You may have read the book many times, and seen the various movies, but there’s always something new to learn about a classic like Alice in Wonderland. You probably already knew that “Alice” was based on young Alice Liddell, the daughter of Lewis Carroll’s boss. But Alice wasn’t alone- she had two sisters, and the girls all loved Carroll’s stories.  

The Mad Hatter never would have existed without the persistence of children.

When Carroll began telling a fantastic tale to Alice Liddell and her two sisters on a summer 1862 boating trip up the Thames, he didn’t plan on becoming a children’s author. But just like your niece who won’t stop begging to watch Frozen again, the kids wouldn’t stop asking him to tell the story—Carroll wrote about having to retell “the interminable Alice’s adventures” in his diary. He eventually turned it into a written novel, presenting it to Alice as an early Christmas gift in 1864. By the time he self-published the final version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865, it had doubled in length, with new scenes including those with the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat. “These episodes are likely something that came up later in the retelling of the story,” Vega says.

8. Wonderland wouldn’t have seemed so absurd to the real Alice.

“Some of the things that seem like nonsense to us would have made total sense to Alice and her sisters,” Vega explains. When the Mock Turtle says in the book that he receives lessons in drawing, sketching, and “fainting in coils” from an “old conger-eel, that used to come once a week,” the Liddells would have recognized their own art tutor, who gave the girls lessons in sketching, drawing, and oil painting. Much of the “nonsense” from the book was “based on people and places and experiences that these very real children had and would have been familiar with,” Vega says.

You’ll learn quite a bit about how Carroll was inspired to write Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland -which went through several other titles before publication- and how it came to print, at mental_floss.

Have you seen the latest trailer for the new Ant-Man movie?

(YouTube link)

Well, this isn’t it (this is). What we have here is a remix for New York magazine of the Ant-Man concept, using all kinds of movie footage compiled into a trailer that would be right at home in drive-in theaters in 1955, complete with narration by Vincent Price. What does it say about me that I recognize the majority of the clips used to make this? This is part of the “Vulture Remix” series. You’ll find links to the others at the YouTube page. Ant-Man will be in theaters July 17th. -Thanks, Louis!  

(YouTube link)

No wedding is absolutely perfect, and if it were, it wouldn’t be personal or memorable. Having children as part of the ceremony is the most common way to invite “imperfection,” but whatever they do is usually adorable anyway. At this wedding, the tiny flower girl got cold feet and decided she wasn’t going to do it. So her quick-thinking and practical dad took over to get the flower petals sprinkled down the aisle. A comment at Buzzfeed summed it up well:

One of the most important parenting skills is knowing when to say ¯\(°_o)/¯. Good job, Dad!

Yep, this is one wedding that people will remember fondly.

Longtime Neatorama friend Dan Piraro is the mad genius behind the comic Bizarro. His comic panels are surreal, often political, and have no recurring characters. All those factors made it hard for an unknown to get into newspaper syndication in the days when that was the only way to make it big in the business. Piraro was an art school dropout illustrating products for sale with a wife and baby to support when he was inspired to try newspaper syndication by Gary Larson’s strip The Far Side. That inspiration turned out to be a stumbling block.

Many months of unsuccessful attempts passed before Piraro elicited an “encouraging rejection” from Chronicle Features editor, Stuart Dobbs. “He told me that, while they were interested in me, they already had a similar strip [The Far Side],” recalls Piraro. “But he told me to stay in touch.”   

Finally, after several failed efforts, the 25-year-old cartoonist was offered his big break:

“One day, [Dobbs] called me and said, ‘I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that Gary Larson is jumping to Universal Press Syndicate, and we had no idea he was even thinking about it. But the good news is that we’ve decided to pick up your strip because we now have room for it.’”

At first, Piraro thought he “his ship had come in.” Quickly, he learned that syndication was not for the hasty: selling to newspapers is a very gradual process that often takes years. A whole year into syndication, Piraro’s strip, Bizarro, was only featured in seven newspapers.

“My first royalty check was $90 for an entire month of cartoons,” he recalls. “That was a very disappointing day.”

