Moorhead High School in Moorhead, Minnesota, received the finished yearbooks for 2013, and found their school -and town- was misspelled. On the cover. It said Moorehead.
“They proofed the book and the cover, and they missed it,” district spokeswoman Pam Gibb said. “I don’t know that there’s much we can do now. It’s a mistake, and it was made.”
The district can’t afford to reprint the yearbooks, which annually cost about $20,000 to $21,000 to produce, Gibb said, noting final invoices haven’t been paid yet for the 2013 yearbook. Sales of the 2013 book have totaled about $19,000 so far, she said.
There has been some discussion of making a label to cover it up, but how unique would that be? The class of 2013 will look back at this in twenty years and laugh. Link -via Laughing Squid
The trick of attracting insects by resembling insects is a genius move by a many species of orchids. But there can be danger in such specialization. This is not the first time that Randall Munroe of xkcd made me go all verklempt over something that has no feelings. Link -via Ed Yong
Photographer Martin Klimas (previously at Neatorama) has a new art series called Rapid Bloom in which he shows beautiful blossoms mid-explosion!
…he drops flowers into liquid nitrogen and then shoots them with an air gun from behind. Klimas wanted to show the flower, in its entirety, in one single shot, a flower in full bloom turned into a fascinating piece of abstract art.
Alanna George made this Very Hungry Caterpillar costume for just a couple of dollars, and it looks just like the caterpillar in the book! It's just one of many literary costumes that put kids in their favorite books. See twenty more at Buzzfeed. Link
This list was reprinted with permission from the Bathroom Institute's book Uncle John's Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute has published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
The Maleo is not like other birds. It lays its eggs in the warm sand of Sulawesi island in Indonesia and then takes off -never to return until its lays more eggs. The eggs hatch, and the emerging birds are on their own. Their survival depends on the skills they are born with, which includes flying! But these birds are endangered because of geographic isolation and the fact that people dig up the eggs to eat. Read all about the Maleo at Ark in Space. Link -via the Presurfer
The sheep is handling his student with patience and gentleness. The bull, being a bovine and therefore pretty stupid, doesn't seem to be learning much. -via Tastefully Offensive
If you think the streets of Paris are enchanting, wait till you discover what lurks below.
THEY DUG PARIS
Most visitors to Paris have no idea that beneath the City of Light is a dark labyrinth of branching tunnels and abandoned quarries. Paris sits atop massive limestone and gypsum formations that have been quarried for more than a thousand years. The Romans chiseled the fine-grained limestone into bathhouses and sculptures. The French used it to build thousands of buildings, everything from Notre Dame cathedral and the Louvre Museum to Paris Police Headquarters. As for the gypsum, ever heard of plaster of Paris? That's where it comes from.
When the mining started, the quarries were outside of town, but over the centuries the city spread and so did the quarries. Eventually Paris ended up with a 1,900-acre underground maze that starts about 15 feet below the streets and ends 120 feet underground. Parisians call the multi-level maze gruyère (Swiss cheese), and that's exactly what a cross-section of the ground beneath their feet looks like.
When an entire city ends up on holey ground, things get shaky. Residents got their first glimpse of how unstable their city had become in 1774, when one of the tunnels collapsed, gulping down houses and people along Rue d'Enfer (Hell Street). Parisians panicked, so Louis XVI created the Inspection Generale des Carrieres (quarry inspectors) and appointed architect Charles-Axel Guillaumot as its first chief. He instructed Guillaumot to do three things: 1) find all the empty spaces under Paris, 2) make a map of them, and 3) reinforce any spaces below public streets or below buildings belonging to the king. Personally inspecting the sinkholes to a depth of more than 75 feet, Guillaumot was horrified by what he found and told Louis the truth: "The temples, palaces, houses, and public streets of several parts of Paris and its surroundings are about to sink into giant pits."
MOLD LANG SYNE
That wasn't the only problem in Paris. Thanks to war, famine, and plague, the city's cemeteries were full to overflowing. One frosty February morning in 1788, a homeowner started down to his cellar but was immediately driven back upward by a terrible stench. Egged on by his neighbors (and wearing a vinegar-soaked handkerchief over his nose), he crept back down and found 20 decaying bodies, covered in graveyard mold, bursting through the wall. The graveyards had finally gone beyond their limits.
Just when you thought Game of Thrones symbolism had been mashed up with everything else possible, along comes football season. DJroomba has designed Game of Thrones-style sigils for every NFL team. Many of them have variations in the slogan, so you can pick your favorites. Link -via Uproxx
Before Stephen Norrington became a film director, he did special effects for movies like Alien, where he developed the little guy we now call a Chestburster. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at how they did it. Isn't he just the cutest little thing? See more at the Stan Winston School of Character Arts. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy
Abdul Mallik teaches 5th grade in a village school in the Malappuram district of Kerala, India. Every day for twenty years, he gets to the school by wading through a river, with water coming up to his neck. He holds his bag above him, and changes into dry clothes once he reaches the other side.
"If I go by bus, it takes me three hours to cover the 12-kilometre distance, but swimming through the river is easier, faster and I reach school on time," he says, after he emerges from the river 15 minutes later.
Students are inspired by Mallik's dedication. The experience has made the teacher a staunch environmentalist, and he impresses upon his students the importance of saving the river and the polluted waterways of India. Link -via Arbroath
Annette Jung took the werewolf scene from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video and animated it completely in LEGO bricks. That's a lot of brick moving! -via Laughing Squid
Muffin, Bun Bun, and Ducky have fun in hamster balls, sometimes getting two kittens in one ball. The mother cat is named Tiger, and she's not quite sure if this is a good idea, but she takes it in stride eventually. -via Metafilter
The men and women who became pilots in the earliest days of airplane flight all had something in common -they were brave, adventurous go-getters. Many of them became quite famous, too, which means we have pictures of them to admire. Pictured here is British World War I flying ace Albert Ball. Check out more of those daring pilots from the early 20th century at Flavorwire. Link
