S.A. Williams built a miniature car for his son Bobbi that proved to be so popular, William's friends encouraged him to market a full-size model. There was quite a market for automobiles after World War II, so Williams hired consultants and designers to produce a $500 car that would travel 50 miles on a gallon of gas. The Bobbi-Kar's odd look was the result of form following function. Its component design meant it could be taken apart and reassembled as needed.

Production models were to be equipped with lightweight plastic body panels in various colors mounted to an inner structural body for easy repair. The one-piece rear deck and fender assembly were hinged at the back and could be raised, unlatched, and removed.

Releasing latches located above the windshield and at the rear deck line permitted the easy removal of the hardtop, which could be stowed away in the package compartment under the flat hood. Inside, the dashboard was covered with thick foam rubber padding and upholstered in leather—a less expensive alternative to applying expensive chrome trim, graining, or decals.

Since you've never heard of the Bobbi-Kar, you might assume that the company went out of business because the car was ugly. That's not what happened at all. Read the surprising story of the Bobbi-Kar at The Old Motor. -via Everlasting Blort

After Napoleon Bonaparte died in 1821, his autopsy was witnessed by eight physicians and nine other people. There was a lot of cutting and study, but 200 years later there are still arguments and theories as to what caused the French emperor's death. When the autopsy was over, several body parts were missing, most notably his penis. The organ was taken away by Napoleon's priest Ange-Paul Vignali. From there it changed hands numerous times, and was first seen by the public over a hundred years later.  

In 1927, the shriveled body part went on display for the first time at the Museum of French Art in New York. A New York newspaper covering the event observed observed that “Maudlin sentimentalizers sniffled; shallow women giggled and pointed. In a glass case they saw something looking like a maltreated strip of buckskin shoelace or shriveled eel.”

Two decades later, Dr. Rosenbach sold the appendage to Donald Hyde, a collector of the books and letters. When Hyde died, his wife returned the desiccated tendon to Rosenbach's successor, John Fleming. Some time later, a wealthy collector named Bruce Gimelson acquired the Vignali collection for a reported $35,000.

The relic changed hands several more times over the years. Read the incredible journey of Napoleon's penis, which still doesn't rest in peace, at Amusing Planet.

The railroad over the infamous 11' 8" underpass in Durham, North Carolina, was raised eight inches in 2019, so now it's called the 11'8"+8 bridge. We thought that might be the end of a years-long string of videos in which unwary truck drivers collided with the bridge or peeled off the top of their trucks. However, the underpass is still claiming victims. Earlier this month, a rental truck was caught on video as it perfectly peeled off the truck roof. The driver didn't even stop -and he barely slowed down! -via Geekologie

Henry Ward Beecher was the pastor of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn and a leading abolitionist in the mid-19th century (and the brother of author Harriet Beecher Stowe). He was also widely rumored to have led numerous affairs with the women of his church. Most famous was his relationship with Elizabeth Tilton, the wife of his friend and assistant, Theodore Tilton. Theodore Tilton found out about it in 1870.

Despite the devastating revelation, Elizabeth, Theodore, and Henry decided to keep the affair private. They had several good reason to do so. It protected Tilton’s pride, avoided moral censure of Elizabeth, and preserved Henry’s good name. Nonetheless, their pact did not last because Elizabeth confessed the affair to her friend Paulina Wright Davis, who then told three people: women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony, Henry’s younger half-sister Isabella Beecher Hooker, and the leader of the women’s rights movement Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had also already heard about the affair from Theodore.

As word spread and some of the more influential parishioners within the Plymouth Church congregation learned of the affair. Henry became concerned and prompted Elizabeth to retract her confession. When she did Theodore became upset and demanded that his wife retract her retraction, which she did the same evening. Still, everyone thought news of the affair would go no further. However, that was not the case because Stanton repeated the story.

Another women’s rights leader, Victoria Woodhull, heard it. She was a proponent of free love, a social movement whose goal was to separate the state from sexual matters and the idea of free love.

Woodhull did not disapprove of the affair, but was offended by Beecher’s hypocrisy in that he preached against her philosophy of free love. When Woodhull published news of the affair in her newspaper, it lit the fuse of a widely-publicized and salacious scandal. There was a criminal trial, a church investigation, an excommunication, and a lawsuit. But Beecher was not the one who suffered. Rather, it was Victoria Woodhull and Theodore Tilton who paid the price for the affair. Read the whole story of the Beecher-Tilton scandal at Geri Walton’s blog. -via Strange Company

(Image source: Library of Congress)

The Panspermia Hypothesis is the idea that life on earth was originally transported here from somewhere else by microbes riding through space on asteroids. To survive such a journey, any life form would have to be pretty tough. The toughest critters we know of are tardigrades, or water bears, which have proven they can survive being frozen and the vacuum of space. But could they survive the impact of colliding with a planet? A team led by Alejandra Traspas at Queen Mary University in London tested how impact-resistant tardigrades are by shooting them from a gun.    

