Kitty see, kitty do! What? Have you never seen a woman dancing with her cat before? -via Daily PIcks and Flicks
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
Pumpkins are quite useful as both baking dishes and serving dishes, if you don't mind a little pumpkin flavor in your recipe. They come in all sizes, and are quite impressive to your guests! Check out this list of 21 different things you can eat out of a pumpkin at Buzzfeed, with links to recipes from all over. Shown here is a pumpkin filled with oatmeal, ready for breakfast! Link
It's always nice to catch a glimpse of VIPs doing things everyday normal people do. This image of Tsar Nicholas II playing airplane made me wonder whether the guy supporting him was really a "friend" or a subject forced to carry him -but the source gallery at Retronaut labels him as a fellow royal. Other celebrities in the list at Flavorwire include Albert Einstein, Joe Stalin, Richard Nixon, Franklin Roosevelt, and more. Link
There are many stop-motion video of pumpkins carving themselves, but this one has a twist. Five years after we first posted this video, it still makes me smile.
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
What is the "7" in 7UP? We'll never know for sure. The soft drink's creator, Charles Leiper Grigg, went to the grave without ever revealing where he got the name. But there several interesting rumors regarding its origin.
When Grigg introduced his drink in October 1929, it had neither a "7" nor an "UP" in its name. He called it "Bib-label Lithiated Lemon-lime Soda." Imagine trying to order that bad boy from a Taco Bell drive-through! Bib-label Lithiated Lemon-lime Soda is perhaps the single worst name for a soft drink in soda history. How did he come up with this extraordinarily crummy name?
"Bib-label" referred to the use of paper labels that were placed on plain bottles. The "Lithiated" related to the mind-altering drug lithium. No kidding.
Besides having a very bizarre name, Grigg's concoction hit stores just two weeks before the 1929 stock market crash. It also faced competition from about 600 other lemon-lime sodas. Despite all of these daunting factors, the new drink actually sold pretty well. Chalk it up to the cool, refreshing taste of lithium.
But even with its success, Griggs soon realized that Bib-label Lithiated Lemon-lime Soda was a little tricky to remember (you think?) or maybe he just got sick of saying it himself. Griggs changed the name of his drink to "7UP."
Here's the most persuasive (and logical) explanation for the name: The "7" refers to the drink's seven ingredients, and the "UP" has to do with the soda's rising bubbles. This version is supported by an early 7UP tagline: "Seven natural flavors blended into a savory, flavory drink with a real wallop."
The seven ingredients were carbonated water, sugar, citric acid, lithium citrate, sodium citrate, and essences of lemon and lime oils (technically two ingredients).
Of course, it's entirely possible that as executives devised the ingredients angle to fit the name rather than vice-versa. There are other possible origins, but these theories range from the unlikely to the preposterous. These include:
* Griggs saw a cattle brand that looked like 7UP.
* Griggs was rooting for a seven in a game of craps he was playing in .
* The original 7UP bottle held seven ounces.
* "Seven Up" contains seven letters.
It's quite possible that the "7" refers to nothing at all -Griggs may have simply devised the name to stir up people's interest. In any case, the new name seemed to work okay.
But 1940, 7UP had become the third most popular and best-selling drink in the world. And even when the delicious lithium was dropped from the recipe in 1950, the drink remained a hit.
Is 7UP an aphrodisiac? Remember Wilt Chamberlain, the great basketball player who claimed he had made love to 20,000 women in his lifetime? Well, Wilt the Stilt's favorite drink was 7UP. According to Wilt, "I used to drink the stuff all the time."
Hmmm...
The highest possible credit score is 850. But apparently, no one ever gets that score. Tom Pavelka of Westlake, Ohio, recently was congratulated by a credit bureaus for having a credit score of 848, which "ranks higher than 100 percent of U.S. consumers." How did he do it?
He has a few simple rules:
1. Never charge something without having something to show for it.
2. Never spend money without knowing when you can repay it.
3. Pay your bills on time.
You might think you have to have no debt to have a really high credit score, but that's not true. Credit scores are formed in part based on your payment history. If you never have debt, you have no track record for repaying it.
In fact, the Pavelkas have a mortgage (with four years left,) an equity line that he usually uses to buy cars and then pays off, four credit cards with amounts due this month (they pay the bills in full each month) and a total of eight credit cards with available credit exceeding $120,000.
But here's what might be the biggest factor in building such a reputation for financial responsibility: the Pavelkas have no children. Link -via Consumerist
(Image credit: Gus Chan/The Plain Dealer)
A hundred years ago, the state of medical knowledge was a bit thin by our standards, but it was much better than what came before. A list at Cracked makes us glad to live in the time we do, despite the price of health insurance. You are probably familiar with some of the frightening treatments on the list, but some may be new to you, like the practice of stuffing balls into a person's lung. I am not making this up.
It was a procedure called plombage, which was the process of collapsing a person's lungs with acrylic balls to allow them to "rest" and heal the lesions caused by tuberculosis. The drawback to this therapy was that sometimes the balls were never taken back out, which led to infection, sepsis and other serious complications related to having your lung tissue inundated with balls made of the same material used to craft RuPaul's fingernails.
