A photographer from the Atelier d'Ora in Vienna took the photo above in December of 1916, on the occasion of the coronation of Karl I, Emperor of Austria, as the King of Hungary. It was a grand affair, as we can see by the sumptuous finery worn by the ladies. But it seems strange that the photographer would take portraits of a pair of shoes! Three such photos exist, focusing tight upon the footwear that appears to be made of silk brocade laced with satin ribbons, and the rich lace petticoat adorned with fabric flowers. And all that would scarcely be seen at all under the fur-trimmed gown worn over top. 

The images were labeled as those of Countess Erdödy. There were three Countess Erdödys at the coronation. There was Countess Johanna "Jenny" Margareta Margit Maria Gobertina Erdödy and her sister, Countess Franziska Violet Maria Gobertina Erdödy, and their mother, Countess Erdödy, the American Julia Hanby Scott who married Count Gyorgy Maria Gobert Erdödy de Monyorókerék et Monoszló. We have portraits of the two younger countesses at the coronation, and they are not wearing fur-trimmed gowns. So this must be the feet of their mother.  

Read what we know about these "shoe portraits" at Gods and Foolish Grandeur. In the comments we learn about the photographers of Atelier d'Ora, although we don't know which one was so fascinated with the countess's shoes and took these pictures. -via Everlasting Blort 

Alcohol is the most familiar and widespread drug we have. People have been consuming alcohol for thousands of years for many reasons. In small amounts, it makes you feel good, acts as a social lubricant, and can make you forget your miseries for a while. People are willing to commit crimes to get alcohol, as Prohibition taught us. But what does alcohol do to our bodies?

We know the dangers of operating heavy machinery while drunk. That wasn't a problem until we developed heavy machinery, like cars. We also know what chronic alcoholism does to families. And heavy drinking or long-term drinking will cause liver failure. But that's just one organ. Alcohol affects every organ in your body, including the brain. At some point, that damage can become permanent and even deadly. And that's before we even get to alcohol's addicting qualities. Kurzgesagt goes through all the things that alcohol does, and it's rather scary. 

What do you get when you combine dodgeball with Asteroids? Or maybe it would be more descriptive to compare this game with "bullet time" in the Matrix movies. Anyway, in Dodge This, you (the green ball) have to avoid being hit by red bullets. The bullets are traveling fairly slowly for bullets, but they are coming from all directions. Whoever is shooting at you is not particularly well-aimed, either. You could survive a half-minute or so by not moving at all. But once you are hit, the game is over. The scoring system can easily confuse people who aren't paying close attention, because when it says you are "top 94%," that's actually really bad. 

From what I've heard, this is much harder on a touch screen than for those of us with a mouse. My advice is to stay away from the edges, because you never know where gunfire will originate. Ultimately, your score depends on how long you survive. Therefore, your maximum score depends on when you are obliged to stop and do something important. -via Metafilter 

If you've been following Neatorama for any length of time, you are surely familiar with artist Theo Jansen's enormous Strandbeest wind-powered kinetic sculptures. Every time I see one, I always feel sorry for the way he has to chase them down when the wind is blowing and they are walking fast. Yeah, their legs are way longer than his! But now he's got that problem worked out. Not only can he keep his creations on a leash, but he doesn't even have to run to keep up with him. The solution is a chair Jansen calls the Caterpillar. It glides smoothly across the sand on rolling, uh, "wheels" that resemble tank treads. And it's powered by the much bigger Strandbeest that is pulling it along. 

Jansen says the Caterpillar device will eventually find itself incorporated into a Strandbeest. That sounds pretty neat, but I don't think it would be nearly as cool to watch as seeing his previous works of art walking down the beach on their many legs. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

We do everything with our hands, some of it dangerous, so it's no surprise that the US sees around 45,000 finger or thumb amputations every year. It was a breakthrough when reattachment was developed, but that's not always possible. Alternatively, some of those fingers are replaced by amputating a patient's toe! Moreover, a study in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery tells us that the long-term outcomes for replacing fingers with toes is better than reattaching the original finger. The survey compared outcomes of 75 patients with 126 toe transfers to 52 patients with 96 digit replantations five years later, and found the toe transfer patients had significantly better hand function. The loss of a toe or two did not significantly affect foot function.

