The roller coaster known as Kingda Ka was erected at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, in 2005. At the time, it was the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world. It also gave a memorable phallic feature to the landscape. But that was 20 years ago, and nothing lasts forever. The demolition of Kingda Ka was last month.



And it came down exactly as planned, and not even a tree was injured. But when that tower hit the ground, every beam and strut just fell apart like they were toothpicks! This might give you the impression that the tower wasn't all that sturdy for the 19 years it was in operation. But it's better to assume that the experts who planned and carried out the demolition loosened those components before detonating the final explosion that brought it to earth. -via Boing Boing

(Top image credit: Dusso Janladde)

The International Space Station (ISS) is way cleaner than your home. The modules of the station and the equipment it uses were built in dust-free and nearly sterile conditions. The items taken to the station are regulated and monitored. The vast majority of microbes that are introduced into the environment of the space station is brought in on the astronaut's skin. But is such a clean environment actually healthy?

A study of the microbes on the inner surfaces of the ISS show species from 6.31% of the phylogenic tree, which contains all known species. Compare that to an average household, which can contain twice that percentage or more. One scientist compared the microbial life on the space station to a COVID-19 isolation ward, where every surface is disinfected or sterilized as often as possible. Living in such a clean environment may be the reason that astronauts in space often suffer from immune system maladies. Read about this discovery and its implications at Ars Technica.

(Image credit: NASA)

I can feel a great disturbance in the Force. The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... unnatural. One of them is throwing rap beats in Star Wars. But Star Wars is already full of unnatural things, so why not make the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise into a rap song? All it takes is some imagination, an artificial intelligence program, and a willingness to offend the few prequel purists that still exist.

This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as AI shenanigans in the Star Wars universe go. Another scene from the same movie (Revenge of the Sith) by a different YouTuber makes Palpatine a head banger as he delivers his climactic political speech declaring the birth of the empire in a metal song.



This desire among a faction of Star Wars fans to turn the saga into a musical might eventually get the attention of Disney/Lucasfilm as they continue their quest to wring every possible dollar out of the franchise. -via Born in Space

(Image credit: eightyfivekittens)

We often see lists that show us how adorably cute cats are, or how funny they can be in some situations. Every once in a while, it's healthy to acknowledge that they come with murder mittens and are, in fact, pointy on five ends. After all, your fat and lazy house cat is descended from wild predators, and they feel the need to remind you of that fact every so often. Even the tiniest of kittens can be proud of the weapons they carry around on each paw. The little guy above may have an inflated view of the actual menace he projects, but he will eventually grow up.

(Image credit: StridentStamina)

And by then, a cat will know how to use those claws to get what they want. So enjoy cats, but always keep in mind that they are capable of inflicting great pain if they so choose. You can marvel at these murder mittens in complete safety with a gallery of 50 cats showing off their claws at Bored Panda. 

When you are very much used to something, it's hard to perceive how weird it is to outsiders. Most nations of the world are small enough to exist in only one time zone. And then there's China, which is very big and still only has one time zone, but that's a different story. Anyway, I live pretty close to a time zone border, and have always been conscious of how to calculate the time elsewhere. When living in Central Time, I got used to everything on TV being an hour earlier than it should. The lines between zones aren't straight, and the reasons why are inexplicable. And then we're going to throw Daylight Saving Time in the mix. Someone who has never had to deal with time zones may find them quite confusing. Laurence Brown of Lost in the Pond explains how he first encountered American time zones and what it took to get used to them. There's a 77-second skippable ad at 3:20.

We refer to early theatrical movies as silent films, but they were never presented silently in theaters. In high-class theaters movies were accompanied by an orchestra, and in small towns a piano player provided music and maybe some sound effects. Then Robert Hope-Jones developed the theater organ by electrifying and expanding a church pipe organ to include percussion and sound effects pipes. With a theater organ, a single organist could provide the music of an orchestra plus sound effects for movies! Hope-Jones wasn't much of a businessman, but Rudolph Wurlitzer, who bought the company, was. In the early 1920s, organs were rapidly being installed in theaters across the US. Seeing the latest Hollywood film with a skilled organist providing the soundtrack live on an instrument that may have thousands of pipes was a magical experience, but it didn't last long. The first "talkie" came out in 1927, and theater organ sales ground to a halt.

