As of yesterday, the Berlin Wall has been down longer than it stood. The lines were laid down on August 13, 1961, to separate West Berlin (which was part of free West Germany) from East Berlin and the surrounding Eastern Bloc country. The official fall of the wall occurred 28 years later, on November 9, 1989. The wall was a hated symbol of separation and repression, and was demolished by both citizens and officials of unified Germany until the erstwhile border is barely distinguishable.  

Except one small part. Christian Bormann, then a teenager, discovered a part of the original 1961 wall that remained in 1999 in the Pankow neighborhood in northern Berlin. He kept the find to himself for 18 years because he knew if the section was discovered, it would be destroyed. Now he hopes that enough time has passed that the section will be preserved as a reminder and a cautionary tale.

Bormann initially faced scrutiny by authorities and the media over his claim that the 260-foot stretch of the wall — publicized on his blog in mid-January — was once part of the first Berlin Wall, hastily erected in 1961 after East Germans were barred from leaving their country. When East Germany later decided to make the barrier more permanent, it expanded provisional brick walls into massive concrete barriers with watchtowers and mines. Many of the initial parts of the wall were destroyed in the process, but one appears to have survived in Pankow.

Bormann's discovery is now drawing tourists and locals alike, even though the area has since been fenced off for preservation work.

When the first border wall was replaced by more substantial barriers, a section of the enclosed area was corner-cut, which is why this portion of the original wall was left to stand, forgotten in the woods. You can read a translation of Bormann's post here. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Guido Kunze)

The 1974 film Benji is about a cute stray dog who ends up a hero when he foils a kidnapping plot. A wholesome film about a nondescript dog didn't seem cool in 1974, and producer/writer/director Joe Camp couldn't get any studio interested. But the film was a hit, and spawned four sequels. Now Benji is a beloved childhood memory for Gen X. Let's take a look behind the scenes of Benji.

4. Alfred Hitchcock liked this movie.

It’s hard to imagine Hitchcock sitting down to watch a film about a dog playing hero when you look at all the films he was responsible for and their very different content.

3. Higgins, the dog that played Benji, was buried with his trainer.

More accurately, his ashes were interred within an urn and buried with his trainer. Benji was Higgins’ last movie.

Read more about Benji at TVOM.

You can wear your heart on your sleeve, and you can wear your fandom on your feet! While you sit at your desk in everyday office attire, under that desk you have a piece of Doctor Who or a comic book superhero with you. And if someone notices your cool shoes at lunch, you'll find a kindred spirit. There's a pair of geeky shoes for every fantasy world, and you might find yours in this list: Wonder Woman, Doctor Who, Firefly, Marvel Comics, Mario, The Hobbit, R2D2, Harry Potter, dinosaurs, and Supernatural. See them all at Oddee. If you want a pair for some pop culture universe not listed, check out the linked vendors and you'll probably find it.

(Image credit: OrionsOriginals)

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Under normal circumstance, a coyote and a goat would be predator and prey. No so for these two. They are pets who live together in Idaho. We can assume that they both have access to a generous supply of goat chow and coyote chow, or they wouldn't be the obviously happy friends they are. Let's just hope that goat doesn't ever go out on her own to make friends.  -via Boing Boing

The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!

Research About Questions That Might Strike You As Being Strange
compiled by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Improbable Research staff

A Paper That Questions Its Existence
“Would This Paper Exist If I Hadn’t Written It?” Samuel Lebens, Philosophical Studies, vol. 172, no. 11, 2015, pp. 3059-3080. The author, at Rutgers University, writes:

This paper wants to know whether it would exist, or could exist, in worlds in which I didn’t write it. Before we can answer this question, we first of all have to inquire as to what, exactly, this paper is.... I shall argue that the term ‘this paper’ is actually infected with ambiguity. Does this paper need me? It depends upon what you mean by ‘this paper’.

Haddock: Do I Get Better Looking Each Day?

