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Parts of Australia are seeing the worst flooding in years. In Brisbane, a video crew paddles through a McDonalds outlet in a canoe. The song is "Fish Heads" {wiki} by Barnes and Barnes. -via the Presurfer

Identical twin sisters Amy Gilbert and Allison Oliverio of Clinton, Michigan grew up together, both married their high school sweethearts, went into the same profession, and then became mothers -on the same day!

Dr. Timothy Kim was back and forth delivering both babies.

"They were kind enough to put rooms next to each other, so not so much running. I've been doing this for 12 years and I never heard of twins having a baby on the same day," said Dr. Kim.

Amy gave birth to baby Claire and Allison gave birth to baby Garrett. The sisters both married their high school sweethearts six months apart to the day. They say they didn't plan on getting pregnant at the same

Only time will tell how alike the cousins who share a January 12th birthday will be. http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/region/macomb_county/twin-sisters-give-birth-minutes-apart (with video) -via Arbroath

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Jeremy Woods created a modern title sequence for the 1931 film Frankenstein. I think it works quite well! -Thanks, Jeremy!

Something neat happened just yesterday. I found out that Michael Rousselet, the aspiring screenwriter who figured prominently in the story of The Worst Movie of All Time? is one of the guys behind 5-second Films, which we featured on Neatorama last spring. They produce a new 5-second film every weekday! He wrote to say (among other things):

Wow! I can't thank you enough for that Neatorama article! It is by far the most accurate account I have read of the beginning of the cult movement.

I don't believe this, but is this article actually in a book?

Yes, that would be Uncle John's Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader, the newest in the series. Here's what else happened this week at Neatorama.

Also from the Bathroom Reader, we had a list of Unobtaniums, which are elements, chemicals, and other materials only found in fiction.

Jill Harness brought us Strange Stories Of The World's Most Famous Sleuth, meaning Sherlock Holmes, of course.

From the Annals of Improbable Research, we had the highly improbable article Bodybuilders Have Tiny Testes.

And from our friends at mental_floss magazine, it's a look at "Snake Oils, Hangover Cures, and Other Questionable Medicine" in Hooked on Tonics.

Steven M. Johnson gave us a double dose on Friday, with Missed Opportunities in Bicycle Design? in the Museum of Possibilities, and an article in The New York Times featuring his designs for a new kind of taxi cab.

In the What Is It? game, the scary-looking item is a “A corn husk shredder, it was used for making mattresses” It took 72 guesses before Julia Ross gave us the correct answer! The funniest answer selected was from D.Spencer, who said “It was attached to the inside wall of the outhouse and used to hold the sears and roebuck catalogue so that it wouldn’t blow out when the door was opened on windy days.” Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!

There are more ways to get your Neatorama fix: If you aren't checking our Facebook page every day, you're missing out on extra content, contests, discussions, and links you won't find here. Also, our Twitter feed will keep you updated on what's going around the web in real time. Have a great week!

New York City held a design contest for new taxi cabs and have winnowed the finalists down to three designs, none of which are very exciting, but could make the manufacturer of the eventual winner rather wealthy. However, the city reserves the right to reject all three and start the competition over. Enter Neatorama's own Steven M. Johnson, who quickly supplied several ideas of his own. The taxi pictured is designed to allow bikes to pass easily, without changing lanes! See more of Johnson's taxis in The New York Times. Link to article. Link to slide show.

In the western Greenland coast town of Ilulissat, the sun is scheduled to rise on January 13th after six weeks of darkness. But this year, sunlight was seen coming over the horizon on Monday afternoon- two full days early!

The mysterious sunrise has confused scientists, although it is believed the most likely explanation is that it is down to the lower height of melting icecaps allowing the sun's light to penetrate through earlier.

Thomas Posch, of the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Vienna, said that a local change of the horizon was 'by far the most obvious explanation'.

He said as the ice sinks, so to does the horizon, creating the illusion that the sun has risen early.

So the anomaly apparently has nothing to do with the changing zodiac signs. That's a relief! Link -via The Daily What

When the subject of frivolous lawsuits comes up, someone always mentions the McDonalds hot coffee lawsuit as an example, because the short version sounds so outrageous: a woman sued McDonalds because her coffee was served hot. But the short version doesn't tell us much.

The world’s most infamous cup of coffee spilled on February 27, 1992 in Albuquerque, NM. Stella Liebeck, a 79-year-old grandmother, was a passenger in her grandson’s car when they drove through at a McDonald’s, and after she received her styrofoam cup of joe her grandson pulled the car forward and parked so Liebeck could mix in her cream and sugar. Liebeck braced the cup between her knees, but when she tried to pull off the cup’s lid, the entire cup of coffee spilled into her lap. Although subsequent developments in the courtroom turned Liebeck and her case into objects of derision, it’s worth noting that she actually suffered legitimate injuries from the accident. Liebeck’s sweatpants absorbed the hot coffee and held it next to her skin, which helped lead to third degree burns on six percent of her body. Liebeck ended up spending eight days in the hospital and undergoing skin grafts to counter the effects of the burns.