You have to feel for the folks who lost two or more fingers. Then you might wonder why toe replacement works better on average. The study doesn't go into it, but it may be that a deliberate toe amputation done in the same surgical procedure is fresher and less damaged than a retrieved finger. Read more at Discover magazine, or here if you're out of free articles. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: sole_lover) 

Is there such a thing as having too many ducks? Tara Poole lives in Victoria, Australia, and has ducks and chickens. While she was raising her own set of domestic ducklings, someone from a wildlife group who knew Poole contacted her about taking in a clutch of abandoned ducklings. These were Australian wood ducks, a wild species that proved to be quite different from barnyard ducks. The ducklings apparently imprinted on Poole and her husband. They hung out with the domestic ducks and learned to swim. The wood ducks started flying all at the same time, and Poole expected them to fly the coop eventually. But the wood ducks decided farm life was good enough. Instead of heading into the wild, the now-grown ducks follow their humans around everywhere and cuddle with Tara. They even critique her fashion choices! It's a good thing she loves ducks, because she is stuck with them.   

Homemade ice cream used to be made by churning your ingredients while they are surrounded by ice an salt. It took forever and made your arms hurt. Modern ice cream makers use electricity, but you don't really need them if you know a few things about ice cream. The secret to good ice cream is that the ice crystals that form in it while it's freezing are too small to be detected in your mouth, leaving only delicious creaminess. Churning breaks up those crystals, but the right ingredients will keep them from growing in the first place. Swetha Sivakumar explains why sweetened condensed milk and whipped cream tend to inhibit the growth of large ice crystals, making them perfect for no-churn ice cream. Those two ingredients, with flavoring added, are all you need. However, the kind of flavoring you add makes a difference, since additives will vary in their own crystal-growing tendencies. Read how to make your own ice cream without all the churning at Serious Eats. You will still need a freezer.

(Image credit: Serious Eats/Qi Ai)

You've heard of concrete canoe competitions, designed to challenge the skills of engineering students. You can make concrete float, if the weight of the displaced water is greater than the weight of the boat and whatever is in it. Scale up those little concrete canoes, and you have a concrete ship. It sounds insane, but massive cargo ships made of concrete exist all over the world. They were built mainly during the steel shortages of the two world wars. Concrete may have been easier to get than steel, but these ships were slower and less maneuverable than steel ships, so they were relegated to other uses besides battle (in most cases; we will learn about a crucial exception). Still, concrete is more easily breached, and near impossible to repair before the boat sinks. You can't just bang out the dents. 

Phil Edwards introduces us to concrete ships by tracing the history of 24 ships built at the McCloskey shipyard in Tampa, Florida, in just over a year (1943-44). Oh, they are still around, even if they don't float anymore. It takes more than 80 years for a concrete ship to disintegrate! Find out more about concrete ships at The Crete Fleet. This video has a 95-second skippable ad at 2:00. -via Laughing Squid 

The family of two-year-old Unakite Thirteen Hotel did not select her name. Neither did any human. She was born in 2022 in a house in Nebraska and relinquished by her birth mother, who does not have a current relationship with the birth father. The infant was then taken to a hospital, where she was issued a certificate of live birth instead of a birth certificate, with the randomly computer-generated name of Unakite Thirteen Hotel. 

The normal procedure is to file a certificate of live birth with the state, which then issues a birth certificate. But that didn't happen in this case. The girl's father, Jason Kilburn, found out about her, and filed for custody. Meanwhile, without a birth certificate, she couldn't get a Social Security number, and therefore could not be registered at a daycare nor could she get health insurance. And she couldn't change her name, either. 

Her father named her Caroline Elizabeth Kilburn, and had to go to court to get her a birth certificate. When it was finally issued, Caroline's name was still Unakite Thirteen Hotel. But the state didn't follow through with getting her a Social Security number. Only after the story made national news this week was a Social Security number issued for Caroline  ...in the name Unakite Thirteen Hotel. Kilburn is relieved that the number proves his daughter exists, and will seek a legal name change. 

Unakite is a kind of granite, pictured above. The comments at Metafilter make it clear that unidentified hospital patients are often classified by random words to avoid confusing them with other patients, but that does not explain how so many people dropped the ball with Caroline. 

