(Photo: Tareq Salahuddin)

The event is called a kidney transplant chain. It's a sequence of carefully-timed transplants that match donors and recipients for compatibility. UCLA Health explains:

It starts with an altruistic donor - someone who wants to donate a kidney out of the goodness of his or her heart. That kidney is transplanted into a recipient who had a donor willing to give a kidney, but was not a match. To keep the chain going, the incompatible donor gives a kidney to a patient unknown to him or her who has been identified as a match, essentially "paying it forward." A specialized computer program matches donors and recipients across the country.

For 2 days, doctors in San Francisco completed 18 surgeries carrying out 9 kidney transplants, all of which were successful. It was an unusually complex kidney transplant chain. The Orange County Register explains the challenges involved:

Adding to the logistical hurdles of so many surgeries, kidneys had to be ferried back and forth between the two hospitals. On Friday, two kidneys were sent from California Pacific to UCSF via a special organ transport service and two kidneys were sent from UCSF to California Pacific for a total of four, 3-mile trips. Two trips were made Thursday.

“Everything went as planned,” said Noel Sanchez, spokesman for Donor Network West. The Oakland company specializes in packaging and transporting organs.

-via Ace of Spades HQ

George R. R. Martin has a gift for names. Westeros and Essos are filled with people who have names charmingly much like, but not quite, those in the real world. A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones have become so popular that many of these names are already in spell checking programs. But not all of them. Cartoonist James Chapman illustrates what happens when one spell checking program tries of offer corrected versions.

(Photo: Pempele's Pizza)

This delicious-looking pizza that I can almost smell through the computer screen is pita pastrmajlija, a cheese and meat pie eaten in Macedonia. It's 1 of 16 breakfast foods from the different nations of Eastern Europe, including a deep-fried pastry from Albania and potato pancakes from Belarus. Most, but not all of the Eastern European nations are represented (Slovakia, Lithuania, and Moldova appear to be absent).

Which of these dishes have you tried?

(Photos: Alaska Department of Fish and Game)

This fellow with a handsome mug is a lamprey, a type of fish. It's a parasite that attaches itself to other fish with its tooth-filled sucker mouth, then sucks the life out of its host. We've all known people like this guy.

He and his friends have been dropping out of the sky outside of Fairbanks, Alaska.

(Photos: Adam West on Facebook, CBS)

Adam Armstrong, 19, of Leeds, UK planned a trip to the Spanish resort island of Ibiza. His stepfather purchased airline tickets with Ryanair. Unfortunately, he purchased the tickets thinking that his stepson's last name was "West."

Armstrong tried to correct the error, but Ryanair presented him with a £220 ($336 USD) administrative fee for that task. Disgusted at this ridiculously high price, Armstrong legally changed his name--for free--to West. He then quickly got a new passport with the name West for £103 ($157 USD).  The Guardian reports:

Armstrong said: “Her stepdad got my name from Facebook but I had put it as Adam West as a joke, because he was the actor who played Batman on TV.

“Ryanair were not helpful at all. We showed them we were not trying to change the person, just the name, but they wouldn’t back down.

“Ryanair pride themselves on being a customer-centric business, it just seems like a joke when they wouldn’t change the name. I just thought it was completely ridiculous. All they needed to do was hit the backspace key on a keyboard and they want to charge me £220?” […]

Ryanair is known for tempting customers with cheap fares but demanding fees for anything from printing boarding passes at the airport to checking in additional bags. The airline’s boss, Michael O’Leary, once mooted charging passengers to use the toilet mid-flight but the plans never came to fruition.

-via Marginal Revolution

(Photo of Leslie smith via USA Today)

A man outside a nightclub in California decided to sexually harass a woman. He then experienced a major failure in the victim selection process by targeting two young ladies who happen to be professional cage fighters: Leslie Smith and Heather Clark.

Leslie Smith is in the bantamweight division and Heather Clark is in strawweight division of the Ultimate Fighting Champion mixed martial arts company. They are highly skilled at physically beating opponents into bloody submission.

The man pinched Clark's bottom. Smith objected, as the tabloid The Mirror describes:

The man then allegedly spat in her face saying "F*** you. I can do whatever I want."

Smith replied: ‘No motherf***er, you can’t.’

He then allegedly swung a punch in Smith's direction - which she dodged, forcing him against and wall.

She then managed to take him onto the floor where she rained down elbows on him, the Metro reports.

"He turned over and I just dropped elbows on him from mount against the building until he started saying, “I’m sorry,”‘ Smith told Bloody Elbow.

