Aerobatic pilot Sebb Stratta takes full advantage of his job by sharing it with his friends. Want to go for a plane ride? Get ready for spins, loops, and strangely-moving horizons! Plus, he has a dash cam ready to catch their reactions. It’s a thrill they will remember fondly -after they are safely on the ground. -via Viral Viral Videos
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A truck carrying 6,800 kilograms of live catfish spilled its load Tuesday when a door swung open in Guizhou province, China. Tons of fish covered the road in the Kaili Development Zone. But the incident did not end with a call to a hazmat crew, or people carrying fish home with them.
According to NetEase, firemen were dispatched to the scene and with local residents' help, the fish were eventually reloaded onto the truck.
The truck was ready to carry the fish to its destination after two hours of "rescue", which pretty much just involved spraying the road fish with water and plopping them into buckets.
There were no reports of any looted fish. But there are plenty of pictures.
(Image credit: NetEase)
Over 500 students were expelled from high school in Patna, Bihar, India, over a two day period for cheating on their class ten board exams. The results of the tests determine high school graduation and are often also used for college admission. A photograph taken during one exam session showed friends and family members outside the windows, ready to pass notes to test-takers. Education minister PK Shahi says it is impossible to conduct fair exam without the cooperation of parents.
He appealed to parents to not indulge in such practices but said reports of cheating in exams were common in all parts of the country, not just Bihar, adding that chief secretary Anjani Kumar Singh and police chief PK Thakur had been asked to further tighten arrangements.
Around 1.43 million students are appearing for the class 10 state board examinations this year at 1,217 centres, many of which are allotted a large number of students without commensurate infrastructure to accommodate them. The school-leaving examinations are marked by violence and wide-spread use of unfair means that include parents and friends writing answers for examinees, often guarded by armed men.
In addition to the expulsions, seven parents were arrested for helping their children cheat on the test.
On-the-spot news reporters are always close to the action, and therein lies danger. Every once in a while, a reporter slips or gets knocked down live on air. Once we find out they are not seriously injured, it’s funny because the embarrassment is so public, Then, we you put all those clips together, we see news reporters as an endangered species because of their clumsiness and proximity to calamity. -via Tastefully Offensive
In one of the world's biggest caves, a scientist gets in over her head.
(Image credit: Robbie Shone)
TONGZI, CHINA, 2011—Deep inside the mountain, we hear the sound of a river. The four of us—all researchers who study caves—are exploring Quankou Dong, or Big Spring Cave, in a remote, mountainous part of China, just south of Chengdu.
The “big spring” is a river that runs through a passageway from one end of the enormous cave to the other. Along the way, it churns into class 4 rapids. Hours earlier, we’d entered through a dry passage. Now, it’s full of water, rising fast.
The cave’s entrance is stunning: 100 feet wide, 300 feet high. Once inside, you pass through Cloud Ladder Hall, a 16-acre room so high it has its own weather system. One of the largest cave chambers in the world, it rises more than 1200 feet, though its roof is typically hidden by clouds.
We first went inside Quankou Dong in 2008, after it’d been discovered the year before, and we had been back several times. On one occasion, I slipped on a rock, fell in, and got tossed around in the rapids! It wasn’t funny at the time—class 4 rapids are very difficult to maneuver and can be incredibly dangerous—but my colleagues and I laugh about it now.
This year, we’re undertaking an epic 24-hour exploration. Since you can’t rent a car in Tongzi, we pay a driver 300 yuan to drop us off and then pick us up the following day. We’re wearing kneepads, wind-resistant PVC suits, and helmets equipped with powerful caving lights. Our packs are full of climbing equipment. Around 2 p.m., we arrive at the mouth of the cave.
Matt Stopera of Buzzfeed became an accidental internet celebrity in China. It all started when his iPhone was stolen, but was still connected to Stopera’s cloud storage. Odd photos of a man and his orange trees were showing up. Stopera found out about the cloud storage connection, and figured out the pictures were coming from the new phone owner, most likely in China. So he disconnected the phone from his account, and though nothing else of it. Except that he wrote a post about it.
That story became a hit on Weibo, China’s big social network. Users all over the country became determined to find the man with the orange trees. Meanwhile, Stopera became a huge Weibo celebrity. The story builds gradually, but the upshot is that Stopera is in China right now. As you can see, they put the "welcome matt" out for him. Read the whole account in this post. -via Metafilter
The character Indiana Jones was first introduced to us as he was looting a sacred cave and ends up having to run for his life. That told us the basics about the character in an almost-wordless sequence while we were being entertained at the same time. Cinefix gives us an inside look at the scene’s background and the reasons it works so well. The soundtrack, cinematography, production design, and special effects all had to mesh perfectly to create the scene we all know and love that opens the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. -Thanks, Daniel Portolan!
This is what happens when you don't obey the librarian and she has to shush you one too many times. The UT Dallas McDermott Library had an incident yesterday. No one was injured, but it ended up being a lot of work.
We'd call this a minor setback. Some of our shelves collapsed today during our renovation. Boy was it fun picking up all those books.
The Facebook post has a couple more pictures of the carnage. Found at reddit, where I also got the post title. They’ve got every book and library pun possible in the comments.
One doctor overwintering in Antarctica is responsible for the health of around 150 people, 2800 miles away from the nearest hospital, with no transportation available for months at a time. Combine that with the danger of freezing, and you have a rather stressful job. You may spend months treating sports injuries, respiratory illness, summer insomnia, and the rare case of frostbite, but there is always the possibility of a major emergency -and the patient could even be the doctor.
It’s a hypochondriac’s worst nightmare: alone in the Antarctic, with the lone physician too ill to care for anyone else. Modern screenings have reduced that possibility, but the area has been home to a series of legendary crises.
