Brazilian archaeologists have discovered an Stonehenge-like stone structure in the Amazon:

A total of 127 large blocks of stone were found driven into the ground on top of a hill. ... Well preserved and each weighing several tons, the stones were arranged upright and evenly spaced.

What impressed researchers was the sophistication of the construction. The stones appear to have been laid out to help pinpoint the winter solstice, when the sun is at its lowest in the sky.

Link

From the website:

These shots were taken in the streets of Tokyo and Osaka at night , and in them I have avoided the more aesthetically pleasing locations such as seaside areas and the well-known "subcenters" in favor of the everyday disorder of the streets. Take a brightly-lit busy street bustling with people and remove the people: the purpose of the lighting is lost and only the glow remains - providing a glimpse of the streets we know well from a less familiar perspective.

Link (via Fosfor)

Mark Inglis, a double amputee who lost his legs to frostbite 23 years ago, reached the summit of Mt. Everest, making him the first ever double amputee to do so.

Way to go, Mark! Link

Chen Jin became China's national high-tech hero overnight when he "invented" China's first homegrown computer chip dubbed "Hanxin".

Turned out, he simply scratched away the logo from a Motorola chip with sandpaper and replaced it with his own!

Two years later, according to press accounts, the whistleblowers came forward. Some colleagues had a dispute with Chen and they began contacting the government. They claimed, according to the media, that migrant workers had simply scratched away the name "Motorola" from a chip and replaced it with "Hanxin."

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-05/15/content_589728.htm

A tuna caught at Vanga, near Tanzania border and sold to a Kenyan man, is making a stir because it had the Koranic writing "Wallahu khayru razikiyna" (God is the greatest of all providers):

Mr Hassan said Islamic scholars had gone through the message and "there is no doubt that the almighty God is communicating with his people."

Meanwhile, at the Mombasa Old Town, the find has baffled the Muslim residents.

Link

From the website:

On February 28, 2001, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake, located some thirty miles below the surface of the earth and a few miles away from Olympia Washington, moved the ground for a bit more than half a minute. Damage was surprisingly light, due, in part, to structural retrofitting throughout the region, and also to the epicenter's depth.

A sand tracing pendulum, located at a shop in Port Townsend called Mind Over Matter (since moved to Sedona, Arizona), produced some very interesting patterns.

The smooth curves you see to the outside of the Earthquake Rose are what you normally see when someone sets the pendulum in motion to make a tracing...and without seismic assistance. You can see the patterns left when someone started it before the earthquake. This happy coincidence made what many people are describing as an eye...some even saying that it looks like Poseidon's eye...do you remember that he was the god of earthquakes as well as the sea?

The earthquake's handiwork is the design in the center. While it's tracery makes up the pupil of the eye, it also strongly resembles a rose, which inspired us to call it the Earthquake Rose.

http://www.earthquakerose.com/

For the first time in US history, it costs more to manufacture a penny and a nickel than the value of the coins themselves!

The Mint estimates it will cost 1.23 cents per penny and 5.73 cents per nickel this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. The cost of producing a penny has risen 27% in the last year, while nickel manufacturing costs have risen 19%.

Link (via Something of Interest, Thanks Jason!)

Leftlane News has awesome photos of this diamond rhinestone-covered Mercedes SL. Liberace would be proud. Link

Two new maps of the distribution of galaxies in the universe, derived from data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, revealed colossal structures and supported the idea that the universe is dominated by dark matter and dark energy.

One of the teams, led by Chris Blake of the University of British Columbia, Canada, has created the largest map of the heavens ever produced. It includes more than a million galaxies and the farthest sits more than 5 billion light years from Earth.

The other group, led by Nikhil Padmanabhan at Princeton University in the US looked at 600,000 galaxies covering a similar region – about one-tenth of the sky. But both final maps rely on only 10,000 spectral measurements.

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9164-biggest-map-of-universe-reveals-colossal-structures.html (Thanks Johnny!)

Florigene, a company owned by Japanese brewer Suntory (remember the Suntory Time whiskey commercial from the film Lost in Translation [wiki]?), has developed the world's first "blue rose" by using biotechnology.

For the first time in the world, SUNTORY has succeeded in creating blue pigment in roses by implanting the gene that leads to the synthesis of blue pigment from pansy. Unlike the roses created by using conventional breeding technologies, the roses developed by us have almost 100%* Delphinidin in their petals, which has allowed these new and very different blue roses to become a reality.

Link

Martina Koloska took this amazing picture of the Glasswing butterfly (Greta oto), as seen 'round the Net.

Link | More Pics (Thanks Riga!)

I missed this one when it came out in 1999 (and Neatorama wasn't around then, anyways).

YouTube link [video] | O Entertainment website (via PistolWimp, Thanks Yayo!)

Neatorama reader Y.Y. Qian wrote:

Interesting, there is a fashion house named Google in a chinese city, but selling nothing to do with Google products (e.g even Google T-shirt).

Interesting, indeed! Link

Neatorama reader Garth Johnson wrote:

If you like gum painting, you'll love the glitter paintings of Claire Joyce. She paints using nothing more than Elmer's Glue and sprinkled glitter on wood panels. She recently completed 3 4'x8' baroque glitter paintings.

Link | Flickr Photoset (Thanks Garth!)

Costanza Puente's latest work is a life-size self-portrait statue made from bread, on public display in the park of Chile's Catholic University Extension Centre. Understandably, her work is proving popular with the pigeons in the park.

Link (Thanks Yayo!)