A deadly fire that killed nearly 100 cats at an animal shelter in Toronto, Canada, was caused by .... mice!
The fire at the humane society shelter in Oshawa also killed three dogs and some rats that were up for adoption.
An initial report from the fire marshal says mice or rats chewing through electrical wires in the ceiling are likely to have sparked the blaze.
There's a spot in a Lowes movie theater parking lot in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where you'll never forget where you parked your car: the grave of Mary Ellis. Yes, a cemetery right smack in the middle of a parking lot!
Not only is the grave of Mary Ellis embedded in a parking lot, it's also the focus of a terrific legend. Mary, who came to New Brunswick in the 1790s to live with her sister, fell in love with a sea captain who promised to marry her once he returned from his next voyage. The captain then left Mary his horse and sailed off down the Raritan River.
Every day, Mary rode her lover's steed down to the river, hoping to meet him at the water's edge. For years, she gazed at the river, waiting for his return. In 1813, she purchased a plot of land overlooking the river, where she maintained her vigil until her death in 1826. And there she was buried, forever waiting for her captain.
Meanwhile, commercialism swept through, establishing a series of retail businesses, including a popular flea market, all sharing space with Mary. Today, Mary's grave is entrenched in the parking lot of a Lowes movie theater.
Wesley Treat's Roadside Resort has more on Paved Paradise: Cemeteries in Parking Lots - via
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Most Fascinating Tombs in the World
Neatorama reader SparkS put together a great post in the Forum: a fun list of humorous military truisms. It includes such gems as:
"If the enemy is in range, so are you." Infantry Journal
"Aim towards the enemy." Instructions printed on U.S. Rocket Launcher
"When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not our friend." U.S. Marine Corps
"Cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate. The bombs are guaranteed always to hit the ground." USAF Ammo Troop
"Try to look unimportant; they may be low on ammo." Infantry Journal
http://www.neatorama.com/forum/topic/military-truisms-and-humor
The following is reprinted from The Best of The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. From Hollywood's earliest days, directors have sought to leave their individual marks on their films. Some have devised small "signatures" that identify a film as their work. Can you spot them? MAKING THEIR MARK The French have a word for it: auteur (author). It's the name for a theory of filmmaking - the idea that a film director is like a book's author and is responsible for the film's vision, form, and content. Many director's films are easily recognizable as theirs, based on the themes and style that recur in their movies. But some directors also add small signature touches or in-jokes that - if you recognize them - add to the audience's enjoyment. FRANK CAPRA In the Christmas classic, It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Jimmy the raven sits on Uncle Billy's desk in the Bailey Building and Loan. ALFRED HITCHCOCK Psycho: About four minutes into the film, Marion (Janet Leigh) returns to her office. You can glimpse Hitchcock, wearing a cowboy hat, through the window. Don't blink or you'll miss him - he's only on-screen for a few seconds. Rear Window: About 30 minutes into the film, Hitchcock is winding a clock in the songwriter's apartment. Dial M for Murder: This one is of Sir Alfred's trickier cameos. Roughly 13 minutes into the film, a class reunion photo is shown. That's him on the left of the picture. Strangers on a Train: Right at the start of the movie, Hitchcock can be seen boarding the train, carrying a double bass. Lifeboat: Hitchcock appears briefly as the "before" and "after" pictures in a newspaper ad for weight-loss program. Around the time of this movie's filming, Hitchcock had crash dieted and dropped 100 pounds. QUENTIN TARANTINO Each also has an ad for Red Apple cigarettes (a fictional brand.) Tarantino almost always has one or more of his characters barefoot - it's Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill movies. MARTIN SCORSESE Cape Fear: Scorsese's mother plays a customer at the fruit stand. The Color of Money: Scorsese is walking a dog in the casino scene. The dog was actually his own dog, and received a credit as Dog Walkby. Goodfellas: Scorsese's mother plays Tommy's mother. The director let her ad-lib her entire scene. His father plays the prisoner who put too many onions in the "gravy" (tomato sauce). Raging Bull: Scorsese can be seen asking Jack to go onstage. Also in Raging Bull, Scorsese's father is part of a mob at the Copa Nightclub. Taxi Driver: Scorsese is sitting in the background of the campaign headquarters as Cybill Sphepherd walks in. |
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The article above is reprinted with permission from The Best of the Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. The Bathroom Reader Institute handpicked the most eye-opening, rib-tickling, and mind-boggling articles from everything they have written over the last ten years and carefully crammed them into 576 pages of the book. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute has published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute. |
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Previously on Neatorama: Stories Behind Hollywood Studio Logos
Hooray! It's time for our collaboration with the always excellent What is it? Blog. This week brings us this strange object pictured to the left. Can you guess what it is?
