Before World War II, dirigibles appeared to have a promising future and much effort and money were spent developing them. According to a 1995 article in the US Naval Institute's Proceedings, the first attempt to build a metal-skinned airship was conducted in Germany in 1897, but the design concept was not successful into the Detroit Aircraft Corporation build one in 1929.

Robert Guttman of History.net says that the ZMC-2 was covered with very thin sheets of aluminum riveted together using a process that kept the structure airtight. The helium was not contained in multiple bags inside. Rather, the hull was one single envelope to contain the gas.

Three crew members could pilot the vessel at a speed of 50 miles per hour for a range of 680 miles. It operated for 12 years and completed 2,265 safe flight hours. Nonetheless, the US Navy decided that its range was too short for anti-submarine patrol and scrapped the vessel in 1941.

-via Aviation Archive

Did you know Korea sells “one-a-day” banana packs?

Instead of every banana ripening at once, each one is at a different stage.

One is ready today.

The next one is ready tomorrow.

The last one is still spiritually in college, “experimenting.”

Simple. Genius. Solves the entire… pic.twitter.com/f3r5lXhm5J

— Sovey (@SoveyX) May 4, 2026

Leaving aside sorting bananas by radioactivity as a backup power generation source, you can sometimes eat bananas for food. X user @SoveyX says that consumers in South Korea can buy a week-long pack of bananas that become ripe individually by day.

This prompts @smimik11 to quip, "how are we supposed to lie to ourselves about our intentions to make banana bread?"

-via Marginal Revolution

Someone put audio from CASINO over Looney Tunes and its perfect 🔥😂 pic.twitter.com/mBE6AbdxDc

— Todd Spence (@Todd_Spence) May 1, 2026

Content warning: very foul language.

Toni Nunes of the Instagram account Growing Up 80s added dialogue from a scene in the 1995 mafia film Casino with one from "Bugs & Daffy Get a Job," a 2011 episode of The Looney Tunes Show. Nicky (Daffy) confronts Ace (Bugs) in the desert about an underhanded play in casino management.

Here is the source material from Casino and here is the source material from The Looney Tunes Show. It is very easy to see Daffy as a gangster, but I doubt that Daffy could be so easily whacked.

-via Tim Newman

Tortellini the tortoise is fully equipped for a day at school. His human has made a scaled-down JanSport backpack, complete with the iconic label and a functional zipper. He keeps his lunch (grapes and berries) in it, which he takes out at the appropriate time for energy to power through the school day.

Our little friend loves mango, either for eating or wearing, as well as strawberries (again, either for eating or wearing). Tortellini's many outfits and disguises show that he is well-loved by his human.

Rob Williams is a comedian, acrobat, and general stage entertainer in Austin, Texas. Years ago, while working as a regular in an improv show, he needed to quickly come up with a stunt. Making use of his remarkable dexterity, that stunt was making a complete sandwich with only his feet. Williams later secured a Guinness World Record for the fastest sandwich made with just the feet. That record is 1 minute and 57 seconds.

Watch him recreate that performance in great detail, including peeling the baloney and opening the jar of mayonnaise with only his feet. Don't worry about hygiene: he cleans them before each performance.

-via Born in Space

New Yorker cartoonist and professional illustrator Brooke Bourgeois imagines a more modern Beauty and the Beast story. She comments about her love of the Libby ebook app, especially its collection of audiobooks.

I love Libby and Hoopla, which allow public library systems to offer ebooks to patrons in an easy-to-manage system. If I'm not watching a screen or reading a print book, I have an audiobook playing. This is helpful to prevent that agonizing experience of being alone with one's thoughts.

Jonas Lauwiner isn't just some nut like Emperor Norton of the United States. To borrow a phrase attributed to Napoleon, King Jonas found the crown of Switzerland lying in a gutter.

The Swiss Confederation is a republic in structure. It had no king until 2019 when King Jonas staged a coronation in Bern. The Times reports that he's been building a power base by exploiting a legal loophole that allows residents to acquire unclaimed land by registering a claim with the local government.

Over time, King Jonas has acquired numerous small plots of land--including sections of road--that are equal to 0.045 square miles, which is roughly a quarter of the size of Vatican City.