For years afterward, Piraro kept his day job while coming up with daily strips to keep the syndication dream alive. It eventually paid off, but the journey was difficult. Then computers and the internet changed the way comics are produced and consumed, and he had to adapt all over again. Read the fascinating story of Piraro and his Bizarro comics at Pricenomics. -via Digg

(Images credit: Dan Piraro)

Visual effects and digital postproduction company El Ranchito Imagen Digital shows us what they did to make one battle scene in the Game of Thrones episode entitled “Hardhome.” There is a terrific amount of work to make every little detail of a fantasy world mesh together to create a seamless sequence. You can imagine how much digital effects work went into the entire season!    

(vimeo link)

Does this contain spoilers? I don’t think the video tells us anything major: there’s a battle scene, with some supernatural characters, but we don’t see who wins. I can understand why they release these effects videos after the season ends, because it will challenge your suspension of disbelief to imagine the actors doing their stuff in separate studios, in front of green screens, without the thundering hordes of the finished product. -via Uproxx

It's heeeeere! The Hey Jules Studio ETSY SHOP is now open Prints are available from the #100daysofrainbows series! HUGE THANKS to all the lovely people who have followed this project, left nice comments, and even asked for prints. I truly appreciate your love and support! and...link in profile

A photo posted by Julie Seabrook Ream (@hey_jules_studio) on Jul 8, 2015 at 2:42pm PDT

Day 78/100: Summer is here! YES! #the100dayproject #100daysofrainbows #thecuratedrainbow #crafttherainbow #tastetherainbow #rainbow #rslove #howisummer #dsrainbow #dscolor #ABMlifeiscolorful #summer #summertime #bandotodolist #heyjulescreates

A photo posted by Julie Seabrook Ream (@hey_jules_studio) on Jun 22, 2015 at 6:19am PDT

Flowers make the prettiest rainbows!#moredaysofrainbows #thecuratedrainbow #crafttherainbow #rainbow #ABMlifeiscolorful #rslove #dscolor #dsrainbow #flowerpower #heyjulescreates

A photo posted by Julie Seabrook Ream (@hey_jules_studio) on Jul 29, 2015 at 10:21am PDT

Artist Julie Seabrook Ream “never could pick a favorite color.” She started a project at her Instagram account hey_jules_studio called 100 Days of Rainbows. Well, she’s past 100 days, but keeps on creating new rainbows out of various other object: toys. flowers, food, anything that comes in a rainbow selection of colors. Almost all are laid out in Roy G. Biv style. Check out all 121 rainbows so far. Many are available as art prints at her Etsy shop.

Cheese and butter go back a long way as methods of preserving milk. But fresh milk was considered baby food, or a boost for growing children, through most of history. Only about a hundred years ago did milk drinking become common among adults. That was because of the convergence of several trends around the beginning of the 20th century. First, the milk trade became regulated and safer (see our previous articles on that development). Then there was the craze for healing through nutrition, which led to the development of cereals, served with milk (see our previous article on that). And there was the Temperance movement, with groups trying to get men to drink anything besides alcohol (which we also covered). Read more about these trends and how they led to people rushing out to buy milk before a snowstorm hits, at BBC Future. -via mental_floss

See, it’s always handy to teach your children new skills! Swaddling a baby makes him or her feel cozy, warm, and safe, like being back in the womb. Or like being a burrito. And that can be a good feeling no matter what your age. This is the latest from Lunarbaboon.

Cause we were like, "woaaaah.", and I was like, "woaaaah." and you were like, "woaaahh...

-Crush, Finding Nemo

WWF-Australia put a GoPro camera on the back of a sea turtle so we can get a turtle’s-eye-view of the surreal and beautiful Great Barrier Reef, home to over 6,000 animals species. It will make you feel as if you are riding on the turtle’s back!

(YouTube link)

The turtle eventually shed the camera, but then it landed in a lovely spot to record more wildlife before it was retrieved. -via Viral Viral Videos

At one time, creepy tales were told around the campfire and at slumber parties, but outside of your circle of friends, you pretty much waited to retell them to your kids many years later. The internet changed all that, making audiences much bigger, including more gullible readers, and adding the ability to include images. Terror-inducing tales can spread like wildfire, and the scarier the story, the faster it spreads. One of those tales grew into the legend known as Slenderman.

