We've reached the end of a stressful event-filled week. It started off with the Boston marathon, which became a crime scene when two bombs exploded, killing three people and injuring over a hundred. Then letters containing ricin started arriving addressed to congressmen and the president. Wednesday, they got the guy who did it. A fertilizer plant in West, Texas, had a fire and then an explosion Wednesday, resulting in 14 dead and numerous injuries. The media had its problems balancing breaking news and accuracy in the Boston events. Crowdsourced detective work meant several innocent people were suspected. Then Thursday night, one the bombing suspects died during a police confrontation. A young policemen was also killed in the line of duty. Friday, Boston stood still while police searched for the second bomber, who was captured alive last night. Then the city celebrated. And while all this went on, there may have been some posts at Neatorama you missed, so let's go over them now, beginning with our features articles.

In the first edition of Don't Eat That, John! The French Toast Reuben Nutella Elvis Sandwich, our own John Farrier challenged himself to prepare and eat one of the weird food combos he posts about. At least we know he'll take a dare.     

Eddie Deezen wrote about Lina Medina: The 5-year-old Mother. A sad but true story of medical anomaly and abuse.

Uncle John's Bathroom Reader gave us the story of Women in Space: The Mercury 13.

Crime and Punishment—A Personal Meditation came from the Annals of Improbable Research.

And mental_floss magazine contributed Understanding Existentialism in Four Easy Steps.

We had three brainteasers from the Bathroom Reader series this week: Directions, Name That Heiress, and Pocket Change. Did you figure them out?

The next edition of Neatomail, our weekly newsletter, will feature a Hello Kitty giveaway, so sign up for your subscription today!

In this week's What is It? game, the small objects are copper crushers or copper pressure cylinders from the Frankford Arsenal. The What Is It blog explains how they are used to measure the force of a gun's chamber pressure. The first correct answer came from theoneandonly, who wins a t-shirt! The funniest answer was "flute holes" from Lucas Gentry. That's good for a t-shirt from the NeatoShop, too! Thanks to everyone who played, and thanks to the What Is It? blog!  

The post with the most comments this week was Newest Birthing Trend: Don't Cut the Umbilical Cord, followed by Don't Eat That, John! The French Toast Reuben Nutella Elvis Sandwich and Wedding Present: Mother Gives Her Son a Lamp with Everything She Found in His Pockets While Doing His Laundry. I thought about telling John his titles are too long, but it appears to work, as far as getting comments goes.

The comment of the week came from Mike Francis in the post Mysterious Tiny Door Found in a Tree, in which he quipped "Do you have any idea what real estate prices are like in S.F.?"

The most popular post of the week was Apartment Resident Leaves Water Tap On All Winter, Creates Ice Mountain. In second place was Convertible Napping Desk, followed by Lina Medina: The 5-year-old Mother.  

The post that drew the most ♥s this week was Dove Hires a Forensic Sketch Artist to Draw Women as They See Themselves. The post Judge Holds Himself in Contempt of Court When His Cell Phone Rings in Court came in second, and then we had a three-way tie between A Sloth and His Cat, Wedding Present: Mother Gives Her Son a Lamp with Everything She Found in His Pockets While Doing His Laundry, and "Look for the Helpers." But if you want to see posts with consistently high ratings by ♥s, check out the sub-blog Lifestyles of the Cute and Cuddly. It's under the button labeled "Pets" in the top menubar.

Usability Tip of the Week: Our latest feature articles are pictured in thumbnail images across the top of each page of Neatorama. But you can use the arrows on each side of that listing to find even more -up to the last twenty, I believe. We're still working on getting all our features ready for a new "best of" page, coming soon!

Mother's Day is May 12 -and that's a lot sooner than you thought, right? You'll be ahead of the game if you order Mom a gift soon from the NeatoShop, because no one else will find her a gift as unique as yours.

Now that's a happy fox! This picture is from the Neatoramanauts Facebook page. Just an example of the extra content you'll find at Facebook, so check it out every day! Follow Neatorama on Twitter and Pinterest, too!

