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The moral of the story is: if you are going to sail off the coast of Wales on December 5th, you may want to change your name to Hugh Williams. But is this a true story? Any records from these incidences seem to be at least second-hand. I found a post at The Scuttlefish that may shed a bit of light on how "coincidental" the story really is. And be sure to check out the comment from Hugh Williams. Link
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
The Philips company introduces lights that run without electricity or solar power. Instead, they harness the bioluminescence of bacteria. You have to feed them fuel, namely methane and compost. The lights developed so far aren't bright enough to read by, but they may have other uses, like illuminating dark roads and exit signs. Link -via Buzzfeed
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It may look like a simple piece of plastic, but this robot has the moves! In fact, that's what it is for -to test out news ways for a robot to move. Developed by researchers at Harvard University, this soft robot was inspired by the movements of squid and worms. Link -via Cosmic Variance
The economy was tanking. Millions lost their jobs. Stocks were down. And since bankers seemed to be riding out the bad times better than anyone, the government appointed a commission to look into who was to blame for the crash. But this was 1933, and Ferdinand Pecora was chief counsel to the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Banking and Currency.
That was just the beginning. The proceedings became a "circus" and a media sensation. Read about how Pecora unearthed the dirty secrets of the banking industry that led to the Great Depression at Past Imperfect. Link
Assigned to probe the causes of the 1929 crash, he led what became known as the “Pecora commission,” making front-page news when he called Charles Mitchell, the head of the largest bank in America, National City Bank (now Citibank), as his first witness. “Sunshine Charley” strode into the hearings with a good deal of contempt for both Pecora and his commission. Though shareholders had taken staggering losses on bank stocks, Mitchell admitted that he and his top officers had set aside millions of dollars from the bank in interest-free loans to themselves. Mitchell also revealed that despite making more than $1 million in bonuses in 1929, he had paid no taxes due to losses incurred from the sale of diminished National City stock—to his wife. Pecora revealed that National City had hidden bad loans by packaging them into securities and pawning them off to unwitting investors. By the time Mitchell’s testimony made the newspapers, he had been disgraced, his career had been ruined, and he would soon be forced into a million-dollar settlement of civil charges of tax evasion. “Mitchell,” said Senator Carter Glass of Virginia, “more than any 50 men is responsible for this stock crash.”
That was just the beginning. The proceedings became a "circus" and a media sensation. Read about how Pecora unearthed the dirty secrets of the banking industry that led to the Great Depression at Past Imperfect. Link
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Ormie wants a cookie. There's a reason we put cookies up on top of the refrigerator -so little pigs can't get them! Ormie does have his own Facebook page, though. Link -via the Presurfer
It's time to play a game in collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog! Do you know what this thing is?
Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will each win a T-shirt from the NeatoShop!
Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?
Check out the What Is It? Blog for an additional picture of this item, and more mystery items. Good luck!
Update: the object in question is indeed a set of manual hedge trimmers. Berhard was the first of many with the correct answer. The funniest answer cam from SisterMerryHellish, who declared this is a wookiee toenail clipper! Congratulations to both for winning t-shirts from the NeatoShop!
A new art installation at the Holburne Museum in Bath, England, uses a "garden" of 5,000 lights planted on the grounds. Artist Bruce Munro was inspired by fields of flowers blooming in the Australian desert. See more pictures of the work called Field of Light in all its glory at Kuriositas. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Richard Breakspear)
TV, literature, and movies are full of fictional businesses and products. How well do you know these companies that don't exist? Find out in today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. I didn't know any of the answers, but scored 7/12 by educated guess! I bet you can do better. Link
Teddy Bear the porcupine loves corn on the cob, and wants it all for himself. He doesn't mind to tell you about it, in his Ewok voice! -via I Have Seen the Whole of the Internet
This Twaggie was rendered in comic form from a Tweet by @anniecolbert. Although I've known people like that, I hope it isn't a true story! Link
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
George Harrison passed away due to lung cancer ten years ago today, on November 29, 2001. George will, of course, always be remembered and beloved as the youngest member of The Beatles. But George was, besides that, a brilliant guitarist, a great singer, and a very gifted composer in his own right. Let's take a look at a few facts you may not know about "the quiet Beatle."
* George's favorite color was purple. He loved Formula One racing, egg sandwiches, and watching Monty Python's Flying Circus on TV. His favorite movie was Mel Brook's The Producers (1967).
