World Trade Center Victims

Does anyone know the story behind this photo?

Yay! It's time for Neatorama and Hobotopia's Caption Monkey game. Funniest caption will win an original Laugh-Out-Loud Cats cartoon by Adam "Ape Lad" Koford.

Contest rules are darn simple: place your caption in the comment section. One caption per comment, please. You can enter as many as you'd like.

For inspiration, check out Adam's blog. Good luck!

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For more the web's most interesting videos, check out: VideoSift.

So, the scientists at CERN flipped on the Large Hadron Collider and life as we know it didn't end (yet). So to celebrate our continued existence, here's the "I Survived the Large Hadron Collider" T-Shirt on Neatorama's Online Shop: http://shop.neatorama.com/product-info.php?i-survived-the-large-hadron-collider-t-shirt-pid104.html - on sale for $9.95

Expected to step on the block, so to speak, of Stern's Sirius radio studio is a San Diego woman who says she wants to sell her maidenhood to pay her college tuition.

"I don't have a moral dilemma with it," says the pretty brunette, who's using the pseudonym of Natalie Dylan "for safety reasons."

"We live in a capitalist society," she tells us. "Why shouldn't I be allowed to capitalize on my virginity?"

Hoax? You be the judge: Link - Thanks honeybee

To remind the people of Sydney and Melbourne, Australia that Queensland is a warm place to go to during winter vacation, Tourism Queensland employed a bunch of attractive women to ... um, flash men on the street with this advertising message:

The objective was to make Queensland the number one choice for a winter holiday. To remind the Sydney and Melbourne markets than, evein in winter (it’s winter now in Australia), the weather’s warm enough to enjoy Queensland’s beaches 24 flashers were deployed throughout high traffic areas in chilly Sydney and Melbourne to promote sunny Queensland as a holiday destination this winter.

Here's the "front view": Link (SFW, don't worry - Update 9/10/08: Some visitors complained of a virus from the website - click at your own risk)

Would you believe that Einstein was the inspiration for Yoda, E.T., and even a spiffy BMX bike trick? Here are 6 things inspired by Albert Einstein, the smartest man who ever lived:

1. Yoda

Einstein (Image: Wikipedia), Yoda and Stuart Freeborn (Image: Muppet Wiki)

Stuart Freeborn, the make-up supervisor for the original Star Wars trilogy modeled Yoda after his own face. He added a bit of Einstein's eyes and wrinkles for that "wise look" of the Jedi master. (Source)

See also: Top 5 Star Wars Designs and What Inspired Them at Geek in Heels blog

2. E=MC² Ballet

It turns out, Einstein's theory of relativity may just be perfect for ... the ballet!

In 2005, artistic director Mark Baldwin of the Rambert Dance Company created a new ballet, called the Constant Speed (a reference to the constant speed of light irrespective of the motion of the light source, which was postulated by Einstein).

Jerry Cowhig of the Institute of Physics that commissioned the work said:

"Dance is an expressive medium and it will be ideal for abstract concepts like the theories of Einstein on everything from tiny atoms to the dynamics of the whole cosmos." (Source)

3. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Steven Spielberg hired special effect artist Carlo Rambaldi to create the animatronic model of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.

Spielberg also asked Rambaldi to incorporate features of Ernest Hemingway, poet Carl Sandburg, and Albert Einstein into the eyes and face of E.T. Rambaldi did, but he also threw in a bit of his own cat into E.T.! (Source)

(Photo: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial / Universal at Yahoo! Movies)

4. Einstein on the Beach Opera

[YouTube clip: a Documentary on Philip Glass, music starts at 0:50,
Einstein on the Beach at 3:00]

In 1976, Philip Glass scored and wrote an opera (directed by Robert Wilson) called Einstein on the Beach. It is Glass' first and longest opera - the full version takes approximately 5 hours to complete with absolutely no intermission! Because of the length, the audience is free to come and go as they like.

Actually, Wilson wanted Charlie Chaplin or Adolf Hitler as the subject of the opera, whereas Glass wanted Mahatma Gandhi. The two compromised on Albert Einstein.

Einstein on the Beach is hailed as a groundbreaking work in opera: even stranger than the 5 hour performance, the opera is also accompanied by a slideshow of visual imageries that border on crazy!

