They fell, alright, like dominoes! Oh yeah, these dinosaurs ARE dominoes, stacked with care by Flippycat. Two weeks to stack, mere seconds to see them come tumbling down. -via The Daily What
Previously: More domino works from Flippycat
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
In 1947, the British South American Airways plane Star Dust took off from Buenos Aires, Argentina, with eleven people aboard, destined for Santiago, Chile. But it never arrived.
The passenger list certainly does its part to set the stage for conspiracy theories: A Palestinian returning to Chile from visiting a dying relative, two British businessmen, a high-ranking associate from the Dunlop tire company, a British civil servant delivering important documents to an embassy, and a German-born Chilean resident who had been stranded in Germany during the war.
The flight departed Buenos Aires at 1:46 p.m. on August 2nd, headed over the Andes mountains. Before the airliner’s disappearance, the flight was uneventful. The final transmission from the Star Dust to Santiago’s airport was a Morse code transcription, S-T-E-N-D-E-C, the meaning of which has been debated by experts since 1947. Santiago’s Morse operator asked for clarification, and twice more S-T-E-N-D-E-C came through the wire.
There are many interpretations of the meaning; one hypothesis is that STENDEC was an acronym (Starting En-Route Descent or Severe Turbulence Encountered Now Descending Emergency Crash-landing). Others suggest perhaps the Santiago Morse operator misheard and thus mis-transcribed the code. Still others point out that STENDEC is an anagram of DESCENT. To this day, no one can definitively say what the Star Dust’s Morse operator was intending to say. What is known, is that the Star Dust would not be heard from again.
A search turned up no clue as to what happened to the Star Dust. In fact, it was a half-century before any wreckage was found at all. Read the story of the the Star Dust and how the mystery was solved fifty years later, at Sometimes Interesting. Link
Insects with visible human skeletons do insect things in the unsettling animation Hominid, based on the series of photo composites by Brian Andrews under the same title. Link -via Daily of the Day
Former Idaho beauty queen Jamie Hilton suffered brain swelling after a devastating fall in June. Doctors removed a large chunk of her skull to allow the swelling to heal, then replaced it a few weeks later. In the meantime, where did they store the skull? In her abdomen.
Doctors removed 25 percent of her skull and surgically zipped it into her stomach, where it would remain as her brain swelling subsided.
"It was pretty shocking," laughed Hilton. "I didn't know they did that."
The mother of three was in a medically induced coma for several days, then woke to find her head shaved and stitched shut, a protrusion in her stomach.
"There was just this bulge," she said. And her head "was Frankenstein-style."
Hilton is recovering well, and has chronicled her ordeal on her blog. The family did not have health insurance when Hilton was injured. Link to story. Link to Hilton's blog. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Jamie L. Hilton/Mrs. Idaho)
Remember the 2006 World Cup, when the whole world was watching France play Italy for the championship, and French player Zinedine Zidane drove his head right into Italy's Marco Materazzi? It's the lasting image of all that year's matches, and was made into countless internet memes. Italy won the World Cup and Zidane retired from soccer.
So it might come as some surprise that the evening's painful, defining moment has now been cast in bronze outside the Pompidou Center, the city's modern art museum. But there it is, 15 feet high, towering over passersby: Zizou lowering his forehead into Marco Materazzi's chest; the Italian defender leaping back like he has touched an electric fence.
The Paris statue was created by Algerian sculptor Adel Abdessemed. Link -via Kottke
Sharks, vampire bats, crocodiles: the stuff of horror movies. Yes, these animals can kill you, but medical science is turning lemons into lemonade, so to speak. For example, the venom of a cobra:
Well, scientists think that part of what makes venom so nasty is that it suppresses the body's ability to fight back by hampering the immune system's normal healing process. So if you had a disease caused by an overactive immune system, a chemical that slows it down would be the proverbial vigilante crime fighter keeping a corrupt police department in check. This may be why in India cobra venom is considered an arthritis cure -- arthritis is caused by the body's own immune system keeping the sufferer's joints chronically inflamed.
So then you start looking at other even more horrible diseases, like multiple sclerosis and HIV -- both of which involve royal cock-ups in the immune system.
Read about five such terrors from nature at Cracked. Link -via Gorilla Mask
(Image credit: Flickr user Greg Younger)
Brothers Bailey Leonard and Meyers Leonard grew up close, especially after their father died. Bailey joined the Marine Corps. Meyers grew a foot taller and became a basketball player. What you see here is older brother Bailey coming home from Afghanistan. The younger Leonard now plays for the Portland Trailblazers. Read more about his family's story at ESPN. Link -via Viral Videos
Avery Ellis' cat has some trust issues. Watch the video first, then highlight the blank area for a comment from the YouTube page that will make you feel a bit better about this.
yeah, i had just come from the set of my drummer's movie "interplanetary" (there's a temp trailor in my faves) in which i was a character who died and instead of washing it off on set, i drove home with it... freaked a few other drivers out!
-via Arbroath
Doctor Who fans know how terrifying the Weeping Angel is, and what an awesome Halloween costume it would be. Download and print your own mask! Link -via The Daily What Geek
This is what you call a scary ghost story! By Brinny at Brinney Art. Link -via Irene's Internet
Have you ever wondered what the a bowling alley looks like in those areas not open to the public? Redditor Kiowa707 is a student mechanic who works at a bowling alley, keeping the pinsetters functioning. He posted a series of pictures to show us what is back there behind the scenes. Link
Choose your fashion carefully! I'm no hipster, but maybe this is where Spandex may come in handy. From Sticky Comics, by Christiann MacAuley. Link
Remember when this microwave with a computer was launched? They said it would be handy for looking up recipes! The thing is -who needs a recipe to use a microwave? And the computers we already were using were fully capable of looking up recipes. This is just one example from a list at Gizmodo of gadgets that crashed and burned because they were redundant, poorly designed, or just plain silly. Link -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: Fabian Bimmer/AP)
Flood Fill is a simple game that gets maddeningly difficult as soon as you think you've got the hang of it. The point is to assign colors to a grid and not have any color blocks touch the same color. Good luck! Link -via mentalfloss
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