On January 3, 1961, a nuclear meltdown at Stationary Low-Power Plant Number 1 (SL-1) near Idaho Falls, Idaho, killed all three operators at the site: Jack Byrnes, Dick Legg, and Richard McKinley. They are, to this day, the only nuclear explosion fatalities on U.S. soil. The design of the facility, which provided power to the surrounding area, did not have the redundant fail-safe measures that newer reactors have. There were three control rods that had to be manually lifted, no more than four inches. Lifting only the central rod further would be enough to cause a meltdown -and that's what happened.

At 9:01 p.m., SL-1 exploded. “When the reactor went critical, it released so much heat energy in four milliseconds that it flashed the water surrounding the fuel to steam,” reads Stacy’s book. “[Water] slammed against the lid of the pressure vessel at a velocity of 160 feet per second and 10,000 pounds per square inch exactly as if it were a piston — a water hammer. The entire vessel jumped nine feet into the air, hit the ceiling, and thumped back into place…The violence of the explosion killed all three of the men.”

McKinley was struck in the head by a piece of radioactive shrapnel that tore off half his face. Byrnes was thrown into concrete blocks, breaking ribs that pierced his heart. Legg was skewered in the gut by a flying control rod that launched him thirteen feet in the air and pinned him to the ceiling. (It took a week to get him down, requiring a pole with a hook to push him into a net attached to a crane operated by a man shielded in lead.) The men’s bodies were wrapped in several hundred pounds of lead, placed in steel coffins, and buried under a foot of concrete.

Investigators later tried to recreate the conditions leading to the meltdown. The central rod had been lifted over twenty inches, but no man could cause that to happen in any way that could be construed as accidental. Was it sabotage, suicide, or carelessness caused by anger? We know what happened at SL-1, but we will never know exactly why. However, details of the lives of the men who were there give us some clues, which you can find out about at Longreads.  -via Digg

Screen Junkies takes us on a tour of a remote island with a large ape in an Honest Trailer for Kong: Skull Island. They've got plenty to say about the seventh King Kong film, especially about the weird 1970s setting and the analog to the Vietnam War. But then something really weird happens.

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Jordan Vogt-Roberts, the director of Kong: Skull Island, steps in to add his own critique! He has a long list of his movie's failings, which he cheerfully shares with us. "Yeah, I bathe in pain."

British student Liam Smyth has a first date story that beats all the others you've heard. Remember the famous Sure Lock ad in which a woman had to retrieve her own poo from a toilet? The toilets in Britain aren't quite as robust as American thrones. Anyway, Smyth's Tinder date found herself in the same situation when she went #2 at his home and it wouldn't flush down. She retrieved the contents of the bowl and threw it out the window. She calmed down and then confessed to Smyth.

“I was understandably concerned, and told her we would go outside, bag up the offending poo in the garden, bin it, and pretend the whole sorry affair had never happened.

“Unfortunately, owing to a design quirk of my house, the toilet window does not in fact open to the garden, but instead into a narrow gap of about a foot and a half, separated from the outside world by another (non-opening) double glazed window. It was into this twilight zone that my date had thrown her poo.

After Smyth notified the other residents of the house, for some reason, the woman decided she could climb into the gap and retrieve it herself. But then she got stuck in the window. That's where the firemen come in. You can read the entire story at the Bristol Post. Isn't it wonderful when your first date horror story makes it into the local paper? -via Metafilter

Peacock spiders perform their mating dance to a disco beat with the Bee Gees' tune "Staying Alive" from the movie Saturday Night Fever. If this doesn't impress those lady spiders, I don't know what will! They not only dance well, but they display an astonishing variety of colors and patterns on their butts.  

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Jürgen Otto, also known as Peacockspiderman, dipped into his extensive archives of spider videos and put this awesome music video together. There are 51 different spiders spiders here. -via Tastefully Offensive 


See more of Otto's peacock spiders.

During the 1930s, unemployment in Appalachia was as high as 40%. Roads were awful or nonexistent, and 31% of the residents of eastern Kentucky were illiterate. The region's needs gave rise to an innovative WPA program to put women who had horses or mules to work improving conditions: The Pack Horse Library Initiative.   

