Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss will test your familiarity with city nicknames. If you're lucky, your city will be one of the ten! If you're unlucky, you'll score 30% like I did. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/46899

Michael R. Barrick created a graphic last summer using the Vancouver Olympics mascots and the internet cartoon character Pedobear. The image shows up in a Google image search for the mascots, so it was only a matter of time before someone used it without knowing that Pedobear is not an Olympic mascot. The graphic showed up this weekend in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Olsztyn. Link

You can get a swine flu vaccination at Walgreens. To advertise that fact, they put stickers on other products, but do they say "vaccine"? No, the stickers just say "H1N1 Available Here", which won't make much sense once you get these products home. Link -via J-Walk Blog

One hundred years ago today, the Prince of Abyssinia visited the British Navy battleship H.M.S. Dreadnought. The prince and his retinue took a tour of the vessel and were accorded diplomatic honors as fitting for visiting royalty. The guests spoke a language the sailors did not understand, but they figured "Bunga Bunga" was a polite greeting because the royal group used it a lot. But this wasn't the prince of Abyssinia! The Navy learned about the hoax when it hit the newspapers.

The next day the Navy was mortified to learn that the party they had escorted around the warship had not been Abyssinian dignitaries at all. Instead it had been a group of young, upper class pranksters who had blackened their faces, donned elaborate theatrical costumes, and then forged an official telegram in order to gain access to the ship. Their ringleader was a man named Horace de Vere Cole, but the entourage also included a young woman called Virginia Stephen who would later be better known as the writer Virginia Woolf.

By February 12 the British newspapers were full of the story of the stunt. "Bunga Bungle!" the Western Daily Mercury trumpeted. For a few days the Navy was the laughingstock of Britain. Sailors were greeted with cries of "Bunga, Bunga" wherever they went. One newspaper suggested that the Dreadnought change its name to the Abyssinian.

Link -via Metafilter

See a larger photograph of the event. Link

Craftster member teriyakimoto made this knitted gas mask for a friend who thought it would be a cool way to stay warm while riding his bike in winter. It is attached to his knit cap by Velcro straps. Link -via Unique Daily

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An Armenian story in Russian with English subtitles. Starring the wildest animated wizard you've ever seen! (via Metafilter)

The game Record Tripping uses only your mouse, and mostly just the scroll wheel. Figure out your goal as you go along, which gets more difficult in the upper levels. The graphics are nice, but you might want to turn the sound down if you find it as distracting as I did. Link -via b3ta

Director Alfred Hitchcock was a busy man. He had a lot of projects going at once, and many had to be abandoned along the way due to inadequate budgets, scheduling conflicts, and other reasons. Mental_floss takes a look at a baker's dozen of those movies that were never completed, such as Flamingo Feather.

In 1956, Hitchcock bought a story called Flamingo Feather from South African author and diplomat Laurens van der Post. The plot involved a Russian scheme to train South Africans for nefarious Communist purposes. When Hitchcock went to South Africa to scout shooting locations, though, the project quickly fell apart. The director wanted Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly as the leads, which would be pricey, and he felt he needed fifty thousand Africans to act as extras. Hitchcock didn’t love the look of the country’s terrain, and it became apparent that even in South Africa it would be tough to get together 50,000 African extras when most of the country’s population worked long hours at farming jobs.

Link

Justin Van Genderen designed a series of five posters of places in the Star Wars universe. They remind me of vintage travel agency posters. See posters featuring Tatooine, Hoth, the Degobah System, and Bespin as well as Endor at Gigantor. http://giagantor.com/2010/02/04/minimal-star-wars-galaxy-posters/ -via Buzzfeed

A weekend trip to Granada, Spain gives us all a look at the Nazrid Palaces of the Alhambra, built in the 14th century by the conquering Moors of North Africa. Considering the history, it's astonishing that these buildings have survived 700 years without significant damage. The Alhambra is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Link -Thanks, Juergen!

(YouTube link)

The secret is out! The internet's favorite Japanese Scottish Fold, Maru, carries a security blanket. I've had several cats that did the same. -via Arbroath

This list of hilarious answers to game show questions proves that American contestants aren't the only ones who fall apart under pressure. Here is a sample:

BEG, BORROW OR STEAL (BBC2)

Jamie Theakston: Where do you think Cambridge University is?

Contestant: Geography isn't my strong point.

Theakston: There's a clue in the title.

Contestant: Leicester.

PHIL WOOD SHOW (BBC GMR)

Wood: What 'K' could be described as the Islamic Bible?

Contestant: Er. . .

Wood: It's got two syllables . . . Kor . . .

Contestant: Blimey?

Wood: Ha ha ha ha, no. The past participle of run . . .

Contestant: (Silence.)

Wood: OK, try it another way. Today I run, yesterday I . . .

Contestant: Walked?

What's doubly funny is how the hosts try their best to help out a clueless contestant. Link -via Bits and Pieces

Mei Lan the panda is on her way to Chengdu, China. She was born at Zoo Atlanta in 2006 under an agreement that all pandas in American zoos belong to China. Today she is being shipped to Washington DC, where she will join Tai Shan, the panda born at the National Zoo. The two will be the only cargo aboard a FedEx 14-hour non-stop flight to China.

After a caravan to the airport and a ride past dozens of waiting photographers, Mei Lan was lifted into the 777 Freighter emblazoned with panda logos. Shortly after 8 a.m., the door was closed, the plane taxied and the flight took off.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed agreed it was fine to be “reflective, or even wistful” about Mei Lan’s departure, but important, too, to remember that she’s a healthy member of an endangered species, and by moving to China, she can help her kind survive. (Reeds advice to her: “be fruitful and multiply.”) Scientists estimate there are about 1,600 Giant Pandas in the wild. About 300 live in captivity, mostly in China.

Three giant pandas remain at the Atlanta Zoo, Mei Lan's parents and an infant. Link -via Metafilter

More on Mei Lan.

More on Tai Shan.

At one time or another, almost everyone dreams about receiving an unexpected inheritance. Maybe you share DNA with a rich person you didn't know about. Maybe an ex has forgiven you for whatever reason you broke up. Maybe a relative has more money to leave than you know of. Or maybe some rich person will pick your name from a phone book and make you a beneficiary. Yeah, right, but... all those things have happened! Shown is former waitress Cara Wood, who received a half-million dollars when a regular customer died. Link -via Look at This

This article at Discover Magazine has nothing to do with the science fiction stories we are so familiar with. Author Sean Carroll looks at time travel as a physicist. He says if time travel were possible (and it might be), there would be no paradox, because we cannot change what has already happened. Ever. Then it gets weird.

Imagine that we have been appointed Guardian of the Gate, and our job is to keep vigilant watch over who passes through. One day, as we are standing off to the side, we see a person walk out of the rear side of the gate, emerging from one day in the future. That’s no surprise; it just means that you will see that person enter the front side of the gate tomorrow. But as you keep watch, you notice that he simply loiters around for one day, and when precisely 24 hours have passed, the traveler walks calmly through the front of the gate. Nobody ever approached from elsewhere. That 24-hour period constitutes the entire life span of this time traveler. He experiences the same thing over and over again, although he doesn’t realize it himself, since he does not accumulate new memories along the way. Every trip through the gate is precisely the same to him. That may strike you as weird or unlikely, but there is nothing paradoxical or logically inconsistent about it.

Link -via Digg

(image credit: Biwa Studios)