Chances are that you've never heard the names of any of the ten nurses on this list. But they all have stories of devotion and sacrifice, and they all deserve to be remembered. For example, Elsa Brandstrom was nicknamed "The Angel of Siberia." The daughter of the Swedish ambassador to Russia, she volunteered her services at the outbreak of World War I.

In 1915, Brandstrom was in Siberia treating German prisoners of war with the Swedish Red Cross. Matters got more complicated when her Russian work permit was revoked, but that didn’t stop her. Brandstrom continued traveling to Siberia illegally for two whole years, until the Russian authorities arrested her in Omsk in 1920.

Upon her release, she went back to Sweden and launched a campaign to help POWs. Her efforts included fundraising and founding a children’s home with room for more than 200 orphans. Eventually, she married and moved to the United States. But even there she dedicated herself to helping German and Austrian refugees.

And she is just one of ten heroic nurses on the list. Link -via the Presurfer

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Chef Jon of Food Wishes tells us the secret of looking like a competent chef, even if you aren't. Don't let my kids see this video, they'll be flipping food all over the kitchen practicing this! Link -via Viral Viral Videos 

In places where malaria is rampant, a common defense is to sleep under a insecticide-laden mosquito net. The nocturnal mosquito of the genus Anopheles can't penetrate the netting, and will die from the insecticide if they try. But malaria rates did not plummet as expected. Did the bed nets fail? No, the mosquitos changed -they stopped being strictly nocturnal and started feeding at dawn, after their human buffets got out of bed!

First, we don’t know yet if this was an evolutionary (i.e., genetic) change or a purely behavioral change. It is possible that there was quite a lot of genetic variation in timing of activity in the population a few years ago and that the bed nets provided a selective regimen that skewed the population to consist mainly of late night and dawn-active individuals. It is also possible that there is sufficient behavioral plasticity in the mosquito allowing it to learn the new best time of day to go out foraging. I’d love to see the mosquitoes placed in isolation chambers to monitor purely genetic patterns of circadian rhythms of activity.

If the change is genetic, meaning the circadian rhythm is inborn and the adaptive behavior is passed to future generations, malarial mosquitos may be much harder to defend against. If this is a learned behavior, well, we have a ready-made horror movie plot. How scary are mosquitos that can learn? Link -via Ed Yong

When I first saw this picture, I assumed someone in the neighborhood who had suspicions wrote this on a parked truck. But according to WBIR, this truck was stopped by police in Memphis. Someone was actually driving it with "METH LAB" written on the windows!

After being stopped for a license plate violation early Friday morning, the driver was arrested for outstanding warrants and other meth-related charges.

The meth cooker in the truck was removed by a hazmat crew. Link -via reddit

The following is an article from the book Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.

Everybody thinks Queen Isabella was so great, financing Christopher Columbus' voyages and all. But there's a darker side to her story.

When Isabella came to power in 1479, the Spanish region was at war with itself, a bunch of tiny kingdoms jockeying for position. By the end of her reign, Spain was united and becoming a global power. But it wasn't all good.

FIGHTING HER WAY TO THE TOP

Princess Isabella was the daughter of King John II of Castile, but she was a long way down on the royal ladder. For one thing, there was a little problem called the Sallic Law that prevented any woman from ascending the Castillian throne. But when her two brothers died off (one under suspicious circumstances) Isabella stepped up to the plate.

She'd already secretly merried Ferdinand of Aragon; their first task was to unite his Aragon and her Castile under their absolute rule. The queen kept the nobles firmly under her thumb and chose royal officials who were university-educated. A student and a great reader, Isabella created a government based on brains rather than birth.

PUTTING SPAIN ON THE MAP

With the domestric home front in hand, the royals looked south where Granada was still ruled by Islamic Moors. Under the banner of a Christian Crusade, the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella took Granada from the Moors in 1492. The country of Spain was united. Isabella was now free to make the shrewdest of all her decisions.

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The Apple Sisters meet the Handsome Coffee Roasters in this flirty retro musical ad. It sure makes me want a "hot" cup of coffee! -via Daily of the Day

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These modern irritations sound completely ridiculous in a different context. This video was produced by The Gift of Water as part of their series about first world problems. The videos bring attention to Water Is Life, an organization dedicated to bringing a safe water supply to everyone. Link

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Norwegians Fridtjof StensÆth Josefsen and Jakob SchØyen Andersen brag about how their alphabet is bigger than the one we use in the U.S. The song is catchy, but a few lyrics are NSFW. -via Metafilter

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Oh sure, you've heard the joke quite a few times after the game Battleship was made into a feature film. The trailer here is a joke, from Film School Rejects. But the Hungry Hungry Hippos movie is really supposed to happen.

Hasbro, the company behind the hits "Transformers" and "G.I. Joe" and the flop "Battleship," has signed a deal with independent production and finance company Emmett/Furla Films to make movies based on the board games Hungry Hungry Hippos and Monopoly and the toy Action Man.

Rhode Island-headquartered Hasbro, which has a film production office at the Universal Pictures lot, announced the three-picture deal Thursday and confirmed that the first movie will be "Monopoly," which the two companies hope to start production on in 2013.