For the experiment, Traspas, along with co-author Mark Burchell, took 20 tardigrades of the species Hypsibius dujardini and fed them a (potentially) last meal of mineral water and moss. The well-fed microbes were then put into hibernation—a frozen state in which their metabolism dropped to a mere 0.1% of normal. Groups of two to three individuals were put inside water-filled shafts that were in turn placed inside a nylon cylinder. A two-stage light gas gun was used to fire these cylinders, along with their hibernating passengers, at sand targets inside a vacuum chamber. Six shots were fired at speeds from 1,244 to 2,237 miles per hour (556 to 1,000 m/s), which the scientists measured with laser light stations.

While the experience of tardigrades shot from a gun doesn't prove anything about billion-year-old single-cell organisms in space, it may be a step in that direction. Read how that experiment turned out at Gizmodo.

(Image credit: Schokraie E, Warnken U, Hotz-Wagenblatt A, Grohme MA, Hengherr S, et al. (2012))

Some days you hate your computer, and some days your computer hates you. They are fragile little creatures, and if you don't treat them just right, they will turn on you and exact revenge- by forcing an update! -via Geeks Are Sexy

The latest from filmmaker Fabrice Mathieu (previously at Neatorama), The End is a tribute to the lost year of 2020, an experimental montage made using looping gifs from classic films. It's set to the tune "My Fault" by Ennio Morricone, which you might recall from the spaghetti Western My Name is Nobody. At first it seems like a simple mashup of similar images, but it takes us from waiting to coping methods to confusion to panic to despair as it goes along. Watch it once for the mood, then again to see how many movies you can identify.  -via Laughing Squid 

Where do you go when you want to get away from the pressure of the rat race? Yes, but what if you already live in Tahiti? The 18th-century chiefs of Tahiti took their downtime at Teti’aroa, a lush atoll 30 miles to the north.

The emerging story confirms Teti’aroa was the vacation spot for the royal family of Te Porionu’u. But the islets also served other functions: Leaders from other islands and their delegations convened there for rituals and negotiations. The youngest members of chiefly families also partook in ritual fattening, or ha’apori, on the atoll: They holed up in dwellings, out of the sun, and fed on a high-calorie fermented paste of breadfruit and coconut water. After weeks they would emerge, looking plum royal: pale and fat.

Ongoing research also shows that Teti’aroa has been a prized destination for native Polynesians much longer than thought—probably ever since the archipelago’s largest islands, Tahiti and Moorea, were first settled, some 900 years ago.

The modern era is no different, as wealthy people in the know book vacations at the single resort on Teti’aroa. There are also intense efforts to conserve the ecosystem of the atoll and document its rich history. Read about Teti’aroa at Atlas Obscura. 

Viruses are incredibly weird, as they exist on the edge of our definition of life. The problem is most likely our definition of life. If we expand the definition to include viruses, then we have to include other obviously non-living things like artificial intelligence and living things that aren't organisms, like prions. But viruses are currently the edge case in the argument, as SciShow explains. -via Geeks Are Sexy

The Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus), which died out about 8,000 years ago, sported the largest antlers of any animal ever. Their antlers could be as big as 12 feet across- and they regrew those antlers every year! Males of the species were about the size of an Alaskan moose, while females were somewhat smaller and did not grow antlers.  

As a name, Irish elk is a double misnomer. The animal thrived in Ireland but was not exclusively Irish, ranging across Europe to western Siberia for some 400,000 years during the Pleistocene. Nor was it an elk; it was a giant deer, with no relation to the European elk (Alces alces) or North American elk (Cervus canadensis). The evolution of its most striking feature was driven by sexual selection; no survival advantages derived from such enormous antlers. “It was all about impressing the females,” says Adrian Lister, a paleobiologist at the Natural History Museum in London, England, and a leading expert on the species.

The prevailing theory for some time was that those antlers eventually grew to be so big that they disabled the animal, but scientists now have better ideas as to why the Irish elk went extinct. Read what we've learned about the Irish elk at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Smithsonian Institution)

I saw the term "alien zombies" in the title and thought it weird. In a fictional story, there is no need to make aliens into zombies because aliens can be as weird and dangerous as the plot needs them to be without bring the zombie trope into it. But then I read the article, which has a lot of examples of space zombies, many that I've seen. In TV, it's a way of introducing a new concept into a series that already takes place in space. In standalone films, it's a way of explaining how zombies happen: a novel microbe infection from space. But there are practical reasons, too.   

The appeal of putting a zombie in a spaceship for a TV show is easy to see. Zombies are a cool and instantly recognisable monster. Spaceships are a cool and instantly recognisable setting. What’s more, while your production values may vary, zombies on a spaceship is a pretty damn cheap concept to realise on screen. Zombies are just however many extras you can afford with some gory make-up. All you need for a spaceship is some suitably set-dressed corridors and maybe a couple of exterior model shots if you’re feeling swish.

