left hung in trees while they rot away, all in honor of a drowned little girl that you start to realize just how creepy this macabre tourist destination really is.
It all started over fifty years ago, when the island’s only resident, Don Julian Santana found the body of a dead little girl in the canal where the island sits. He was haunted by her memory and soon started hanging dolls in the trees to appease the girl’s spirits and to ward off evil spirits from entering the island. Doll heads, arms, legs, etc. are sprawled out across the island in a strange sacrifice to prevent further evil. Strangely though, in 2001, Don Julian suffered the same fate as the little girl, drowning in the canal beside his home. Some people believe this was the work of the dolls who have since become inhabited by evil spirits. These days, the dolls remain the sole occupants of one of Mexico’s darkest tourist attractions.
Image Via SkilliShots [Flickr]
The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo started when the local monastery outgrew its original cemetery, so the monks decided to mummify one of their recently deceased brothers before placing him in their newly opened catacombs. The process seemed to work well, so the monks began mummifying all of their fallen comrades and placing them in the catacombs. After a few centuries, word spread about the monk’s unique burial methods and it soon began to be a status symbol for rich people to be entombed in the catacombs buried in their finest clothing. Some people even left wills requesting that their clothing be changed by their family members at regular intervals.
The last friar was buried in the catacombs in 1871, but famous people from the area continued to be interred up until the 1920s. There are now about 8000 mummies lining the walls of the many hallways, which have been organized into categories: men, women, virgins, children, priests, monks and professionals. Some of the bodies are even set in poses, including the bodies of two children who sit together in a rocking chair.
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Japan’s Suicide Forrest
At first glance, the Aokigahara Forest near Mount Fuji is an ideal nature destination, filled with stunning trees growing on hard volcanic rock, and icy, rocky caverns. But the forest has a much darker side, one that was popularized with the 1960 novel Nami no T?, where the main characters end up committing suicide in the area. While Aokigahara was always a destination for the forlorn to end their lives, Nami no T? made the idea much more popular and since the book was released, an average of 30 people kill themselves in the area every year, with a record-setting body count of 108 deaths in 2004.
The government has put out a number of signs in both Japanese and English urging people to reconsider their decision and seek psychiatric help. Once a year, a group of volunteers patrols the forest looking for bodies. These body hunters mark off the areas they are exploring with plastic tape that is never removed. Thus, even if you never see a dead body or ghost roaming the forest, you are still bound to see signs of the forest’s secrets wherever you happen to go.
Image Via Al Kaiser [Flickr]
Mexico’s Island of the Dolls
Unless you already have a doll phobia, the idea of an island filled with dolls doesn’t sound all that creepy at first. It’s once you learn that the dolls are mutilated and left hung in trees while they rot away, all in honor of a drowned little girl that you start to realize just how creepy this macabre tourist destination really is.
It all started over fifty years ago, when the island’s only resident, Don Julian Santana found the body of a dead little girl in the canal where the island sits. He was haunted by her memory and soon started hanging dolls in the trees to appease the girl’s spirits and to ward off evil spirits from entering the island. Doll heads, arms, legs, etc. are sprawled out across the island in a strange sacrifice to prevent further evil. Strangely though, in 2001, Don Julian suffered the same fate as the little girl, drowning in the canal beside his home. Some people believe this was the work of the dolls who have since become inhabited by evil spirits. These days, the dolls remain the sole occupants of one of Mexico’s darkest tourist attractions.
Image Via SkilliShots [Flickr]
Italy’s Catacomb of Mummies
The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo started when the local monastery outgrew its original cemetery, so the monks decided to mummify one of their recently deceased brothers before placing him in their newly opened catacombs. The process seemed to work well, so the monks began mummifying all of their fallen comrades and placing them in the catacombs. After a few centuries, word spread about the monk’s unique burial methods and it soon began to be a status symbol for rich people to be entombed in the catacombs buried in their finest clothing. Some people even left wills requesting that their clothing be changed by their family members at regular intervals.
The last friar was buried in the catacombs in 1871, but famous people from the area continued to be interred up until the 1920s. There are now about 8000 mummies lining the walls of the many hallways, which have been organized into categories: men, women, virgins, children, priests, monks and professionals. Some of the bodies are even set in poses, including the bodies of two children who sit together in a rocking chair.
Austria’s Skull Ossuary
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