In 1835, Giuseppe Mario Fieschi and two co-conspirators tried to assassinate King Louis-Philippe of France. To pull it off, Fieschi devised what became known as “the infernal machine.”
Rather than fire just one shot at the king, or even three if the trio joined together, Fieschi constructed a mutant weapon with 25 barrels that could shoot at once, all pointing in different directions. The machine of wood and iron was finally set up on the third story of 50 Boulevard du Temple in Paris, and on July 28, 1835 put to its macabre test.
The king was only slightly grazed, but 18 people died and 42 were wounded in the sudden onslaught, including Fieschi himself. After all, when you have 25 barrels firing, the chances of one of them malfunctioning are multiplied. Read how the crime played out, and see pictures of the infernal machine, at Atlas Obscura.
How’s this for a thrill: combine skiing, zip lining, and bungee jumping! The Bun J Ride at Tignes Ski Resort in the French Alps does just that. You have a ski jump ramp with two zip lines on the sides, extending down the hill. A bungee cord is suspended between those two zip lines and attached to the skier or snowboarder. Once you launch off the ramp, you bounce up and down two or three (or more) times to the bottom of the hill. Get a good view of the bounce in this video, although the guy’s form was an embarrassment. People also do this with bicycles. -via Geekologie, where you can see yet another video.
Marisa Inda is pretty fit. She also has a style that seems to defy gravity, and this video was not recorded in outer space. It’s not magic, it’s muscles. Pullups are just about the most difficult thing for even a strong, fit woman to do in the gym, but for Inda, it’s an opportunity to dance. -via Uproxx
This cat has the strangest, humanlike face with eyes that look as if they can see right through you. We don’t know whose cat this is, and the earliest appearances of the photograph are in various languages I cannot read. Using a machine translation, none appear to identify him. Some compared him to the Middle-Earth wizard Radagast from the movie The Hobbit, probably for his drooping whiskers and bulbous nose. But perhaps another movie would have a more appropriate role for him. -via reddit
The U.K. government agency Sport England has a new campaign called This Girl Can to encourage women to become active in sports and recreational activities.
It comes as research, carried out by us, reveals that at by every measure, fewer women than men play sport regularly – two million fewer 14-40 year olds in total. Despite this, 75 per cent say they want to be more active. In some other European countries, this disparity doesn’t exist.
Further research into what's stopping women turning their ambitions into reality found that a fear of judgement – on appearance, ability or how they chose to spend time on themselves – puts women of all ages off exercising.
The video I Jiggle, Therefore I Am shows women of all sizes, ages, ethnicities, fitness levels, and abilities having fun in a wide range of sports. Watching it makes me want to dance, although I will leave the boxing to others.
The recession of 2008 caused a steep rise in the number of homeless people, and the recovering real estate market has made it difficult for those with few resources to get back into a home of their own. One response is the homeless village, spontaneous communities of displaced people who band together. We reported on one, Dignity Village, several years ago. Since then, the village has grown into a “tiny home” community, along with many other such settlements that have arisen in the Western U.S.
Tiny-home villages for the homeless have retained the idea of everyone having their own tiny structure to sleep and find privacy in, but have, for the most part, consolidated bathroom, kitchen, and recreational space into one or two communal buildings with some combination of plumbing, electricity, and heat. In many ways, they are a multi-roof version of the old-fashioned urban SRO (single-room occupancy) hotel or boarding house, with separate bedrooms but shared baths and kitchen, that provided the working and nonworking poor with affordable living options in so many cities before gentrification turned those properties into boutique hotels or market-rate apartments.
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In this regard, they may be solutions that not only alleviate homelessness, but also prevent it by creating more affordable housing. They provide an option below the lowest rungs of market rent, which in cities such as Portland and Eugene can start around $700. In the gap between such rents and low-income units (such as those subsidized by the federal Section 8 program), for which there are often long waits, homeless people often have no options except for shelters — which afford no privacy and, more vexingly, usually kick people out between early morning and late afternoon — or the streets.
Every language develops its own diagnoses of maladies, or on the milder side, descriptions of feelings. In German, they have some syndromes that could be called by another name in another language, but they sound much more debilitating in German. There’s also a few that are unheard of in other parts of the world.
3. KREISLAUFZUSAMMENBRUCH
Kreislaufzusammenbruch, or “circulatory collapse,” sounds deathly serious, but it’s used quite commonly in Germany to mean something like “feeling woozy” or “I don’t think I can come into work today.”
7. PUTZFIMMEL
Putzen means “to clean” and Fimmel is a mania or obsession. Putzfimmel is an obsession with cleaning. It is not unheard of outside of Germany, but elsewhere it is less culturally embedded and less fun to say.
9. OSTALGIE
Ostalgie is nostalgia for the old way of life in East Germany (“ost” means East). If you miss your old Trabant and those weekly visits from the secret police, you may have Ostalgie.
Can you imagine coming down with several at once? “I had to call in sick with Kreislaufzusammenbruch, because I have to clean the house so it will be the way it was in the East before the wall came down.” There are plenty more uniquely German illnesses in a list at mental_floss. No, German measles is not on this list.
This is an ad for non-stick cookware. At least, I think it is, because what else would it be? The reaction of the man of the house evokes some kind of weird fantasy, especially when we see how happy he is with the final result. It only gets more nonsensical as it continues. Therefore, it will be remembered, which is all that matters in advertising. -via Metafilter
A friendly young seal has become quite popular with surfers and other beachgoers on the shore near Cap Ferret, France. They’ve named him “You.” Here, you see You trying to hitch a ride on a surfboard, possibly because he sees so many humans have fun with those things. See a couple more videos of You, playing with surfers and adorable snuggling up with a Labrador retriever, at Daily Picks and Flicks. Incidentally, You the seal in French is "le phoque You."