Ah! That's what that orange arrow is! The latest comic from Alex Culang and Raynato Castro at Buttersafe is a story of high-tech meets no-tech. The horse probably already knows the way, but he's in no hurry because he knows he'll get that carrot sooner or later. He looks pretty well-fed, and his estimated arrival time is infinity. No, the horse knows where he's going. It's the guy who needs a map who's lost.

Can you imagine trying to put a headband with a GoPro on a cheetah? Odyssey must be an unusually cooperative cat. He is out on the hunt with his siblings, which gives us a chance to see a chase from the cheetah's point of view. When things get going really fast, the production slides into slow motion to keep us from falling out of our chairs.

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It's a clip from the PBS Nature 3-part series Animals With Cameras. The chase itself reminds me of a study we posted last week about how prey animals benefit when a predator cannot go in a straight line. Cheetahs can run more than 60 miles per hour, but only for about ten seconds, and only then if there are no obstacles to break their stride. In this cas, we feel good for the gnu, but the cheetahs are tired and still hungry.     

This image was posted at reddit with the label When Libraries Troll Their Patrons. We've all been there, trying to find a book when we recall neither the title nor the author. Commenters started telling tales about working in book stores or libraries, or getting embarrassed by being that patron with the wonky memory. Librarians and book store workers want to help, and they consider it a challenge to find that one book you can't identify, if they have the time. Then starstarstar42 told his story.

To all bookstore employees that take the time to help... thank you.

35 y.o. me walked into a bookstore after WEEKS searching on the web for the first book my now deceased mom let me pick out on my own. Thing is, 3 y.o. me was really mad at her for some reason that day and I did not want to pick out a stupid book! I cried all the way home because she made me do so.

That night she tucked me in (me, still very mad) and read me that book. I f-----g hated the story. I f-----g hated the mouse that starred in it. I f-----g hated the colors when she showed me the pictures. I f-----g hated that book, period. At the end, my mom kissed me and smiled as she smoothed back my hair. Looking back so many decades later I understand now that her love for me was dancing in her eyes as if to say, "be mad all you want, little man of mine. I can never stop loving you. You are my world".

30 years later and I was stoically mourning my mom's death when, for no reason I can explain, I remembered that book.

I wanted it. I wanted more than anything else in my life to find it. To see the mouse in it again, to hold the cover, to bring that small part, that tiny memory of her, back into my life.

Weeks on Google. All I could remember were hazy faded images of a mouse. I searched "mouse story" on Google. 2.8 million hits. It wasn't in the first 20 pages of 100 hits-per-page results. I kept trying till one night I furiously slammed my fist on my desk and gave up. I had nothing else to go on. I was unnaturally angry and upset at myself that evening; feeling I'd let her down again, as I'd done more than once when she was still around. I barely got any sleep that night.

A week later and I'm driving past a mom & pop bookstore/vinyl record shop. With little hope, I went in and bashfully asked the question that my mind knew was stupid, but had to be said.

"I'm looking for a book. It's about a mouse. I'm so sorry, that's all I remember. Can you help me?" I didn't even tell her why this meant so much to me.

The owner, a nice lady in her 50's, spent an hour helping me. She suddenly turned into a combination of "Monk" and "Sherlock". How old was I now, how old when I read it? Was the book wider than it was tall? What colors in it did I remember? Any other characters that I could remember? Most of the answers to her questions were "I can't remember".

One hour.

She found it. "Scuttle the Stowaway Mouse" by Jean Soule. It had been out of print for decades, but she found a pristine copy of it online, ordered it for me and it got to me 48 hours later. $32 she made on that sale. Not even enough to pay to keep the lights turned on in their shop for a day I bet.

Got home, opened the book, my hands softly running over the cover as if it was my mom's face. I was unashamedly weeping bittersweet tears by the first page. Each word was like a kiss on a mad little 3 y.o. boy's forehead.

