Atlas Obscura is highlighting trees all this week in what they call, appropriately, Tree Week. Among posts about living trees and historical trees, they also pay tribute to trees in fiction. It’s only natural, as literature has been dependent on trees for a thousand years. They bypassed the most obvious choices (The Giving Tree) and introduce us to some literary trees you might not have thought of, like the Tree of Heaven from the book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

The so-called Tree of Heaven grows outside the window of Francie Nolan, a second-generation Irish-American girl coming of age in Brooklyn at the turn of the century. Just as Francie and her family struggle against the odds to make a life for themselves, the tree too manages to prosper without water, light, or care. Francie grows from a girl to young woman under the harsh conditions of tenement life, enduring poverty, assault, loneliness, and betrayal. Through it all, she maintains a deep and abiding inner strength. Like Francie, the tree that grows out of the cement in Brooklyn is tough, tenacious, and blossoming against all odds. It’s the kind of tree you root for.  

Read about six other literary trees at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit:  Tao Tao Holmes)

(YouTube link)

The annual auto race known as the Indianapolis 500 takes place on Sunday during Memorial Day weekend. The race is 500 miles long, and it’s in Indianapolis, which means it was named properly, because the best names confer important information. Otherwise, there’s a lot about the famed race you don’t know. John Green is here to fill you in on the less-important but still interesting information about the race in this week’s episode of the mental_floss List Show.

People who never went camping with their parents are at a disadvantage when they try it on their own, or with other people who’ve never done it before. You don’t know what to expect, or what to take (hint: mosquito repellant), or what to do. These folks are lucky that they knew where to go!

(YouTube link)

Nevertheless, they will consider it a success if the pictures look good on Instagram. Later, they will realize that the memories of all those screwups will make great stories for the rest of their lives. And they’ll take their kids camping, so that the next generation will be better prepared. This video is from the Vancouver comedy group IFHT. -via Tastefully Offensive

Mark Rober (previously at Neatorama) decided it would be cool to add water balloons to a trampoline. It was! He and his nephews jumped along with hundreds of small water balloons, which looks really cool in slow motion. Notice that a body will depress the trampoline surface while the balloons "jump" and stay at the same level.

(YouTube link)

There’s also a couple of really big water balloons that proved to be super-tough. But even a super-tough balloon can only take so much! A good time was had by all.  -via Viral Viral Videos

In the west African country of Benin, 17% of the population follows the voodoo religion. An annual voodoo festival brings out the fanciest fashions used in voodoo rites.

The idea of the festival is to strengthen the bond that unites families and communities with departed ancestors known as Egungun, a Yoruba word which means, ‘the souls of the dead who have returned to earth for a short time to pass on specific advice to the living’.

To represent these ancestral advice-giving spirits, members of the community masquerade around town in elaborate veiled costumes made from velvet, silk, damask, Indian madras; the best fabrics money can buy. Veils are often made of cowry shell screens to avoid the bad luck of seeing the dancing masquerader’s eyes.

See a collection of photographs of these elaborate costumes at Messy Nessy Chic. -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Flickr user David Stanley)

Max Kessler was surprised when he heard that Adam Sandler’s new movie The Do-Over had him starring as a character named Max Kessler. That’s pretty neat, because it’s not the world’s most common name. But the similarities didn’t stop there.

Kessler posted the coincidence and a picture to reddit. One thing led to another, and Adam Sandler started sending pictures back and forth with Kessler. And then Sandler had Kessler flown to Los Angeles for the premiere of the movie on Netflix Monday.

(YouTube link)

Whatever you think of Adam Sandler movies, you have to admit it’s a cool story for Max. No word yet on whether he may have a future as Sandler’s body double or stand-in. You can read the whole story, with pictures and links, at Uproxx.

Everything was going just fine until the realization hit him. Just a cog in a machine. His usefulness as a cog was instantly over. Once they get to yearning for something better, you can’t keep them well-oiled and running the way you used to. This is the latest from John McNamee at Pie Comic.

There are several services available today that let you know when someone opens an email message you sent. That way, you know they got the message. If you’re trying to keep track of a bunch of things to tell a bunch of people, like during wedding planning, that can be a great help. It can also be a blow to your ego to find out how many people are getting your messages but choosing not to respond. And it can cause trouble, as in the case of Jenny, who continued to email Steve after they broke up. When he got a new girlfriend, he quit responding, but she knew he read her friendly emails anyway, because she had a tracker that notified her when they were opened.   

One Tuesday in the summer of 2015, Jenny got a flurry of read receipts. Steve had just re-read all of the emails she had sent him the year before in rapid succession. This struck Jenny as strange, especially when she looked at the time. It was 10 a.m.; Steve was likely at work. So she sent him a text message, “Did you just open a bunch of old emails from me?” He said he hadn’t and wanted to know why she thought he had. She told him about the tracking. He called her a creep (mostly kiddingly), but also revealed that he’d gotten back together with the restrictive girlfriend. Apparently, after he’d left for work that day, she had hopped on his home computer and snooped through his email.