Unlike many New Deal projects, the packhorse plan required help from locals. "Libraries" were housed any in facility that would step up, from churches to post offices. Librarians manned these outposts, giving books to carriers who then climbed aboard their mules or horses, panniers loaded with books, and headed into the hills. They took their job as seriously as mail carriers and crossed streams in wintry conditions, feet frozen in the stirrups.

Carriers rode out at least twice a month, with each route covering 100 to 120 miles a week. Nan Milan, who carried books in an eight-mile radius from the Pine Mountain Settlement School, a boarding school for mountain children, joked that the horses she rode had shorter legs on one side than the other so that they wouldn't slide off of the steep mountain paths. Riders used their own horses or mules-—the Pine Mountain group had a horse named Sunny Jim—or leased them from neighbors. They earned $28 a month—around $495 in modern dollars.

The program was extremely popular among the recipients of the books. Demand grew, donations came in, and the librarians even started making their own books. Read about the librarians on horseback at Smithsonian.

A bat got into a home in Ireland. The people there immediately went into their individual action modes. Derry is trying to catch the bat. Maureen hides behind the door to the next room in order to watch. And Tadhg Fleming records it on video while offering encouragement and instruction. And that's the best part of the adventure. There is a good smattering of NSFW language.

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Or maybe the best part was the dog peeing on the floor. Anyway, the poor bat did his best to find an open door the entire time, but had to wait until everyone calmed down before he could succumb to the towel and find his freedom. Great job, Derry! -via reddit 

Clowns were once associated with the circus, then with children's parties, but now they exist in horror movies more than in real life. You might blame John Wayne Gacy, or the Joker, but clowns are just plain scary, and always have been. And now we have another scary clown to look forward to in the new season of American Horror Story and in the a feature film of Stephen King's It coming up. Those clowns are in competition with quite a few past movies that scared the bejesus out of us. Which is your favorite scary clown movie? See the the list of 13 at Gizmodo. 

Book burning has been used as a terroristic threat, a symbol of power, and a cultural cleansing since ancient times. In ancient times, when many books were the only copy in existence, book burning was often a sign of conquest. The conquering nation would destroy the accumulated knowledge of a conquered land in order to install their own culture. Destroying cultural knowledge became more difficult after the invention of the printing press, but book burning continued, as a symbol of preferred thought if nothing else. It was often a demonstration of crushing a dissention.

The unifying factor between all types of purposeful book-burners in the 20th century, Knuth says, is that the perpetrators feel like victims, even if they’re the ones in power. Perhaps the most infamous book burnings were those staged by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, who regularly employed language framing themselves as the victims of Jews. Similarly, when Mao Zedong took power in China and implemented the Cultural Revolution, any book that didn’t conform to party propaganda, like those promoting capitalism or other dangerous ideas, were destroyed. More recently, the Jaffna Public Library of Sri Lanka—home to nearly 100,000 rare books of Tamil history and literature—was burned by Sinhalese Buddhists. The Sinhalese felt their Buddhist beliefs were under threat by the Hinduism of Tamils, even though they outnumbered the Tamils.

Even when the knowledge itself isn’t prevented from reaching the public, the symbolic weight of burning books is heavy. “Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them as to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are,” wrote John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, in his 1644 book Areopagitica. “Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature… but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself—” an idea that continues to be espoused in modern culture, like in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

Read accounts of book burning and its evolving purpose at Smithsonian.

Have you ever wondered what your cat does all day while you're at work? Aaron of AaronsAnimals hung a camera around his cat's neck to find out.

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Well, that's just what you'd expect from a cat. He climbs on the furniture, knocks things off tables, watches TV, pranks the dog, takes selfies, flirts with the neighbors, menaces wildlife, and then welcomes you home, acting as if he's been a good boy all day. -via Everlasting Blort

Here we have an alternative history in which mankind decided that the idea of turning to agriculture was no fun at all. Imagine what kind of civilization we'd have today if that had been true! But when you think outside the androcentric box, it makes more sense that agriculture was invented by women, especially women who were geographically limited by caring for and protecting young children. This comic is from Zach Weinersmith at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Bruce Lee was only 32 when he died in 1973, but he was already an icon of both Hollywood and Hong Kong film. Lee is credited with changing the image of Asian-Americans in Hollywood, and with kickstarting the popularity of martial arts in the U.S. His death at such a young age only cemented his legendary status. He was also a dedicated family man who didn't get to spend enough time at home because of his career. Bruce Lee fans will want to see a collection of images of him during happy times with his wife Robin and his children Brandon and Shannon.

