Have you ever pulled that trick where you made a perfect snowman that's around ten inches tall and took a close-up picture to post on social media? That's why redditors demand a "banana for scale" whenever the size of something is questionable. That wasn't required for this snowman, because they already have a house for scale!

Eric Fobbe of Buffalo, Minnesota, built a snowman that's 30 feet tall and 20 feet across. He gathered up snow from all around the neighborhood and used a snowblower to pile it up. Fobbe says the snowman needs daily maintenance, with extra snow added anytime he starts to shrink. This is not Fobbe's first giant snowman. He's been building them for four years, and every year the snowman is larger. This year's snowman is so big he has a traffic cone for a nose! See a video report on the snowman from the local news station. -via TYWKIWDBI

Jun Ono, Akiyasu Tomoeda, and Kokichi Sugihara developed this illusion that shows us how pixelated pigeons and worms move. When they move across a grid of stripes, the worms appear to stretch and compress, while the pigeons begin to waddle. The movement of the figures is actually smooth, as you can see at the top where pigeons move across a bare background. This is also shown later with UFOs. But the effect is much stronger at this interactive page, where the colors are bolder. The pixelated pigeons appear to be stretching their necks out as they move forward, but that's an illusion. Uncheck the "grid" box underneath the graphic to remove the background stripes. You can also adjust the speed and colors to see how that affects the illusion. The movement we see in the figures comes from the low contrast when the edges of the figures move across the stripes, as we have a hard time seeing that part of the movement. You can see another version of the same affect in the Stepping Feet illusion. -via Boing Boing 

Is there anyone who doesn't like fettuccine Alfredo? You may look at it as a fancy Italian version of macaroni and cheese, but it sure is tasty. Like spaghetti and meatballs, or carbonara, it's a dish better known in the US than in Italy. But is certainly originated in Italy, made by chef Alfredo di Lelio in 1908 for his wife. It was a simple combination of handmade fettuccine pasta, butter, and Parmesan cheese.

What made fettuccine Alfredo the popular dish it is today (in America) is the way Alfredo presented it at his restaurant in Rome. He would personally mix the cheese with the buttered pasta at the table until it was silky smooth, and foreign visitors would go home and rave about it. Since 1933, the dish has appeared in more than 800 American cookbooks. Yet it's still not all that well known in Italy. Italian food historian Luca Cesari explains how and why Alfredo developed his recipe and how it became a sensation everywhere except his native land, at Literary Hub. -via Damn Interesting

Stumpy Lake Golf Course is right on the banks of Stumpy Lake in Virginia Beach, Virginia. You can imagine how many golf balls are at the bottom of the lake. It's not any easier retrieving a lake ball when the surface is frozen, because I wouldn't ever trust a frozen lake in Virginia to hold a person's weight. But this video is not about people.

Just a couple of days after Christmas, a couple of guys were out birdwatching near frozen Stumpy Lake. There were two bald eagles out on the ice playing with a golf ball! One guy took still pictures while the other ran video. The game started out as soccer (even though the narration is golf), but it turned into a game of keepaway once the birds noticed they were being watched. Who knew that bald eagles could be so playful? I guess they just don't want to play with humans. -via Everlasting Blort

We've all been put into the position of having to guess how old a photograph is. There was a time when you could get pretty close by looking at the tint and the quality. Now those things can be manipulated, so instead we look for clues in the image itself, like fashions or cars or written words on signs and newspapers. Now here's a game that puts your chronological sleuthing skills to the test! Chronophoto gives you a photograph taken between 1900 and 2020, and you adjust a slider to indicate what year you think it was taken. It's harder than you might think. You'll be given points based on how close you are. Each game consists of five photos, and a perfect score is 5000. My best score was little more than halfway there, but I was in more of a hurry than I should have been. You will do better! -via Metafilter

An island named T-3, informally called called Fletcher's Ice Island, is an anomaly because it was never an island at all. It was an iceberg that had calved off an Arctic glacier in the 1950s. Since it was so big -11 kilometers long and five kilometers wide- the US Air Force put an airstrip and a research station on it. The station was manned by mostly civilian contractors, who lived in trailers and huts and whiled away the long Arctic winters by drinking and fighting. It was in this strange environment that Mario Escamilla shot station director Bennie Lightsy under stressful circumstances in 1970. Was it murder or manslaughter or an accident? Before that could be determined, the question of jurisdiction had to be settled.

The research station on T-3 was run by the Air Force, but the men involved were civilians. The place where it happened wasn't claimed by any nation, because it wasn't land. The Arctic Ocean isn't the property of any country. Canada didn't want the case. Escamilla was seized by going through the US airbase at Thule, in Greenland, which is owned by Denmark, who didn't want the case either. Would maritime laws apply? T-3 wasn't an island, but it wasn't a ship, either. Read about the many problems of jurisdiction for this case, and how it was eventually resolved, at Today I Found Out.

This is a photograph of a rock formation in the Hingol National Park in Pakistan. What does it look like to you? Take a minute and decide. Now, when you learn that this is sometimes called the Balochistan Sphinx, you will see its resemblance to the Great Sphinx of Giza. It has the face of a man, the body of lion with paws and everything, and a Nemes headdress worn by Egyptian pharaohs. This rock stands atop another formation that appears to have the columns of a Hindu temple. Who carved this?

Mother Nature carved it. There have been some articles and videos proposing a theory about an ancient civilization that for some reason carved a giant Egyptian sculpture and a Hindu temple in Pakistan so very long ago that it has been worn down by erosion. But that theory doesn't stand up at all, especially when you see the formation from different angles. This is an example of pareidolia, the tendency to see familiar shapes, particularly faces, in random objects. Read about the Balochistan Sphinx at Historic Mysteries.  -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: Bilal Mirza)

British folks have blood pudding or black pudding, and they also have Christmas pudding, which are nothing like each other, and nothing like what Americans put into a chocolate pie. So why are they all called pudding?