(In 1993, the rock band Counting Crows recorded a single titled Einstein on the Beach (For an Eggman), which title was inspired by Glass' opera)

5. Einstein Comes Through, the Play

In 2004, David Ellenstein was thinking of ideas for a one-man play as a backup to his regular acting gigs when he ran into actor Marc Silver. Turns out, both of them had played Einstein before, so naturally they decided to write a play about the man:

The two playwrights tell the story of Hank, an actor who performs a one-man Einstein show, but can't on this day due to uncertain circumstances. He turns to Einstein to get him back on track and out of trouble.

"We used Marc's day job as a starting point because it gave the character the option of being the actor or Einstein," he said. "The play is surreal. It's a pretty wild ride because it jumps around between him being an actor and Einstein." (Source)

6. Einstein Flip BMX Trick

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Einstein's annus mirabilis (that's what he called his most productive year ever), Helen Czerski, a Cambridge University physicist and BMX rider Ben Wallace collaborated to create a nifty bike trick dubbed the "Einstein Flip":

The stunt "pushes the boundaries of what it is humanly possible to do on a bike", said Helen Czerski, a Cambridge University physicist, who collaborated with BMX rider Ben Wallace to create the manoeuvre to show young people the physics in everyday life.

Wallace, 18, launched himself off a 6ft ramp and rotated 360 degrees while folding his bike underneath him. Ms Czerski said: "It is at the limits of what is possible. I did the maths and found that it could work. Having said that, I wouldn't want try this myself - however much I trust my calculations. It takes a lot of guts." (Source)

(Photo: David Bebber)

Don't miss this article: 10 Strange Facts About Einstein

Did you know that the current US flag was designed by a high school student for a class project? (He got a B, though his teacher changed it to an A after Congress accepted it as the national flag!). Did you know that the Libyan flag is green (and nothing but green) or that the precursor to the Philippines flag had a Jolly Roger? Read on ...

1. Flag of the United States: The Stars and Stripes

Supposedly, it was George Washington himself who proclaimed "We take the stars from Heaven, the red from our mother country, separating it by white stripes, thus showing that we have separated from her, and the white stripes shall go down to posterity representing Liberty."

Lower Left: Colonial Flag, used chiefly by Colonies of New England before the Revolutionary War. Lower Right: Bunker Hill Flag, used by New England troops at the battle of Bunker Hill. Upper Left: Pine Tree Flag of the Navy, used by the American ships early in the Revolutionary War. Upper Right: Rattlesnake flag, used early in Revolutionary War. Center Left: First National Flag, used in 1776, before the Declaration of Independence. Center Right: The Present "Star Spangled Banner" (Image: History of the US, a high school text book in 1885 [wikipedia])

At the time of the signing of the Declaration Independence, the United States of America had no official national flag. The Grand Union Flag is considered to be the first national flag of the United States, though it didn't have any official status.

In 1777, the Second Continental Congress passed the Flag Resolution stating that the national flag of the United States has 13 red and white stripes, and 13 white stars in a blue field. But it didn't specify the arrangement of the stars. One popular story is that George Washington asked Betsy Ross to design and sew the flag (Betsy decided to use a 5-pointed star instead of 6 to save time). Though this story is accepted as historical fact by most Americans, historians doubted it as the only evidence was the words of her only surviving grandson.

Since then, a new star is added to the flag when a new state joined the Union (in 1795, 2 stars and 2 stripes were added when Kentucky and Vermont became states, but the number of stripes subsequently reverted back to 13).

When Alaska and Hawaii were being considered for statehood, people sent in more than 1,500 new flag designs to President Eisenhower. One of the designs was submitted by a 17-year-old high school student named Bob Heft, who first created it as a school project. He got a B- for it (for "lack of originality"), though his teacher agreed to change his grade if his design was accepted. When Bob's flag design was chosen, his teacher changed the grade to an A! (Source)

2. The Flag of Afghanistan

Afghanistan is a landlocked country in south-central Asia. It is not particularly rich in natural resources, but its geographical location made it a crossroad between the East and the West. Throughout history, Afghanistan has probably seen more wars and conquests than any other piece of land in the world.

A true reflection of its history, the Afghan national flag has had more changes during the 20th century than flags of any other countries in the world.

Phew. Image credit: Wikipedia

3. Flag of the United Kingdom: the Union Jack

Image credit: Guilherme Paula [wikipedia]

The national flag of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the royal banner known as the Union Flag or more popularly the Union Jack. Its current design is the combination of the red Cross of St. George (patron saint of England), the white red Saltire (or X-shaped cross) of St. Patrick of Ireland and the white Saltire of Saint Andrew of Scotland.

