(Image: Universal Pictures)

Frank Herbert's novel Dune is one of the most respected science fiction novels of the Twentieth Century. David Lynch's 1984 film version did not acquire such acclaim. It was an expensive film that utterly bombed at the box office.

I've never understood why. Since I first saw it in 1988, I've loved the movie. It's one of my favorites. Here are 13 bits of trivia that you might not know about it.

(Photo: Lionel Allorge)

1. Trying to condense a long book into a movie is always a challenge. Film director Alejandro Jodorowsky tried to make the movie in 1975, but among other problems, his script would have been 11-12 hours long.

(Photos: cootsimagery, Library of Congress, Luke Ford)

2. Jadorowsky wanted Orson Welles to play Baron Harkonnen, Salvador Dalí to play the Emperor and David Carradine to play Dr. Kynes.

3.  Kyle MacLachlan, who played Paul Atreides, was a devoted fan of the novel. He said, “I first read Dune when I was fourteen years old. I’ve read it every year since that time. It’s almost been my bible.” (Naha 44)

4. Paul Smith, who played Rabban, is a big man. To keep his costume from splitting, designers made his costume out of tire rubber.

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5. Kenneth McMillan, who played Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, wore a 250-pound costume. The fleshy protrusions are made of colostomy bag rubber. It was tremendously hot and the designers worried that McMillan would overheat. So they built a duplicate costume that was water cooled with tubes that ran inside.

Abraham Lincoln

William Howard Taft

Richard Nixon

William Henry Harrison

Chaz Rodick, a high school student in New York, dressed himself like each of the Presidents of the United States and took selfies. You can view all of his photos in the series here. 

It all started when he noticed that he looked like Harry Truman in one of his outfits. Soon, he was contributing one picture a day to the project.

-via Blame It on the Voices

Dan Polydoris is a toy collector and customizer in Chicago. He's a published expert on classic American toys. He's also an 80s kid, so he played the old Activision games of that era. He stripped old G.I. Joe action figures for parts in order to make his own action figures for the pixelated characters from those old video games.

Pictured above is Pitfall Harry from the 1982 game Pitfall. It's made from Tripwire and Breaker figures. Click here to see Polydoris's action figures from the games Pressure Cooker, Keystone Kapers, H.E.R.O. and Frostbite.

-via Geek Art

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It's called Verrückt, which is German for "insane." And trying to descend this waterslide safely would be utterly insane.

Let's do it!

The Schlitterbahn Water Park in Kansas City, Kansas is building the world's tallest waterslide. At almost 170 feet tall, it's taller than Niagara Falls (165 feet). The mad engineers who built it aren't sure how fast a person will go down it, but they think that a human corpse could exceed the 65 MPH velocity that this waterslide in Brazil can perform.

The Verrückt bottoms out, then rises to a 5 story hill before plummeting its hapless victims into a pool of water and the merciful embrace of death at the end.

It really needs a loop, like this slide in New Jersey.

-via Twisted Sifter

Virgil Texas decided to mock Upworthy. You won't believe what he did next. Upworthy: Sprinfield is his parody of Upworthy's enticing but predictable headlines. The residents of that town become the stars of explosive news stories and inspiring videos.

-via Jeremy Barker

P.S. Be sure to check out Science Fiction & Fantasy Upworthy.

Kirk

Spock

McCoy

Captain's Log, Stardate 1313.7. We are investigating reports of a red dot in star cluster NGC 321. Although Starfleet vessels have reported previous sightings of the red dot, none have been able to capture it. We hope that we will finally be able to bring an end to this menace.

Jenny Parks, the illustrator who drew 11 incarnations of the Doctor as the Avengers as cats has turned her attention to classic Star Trek.

-via Geek x Girls

(Photo: Diesel)

Jillian Mercado is a fashion reporter. She has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair. During her work for a fashion magazine, she met Nicola Formichetti, the artistic director for the Diesel fashion house.  A few months later, she discovered that Formichetti had put out a casting call for models. For a bit of fun, she applied.