Some countries require their doctors undergo an appendectomy to ward off the potential for appendicitis. If that seems excessive, consider the case of Leonid Rogozov, a Russian physician who diagnosed himself with a swollen appendix during a 1961 expedition. Trapped in the Austral winter with no flights in or out—the harsh weather can prevent aircraft from functioning properly—he deputized a few researchers to be his surgical assistants and cut out his own organ using only local anesthesia. He recovered in just two weeks.
In 1999, Jerri Nielsen discovered a lump in her breast. She performed a biopsy using only an ice cube to numb the area; upon discovering a cancerous growth, she had drugs air-dropped to her until she was able fly out for treatment.
Mental_floss talked to Dr. Dale Mole and Dr. Sean Roden about their stints as physicians at the bottom of the earth. Their experiences will give you new respect for those who volunteer for such duty.
(Image credit: Dale Mole)
On January 30, James Mort, Daniel O’Sullivan, Andrew, and Leonard went skiing on a meter of new snow in the Alps on the Swiss/French border. Mort was in front when a avalanche buried him. The whole story is here.
As the snow piled higher and higher, It became darker and darker until I was surrounded by an eerie black silence, broken only by the sound of my slow breathing and racing heartbeat.
"Okay" I thought to myself;
"You’re dead."
I had a shovel and probe in my backpack and I was wearing a transceiver, however, the others were only carrying a shovel and probe. I was convinced that they would not find me in time. Unable to move I focused on slowing my breathing, relaxing and conserving oxygen. I felt bizarrely emotionless and wondered for a moment what death would be like. Then I remembered that I was reaching upwards with my left arm, ski pole still attached. I tried to wiggle my hand and I felt a ‘pop’ as the top 5cm of the pole broke the surface of the snow. Suddenly emotion flooded through me as I realised that Andrew, Dan and Leonard would be able to locate me under the snow if they saw the tip of the pole. However I still forced myself to remain calm as I sat in wait.
O’Sullivan was wearing a GoPro on his helmet and captured the action. -via reddit
The Magna Carta turns 800 years old this summer. The British Library thinks we should all learn a little more about that document on this auspicious occasion. That’s why they’ve given us two beautifully illustrated videos on it, narrated by Terry Jones of Monty Python. The Magna Carta itself didn’t change life much for everyday people, but it started England -and the world- on the path from absolute monarchy to the rule of law. It eventually led to the idea and the ideal of democracy. The second video in the series explains how that happened.
Learn more about the Magna Carta at the British Library. -via Digg
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
The Beatles arrived in Manila to give two concerts in early July of 1966. This was to be one of their gigs on their 1966 final-ever tour; they had just finished a few very pleasant gigs in Germany. There were “bad vibes” almost from the word “go” as the boys arrived at the Manila airport.
Ringo: “I hated the Philippines. It was like that hot/gun/Spanish inquisition attitude.” George stated, “As soon as we got there, it was bad news. There were tough gorilla-little men in short sleeves who acted very melancholy.”
The boys were greeted at the airport by severe-looking armed guards and were sternly instructed to get on a boat. A bit scared already, they complied. This was actually the first time in their time together that they were separated from their manager or any of their aides while on tour. They were taken to a limo and solemnly escorted to their hotel.
No one except them knew it, but they had another reason to be scared. The Manila guards had confiscated the boy’s traveling bags- which contained marijuana, illegal there as in many places. (Fortunately for the Fab Four, their bags were not searched and their secret stash was never discovered.)
At the time in Manila, the country was ruled by the dictatorship regime of Ferdinand Marcos and as soon as the Beatles got settled in, they were told they were to attend a reception for the country’s matriarch, Imelda Marcos. Tired and jet-legged, they politely informed the guards they would not be attending. A bit of arguing back and forth went on, but the boys stuck to their guns and settled in for the day.
They were soon joined in their room by their roadies, a few aides and their manager, Brian Epstein. They played two concerts that night, each before crowds of 40,000, and all went well. Their dressing room had been “a mess” and they had been served a horrible meal of corn flakes with lumpy, sour milk and some other horrible-looking food, but thought nothing of it. Little did they realize what was in store for them.
Scotland-based artist Demetria Skye Logan (DeviantART member DeeeSkye) can draw anything, but lately she’s taken to the character Baymax from the movie Big Hero 6. She’s drawn him in many incarnations, particularly as other Disney characters. That includes Mickey, Rapunzel, Elsa, Aladdin, the Mad Hatter, and Wreck-It Ralph, among others. See more of them at her blog and her DeviantART gallery. -via Pleated-Jeans
Siberian photographer Alexey Trofimov captured extraordinary scenes of sunshine and ice on Lake Baikal. The turquoise blue ice shimmers like gemstones. Massive Lake Baikal is the oldest and deepest lake on earth, and the ice that appears this way every March draws tourists from all around to see it.
These unique frozen formations are in fact called ice hummocks. The knolls are created in part by pressure that develops gradually and unevenly in the layer of ice that covers Lake Baikal in winter. The physical make-up and temperature of the ice sheet then also become imbalanced, and hence the hummocks form and rise above the frozen surface.
This is Siberia, so the ice will be there until May. See many more pictures of the Baikal ice hummocks at Scribol.
(Image credit: Alexey Trofimov)
Gluten intolerance is a real medical condition that’s fairly rare and a real hassle for those who suffer from it. However, it’s become the latest fad self-diagnosis, and so many people have jumped on that bandwagon that even real sufferers have become suspect -like autism or ADHD. If you want to contribute to this problem, JP Sears tells you exactly how to do it. -via Viral Viral Videos
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