Tom Mault bought this bike for $350 and later found out that it was a wise purchase: the bike is a 1963 Schwinn Sting-Ray bike, one of the first of its kind off the line.

And Schwinn collectors have offered him up to $100,000 for the "rare piece of American history" - Tom, however, had another idea:

Bike collectors from London to Japan "flipped out," Mault says. By 6 p.m. Thursday, his online posting had been viewed almost 1,900 times, and people had offered him between $2,000 and $100,000 for the bike.

The catch, he says: It's not for sale.

Mault, who owns roofing company Tidewater Exteriors in Hampton, says he would rather donate the Sting-Ray — one of the hottest American icons of the 1960s and '70s — to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-local_bike_0627jun27,0,6873169.story - Thanks Mowog!

"Replate" is an idea out of San Francisco (where else?) about how people should put their unwanted leftover doggie bag on top of trash cans so the homeless can eat them.

http://www.replate.org/ - Thanks zwmyers!

Do you think it's a good idea to share with the less fortunate? Or do you think it will just encourage more homeless to come to San Francisco?

Every cloud has a silver lining - or so Amanda Ripley thinks when she wrote this interesting article for TIME Magazine about the sky-rocketing price of gas.

Here's one of the 10 Good Things About $4 Gas:

Fewer Traffic Deaths
Every year, about 40,000 people die in traffic accidents in the U.S. If you are age 5 through 34, you are more likely to die this way than any other way. Ordinary things we do — or don't do — have extraordinary consequences. We know that higher gas prices cause many of us to slow down and drive less — which means fewer people die. Early research into 2006 accident data suggests that many lives have already been spared. If gas remains at $4 per gal. for a year or more, expect as many as 1,000 fewer fatalities a month, according to professor Michael Morrisey at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and associate professor David Grabowski at Harvard Medical School, who calculated that estimate for TIME. That means annual deaths could be cut by almost one-third — a public-health triumph.

Link

(Photo: Nycotyne [Flickr])

Every year for 17 years, researchers asked hundreds of thousands of people in 52 countries the same two questions:

"Taking all things together, would you say you are very happy, rather happy, not very happy, not at all happy" and " All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?"

And despite the current tough economic outlook, they found that happiness is actually on the rise around the world:

"It's a surprising finding," said University of Michigan political scientist Ronald Inglehart, who headed up the survey. "It's widely believed that it's almost impossible to raise an entire country's happiness level."

Denmark is the happiest nation and Zimbabwe the the most glum, he found. (Zimbabwe's longtime ruler Robert Mugabe was sworn in as president for a sixth term Sunday after a widely discredited runoff in which he was the only candidate. Observers said the runoff was marred by violence and intimidation.)

The United States ranks 16th.

Link - Thanks Geekazoid!

What - just what - happened when Hell Boy got interviewed by James "Booyah" Lipton of Inside the Actors Studio? Find out here: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via The Fire Wire

Here are some more Hellboy Interview clips: Link - Thanks Levi!

Inspired by Lewis Carroll's book "Through the Looking Glass," Yasmin Sethi created this Alice chess set where the pieces are opaque until they are put on the board - then they magically turn transparent to reveal their identities.

Link - via DVICE, thanks Sheldon Price!

Great Moments in History is a tumblr blog dedicated to (re)documenting important historical events ... on the Etch-A-Sketch! This one is, if you haven't guessed already, is their take on the Hindenburg disaster.

Link - Thanks Eric!

Previously on Neatorama: Master of the Etch-A-Sketch

Scientists knew that Earth is crying since the 1970s, but they've just recently been able to listen to it.

The "cry" is actually a series of chirp and whistles created by solar wind particles colliding with the Earth's magnetic field high above the planet, and is called the Auroral Kilometric Radiation (AKR):

The Auroral Kilometric Radiation (AKR), as it is called, is beamed out in a narrow plane, as if someone had put a mask over a torch and left a slit for the radiation to escape.

This flat beam could be detected by aliens who've figured this process out, the researchers say. The knowledge could also be used by Earth's astronomers to detect planets around other stars, if they can build a new radio telescope big enough for the search. They could also learn more about Jupiter and Saturn by studying AKR, which should emit from the auroral activity on those worlds, too.

Link | Listen to the sound - Thanks Geekazoid!

Bad: Car accident on the highway ...
Really Bad: It was an overturned big rig ...
Neatorama-worthy: ... carrying 12 million bees!

BBC has the story:

Motorists on Canada's biggest highway ended up with a bee in their bonnet after a truck transporting 12m of the insects overturned. The lorry was carrying 330 crates of honey bees when it tipped over on a ramp in St Leonard, New Brunswick.

Bee experts were called in to help deal with the accident on the Trans-Canada Highway.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police said a downpour of rain helped to contain the bees in and around the vehicle. "Bees don't like the rain... thousands of bees are hanging on the back of this truck and on the pavement right behind," said police spokesman Derek Strong.

Link (with video clip) - Thanks Paul!

Marathon runners are hard core, and their supporters are too! Here are a few funny signs that people hold during races (the last two are the best!) at Elite Feet: Link - Thanks Matt!

Next time you eat a Twinkie for a snack, think of the children in Tanzania. Here's what they eat for an afternoon snack (I won't tell ruin the surprise and tell you what it is, but if you're squeamish, this video isn't for you!).

Video by David Lipps, a college student working for an NGO in Tanzania.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - Thanks Dan Danbom!

I'm a big fan of Ferry Halim's flash games ever since Miss Cellania posted one a while ago, so I'm pleasantly surprised when this one got recommended to Neatorama.

Sunny Day Sky is a fun (and easy) Flash game where you get to guide a cute little critter fly jump over cars using only an umbrella! (This being a Ferry Halim game, pleasant music is a given... )

Link - Thanks Nalden!

Amoeba Boy (who made the awesome steampunk R2-D2) has come up with another neat thing: steampunk X-wing fighter biplane papercraft.

This time, he's even provided the cutout plan if you want to make your own: Link - Thanks Mark Edwards!

We've blogged about Sustainable Dave's attempt to save all the trash he generates in a year. This month marks Dave Chameides' 6th month anniversary of his effort (he blogs everything - and I mean everything - that he throws away).

Check out his progress here: Link | An interesting interview with Dave by Annie Tsai at Epic Fu - Thanks Dave!

A grandma in North Carolina was not amused when her granddaughter pointed out what the "WTF" in her license plate stands for.

So, after her complaint to the DMV, she got the state government of North Carolina to offer a free replacement to the 10,000 people who got the unfortunate license plates. (Oh, if only those replacement plates have "LOL" on 'em!)

http://www.newsobserver.com/1565/story/1118976.html - via khumptydotcom, thanks Kyle!

In other news, the WTF Group and Mac Store are not amused ...