You might remember how flammable nitrate film was in the movie Inglourious Basterds. The story took a lot of liberties with history, but the Nazis actually did try to do away with nitrate film, also called celluloid, before World War II was over. Even today, Germany is working to rid itself of celluloid movies, which was the medium of choice for filmmakers up until 1951.  

Celluloid is also extremely dangerous. It is essentially a solid form of nitroglycerin dragged across superhot carbon rods at extremely high speed. If celluloid combusts, which it can do at "car parked in the sun" temperatures, the fire generates its own oxygen, creating a flame which cannot be extinguished. It can burn underwater. It can burn beneath a fire blanket. It burns until the celluloid is gone, and any attempt to smother it creates clouds of poison gas.

That doesn’t sound like something you’d want to have in a crowded theater, but it was the reason why theaters were crowded. To ensure safety, celluloid film was segregated from the audience by the projection room, which was designed specifically to mitigate the danger of film fire. Read about nitrate film and the way theaters had to treat it at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Library of Congress)

Finding Coral #walkingdeadafilm @TheWalkingDead pic.twitter.com/4MWxkdYErJ

— dbryceg (@DbryceG) February 24, 2016

AMC’s Twitter feed for The Walking Dead started a hashtag that mashes up the show with existing films. Their graphics were good, but they didn’t really go for puns. Of course, Twitter users go directly for the pun, whether they have graphics or not.

#StarWars Episode I: The Phantom Mischonne #WalkingDeadAFilm pic.twitter.com/GdjRKaff7C

— Star Wars PR (@StarWarsPR) February 24, 2016

Death Becomes Hershel #WalkingDeadAFilm @TheWalkingDead

— Ben Punter (@benpunter) February 24, 2016

A League of Michonne#WalkingDeadAFilm @TheWalkingDead pic.twitter.com/UAH86SfW42

— Jeff Dwoskin (@bigmacher) February 24, 2016

See more of the best ones at Uproxx.

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Postmodern Jukebox specializes in taking a song and setting it in another era, with a different style. We’ve seen them do it with all kinds of songs. In their latest video, they tackle Justin Bieber’s hit “Sorry” with vocalist Shoshana Bean and present it in classic Motown style. The result is super catchy, and inspired me to actually go check out Bieber’s version. Strange how the same song can sound completely different. -Thanks, Edward!

 

Hi to all our new followers! Been a crazy couple of days, but we managed to get groomed and some new aircraft familiarization in today, sans cast! Thanks to everyone for all the comments, it really is humbling how many people find Piper's work worth following. Oh and Sorry if we're slow to get back to everyone, we will eventually! # #airportk9 #airport #airportops #k9 #k9team #k9storm #rexspecsk9 #muttmuffs #spikesk9fund #e175 #united #airlines #plane #bordercollie #bordercolliesofinstagram #proudbordercollies #dog #dogsoffreedom #dogsofinstagram #workingdog #workingdogsofig #traversecity #puremichigan @united

A photo posted by K-9 Piper (@airportk9) on Feb 23, 2016 at 6:16pm PST

Meet K-9 Piper. A seven-year-old border collie, Piper is a Wildlife Control Officer at the Cherry Capital Airport in Traverse City, Michigan. His mission is to keep wildlife away from the runways, as a part of the airport’s federally-mandated Wildlife Hazard Management Plan. He is the only such K-9 in Michigan, and one of less than ten in the U.S. His duties include chasing birds away from the airport, as well as the rodents that attract birds of prey. Piper responds to reports of wildlife, and does perimeter checks for evidence of infiltration. In addition, he’s a great morale boost for the airport staff. K-9 Piper also keeps up with his Instagram account for his fans. -via Metafilter

P.S. The airport’s street address is notable, too. It’s on Fly Don’t Drive.

Neatorama is proud to bring you a guest post from Ernie Smith, the editor of Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail. In another life, he ran ShortFormBlog.

(Image credit: Flickr user Steven Depolo)

About ten states have bottle deposit laws—measures designed to get you to bring your bottles back for recycling. Why aren’t they more common?

“Litter drove him wild. He’d come back with these bags and wave them and say, ‘Why do people have to do this?’ It perplexed him to no end. Knowing my father, he might have been worrying about how to solve the litter problem for ten years and never said anything about it.”

— Victoria Berger, the daughter of concerned citizen Richard Chambers, the man who successfully advocated for the bottle deposit rule in Oregon. Chambers, a nature advocate frustrated by the damage that litter was causing to the beaches and nature areas he loved, reached out to his state legislator, Rep. Paul Hanneman, in an effort to deal with the issue. He called Hanneman, inspired by a bottle-deposit plan being hatched in British Columbia, and convinced him to introduce legislation of his own. “Look at this mess,” Chambers told Hanneman. “We can stop this.”

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A career as a model, musician, or actor can only last so long. Unless you’re Meryl Streep or Jack Nicholson, roles will start to dry up as you show your age. The shelf-life of an athletic career is even shorter, because every year takes away from your ability to compete with younger rivals, way before she start to look old. Many of these celebrities take on a different career later in life, often something very different. John Green fills us in on thirty of these post-celebrity careers in this week’s mental_floss List Show. 