Why is it called the Union Jack? Some people say because it was named after King James I of Great Britain (after Jacobus, Latin for James) who introduced the flag; others say that the "jack" refers to the jackstaff, a small pole in the bow of the ship used to fly flags - and since Britain's navy was formidable, the name Union Jack stuck.

If you look closely at the Union Jack, you'll notice that the diagonal red and white stripes aren't symmetrical. Here's the story behind it:

In 1801, an Act of Union which made Ireland a co-equal member of the United Kingdom made it necessary to add a symbol for Ireland to the flag, but without obliterating any of the existing symbols. If the St. Patrick's cross had been centered on the diagonal stripes, then St. Andrew's cross would have been relegated to an inferior position, basically serving only as a border for St. Patrick's. But Scotland was the senior of the two kingdoms, so this was unsatisfactory. The solution was to divide the diagonal stripes diagonally, so that the red St. Patrick's cross would take up only half of each stripe, and so that half devoted to St. Andrew would take the place of honor. Thus, in the two hoist quarters, the white St. Andrew's cross occupies the upper position, and in the two fly quarters, the red St. Patrick's cross occupies the upper position. (Source)

But what happened to Wales? The Flag of Wales, The Red Dragon or Y Ddraig Goch, isn't represented in the Union Jack because Wales was annexed by England in 1282. With the Laws in Wales Act 1535 - 1542, it is legally part of the Kingdom of England and thus represented under the St. George's Cross flag.

4. Flag of Albania

Albania has one of the most kick ass flags around: the two-headed eagle design was derived from a 15th century Albanian warrior named Gjergj Skanderbeg, the Dragon of Albania (who, ironically, had a two-headed eagle as a seal, not a dragon). Skanderbeg, in turn, got the design from an ancient Byzantine heraldry.

The evolution of the flag of Albania is as follows:

5. Flag of Libya

The flag of Libya is ... green. Green, and nothing but green - in fact, it's the only national flag in the world with only one color and no design or insignia. Green is the traditional color of Islam, the state religion of Libya, and also symbolizes Gaddafi's "Green Revolution," where he overthrew the Libyan monarchy in 1969.

6. Flag of the Seychelles

Seychelles is an archipelago nation of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean east of Africa. The country has 3 flags since its independence in 1976 from the British Commonwealth.

In the current flag, the blue band represents the sky and the sea that surrounds the island nation, the yellow band is the sun, the red symbolizes the people, the white band represents social justice and harmony, and the green band depicts the country's land and nature.

7. Flag of the Philippines

The present-day national flag of the Philippines has elements of the flags flown by the Katipunan secret society during the Philippine Revolution. The Pambansang bandila ("National Flag") was first conceptualized by General Emilio Aguinaldo during his exile in Hong Kong in 1897 and hand sewn by Marcela Agoncillo, her daughter Lorenzo and a friend named Josefina Herbosa de Natividad.

Though the Katipunan flags aren't considered national flags (and thus not a direct precursor of the current flag), their varieties and designs deserve a mention (plus what other national flag has a Jolly Roger?)

Some of the Katipunan generals have their own personal flags:

Anyway, here is the evolution of the Philippine national flag:

Actually, the blue color has been changed at least 5 times in the Philippines flag (read more about the blue shade debate here)

Obviously this article is woefully incomplete. There 193 recognized countries (more if you count special entities and territories) in the world, and we've only covered a handful. So if your country isn't listed and you think that its flag deserves a mention, please write about it in the comment section.

The following is reprinted from Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again

During World War II, Japan had a secret weapon designed to spark a massive forest fire in the United States. Thanksfully, the device - which was partly made by Japanese schoolgirls - was a dud. Here's the bizarre story of the Fugo killer balloons:

On May 5, 1945, Reverend Archie Mitchell, his wife Elsie, and five children from his Sunday school drove from the tiny southern Oregon town of Bly for a picnic on Gearhart Mountain. While Reverend Mitchell parked the car, his wife and the children explore. They came upon a device the U.S. government knew about but had kept secret. When one of them touched the device, it exploded: Mrs. Mitchell and the five children were killed. The six Oregonians became the only known fatalities on the U.S. mainland from enemy attack during all of World War II.