To her surprise, Mercado was among 23 models selected to represent the brand. When photographers took photos of her, she didn’t conceal her wheelchair. Mercado was worried about how people would respond when the photos were released on Instagram. To her delight, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Mercado is overjoyed about it. She wrote on her blog:

You all have no idea how speechless I am right now . . . Thank you for giving me a chance of a lifetime and believing in me. This is beyond everything. You guys that’s me!!

-via 22 Words

Redditor Put_It_All_On_Red made this modification of The Great Wave off Kanagawa, a watercolor woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). Cookie Monster, an unstoppable force of nature, crashes over and devours all that comes in his path. It is a beautiful but impersonal movement toward cookies.

-via Tor

A few months ago, we showed you a dos-à-dos book--one with a hard back that forms the front of another book. This rare book owned by the National Library of Sweden is even more complex. Erik Kwakkel, a medieval book historian at Leiden University, says that this book is actually six books that are each opened differently. Each book opens and closes with a little clasp.

All of the books are devotional texts printed in Germany in the 1550s through 1570s, including a copy of Martin Luther's widely-read The Shorter Catechism. You can view more photos here.

(Photos: National Library of Sweden)

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John Evans holds the Guinness World Record for the balancing the heaviest car on one's head. How did he discover that he has this talent? It started while he was working as a bricklayer. He discovered that he could do his work faster if he carried bricks on his head, thus leaving both hands free.

Evans is enormously strong and has put that ability to work as an entertainer and strongman. Over the course of his career, Evans has balanced on his head a 357-pound car, 275 full pints of beer and a girl inside a flaming oil drum.

In this video, Evans lifts a gutted 352-pound car and balances it on his head for 33 seconds.

This is one of 10 weird automotive world records rounded up by Jalopnik. You can view the rest here.

If you're a native English speaker, you may know more Japanese than you think. For example, the word "tycoon" has come to mean in English a wealthy and powerful business leader, such as the above pictured Howard Hughes. But originally, taikun (大君) referred to the shoguns of Japan, who dominated that nation for centuries until the Meiji Restoration in 1868.

This is one of 11 English words of Japanese origin described by Michelle Lynn Dinh of Rocket News 24. Among them is, of course, anime. But as Dinh explains, the history of that word is a bit complex.

ArielSnow White

Jasmine

Aurora

Brianna Garcia is the artist who drew the main characters from My Little Pony as raptors. They were an internet sensation. She's also drawn several Disney princesses as gargoyles. Specifically, they're modeled on the 90s Disney television show Gargoyles.

Ah, the 90s! It was a very strong time for American animated television. That was the era of Batman: The Animated Series and Exosquad, two gems that are still worth watching again and again. Another fine show from that era was Gargoyles, the tale of several gargoyles frozen in time (and stone) in medieval Scotland and revived in the Twentieth Century.

Since Disney owns both Gargoyles and the princesses, there's no reason why they couldn't launch this concept as a show.

Bonus item: My Little Pony characters as gargoyles.

-via Geek x Girls

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Racing bike riders may occasionally drag their knees on the pavement while turning at high speeds. But this daring rider appears to deliberately lay his head on the track.

Charles Darwin, call your office!

-via Geekologie

Now I can't personally attest to the translation because I foolishly studied Latin instead of the more widely-spoken Vulcan tongue. I know only enough Vulcan to get into a bar fight.

But this Vulcan language blog seems to attest to the accuracy of Claire Little's tattoo. I hope that she made sure before she got it inked on. It would be embarrassing to later learn that the text read something like "plomeek soup" or "dry clean only."

-via Fashionably Geek

(Doghouse Diaries)

Are your relationships sufficiently superficial? Can you get your abs down without actually working hard? How far are you falling behind your friends?

Never mind that. A magazine that makes you questions your own value should start with your ethics and personality.