(Photo: Sportex Italia)

Dino and Dario Ferrari caught this 9-foot long, 280 pound catfish in the Po River in northern Italy. It’s a Wels catfish (Silurus glanis). After a fierce, 40-minute battle, the twin brothers reeled in a creature that is being called the “monster of the Po.”

It’s time for a huge serving of fried catfish!

Or perhaps not. After measuring and photographing the fish, which is probably about 30 years old, they let it back into the water. You can see more of those pictures at the Daily Telegraph.

(Photo: Anne Wermiel/New York Post)

This is Noa Mintz, the founder of Nannies by Noa, a successful small business in New York City. If you need a top quality nanny or babysitter, she can set you up.

She's only 15 years old.

From a young, er, younger, age, Noa got to know a lot of nannies and babysitters. She developed a knack for knowing if a caregiver's personality was a good fit for a family--or wasn't. When she was 12, she launched a company that paired nannies and babysitters with families who needed them. Noa ran the company while going to school and living an otherwise normal life as a middle schooler.

Now, as a high school freshman, she realizes that she can no longer devote enough time to her company, which serves about 190 clients through about 75 nannies and babysiitters. Noa has hired a CEO to take over of day-to-day operations. The New York Post reports that this is only her latest venture:

Mom Meredith Berkman, a former journalist, isn’t surprised by her daughter’s ambition.

“Noa is a natural-born serial entrepreneur — from 6 or 7, she was always trying to start these mini-companies,” says Berkman.

“She’d reach out to my friend and ask to be a consultant for birthday parties. There are kids whose lives are absorbed by tennis or acting — but this is her baby, her startup. It’s not a hobby for her. This isn’t a lemonade stand.”

-via Oddity Central

In 1985, Rodolfo Neri Vela, a Mexican scientist, served on a mission of the space shuttle Discovery. He brought tortillas. These proved to be an incredibly practical food in zero gravity. NASA astronauts have been using them ever since when attempting to make sandwiches.

That doesn't mean the results are always pretty. Pictured above is a cheeseburger made by astronaut Terry W. Virts, who is currently on board the International Space Station. The burger consists of broken up beef patty, cheese paste, tomato paste, and Russian mustard on a tortilla. He describes it as "VERY TASTY!"

-via First We Feast

(Video Link)

The Jaws of Life are hydraulic tools used by rescue workers to extract people trapped behind heavy objects. One common use is to cut people out of crashed, mangled cars. This machine can snip right through a car frame with enough pressure.

Andrew MacDonald of Victoria, British Columbia fell asleep while driving on January 11. He crashed, breaking several bones in the process, including a femur, both ankles and both kneecaps. While firefighters cut him out of his car, MacDonald turned on his phone and recorded the incident.

He's remarkably chipper, despite suffering grave injuries that would ultimately require major surgery and a month-long stay in the hospital. MacDonald expresses interest in the "hot nurses" that he anticipates meeting at the hospital.

Content warning: a bit of foul language.

-via Jalopnik

Go ahead. Pop it. You know that you want to. It’s so satisfying to feel the bubbles snap beneath your fingers.

Bubble wrap is irresistible. So the ad agency that came up with this promotion for the video game Dragon Quest deserves great praise for its creativity and ingenuity. Kotaku reports that the Shinjuku train station in Tokyo has a wall covered with bubble wrap. Each bubble contains a picture of Slime, the mascot of the game. Passersby can’t help themselves: they’ve got to pop the Slimes.

(Photos: Manchester Evening News)

Pedro is a Shetland Pony that lives at the Ebony Horse Club in London. He lives in a stall with a normal-sized stall door. He has to stretch high up to just barely look over the edge at the world outside. So members of the club commissioned a periscope that lets Pedro see at his own height. They call it the Pedroscope.

Print and Cut, a fabrication shop, designed and built the Pedroscope based on a sketch sent in by the club. The Manchester Evening News reports:

Andy Morris, owner of Print and Cut, said: “We got an email from the Ebony Horse Club who were asking for our help, it was so nice, and a little bit funny, that we decided to give it a go."

And being experts in 3D printing, workers at the Stockport company knew a small and relatively easy gesture would mean the world to Pedro.

Andy, 38, said: “The sketch was sent to us and then I turned it into a 3D sketch with some software, and then it was sent to be made. It was all quite easy, and we did it for free to help Pedro.

