On July 31, 1761, the French ship L’Utile shipwrecked on a one square kilometer island in the Indian Ocean. The sailors built a boat and managed to escape, but they left behind 60 slaves the ship was carrying illegally. Fifteen years later, the survivors (seven women and a baby) were finally rescued. UNESCO is still researching the story of their escape attempts and how some survived those years on what is now named Tromelin Island. http://portal0.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=26887&URL_DO=DO_PRINTPAGE&URL_SECTION=201.html -via Reddit
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On July 31, 1761, the French ship L’Utile shipwrecked on a one square kilometer island in the Indian Ocean. The sailors built a boat and managed to escape, but they left behind 60 slaves the ship was carrying illegally. Fifteen years later, the survivors (seven women and a baby) were finally rescued. UNESCO is still researching the story of their escape attempts and how some survived those years on what is now named Tromelin Island. http://portal0.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=26887&URL_DO=DO_PRINTPAGE&URL_SECTION=201.html -via Reddit
Deviant Art
Design student Zhu Yunwei made these very unnatural-looking portraits by integrating two photos, one with eyes open, the other with eyes closed. The results looks strange because people can’t hold their eyes in different positions without showing some strain. Link -via J-Walk Blog
Freddy Human Machine Man - video powered by Metacafe
This is a TV capaign for an Italian sportswear company, but it’s fun to watch. Link -via Ursi’s Blog
These 300-400 calorie meals look pretty good. There’s always room for a salad! For comparison purposes, a Big Mac, small fries, and a small Coke totals 930 calories. Link -via the Presurfer
Dave Spencer at Instructables made a volcano cake for his son’s birthday. This cake had vibration, smoke, sound effects, and a lava flow (strawberry flavored)! It required seven boxes of cake mix. Then he posted the process of building the cake, hardware and all, and a video of the cake in action at the birthday party. Link -via Cynical-C
Google recently launched Google Web History, a service where you can access, search, and sort the places you’ve been on the web, even after you’ve deleted the browser history on your computer. Google’s ability to do so, which many were not aware of til this program launched, has some people worried about their searches becoming public. This cartoon from Geek and Poke portends what may come as the result. Note: this joke could work for any candidate of any party. Link -via Anil Dash
The 143-year-old Quanjude roast duck restaurant in Beijing has closed for six months of renovations, but the oven will stay on. The restaurant ovens have never been extinguished since it first opened in 1864, in which time it has served over 115 million ducks!
"The electric board will stop tracking the ducks, but the stove has been burning for about a century and a half, and the fire will never die out," Jiang Junxian, chairman of the board of Quanjude Group Co. Ltd. said in an interview with Xinhua on Tuesday.
He said the restaurant will keep embers burning in an ancient cooking vessel that will be kept on-site during the renovations. According to Jiang, special staff will be assigned to add fuel each day to keep the fires burning.
Link -via Arbroath
From 1963, the first TV ad featuring the character Ronald McDonald. {wiki} You might recognize NBC weatherman Willard Scott under the makeup. -via Random Good Stuff
This piano piece was created by assigning notes to the digits 0 through 9 in the constant known as pi. Pi has no repetitive patterns, so the piece sounds random, but has a mathematical beauty all its own. Link -via Everlasting Blort
BMW designed a ficticious luxury private jet for Boeing that that can function as a second home. The design was unveiled at the Aircraft Interiors Expo 2007 in Hamburg last week. http://tekenstein.com/bmw-designed-787-vip-business-jet -via A Welsh View
New footage of Nora, the Piano-Playing Cat. The "call and reponse" section is priceless! I think Nora has grown to love the camera as well as the piano. Push play or go to YouTube. -via Metafilter
Artwork from the Workplace features things created by people who are bored at work.
Of course not all jobs are constantly tedious through and through, but only a bunch of precious few jobs are exent of periodical boredom. And it is when boredom kicks in that something beautiful happens: people seek refuge from despair in drawing away, or making unexpected sculptures, writing rhymes… That is the Artwork from the Workplace.
Submissions are welcome. Link Thanks, jonkysit!
Jim Henson and Frank Oz tackling the Computer Age. Push play or go to YouTube. -via the Presurfer
Update: Anita Bath has more details. This funny computer video, titled Coffee Break Machine, was created by Jim Henson in 1967 as an IBM training video. At the time, the monster was named "Arnold the Munching Monster".
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