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This footage was filmed around 1900 in the cities of London, England, and Cork, Ireland. However, it doesn't look like any 100-year-old film you've seen, because it's been altered to make it more like being there than the film technology of the time could produce.   

This video has been dramatically enhanced in quality, using modern video editing tools. The film has been motion stabilized and the speed has been slowed down to correct speed (from 18 fps to 24 fps) using special frame interpolation software that re-creates missing frames. Upscaling to HD quality was done using video enhancer software.

-via Nag on the Lake

Raising a baby means getting advice from those who supposedly know more than you do -and in the 19th century, there were no shortage of experts to sell you a book. But even the most commonly-followed advice seems strange to us now.

From the day of birth, schedules and strict discipline were of deep importance. This baby was to interfere as little as possible with your life. Affection was to be restricted, with care instructions more fitting a ficus than a child. From 1916's The Mother and her Child by Drs. Lena and William Sadler: "Handle the baby as little as possible. Turn it occasionally from side to side, feed it, change it, keep it warm, and let it alone; crying is absolutely essential to the development of good strong lungs. A baby should cry vigorously several times each day."

As the child grew, regulated contact could be tolerated. "At the age of two weeks, the child may be systematically carried about in the arms 2 to 3 times a day, as a means of furnishing additional change in position," is the precise advice of Dr. JP Crozer Griffith in 1900.

That appears cruel and unnecessary to us today, but if you dig a little deeper, there are reasons that they seemed like a good idea at the time. An article at the Atlantic tells the reasons why such advice might not have been "stupid" after all. Link  -via Metafilter

Once upon a time, "trial by fire" was a literal trial, with literal fire. The idea was that if an accused criminal were subjected to mortal danger, such as a fire, divine intervention would save the truly innocent. These were called trial by ordeal, and in some ways it made sense.

Of course, the system was far from foolproof; many of the trials were easily manipulated by the administering judges (or priests) to “prove” a verdict that they thought was correct. Still, some authors, such as George Mason University economist Peter Leeson, say that in a society that unflinchingly believes in the efficacy of these trials, the ordeals and ordealists would have resulted in the “correct” verdict more often than not. After all, if a person was guilty, but believed that the trials always showed the truth, they’d be unlikely to be willing to undergo them—the punishment for pleading guilty was almost always far more lenient than the punishment for being “shown” to be guilty under trial by ordeal.

There were many different ordeals used to separate the innocent from the guilty -burning, poisoning, drowning, torture- and specific procedures for each that you can read about at mental_floss. Link

This is Harvard Square as you've never seen it before -and you'll probably never see it again without people. Boston was on lockdown earlier today, as police looked for the fugitive bomber (and they got him). Citizens were told to stay home and stay inside during the sweep. Some took advantage of the eerie situation to photograph the city with empty streets. See more of them in a collection at NBC. Link  -via Fark

(Image credit: someaunty)

Ancient tales of vampires later split into two modern mythic characters: vampires and zombies. Movies characterize vampires and zombies as quite different, yet tales from history tell of vampires with characteristics of both: basically undead formerly-human monsters who want to eat humans. An article at the Verge compares the nonfiction book Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus and the novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War to show how the real disease rabies led to the vampire myth.       

Spanish physician Juan Gomez-Alonso explains four connections between rabies and vampire myths in a 1998 Neurology journal article, the most obvious being infection through the blood via bites. Rabies victims also often suffer from facial spasms, lending them an animalistic appearance. The third connection is the time frame: vampire lore had them living for forty days before being turned, the same amount of time it usually takes for the victim of a rabies attack to die after their initial bite. The final connection is probably the most surprising: sex drive. The insatiable sexual desire that’s a trademark of both traditionally gothic and sparkly modern vampires can also be traced to rabies. Male rabies victims often get involuntary erections and have spontaneous orgasms. Unsurprisingly, this was not often spoken of outright, but was alluded to in much of the early medical literature, with one eighteenth century Austrian physician noting “his seed and his life were lost at the same time.”