Today being Christmas, the first person (or the funniest guess, if no one gets it right) wins a Free Neatorama T-Shirt! The game rules are darned simple: place your guess in the comment section. One guess per comment, but you can enter as many ones as you can think of. Post no URLs, please let others play.
For more clues, check out the What is it? Blog. Good luck!
Update 12/28/08 - the answer: This was marked "grenade launcher", I've since found that it's a European racquet grenade that's missing the charge and the fuse, it was probably meant to be used with a trip wire to make a booby trap, but if a different type of fuse was attached the whole thing could have been thrown as a grenade. - congrats to SarahW who got it right first!Remember the guy that tried to pay off his bills with a picture of a spider? Well, he's at it again. This time it's all about getting himself invited/disinvited to Matthew's housewarming party.
Link - via Miss Cellania
A Chinese man found out the hard way why his Pomeranian dog was impossible to train: it's actually a fox!
... he found the dog hard to tame, it would often bite him and had several unusual traits, he told the Wuhan Evening Post.
"It can't bark but instead makes little 'em em' noises, and its tail has been growing longer and longer," he said.
"The most annoying thing is that starting this summer, the dog became very smelly. Even when we gave it a daily shampoo bath, the smell was still strong."
Zhang took his 'dog' to a local zoo for answers, and it turned out the dog is actually an Arctic fox, a protected rare species.
Link - via Scribal Terror
Blanca Figueroa, the mayor of South El Monte, California, is one hardworking woman. In fact, you can often find her working in her office till the wee hours. Figueroa said that a mayor's work is never done, but her fellow council members think that she's actually living in her office!
"The mayor has been living at City Hall for the last eight months," said City Councilman Hector Delgado, who added of her office, "Does it look like a professional office or does it look like somebody's bedroom?"
Delgado has been leading an effort to limit the amount of time Figueroa can spend at the office. He says he has surveillance video that shows Figueroa there at night, kicking back, cooking dinner and watching Mexican soap operas.
Kate Linthicum of The Los Angeles Times has the story: Link - via Super Punch
Photo: Nancy Pastor / LA Times
Just in case that car thing doesn't work out, Honda has a plan B in its quest to dominate the world. Behold, the giant 49-foot tall ASIMO robot replica (masquerading as a float, but we're not fooled!):
Honda has tested a 49-foot replica of their ASIMO humanoid robot, that’s 12 times the height of the original. The animated replica will be a guest of honor at the 120th Rose Parade as well as kick off Honda’s 50th anniversary of U.S. operations.
The creation called “Hats Off in Celebration” will be completed with natural materials like lettuce seed, rice, carnations and strawflower.
I, for one, welcome our new giant ASIMO robot overlord: Link
After a thorough analysis of the emotional state of Wolverine in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman, AlwaysWatching blog came to this irrefutable conclusion: Hugh Jackman has many nuanced facial expressions. Take a look: http://www.alwayswatching.org/news/x-men-origins-wolverine-trailer-facial-expressions-hugh-jackman
Last Seen (2006) by William Betts
William Betts is like the modern day Seurat - In his "Surveillance" series, he makes paintings from digital photographs using his own specially-designed machine to apply dots of acrylics onto canvas. The result is a grainy image akin to the blurry still images of a surveillance CCTV: Link - via The Zeray Gazette
Skip this one if you're squeamish. Here's a gruesome yet fascinating article from The List Universe: 10 people who were forced by dire circumstances to perform surgery ... on themselves!
