Former NASA engineer Mark Rober (previously at Neatorama) was asked to charge a very powerful battery for an electric Volkswagen. He decided to make lemonade- a really serious lemon-powered battery, using 1232 lemons. After having as much fun with that many lemons as they could think of, he and William Osman got down to business. Lemons were not the only creative idea he had for charging the huge car battery. The Volkswagen supercar ended up winning the Pike's Peak Challenge, and set a world record, too! -via The Kid Should See This
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This critter got himself into a predicament, didn't he? A crab boat crew saw a fox stranded on an iceberg about seven kilometers off the coast of Labrador. Alan Russell of St. Lewis talked to the CBC about the fox on an ice shelf.
"We seen something on the ice. Wasn't sure what it was," Russell told CBC's Labrador Morning. "So we got up closer to it. It was a little fox, Arctic fox. And he wasn't very big. He was soaking wet, and the gulls was trying to pick at him."
The crew tried to pull him from the mushroom-shaped iceberg tip, but the skittish fox wouldn't let them close. So they used the boat to knock the ice pan down and fished the fox from the water with a net.
The crew put the fox in a bin with wood shavings, brought him to port, fed him for a couple of days, and then released him. See more pictures at CBC. -via TYWKIWDBI
(Image credit: Alan Russell)
Warning: infectious laughter. These guys were trying to find their way around what I think might be the city of Fortaleza in Brazil. Commenters believe the trouble may be because they didn't switch the language of their app to Portuguese. They have stories of using map apps in languages that don't work well in the location they are driving through. At any rate, what came out was not only the road they should turn on, but all the other roads and shopping plazas it leads to. InappropriateSurname jotted them all down.
Turn left onto Avenida Almirante Barroso / Avenida Antonio Justa / Avenida da Abolição / Avenida Desembargador Moreira / Rua Frei Mansueto / Avenida Pessoa Anta / Rua Ana Bilhar / Rua Barbalha / Rua Barbosa de Freitas / Rua José Napoleão / Rua Juazeiro do Norte / Rua Júlio Ibiapina / Av. Senador Virgílio Távora
Then turn right onto Rua José Napoleão
The video was uploaded yesterday. You have to wonder if they're still driving around, trying to find their destination. -via reddit
The annual World's Ugliest Dog contest was held yesterday at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, California. The winner was a bulldog named Zsa Zsa, who came with her owner Megan Brainard all the way from Anoka, Minnesota, to enter the competition.
Zsa Zsa won a $1,500 cash prize. Judging was based not just on appearance, but personality, too, which Zsa Zsa clearly has in spades. That being said, crazy eyes, crooked tails, weird walks and tongues that kind of hang there were all important to judges.
See more of Zsa Zsa and pictures of the runners-up here. -via Fark
There's a big difference between being alone and being lonely. If you are alone because you truly enjoy solitude, that shouldn't be a problem. But if you feel all alone and don't want to be, that is real loneliness. The stress of loneliness and social isolation can do serious damage, but that doesn't mean you are doomed. For many people, feelings of loneliness come and go as life progresses, and smart folks learn how to change their life situation to meet their need for social connections. AsapSCIENCE lets us in on the science of loneliness and its effects. -via Laughing Squid
Fans love it when a TV series throws in a line or an action that is only understood by faithful viewers, those who have been watching since season one. They are callbacks, running gags, internal references, brick jokes, slow burns, in-jokes, or Chekhov's gags. You could look all those up at TV Tropes, but then you can kiss your evening goodbye. In the above case, a subject comes up 43 years later, and the internal reference is just dialogue for most viewers, but pure gold for those who remember the earlier episode. Below, the gun going off for no reason is just a random fact, and the reason it was mentioned at all only becomes evident years later.
Maybe these things are in-jokes for the writers, or maybe they are put in just to see if anyone notices. Even if just a few fans do, you can bet they'll share the cleverness on social media tomorrow. See 13 such references in a pictofacts article at Cracked.
