Quick: what comes to your mind when I say "Ferrari"? A line of gorgeous (and exorbitantly priced) supercars? Formula One racing? How about mule-shoeing, World War I flying ace, and the H1N1 virus?

Let's take a look at Neatorama's Top 10 Neat Facts About Ferrari:

1. A Ten-Year-Old Boy's Love of Racing

Enzo Ferrari, racing for Alfa Romeo (Image: Ferrari)

In 1908, Enzo Ferrari's father took him and his older brother to a race in Bologna. There, he became smitten with racing and wanted to become a race car driver. Ferrari's dream became reality in 1919, when he made his racing debut at the age of 21.

2. Enzo Ferrari was a Mule Shoer

During World War I, Enzo was a blacksmith and mule-shoer for the Italian army.

3. The H1N1 Connection

If you think that the current H1N1/Swine Flu is a new thing, think again: the Influenza virus H1N1 that you hear about all over the news today is the descendant of the virus responsible for the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic that killed as many as 100 million people worldwide.

In 1916, Enzo's father and brother died during an Italian flu outbreak, and in 1918, Enzo himself was stricken with the disease and almost died. Enzo was discharged from the Italian army but upon returning to his home in Modena, he discovered that his family's metal engineering firm had collapsed.

Enzo had to look for a job. When Fiat turned him down, he found a job as a test-driver for a small carmaker called CMN. A year later, his friend got him a job at Alfa Romeo as a race car driver. About ten years later, he started his own racing team, Scuderia ("stable") Ferrari.

4. Enzo was a Bad Ass

In 1919, while driving through the mountains of southern Italy to go to a race, Enzo Ferrari and fellow racer Ugo Sivocci were trapped by deep snow. They were going to be attacked by a pack of wolves but Enzo scared them off with a revolver that he kept with him at all times. They made the race. (Source)

5. Origin of Prancing Horse Logo

Francesco Baracca (c. June 1918)

The black prancing horse in the famous Ferrari logo was originally the symbol of Count Francesco Baracca, a flying ace in the Italian air force during World War I.

In 1923, Enzo Ferrari met Baracca's mother, Countess Paolina, who asked that he use the horse on his cars for good luck. It must've worked for Ferrari though Baracca didn't fare so well: his plane was shot down and he was killed in action at the age of 30.

See also: Neatorama's Evolution of Car Logos

6. How Ferrari Got the Nickname "Il Commendatore"

How did Enzo Ferrari got his nickname "Il Commendatore"? Was it because he's famously prickly and tyrannical? (Ferrari's longtime chief engineer Mauro Forghieri once remarked "As a businessman, he is excellent. As a human being, he is a zero" about him)

Actually, he was given the title Commendatore (literally Knight Commander) in 1927 for his racing accomplishments by the King of Italy Vittorio Emmanuel III. When Italy became a Republic in 1946, all honorary titles were canceled. So, technically, Il Commendatore became just a nickname for Enzo.

7. The Very First Ferrari

Ferrari 125 S (Photo: Daisuke Ido)

The very first car* produced and built under the Ferrari name is the Ferrari 125 S (125 after the engine displacement and S for Sport). I think it's one of the most beautiful cars - if not the most beautiful - Ferrari has ever made (though the 166 MM Barchetta ain't bad).

*Enzo Ferrari did make cars for Alfa Romeo before he started making Ferraris. One of the weirdest cars he ever made was the Alfa Romeo Bimotore, a car with two engines. One in front and another in the back of the driver.

8. The Most Expensive ... Brochure?!

You all know that Ferraris are expensive, but would you believe that even their brochures are pricey? In 1985, a brochure for the 1960's Ferrari 250 Le Mans fetched £1,070 at a Christie's auction in Monaco. A world record till today.

9. Most expensive Ferrari

1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa (Photo: 4WheelsNews)

The most expensive Ferrari ever sold was 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa (lit. "red head" - named that way because its red valve covers). It got 9.02 million euros in a recent auction. In addition to their legendary performance as race cars (the 250 TR won 10 international championships from 1958 to 1961), this model is also ultra rare: only 22 were ever constructed. (Source)

10. Wrecking a $1 Million Car.

You'd expect that when Ferrari made a car to honor its founder, it'd be good. And you'd be right: in 2002 Ferrari introduced the Enzo Ferrari, a sports car built using Formula One technology.

Only 400 cars were ever made ... and so far, 6 14 Enzos have been totaled. At a million bucks EACH!