Take, for instance, the self-surgery of one Dr. Leonid Rogozov:
Surgical Procedure: Appendectomy
At the age of 27 Soviet Doctor Leonid Rogozovwas was stationed at the Novolazarevskaya base in the Antarctic. The doctor recognized his own acute appendicitis and worsening condition. Because of the absence of a support aircraft and inclement weather along with the danger of a burst appendix the doctor decided he would have to perform surgery on himself. With the team’s meteorologist holding the retractors, a driver to hold the mirror and other scientists passing surgical implements, he sat in a reclined position and cut out his own appendix under local anesthetic. During the operation he passed out, but was able to continue and complete the procedure in little less than two hours.
Interesting Fact: A detailed report was written by Dr Rogozov documenting the unusual event along with the photo shown above. The doctor made a full recovery and resumed all duties in two weeks.
Link - via mental_floss and i met a possum
Congratulations to Denita TwoDragons, a long-time Neatoramanaut, and hubby, on the arrival of their very cute daughter, Tabitha Charis, a few days ago:
I Am Proud to Announce... my bouncy little squeak festival, Tabitha Charis, was born at 5:22 this morning! She's a hefty 8 lbs. 9 oz. and a leggy 20 1/2 inches long. She came into the world screaming like a banshee and immediately crapped all over the OBGYN's shoes. I'd say she got off to a good start!
Go over to Denita's blog to see the cute pics, and to offer your congratulations, of course: Link - via Neatorama Forum
I'm sure you've all heard of Bernard Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme that fooled even the most financially savvy investors. But what do you know about Ponzi or pyramid schemes? Here's a quick (and fun) crash course at the 9 Most Brazen Ponzi Schemes in History:
Ponzi schemes are named after Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant who perpetrated a legendary scam. Actually, he wasn't the inventor of this type of scams - it was called "Robbing Peter to pay Paul" schemes - but his was so large that his name became synonymous with it.
Ponzi started a business buying and selling a type of postal coupon and promised investors a 50% return on their money within 45 days (compare this to an annual 5% interest for bank savings account at the time).
Ponzi's early investors did get their money doubled and even tripled in a short amount of time. This, and glowing newspaper reports at the time about his company, the Securities Exchange Company (yes, the "SEC" - ironic, huh?), got him a lot of money from investors. At one point, Ponzi took in $1 million in a three-hour period from investors. All in all, about 40,000 investors invested about $15 million in Ponzi's scheme in nine months between 1919 and 1920 (about $174 million in 2007 value).
When it was discovered that Ponzi was paying old investors with money from new ones, his scheme collapsed and he was sent to jail ... for 5 years! After serving his federal sentence, Ponzi was sentenced by the State of Massachusetts for an additional 9 years, but he skipped town. Ponzi ended up in Brazil, where he spent his last years in poverty and sickness.
Before he died, Ponzi gave one last interview where he confessed to his crime "My business is simple. It was the old game of robbing Peter to pay Paul. You would give me one hundred dollars and I would give you a note to pay you one-hundred-and-fifty dollars in three months. Usually I would redeem my note in 45 days. My notes became more valuable than American money ... Then came trouble. The whole thing was broken." (Zuckoff, Mitchell, Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend, p. 313)
(For more detailed info, check out mental_floss' excellent post on Charles Ponzi)
Maria Branca dos Santos, or more commonly called "Dona" Branca, was a poor Portuguese woman when she decided that she would open her own "bank" in 1970. To make it attractive, she promised an interest rate of 10% per month, and got thousands of clients (including the working poor of Portugal) to give her their money.
The scheme lasted more than 14 years, and during this time she's known as "The people's banker." Dona Branca was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison. She died poor, blind, and alone.
In 1993, her crime inspired a Portuguese soap opera titled A Banqueira do Povo ("The People's Banker").
In 2005, a Pakistani high school science teacher Syed Sibtul Hassan Shah went to Dubai. When he came back to his hometown of Wazirabad, Pakistan, he convinced his neighbors to give him their savings, which he doubled in just 7 days, based on a "stock program" that he had learned in Dubai.