However, today there are still around a hundred musicians who are skilled in playing a theater organ, but only a handful who make a living doing so. The American Theater Organ Society (ATOS) would like you to experience cinema the way it was presented in the early 20th century, and works to preserve existing theater organs and promote their use. Smithsonian explains what makes a theater organ so special, and has a rundown of eight places where you can still enjoy old movies accompanied by a live organ performance. This would be well worth a road trip this summer.  
 
(Image credit: Andypiper)

During World War II, the sky was battleground as much as the ground below. When your plane was attacked and destroyed, you had to rely on your parachute to get you safety back to earth. But there was always the possibility that your parachute could be destroyed along with your plane, and you'd be out of luck. But three men on the Allied side- a Ukrainian, an American, and an Englishman, survived miles of freefall and survived! Two were picked up by German forces, but were given care for their injuries and survived the war as POWs.

Shown above is American Alan Magee, who was a ball turret gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress in 1943. First his ball turret was wrecked, then he found his parachute shredded, and finally he was blown out of his plane completely. He fell four miles, unconscious, and crashed through the glass ceiling of a train station in France. He suffered horrific injuries, but came into the care of a compassionate German doctor. Read Magee's story and that of the two other survivors who made it back to earth without the aid of parachute at Military History Now. -via Strange Company

(Image source: American Air Museum in Britain)

We all know what a living language is- those are the ones we use. But languages eventually die out when people don't use them. The death of a language is a gradual process that goes from a lack of native speakers to no speakers to eventually an untranslatable mystery. We think of Latin as the epitome of a "dead" language because no one raises their children to speak Latin as their first language. Yet a lot of people can speak and understand it, and it is used in certain ways in religion and science, unlike, say, Sanskrit.

Linguist Dr. Erica Brozovski (previously at Neatorama) takes us through the process of language death. Languages can be classified as dormant, dead, or extinct depending on where they are in the death process. However, these terms are not mutually exclusive, nor do they signal that a language is doomed. Well, except maybe the extinct label does. What can really blow your mind is realizing that we don't have that many examples of an extinct language because they are extinct, but you can bet your bottom dollar that there are a bunch of them we'll never know about. -via Laughing Squid

You may have never heard of the medical procedure called osteo-odonto keratoprosthesis (OOKP), possibly because doctors call it tooth-in-eye surgery. Or maybe because your doctor has never proposed transplanting one of your teeth into your eye. This surgery has been done for decades in Australia and has a good track record for restoring sight for certain patients who suffer from corneal blindness and have a functioning retina.

Surgeons remove a patient's canine (eye tooth) and cut it into a rectangle and drill a hole in it to house a telescopic lens. Then they attach it to the patient's inner cheek for a few months to grow tissue around it. Then they implant the tooth in the patient's eyeball! The bio-device works because tooth enamel is so hard, and because transplants from the patient's own body aren't rejected. Three Canadians have recently become the first in that country to try OOKP. Read how this bizarre but established transplant technique works at CBC.  -via Boing Boing

(Unrelated image credit: Reese Brown)

Often when you hear about a cryptid, like Bigfoot or the chupacabra or a jackalope, it's a story that's been around so long that people cannot pinpoint when the legend started. But the urban legend of the Fresno Nightcrawlers not only has an exact start date, but it's relatively recent and there is video footage! This cryptid had the advantage of the internet, which quickly adopted it after the original 2007 video went viral. A Fresno Nightcrawler looks like a pair of legs that walk around by themselves. In most fan art, there's a head attached, but the video it is based on is so blurry you have to use your imagination. Luckily, that's what so many people on the 'net are good at.

Is the Fresno Nightcrawler a hoax, a strange technical artifact, or something real that we just don't understand? Dr. Emily Zarka of Monstrum (previously at Neatorama) takes a good look at the video that made the Fresno Nightcrawler a thing.