-via @myth_pilot | Photo: His Majesty, King Jonas of Switzerland

Horsewoman Kate Janicki of Woodland, California is proud of her sister, Hannah, getting a job at a local Dutch Bros coffee shop. She decided to visit Hannah at work. So she saddled up Penny, one of her horses, and then put the horse in a trailer and hauled her to the cafe.

Once they arrived at the Dutch Bros, Ms. Janicki mounted Penny and took her to the drive through window. Hannah and her coworkers were delighted at the surprise.

Penny was pretty chill about the experience (including the highway noise), but found the white paint marks on the road a bit unsettling.

Since its launch by inventior Ruth Handler in 1959, the Barbie doll (and her fictional universe) was a pop culture behemoth that spawned inumerable accessories and merchandise.

In 1961, Mattel released a 45 RPM record in which Barbie, performed by Charlotte Austin, and Ken, performed by Bill Cunningham, sang six songs with a swing style common to the late 50s and early 60s. It came with a booklet that I gather had the lyrics. They describe an idealized vision of romance suitable for young audiences.

The album is available on YouTube. You can also purchase a copy from eBay.

-via Hollywood Horror Museum

うちのぐるぐるレイアウトもスリップリング経由でレールに給電してます！#鉄道模型 #Nゲージ #Bトレ #ジオラマ https://t.co/Tnngs9844O pic.twitter.com/Btdp3odQYI

— B作 (@Btoretsukuru) April 28, 2026

Japanese X user @Btoresukuru makes N-gauge model trains. The N scale is 1:160, so making a scene so realistic that it looks like a video recording of a real train requires incredibly precise attention to detail. He has a store from which he sells specialized tools and parts for this kind of model railroad construction.

Btoresukuru explains that he used slip rings to permit continuous rotation of both the train and the base. The visual effect is stunning.

A Brazilian funeral company is now selling Mario-themed coffins

You can choose from Mario, Luigi, Toad, Princess Peach, or even Yoshi pic.twitter.com/bEeNrXcKQ6

— Dexerto (@Dexerto) April 28, 2026

Eventually, you run out of 1-Ups. You jump into a warp pipe that doesn't end.

When that happens, be prepared with an appropriate coffin. The Portuguese text is throwing me off, but I gather that artist Bruno Tanato has teamed up with coffin manufacturer Industria de Urnas Bignotto to produce coffins that resemble the colors and iconography of Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Toad, and Princess Peach. They're also working on designs inspired by Barbie and The Fairly Odd Parents.

The Soviet Union was not known for being a powerhouse of popular culture export products (Tetris being the only exception). But the dictatorship nonetheless tried to make popular entertainment for domestic and foreign markets.

Mary Poppins, Goodbye is an example. This is two-part musical miniseries in Russian that premiered in 1984. The story is not too unfamiliar to those of us who grew up in the Disney adaptation of the novel. Natalya Adrenychenko stared in the titular role.

You can watch part 1 and part 2 on YouTube. Scrolling through these videos, it's possible to get the gist of the story even without the ability to speak Russian.

-via @kiyasu

Cig Neutron and Rannie Rodil, who are masters of special effects makeup, costuming, and mask making, created this cosplay mixing up Sailor Moon with the real sailor man. Do you think that Usagi Tsukino would be willing to chug a can of spinach to trigger her transformation?

Citizens attend the Landsgemeinde, a traditional public vote in Appenzell, Switzerland, where historically the only proof of citizenship required for men to vote was the display of a sword or Swiss military sidearm.

One of Switzerland’s oldest forms of direct democracy, the vote… pic.twitter.com/uWwInMb255

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) April 27, 2026

The Landsgemeinde is a traditional Swiss political event that consists of non-anonymous voting on public issues in an open air assembly. Such an assembly recently took place in the Swiss town of Appenzell in a canton of the same name in the northeastern part of the country.

In this direct democracy, only those men willing to bear arms in defense of the community were allowed to vote. Although military service is no longer a requirement and women were granted the right to vote in 1991, some participants still carry swords to the Landsgemeinde.

There's a dinosaur-themed cafe in Suwon, a city south of Soeul. Threads user @strayhyuniee visited and took photos. One dessert on sale is attracting a lot of attention on the Internet: a tiramisu dish shaped like the head of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. So it's a tyrannomisu.

Photo: @qhc8821