A pair of bloomers once owned by Queen Victoria had just fetched £4,500 at an auction:
The knickers have a 50in (127cm) waist and date from the 1890s, which indicates the monarch had a large girth as she approached her old age.
It was thought the bloomers would fetch £500 but a Canadian buyer spent £4,500 on the pants which are monogrammed with VR for Victoria Regina.
Link - via Scribal Terror
This is pretty funny: a story about an Olympic swimming competitor whose Speedo fell out in the middle of the swim!
Okay, so maybe it's a little unbelievable, but still enjoyable nonetheless: Link [embedded YouTube, in Japanese - but you'll get the gist]
Tired of losing your teeny tiny remote control? Get one that is almost a foot long!
The built in shock absorber is great for those accidental drops, and the rubberized edges will make sure your remote, and furniture is protected. You won’t lose this down the back of the sofa, and you won’t need your glasses to find it.
Last Sunday, Pastor Irwin Allen of Peoria, Arizona, deliverd a sermon about sins so specific that some people in the audience gasped with recognition.
So how did Pastor Allen gave such a "prophetic" sermon? He read the blogs of the people in his congregation:
Pastor Alton, who cultivates a reputation as a computer illiterate techno-phobe, is actually an avid reader of MySpace pages, blogs and personal websites of the people in his congregation. "I appear, shall we say, un-hip," he says. "Therein lies my advantage."
Though he publicly refers to the Worldwide Web as the "Worldwide Waste" and e-mail as "sin-mail," in his home office is a bank of computer screens with more than 170 bookmarked sites — personal web pages, blogs, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Flickr and more.
Each week Alton surfs the sites for hours to find evidence of questionable behavior by people in his church. He jots offenses down and incorporates them into his Sunday sermons.
http://www.larknews.com/august_2008/secondary.php?page=1 - via Locust & Honey
Update 8/4/08 - It's a satire, LarkNews is like the Onion for evangelicals (which, I fully admit, I didn't know though I did look for references to the story and could only find it on LarkNews - Thanks Rev. Kate Layzer)
Photo: Camilo José Vergara
Some billboards in many tough urban areas don't sell products. Instead, passer-bys get to see pictures of smiling men next to a question: "Who Murdered Me?"
Camilo José Vergara wrote this for the Los Angeles Times:
Usually, the dead ask questions only in our dreams. In these cases, though, the dead are homicide victims whose killers have not been found. The signs are there because so few witnesses come forth and police departments hope the offer of a reward will break through “witness reluctance.”
The signs seem to say: “I am dead, but my smiling face will hover over this ghetto neighborhood until my assassin is placed behind bars.”
The New York Times has a really neat gallery of the Olympic torches and their histories, from the one used in Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, 1936 to today's Beijing Olympics.
Link [Flash] - Thanks karan!
Most people know that the Olympics started out in Ancient Greece, but did you know that back then the athletes competed in the nude? (Though technically, they could wear penis restraints - yes, you read that right). Or that one of the games was an ancient form of mixed martial arts? Or that a chef won the very first Olympic games?
To help celebrate the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, we'll posts some neat facts about the Olympics, starting with this one: 10 Fascinating Facts About the Ancient Olympic Games:
Milo of Kroton, one of the greatest Ancient Olympic champion. He won
the wrestling event 6 times, over the span of 34 years! (Source)
Yes, that's right - ancient Olympic sportsmen (all men, by the way) ran, wrestled, and fought buck naked. The ancient Greeks had a tradition of doing things nude (they walked around in the buff in the bedroom and at parties called sympsia*, and they exercised without any clothes on) - indeed, the word gymnasium came from the Greek word gymos, which means "naked."
Why naked? Well, to appreciate and celebrate the male physique, of course, and as a tribute to the gods. Participants regularly anointed themselves with olive oil to enhance their looks ... and to keep the skin smooth!
In the sixth century, there was an actually attempt to make athletes wear loincloths, but this proved to be unpopular and soon afterwards nudity regained its status as fashion in athletics.
*Great trivia for the next time you're in a boring symposium: the original symposium is a nude drinking party (sympotein is Greek for "to drink together"), complete with courtesans (basically sophisticated prostitutes).
Did I say all athletes competed naked in the Ancient Olympics? Silly me - actually, not all of them were naked.
Some wore a kynodesme (literally a "dog leash"), a thin leather thong used as a penis restraint:
[The kynodesme] was tied tightly around the part of the foreskin that extended beyond the glans. The kynodesme could then either be attached to a waist band to expose the scrotum, or tied to the base of the penis so that the penis appeared to curl upwards.
The very first recorded Ancient Olympic Games took place in 776 BC. The event was a stadion race (a foot race equivalent to a 190-m or 208-yard dash). The winner was a humble baker from the Greek city state of Elis named Coroebus (also spelled Koroibos).
