This image of Nyan Cat was created using Light Scythe, an open-source invention for writing text and drawing images with light in mid-air. I can't begin to tell you I understand it, but you can see for yourself. Link -via I Can Has Cheezburger
The River Fleet in London is a tidal river that once provided water for many industries. Over the years, it became quite polluted, then was consigned to flow underneath the city as London grew, until it was eventually incorporated into the sewer system. But the river is still there, filling its tunnels at high tide and ebbing to a trickle at low tide. Read about what happened to the River Fleet and see plenty of pictures at Kuriositas. Link
Animals have invaded your favorite social networking site -and what's worse, they have more followers than you do! So what's all the buzz about? ShortList will introduce you to cats, dogs, birds, and even snakes that Tweet. Maybe you'll find a Twitter critter you want to follow yourself! Link
Bake cookies in a car? You betcha! In Amarillo, the temperatures have soared to over 100 degrees, and about 200 degrees in a closed car. Brittany Nunn of the Amarillo Globe-News baked chocolate chip cookies in her car. They took quite a while to bake, but the car smelled wonderful afterward. http://amarillo.com/blog-post/brittany-nunn/2011-07-21/why-does-my-car-smell-cookies -via reddit
Students at Caltech didn't do much public protesting against the Vietnam War or the draft or the voting age, but on January 6, 1968 they found time to rally for something dear to their hearts.
In what some observers suggest may be the emergence of the college’s social conscience, the enraged students voiced opposition to rumored canceling of NBC’s science fiction series Star Trek.
“It Is Totally Illogical to Cancel Star Trek,” read the sign of one bespectacled protester…
A nationwide campaign kept the series on TV for one more year. Link -via Buzzfeed
(Image credit: Harry Chase/Los Angeles Times Archive/UCLA)
A young boy comes up with a scheme to get some carnival money. A short film featuring traditional hand-drawn animation by Izabela Melamed. -via Metafilter
In one comment thread this week, several people said our link format is very confusing. Now, I don't know if they were trolling or what, since that's the first time I heard that particular complaint, but I want to remind you that anytime you have trouble accessing or navigating around Neatorama, we want to know about it. Also, if you have opinions or suggestions about the site as a whole, you are welcome to leave those comments right here. Of course, "this sucks" counts as an opinion, but it isn't very useful to us in our quest to make Neatorama a pleasant experience for the greatest number of readers. But if you care about making the site better and have an idea of what we can do, let us know! And we will work to bring you neat and interesting things, like these exclusive articles from the past week:
We learned about the Soviet lunar program in The Secret Race to the Moon, courtesy of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
From mental_floss magazine, we heard of some Great Moments in Presidential Debt.
Congratulations to the winners of the Decipher the Doodle Contest at NeatoBambino! For everyone else, there will be another chance soon.
Once you are caught up on the main site, we have a lot of other offerings! Always keep up with NeatoBambino. Read some fresh new literature on our newest sub-blog Bit Lit. Soothe your eyes at the Neatorama Art Blog. Check out past articles on all kinds of subjects at The Best of Neatorama. Join in the discussions at our Facebook page. And be sure to follow Neatorama on Twitter!
Get ready for gallery after gallery of great, not-so-great, and over-the-top cosplay pictures from Comic-Con, coming soon to a website near you! Cats are celebrating Comic-Con as well, over at I Can Has Cheezburger, and they've got a great roundup of costumes from comic books, science fiction, and movies to show off! Link
How well do you know your Pixar films? Do you know who did the voices? Of course, you know Tom Hanks did Woody and Tim Allen did Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story movies, but other celebrities provided voices you might not know about -unless you recognized them. Test yourself in this Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. Come on, I scored 60% just by educated guess! Link
Medieval knighthood sounds like a romantic career in fiction. What a life of chivalry was really like doesn't seem all that great. A team of scientists tried to replicate the work of a knight clad in up to 110 pounds of metal by dressing up volunteer historical re-enactors from the Royal Armories in London, and putting them on treadmills. Even though they were used to wearing armor, you better believe they worked up a sweat!
Sure enough, the researchers found, armor was exhausting. The men used 2.3 times as much energy to walk while wearing the armor than without it, and 1.9 times as much to run. Being outfitted for battle turned out to be even more tiring than hauling around a backpack of the same weight would’ve been. As it turns out, covering your legs with enormous, heavy metal plates makes moving around a lot harder.
