For 32 years, actor Peter Falk played the role of Frank Colombo, a LAPD detective who could intuitively know who had committed murders that he investigated. In 69 television movies, Colombo gradually ensnared each murderer who thought that he was far too clever for the seemingly erratic, dim-witted detective.

Falk played other roles, including the grandfather in The Princess Bride. But he best known as Colombo.

Yet Falk did far more than just act. He was also an artist. A tweet by Diane Doniol-Valcroze alerted me to his self-portraits as Colombo. Pictured above is one sold by the Bonham's action house.

(They Can Talk/Jimmy Craig)

Don't just bring a bag. Bring a roll of bags. You need a backup plan in case your dog is backed up. Listen to your dog's warnings.

Oreo's new ad campaign suggests that new packages could help protect your packages of cookies from thieving kids. What kid (or adult) would actually want to eat cauliflower and rice? Yes, you might see it in the refrigerator, but you won't actually pull it out. Thus the cookies inside are safe.

Motor World introduces us to the Kurogane Model 1 Fire Trike, a Japanese-built firefighting vehicle designed in response the devastation of the region of Kanto in 1923 by an earthquake that triggered a tsunami, then a massive fire. Over 100,000 people died. This tragedy inspired a more systematic firefighting system, including emergency response vehicles that could navigate the often narrow confines of cities.

At the time, the Japanese motorcycle industry was booming. In 1941, the Kurogane company unveiled this design. Very few such trikes survived World War II, but a Russian museum came into possession of one in Malaysia. With an 1100-cc engine and leaf spring suspension, it was fully capable of hauling heavy equipment over difficult terrain.

-via Stuff | Photo: Motor World

I was impressed with not only Smac McCreanor's creative idea, but her masterful execution of the premise. It turns out that she's a professional dancer and actor, so it's no wonder that she was able to physically demonstrate the crushing of each object displayed in the Hydraulic Press Channel's emotionally soothing TikTok page.

-via Born in Space

Ddangerous Ddave loves hard rides on his Norco Sight C7. Here he is on a forested mountain trail, going at high speeds through bone-breaking obstacles. He never falls, but he does have the sense to look at one jump and say, "That's not solo ride material." Yet, at another, seemingly more challenging jump, he takes his bike airborne.

Watch it all, if for nothing more than hearing his joyful laughter.

-via The Awesomer

Political historian Robert Justin Goldstein writes about an extraordinary incident in 19th Century Sweden:

In another case of press repression which succeeded only in creating a martyr, the editor of the Swedish newspaper Stockholms Posten, Captain Anders Lindeberg, was convicted of treason in 1834 for implying that King Karl Johan should be deposed. He was sentenced to death by decapitation, under a medieval treason law. When the King mitigated the sentence to three years in prison, Lindeberg decided to highlight the King’s repressive press policy by insisting upon his right to be beheaded and refusing to take advantage of the government’s attempts to encourage him to escape. Finally, in desperation, the King issued a general amnesty to ‘all political prisoners awaiting execution’, which applied only to Lindeberg. When the editor stubbornly insisted upon his right to execution, the government solved the problem by locking him out of his cell while he was walking in the prison courtyard and then refusing him re-entry.

I encountered this story in the wonderful blog Futility Closet and decided to post about it here at Neatorama. But my efforts at verifying the story (which sounds too good to be true) came to nothing.

So I ordered Goldstein's book through interlibrary loan to check his source. Goldstein's source is a 1940s book series on Scandinavian historian by Swedish author B.J. Hovde. I don't have access to Hovde's book and am thus unable to track his sources. But given the contemporary scholarly book reviews of his work that I have found, I'd say that the likelihood that the story of how Lindeberg escaped is true is, on a scale of 1 to 10, about a 6.

Photo: Der Vollstrecker

Ayhan Tomak, a Turkish sculptor who specializes in wood, has many fascinating pieces on his website, his Instagram page, and his DeviantArt page. But I'm particularly struck by his mirror backings. They exhibit incredible fluidity--like they encapsulate shimmering pools of water in constant motion.

To be more precise, Madeleine Ravier referred to her invention as a "bicycle for animals." She did not restrict the design in her 1907 patent to horses.

Ravier concluded that, as human locomotion is more efficient on a bicycle, animals likewise benefit by an appropriately adapted vehicle. Weird Universe quotes a translation of her patent:

What man did for himself he can do it for animals, or at least for some of them; There is a way to increase the efficiency of their limbs by the intercalation, between these limbs and the field of motion, of mechanical devices receiving the reciprocating motion of the limbs, transforming it into continuous rotary motion, and ending in rotating parts; and the result obtained can be used to make animals move man faster and farther than has hitherto been done by using them.

With a wingspan up to 11 inches, the appropriately named Atlas Moth can attract unwelcome attention from predators. Fortunately, one of its evolutionary advantages is that the tips of its wings look like snake heads. The Natural History Museum in London describes how this feature helps:

The moth's Cantonese name translates as snake's head moth, because the tips of its wings look similar to the head of a deadly cobra.

When threatened, the moth will drop to the floor and writhe around, slowing flapping its wings to imitate snake head and neck movements and scare away predators.

-via The Fabulous Weird Trotters | Photo: Pixabay

Redditor UNHOLYpuppetboy shares this photo of the book stacks of his local public library. It's the Merchants' Square location of the Carmel Clay Public Library in Carmel, Indiana. The main library of that system is under renovation, so the collection and its services were moved into a closed grocery store last October. The local NBC News affiliate described the changes last year:

That's right, the library is now in the old Marsh in Merchants' Square while the main library undergoes renovations. The library expects construction could take up to two years, with a focus on expanding the "teen" area. [...]

"Our books in the freezer section. That's a popular area," said Director Bob Swanay. "The children's area is in what was formerly the winery section of the store."

-via TYWKIWDBI

Custom dicemaker RitualCast of Ketchikan, Alaska says that this ominous street art recently appeared downtown. And there's evidence that the situation has become even more dangerous: packets of googly eyes have been mysteriously appearing around the city.

-via Super Punch

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Capuchino Cosplay offers this fresh take on Marvel cosplay. Here is a Rococo-style rendition of Captain America and Iron Man. The pair of heroes are ready for the masquerade ball.

This unique blown glass piece designed by Jim Rokos and made by glass artist Jochen Holz is called My Other Half. The glass with the lowest level will fill up, so it's necessary to coordinate your drinking with a partner. Rokos designed it as part of a project that he calls Blindspot, which is about how people work together (or don't) as couples.

-via Toxel

How shall we protect our property from people stealing packages away from our front doors? Stage magician and science educator Jason Latimer reasoned that the best way is to convince thieves that there are no packages to steal. He built a box with a mirror that reflects the side wall of his house. As a result, when viewed from the front, the box appears to be a transparent table.

-via The Awesomer