Rasmus Hans Johan Malling-Hansen, the director of Denmark's institute for the hearing impaired in Copenhagen, patented this typewriter in 1870. Here's how it worked:

The writing ball consists of a semi-sphere with radial pistons, which can be severally pushed down to the center of the sphere, where the type is printed on a paper surface (by means of carbonized paper or a ribbon).

The whole apparatus (the writing ball included) is mounted on a stationary foundation plate in such a way that it can be moved down against a spring, when the writing ball or one of its pistons are forced down by the finger. The foundation plate has an upright anvil under the centre of the ball and directly under the paper frame. When a knob of a type piston is depressed, the paper resting on the anvil, below the same receives an impression. When the finger pressure on the type piston knob is removed, the instrument swings into its normal position. The escapement mechanism moved the paper frame that held the paper on space until the end of the line was reached. By pushing the button on the left in front of the ball all the way down, the carriage was turned concentrically back to the beginning of the line and moved one line to the left.

Link via GearFuse | Photo: Auction Team | More Unusual Typewriters at Dark Roasted Blend

Do you remember the formerly trapped Chilean miner whose wife and mistress learned about each other while he was underground? It turns out that Yonni Barrios has been cheating on his mistress:

Yonni Barrios, who was the 21st miner out of 33 to be rescued last week, was welcomed on the surface by his mistress, Susana Valenzuela, after his wife of 28 years, Marta Salinas, refused to greet him.

But Ms Valenzuela claimed her 50-year-old boyfriend was also seeing a 25-year-old woman, Rosa Esther, who tried to visit him at the hospital. He was taken there for treatment after spending 69 days trapped underground.

Ms Valenzuela stopped the young woman from seeing him, telling a Colombia radio station La FM that "he is my Yonny Barrios, mine and no one else's," the New York Daily News reported.

"How on earth is another woman going to take your man away from you if you're in love with him? I hit her, I hit her a lot."

Link | Photo: AFP

Andy, who lives in Zurich, is a big fan of electronic music. As an expression of his individual musical taste, he created a colorful wall hanging charting his listening activities over the course of a year. Here's his description, run through Google Translate:

Last graph now takes up precisely these statistics, that is your taste in music and creates a graph in the form of a timeline (x-axis). The different amplitudes (y-axis) represent the frequency of the artists who came to this particular time through your speakers. The service offers several options to customize the finished graph to your needs so you can even change the period and select the color display. You can then save the graph as a PDF file with the very great advantage that load graph created a vector graphic. Thus, the image can be stored up to infinity, enlarge without any loss and therefore print. That's what I did. In a calibrated perfectly ordinary photo service I've printed the poster in 3m width and about 80cm high. To make the effect of the picture come out better, I can drag the image onto a wooden frame to make it as a little plastic wegzuholen from the wall. Additionally, I have removed the gray wall to once again increase the effect of the poster.

http://www.waximalplanet.de/?p=3813 (Google Translate) via Nerdcore

Granny Grimm's Ghoulish Book of Grammar is an ongoing series by artist Nik Holmes. It's a great way to educate young children about the letters of the alphabet and the monsters that come out at night. New entries are published on Thursdays.

Link via Popped Culture

Molly, a shar pei, had a medical condition that caused her skin to rub against her eyes. She underwent surgery to correct this problem:

Richard Marks, the vet who carried out the surgery last week, said the dog was suffering from the worst case of entropion he had ever seen.

He said: "What I essentially did was give her an extreme facelift. I removed a large piece of skin and stitched the remaining skin to the back of her head."

"It may sound extreme but if it had been left much longer she would have been totally blinded."

Link via Buzzfeed | Photo: Archant

Hundreds of people in Spain are participating in championship matches in the grueling sport of competitive napping. The National Association of Friends of the Siesta is hosting the event in order to promote the practice of the siesta. Here's how the event is judged:

Ruz then went to the competition area. A doctor attached a pulse meter to her chest so the judge, sitting in a lifeguard-type chair overlooking the five sofas, could tell whether she's really asleep.

In this competition, the siesta is limited to 20 minutes, a duration which the organizers and some doctors say is optimal; a quick nap after lunch to get refreshed, without entering a deep sleep cycle.[...]

The intricate rules award points to contestants depending on how long they sleep during the 20-minute competition time, any unusual positions they sleep in, eye-catching pajamas they might be wearing, and yes, a lot of extra points for snoring.

Link via Althouse | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user das911s used under Creative Commons license

This amusing diagram is floating through the Internet this weekend. Do you think that you could complete the assembly process? Which tools will you need?

via Joe Carter

(Video Link)

Allegedly, this video was taken from security camera footage from a highway in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. A police officer pulls over a motorist. As he talks to the driver, a pack of wolves or wild dogs attack him. The officer jumps into the backseat of the car to escape them.