“They had a huge fight,” Jenny told me.

There are also enhanced trackers that can geolocate an email recipient. That’s problematic when a stalker uses it. Bosses use it to track employees. But the biggest group that uses email trackers is marketers. Read about email trackers and what they can do at Fusion.

(Image credit: Erendira Mancias/FUSION)

(Image credit: Keli Ciesemier)

Dickens fans have long wondered which real-life spinster inspired Miss Havisham of Great Expectations. Does a haunted house hold a shocking new clue?

It starts with the house. Long before it inspired one of London’s most popular haunted house rides, the building at 50 Berkeley Square inspired fear. The dark and dilapidated structure sat ignored, caked in decades of soot and grime. Handbills and loose straw accumulated in the yard. In the words of Charles G. Harper, author of the 1907 book Haunted Houses, the four-story manse was “the very picture of misery.”

A spectacle of decay in an otherwise respectable central London neighborhood, the house became a magnet for ghost stories. One magazine claimed: “When touched, [the walls] are found saturated with electric horror.” Those foolhardy enough to spend the night inside, it was whispered, were found dead in the morning, their faces contorted with terror.

In the 1860s and 1870s, the few who dared knock at the door were waved off by a tight-lipped servant. One would-be investigator, fortifying his courage with drink, was promptly arrested and fined 10 shillings—though he never managed to get inside. The local Spiritualist Society had no better luck contacting the owner, leaving the Victorian poet Frederick Doveton to muse:

The cobwebs in the windows lie,
And dirt and dust are there;
What is the unknown history
Of 50, Berkeley-square?

In 1880, the disappointingly mundane answer emerged in Notes & Queries magazine. Despite its vacant appearance, 50 Berkeley Square had been occupied by a Mr. Myers since 1859—unlisted and unseen but brought to light in 1873 by a tax summons. The “ghost” was simply a recluse who had let the place decay. But like the best haunted houses, 50 Berkeley Square had juicier secrets tucked beneath its floorboards. In fact, the home’s true legacy may be more fantastic than any ghost story and may hold the key to unlocking one of literature’s greatest puzzles.

How many ways are there to die in space? Way more than we really want to think about. This animation by Thomas Lucas has quite a few of them, crammed into a very short amount of time.

(vimeo link)

If you’re going to die at the hands of a space alien, better do it within two seconds! Am I horrible for laughing at these? It is a cartoon, and we've seen a lot of these scenes in movies already. -via Everlasting Blort

Coyote Peterson was wandering through the Costa Rican rainforest at night -which doesn’t seem all that safe- when he encountered an ocelot. Luckily, this was a half-grown cat that was somewhat used to people. Still, how strange is it that a wildcat will let you pet her?

(YouTube link)

She also wants to play, and you know how cats play, by attacking! Peterson gets his ear chewed on and a few scratches. Don’t try this at home. As if you could! Let’s just hope that this ocelot’s ease around humans doesn’t lead her to a bad end someday.  -via Viral Viral Videos

A home theater is the best of both worlds: the privacy and flexibility of watching home video, plus the immersive experience of a theater. If you have the room and some money, you can get a lot of bang for your buck. But if money is no object, there are new advances in home theater equipment and design that could be your dream come true! Check out this relatively tame design called The Traditional:

This Future Home Traditional design won the Custom Electronic Design and Installation Award (CEDIA) for 2004 Best Home Theater (Level VII) $600,000 – $800,000 for the 2004 EXPO. Located in Southwest Arizona, the wide screen image was “so brilliant” that the company pictured it on its website rather than using a standard image to replicate it. The theater features an ISP calibrated video capable of exceeding the standards normal for a professional theater. It also has a twelve-foot screen for optimal viewing, within the luxurious theater interior.

See others that will help your imagination run wild at Housely. Besides the quality screens and sound, many are modeled after real theaters or designed around your favorite film.

Hitchcock meets Lucas in a mashup by Fabrice Mathieu. Cary Grant is dropped off at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere ...on Tatooine. The countryside is infested with Sarlaccs. Can things get worse? Of course they can!

(vimeo link)

Don’t fret too much -this short film has a relatively happy ending. Enjoy the terror of North by Northwest with the cool spaceships of Star Wars. -via Gamma Squad

Need some ideas to write your crimefighting buddy story? Try out the generator They Fight Crime. You can select the names and genders of your duo (or not), and the generator picks the relevant characteristics from columns A, B, and C. Many hit TV series have been built with this kind of  method. When yours is picked up by a network, let them know you heard about the sure-fire formula right here! See other examples at Twitter. -via Metafilter

Trust me, this isn't unusual, even in humans. You might think you're testing intelligence, but some subjects just don't care. Therefore, you're actually testing how much they care. I have a child going off to college like this: she's smart, but only about things she cares about. So I worry. This is the latest comic from Megacynics.