They named this cat Brian after the man who found him, but they should name him Captain Kirk. See, he’s got a left ear, and a right ear, and then a final front ear. (badum ching)
Miss Farrar, 38, said: “He’s obviously very distinctive with his extra little ear so someone must be missing him or recognise him.
“He’s in a bit of a tatty and skinny state. He’s been in the wars a bit and has a fractured canine tooth and ear mites so he obviously needs looking after.
“We see all sorts of cats here but Brian is by far the most unusual, he is something special.”
Looks like we have a bonus episode of the mental_floss List Show this week! John Green returns to the hosting slot to talk about everyone’s favorite puppeteer, Jim Henson. He led a fascinating life, of course, and the things you don’t know about him are just as interesting as the public side we know from the Muppets in all their incarnations. Seriously, this video is more than 31 facts; it’s more like 31 stories about Jim Henson. And then he left us too early. Oh yeah, you can see that performance Green mentions at the end right here, but you'll need a handkerchief. -via Tastefully Offensive
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.
Gaping holes in the practice of dentistry compiled by Bertha Vanatian, Improbable Research staff
The Case of the Wrong Tooth (1991, by Jerrold) “The Case of the Wrong Tooth,” Laurance Jerrold and Mary Romeo, American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics, vol. 100, no. 4, October 1991, pp. 376–81. The authors, in Massapequa, New York, write:
Without breaking stride, the patient was told that an important personal call had to be made and we would be with her momentarily. A call was placed to the surgeon. He was informed of the situation and asked in Anglo Saxon verbiage how he could have done what he did since he was familiar with our office routine and with the extraction forms that we use....
[He said that] was that the patient was fairly certain that the premolar he removed was indeed the intended sacrificial odontome. He said he asked her if she knew which one it was and she responded “I think this one.” He asked if she was sure, and she responded “pretty sure.” Unbelievable! He was told that it might be a wise idea for him to notify his malpractice carrier of the incident as there were no easy solutions to this problem.
Wrong Tooth Extraction: Ethics (1998, by Jerrold) “Ethics Case Analysis: The Extraction of the Wrong Tooth,” Gary Chiodo, Susan Tolle, and Laurance Jerrold, American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics, vol. 114, no. 6, 1998, pp. 721–3.
Withholding the fact that the wrong tooth was extracted encumbers the family’s decision about how to proceed with their future care.
Wrong Tooth Extraction: Education (2004, by Chang)
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.
Brushes with fame compiled by Bertha Vanatian, Improbable Research staff
Of the many toothbrushes that have traveled to dark places, several later found their way into the medical literature. Here are a few of those several.
The patient gave a history of having swallowed a toothbrush a few hours before, stating that while he was scrubbing his “tonsils” with the toothbrush, it slipped from his grasp and was swallowed. According to the patient, “several doctors attempted to remove this foreign body but were unable to do so.” …
The patient’s right leg had been amputated just above the knee, and the fourth and fifth fingers of the left hand were also missing, which, together with the type of patient, led me to suspect that possibly the act had wilfully been committed in order to secure hospitalization, or that he had not even swallowed a toothbrush….
On June 21 operation was performed… after opening the peritoneum and packing off the intestine, the stomach was brought up and the handle of the toothbrush was readily palpable, with the bristle end fast in the pylorus.
George came to the United States at the age of 23 after growing up in Greece. He lived on a farm with seven brothers and sisters, and his parents couldn't afford to send him to school. He left home at the age of 12 and went to Athens, where he was homeless for a time,and depended on the kindness of others to give him food.
L’Iber Museo de los Solditos de Plomo in Valencia is a museum displaying over a million miniature tin soldiers! They represent the military of many different countries, from many different eras. Mike Powell and Jürgen Horn got a chance to visit and take pictures.
The scope of L’Iber’s collection is breathtaking, with over a dozen rooms loosely organized by time period. There are rooms dedicated to World War I, Napoleon, and Ancient Rome, and you can find almost every kind of soldier imaginable, from US Confederates to ancient Egyptians. You’ll see prehistoric hunters bringing down a mammoth, medieval warriors laying siege to walled cities, and a darling little Francisco Franco protected by his fearsome Moorish Guard.
Some are in glass display cases, some are on the march, and some are engaged in battle in huge dioramas set up for visitors to study. See pictures of this amazing collection at For 91 Days.
Have you ever wondered how often Chewbacca gets a shampoo? Or what brand of hairspray he prefers? Or what causes his worst tangles? Taking care of all that hair is no joke (even when it is). It took six months to construct four and a half Chewbacca suits out of yak hair for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Maria Cork, the “supervisor of the hair department in creature effects” for the film, fills us in on the secrets of the Wookiee’s beauty routine. -via mental_floss
Our hearts go out to the people of Paris, France, as they deal with the consequences of multiple terrorist attacks on Friday. The death toll stands at 128 right now, and hundreds are injured. There were both shootings and bombings. The lights of the Eiffel tower were turned off in mourning.
The world rallied around France in the aftermath of the attacks. Symbols of support came from all over. The most immediate and photogenic way of showing support was to light landmarks in the colors of the French flag: blue, white, and red.
It’s November, and the mild temperatures can’t last forever, especially if you’re near the Arctic Circle. Popular meteorologist Pekka Pouta (his name means dry weather) has the forecast for Finland.