Een foto die is geplaatst door Nikki A (@mo_cali_girl) op Jun 20, 2014 at 3:44 PDT
My mother broke her wrist just before Christmas, which was a genius plan for getting out of cooking the holiday feast. I offered to decorate her cast, but she said no, it’s got a nice knit sock over it. Those socks can be painted almost as easily as a plaster cast, as these 18 unfortunately injured people show us at Buzzfeed. The title is just a bit misleading, as they enlisted artist friends for the work -I can't picture them painting the casts themselves. You'll see reproductions of famous works, superhero limbs, holiday decorations, and clever illusions to lessen the sting of immobility.
An ermine is a stoat wearing his white winter coat. I had no idea they were so cute, but this little guy is utterly charming as he peeks out of his cubbyhole in a hollow tree stump. Look at those bright black eyes! There is no information about where this was recorded, or whether this critter is used to humans or not. It's just a delightful moment, captured on video. -via Tastefully Offensive
There’s a reason it’s called Death Valley. This vast expanse of the Mojave Desert gets less than 2 inches of rain per year, the daytime temperatures can reach upwards of 120 degrees, and the landscape is so salt-laden and windswept that it’s nearly impossible for anything to take root. But there’s more life in Death Valley than you’d imagine. Here are 10 stubborn plants and animals that refuse to retire to greener pastures.
1. The Rat with a Drinking Problem
Like many Death Valley residents, the kangaroo rat lives for the nightlife. It spends most of its day napping underground, only venturing out after sunset. Of course, taking advantage of the cool nighttime temps is a common trick among desert mammals. What’s not common is how the kangaroo rat has adapted to deal with the scarcity of water: It never drinks the stuff! Special organs inside its nose allow it to absorb moisture directly from the air, and highly efficient kidneys keep its body hydrated. In fact, the kangaroo rat is so well adapted to the dry climate that even after living in captivity for years, it will still refuse water.
Despite its bone-dry landscape, Death Valley is home to thousands of pupfish. The colorful, sardine-like fish live in isolated waterholes only a few feet wide. But how did all those aquatic animals get lured into the desert? The pupfish are actually stragglers from the ice age 10,000 years ago, back when the valley was a large glacial lake. As the glaciers melted, schools of pupfish became trapped in the waterholes and evolved into several distinct species. Today, the water in the small ponds can be as warm as a bath (around 90 degrees F), and the salt concentrations can exceed twice that of seawater. The conditions aren’t ideal, but the pupfish survive by drinking copious amounts of water and efficiently excreting the salt through their digestive tracts.
Life for the pupfish has become even more difficult in recent years. Beginning in the 1960s, farmers near Death Valley started pumping the desert’s groundwater for irrigation, which depleted the waterholes and caused serious declines in pupfish populations. One particular species, the Devils Hole pupfish, came close to extinction in 2006 when its numbers dipped below 40. But then an unlikely savior emerged: the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The casino relocated several pupfish to its swank aquariums, successfully reviving the species before its luck dried out.
It’s no secret that Death Valley is a tricky place for plants to take root. The earth there is so salty that it would kill most vegetation. But the Desert Holly has developed a clever technique for dealing with the unfriendly soil. The low-growing shrub soaks up the salt in the ground along with any moisture, and then, during blooming season from January to April, it excretes the sodium deposits onto its leaves. As a result, the plant turns from green to silver—a color change that helps it reflect the scalding sunlight instead of absorbing it.
Star Trek fans know that suspension of disbelief is crucial to their enjoyment of the space opera, especially the 1966 version. After all, the Enterprise was built by TV producers, not engineers. And those shows have been seen so many times that real fans have gotten a really good look at how unsuitable the Enterprise is for its mission. Some of the design flaws are pretty technical, while others are quite evident to everyone, like
9. No Seatbelts
We get it. It's fun to watch a dozen or so people get tossed around a bridge during a battle sequence — definitely more fun than just seeing a camera shake up and down while all the crew members remain safely strapped into their seats. But seriously, you'd think that after enough concussions caused by people falling out of their chairs, the Enterprise designers would just add some damn restraints. Class action lawsuit, anyone?
Mark Taylor is surprisingly calm for a man who just crashed a new $3,000 drone: “Well, at least we got that on video.” That may come in quite handy for getting a refund, or at least enough YouTube views to lessen the sting. He was trying out the drone’s auto-takeoff feature. It was not a user error, but a bug in the system. Taylor has more details at the YouTube page, and an update that credits the manufacturer, DJI, with excellent customer service. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
Most of us get surprisingly little education about caring for our teeth. Our parents teach us to brush, and if we are lucky, we get a guest lecture in grade school on the proper brushing technique. And a small percentage of us have dental insurance and talk to a dentist every once in a while. But most people develop oral hygiene habits early in life and stick with them for decades, while science comes up with new findings that contradict conventional wisdom. In other words, you’re doing it wrong. Molly Beauchemin, a “health nerd,” brings us some tips for taking care of our choppers that may surprise you. Who knew you’re supposed to rinse your mouth after drinking acidic beverages, but not after brushing your teeth? And there’s more.
4.) Floss More, Brush Less
A dentist in Virginia once told me about this experiment: go 4-5 days without flossing, then floss. After you floss, ball the string up in your hand and smell it. You will never go without flossing again.
The moral of the story is this: the worst bacteria that causes bad breathe and cavities lingers near our gum line and flossing is the only way to get them out. Luckily, its actually a lot easier to knock plaque off our teeth than we think, so flossing followed by a light brush is sufficient to keep your mouth squeaky clean. In fact, some dentists suggest that if you had a choice between flossing or brushing you'd be better off just flossing. It's that important. As my best friend's father—a dentist—once told me: “floss more, brush less”.
