We got to see a few minutes of some old friends in The Force Awakens: R2D2 and C-3PO. But the golden droid had a red arm! What’s up with that? We were told the answer would be revealed in a Marvel comic book months ago, but it was delayed. The explanation came out today, a one-shot issue called Star Wars: C-3PO #1. If you want to go buy the comic, you’ll want to skip the rest of this post. Otherwise, here’s the reason that C-3PO has one red arm in the movie The Force Awakens.
Spoilers ahead for Star Wars: C-3PO #1, by James Robinson, Tony Harris, and Joe Caramagna.
Actually, to be fair, we’ve actually known ever since the Force Awakens visual dictionary guide book came out why Threepio’s arm is red. (The book had some other interesting facts in it, too.) C-3PO wears it in memory of a droid that sacrificed itself to save him during a mission for the Resistance. Pretty boring, and yet, Robinson and Harris manage to weave a fascinating tale around this rather humdrum factoid.
John Green returns to the mental_floss List Show this week to tell us about strange wedding traditions. These traditions come from all over and different periods in history. I can tell you right off that the bit about Appalachian quilt-making hasn’t been done in a long time. That Norwegian bit about the ironing board sounds like a pretty good idea, though. If youccan’t be handsome, at least be handy.
If there is one thing that the internet generation has in common, it’s Star Wars. From the first movie in 1977, kids have enjoyed the movies, toys, clothing, decor, and most of all, the make-believe play from a time long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. These childhood memories from all over are archived at the website I Gew Up Star Wars. It has years of image and video submissions from Star Wars fans.
Do you remember playing with your STAR WARS figures in the sandbox? Do you remember running around the schoolyard at recess on a snowy day pretending you were riding atop a Taun Taun? Do you remember talking your parents into watching STAR WARS at the theater just one more time, because nine times just wasn’t enough? Do you remember begging your Mom for that Stormtrooper figure you walked past at the grocery store? If you remember any of those things, you have come to the right place.
Looking at these pictures makes me regret not being able to grow up with Star Wars, but then I console myself with the fact that I did get to watch the first man walk on the moon live on TV. -via the A.V. Club
The most common story about the origin of the ice cream cone has its debut at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. A waffle maker was set up next to an ice cream vendor when the vendor ran out of ice cream cups. The waffle maker lent his skills to produce edible containers that became a hit. But this story is only common because the ice cream maker, Ernest Hamwi, went on to found the Missouri Cone Company. There are several variations of that story, but ice cream cones existed long before the World’s Fair. A French etching may point to the use of the edible cone as far back as 1807! And there are even previous patents.
In the second half of the 19th century, ice cream bought outside the home was served in a small glass container, called a “penny lick” for the price. You would lick the ice cream out of the glass and return it to the vendor to wash and reuse. This practice wasn’t necessarily sanitary, and it could cause delays if too many people wanted ice cream at the same time.
The solution: an edible container. Italo Marchiony, who later claimed he had been making edible cups to serve ice cream in New York City since 1896, filed a patent in 1903 for his own ice-cream-cup-making machine. The mold’s shape is something more akin to a cup than a cone, as was the “apparatus for baking biscuit-cups for ice-cream” that Antonio Valvona of Manchester, England had patented a year before.
Inky the Octopus was a popular exhibit at the National Aquarium in Napier, New Zealand, since 2014. But Inky no longer lives there, as the aquarium has revealed that he made his escape earlier this year. One day, staff noticed that there was only one octopus in the tank instead of two. The lid to the enclosure had had been placed loosely, leaving a small gap, and the octopus took the opportunity to climb out. Octopus tracks led to a small floor drain, only 150 millimeters (6 inches) wide.
Rob Yarrall​ from the National Aquarium said Inky was about the size of a rugby ball but octopuses could stretch themselves to extremes, allowing them to squeeze through almost any space.
"As long as it's mouth can fit," Yarrall said.
"Their bodies are squishy but they have a beak, like a parrot."
Since his disappearance aquarium staff have missed Inky, who was popular with staff and visitors, but they were pleased to see him return to the ocean, Yarrall said.
