Today is the right day to visit Museum of Hoaxes's famous list of Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time.

At no. 1 is 1957 The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest, where BBC news show Panorama announced that very mild winter and elimination of the spaghetti weevil had created a bumper crop for Swiss spaghetti tree growers.

A huge number of viewers called in to ask how they can grow their own spaghetti tree - to which the BBC responded "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."

Check out the rest of the list: Link

Happy April Fool's Day everyone!

Kirsteen's sculpture reminds me of the toothpick arts we used to do when we were kids, only much larger and cooler.

From the website:

A deliberate attempt has been made to present the structures as models. They are made from the commonly used architectural model-making material FomeCore, and are scaled down to tabletop size. Consequently, they draw on the assumptions of architectural models – to help visualise and sell projects yet to be realised. The presentation of the sculptures in an immaculate and clean form supports such inferences, yet the structures have evidently already existed and are failed structures.

Link (via Gravestmor)

Fosfor Gadgets has listed the Top 10 Weirdest Keyboards Ever: Link

Despite never having formal art education Max Ernst (1891 - 1976) helped found the Cologne Dadaist group and later became a famous surrealist painter.

What's surrealism? Wikipedia explains:

Surrealism is a cultural, artistic, and intellectual movement oriented toward the liberation of the mind by emphasizing the critical and imaginative faculties of the "unconscious mind" and the attainment of a state different from, "more than", and ultimately "truer" than everyday reality: the "sur-real", or "more than real".

For more of Max's artwork, visit: Link| The Surrealist Website (via Ursi's Blog)

In 1935, Boston architect Chester Lindsay Churchill completed the Mapparium, a three-story spherical globe room with a map of the world made from stained glass:

Churchill purchased large glass panels from the Hope Glass Company in England, which were then shipped to the Rambusch Company in New York. Once there, Rambusch set about the task of creating the map in stained glass. Artists at Rand McNally in Chicago used their 1934 world map to create paper map overlays (known as cartoons) as templates for each panel. Rambusch artists then traced these maps onto 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick glass panels, and then painted them with a colored powdered glass mixture. Each panel was then fired in a kiln to fuse the color to the panel. Different colors required separate firings at temperatures ranging from 1,100 to 1,350 degrees Fahrenheit. To help maintain their exact curve and shape, panels were fired in asbestos cradles. It took eight months to paint and bake all 608 glass panels.

http://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/exhibits/mapparium.jhtml (via Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society)

This has got to be one of the weirder inventions around: a company called Flat-D Innovations is selling a doggie thong designed to reduce dog fart odors!

Link (via Strange New Products)

Motive Power Review has an extensive photo collection of railroad snowfighting equipments: Link (via Information Junk)

Ann Mette Heindorff has an amazing collection of stamps delineating art history, styles, and artists.

Link (via KingBoy)

Archaeologist Yannis Lolos said that his team had unearthed the 13th century remains of the remains of a 3,500-year-old palace of Ajax the Great, a legendary warrior-king described by Homer in The Iliad.

The Mycenaean-era complex found on the small island of Salamis near Athens covers about 750 sq m (8,070 sq ft).

The chief archaeologist said it was a rare case where a palace could be attributed to a famous Homeric hero.

Yiannis Lolos said travellers and archaeologists had been looking for the site "from the early 19th Century".

Link | Wikipedia entry on Ajax the Great

2Spare has assembled Top 87 Bad Predictions about the Future. To wit, on the computer category, are these bad predictions:

Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons.
- Popular Mechanics, March 1949.

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in 1977.

I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year.
- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957.

But what... is it good for?
- IBM executive Robert Lloyd, speaking in 1968 microprocessor, the heart of today’s computers.

Link (via The Presurfer)

Las Vegas (where else?) Hilton Executive Chef George Bargisen has assembled the World's Largest Buffet:

Bargisen spent 24 hours straight overseeing the mammoth spread, which included dishes from a dozen ethnic cuisines and offered everything from salmon Wellington to fried alligator, and from pumpkin pie to baklava and pistachio truffles.

The buffet has 40 soups, 100 salads, 150 deserts - all in all, there are 510 different dishes.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/03/28/vegas.buffet.reut/index.html (Thanks Tiffany!)

James Wilson of Redford, Michigan, went on strike - a very unique strike. He will stay on the roof of his house until his wife Vanessa makes their 3-year old daughter and 2-year old son sleep in their own beds and not his!

Even though our two month old daughter refuses to sleep without my wife holding her, and my two year son won't even attempt to sleep without his pacifier, my wife still refuses to take my advice about how to fix these problems.

After begging and pleading with my wife (because I adore and love her dearly) to stop spoiling our children and ignoring my feelings, I've decided enough is enough.

So I went on strike — and moved to the roof of our home.

James' website: Husband On Strike | Local6 Story

After being held hostage in Iraq for 3 months, American freelance journalist Jill Carroll was released unharmed.

From ABC News:

Carroll, 28, was dropped off near the Iraqi Islamic Party offices. She walked inside, and people there called American officials, Iraqi police said.

"I was treated well, but I don't know why I was kidnapped," Carroll said in a brief interview on Baghdad television.

From CNN:

Her father Jim Carroll said he was asleep at his home in North Carolina when the telephone rang at about 6 a.m. The voice on the other end of the line said simply, "Hi Dad. This is Jill. I'm released."

Link to news stories: ABC News | CNN

This snake bowtie ad (the perfect wear for Snakes on a Plane!) is from Space Ace #5, 1952 and is just one of many fantastic vintage ads at Steve Conley's Super Marketing: Ads from the Comic Books. Link (via Kingboy)

From the 2002 archive of the Cellar Image of the Day, we find Liew Thow Lin - the famous Malaysian "Magnetic Man".

Liew, a retired contractor, discovered that he could have various metallic objects "stick" to his body. He even managed to pull a car using a chain attached to a metal plate that was then stuck to his abdomen. Furthermore, this super power appared to be genetic as 3 of his sons and 2 of his grandchildren also have it.

Now, scientists at a local university had examined Liew - and discovered that there was no magnetic field around him at all:

Professor Dr. Mohamed Amin Alias, from UTM's electrical engineering faculty in Johor, agreed. After seeing Liew perform, the professor did research on the matter, and decided, "His skin has a special suction effect that can help metal stick to it." "These powers are not an illusion," he said, "That is why his two sons and two grandchildren also have the magnetic-like ability. They have his genes."

Checkout these human magnet articles at: Randi | FarShores ParaNews | Magnetic People by Simon Harvey-Wilson | Tan Kok Thai's ability at A Welsh View

Some other photos at Sobrenatural | Edward Naumov "magnetizing" a test subject at paranormal.about.com