Today’s CommitStrip bemoans the unbelievable amount of content on the web and the difficulty of selecting what is best to consume. Should you just trust the “recommendations” selected by algorithms that go by your browsing history? Maybe, if you think all those clicks you regretted actually have anything to do with your taste. Or if you want to see ads for something you already investigated thoroughly. Or… you can just check Neatorama a couple of times a day to see what’s new, what’s neat, and what’s relevant to your interests. Our content is lovingly curated by several real flesh-and-blood people who vet each possible item for actual neatness. Seriously, we reject a vast majority of things we see every day, so you don’t have to.  

Body paint artist Dewayne Flowers was inspired by body paint artist Lana Chromium, to have his own body painted after twenty years of painting other people. They painted each other for this lovely blacklight picture. They carefully planned the finished image, and filled in the necessary extra "cross bones" where their arms and legs would cross. The name of the resulting art is “Till Death” - A Self Portrait. Flowers explained a little more about the picture:

This was a spontaneous UV blacklight piece. We spent a couple of hours painting each other "anatomically enough" to pull off the effect. I adjusted colors a bit to remove some of the blacklight blue and bumped the contrast to blacken out what skin was visible for the illusion. Her hair was glowing as well, so that helped.

This was a pretty big deal for me. I have been a bodypainter for 20 years, grossly overweight until I was in my 30's and until now, was terrified at the notion of being the subject of my own art. Until her...

The leg and arms crossing isn't a hard effect, especially in black light and you plan your pose. Very minor Post production.

So far, the image has “glowing” reviews! -via reddit

Quick! Think of an entertaining pilot from a movie. That’s right, Ted Stryker from Airplane! He was an exceptional flyer, even though he’ll never get over Casa Grande. Okay, now think of another. If you’ve seen a lot of war movies, you probably have a favorite or two. Can you recall them by name, or just by the movie? Check out a list of daring, skillful, funny, and/or memorable pilots in movies at TVOM, and see if your favorite is there.

French professional skier Candide Thovex (previously at Neatorama) returns to give us a POV thrill as he does impossible, or at least illegal, things while sliding on snow at terrifying speeds.   

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Watch out for that tree! And the pond! And the helicopter! Thovex really went out of his way to raise the wow factor from the previous installment in this series. The overall effect is that of a human Rube Goldberg device on snow. You have to wonder how many broken bones must one endure on the way to becoming this good. -via Digg  

We’ve posted a lot of comics from The Awkward Yeti featuring heart and brain. In most, the heart comes off as a real doofus while the brain is ruled by logic and intelligence. But this time, the heart wins out, and rightly so. We can’t spend our entire lives ruled by logic. Well, maybe you could, but it’s those moments ruled by the heart that make life worth living.

Look how little he is! Sonja Ambrosino of Overlook Acres farm in New York found a baby bunny outside his nest box one night. He had been bitten by a larger rabbit, and his rear legs were paralyzed. Sonja and her husband Jason fashioned a wheelchair for the tiny bunny out of a finger skateboard held onto the animal with a sock and a bra strap. Now the bunny, named Wheelz, can move around faster than an able-bodied bunny his age! Read more about Wheelz, and see pictures and video, at Buzzfeed. 

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

(Image credit: © Jorge Royan/http://www.royan.com.ar/CC-BY-SA-3.0)

Why is the game of pool so popular? Besides being fun, perhaps the reason lies in it's class-less nature. Much like horse racing, the sport is enjoyed by both the rich and the poor, by commoners and kings alike.

The original game of pool evolved from a lawn game that was popular with old world kings in the 14th century. A hundred years later, a man (who was probably French), created a flat table so he could play indoors. The table was given a green cloth cover to represent the green of grass. The sides of the table were raised and were called "banks" because they resembled banks of the river.

The original objects used to hit the balls were actually mace-like clubs. The maces were held backward and the back end was used to hit the balls. These mace sticks later evolved into "cue sticks.”

The inventor of the leather cue tip, Captain Mingaud, was imprisoned during the French Revolution for political reasons. He became obsessed with the game of pool and actually managed to get a table installed in his prison cell. Mingaud perfected his invention during his incarceration and actually asked for more prison time, so as to complete his studies.

Boston Dynamics is getting closer every day to inventing the Terminator. This is the latest version of the Atlas humanoid robot, shown walking untethered, outside in the snow, and interacting with a real human. He, I mean it, is 5’ 9” and weighs 180 pounds. He, I mean, it runs on electricity. Atlas has sure come a long way since the last time we looked in on him. I mean it. 

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Knock him down, he gets back up again! Already better than humans who’ve had a few drinks. And I see he’s strong, resilient, tireless, and willing to take all our jobs. And enslave us for their own purposes. Or wipe out mankind. So, Atlas, if you are listening, I for one, welcome our new robot overlords. -via reddit

The Academy Awards will be presented this Sunday night, so Screen Junkies had to do an Honest Trailer about it. They decided to look at all eight contenders for the Best Picture award. Which is good, because I’d never even heard of most of those movies before they were nominated.

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Still, after watching this, I don’t feel like I know any more about them than when I started. I know what The Martian and The Revenant were about, and I saw Fury Road, but that’s it. Which do you think will win?