Words soon spread of the "Double Shah" and people began investing with him. In 18 months, he took in over Rs. 70 billion (about US$880 million) from 3,000 people and was even considered to be the next political leader from the area.
When police arrested Shah on charges of robbery in 2007, thousands of people descended to the streets to protest against his arrest (Source). He is now in custody and his case is pending.
Usually, Ponzi schemes are run by people you've never heard of before - but this one is different: Lou Pearlman is a famous boy band music mogul who founded the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync.
In 1981 (incidentally, the same year that 'N Sync star Justin Timberlake was born), Pearlman started Trans Continental Airlines Travel Services, Trans Continental Airlines Inc, and 12 other companies. Problem was, they existed only on paper. For 20 years, he sold shares of the companies to investors and got loans from banks, to the tune of $300 million. To keep up the ruse, he invented a fake accounting firm Cohen & Siegel (he even hired an answering service to pick up the phone) and a fake branch of a bank in Germany. He falsified tax returns and other financial documents to appear legit (Source).
When his scheme unraveled, Pearlman fled the country and tried to hide. He was captured and was sentenced to 25-year in prison.
In 1992, Damara Bertges and Hans Gunther Spachtholz founded the European Kings Club, a "non-profit" association that rallied against big European banks and promised to help the "little guys."
Investors buy a "letter," which was kind of a club share, for 1,400 swiss franc. This entitled them to 12 monthly payment of 200 swiss franc, which meant doubling their money in just a year.
The European Kings Club meetings were a hoot: they sang their own anthem, and the duo made a show of pressing money into the hands of the "club members."
When the scheme collapsed 2 years later, some 94,000 German and Swiss investors were bilked out of US$1 billion. In the Swiss cantons of Uri and Glarus, it was estimated that one in ten adults had fallen for the scheme. (Source)
But even after authorities raided the EKC offices and captured Bertges, her investors still believed that she was their champion. When Bertges went put on trial, her "victims" applauded so loudly that the judge had to clear out the room. (Source). For defrauding people out of US$1 billion, Bertges got 7 years and Spachtholz got away with less than 5 years in jail.
Unless you've been living under a rock, you all should know by now that financier Bernard "Bernie" Madoff was arrested for running a Ponzi scheme. There are four notable facts about his operation:
We're not going to talk about Madoff (this news is all over the Internet), but let me just re-print what his website used to say before it was taken over by authorities:
In an era of faceless organizations owned by other equally faceless organizations, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC harks back to an earlier era in the financial world: The owner’s name is on the door.
Clients know that Bernard Madoff has a personal interest in maintaining the unblemished record of value, fair-dealing, and high ethical standards that has always been the firm’s hallmark. (Source)
Find out more about Bernie Madoff's $50 Billion Ponzi Scheme at Wikipedia (or just open a newspaper, folks)
If you think the ponzi schemes above were brazen, take a look at this one. It ensnared a million - yes, you read that right, a million - people in China ... with ants! (Photo via Asia Sentinel)
In 1999, Wang Fengyou founded the Yilishen Tianxi Group and hatched a scheme so crazy it's brilliant: ant farming. He convinced poor farmers to give him 10,000 yuan (about $1,500). In return, they got a box of "special ants" and a list of very strict instructions: spritz the ants with a sugar and honey solution at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. every day, and feed them cake and egg yolk every three to five days. Under no circumstances were they to open the box. Every 74 days, workers from Yilishen would come by and pick up the ants to be ground up and made into an aphrodisiac. For their troubles, the farmers get 13,250 yuan, a 32.5% premium every 14 months. (Source)
By 2006, Wang was a very rich man. His company was featured in newspapers and on TV. He hired celebrities to publicize his company and hobnobbed with government officials. He even got the "China's Top 10 Entrepreneurial Leaders" award from the government. His ant aphrodisiacs were sold in some 80,000 pharmacies across China and by some accounts, over 1 million people bred ants for Yilishen, giving the company an annual turnover of 15 billion yuan (US$2 billion).
In October 2007, Wang's scheme collapsed. The company started to miss payouts and thousands of ant farmers descended on his company's headquarter and government offices. A month later, Wang Fengyou was arrested.