I miss my mother with my whole heart.

Thank you, bookstore lady. Thank you beyond words.

Please pass the tissues. -via reddit

When we think about microbes, we think "germs." We try our best to kill the bacteria, viruses, fungal spores, and tiny creatures that could make us sick. We kill germs constantly, and rarely ever consider all the beneficial microbes that make the world turn.

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Ed Yong and Professor Jack Gilbert of the University of Chicago give us an idea of what the world would look like without microbes. It's creepy and downright apocalyptic. Remember that Horton said, "A person's a person, no matter how small." Microbes are not persons with rights, but they do contribute to the world as we know it. -via The Atlantic

Would you be able to bring yourself to drink any of these lattes? After all, they are masterpieces! Yeah, sure, but only after pictures are taken to preserve their beauty. Kangbin Lee is a professor in the Hotel, Restaurant, Cooking, and Confectionary Department at the Seoul Arts Center. He is also a latte artist who puts a rainbow of colors into lattes, in both 2D and 3D versions.  



I can't imagine the drink would still be hot after the painting and the photographs, but a minute in a microwave will fix that.



Watch how Lee creates the Starry Night latte in this video. See more of Lee's lovely cups of coffee at Instagram. -via Boing Boing

Bonus fact: while Sarah and Brian think chicken pox is normal, Debbie and Gary are afraid of shingles. Meanwhile, Shirley and John think that fear of polio is normal. Age and cohorts are constant within themselves yet changing over time. Names are trendy, but once you have a common name, it becomes part of the cohort. This is the latest comic from Randall Monroe at xkcd.

The next Star Wars movie is a stand-alone film covering the life of Han Solo in his younger days, before he met Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa. Disney aired a 45-second teaser during the Super Bowl last night, and promised the full trailer would debut today. And now it's here. It's only a minute and a half, and we don't see much of Han, but this is what we have.

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The film stars Alden Ehrenreich as the title character, Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian, Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca, plus Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, and Thandie Newton as characters we haven't met. Solo: A Star Wars Story will be in theaters May 25.

The 1992 crime film Juice starred Tupac Shakur and Omar Epps in a tug-of-war over their descent into a life of crime along with their other two friends. Bishop (Tupac) goes full-tilt while Q (Epps) wants to pull back. The violent film received favorable reviews that stand up over time. Juice was Tupac's first acting job- he auditioned for it on a last-minute whim. Epps was only 17 when he was cast. Let's learn some more about Juice.  

10. Tupac Shakur would often walk off the set between filming.

Fellow cast member Jermaine Hopkins decided to pull a prank on him by telling Shakur that he’d been fired. When the prank was discovered Tupac got into a fight with Hopkins.

9. Shakur wanted people to call him Bishop even when off screen.

He was that intense that he wanted to stay in character as much as possible, which meant that he was also kind of edgy.

There's more trivia to read about Juice at TVOM.

Once upon a time, the Super Bowl was all about football. Then it became all about the party ...and the food. Then as ad rates soared, the game became a showcase for advertisers to put their best foot forward, with new and clever ad campaigns that cost millions. Well, that's still true, but those of us who don't want to watch hours of football know that those premiere ads would be easier seen on the internet. And so it is. You can watch the best of them all in one place this morning. See Peter Dinklage and Morgan Freeman channel Busta Rhymes and Missy Elloit, watch Wendy's diss McDonalds, get a fleeting glimpse of the new Star Wars movie, and see what the Bud Knight does.

Kaplamino gives us look at the project he's been working for three months. It's a chain reaction marble run on a tilt table. There are magnets, levers, fidget spinners, catapults, and all kinds of clever segments all working together to get one blue marble to the end.

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Kaplamino (previously at Neatorama) says it took about 500 failures to get this video, but he refined the design along the way. After the design was perfected, it only took about 30 tries to get everything to work in one perfect run. -via reddit