While we learned that “all drains lead to the ocean” is not universally true, in this case the drain does lead to the ocean. Inky had toys and games and regular meals at the aquarium, but nothing beats freedom.-via Uproxx
Warning: earworm. Toronto musician Aaron Ridge (@Dopeusmaximus) had a little fun on Snapchat by constructing a song around cooking a meal, Disney-style. He assembled all the parts into one video to share with us. Yeah, this sounds just like something you’d find in a Disney animated film. Joeyfingis supplied a plot:
That spin at the end, I picture his cape twirling around him, his riding boots clicking on the tile, and there's a princess who's secretly in love with him spying through the window wishing her father would let her marry the dashing, horseback riding, castle chef. Little does anyone know, his biological mother was the Queen long ago and he's destined to rule! Unfortunately for the star crossed pair, their love will have to wait. They will suffer through years of sexually charged friendly tension, he will always be there on his horse to save her from her adventurous miss steps, keeping her out of trouble with her evil great uncle the illegitimate King.
But one day, a traveling beggar will walk through the kingdom, and upon hearing the melodious voice of the chef singing the royal morning-time Steak and Eggs tune of a long forgotten lineage of gracious rulers, the beggar will reveal herself as none other than the chef's nanny, once top advisor to the Queen! The chef's ascent to the throne will be swift, as the populace helps to overthrow the evil illegitimate King, and the Chef/Prince/King will swoop up his long time princess lover onto his steed and kiss her deeply as they cross the threshold into the castle grand room where a massive wedding has sprung up for them! Steaks and Eggs will rain from the ceiling as the town's people empty the castle pantrys of the new King's favorite dish!!!!!!!
Horaaay horaay, a wondrous day, now we all can eat these tasty Steak and Eggs!!!
Now how long will it take until someone does an animated sequence to go with the song? And how long will it take to get “Steak and Eggs” out of my head? -via reddit
You’ve read our reports on more than one robot restaurant opening in Asia. After a few years and a few more restaurants trying the concept, it looks like the robot apocalypse has been postponed. Who could have figured that robots don’t make good waiters? The city of Ghangzhou in southern China had three robot restaurants, but two of them have now closed. The remaining restaurant is staffed with mostly people, and has only one remaining robot server.
One of the establishments employed as many as 10 robots at one time. The gimmick reportedly had some short-term benefit of driving customers through the door.
However, those guests reportedly were just as quickly turned away by food that was generally considered "unpalatable" for guests, according to reports.
Likewise, the robots were unable to pour beverages for guests, nor were they able to consistently take accurate food orders.
Instead of being fired, some of the robots were merely demoted to greeters. Robots may take all our manufacturing jobs, but they aren’t smart enough to juggle orders and serve ten tables, so remember to tip your server accordingly. -via How Stuff Works
Brickmania Toyworks in Minneapolis commissioned this work. It has 126,285 K’NEX pieces and runs 278 meters Granger is a 23-year-old computer science student at the University of Minnesota. He’s been building K’NEX projects since he was five years old. -via Viral Viral Videos
The description at imgur said, “A family went to movie for 3 hrs come back to this.” Whoever left these prints apparently found a stock of ink and had a grand old time.
The evidence leads through the home. Who could have committed such a crime?
The perpetrator didn’t get in the bed, but he obviously thought about it.
I believe we have found the guilty party. The good news is that the floor was fairly simple to clean, and the ink was non-toxic. The bedspread will be a permanent reminder to put the ink away where unauthorized users cannot get to it. There are 11 pictures of the carnage in the imgur gallery.
Ah, the things women go through to be beautiful… sometimes could kill them. Since the ancient Egyptians, we’ve concocted miracle potions to improve one’s complexion with compounds that later proved to be highly toxic, like lead, arsenic, mercury, and radium.