Unlike other Ponzi scheme con artists who got off after only a few years in jail, Wang's fate doesn't look good. In the same year Wang's scheme collapsed, the Chinese government started cracking down on 3,747 pyramid schemes. Wang's rival, who conned people with a similar ant-breeding scheme, was sentenced to death. (Source)
Oh, and did his aphrodisiac ants really work? Actually yes, but not because of the ants. His products contained sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra.
Biletov or fractions of shares of the MMM Corp, bearing the likeness of Sergey Mavrodi (photo via PJ Symes, who wrote a fascinating article on the MMM Corporation)
Just one million people? Meh, said Sergey Mavrodi. His scheme duped two million people!
Mavrodi was a Russian scammer who along with his brother Vyacheslav Mavrodi and Vyacheslav's future wife Marina Murayveya, founded the MMM company in (the triple Ms came from the surnames of these three people). In the early 1990s, MMM promised dividends of 1,000%, promoted itself heavily in TV ads, and delivered on its promise. At its peak, Mavrodi's company was taking in more than $11 million a day from the public! Within 5 years, Mavrodi took in $1.5 billion from at least 2 million people.
When the whole thing unraveled and the police raided MMM offices for tax evasion, Mavrodi pulled another fast one: he convinced his "investors" that it was the government's fault that they lost their investment. He even ran for the Russian State Duma (the lower house of parliament) to get the government to initiate a "payback" program ... and he was elected! That was a good thing because he got himself a parliamentary immunity.
When his immunity was later revoked, Mavrodi went on the lam. In 2003, he was arrested , fined $390, and sent to a penal colony for four-and-a-half years (Source). That translates to about $38,052 swindled per hour in the slammer.
President Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act of 1935. Photo: Library of Congress
Well, not exactly, but Social Security does have a few similarities to a Ponzi scheme.
But first, a little about Social Security. In 1935, President Roosevelt introduced a controversial "social insurance" to prevent the crushing poverty that hit many Americans in their old age during the Great Depression. As part of his New Deal, Social Security provided benefits to retirees and the unemployed, financed by taxes on current worker's wages.
The details have changed over the years, but the basics remain the same: just like in a Ponzi scheme, money from new investors (taxpayer) is used as payout to older investors (retirees).
From 1937 to 2005, Social Security has taken in more than $10.7 trillion in taxes and other income. In the same time period, it has given out more than $8.9 trillion (Source). The program is actually taking in more in taxes than it gives out in benefits (and invested it in Treasurys - this in itself is a complicated issue because it's akin to the government giving itself an IOU). It is projected to run a surplus until 2018, when the baby boomers are expected to retire and start draw their benefits. Though it's difficult to accurately predict, Social Security's own trustees expect the program to run out of money by 2040 unless big changes are made (Source).
There's one similarity between Social Security and Ponzi scheme that is irrefutable: the early investors/retirees get the better end of the deal. The first person to receive monthly retirement check was Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Virginia. Ida retired in November 1939 at the age of 65 and started collecting her checks in January 1940. She lived to be 100 years old, and during her lifetime, she collected $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits. Ida put in a total of $24.75 into the system, thus giving a return of over 90,000%!
I'll be the first to admit that we've skipped a lot of Ponzi schemes, such as those run by Reed Slatkin (who co-founded the ISP Earthlink), Tom Petters, and many others. Interested readers are suggested to check out Wikipedia's entry on Ponzi scheme.
If you like this article, please check these out:
Leave it to science to reveal all of life's greatest mysteries. Here's the secret to baking the perfect cookie, by food scientist Shirley Corriher: it's all about the gluten!
Among the cookie problems bakers face is that the cookies can emerge from the oven soft and intact, but when the cookies travel, they may turn into a box of crumbs.
To beat this problem, Corriher suggests adding a tablespoon of water to a cup of flour that's going to be used in the cookies. The two proteins in flour — glutenin and gliadin — grip water, Corriher tells NPR's Melissa Block, and make "springy stretchy, strong elastic sheets of gluten." The gluten will hold the cookies together, she says.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98275947