Etsy seller RoobyLane calls it a prom dress, but it would be perfect for everyday wear, too! Just expect that when you wear it, people will be able to read you like a book. It contains the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which is the first book in the Harry Potter series.

With a sufficiently elaborate dress—say, one with a massive hoopskirt—she could reproduce the entire novel.

-via Fashionably Geek

(Photo: unknown)

Nichelle Nichols is the actress who played Lt. Nyota Uhura on the original Star Trek. Prior to running the communications systems on the Enterprise, she attended the Chicago Ballet Academy. She sometimes found work as a dancer, including as a background performer in the 1959 film version of Porgy and Bess.

Nichols kept up with her dancing skills. The Geek Twins has a collection of behind-the-scenes photos of uncertain provenance showing Nichols in costume on the bridge set demonstrating how flexible she is.

Think of it as a low-tech selfie sombrero. You get to wear a selfie-producing machine, but people won’t look at you like you’re weird when you do it.

Lithuanian photographer Ignas Kutavicius built a head-mounted device that takes simple shots using a pinhole camera. These were the earliest cameras in photographic history. So by using one to take a selfie, users can reflect on “what selfies could of looked like at the beginning of photographic history.”

(Video Link)

Kutavicius describes his project in this video for BBC.

-via Junkculture

(Michael A. Parker)

Design Within Reach is a home furnishings company. Every year, it holds a contest that invites artists to build chairs using only 2 champagne corks. The only materials that contributors may use are the wire frames, the metal wrappers, and, of course, the cork wood itself. The results are marvelously creative. 

(Taryn)

Tomáš Gabzdil Libertíny is an artist who collaborates with bees. By building hive structures in certain shapes, he enlists the cooperation of bees in creating sculptures out of beeswax. We’ve previously seen one that looks like the crucified Jesus. 

This one titled Thousand Years takes the form of a teapot. Christofle, a French silver maker, commissioned the piece.

-via Inhabitat

(Photo: Fritz von der Schulenburg)

The Italian fashion designer Elsa Peretti purchased an old watchtower on the coast of Tuscany as a vacation home. It was called La Torre. The Sixteenth Century structure was built for military purposes, so Peretti had to have it redesigned with comfort in mind. So she hired architect Renzo Mongiardino to renovate it.

Mongiardino took the old fort and turned it into a fairytale castle by covering the walls with three-dimensional images of fantasy scenes, including this stunning fireplace that looks like a giant’s mouth. You can see more photos of the home at The Art of the Room.

-via Messy Nessy Chic

The American rock band Blue Öyster Cult’s iconic song “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” features, oddly, the use of a cowbell. This led to the development of More Cowbell, one of the greatest Saturday Night Live sketches ever. In it, the album producer, played by actor Christopher Walken, insisted that despite all doubts, what the song needed was not less, but more cowbell.

Maple the dog agrees. As his human, Trench, plays “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” Maple rings the cowbell.

More cowbell, Maple. Please.

-via Tastefully Offensive

(James Chapman)

Millénium Condor? That totally would have worked, even in English. And Chewie is a Chico for sure. But Jabba the Woodsman? Maybe the French version has a different backstory for him.

Cartoonist James Chapman publishes many cartoons showing how different words and expressions are conveyed in languages other than English, including the sound of frying bacon and how to answer the phone. In a recent production, he took us back to il ya longtemps dans une galaxie lointaine, très lointaine.

-via Blame It on the Voices

(Photo: Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland)

Alberto Frigo (warning: not safe for sanity) documents his life. Specifically, he records images of what is right hand is doing. For 11 years, Frigo has carried a camera. Whenever his right touches something, Frigo photographs it. 

(Photo: Cianan Brennan/TheJournal.ie)

He has used the resulting collection to build a massive repository of images now on display at the Science Gallery in Dublin, Ireland. The exhibit is named Lifelogging: Do You Count. With magnifying glasses, visitors can see the long history of Frigo's right hand.

How do people respond to his practice? Frigo responds:

I generally try not to speak too much about it and first let them talk about their lives. Obviously, once somebody gets to know me, he or she will become curious about all my procedures, but in the long run I think the general feeling is that my lifelogging practice is rather unobtrusive.

He hopes to continue the practice until he's ready to retire in 2040. With an average of 76 photos a day, that's about 970,900 more pictures.

-via Flowing Data