* George's birthday was a bit nebulous. For most of his life and career, George thought his birthday was February 25, 1943. (Hundreds of Beatle's book state this date.) But near the end of his life, George changed his story and said his actual birthday was February 24, 1943. A family document revealed that he was actually born at 11:50 PM on the 24th.
* George and Paul McCartney were the first two Beatles to meet. The two rode on the same school bus in 1954. Paul was 12; George 11. Before this, George and John Lennon had gone to the same elementary school (Dovedale Primary School) for three years but never met there.
* George was the original "prolific" Beatle composer. Although everyone knows John and Paul composed a great majority of the classic Beatles songs, George actually co-composed the first two Beatles songs on record. In 1958, at their very first recording session, the Beatles (then called "The Quarrymen") played the Paul McCartney-George Harrison song "In Spite of All the Danger." In their next early recording session in 1960, the band played a John Lennon-George Harrison instrumental called "Cry for a Shadow."
* He officially joined the Beatles ("The Quarrymen") on February 6, 1958. He was only 14 at the time. George briefly changed his name to "Carl Harrison" (in honor of his idol, Carl Perkins) for an early tour of Scotland in 1960.
* George's "first time" was with a German prostitute in Hamburg. He was 17. After the act was finished, the other three Beatles (John, Paul, and then-drummer Pete Best) applauded heartily. George didn't know they were in the room.
* He wrote his first "official" Beatle "Don't Bother Me" (it was featured on With the Beatles, their second album), when he was sick in bed.
* George became a devout vegetarian at the age of 22 in 1965. According to his ex-wife Pattie, he would allow neither meat nor fish to be brought into their home.
* He gave a slang word to the national vocabulary. In The Beatles' first movie A Hard Day's Night (1964), George used the word "grotty" to describe some items of clothing. "Grotty" (meaning "grotesque") caught on as an actual slang word used frequently in the sixties. It is still used, albeit sparingly, to this day. According to John, George "used to cringe every time he had to say it."
* He was the "best Beatle actor." Well, at least according to the director of the boys' first two films. Richard Lester, who directed both A Hard Day's Night and Help! (1965) named George as the best actor of the foursome. According to Lester, in A Hard Day's Night, George "nails every line."
* He was the first Beatle to have a number one song as a solo act. "My Sweet Lord" hit the #1 spot on the charts in December of 1970.
* A versatile musician, George played 26 different instruments. Every Beatles fan knows George could play the guitar and the sitar. But he was also well accomplished on the conga drum, the African drum, the xylophone, violin, harmonica, marimba, and glockenspiel.
* George's greatest joy was gardening. He claimed to have "planted 10,000 trees" in his lifetime. In 1980, he published his autobiography I Me Mine. The book was dedicated "to all gardeners everywhere."
* He put up $4 million "to see a movie." When the Monty Python comedy troupe was having trouble getting their movie The Life of Brian (1979) financed, George actually mortgaged his home to help finance it. He said he gave them the money "because he wanted to see the film." According to Monty Python member Eric Idle, this remains "the most money anyone ever paid to see a movie."
* As we all know, George passed away from cancer in 2001. His mother, Louise, had previously died of the disease in 1970. George wrote the song "Deep Blue" in her honor. His dad, Harry Harrison, also died of cancer in 1978. The night of his father's passing, both George and his wife Olivia awoke in bed and viewed the same blue light. They both testified they saw a vision of Harry smiling at them.
There were almost 4,500 Hasidic rabbis at the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries in Brooklyn, and 3,000 of them posed for a photograph together. Not all of them got into the frame, but this is still a big picture! There's a link to the high-res version at NBC if you want to find someone you know. Link -via Buzzfeed
(Image credit: Tina Fineberg/chabad.org)
One way to sell Christmas cards is to create an outlandish story about their origin. Brad McGinty III tells about his father's failed 1955 business venture with a Japanese artist whom he shot in the face during World War II. The artist's "misinterpreted" idea for a greeting card is now for sale at his site. Whatever you may think of the cards, the story behind them is priceless. Link -via Metafilter
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The Aviarios del Caribe sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica is an orphanage that cares for abandoned and injured sloths with the goal of releasing them back into the wild. But the youngsters have to be taught how wild sloths do sloth things. -via Arbroath
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