MADE IN JAPAN

The exploding contraption was a Japanese Fugo balloon bomb, the brainchild of Major General Sueyoshi Kusaba of the Japanese Ninth Army Technical Research Laboratory. The balloons measured 33 feet across and 70 feet long from top to bomb. They were constructed (by Japanese schoolgirls) from bits of a tough paper called washi, made from mulberry trees, and glued together with potato paste. The bomb parts were made in a factory - not by schoolgirls. Filled with hydrogen gas, the payload consisted of 36 sandbags for ballast, four incendiary bombs, and one 33-pound antipersonnel bomb.

Launched to rise 35,000 feet, the balloons were designed to use the prevailing Pacific eastward winds to reach the west coast of North America. As the balloons leaked gas and lost altitude, barometric pressure switches caused the sandbags to drop off and the balloons to rise back to the jetstream. The trip took three to five days. By the time they reached the United States, the baloons, now out of sandbags, were supposed to drop the bombs and then self-destruct. The Japanese hoped the bomb would cause forest fires and panic the American public.

FUGO, FUGO, FUGO!

Between October 1944 and April 1945, Japan launched 9,300 of these balloons. Estimates are that fewer than 500 balloons reached the United States or Canada; the rest fell into the Pacific Ocean. In November 1944, one balloon was discovered in the ocean off San Pedro, California. In January 1945, a balloon bomb landed in Medford, Oregon, without exploding. At some point, a rancher in Nevada discovered a balloon and used it as a tarp to cover his hay; police later discovered that two bombs were still attached to it.

WHAT BALLOONS?

Most of the balloons either exploded harmlessly or failed to detonate on impact. Approximately 90 of them were recovered in the United States as far east as Michigan. Strict censorship kept their existence out of the newspapers, and those who knew of their presence were sworn to secrecy. It was feared that news of the balloons arrival would encourage the launching of more balloons. They weren't seen as much of a danger, but the hush-hush handling of the situation worked: the Japanese abandoned the project because they didn't hear of any success. But after the Mitchell family tragedy in Oregon, the public was warned.

The last balloon bomb was found in Alaska in 1955; its bombs were still capable of exploding. Ironically, on March 10, 1945, one of the last paper balloons desceded near Hanford, Washington. The balloon landed on electrical power lines, shutting off the Hanford nuclear reactor for three days. The Hanford reactor, part of the top-secret Manhattan project, was producing plutonium for the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, five months later. The Fugo balloon bombs are considered a failure as weapons system. There were no proven bomb-caused forest fires, and they caused little other damage. Elsie Mitchell and the five children were the tragic exceptions.

How well do you know your animal traps? Our pal Rob H. of What is it? Blog has a neat featurette: a quiz of 28 of the strangest and most gruesome-looking animal traps.

This one above is the man trap:

A man trap, it was used by a wealthy land owner in England to catch poachers. It takes a key to open the jaws and they can't be pried apart. It was designed so as not to break the leg, a small consolation since the victim probably paid with his life.

The stick was used as a trigger, it kept the jaws open and when stepped on, the trap was sprung.

Check out the entire list here: Link

Photo: Doron [wikipedia]

What if M.C. Escher designed a real life building? It'd probably be something like the Chand Baori stepwell near Jaipur, India. The amazing 13-stories well was built in the 9th century and has 3,500 narrow steps. Don't fall - at 100 feet (~30 m) deep, it's a long way down.

Oddity Central has more: Link - via Scribal Terror

Photo: Rosemary Travale [Flickr]

Neatorama reader Rosemary Travale spotted this creative graffiti (technically graffito, I think) near the corner of Iriquois Shore on Trafalgar road in Oakville, Ontario, Canada:

Some very creative person noticed the shadow the crosswalk box made resembled Batman's head so they added in his face to complete it. Very neat street art to come across while walking home at night!

Link - Thanks Rosemary!

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For more the web's most interesting videos, check out: VideoSift.

By now you've all probably been playing with Google Chrome, the search engine giant's new browser (well, unless you're on a Mac or Linux, that is). Well, Philipp Lenssen's Google Blogoscoped blog who broke the news on the whole thing has a really neat list of tips and pointers on Chrome.