"Then I stopped as soon as he said sorry, because that was really the only thing I went over there for."

Smith was discreet about the incident, but decided to come forward to the news media about it because her friends enjoyed hearing the story so much. And so do we!

-via Dave Barry

It's a simultaneously beautiful and disgusting work of art. Tasha Sturm of Cabrillo College in Aptos, California sent her 8 and 1/2 year old son outside to play. When he returned, she pressed his hand into a large plate of trypticase soy agar. The bacteria on his hand grew into this lovely formation--a vibrant array of colors and fractal shapes. Sturm describes it in more detail in the comments at this post.

-via Colossal

(Photo via Pairie View A&M University)

Today, June 19th, is the 150th anniversary of Juneteenth, the day that slavery ended in Texas. Celebrating it is an old tradition among black Texans and an emerging one across the United States. Let's look at the origins of this great event.

On April 9, 1865, General Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Grant, then accompanying General Meade's Army of the Potomac. On April 18, General Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee to General Sherman's Army of the Tennessee. On May 10, Federal troops captured Jefferson Davis, the President of the defunct Confederate States of America. That odious institution was finally crushed.

Except in Texas.

Although it had contributed men and materiel to the Southern cause, Texas had been largely spared the ravages of the war. Now, having dispatched the largest of the rebel armies, the United States was ready to restore its authority in Texas.

What the heck is this thing?! No one knows. A video shot on a dock in Pengu, Taiwan shows a long bright green worm (auto-start video) shooting its pink proboscis appendage over the ground, presumably in search of human flesh. The origin and intention of this worm are unclear, but I can only suggest that we remain panicked while authorities investigate.

-via Super Punch

(Video Link)

Anthony Kulkamp Dias, a bank worker and professional guitarist in Brazil, underwent brain surgery. The doctors wanted him to stay awake during it, so Dias played his guitar and sang. The Daily Telegraph (auto-start video) reports that one doctor enjoyed a song so much that he asked for an encore:

“The doctors asked me to repeat one of the country songs so I even had an encore,” Mr Kulkamp told Brazilian news website G1.

As the doctors worked on this brain, Dias felt the effects on this body and performance:

“I played six songs at certain times,” he said. “My right hand was a bit weaker because that was the side that they were operating on. So I stopped and rested. I was interspersing songs and talking with them.”

In the video above, Dias is playing "Yesterday" by Paul McCartney.

-via Daily of the Day

Etsy seller Trevor McIntyre made this elegant fire pit that is ideal for a proper funeral or just toasting marshmallows. When it's too cold to go pillaging, start a fire. 

(Photo: Darby Simon)

When PBS faces its greatest crisis--or just a fundraising week--it calls upon its greatest heroes: Carl Sagan, Bill Nye, Fred Rogers, and Bob Ross. Men vs Cosplay offers this friendly take on The Avengers.

Question: which PBS host corresponds with which Avenger? I mean, besides Bob Ross obviously being Black Widow.

-via Cosplay in America

(Photos: The Kangaroo Sanctuary)

Roger is a 9-year old kangaroo that lives at the Kangaroo Sanctuary of Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia. He weighs 200 pounds and is 6 and 1/2 feet tall. Most of that appears to be muscle!

(Photo: Barbie Fantasies)

After over five decades of wearing wedges and stilleto heels, the always fashionable Barbie will get articulated ankles. These will permit the doll to wear different types of shoes comfortably. This is the latest change thanks to Mattel's new "Fashionista" line. CTV reports:

It’s the first time in the iconic doll’s history that she will be able to step out in relative comfort. Past incarnations have always featured heeled-shoe accessories for the ever-youthful party girl, whose feet were perpetually frozen in an angled position.

But Mattel figured it only made sense that the new “Film Director Barbie” would wear “running-around-the-set flats.” Don’t worry though, she can still put on a pair of heels for the movie premiere, the ad reads.

-via The Mary Sue

Pictured below is Coma-Doof Warrior, a character in the movie Mad Max: Fury Road. He's noted for his fire-spitting guitar and wearing his dead mother's face as a mask.

Naturally, Make contributor Caleb Kraft wants a flamethrowing musical instrument. But he prefers the ukulele to the guitar, and so built one. You can watch a step-by-step video describing how to make your own here.

Kraft notes that his design could be scaled up to a guitar or any other stringed instrument. I suggest going all the way with a flamethrower octobasse, which is a 12-foot tall fiddle.