During both of the Battles of Bull Run in 1861 and '62, the Union Army suffered defeat and lost a lot of men. The battlefield near Manassas, Virginia, is now a memorial protected by the National Park Service. They do not normally allow the ground to be dug up, but a utility project in 2015 unearthed some curious human bones. Physical anthropologist Doug Owsley and forensic anthropologist Kari Bruwelheide investigated.
One bone in particular, an incomplete distal left femur found in more than ten separate pieces, leapt out at them. Cleanly sawn, the find piqued the pair’s curiosity. “Knowing this is a Civil War battlefield,” Bruwelheide says, “the first thing we think about is an amputation.”
Owsley and Bruwelheide soon had much more to go on—additional scouting in the area of the first find turned up a human-excavated pit, dug a single foot deep, containing seven additional limbs and two virtually complete skeletons (one was missing its skull, likely due to farming activity during the years before the site became a National Park). Owsley and Bruwelheide set about doing what they do best: piecing together the story behind the bones.
“First, we had to determine whether this was First or Second Manassas,” Owsley says. “There were two battles fought on this property.” To help them assess the evidence, Owsley and Bruwelheide corresponded with park superintendent Brandon Bies. The location of the pit suggested the second battle, but it was two subtle aspects of the bones within that led Bies and his fellow park historians to reach an ironclad conclusion.
The team found subtle clues to determine which battle the bones were from, who did the amputations, and why the full skeletons were buried in the medical pit. Read the fascinating research that yielded the answers at Smithsonian. -via Strange Company
(Image credit: Kate D. Sherwood)
The Gorilla Foundation has announced the passing of Koko. Koko the lowland gorilla was born at the San Francisco Zoo and was only one year old when she began to train in sign language with Dr. Francine “Penny” Patterson. Koko's amazing ability to communicate led to the establishment of the Gorilla Foundation. She had a vocabulary of around 1,000 words in sign language and understood around 2,000 spoken words. Koko loved to watch movies and was an avid fan of the TV show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. She was the first non-human to successfully participate in an internet chat. Koko was famous for her loving relationship with cats, and her intense bonding with her first kitten.
Koko’s capacity for language and empathy has opened the minds and hearts of millions. She has been featured in multiple documentaries and appeared on the cover of National Geographic twice. The first cover, in October of 1978, featured a photograph Koko had taken of herself in a mirror. The second issue, in January of 1985, included the story of Koko and her kitten, All Ball. Following the article, the book Koko’s Kitten was published and continues to be used in elementary schools worldwide. Her impact has been profound and what she has taught us about the emotional capacity of gorillas and their cognitive abilities will continue to shape the world.
Koko was 46.
(Image credit: Flickr user sid)
Bruce and Terry Jenkins have led an interesting life. Now that they are retired, they spend their time running a private shelter called Cat's Cradle. They have 30 cats, all of them rescues, elderly cats who have outlived their original owner. They get to spend their sunset years being loved and fussed over by the Jenkins. They are awesome people. Stay for the credits, where we get to see the finished butterfly garden. -via The Atlantic
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom officially opens Friday, although you can attend previews on Thursday. This will be the fifth movie in the Jurassic Park franchise, which began in 1993. However, the sequels came to a screeching halt in 2001 when Jurassic Park III came out. It was the first of the movies not to be directed by Steven Spielberg, and the first that wasn't based on a book. It made money, but was not well received. Screen Junkies explains why in an Honest Trailer for Jurassic Park III. Fourteen years went by before producers were healed from the trauma enough to bring us Jurassic World. -via Geeks Are Sexy
We all love service dogs, and we are in awe of their abilities and their loyalty. You're not supposed to pet one without permission, because they are on duty. It took time and the internet for people to learn that rule. But what if a service dog approaches you? That would be surprising, but it happens. For a reason. Lumpatronics told a story about how and why a service dog might come up to you.