But that's only the beginning of the story. Liebeck asked McDonalds for $20,000 to cover her medical expenses and lost wages. McDonalds offered $800. That's when the story starts to get complicated. Read the entire account of how a jury decided to award Liebeck $2.9 million when the case went to court (and that's not even the end) at mental_floss. Link

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This girl read the Dr. Seuss book Fox in Socks in 2 minutes, twenty seconds flat! I hope you can keep up. -via reddit

Would you be surprised to find that Nuclear Sludge has been found to contain contaminants that "potentially could cause health problems" if consumed? Maybe you should know that Nuclear Sludge is a variety in the Toxic Waste line of candy!

Circle City Marketing and Distributing doing business as Candy Dynamics, Indianapolis, IN, is issuing a voluntary recall of all Toxic Waste® brand Nuclear Sludge® Chew Bars, all flavors, Net wt. 0.7 oz (20 g) package. The product is imported from Pakistan.

A recent test performed by the California Department of Public Health has indicated that a lot (#8288A) of the cherry flavor of the above-listed product contains elevated levels of lead (0.24 parts per million; the U.S. FDA tolerance is 0.1 ppm) that potentially could cause health problems, particularly for infants, small children, and pregnant women.

Out of an abundance of caution, the company has determined to recall all lots and all flavors of the product distributed from the product's inception in 2007 through January 2011.

http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm240012.htm -Thanks, Mitch B!

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You've seen cats chase a laser light, in real life or in videos. Turkeys will chase one, too, as long as they have appropriate music to accompany them! (via Cynical-C)

I have always placed one space between sentences in the same paragraph. Until I began editing submissions for Neatorama (mainly to correct line breaks for html formatting), I didn't realize so many people placed two (or more) spaces after a period. I also noticed my children used two spaces between sentences in their school work. They said their teachers told them to. How did that habit originate? And who makes the rules for such things?

Typographers, that's who. The people who study and design the typewritten word decided long ago that we should use one space, not two, between sentences. That convention was not arrived at casually. James Felici, author of the The Complete Manual of Typography, points out that the early history of type is one of inconsistent spacing. Hundreds of years ago some typesetters would end sentences with a double space, others would use a single space, and a few renegades would use three or four spaces. Inconsistency reigned in all facets of written communication; there were few conventions regarding spelling, punctuation, character design, and ways to add emphasis to type. But as typesetting became more widespread, its practitioners began to adopt best practices. Felici writes that typesetters in Europe began to settle on a single space around the early 20th century. America followed soon after.

Slate looks at the "type crime" of double spacing. Which convention do you follow when typing? Link -via Buzzfeed

Photographer Catherine Karnow went to Vietnam in 1990 to photograph scenes from that country as it was just opening up to visitors from the west. She spent days on a train traveling toward the mountains of central Vietnam.

I came upon a young mother with her children. My translator friend was not with me, so I had to gesture my request for permission to photograph her. She nodded smiling. As the train started to pick up speed as it descended the mountain, we finally felt the first breeze in days. I leaned way out the window to get the right angle, and we were all laughing, feeling the joy of the freefall. Afterwards I gave the children a box of crayons and promised to send photos to the mom.

Somehow I lost her address and was never able to send her any of the photos. One especially exuberant shot became quite a famous image. It is published all the time, and has even been on the Lonely Planet Guide to Vietnam for years. I've always wondered what happened to that beautiful woman and her children and wished I could share the success of the photo with her.

All these years later, we have Facebook with which to find old friends. Read how Karnow reconnected with the woman she photographed twenty years earlier at National Geographic Traveler. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!

(Image credit: Catherine Karnow)

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The Martin Guitar Company marked the milestone of its 1.5 millionth guitar produced by making it a one-of-a-kind Leonardo Da Vinci special edition -with a mosaic inlays of The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa and other reproductions of Da Vinci art. The company unveiled the guitar at the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) show in Anaheim. -Thanks, Stratoblogster!

Dr. Chevalier Jackson was a laryngologist who spent a good deal of his career retrieving objects that his patients swallowed or inhaled. And he kept them all. He retired with a collection of over 2,000 bizarre items that had once been inside his patients.

Jackson retrieved these objects from people’s upper torsos, generally with little or no anesthesia. He was so intent on assembling his collection that he once refused to return a swallowed quarter, even when its owner threatened his life.

“He was a fetishist, no question,” said Mary Cappello, the author of “Swallow” (New Press), a new book about Jackson and his bizarre collection. “But his obsession had the effect of saving lives. That’s kind of amazing, and lucky for us that his madness made possible forms of rescue.”

The collection is set to go on display at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia on February 18th. Link -via Bioephemera

Etsy seller Out of the Pink Sky makes jewelry, most notable these catbutt earrings. There are catbutt earrings available in other colors, too. Link -via Buzzfeed