Adam Ragusea explains the different kinds of puddings. Beware, the European pudding began as a sausage, and that is explained in a way that... well, let's refer to the saying "If you love sausage and you love the law, you don't want to see either being made." Then eventually pudding became more than just sausage, and the word was highjacked to mean a sweet soft dessert with all manner of things in it. Ragusea even makes one from a 17th century recipe. But the evolution continued in a different way in the United States, where our pudding eventually became more liquid with fewer things in it.

The video has a skippable ad from 3:00 to 4:20. -via Digg

Josh Jacobs, also known as Slinky Josh, is the world's premiere expert in slinky manipulation, or slinking, as he calls it. He came by the art honestly, by seeing someone on the internet do it. He was so impressed that he got a slinky and started practicing. The slinkys that Jacobs uses are a far cry from the original metal slinkys, which got bent before you could ever do fancy tricks with them. He uses tough, colorful slinkys that he sells along with slinky manipulation lessons. In this video, Jacobs shows us a couple of the basic moves that anyone can do, but you can only get really good at it with practice. -via Digg

It's been 30 years now since the last Sears catalog was printed. By then, the company had spent more than 100 years as the king of mail order. Does anyone else remember when you could order a gun through the Sears catalog? Sears would mail some items that would be unthinkable today, like heroin, back when it was offered as a non-addicting alternative to morphine. Sears offered a whole line of drugs, many that would be categorized as "snake oil" today.

You could order an entire house delivered from Sears, although it would come in many separate packages that you put together yourself. Plans were included that gave you step-by-step directions for buildings your own house from a kit. For an additional charge, you could even get one designed to include a bathroom.

Smithsonian gives us the origin story of the company founded by 22-year-old Richard W. Sears in 1886, including the short appearance of Alvah C. Roebuck. And we get a taste of some of the weirder things that were once sold by mail order through the Sears catalog.

(Image credit: Mike Mozart)

Take a good look at the musical notation before you play the video. In ten measures scored for ten instruments, you see a cat curled up in a ball. How does it sound? Surprisingly good! How does that happen?Noam Oxman wrote this music as a memorial tribute for his beloved Chubby Cat, who he describes as "a sprinkle of playful piccolo, a touch of warm strings, and a sweet harmony progression." He is describing both the cat and the music. We can be impressed with the skill that went into this, although it's not Oxman's first such musical illustration. His YouTube channel of "Sympawnies" has a lot more, and some of them are for sale as art prints as well. Proceeds are used to feed and give medical treatment to stray cats.

When you've got the talent to do something as odd as this, you have to share it with the world. -via Fark

Who was the real life Carmen Sandiego? History has so many male thieves, con artists, and scammers that the women who pulled these capers often fly under the radar. But they are there, making themselves wealthy by convincing people they are someone besides who they really are. Con women may present themselves as someone worthy of expensive gifts, or talk their way into money that is never seen again, or marry into wealth by false pretenses, or engage in plain old thievery. Some are better at it than others.

The picture above is of May Dugas, an educated prostitute from Michigan who blackmailed her wealthy clients. When her scams were uncovered, she took her show on the road, to Shanghai, Tokyo, London, the Netherlands, and back to the US, where she returned to her hometown as a fabulously wealthy woman. But Dugas continued her crimes even then. Other con women from history include a jewel thief, a royal fraud, and one woman who faked her own death. Read about five of them at Messy Nessy Chic.

It's so cool when people who have access to hi-tech equipment share the stuff they see with the rest of us. Photographer Jens Braun dissolved some vitamin C and then let it recrystallize under a microscope fitted with a camera, using polarized light and everything. We get to see the action in various speeds and colors. Even if you don't understand what's going on (and few truly do), the process is beautiful. It's the conjunction of art and science. Or you might say that the natural world is a work of art, but we aren't able to see all of it without the help of an artist.  -via Digg

If a conjoined twin were to commit a crime, what would be the legal implications? The state could certainly put the perpetrator on trial, but could they be punished with a prison sentence? One twin could not be incarcerated without the other, and that would mean jailing an innocent person. You might think, how could one be guilty without the other also being guilty? There are plenty of crimes that happen in the blink of an eye, like shoplifting or simple assault, that the second twin might have no knowledge of before the moment it happens. That brings up the question of how responsible one twin would be for preventing their sibling's crime, or failing to report, or even fleeing. While one twin might be the guilty party, the other might be an accessory to a crime. That brings up the question of free will, the exact nature of the twins' physical bond, and how competent each twin is.

This is a common thought experiment in law school, but believe it or not there have been a couple of real world cases, including one in the US. There was also a fictional case in the TV series American Horror Story. Read about those cases and the legal questions surrounding conjoined twins and the law.  -Thanks, Jill!

(Image source: Wellcome Images)

In Iceland, people are beginning to celebrate Sólardagur by enjoying sólarkaffi. That takes a bit of explanation. Iceland is below the Arctic Circle, but it is close and quite mountainous. In some valley communities, the sun does not shine for a month or so on either side of the winter solstice. Sólardagur translates to Sun Day, the day when the light comes back, even for just a few minutes. That calls for a celebration which involves sólarpönnukökur (sun pancakes) and sólarkaffi (sun coffee). Some villages, schools, and and workplaces have community breakfasts to celebrate, and children sing songs welcoming the sun.

In those villages affected by midwinter darkness, the coffee and pancake tradition goes way back. But due to people moving into the city, meaning Reykjavík, they spread the traditions of Sólardagur to all of Iceland. Read about the return of the sun to Iceland and the celebrations that accompany it at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Greg Neate)