Monopoly, under producer Ridley Scott, was already in development at Universal and will continue with Emmett/Furla Films as co-producer. Link -via Buzzfeed

Yeah, that's pretty much a question you known the answer to: no, and not many of them ever did. But the cliche came from somewhere, and Slate explains.

Before Communists, the first “card-carrying” groups tended to be members of labor unions, and often members used the cards openly to claim union jobs. Perhaps the earliest  mention of “card-carrying” union members came in a 1912 Daily People article, which described how “ ‘Union-card’ carrying members” of certain labor unions were occasionally able to get elected to Congress. A 1918 New York Tribune article described members of the Industrial Workers of the World as “red-card-carrying ‘wobblies,’ ” referring to the members by their popular nickname and red membership cards. In 1927, all “card-carrying members” of the secret organization United Farmers reportedly received discounts from local merchants.

Read the rest of the article to learn how the phrase became linked to Communists of the Red Scare. Link -via mental_floss

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About two dozen ducks had reached adulthood without ever having the opportunity to swim. They (along with 100 other birds) were confiscated from an animal hoarder by the Ulster County SPCA and lodged with Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. Of course, the flock was apprehensive about going into the water at first, but once one of them decided it was fun, the rest soon did as well. Read the whole story at the sanctuary site. Link -via Daily of the Day

Did you happen to go see Star Wars on its opening weekend in San Francisco in 1977? Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle found and posted photos of the crowds at the Coronet Theater waiting to see the new film Star Wars, and he wants to find those folks. Even if you weren't there, you'll want to see the pictures. Oh, and you'll definitely get a kick out of the newspaper ads for the movie -one describes Darth Vader as a metallic star creature. Link -via Laughing Squid

Hi Neatoramanauts! Ain't October great? It's the internet's fun time month, in which we get to wallow in horror and cosplay and zombies to our heart's content. But the other October holiday us this week. We Americans of a certain age grew up generation after generation hearing "Columbus discovered America." That's where our American history classes started. But that statement is not only wildly ethnocentric, it's untrue. Some places instead call the holiday Discoverer's Day, Native American Day, or Indigenous People's Day. Plus, Columbus landed on October 12th, but we take a day off on October 8th, or whatever the nearest Monday is. And that also happens to be Canadian Thanksgiving Day. So if you're not celebrating Columbus Day, you can join me in being thankful for Canadians. Meanwhile, let's take a look at some of the things that went on this week at Neatorama.

Jill Harness wrote about Tim Burton's new movie in Feed My Frankenweenie. She also contributed the article 10 of Weirdest World Championships Around.

Eddie Deezen told us about Harpo, The Silent Marx Brother and also The Secret of Humphrey Bogart's Distinctive Voice.

Zeon Santos collected Halloween Costumes From Yesteryear, and presented the collection on our Halloween blog.

David Israel wrote 10 Landmark Moments in Animation History, which came to us by way of mental_floss magazine.

How to Write a Scientific Research Report was reposted from the Annals of Improbable Research. Don't miss the "English translation" link at the end.

And Uncle John's Bathroom reader gave us Why There's So Much Sand in the Sahara.

In this week's What Is It? game, the pictured object is an exact replica demonstration model of the original Telstar satellite, launched in 1962. The real satellite was only about twice as big. Craig Clayton knew that, and wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The funniest answer came from The Professor, who won a t-shirt when he said, "This is the Death Star's lesser known cousin, the Mildly-Irritating Toothache Star." There were a lot of other great guesses; you should read them all. See the answers to all this week's mystery items at the What Is It? blog. And thanks for playing along!

Over at the Neatorama Halloween blog, we found recipes for Monster Boogers, Meatloaf Hand, and Peanut Butter Eyeballs. We saw how one guy decorated his home with real giant spiders. And, of course, there were awesome ideas for and pictures of Halloween costumes for adults, kids, and pets. You should check out the Halloween blog every day!

The post with the most comments this week was Skull Bone Transplanted Twice, followed by Want to Encourage Cycling? Forget about Helmets. We welcome your contributions, and comments are the easiest way for us to find out what you want to see here. But you can also communicate your approval simply by clicking the ♥ at the top of posts you like.

If you see something we should know about, something really neat, tell us about it by emailing tips@neatorama.com and you might see it posted here real soon! Also, have you checked out all the new Halloween costumes, party supplies, and home decor items at the NeatoShop? You don't want to miss out on what you've been looking for!

Happy Thanksgiving to all Canadian Neatoramanauts!

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You've seen the Useless Machine here before, more than once. But what if you hooked two of them together? It's been done, but this is an extensive video clip from the folks who make the machines. No, you don't have to watch the whole eleven minutes if you don't want. There are technical difficulties at about 8:30 and 9:30, but they were worked out. No word on how long the batteries lasted. -via Boing Boing

Is this the coolest-looking dog ever or what? Baffy is a bomb-sniffing dog, posted to reddit by his fellow soldier guynamedgriffin. He tells us Baffy came to him already named, so he doesn't know the reason behind it, and that Baffy has already identified about 45 bombs. He also says:

Yes the terrain can be rugged at times, so the boots protect his paws, they also help when he is kicking ass.

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