One strange tale involving a crashed Ferrari Enzo led to the capture of a high-flying Swedish criminal named Stefan "Fat Steve" Eriksson, head of the Uppsala mafia who bilked investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars by creating a failed handheld game unit Gizmondo. It's a fascinating story - if you haven't heard about it, Randall Sullivan of Wired wrote an article explaining the whole thing.

Bonus: Ferrari Factory

Photo: Laurence Yap / Canadian Driver

Want to see the inside of a Ferrari factory? Laurence Yap took a peek inside the Maranello facility and wrote this article for Canadian Driver:

Walk through the Ferrari factory towards the end of the working day – its hours are like regular office hours, Monday through Friday – and it can seem almost like you’re in Willy Wonka’s candy factory. On the line where they make V8-engined F430s, young workers in full Ferrari-red regalia circle around their work stations, smiles on their faces, and a tune whistling from their lips.

Most of the people working on the factory floor are in their 20s and 30s, as a whole chunk of older workers – hired in the sixties – retired recently, all at the same time. So as if building Ferraris wasn’t enough, the whole place buzzes with a lot more energy than your typical car factory. Workers have decorated their stations with Ferrari stickers, Schumacher posters, and other automotive memorabilia; they’re free to wear what they want, but they’re all wearing something red.

Link

Just a couple of updates:

10 Neatest NY Inventions Over at HuffPo
I wrote an article titled 10 Neatest New York Inventions Ever that got frontpaged at the Huffington Post. For example, whoddathunk that Jell-O (OK, OK, gelatin desert) was invented in New York?

Not satisfied with having built the first American locomotive and running for president (for the Greenback Party ticket), industrialist Peter Cooper decided to try his hand in desserts. In 1845, he patented the formula for powdered gelatin.

You may not know the name "Peter Cooper," but I bet you've heard of what his invention later became known as. That's right. Jell-O.

Link - Thanks David!

Technorati State of the Blogosphere Interview
In addition to a completely new article-based front page and a new way to calculate the ranking of Technorati Top 100 Blogs, Technorati has just finished releasing their annual State of the Blogosphere 2009 report. Tucked in between all the interesting statistics and interviews with Internet heavyweights like Arianna Huffington, Seth Godin, Mathew Ingram, Simon Mackie, Andrew Breitbart, and Dean Takahashi, is little ol' me.

Many thanks to Eric Olsen who conducted the interview and tolerated me being a rambling doofus and butchering the English language (and is that how I sound like? OMG!). We talked about the Neatorama Shop, how Neatorama grew, the blog's counter-intuitive strategy of reducing pageviews, Neatorama's statistics and so on and so on for about 23 minutes: http://technorati.com/blogging/article/alex-santoso-interview-sotb-2009/

If you're interested, my interview for Technorati's State of the Blogosphere mentioned above was conducted using a new and free web service called wetoku.

wetoku is still in beta, but I can tell you this: it's one to watch out for. The interview was a snap to set up - all I had to do was plug in my webcam (otherwise it sits in a box somewhere on my bookshelf) and click on a link sent to me via email. The web page consisted of the image of the interviewer (in my case, Eric Olsen of Blogcritics and Technorati) and the interviewee (me), and a simple chatbox where we can text each other. The interviewer presses the "record" button and we started talking. Simple!

It's easy to see how wetoku can be very useful (just view all of the interviews done by Technorati for their State of the Blogosphere report). I won't be surprised if we see many more wetoku interviews popping up in many blogs.

Link

Stop! Hammerhead Time - $11.95 | Funny T-Shirts

What do you get when you combine a certain 80s fad and sharks? Here's a T-shirt designed by the always awesome Nathan Mazur of Scared of Bees and brought to you by MC Hammerhead, the hippest of all sharks. From the Neatorama Shop: http://shop.neatorama.com/product-info.php?stop-hammerhead-time-tshirt-pid610.html

What would you do if someone killed your child, and authorities refused to extradite the suspect? Here's what one father allegedly did:

A retired accountant whose daughter was killed 27 years ago was facing charges last night over the alleged abduction of the man he always blamed for her death. The man was left bound, gagged and injured outside a French courtroom.

André Bamberski, 72, is suspected of taking justice into his own hands over the German authorities’ failure to act against Dieter Krombach, a German cardiologist, after a French court convicted him of manslaughter in his absence.

Mr Krombach, 74, was found trussed up with head injuries in a lane near the criminal court in the eastern city of Mulhouse on Sunday after an anonymous caller with an Eastern European accent tipped off police. Mr Bamberski, who is of Polish origin and lives near Toulouse, was in Mulhouse at the weekend and is suspected of making the call, police said.