Time to batten down the hatches, and build your direwolves some shelter. A better quality video is available at the station’s Facebook page. -via reddit
City dwellers of a certain age love to reminisce about the automats, which were restaurants that resembled vending machines. A wall of food awaited the diner, in cubbyholes with glass doors. You decided what you wanted to eat, slipped a nickel in the slot, and opened the door to pull out a sandwich, bowl of soup, side dish, or piece of pie. The most successful of these in the U.S. was Horn & Hardart, named for the two men who brought the automat idea to the U.S. from Germany.
“These earliest automats relied on dumbwaiter technology, so essentially, there was a kitchen underneath the dining room,” says filmmaker Lisa Hurwitz, who is directing and producing a documentary about Horn & Hardart automats. “It was more about the novelty of the experience than about speed. Historians or academics refer to the automat format as ‘quick service,’ but they don’t refer to it as ‘fast food.'” Horn & Hardart’s first automat machine arrived in Philadelphia in 1902, purchased from overseas as a kind of experiment. While cold foods could be immediately taken from the automat after inserting a token, customers would have to wait for warm dishes to be finished and sent to up from the kitchen via dumbwaiter.
Over the next few years, Horn & Hardart’s chief engineer, John Fritsche, redesigned the machine, maintaining the fundamental design of European models but tweaking it to the needs of American cafeterias. In 1906, Fritsche secured a patent for an innovative automat that held ready-to-eat dishes, which could be purchased and removed directly through a bank of clear glass windows four rows high. Menu items were stocked from the rear by kitchen staff.
Automats went through technical evolution as well as cultural evolution in the decades in which they flourished. But cost-cutting and innovations in other types of food service caused the automats to decline starting in the 1950s. The last automat in New York closed in 1991. But that was a long run, and you can read the fascinating story of Horn & Hardart’s automats at Collectors Weekly.
There was a disturbance at an art gallery that led to an investigation. Four intruders were apprehended. A Facebook post by the Newport (Oregon) Police Department takes the burglary report to the next level.
Four masked bandits burglarized Inscapes Gallery on SW Bay Blvd recently. Officers responded to a report of suspicious activity after midnight and cornered the suspects immediately upon entering the business. The suspects, known only by their street names of ‘Home Dog’, ‘Da Nails’, ‘Squeaky Feets’, and ‘2-Toes Todd’, attempted to elude officers on scene. After a brief scuffle, all suspects were captured without further incident or injuries.
‘Squeaky Feets’ told officers they had no intention of taking anything from the gallery; they were only trying to straighten a few pieces of art on the wall. Tell it to the judge, ‘Feets’. Tell it to the judge.
An obituary in the Los Angeles Times brings us an extraordinary story of identical twins separated at birth. Jack Yufe passed away Monday at age 82. Jack and his identical twin Oskar Stohr were separated in infancy and grew up to lead lives that were in total opposition. It was a real-life version of The Parent Trap, without the humor.
Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, on Jan. 16, 1933, they were 6 months old when their parents split up.
Oskar went to Germany with his Catholic mother, Elizabeth, and grew up as the Nazis rose to power. Like his fellow students, he greeted the school principal with “Heil, Hitler,” and was warned by his grandmother to never let on that his father, Joseph, was Jewish. As an act of survival, Oskar joined the Hitler Youth movement.
Years later, he confessed that he had dreamed that he shot down his twin in an aerial dogfight. Jack had a similar nightmare about killing Oskar with a bayonet.
For Jack, however, the war was a distant threat, experienced mainly through newsreels he saw growing up in Trinidad with their father. His childhood was difficult in other ways.
“As a white, red-headed boy in a predominantly black and Indian culture, he stood out a lot and was beat up a lot,” said his son, Kenneth. “He was constantly having to prove himself.” Luckily, he was highly competitive and and excelled athletically.
Jack knew he was Jewish but didn’t feel the weight of that identity until he was 15 and was sent to Venezuela to live with an aunt who had been in Dachau and was the only European relative on his father’s side to survive the Holocaust.
Jack went to Israel as a teenager and joined the Israeli Navy. The twins finally met each other in 1954. It was awkward and they didn’t reunite again for 25 years. But the similarities between the two, who had been separated for their entire lives, was uncanny. Read the whole story at the L.A. Times. -via Fark
Kittens Bea and Arthur were fixed on the same day. They came home from the veterinarian’s clinic wearing their cones of shame. They were a bit bumfuzzled with their own cones and their sibling’s cone, too!
Jason became friends with Eric at school. He found out that Eric always wanted to fly, but he was afraid of heights and had never been in an airplane. So… Jason surprised him with a last-minute plane ride. The resulting video is priceless.
He did it right. I learned long ago that if someone is scared to try something they honestly want to do, don’t put it off. Don’t drag it out. That only gives them more time to worry about it. Just do it. That’s why I had all my radio trainees speak on-air the very first day, before they learned all the technical stuff. -via Viral Viral Videos
Japan's All Nippon Airways redecorated a Boeing 787 Dreamliner Star Wars-style to resemble our favorite droid, R2D2. Yesterday, it left Japan for the first time and landed in Singapore, where Reuters got to photograph the inside. Yes, the interior is just as Star Warsy, with luxury first-class seats that look like R2D2. The flight attendants even wear those colors! See the images at Mashable. All Nippon Airways, in conjunction with Lucasfilm, has plans for three other Star Wars planes. -via Uproxx