One thing that many people are wondering about is what's up with Google Chrome's logo? Philipp thinks that it's a combination of Pokémon's Poké Ball, and the Simon toy (see also this post on Digital Inspiration)

Well, I say there's something else. See that glowing blue eye? It's absolutely, positively from SAL 9000, the Earthbound twin of the HAL 9000 computer in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Huh? There are two of 'em? Yep: HAL has a red eye, SAL has a blue eye.)

And here's a YouTube clip of SAL 9000 (voiced by Candice Bergen, actually) from 2010: The Year We Make Contact (based on Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two)

[YouTube clip]

Sometimes the most amazing abilities of the human brain are revealed exactly when things go wrong with it. Take, for example, savants - people who have mental abilities that could only be characterized as superhuman (like having photographic memory, playing music perfectly after hearing it just once, or doing complex mathematical calculations in one's head) but otherwise severely disabled in every day cognitive functions and social interaction.

Does the human brain have latent savant-like abilities? Does our higher cognitive functions somehow block these abilities, and why? And can we have savant-like abilities without the accompanying autism and/or developmental disabilities? One intriguing study by Dr. Allan Snyder of the Centre for the Mind suggested that temporarily impairing the left fronto-temporal lobe in healthy subjects by low-frequency magnetic pulses could result in savant-like mental abilities (see, for example: article in New York Times "Savant for a Day")

Most savants are born with their abilities (and unfortunately, their developmental disorders), but not all: severe brain injuries can, in very rare instances, cause savant-like abilities to surface (see, for example: The Case of the "Sudden" Savant). One noted savant (Daniel Tammet, see below) is a highly functioning autistic savant who can perform amazing mental feats but does not have significant developmental disabilities.

There are a few savants in the world (called "prodigious savants") whose abilities are so exceptional that they would've been classified as phenomenal with or without cognitive disabilities. Let's take a look at 10 savants with superhuman mental skills:

1. Kim Peek, the Real Rain Man

Even though you've never heard of Kim Peek, chances are you've heard the movie Rain Man. Kim was the inspiration for the character played by Dustin Hoffman in the movie.

Kim Peek was born with severe brain damage. His childhood doctor told Kim's father to put him in an institution and forget about the boy. Kim's severe developmental disabilities, according to the doctor, would not let him walk let alone learn. Kim's father disregarded the doctor's advice.

Till this day, Kim struggles with ordinary motor skills and has difficulty walking. He is severely disabled, cannot button his shirt and tests well below average on a general IQ test.

But what Kim can do is astounding: he has read some 12,000 books and remembers everything about them. "Kimputer," as he is lovingly known to many, reads two pages at once - his left eye reads the left page, and his right eye reads the right page. It takes him about 3 seconds to read through two pages - and he remember everything on 'em. Kim can recall facts and trivia from 15 subject areas from history to geography to sports. Tell him a date, and Kim can tell you what day of the week it is. He also remembers every music he has ever heard.

Since the movie Rain Man came out, Kim and his father have been traveling across the country for appearances. The interaction turns out to be beneficial for him, as he becomes less shy and more confident.

Further reading about Kim Peek:

• Kim Peek [wikipedia]
• Kim Peek - The Real Rain Man
• On YouTube: Kim Peek - The Real Rain Man (a series of 5 clips)

(Photo: Kim Peek courtesy of Darold A. Treffert / Wisconsin Medical Society)

2. Leslie Lemke

[YouTube clip]

Leslie Lemke didn't have a great start in life. He was born with severe birth defects that required doctors to remove his eyes. His own mother gave him up for adoption, and a nurse named May Lemke (who at the time was 52 and was raising 5 children of her own) adopted him when he was six months old.

As a young child, Leslie had to be force-fed to teach him how to swallow. He could not stand until he was 12. At 15, Leslie finally learned how to walk (May had to strap his fragile body to hers to teach him, step by step, how to walk).

At 16 years of age, Leslie Lemke bloomed. In the middle of one night, May woke up to find Leslie playing Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. Leslie, who has no classical music training, was playing the piece flawlessly after hearing it just once earlier on the television.

From then on, Leslie began playing all styles of music from ragtime to classical. Like the Tchaikovsky piece, he only has to hear the music once in order to play it again perfectly. He became famous after being portrayed in national television shows. Before his health started to deteriorate, Leslie gave many concerts around the world.

