Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

In 1967, the Beatles filmed their only made-for-TV movie. It was called Magical Mystery Tour. The film itself is an interesting, checkered, odd little movie directed and edited by the Beatles themselves. It was, basically, the boys riding around in the country on a Magical Mystery Tour bus with an eclectic group of characters. They just rode around and filmed whatever random adventures they got into.

It also features a few sketches written by the Beatles themselves. It is a crazy quilt pastiche, but it does feature some excellent pre-MTV Beatles videos, including John singing "I am the Walrus" and George singing "Blue Jay Way." The film was a huge flop when it was first shown on TV -the Beatles first unqualified failure.

Five days before the showing of Magical Mystery Tour on December 21, 1967, the Beatles had their annual holiday party. The Beatles always had a Christmas party, but in 1967, it was John Lennon who suggested a Magical Mystery Tour party instead. The Beatles readily agreed.

The Beatles, their wives (and Paul's current girlfriend, Jane Asher), the staff of their Apple organization, various friends and family members attended. The invitation read "Magical Mystery Tour Fancy Dress Party." In other words, it was a costume party.

The February 1970 issue of Circus magazine -which I probably bought at the local newsstand- asks the burning question of twenty musicians: Will They Survive the 70s? Four of them did not, and two did not even survive the year 1970. However, most of them are still with us -and still performing- 42 years later. Link -via Nag on the Lake

When fat cat Tiny came to live at the Fredericton SPCA in New Brunswick, California, Canada, he weighed over 30 pounds. That was in December. Nine months later, Tiny has last over a third of his weight! Yesterday's weigh-in had the cat at 19 pound and 11 ounces. See a series of photographs showing the shrinking but healthy Tiny at Buzzfeed. Link | Tiny's Weight Loss Challenge Facebook Page

This contraption was spotted last weekend in Shoreditch, London, England. The mecha-art vehicle was created by artist Alex ‘Wreckage’ Wright. You can see a video of people examining it at Obvious Winner. Link -via The Daily What

While truth is stranger than fiction, it can also be ridiculous. Some of the strangest premises for comedies came from actual stories, like the film It Could Happen to You.

Originally titled “Cop Tips Waitress $2M,” in the style of the New York tabloids that became fascinated by the tale, Andrew Bergman’s 1994 romantic comedy was based on the story of Robert Cunningham and Phyllis Penzo, a cop and waitress (respectively) who split a New York lotto prize after cop Cunningham gave waitress Penzo half of his ticket in lieu of a tip. In the movie, that act is the first step towards a tender romance between the pair. In real life, not so much; both parties were happily married and stayed that way, telling Entertainment Weekly, “Except for the part about us winning, it’s totally fiction.”

Comedies have been made from serious news as well, like Arsenic and Old Lace. Read about ten comedy films based (sometimes very loosely) on true stories at Flavorwire. Link 

Marcus Banwell learned the hard way that if you steal hot peppers, you should wait until you are away from the store before you eat them. Banwell had apparently ingested at least one Scotch Bonnet pepper from the Singh Store in Bristol, England. The store owner heard a commotion as Barnwell doubled over and became sick from the fiery food.

Prosecutor May Li said when officers searched Banwell they found another four chilli peppers in his pocket, a stolen milkshake and fruit juice, and a clarinet stashed in his waistband, which was missing from a music shop.

The heat of a chilli pepper is measured using the Scoville scale.

The Scotch Bonnet, also known as Boabs Bonnet or Caribbean red pepper, is named for its resemblance to a Tam O'Shanter hat. Most Scotch Bonnets have a heat rating of 100,000 to 350,000 Scoville units. This compares to the rating of most jalapeño peppers, which is 2,500 to 8,000.

A small amount of drugs was also found. Banwell was sentenced to 14 weeks incarceration. Link -via Arbroath

You've read about funny college sports mascots, but have you ever seen a purple cow? Meet Ephelia, the Williams College purple cow. Back in 1865, two young women at Williams College in Massachusetts wanted to make sure that the school's baseball team had an official team color before they faced Harvard in the intercollegiate champion series. They bought purple ribbons for the team, which won the title. One of the young women went on to be Lady Randolph Spencer Churchill, the mother of Winston Churchill.

As for the cow, that's still a bit of a mystery. One theory has it that when dairy cows grazed ay sunset in a valley not far from the college, they took on a purplish tinge from the nearby Berkshire Mountains. The name Ephelia was selected in a contest sponsored by a local radio station in 1952.