So today I tripped. Fell flat on my face, it was awful but ultimately harmless. My service dog, however, is trained to go get an adult if I have a seizure, and he assumed this was a seizure (were training him to do more to care for me, but we didn’t learn I had epilepsy until a year after we got him)
I went after him after I had dusten off my jeans and my ego, and I found him trying to get the attention of a very annoyed woman. She was swatting him away and telling him to go away. So I feel like I need to make this heads up
If a service dog without a person approaches you, it means the person is down and in need of help
Now you know. They are truly being Lassie, asking you to come save Timmy from the well. -via The Daily Dot
Update: Nicolas Steenhout, an accessibility consultant, says this is not how most service dogs are trained to get help. He explains in this Twitter thread. -Thanks, Gristle McNerd!
(Image credit: Lextergrace)
Vacationing in the Poconos Mountains goes way back into the early part of the 20th century. But in 1945, as soldiers returned from the war and got married, Farm on the Hill became the first "honeymoon resort" in the Poconos, and others soon followed. There were plenty of honeymoon accommodations to select from, like the "honeymoon mansionette" pictured above, complete with fireplace, plastic flowers, sky-blue decor, and a TV with a matching blue screen of death. There were plenty of recreational opportunities, like archery, swimming, golf, canoeing, and table tennis, as well as lounges and restaurants.
Some hotels went all in on the honeymoon idea as the 1960s progressed, with heart-shaped bathtubs during the era of "affluent vulgarity," which extended the potential clientele to unmarried couples ready to pay for a getaway. See a roundup of postcards from the Poconos during its honeymoon heyday at Flashbak. -via Everlasting Blort
Lucas the adorable young spider (previously at Neatorama) is looking for a place to nap. It has to be perfect: private and cozy and away from distractions. When you are a tiny spider, there are a lot of spots to choose from! Spoiler- he finds a good place. -via Laughing Squid
T.J. was a 14-year-old who ate gummy vitamins as if they were candy. It was a language problem- he thought they were candy. While he ate too many every day, the day he consumed an entire bottle (150 gummies), he landed in the hospital with strange symptoms. YouTuber Chubbyemu (previously at Neatorama) takes us through the process of diagnosis and treatment, and explains in detail what a vitamin overdose does to one's body. It's not pretty. Chubbyemu has a series of horrific medical stories in his YouTube channel. -via reddit
In June of 1959, the US Postal Service, in conjunction with the US military, shot 3,000 letters from a submarine across 200 miles to a Naval Auxiliary Air Station in Florida. The letters were all the same, since this was a demonstration intended to show the Soviet Union how accurate American missiles were. But it was far from the first time folks attempted to deliver mail by rocket.
For example, in the late 19th century in Tonga, residents of the island of Niuafo’ou decided to try using Congreve rockets to send and receive mail. You see, the island’s lack of beaches and harbour, as well as the presence of the second deepest oceanic trench in the world, the Tonga Trench, right next to it (making it impossible to anchor), meant getting mail from ship to land wasn’t something regularly done, despite ships frequently passing by.
The ultimate solution to leverage the existing ship traffic here for sending and receiving mail was simply to have ships drop cans containing mail into the water and then blast their horns as they passed by. Strong swimmers would then swim out to try to collect the cans before the current did. Likewise, the swimmers would carry messages from the island out to the shipping lane to drop off, with the canned letters picked up when the ships passed. This all eventually earned Niuafo’ou the nickname of Tin Can Island.
But before they earned that moniker, they decided to go with the Congreve rockets, which is definitely a missed opportunity here in terms of a more badass nickname.
Mail delivery by those Congreve rockets was discontinued for the same reason other plans failed- the rockets were unreliable and not all that accurate. By the time missiles were accurate enough to do the job, we had planes going to all parts of the world anyway. Read about the many plans and projects to deliver mail by missile at Today I Found Out.
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