When you're taking part in a Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), you are joining in a community of people who don't know each other, yet you are playing a game together. What you see are the characters these people create for the game. If there's character who doesn't speak, there may be a reason.    

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The scenario here is actually pretty tame compared to some I've heard about. This video from Epic NPC Man focuses on that moment when you learn who is behind that character. And why so many women gamers play offline. Yeah, women gamers aren't as rare as guys think, they just don't want to deal with this.  -via Geeks Are Sexy

An orchestrion is a machine that plays many different musical instruments, most often including a piano with other instruments added. The music is programmed on rolls of paper like a player piano. The Philipps Paganini orchestrion was built by Philipps & Son’s in 1921, and is now at the Speelklok Museum in Utrecht, Netherlands. This orchestrion pays 17 instruments!   

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In this video, Martin Molin of the band Wintergatan (previously at Neatorama) visits the museum to show us the Philipps Paganini and how it works. If you've seen his musical gadgets, you know this is right up his alley.  -via Laughing Squid

Tony Mink's friends, family, and business associates spent Christmas of 1983 searching through the mountains of New Mexico for his plane, using planes, helicopters, snowmobiles, and skis. Mink, a professional pilot, had flown his family in a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza from Florida en route to Utah on December 23, but only made it as far as Canjilon Mountain, where the plane crashed and was soon buried under 11 feet of snow. They survived the crash, but would they survive the freezing temperatures until someone could find them? Mink's skydiving buddy Keven Peterson and his business partner Adam Glover were waiting for Mink's arrival at a Christmas party in Salt Lake.

By 3 a.m. they still hadn’t heard from him. “If he crashed my plane and lived through it,” said Adam—the Bonanza’s registered owner—“I’ll kill the son of a bitch myself.” Solid priorities, Keven thought. But they were all worried. Most of the lightweights had gone home already, but Tony’s core group of friends—Keven, Adam Glover, and a few of the other skydivers—had stuck around trying to figure out what could have happened. Keven hoped Tony had just gotten a hotel, but feared the worst. At 4 a.m., he called the FAA. “My friend’s plane is overdue,” he said.

Meanwhile, Adam was growing more agitated by the minute. He knew something Keven didn’t: There was a quarter million dollars aboard that Bonanza.

Tony and Adam weren’t salvagers. They were smugglers.  

Mink had not filed a flight plan because of the cash he was carrying. And the plane was buried in the snow. Despite poor weather conditions, several crews spent the next few days trying to find the plane. Some were on the scene to find and rescue the family, while others wanted the money they knew was on the plane. Read the full story of Tony Mink and the plane crash at The Daily Beast.  -via Digg

(Image credit: Cgettings)

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

Superman would probably be the most famous and popular superhero of all-time. I guess because we are all so familiar with him, Superman's powers don't seem very strange at all. He could fly (interestingly though, in the original Superman comics, he could not fly. He was a leaper. He would make giant leaps around Metropolis). In the Superman radio serial, he could walk through walls and even split himself into two Supermen.

In the 1980 movie Superman II, Superman had a power he never used before or since. He wiped out Lois Lane's memory of his secret identity- with a kiss.

Also, in one comic only (1947's Superman #45), Superman could merge himself with the wall (to escape from an alien prison). In this same unique comic, he molded his face to look like one of the aliens and convinced them to go home. He actually could manipulate the muscles in his face and entire body to assume a new form, in this case a yellow-skinned alien- with pointy ears and no hair, no less.

In another unusual and unique Superman (Action Comics #454) the Man of Steel had an unquenchable appetite. Superman usually is said to not need food because he gets his energy from the sun, but in this issue he scarfs down a mountainous plate of hamburgers.

Superman also once had the power of ventriloquism. In several 50's and '60's comics, the man of steel throws his voice around like Edgar Bergen. As far as having versatility in his super powers, I think we have to agree that Superman wins first prize, but let's move on.