Who says internet memes don't last? Some people have the most fleeting memes tattoos on their bodies. Imagine trying to explain to your grandchildren why those things were so important to you that you had them permanently inked into your skin. Ranker has a list of ten memes, some with more than one tattoo found. A couple pics are NSFW. Link
Don Schoendorfer makes wheelchairs out of lawn chairs and bicycle wheels. His hobby was inspired by a woman in India who crawled across the dirt because she had no wheelchair. After building 100 of the inexpensive chairs, Schoendorfer founded the organization Free Wheelchair Mission in order to get the chairs shipped to those who need them worldwide.
It costs less than $60 to have each chair made, shipped and delivered to "some of the most remote corners of the globe," according to Schoendorfer's website, freewheelchairmission.org.
Better yet, the recipients don't have to pay a dime for their new mobility.
Schoendorfer says he hopes to distribute 20-million wheelchairs in total.
Properly managing one's finances seems like it should be a prerequisite for running a country. But these U.S. leaders could have used more dead presidents in their wallets.
HARRY TRUMAN -THE BUCK STOPPED THERE
Prior to becoming president, Harry Truman's ventures in private business earned him more trouble than profit. He lost several thousand dollars investing in a fruitless zinc mine, and even more money funding a short-lived haberdashery in Kansas City. Eventually he began to view politics as a more stable career than business. Even as a senator, Truman was forced to borrow money and live more modestly, as he sent much of his income home to support his farm in Missouri.
Upon leaving the White House in 1953, Truman refused to exploit his former office as a stepping stone into the business world. This left him with just a small plot of land off which to live. He hoped that his memoirs would bring in extra cash, but between paying the ghostwriters and the taxes, Truman netted just $37,000 from the book. His insolvency grew so pathetic that President Eisenhower passed the Former Presidents Act in 1958, which created a pension for Truman. The former president made use of every last bit of it, leading an active life until his death at the age of 88.
THOMAS JEFFERSON -LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF MONEYLENDERS
During the 1700s, tobacco rarely turned a consistent profit. So Thomas Jefferson, like many plantation owners of his time, lived in perpetual debt. Eager to look the part of a Virginia gentleman, Jefferson borrowed money for expensive clothes, furniture, and wine. He continued to indulge in this lifestyle through his presidency and into retirement. Jefferson's beloved country estate of Monticello was especially draining on his finances. Its high ceilings and large windows led to excessive heating costs, and its flat roof and cavernous skylights leaked with every rainfall. by the time Jefferson was in his late seventies, the neglected bills had piled up and doubled with interest.
To lessen his financial woes, Jefferson started selling off the things he loved. He sold his entire collection of books to a Congressional library and even hatched a plot to give away a large parcel of land in a statewide lottery. When news of the lottery (and its purpose) reached his former colleagues, generous donations poured in. Despite these efforts, Jefferson died in debt. Two decades later, his grandson finally paid off the founding father's tab.
ULYSSES S. GRANT -THE BOOK DEAL OF THE CENTURY
In 1881, former president Ulysses S. Grant settled into his retirement with what seemed like a prudent investment in his son's Wall Street firm, Grant & Ward. But when the younger Grant's partner, Ferdinand Ward, absconded to Canada with all the money, Grant found himself short $150,000.
Grant considered it a matter of personal honor to pay back the debt in full and rejected any financial assistance. He sold off much of his land, but it wasn't enough to cover his losses. To generate more income, the former general wrote a series of articles about his Civil War exploits, which the ever-humble Grant doubted anyone would read. Surprisingly, the articles were a huge success, and Grant's longtime friend Mark Twain convinced him to pen his personal memoirs. Completed just before his death in 1885, Grant's autobiography became one of the best-selling books of its time -earning more than half a million dollars.
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The article above, written by Brian McMahon, is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the May-June 2011 issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a subscription to mental_floss and never miss an issue!
Be sure to visit mental_floss' website and blog for more fun stuff!
The space shuttle Atlantis ended its final mission today when it landed in Florida just before 6AM ET. This photograph, showing the shuttle's final descent path, was taken this morning by the Expedition 28 crew of the International Space Station. See a much larger and more impressive photo at NASA's website. Link-Thanks, Ned!