Link (Photo: Remy Gabalda/AFP/Getty Images)

Having done novels, short stories, and web-serials, Stephen King is branching out to ... comics. He's agreed to co-write the first five issues of American Vampire by Scott Snyder, a new series for DC Comics' Vertigo imprint:

So what lured the master of horror to comics after all this time? He certainly hasn’t been lacking for work, with a new novel, Under the Dome, due out November 10. He also released a novella, Ur, exclusively for the Amazon Kindle in February. But apparently, the promise of a fresh take on vampires was enough to entice King to make the jump.

Link (Illustration by Rafael Albuquerque) - Thanks Brian Ries!

Theories (some as kooky as being abducted by aliens or assuming another identity) have been swirling for years about the fates of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan, who disappeared during an attempt to fly around the world in 1937.

And now, researchers may have found the final resting place for the missing aviators:

Legendary aviatrix Amelia Earhart mostly likely died on an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati, according to researchers at The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR).

Tall, slender, blonde and brave, Earhart disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937 in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator. Her final resting place has long been a mystery.

For years, Richard Gillespie, TIGHAR's executive director and author of the book "Finding Amelia," and his crew have been searching the Nikumaroro island for evidence of Earhart. A tiny coral atoll, Nikumaroro was some 300 miles southeast of Earhart's target destination, Howland Island.

A number of artifacts recovered by TIGHAR would suggest that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made a forced landing on the island's smooth, flat coral reef.

Just in time for the Hilary Swank's new movie "Amelia". Coincidence? I don't think so!

Link | Nikumaroro Island on Wikipedia

Researchers have finally unlocked the secret of a happy marriage: trophy wife!

No, seriously. The study found that marrying smarter and younger women results in less fewer divorces and greater marriage bliss:

The researchers studied interviews of more than 1,500 couples who were married or in a serious relationship. Five years later, they followed up 1,000 of the couples to see which had lasted.

They found that if the wife was five or more years older than her husband, they were more than three times as likely to divorce than if they were the same age.

If the age gap is reversed, and the man is older than the woman, the odds of marital bliss are higher.

Link (Image: a Halloween costume from BuyCostumes)

This week's collaboration with the What is it? Blog brings us this strange looking device - can you guess what it is for?

Place your guess in the comment section. One guess per comment, however, you can guess as many times as you'd like. Post no URL or links - let others play.

No prize this week - you're playing for bragging rights only. For more clues, check out that What is it? Blog. Good luck!

Das Kapital Money Bank - $19.95 + s/h

This one will make Karl Marx spin in his grave (you may be surprised to find where the father of communism was buried. No, not the Soviet Union. Karl Marx was buried in London.)

Behold the Das Kapital Money Bank - a secret storage case shaped like his Das Kapital manifesto. And at $19.95 over at the Neatorama Shop, you don't have to be the bourgeoisie to buy one: http://shop.neatorama.com/product-info.php?das-kapital-money-bank-pid589.html

See also: Good Marx, Bad Marx T-Shirt

Can't speak English? You better not be pulled over in Texas ... Nearly forty people have gotten "no-English" traffic violation tickets:

The Dallas Police Department said it was embarrassed by what it calls a mistake by rookie Officer Gary Bromley after he stopped Ernestina Mondragon for making an illegal U-turn.

In addition for being cited for the U-turn violation, Mondragon received another ticket for being a "non-English speaking driver."

Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle issued an apology:

"We don't have abilities to determine proficiency in any language, and we shouldn't be doing it in the first place," Kunkle said. "I apologize to the Spanish-speaking Hispanic community."

After a review of the records, Kunkle said about a half-dozen officers had issued a total of 38 similar citations. He said police would recommend to the courts that any pending cases be dismissed.

Link

The following is a Neatorama Shop Story, a narrative starring the products carried in this blog’s very own online store.

1932, Vieux Carré. The spirited jazz befit the life the old lady had lived. She had been known for curing illnesses, lifting curses and brewing love potions, all without charging. She had gotten along with everyone, even the reclusive nocturnal couple who rented the windowless basement apartment. The procession wound its way back to her grand dwelling on St. Ann Street where we found ourselves at a wake hosted by the deceased’s attractive young niece, Sookie, who had just returned from her studies abroad.