More info about Leslie Lemke:

• Leslie Lemke - An Inspirational Performance
• Leslie Lemke in concert (April 29, 1986) [YouTube]
• A DVD of Leslie Lemke performing live at the Performing Art Center in Pittsville, Wisconsin can be ordered from:
  
  Miracle of Love Ministries
  8099 Grant Road
  Arpin, WI 54410
  Cost: $20.00

3. Alonzo Clemons

As a toddler, Alonzo suffered a head injury in an accident that changed his life. He can't feed himself or tie his shoelaces, but he can sculpt.

And boy, can he sculpt: after seeing only a fleeting image of an animal on a TV screen, Alonzo could sculpt a perfect 3D figure of it, correct in each and every detail right down to the muscle fibers.

Check out Alonzo's official website, where you can purchase his sculptures: Link

4. Gottfried Mind: Cat's Raphael

Gottfried Mind's cats (For more, check out Art Prints on Demand)

Gottfried Mind was one of the earliest savants in history. In 1776, the eight-year-old Gottfried was placed in an art academy, where his teachers noted that he was "very weak, incapable of hard work, full of talent for drawing, a strange creature, full of artist-caprices, along with a certain roguishness."

One day, Gottfried's mentor, a painter named Sigmund Hendenberger, was drawing a cat when Gottfried exclaimed "That is no cat!" The teacher asked whether he could do better and sent the child to a corner to draw. The cat that Gottfried drew was so lifelike that since then he became known as the Cat's Raphael:

In the course of his narrow, indoors life, he had worked himself into an almost paternal relation with domestic animals, especially with cats. While he sat painting, a cat might generally be seen sitting on his back or on his shoulder; many times he kept, for hours, the most awkward postures, that he might not disturb it. Frequently there was a second cat sitting by him on the table, watching how the work went on; sometimes a kitten or two lay in his lap under the table. Frogs (in bottle) floated beside his easel; and with all these creatures he kept up a most playful, loving style of conversation; though, often enough, any human beings about him, or such even as came to see him, were growled or grunted at in no social fashion. (Source)

5. Gilles Tréhin

Gilles Tréhin lives part-time in the city of Urville, in an island off the Côte d'Azur, between Cannes and St. Tropez. Never heard of it? That's because Urville exists only in his mind.

Since he was 5, Gilles taught himself to draw three dimensional objects. By 12, he started building a city he called "Urville" (after Dumont d'Urville, a French scientific base in the Antarctic). At first he used LEGO, but shortly thereafter, he realized that he could expand his imaginary city much easier with drawings.

Abbaye Sainte Marguerite des Tégartines, in Urville

Urville isn't just an idle idea - Gilles has 250 detailed drawings, complete "history" of the founding the the city, and has even published a book detailing it (Sneak peak at Google Books)

Visit Urville at Gilles' official website here: http://urvillecity.free.fr/index.Urville-ENG.htm

6. Jedediah Buxton

Jedediah Buxton, born in Derbyshire, England, in 1707, couldn't write. By all accounts, he has no knowledge of science or history or anything else for that matter except for numbers. Jedediah, as it turned out, was one of the world's earliest mental calculators and savants.

Everything was numbers to Jedediah - in fact, he associated everything he saw or experienced with numbers. He measured the area of the village he was born in simply by walking around it. When he saw a dance, his whole attention was to count the number of steps of the dancers. At a play, Jedediah was consumed with counting the number of words uttered by the actors.

The mental feat of Jedediah Buxton was tested by the Royal Society in 1754 - his mathematical brain was able to calculate numbers up to 39 figures.

7. Orlando Serrell

Orlando Serrell wasn't born autistic - indeed, his savant skills only came about after a brain injury. In 1979, then ten-year-old Orlando was playing baseball when the ball struck him hard on the left side of his head. He fell to the ground but eventually got up to continue playing.

For a while, Orlando had headaches. When they went away, he realized he had new abilities: he could perform complex calendar calculations and remember the weather every day from the day of the accident.

From Orlando's official website:

What makes Orlando Serrell so unique is that he may indeed hold the key that unlocks the genius in us all. Orlando Serrell did not possess any special skills until he was struck in the head by a baseball when he was 10. And his extraordinary gifts seem to be his only side effect. Could this mean once a key hemisphere in the brain is stimulated, we can all attain the level of genius Orlando posses and beyond? Only time and research will tell. Until then we will do well to keep our eyes on Orlando and learn what we can from his experience.