For the first 13 games, the stadion race was the only competition. At the 14th Ancient Olympic Games, a double race was added.
An Olympionike or a winner of an event receiving an olive wreath and red ribbons
(Epiktetos Painter, 520 - 510 BC - from mlahanas.de)
Yup - that's because the Ancient Olympic Games didn't have any medals or prizes. Winners of the competitions won olive wreaths, branches, as well as woolen ribbons. Oh, that and the all important honor.
They did, however, come home as heroes - and got showered with gifts there. Many victors subsequently used their fame to endorse products and to get paid posing for sculptures and drawings (just like today, huh?)
Tired of all the running, a new game of wrestling (called pale) was added to the 18th Olympics in 708 B.C.
Greek wrestling was a bit more fun than your regular high school wrestling. For one, submission holds were allowed (actually, they were encouraged) and that a referee could punish an infraction by whipping the contestant with a stick until the undesirable behavior stopped!
Later, pygme/pygmachia or Ancient Greek boxing was added. Now, some historian believed that boxing was originally developed in Sparta. Being the original tough guys, Spartans believed that helmets were unnecessary in battle. Instead, they boxed themselves in the face to prepare for battles!
In the Ancient Olympics, there were no rounds - boxing was done when a fighter was knocked out cold (if the fight lasted too long, then they each took turn punching each other in the head until one collapsed).
In this Pankration scene, the pankriatiast on the right is trying to gouge his opponent's eye and the ref is about to beat the living tar out of him with a stick
(Photo: Jastrow [Wikimedia])
If you think that Ancient Greek boxing was violent, it's more like knitting when compared to pankration, the ancient form of mixed martial arts.
How violent was pankration? Let's just say that there were only two rules: no eye gouging and no biting (the referees carried sticks to beat those who violated the rules). Everything else - including choke holds, breaking fingers and neck - was legit. There was no weight division or time limits: the fight continued until a combatant surrendered, lost consciousness, or died.
In 564 BC, Arrhachion of Philgaleia was crowned the pankration victor ... even after he had died:
Arrhachion's opponent, having already a grip around his waist, thought to kill him and put an arm around his neck to choke off his breath. At the same time he slipped his legs through Arrhachion's groin and wound his feet inside Arrhachion's knees, pulling back until the sleep of death began to creep over Arrhachion's senses. But Arrhachion was not done yet, for as his opponent began to relax the pressure of his legs, Arrhachion kicked away his own right foot and fell heavily to the left, holding his opponent at the groin with his left knee still holding his opponent's foot firmly. So violent was the fall that the opponent's left ankle was wrenched from his socket. The man strangling Arrhachion ... signaled with his hand that he gave up. Thus Arrhachion became a three-time Olympic victor at the moment of his death. His corpse ... received the victory crown. (Source)
Lastly, just to prove that they're bad asses, the ancient Greeks then decided to start a pankration event for the paides or youth (boys aged 12 to 17) Olympic games!
Those Greeks sure did love their sports! The Ancient Olympic games were actually just a part of four sports festival called the Panhellenic Games:
- The Olympic Games, the most important and prestigious game of them all, was held in honor of Zeus every four years near Elis.
- Pythian Games was held every four years near Delphi in honor of Apollo
- Nemean Games was held every two years near Nemea, in honor of Zeus
- Isthmian Games was held every two years near Corinth, in honor of Poseidon
The games were arranged in such a way that there was one going on (almost) every year.
Married women were banned at the Ancient Olympics on the penalty of death. The laws dictated that any adult married woman caught entering the Olympic grounds would be hurled to her death from a cliff! Maidens, however, could watch (probably to encourage gettin' it on later).
But this didn't mean that the women were left out: they had their own games, which took place during Heraea, a festival worshipping the goddess Hera. The sport? Running - on a track that is 1/6th shorter than the length of a man's track on the account that a woman's stride is 1/6th shorter than that of a man's!
The female victors at the Heraea Games actually got better prizes: in addition to olive wreaths, they also got meat from an ox slaughtered for the patron deity on behalf of all participants!
Overall, young girls in Ancient Greece weren't encouraged to be athletes - with a notable exception of Spartan girls. The Spartans believed that athletic women would breed strong warriors, so they trained girls alongside boys in sports. In Sparta, girls also competed in the nude or wearing skimpy outfits, and boys were allowed to watch (to encourage gettin' it on later marriage and procreation). (Photo: Sikyon.com)
In 1901, a Greek sponge diver discovered the wreck of an ancient cargo ship off the coast of the Antikythera island. One of the item recovered was an ancient mechanical computer that became known as the Antikythera mechanism. Scientists estimated that it was created in 150 to 100 BC
For over a hundred years, scientists debated the true purpose of the Antikythera mechanism and marveled at the intricacies of the device (mind you, the mechanical clock didn't appear in the West until about a thousand years later).