There are other treatments that are illustrated with pictures that may be disturbing. Link
(Image credit: New England Journal of Medicine)
Yes, it's a song about Nintendo video games set to the tune of "Bohemian Rhapsody." It get exceedingly silly in parts. By Pat The NES Punk and Brentalfloss. -via Daily of the Day
Geeks love "Gangnam Style!" The MIT Korean Students Association dances all over campus, along with just about every other student organization, with special appearances by professors Donald Sadoway, Eric Lander, and Noam Chomsky. Oppa Chomsky Style! -via Metafilter
Office employees at an animal shelter in Swinoujscie, Poland, were noticing small amounts of money and supplies missing over the past year. All staff members were under suspicion, but a hidden camera revealed the true culprit: a cat named Clement.
After 200 GBP had gone missing in a month, managers set up the secret camera and left banknotes on the desk to see who would be tempted
The film showed two-year-old Clement - one of the centre's rescue cats - sneaking into the office at midnight and making straight for the cash.
"When we watched the video we saw Clement jump up on the desk and pick up the money in her mouth," said Alina.
Following clues from the video, they looked under the sofa and found all the missing money. They suspect Clement left no clues behind because she always wears white gloves. Link -via Arbroath, where you can see a video report.
Oy, I'm been so busy blogging about Halloween that I haven't even bought candy yet, and we will need tons of it on trick-or-treat night. You see many posts this time of year about the best and worst treats, always written from the perspective of a trick-or-treater. Well, take it from a jaded parent, we don't buy treats to please trick-or-treaters. We buy treats to make them go away. And the more I must buy, the cheaper the candy will be.
We had a lot of Halloween fun this week here at Neatorama! If you've only browsed the main page lately, you're missing out on a lot of great Halloween costumes, recipes, artwork, and funny and scary videos you'll find by looking through the Neatorama Halloween blog. And we had some marvelous exclusive features.
Jill Harness gave us 20 Amazing and Geeky Matching Parent/Child Halloween Costumes and also a bunch of Stories and Photos From A Variety of Halloween Weddings.
John Farrier wrote Borg Floppy Disk Drives and Other Facts You Might Not Know about Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Our pop culture historian Eddie Deezen brought us The Story of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" and The Final Marx Brothers Film Appearance: The Story of Mankind.
Nation Geographic provided us with lovely pictures illustrating The Escape Velocity of Emperor Penguins, posted in large size at the Neatorama Spotlight blog.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader told us A Real-Life Ghost Story. It was even written up in a medical journal!
And mental_floss books provided us with the background on some Evil Creatures.
Over at NeatoBambino, we have extra stuff about babies and kids, including a video of a teenager who bought a junker Fiero with babysitting money and is rebuilding it herself- even though she's still too young to drive!
The Neatorama Book Excerpts continue! We had two this week, to give you a taste of something you may want to read the rest of. First was Wonderful Life with the Elements by Bunpei Yorifuji. We gave away a copy of the book to Kanga, drawn randomly from possibly the most erudite comment thread we've ever had. Congratulations, Kanga!
We also showed you some neat artworks from Hello Kitty Hello Art! by Roger Gastman. You still have time to leave a comment at the excerpt post so you can win a copy of the book.
In the What Is It? game this week, the pictured object is a Scandinavian nutcracker. The first with the correct answer was Anker, who wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The funniest answer came from Thom1, who guessed it to be a steampunk Pac-Man! So Thom1 also wins a t-shirt. Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to everyone who played this week! Also thanks to the What Is It? blog for providing us with this contest. See the answers to all this week's mystery items at the What Is It? blog.
Is your foot in proportion to the rest of your body? Find out with this week's Drawn to Facts. Catch another illustrated fact every weekend, and browse the Drawn to Facts archives for more.
The posts with the most comments this week (outside of the three giveaways) were:
1. Book Bench
2. 11 Brain-Twisting Paradoxes
3. America's New Fastest Road
4. Can Men and Women Be "Just Friends"?
This list is to make it easy for you to join in those interesting discussions today.
Remember, Neatorama has recently joined Instagram and Flipboard, so there's two new places to interact in addition to Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. See you there! Oh yeah, and
This scarecrow would scare off not only crows, but also children, monsters, and small planes! I don't know who made this scarecrow or where it was (the picture is at least three years old), but he did an awesome job building it. Link
The Ghostbusters will be well represented at your Halloween party with popcorn slimed up with tasty green ectoplasm! Don't be afraid to eat it; it's made of white chocolate and cream. Read how to make your own with instructions from Suzie the Foodie. Link -via Laughing Squid
Another Halloween movie? That's great, because this time, Mike Myers is playing the role of Michael Myers! Schwing! Groovy, baby! It had to happen sooner or later (I thought it was happening when I heard Mike Myers was doing a movie called So I Married an Axe Murderer) and Screen Junkies made it happen. Link
Coulrophobics, you don't have to worry about running into clowns this weekend, because they are all at a convention. The 17th International Clown Convention began Wednesday in Mexico City.
They gathered at Mexico City's Mother's Monument and then set about laughing and guffawing for a full 15 minutes, hoping that a world with more laughter will have less time for violence.
"We held 'laugh for peace' to speak out against violent conflicts, especially the internal conflicts in Mexico. We don't want violence, and we hope we can make more people love peace and learn to smile more often," said Llantom, Chairman of the Mexico Clown Association.
What do you want to bet they all arrived in one car? Link -via Fark
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