Did you ever put a highlighter on your face and go, “Man, I wish my skin glowed. Also I want some face tumours”? Then go back to the early 1900s and get some Radior! In 1917, the London-based company Radior created a series of cosmetics that contained radium, meaning you could buy an actual face powder called “Flesh” full of radium in the hellish dystopia that London apparently was in the 1900s. Other brands, such as Tho-Radia (a French company started in 1933 that made things such as lipstick, skin creams, and toothpaste containing thorium chloride and radium bromide) and Artes (also started in 1933, creators of a skin cream made with “radium gas”) made claims that their products would help “assist blood circulation” and “stimulate cellular vitality”, along with “brightening” complexions.
Oh, but there’s more. The rundown at The Toast has to make you wonder which beauty product we’re using today that will turn out to be a very bad idea when the next generation of research is in.
The National Museum of Natural History, a part of the Smithsonian Institution, has a huge exhibit space in Washington, DC. However, what’s on display is only about 1% of what they have. The rest is in storage, carefully curated, and sometimes rotated into display. Over a period of twenty years, Smithsonian photographer Chip Clark documented this backstage collection in photographs. The museum’s assistant director Carol Butler tells us about the stunning images.
There’s one image of the bird collection. And what I remember [Clark] told me was that it took about eight hours to set up that shot. The collections are stored taxonomically according to the tree of life. But to get beautiful colors and good artistic composition, they had to move some drawers to different positions.
It took an artistic eye, a lot of patience, and probably a certain amount of flexibility to shimmy under drawers or to move sideways past pulled-out drawers. It also took an understanding of what science needed to be expressed through the photographs.
Disney is producing a live-action remake of their 1967 animated film The Jungle Book. At least they are calling it live-action, even though almost all the characters are CGI. In honor of the occasion, Screen Junkies is looking back at the first Disney Jungle Book with an Honest Trailer.
Sure, we know Disney played fast and loose with Rudyard Kipling’s novel book. But since I hadn’t seen this movie in many years, I’d forgotten how repetitive it was. Not a problem for little children, because they are going to watch an animated film over and over again on home video anyway. And how else are they going to learn all the songs? -via Tastefully Offensive
This appears to be a scuffle between two octopuses over a nice cozy place to sit and blend in with the scenary. You see provocation, chase, and some smacking about, plus some color-changing, which might be communication, a cooling-off, or bragging. Who knows? There’s also an intriguing bit where an octopus wipes itself down.
I can’t even tell who won, because how do you tell one shapeshifter from another? Anyway, it’s a pretty cool sequence. This all happened off the coast of Asu Island in Indonesia. -via Metafilter
Some guys are just players, and a lot of guys in movies are players, racking up women by the score (pun intended). Often, that’s what the movie is all about, and the plot concerns how he comes to see someone of the opposite sex as a person instead of just a conquest. But that’s not always the case, or even the main plot. Of course, some characters are better at it than others.
If you were a single billionaire, would you settle down with one woman? Probably not. Tony Stark doesn’t, and he has the kind of money to do whatever and whoever he wants. It’s pretty sweet that he’s able to seduce a hostile journalist who wants nothing to do with him, but that’s nothing compared to his feat of sleeping with each and every Maxim cover model for an entire year’s worth of issues…including twins.
Robert Downey, Jr., I mean Tony Stark, can get away with that, while other characters need to be taken down a notch. Read about 15 womanizer movie characters at TVOM.
Construction workers in Penang, Malaysia, spotted a python curled up around a tree near their work site. They called the local civil defense department, who sent men out to capture the reticulated python. It took them about a half-hour to capture the snake, which turned out to be 26 feet long and weighed 550 pounds!
Herme Herisyam, an official with Malaysian department that caught the snake, told the Guardian that workers from the construction site called the emergency services on Thursday and authorities took 30 minutes to trap the snake.
“It is eight metres in length and weighs about 250kg,” he said by phone.
It emerged later on Monday that the python died on Sunday after giving birth. Herisyam told the Guardian that the snake, which was caught on Thursday, had died after laying an egg. It is not clear why the serpent perished.
The Malaysian snake could well be the longest snake ever captured. The Guinness Book lists the current record-holder, a living reticulated python named Medusa, as the biggest, at 25 feet 2 inches. The folks from Guinness may want to check out the Penang snake. -via Atlas Obscura