We had only recently taken up residence in the sun-drenched breezy balconied rooms on the second floor. The first floor was occupied by a handsome but shy young pianist. He and the old lady had “adopted” each other some years earlier and had become constant companions, so his absence from the procession had raised our eyebrows and our concern. Later, when we did not see him at the wake, we feared he was bedridden with grief and loneliness, yet our worries melted away like Cajun crawfish croquettes as we eagerly sampled the buffet before us. In anticipation of crossing over, the old lady had written out a meticulous plan which Sookie had followed to the letter, lovingly preparing all of her Aunt’s secret recipes, and placing at the center of the table a voodoo doll toothpick holder. With each miniscule skewer removed by a guest and plunged into cayenne crab cakes, deep fried jambalaya crisps, or gator gumbo gobs, everyone present felt a pang of sadness lift, and recalled in its place a joyous memory of a joke shared or wisdom gained in times spent in the company of the dearly departed.

The jazz band paused as the very house itself seemed to groan and sob a long cathartic wail. Just then, our mysteriously absent neighbor stumbled through the doorway, clutching his bosom. Our hostess looked into his eyes and then down at the table, where a lone stick jutted from the heart of its man-shaped holder. Plucking the tiny toothpick from its hole, she stabbed a soft praline ball and lifted it to the quivering lips of the young man whose hands promptly fell from his chest to his sides and then wrapped themselves around the waist of his savior. The two young people closest to the old lady’s heart would now dwell in each others’, as she had long intended.

We knew it was past our bedtime when our subterranean neighbors arrived bearing blood-sausage-stuffed po’ boys. As we were saying goodnight, the hostess passed us the little perforated person who had served up so much deliciousness and pain. She said, “Please take this. My aunt would have wanted you to have it. She told me that your love spanned the ages.”

Our little friend is now marketed under the name of “Ouch! The Voodoo Doll Toothpick Holder.” We have employed ours on several occasions without attracting the attention of authorities. It has retained its power as a great party starter. We have used it at an acupuncturist’s reception, and have adorned “Ouch!” with ruffle-ended toothpicks to evoke a grass skirt for a Very Brady taboo/voodoo luau. When he is not partying, “Ouch!” makes a nice paperweight and graciously holds our “flags of all nations and eras” pushpin collection (essential in mapping our adventures). Just hanging out with him imparts a comforting feeling that you have a tool with which to control the universe. “Ouch!” does not appear to have been approved for use with sparklers, so we cannot advise in good conscience that you try it. Suffice it to say that it would look wicked cool and the spell would be that much more effective.

Ouch! Voodoo Doll Toothpick Holder, available from the Neatorama Shop for $7.95

__________

The story above is written by the dynamic duo Drs. Ernest and Convalescence Bidet-Wellville (hey, I didn’t name ‘em) of the University of Self-Conscious Consumerism in Olde Busytowne, Connecticut. I suspect they write cover stories for the CIA, so if I’m inexplicably missing the next few days, you know what happened.

Psst! Need a job? Here's an opening for you: $10 to $12 an hour, with the possibility of an occassional bonus. All you have to do is cater to the "everyday tasks" of a Georgetown University sophomore.

That's right. Charley Cooper is a busy kid. He's got classes, homework, and even a part-time job at a financial services company. So he's looking for a personal assistant to handle the mundane part of everyday living like doing laundry, organizing his closet, and so on:

Cooper, 19, logged on to the university's student employment Web site last week and posted an ad for someone to tackle "some of my everyday tasks," such as organizing his closet, dropping him off and picking him up from work, scheduling haircuts, putting gas in the car and taking it in for service, managing his electronic accounts and doing laundry (although the assistant will be paid only for the time spent loading, unloading and folding clothes, not the entire laundry cycle).

The successful applicant can expect to work three to seven hours a week and make $10 to $12 an hour, although "on occasion it will be possible to work additional hours and/or receive bonuses at my discretion." Preference will be given to Georgetown undergraduates, Cooper says in the listing, and the assistant can spread his or her tasks throughout the day.

"As my PA you will receive an email once a day by 9:00 am with a task list for that day and a time estimate for each task," Cooper wrote in the job listing, which was first reported by the student newsmagazine, Georgetown Voice. "Important tasks will be bolded on the list and must be done that day (even though everything on the list should theoretically be finished on a daily basis). At the end of the day you will send me an email telling me what tasks are incomplete or that all tasks have been completed."

Link

More at Gawker and Georgetown's Blog Vox Populi.

Image from Foxtongue [Flickr]

The next time you get a bunch of WTF pictures on a viral email, remember this: human's propensity for making weird (and weirdly wonderful) pictures predates the InterWeb. Take a look at these strangely compelling black and white images of yore over at Black and WTF tumblr blog: Link - Thanks Matt!