Created on the Something Awful forums in 2009, Slenderman has since become a modern legend. His story is the very stuff of nightmares. Appearing across the world, his motivations are unknowable, his mission a mystery. All we can say for sure is that, wherever Slenderman goes, chaos and madness goes with him. And once he’s after you, there’s no escape.

Beyond that, the character is almost impossible to describe. Like his form, Slenderman’s legend is fluid, constantly metamorphosing to suit the tale. In some versions, he’s known to stalk and kill those who find out about him. In others, he’s simply a distant, unnerving presence: a shadowy figure watching the world from the edges of the daylight. He can disrupt electrical signals. He can turn unwitting people into his puppets. He can teleport and read minds. He can make you into a killer.

That’s just one of the 8 Creepy Internet Characters that Became Urban Legends you’ll learn (or relearn) about at Urban Ghosts. Warning: some images may be disturbing.

(Image credit: LuxAmber)

Rob from the What Is It? blog was walking in the park this morning and found a spiderweb that’s a bit unusual. It has a stabilimenta shaped like a person! Wait, what’s a stabilimenta? It’s a decoration that a spider adds to its web, for several possible reasons, like camouflage or mate attraction. We all know it can also be used to save a pig’s life.

But what’s this one for? Could it be a warning to other spiders that humans are near? Or maybe an attempt to communicate with us? It’s most likely a case of pareidolia, but if the spider who made it is named Charlotte, all bets are off. -Thanks, Rob!

(Image credit: Flickr user Domenico )

Last week, MegaBots, Inc. issued a challenge to Suidobashi Heavy Industry in Japan, with the purpose of pitting each company’s giant robot against each other in a duel. Now Japan has responded.  

(YouTube link)

Suidobashi founder Kogoro Kurata finds the idea intriguing. After all, the hype surrounding an international giant robot battle will pay off for years, win or lose. When will Kuratas and Mark 2 square off? We will keep you informed as plans commence. -via reddit

Cats and dogs can get along together at times, especially if they know each other well. But they’re still different species, and that can cause conflict. Dogs are rambunctious, and cats are pointy on five out of six ends.

(YouTube link)

Here we have a compilation of clips featuring cats and dogs not trying to get along from America’s Funniest Home Videos. -via Tastefully Offensive

Science is taking a vacation! Or, let’s say, science is finding out things about vacations, and how you can get more bang for your buck. Findings by Dr. Amit Kumar and Dr. Thomas Gilovich analyzed the amount of happiness a getaway brings us and what facts lead to that happiness. They have some tips about why you should take a trip, what kind to take, and how to schedule your activities for peak return.

The happiness literature also has some important things to say about planning. Kumar said that he’d been wondering for a while whether planning a purchase well in advance “might cause [the purchaser to] derive more utility from their anticipation of the experience” than they would if they planned it at the last minute, he said. “We now have empirical evidence that that's indeed the case,” he said, in the form of a paper he coauthored with Thomas Gilovich that’s in press at the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

This tells me that the trend toward surprising children with a last-minute notice that they’re going to Disney World actually cheats those children out of the anticipation happiness they would have otherwise experienced. Not a great tradeoff for a viral video. Read the other ways you can optimize your vacation happiness at New York magazine. -via Digg

A banana farmer in Hunan province, China, bought a couple of “good looking pups” from a Vietnamese man. They grew fast and they grew big, and they had voracious appetites, leading them to chase and eat his chickens. Two years later, Wang Kaiyu had the opportunity to visit a wildlife protection exhibition, and when he saw the bear exhibit, he realized what kind of animals his “dogs” really were! He reported the bears to wildlife authorities, who identified his pets as Asian black bears, a protected species. the bears were taken to a wildlife rehabilitation center. You can see a video report from Xinhua at Facebook. -via HuffPo

(Screenshot: Xinhua News Agency)