Harry Ward got to know Doris in a bomb shelter in Bristol, UK, during an air raid in November, 1940. Three months later, he gave his sweetheart a card on Valentine's Day as he left town to go to war. They married the next year, then had children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. They still use the same card every year:

Mr Ward, now 88, said: 'I knew Doris was the one for me the moment I met her. It was a heck of a night during the Blitz, but at least it meant we met each other. I gave her the Valentine's card then and she is still my Valentine now."

Mrs Ward's card – which reads "Two hearts entwine this Valentine. True love makes it sincere" – is not the only thing that has endured the passing of time.

"Harry is quite romantic and we are still going strong together after all these years," she said.

"The secret to our happy marriage is that we never go to bed without a kiss goodnight. We are as still in love as the day he first gave me this card."

Link | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user Partha Sarathi Sahana used under Creative Commons license

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We're late for the train! But we must board it! How can this be accomplished? A couple in Burma demonstrates one technique.

via The Presurfer

I doubt that this toy is licensed by Disney, but CLOT's TRON: Legacy Bambi toy nonetheless goes on sale on Valentine's Day. They can be found a shop called "Man Is In the Forest" in Shanghai. There are three more pictures at the link.

Link via Kotaku

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Vikersundbakken -- the world's highest ski jump -- opened this past week in Norway. Its staggering 440-foot height allowed champion jumper Johan Remen Evensen to set a new world record by jumping 797 feet. The above video shows that jump. You can watch more videos about Vikersundbakken and the sport of ski jumping at the link.

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Why are you wearing a plastic insulated electrical cord around your neck? Nguyen Le, a photographer and crafter in Brooklyn, made one out of cotton and wool yarn that is probably a lot more comfortable.

Link via Geek Crafts | Le's Blog

Aleksander Doba, 64, crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Dakar, Senegal to Acaraú, Brazil in almost a hundred days. He's the first person to do so nonstop:

After 98 days, 23 hours, 42 minutes at sea, Doba and his custom 23-foot-long, 39-inch-wide human-powered kayak landed at Acaraú, a city on Brazil’s northeast coast. The trip covered some 3,320 miles in all, and Doba became only the fourth known person to accomplish such a feat, and the very first to do it nonstop.

Of course, Doba encountered his fair share of obstacles along the way — age, a broken desalination unit, 20-foot swells and stifling equatorial heat — but none of that would deter him, as he survived on dehydrated food products, candy and fish (which he caught along the way). He also made time to collect rainwater for drinking, communicate by sat phone (recharged by solar panels lining his vessel), and even send out a few tweets.

Link via Glenn Reynolds | Photo: Arsoba Travel

In 1984, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke submitted "siseneG" to Analog magazine. Clarke's cover letter was as terse, stating "This is the only short story I've written in ten years or so. I think you'll agree that they don't come much shorter."

Link via blastr

Design student James Auger was inspired by carnivorous plants to make a clock that is powered by converting the bodies of dead insects into electricity. A roll of flypaper catches the flies, which are in turn scraped off and dumped into a fuel cell. It's an application of biomass energy conversion technology. You can watch videos about the clock at the link.

Link via OhGizmo! | Photo: Auger Loizeau

Toy and puzzle making company Ravensburger has created the world's largest commercially available jigsaw puzzle. It weighs 42 pounds and is composed of 32,256 pieces. The completed image is a compilation of 32 works by the pop artist Keith Haring. You can view more images of it at the link.

Link | Company Website | Image: Ravensburger

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Vimeo user Mark Hannant shot this amazing scene in the Maldives. Five small sharks are chasing after their dinner inside an enormous school of fish. The fish school amorphously forms a hole around wherever the sharks move -- all while a heron on the shore tries to take advantage of the opportunity.

via The Presurfer

deviantART user Sumerset envisions grand alliances in the Star Trek and Doctor Who universes. Leaving aside the depiction of late 24th Century Romulans and Klingons fighting alongside each other...well, they did briefly during the Dominion War, I suppose. But shouldn't all sides within each universe ally against the opposing universe?

I mean, if I saw even the Jem'Hadar fighting the Doctor, I'd support the Jem'Hadar. It's like that old proverb says: "My brother and I against my cousin. My cousin and I against any stranger." Are you a Trekkie or a Whovian? Choose your side and stick with it.

Link via io9

Mark Twain's classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been republished without the n-word, a term now deeply offensive to American sensibilities. But Gabriel Diani and Etta Devine think that this change doesn't go far enough. They have a Kickstarter project to republish the novel with the word "robot" replacing the n-word, and further alternations to the text to make the character Jim clearly a robot instead of a human. At the link, you can view a hilarious video that they've put together explaining the venture.

Link via Gizmodo

Corpus Libris is a photoblog of people covering themselves with the covers of books so that their gestures match the people on the covers. It was started by the staff of Skylight Books in Los Angeles featuring themselves, but now includes reader-submitted photos.

Link via Super Punch

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We've seen floppy disk drives altered to serve as musical instruments, but not quite as sophisticated as this set up by YouTube user FunToTheHead. In this performance, he performs Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor:

Features two 3 1/2" drives and two 5 1/4" drives connected to a PIC18f14k50 microcontroller. It interfaces to any MIDI source via MIDI over USB. Straight MIDI would also be possible with an additional small circuit and some minor firmware changes. This initial version can respond to all 128 MIDI notes, and pitch bends +/- 2 semitones.

As it can produce only four simultaneous notes, and each drive has a different range and tonal characteristics, best results are obtained by arranging compositions by hand. However, it features two modes of operation: in one mode, MIDI channels 1 through 4 are played directly on floppy drives 1 through 4. In the other mode, all 16 MIDI channels are read, and notes are "intelligently" divvied out on a first-come, first-serve basis. "Note stealing" ensures that melody lines sound, but chords are often cut short. One or the other produces acceptable results for many unmodified MIDI files straight out of your favorite media player.

via Geek Dad

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Mike Haeg built this contraption to use while ice fishing. When a fish pulls on the line, the movement of the reel triggers a model rocket to launch. Skip ahead in the video to 0:35 to see the action. Haeg writes "No one lost a hand, but we did lose 2 rockets."

Link via Boing Boing