What's really scary is that 55,000 people still die of rabies every year. Link -via Digg

(Image credit: Flickr user Jere Keys)

Rusty Blazenhoff saw "cool American" flavor Doritos for sale in Iceland. So what flavor is cool American? The picture would lead one to believe that would be nacho cheese, but it's really ranch. So now we know the flavor the world associates with the USA. Learn more at Laughing Squid. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Rusty Blazenhoff)

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Leigh Lahav made her husband Oren Mendezitsky a birthday video by inserting them and their circle into TV show intros. How many do you recognize? There's a list at the YouTube page. (via Tastefully Offensive)

Back in my radio days, I'd often refer to the nearby town of Squalor to indicate that tales of fictional rednecks were indeed fictional. Some of the more familiar fictional cities from movies and literature are fantastic places you'd want to visit -or impressive places you'd want to avoid, but still read about. Take a tour of Metropolis, Pandemonium, The City of Brass, and more at Urban Ghosts. Who knows? You might be intrigued into reading something new because of it! Link

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Instead of running and hiding like a typical house cat when the vacuum cleaner goes on, this cat is mainly curious. When little children first discover the business end of a vacuum hose, they have to "experiment" like this, too. What a great new toy! -via Metafilter

People's obsession with cats did not begin with the internet. Collector's Weekly has a roundup of vintage cat items on eBay that include plates, jewelry, ephemera, knick-knacks, and toys that were manufactured to cater to crazy cat people many years ago -and most of them are still for sale! Link

Casey Grim and Adam McLaughlin made their engagement photo shoot into a hilarious parody of engagement photo shoots. She's doing all the sexy, arty poses you've seen so many times, and so does he. See the rest of the series at Flavorwire. Link

(Image credit: Casey Grim and Adam McLaughlin)

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Big Cat Rescue shows us once again how big cats are like house cats. They like playing with balls, they get high on catnip, they chase laser lights, and in this video, we see that they love to crawl into boxes, too! -via Tastefully Offensive

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Right on the heels of the latest Dove Real Beauty campaign, newfeelingstime has a parody in which men go through the same experiment. First they are sketched according to their own descriptions, and then from the descriptions of other people. It doesn't turn out the same way. -via Daily of the Day

Step # 1 Be the Master of Your Domain

One of the earliest existential ideas to come about was the concept of subjective morality. Formulated in the 19th century by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and German misanthrope/syphilis victim Friedrich Nietzsche, this theory rejected the long-held belief in a “universal truth” of right and wrong. Rather, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche recognized that most situations that appear black and white actually aren’t. Depending on the situation and its consequences, even the most seemingly benign action could turn out to be malevolent – and vice versa. But, if a universal truth can’t properly govern behavior, then what can? The answer, they contended, is you. Yes, you! According to the philosophers, personal experience, personal convictions, and the specific context of a situation are the only things that can define morality. Consequently, the definition of morality has to be left to each individual.

While Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were actually proto-existentialist, their ideas heavily influenced philosophy’s big breakout in the 1940s and 1950s. Largely because of the groundwork they laid, existentialism evolved into a philosophy of individualism and self-actualization. It’s also a lot more positive than it’s given credit for. Kierkegaard claimed that the highest moral good was for an individual to figure out his or her unique truth and passion and use that knowledge to live life to the fullest.

Step # 2 Think Like Spider-Man

Say it with us now: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben must have been reading a lot of stuff by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre when he imparted that little nugget. Expanding on the writing of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Sartre determined that if Man is the maker of his own morality, then his greatest power is the freedom of choice. Thus, choice is inescapable. Even choosing not to choose is a choice. What’s more, each person is defined by his or her choices and the actions they lead to. In other words, no matter how much other people may try to objectify you, you still have the power to determine your own fate.

Sartre and cat