There are plenty of other interesting stories behind this list of 10 strange mascots. Link -via the Presurfer

(YouTube link)

Adande Thorne, also known as Swoozie has another in his series of stories from the world of Disney employment. I could have sworn that we posted the first video at Neatorama, but I can't find it now, so continue reading for the earlier videos in the series.

Once again, it's time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog! Do you know what the object in this picture is? You can win even if you don't know!

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will each win a T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

Check out the What Is It? Blog for more clues. Good luck!

Update: the little hatchet-looking thing is actually a cigar box opener. The notch is for removing nails. The first commenter who knew that was just a guess, who wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The real clue was at the What Is It? blog, where you'd read that it was only a few inches long. The funniest answer was from GlenW, who said, "Years after George Washington became famous for chopping down that cherry tree his less known cousin Hank started making and selling these as souvenirs to tourists at The White House during Washington's presidency." For that, he also wins a t-shirt! Find out the answers to all the mystery items of the week at the What Is It? blog, and stay tuned for the next What Is It? game at Neatorama.

Canadian comedian Stewart Francis won the top prize for the funniest joke at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Do you want to hear the joke?

"You know who really gives kids a bad name? Posh and Becks."

Don't get it? I didn't, either. "Posh and Becks" sounds like a brand, like "Abercrombie and Fitch" but them someone said it was Posh Spice and David Beckham (Posh Spice isn't her real name; if it was, that would be funny).

Still don't get it? I didn't, either. Turns out that the Beckhams have four children, which they named Brooklyn Joseph, Romeo James, Cruz David, and Harper Seven.

Yeah, still don't get it? See, in Britain, those are considered bad names. In America, they are barely notable among the odd names we have. Strange how some jokes just don't travel well. Anyway, the rest of the top ten funniest jokes are listed at the Telegraph. Link

Kumbhalgarh, the second longest wall on earth, can be found in the state of Rajasthan in western India. The 36-kilometer wall was built beginning with the rule of Rana Kumbha in the year 1443. Read about the history of the wall and see more gorgeous pictures at Kuriositas. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Benjamin Vander Steen)

It's not clear whether this store display is aimed toward parents or college students, but it must have been a deliberate joke. This picture is from a compilation of funny back to school signs that include, but are not limited to, hilarious educational misspellings. Link -via Buzzfeed

How much do you know about the pallet, that "humble construction of wood joists and planks"? Unless you are a manufacturer, shipper, supplier, retailer, or logistics worker, you probably don't know much about them. But as a consumer, you depend on pallets more than you know.

As one German article, translated via Google, put it: “How exciting can such a pile of boards be?”

And yet pallets are arguably as integral to globalization as containers. For an invisible object, they are everywhere: There are said to be billions circulating through global supply chain (2 billion in the United States alone). Some 80 percent of all U.S. commerce is carried on pallets. So widespread is their use that they account for, according to one estimate, more than 46 percent of total U.S. hardwood lumber production.

Companies like Ikea have literally designed products around pallets: Its “Bang” mug, notes Colin White in his book Strategic Management, has had three redesigns, each done not for aesthetics but to ensure that more mugs would fit on a pallet (not to mention in a customer’s cupboard). After the changes, it was possible to fit 2,204 mugs on a pallet, rather than the original 864, which created a 60 percent reduction in shipping costs. There is a whole science of “pallet cube optimization,” a kind of Tetris for packaging; and an associated engineering, filled with analyses of “pallet overhang” (stacking cartons so they hang over the edge of the pallet, resulting in losses of carton strength) and efforts to reduce “pallet gaps” (too much spacing between deckboards). The “pallet loading problem,”—or the question of how to fit the most boxes onto a single pallet—is a common operations research thought exercise.

Once you're convinced of how crucial the pallet is for global and even local trade, read how the humble pallet came about, and how it came to be so important. Link -via Boing Boing

(Illustration credit: Robert Neubecker)

The Mississippi River has been providing water, transportation, and blues songs to us for hundreds of years. The river was essential in building trade, agriculture, and settlements in the United States. And it continues to be crucial in ways we rarely think about. In combination with the Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi, it's the fourth longest river on Earth. Learn more about the mighty Missisippi at Environmental Graffiti. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Michael Hicks)

(YouTube link)

One of the first questions a pediatrician asks a new patient's family is "Do you have a trampoline?" along with "Do you always use proper child restraints in the car?" Here you see a few of the horrible things that can happen when you jump on a trampoline -and these clips don't include people who were seriously injured. -via Videogum