Hollywood or someone has tried over and over to make interactive movies a thing, starting way back in the 1960s. Later on, the idea was to marry the concepts of movies and video games, which had to be a winner because kids loved video games. There are quite a few ways to do this, each being expensive and risky and a lot of work, but everyone who made the attempt was sure their interactive movie would be the breakthrough that changed cinema forever. What could possibly go wrong?

The 1995 film project Mr. Payback: An Interactive Movie was launched amid high hopes. It was aimed at kids and teens, who already played video games. It was rude and crude and even had some bankable talent involved. The plot was designed to channel the audience's baser instincts and lust for revenge. And it was a terrific flop. I'm sure you can imagine some reasons why it didn't work, but there were a lot of valid reasons. Eventually, movie producers realized that people didn't like having to share their plot options with a crowd of strangers when they could have total control of their games at home. Read about the disaster that was Mr. Payback at Mental Floss.

Camels have been called "the ships of the desert" because they are so good at negotiating hot, dry, sandy territory. Every part of their bodies is optimized for such a journey, but it took a long time to develop all those specialized features. Who better to explain those body parts than Ze Frank? As part of his True Facts series, he goes over a camel's body piece by piece to show us how weird they are, and how they are perfect for living in, and carrying people through, the desert. For example, it's handy to have tough pads  to protect your body in areas where it comes in contact with the earth. Camels have them on their feet, their knees, and even their chests so they can sit down on hot sand. But it's their internal physiology that's really weird, from their red blood cells to their sinuses that are all optimized for desert survival. This video doesn't make me want to live in the desert any more than I already did, but it works for camels. There's a 70-second ad at 5:10.

Do you remember when movie theaters used to have double features? Two movie for the price of one! Which, of course, wasn't really the case, since double features were so common we didn't know what the proper price for one movie should be. Usually, the double feature paired an expensive Hollywood production (an A-movie) with a B-movie, which was made on a budget of less than $100,000, which could be as low as $10,000. People sometimes fumed about having to sit through the B-movie first in order to see the film they really came for. Or if the B-movie played last, they only stayed because they felt they needed to get their money's worth. Or the double features might even be two B-movies, because the teenagers making out in a dark theater or a drive in didn't care.

But the double feature wasn't just a marketing stunt that stuck around. It was a scheme to keep Hollywood studios in business, and theater owners didn't have a choice. It was only when antitrust laws were enacted and enforced that the double features went the way of the dodo. Whether you enjoyed them or not, you'll want to learn about how the double feature worked at JSTOR Daily. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Warner Bros./Toho)

Luna is described as a "unique-looking dog." That's quite an understatement! Luna has huge ears that stand straight up, and markings that make her nose look like a pig's snout. Her mouth is outlined in black, which just highlights how crooked her smile is. Her skull deformities are the result of distemper when she was a puppy, which she was very lucky to have survived. Distemper has a mortality rate of 50% in adult dogs, and 80% in puppies. Luna's color markings also accentuate her differences. There's really no explaining those ears! But Luna gets along fine, and has a great life with her human Danni, who is the daughter of Luna's original rescuer. Luna's bubbly personality -and her amusingly odd voice- endear her to everyone she meets. You can follow Luna and her adventures with Danni and with her new canine sibling Milo at Instagram.

Our modern lives have been shaped by technological breakthroughs and scientific discoveries that make our lives better. Often, the "making life better" part comes a long time before the "whoops- that's actually very dangerous" part. The automobile changed family life forever, as the large sedans of the past could haul all the kids at once! They could even be comfortably rocked to sleep in a baby hammock suspended across the back seat! The ad touts how this would keep your baby safe in the car, meaning something like safe from rolling down the window and jumping out. However, in the event of a collision, it could easily become a slingshot.

But the car hammock is just one of many products that went to market without someone trying to imagine what could possibly go wrong. Read about five of those dangerous items especially designed for babies, or rather, especially designed for the convenience of parents to the detriment of the child, at Cracked.