Recently, scientists believed that they've finally cracked the mystery:
Tony Freeth, a member of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, said he was "astonished" at the discovery.
"The Olympiad cycle was a very simple, four-year cycle and you don't need a sophisticated instrument like this to calculate it. It took us by huge surprise when we saw this.
"But the Games were of such cultural and social importance that it's not unnatural to have it in the Mechanism." (Source)
The Romans, who conquered Greece, viewed the Olympics as a pagan festival.
So, in AD 393, Roman Emperor Theodosius I banned the Ancient Olympics in part to institute Christianity as a state religion. The Olympics was no more ... until it was revived 1,500 years later in 1896.
Neatorama reader David Nakamura saw our post of the pop culture Mona Leia painting and sent us a photo of this drawing made by his art school friend: a rendering of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring with Lisa Simpson! Thanks David!
Smashing Magazine, the uber-web design blog on the blogosphere, did a really nice study of the 50 most popular blogs (as ranked by Technorati) in terms of their design, information architecture, functionality, and so on.
Neatorama's mentioned in the article (thanks guys!) and the blog even won an award of sorts. It won an award for having one of the most markup validation errors! Actually, all of the blog surveyed have errors save one (A List Apart, but then you'd expect it of the web design experts). In reality, this sort of stuff is meaningless: even yahoo.com and google.com failed validations.
Anyways, Neatorama is old school - it's built with tables (why? Because tables are better than positional CSS, of course!) and that, my friend, is why it has so many validation errors.
Neatorama reader Bruno and friends went camping at Lake Rabun, Georgia, and ran across this charming little country souvenir store/grocery called "Goats on the Roof." As you can guess, the store got its name from the actual goats that live on the roof. (Yes, the roof has grass, bridges, a few goats, a huge bunny and a rooster) - Thanks Bruno!
When their owners handed over two fox terriers named Bert and Ernie because they could no longer care for them, the SPCA was astonished to see the fat dogs: Bert (pictured above) weighed 32 kg (71 lb) and Ernie weighed 44 kg (lb)!
SPCA operations manager Tracy Dunn said the team were speechless when they saw how overweight the dogs were. She said the SPCA often sees malnourished and underweight dogs and cats, so it was unusual to have two very overweight dogs handed in at once.
Dunn said animal obesity is becoming a major problem in New Zealand. "The nation's overweight people are in turn overfeeding and supersizing their pets."
Link - Thanks Greg Furtado!
Hot dogs aren't health food - in fact, most of them will slowly kill you with their high levels of fat and other yummy yet deadly ingredients. But some dogs will kill you faster than others.
Al Dente blog has a run down of 5 cardiac arrest-inducing hot dogs that look good enough to die for!
Start the morning right with the Breakfast Hot Dog from Crif Dog's in New York. Wrapped in bacon and deep-fried, this dog is accompanied with a fried egg and American cheese. All it's missing is a layer of hash browns and sausage gravy. Hey, when you think about it that way, this breakfast dog is bush-league! Time to step it up, Crif's. Read more about this hot dog here.
Now is that yummy or gross? http://www.aldenteblog.com/2008/07/five-hot-dogs-t.html - Thanks Jill Harness!
(Photo: amusingbouche [Flickr])
Previously on Neatorama: French Fry Coated Hot Dog | Hot Dogs Around the World
Now that is a large cup of coffee! Vinacafe Bien Hoa, Vietnam's largest coffee producer, has just been awarded a new Guinness World Record for the largest coffee cup:
The stainless steel structure was constructed by more than 100 people and is 1.53 meters tall, with a diameter of 2.33 meters.
Weighing in at 1,197 kilos, the cup contained 3,604 litres of coffee made with 801 kilos of instant coffee powder and 4,000 litres of boiled water. [that's 952 gallons of coffee, folks!]
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/adjudications/080519_Largest_coffee_cup.aspx - Thanks David E
Yup, that CD on top spins!
Neatorama reader Ashley Holt made this giant turntable cake for a farewell party for her friend Preston Craig, DJ and founder of the Decatur Social Club (A great accomplishment, considering that Preston is a paraplegic. Oh, and apparently he's quite famous for throwing awesome parties in Atlanta).
Ashley made the cake in her mom's kitchen (and completely destroyed it in the process, she said) - she's now going to Sullivan University to study cake decorating, and is pursuing a side business makin' awesome cakes (Email her if you're in Georgia or Kentucky and would like a cake made: CakedUpByAshley AT yahoo DOT com) - Thanks Ashley!