8. Stephen Wiltshire, the Human Camera

As a young child, Stephen Wiltshire was a mute - he was diagnosed as autistic and was sent to a school for special needs children. There, he discovered a passion for drawing - first of animals, then London buses, then buildings and the city's landmarks. Throughout his childhood, Stephen communicated through his drawings. Slowly, aided by his teachers, he learned to speak by the age of nine (his first word was "paper.")

Stephen has a particularly striking talent: he can draw an accurate and detailed landscape of a city after seeing it just once! He drew a 10 meter (~33 ft) long panorama of Tokyo following a short helicopter ride.

[YouTube Link: Stephen Wiltshire Draws Tokyo from Memory, fun starts at 3:20]

More info about Stephen Wiltshire:

• Official Website
• Wikipedia Entry

9. Ellen Boudreaux

Like Leslie Lemke, Ellen Boudreaux is a blind autistic savant with exceptional musical abilities. She can play music perfectly after hearing it just once, and has a such a huge repertoire of songs in her head that a newspaper reporter once tried to "stump Ellen" by requesting that she played some obscure songs - and failed. Ellen knew them all.

Ellen has two other savant skills that are unusual. First, despite her blindness, she is able to walk around without ever running into things. As she walks, Ellen makes little chirping sounds that seems to act like a human sonar (See also our post on Ben Underwood, a blind teen who uses echolocation to "see").

Second, Ellen has an extremely precise digital clock ticking in her mind. To help overcome her fear of the telephone, Ellen's mom coaxed her to listen to the automatic time recording (the "time lady") when she was 8. From then on, Ellen knows the exact hour and minute, any time of the day without ever having seen a clock nor have the concept of the passing of time explained to her.

For more info on Ellen, see:

• Ellen - "With a Song in Her Heart"

10. Daniel Tammet: Brainman

YouTube Clip: Daniel Tammet - The Boy With the Incredible Brain [1/5]

At first glance, you won't be able to tell that Daniel Tammet is anything but normal. Daniel, 29, is a highly functioning autistic savant with exceptional mathematical and language abilities.

Daniel first became famous when he recited from memory Pi to 22,514 decimal places (on 3/14, the International Pi Day, of course) to raise funds for the National Society for Epilepsy.

Numbers, according to Daniel, are special to him. He has a rare form of synesthesia and sees each integers up to 10,000 as having their own unique shapes, color, texture and feel. He can "see" the result of a math calculation, and he can "sense" whether a number is prime. Daniel has since drawn what pi looks like: a rolling landscape full of different shapes and colors.

Daniel speaks 11 languages, one of which is Icelandic. In 2007, Channel Five documentary challenged him to learn the language in a week. Seven days later, Daniel was successfully interviewed on Icelandic television (in Icelandic, of course!).

When he was four years old, Daniel had bouts of epilepsy that, along with his autism, seemed to have brought about his savant abilities. Though he appears normal, Daniel contends that he actually had to will himself to learn how to talk to and behave around people:

As he describes in his newly published memoir, “Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant” (Free Press), he has willed himself to learn what to do. Offer a visitor a drink; look her in the eye; don’t stand in someone else’s space. These are all conscious decisions.

Recently, some friends warned him that in his eagerness to make eye contact, he tended to stare too intently. “It’s like being on a tightrope,” he said. “If you try too hard, you’ll come off. But you have to try.” (Source)

There is a big difference between Daniel Tammet and all the other prodigious savants in the world: Daniel can tell you how he does it and that makes him invaluable to scientists trying to understand the savant syndrome:

Professor Allan Snyder, from the Centre for the Mind at the Australian National University in Canberra, explains why Tammet is of particular, and international, scientific interest. "Savants can't usually tell us how they do what they do," says Snyder. "It just comes to them. Daniel can. He describes what he sees in his head. That's why he's exciting. He could be the Rosetta Stone." (Source)

More info about Daniel Tammet:

• Official website and blog
• 60 Minutes Interview
• Born on a Blue Day, Daniel's autobiography (Daniel was born on a Wednesday, a day he perceived as blue).
• Daniel Tammet - The Boy with the Incredible Brain (5 clips)

I'll be the first to admit that we have only scratched the surface of the fascinating topic of savant syndrome. If you are interested, here are some suggested websites by Darold A. Treffert, the world's foremost expert on savant syndrome, for further reading:

• Savant Syndrome, Darold Treffert's website at the Wisconsin Medical Society
• Islands of Genius [PDF], a Scientific American article by Darold Treffert and Gregory Wallace