And as with the zombie apocalypse genre as a whole, the audience instantly and instinctively understands “the rules” of a zombie story, allowing you to focus on your characters and the solutions they come up with.

However, there are problems with making a classic zombie movie work in space. Den of Geek takes a look at the concept, how it's been done before, and how it clashes with our expectations of a zombie story.  -via Digg

So, we ordered 51 trays of plants to install on our shed's new green roof.

We just got a phone call from the company.

They are delivering 510 square meters.

— Molly Quell (@MollyQuell) May 18, 2021

In the Netherlands, it's not unusual to build a garden on one's roof. Ready to install a green roof, Molly Quell ordered some plants, and a load of gravel to provide it with drainage. The delivery was more like a truckload -a BIG truck that couldn't make it all the way to their house. This was all Onno's fault.

Breaking News: Onno doesn't work for the company who we purchased the green roof from. Onno works for their distributor.

No one likes Onno.

— Molly Quell (@MollyQuell) May 18, 2021

Well, the plants were a screwup, but the gravel they wanted was behind the plants on the truck, so they had to be unloaded. The story gets even funnier from there, with quite a bit of swearing in Dutch. You can read the whole story at Twitter or at Threadreader. -via Metafilter

Have you ever wondered why the French word "souvenir" was adopted into English? It came home with soldiers returning from World War I, and often referred to trench art. See, while soldiers in the Great War faced harrowing danger and deprivation, they also did a lot of waiting. Some of them filled their downtime, in which no entertainment was possible, fashioning useful and/or beautiful items from spent artillery shells and other battlefield scrap. You can imagine these items became highly collectible in the years afterward.

From the winter of 1914 to the spring of 1918, millions of Allied and Central Powers soldiers hunkered down within an estimated 35,000 miles of zigzagging trenches, from the Belgian city of Nieuwpoort on the North Sea to “Kilometre Zero” at the Alsatian-Swiss border. When these soldiers weren’t being exposed to mustard gas, sent into suicidal battles in the deadly no-man’s land between the opposing front lines, or struggling with the dysentery, typhoid fever, lice, trench mouth, and trench foot that were endemic to life in the trenches, they made art. Naturally, the vases, ashtrays, and other decorative objects they fashioned from spent brass artillery shells and other detritus of war were dubbed trench art.

It’s an inspiring story—we love it when the human spirit triumphs in the face of adversity—but if you’re picturing doughty doughboys painstakingly tapping out intricate designs on empty artillery shells while bullets whistle overhead, your imagination has gotten the better of you. In fact, only a fraction of the trench art produced during what was then called the Great War and what we now know as World War I was made by soldiers in the trenches, and of that fraction, the first wave of Great War trench art was mostly the handiwork of infantrymen who wore the uniforms of France and Belgium rather than the U.S. of A.

Scott Vezeau, antique dealer and trench art expert, explains the history of trench art and
how it was made. He also gives us the ins and outs of identifying and collecting trench art and "trench art style" items at Collectors Weekly.

Websites are always asking you to agree to their terms and conditions, which usually means agreeing to let the site collect data from you and sell it. Of course, all that is buried in the small print that may take all day to read, so many websites just plain ask you to agree now or go away. Or sign up for their newsletter. Or agree to various things as a default, if you don't actively opt out. The tricks some websites use to get your agreement can be pretty sneaky. Jonathan Plackett created a game out of those tricks, called Terms & Conditions Apply. Can you get through all 29 pop-up windows without accepting terms and conditions, cookies, or notifications? Yeah, some are easy, while others can be maddening. Try the game and let us know how you did. Difficulty: there are time limits on at least some of them. I did not do as well as I'd hoped, but it was fun trying. -via Metafilter

Seventy-four years ago, Lois Lew showed the world how to use the first electric Chinese typewriter. Here’s her remarkable story. https://t.co/0NELmCI5yP

— Fast Company (@FastCompany) May 17, 2021

In the 1940s, Kao Chung-chin invented a typewriter that would produce 5,400 Chinese characters, plus letters of the alphabet and punctuation marks. To use the machine, the typist had to depress four of the 36 keys at once, which meant memorizing four-digit codes for the needed characters. IBM manufactured the machine, which was demonstrated in a 1947 film. The young woman who typed on the machine made it look easy. How did she do it? And who was she, anyway? Tom Mullaney spent years trying to find her, and after he did, spent years getting an interview. Lois Lew is now 95 years old, and has a fascinating story. She arrived in the US for an arranged marriage as an undereducated 16-year-old. Read the story of how Lew became the star of IBM's campaign to sell the Chinese typewriter at Fast Company. -via Damn Interesting