Some people on the Internet think that this video is fake. What do you think?

via Urlesque, where there's another video of the same event

An anonymous contributor to Post Secret sent the above image to Frank Warren, the artist responsible for the ongoing secret-sharing project. But since he didn't want people in his life to know about his shameful history with the Denver Broncos, he used another man's photo. Specially, one named Luke Pebler, who uploaded the photo into his Flickr photostream. Pebler was promptly flooded with responses from people who knew him:

Over the next couple days I received many messages from friends and family, all ZOMGing over my appearance. The reactions broke cleanly into two camps — about half thought it was hilarious and assumed that I or someone close to me had submitted it as a goof; the other half were convinced that a stranger had used the photo, and found that bizarre and slightly creepy. My wife, a media scholar, immediately pointed out that I was a “creator” whose work has been “poached and reinterpreted.”

Link | Previously: Frank Warren's Neatorama Interview

Artist Daisy Lew loves exploring and getting lost in New York City, where she lives. As a tribute to her adopted city, Lew created a series of pop-up books that look urban skylines when opened. The above sculpture, when viewed from above, says "NYC" and looks like a red apple.

http://www.behance.net/gallery/Pop-Up-NYC/612915 via DudeCraft | Artist's Website

(Video Link)

The blogger behind JustJon created a LEGO Green Lantern power battery. When he holds up his Oan power ring to it, it lights up:

The first stage of this project was to prepare the electronics. The obvious choice was to use an Arduino with an RFID reader in the front of the lantern. With a considerable amount of strife, and a ruined RFID reader, I was able to read an RFID chip with the hardware. The chip was implanted within a Green Lantern ring that had been given away by comic book stores earlier this year.

Once the Arduino was ready, it was time to start building the Lantern itself. The first stage was to build the Lego sphere that made up the main body of the power battery, leaving holes on the sides for the lantern extrusions. A hole was also left in the top to allow the top part of the lantern to open to access the electronics. The arduino was placed in the body, and the RFID read and LED lights were added as the front of the lantern was built out. The power cable was run through the back and the rear was built out with a hole left for the cable.

Link via Comics Alliance

Previously: DIY Glowing Green Lantern Ring

After 14 years of work, Switzerland has finished drilling through 57 kilometers of rock to create the world's longest railway tunnel. It'll be years before it's ready for trains, but the hole itself is complete:

The tunnel is just over 4 km longer than the Seikan rail tunnel in Japan, which at 53.9 km had previously been the longest rail tunnel in the world.

Completion of the Gotthard Base Tunnel will cut the travel time between Zurich and Milan in Italy by 60 minutes to two-and-a-half hours and provide an easier and more economic route for heavy freight trains.

The tunnel -- which is in fact composed of two single-track tunnels -- cost $10.6 billion (£6.6 billion).

Since the first preparations for the tunnel were laid in 1996, over 2,500 workers have taken part in its building according to AlpTransit Gotthard, the company constructing the tunnel. It is due to be operational by the end of 2017.

Link | Photo: EPA

Artist/inventor Nicklas Roy has a storefront workshop in Berlin. He rigged a little curtain in the front window to follow people passing by on the sidewalk. At the link, you can watch a video of reactions to it.

Link via GearFuse

Colin Furze, a plumber in Stamford, UK, altered a mobility scooter. Thanks to a 125 cc motorbike engine, it can now go 69 MPH:

He added: ‘I was told by Guinness that I could modify the engine but I wasn’t allowed to change the appearance in any way so I couldn’t give it bigger wheels or make it more stable. 'I initially tried experimenting with battery power but I only got to about 30mph and the batteries died really quickly so I knew then it would have to be petrol powered.

Furze's next goal is to take the scooter up to 70 MPH on a racetrack. Link via technabob | Photo: Geoff Robinson Photography/Daily Mail

Sapolai Yao represented Papua New Guinea in the steeplechase event at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi. Since he's 4'10", the hurdles were a bit much for him. So Yao used a potted plant nearby as a step stool to climb up on top of one hurdle, and then jump down. He was disqualified as a consequence:

Towards the end of the gruelling race, the diminutive runner couldn't quite muster the energy to get over the water jump.

Ao the resourceful Yao did what any other vertically-challenged individual would - using his surroundings to help him out.

Spotting the pots below the hurdle, Yao gave himself a leg up onto the beam, stopped for a quick breather, and then leapt over into the water.

Link via Deadspin | Photo: BBC