(Image credit: Tom Harpel) 

When you hear of a celebrity who "dropped off the face of the earth," that usually means they stopped getting work, or fell out of favor, or maybe retired. This list means it literally, in that these people were rather well known and suddenly they disappeared even from their friends, family, and co-workers, never to be seen again. That doesn't mean the disappearance was a mystery, or is "unsolved." The sudden disappearance of Glenn Miller is pretty well established to be a plane crash at sea. The reason for the disappearance of a war correspondent can be assumed, even when no witnesses and no remains are found. But others are inconclusive- they may have been murdered, or they could still be alive somewhere, living under an assumed identity. 

You would expect a list like this to have Jimmy Hoffa and Amelia Earhart, and indeed they are here. But you'll also learn about many celebrities whose disappearances flew under your radar, or were famous in another country, or who vanished a long time ago. Read about 30 of them at Bored Panda. 

The 2002 movie Bend It Like Beckham inspired little girls to play soccer, made soccer players feel represented, and introduced the rest of the world to women's soccer (which outside of the US is just called football). It was Gurinder Chadha who wrote, produced, and directed that film, and she has announced that she's making a sequel. Why did it take so long? Chadha said she didn't have a story for another football movie, but now she has one. The script has yet to be written. The stars of the original, Parminder Nagra and Keira Knightley, are open to returning, but want to see a script before they commit. 

In the 23 years since Bend It Like Beckham was released, women's soccer has gone from an amateur sport with few fans to a global juggernaut. Many of today's players credit the film for some of the sport's rise. Emma Hayes, head coach of the U.S. women’s national soccer team, is one of them. Years after being inspired by the movie, she is collaborating with Chadha to make the sequel as up-to-date and successful as possible. Chadha plans to have the movie ready in 2027. Read more about the Bend It LIke Beckham sequel at Deadline.  -via kottke 

There's an old saying that you can't unscramble an egg. It means that there are some actions that cannot be reversed, like speech. Sure, you can "take it back," but the damage has already been done. But like many old adages, science looked at it and said why can't you unscramble an egg? Because of entropy. Well, that clears things up. 

But Leonard Hayflick responded to a 1990 article in the journal Science by explaining how you can unscramble an egg. Think about it, and see if you can come up with a better answer than his.

Show Answer

The 2004 movie Van Helsing had all the Universal monsters together being pursued by a monster hunter played by Hugh Jackman. The movie was a moderate success, panned by critics, but was a big influence on young Emily Zarka, who grew up to be an expert on monsters. She tells us about the real monster hunters from history that date back to the beginnings of civilization. They were everywhere in the Middle Ages, or maybe they were just better documented then. More likely, death and disease sparked panic in populations that didn't understand what they were up against, and reached out for help with a rash of undead vampires. A few of these supernatural investigators were rather famous, and became the basis for one enshrined in Bram Stoker's Dracula, and the character type thereafter served as a handy hero for monster movies. Dr. Zarka explains how the historical monster hunters inspired fictional heroes like Van Helsing.   

British prime minister Winston Churchill loved collecting exotic animals for his menagerie, and decided he wanted six platypuses. Australia did not export platypuses, because they knew they rarely survived any kind of travel. But this was 1943 and they needed Britain's help to repel the encroaching Japanese. So arrangements were made to send Churchill one platypus, which they named Winston Churchill. The animal was to be delivered without fanfare, which was all for the good because Winston the platypus died en route.  

Churchill, the man, had Winston Churchill stuffed, and the whole incident was kept from the press. But leaks occurred, and eventually the story became known that a German U-boat attacked the delivery ship and the platypus was shaken to death. Was there any truth to that story? Last year, a team in Britain and another team in Australia went to work to uncover the truth. Read what they learned, plus the story of three platypuses that made it to Brooklyn a few years after the war at BBC.  -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: Charles J. Sharp) 

Kiki was born paralyzed, due to a mosquito-borne virus. She was rejected by her mother, but was taken in by Don’t Forget Us…Pet Us, a sanctuary for neglected or disabled farm animals in Massachusetts. There she was pampered with plenty of attention, walks in a stroller, toys, music, and even a TV in the barn! Kiki showed how intelligent she is by learning to work the controls on her electronic toys, so they built her an electric cart with a joystick she can control. Kiki has since become an ambassador for the sanctuary and for those with disabilities of any species. Kiki has developed a special bond with the sanctuary owner's mother, Barbara, who suffers from Alzheimers disease. 

Since Kiki learned to drive her own vehicle, other barnyard animals have joined in, like Kashu, a goat who is also learning to steer with a joystick. You can keep up with Kiki and the other animals at Instagram and Facebook. -via Boing Boing