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!

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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!

Ramen noodles aren't just for preschoolers and starving college students anymore! But before you select yours, consult the Ramen Rater. The Ramen Rater has sampled and critiqued 451 unique varieties of instant ramen noodles from around the world -so far! Those ratings, as well as all kinds of recipes and other information about noodles, can be found on his website, also called The Ramen Rater. Link

Who says you can't go on a nature hike just because you're in a big city? There's plenty of edible plants growing right there in the streets of Washington, DC!

During two expeditions on Friday, adventurous eaters, amateur botanists, and a handful of curious locals descended on the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of the Nation’s Capital in search of edible plants and wild foods with the renowned forager, ‘Wild Man’ Steve Brill. Our tour, co-hosted by Roadside Food Projects, Atlas Obscura, and Think Local First D.C., covered all of one block. But the number of foods we found, many of which were weeds you’d walk by without a second glance, didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the available bounty growing between the city’s streets.

Read about the safari and the things they found at Atlas Obscura. Link

(Image credit: Dallas Lillich)

Tom McKinney of Yuba City, California fell off a ladder and couldn't move. His neck was broken. His 10-year-old daschund Chelse was the one who found him. No one else was around, so McKinney told Chelse to get help -and she did, by waking McKinney's sleeping wife and alerting her to the emergency. Now, Chelse is inspiring McKinney to walk again. After all, she had been through almost the same thing herself!

Doctors were worried that Tom may never walk again, but just two months later he’s moving around. He says he drew strength from Chelse who, seven years ago, also had to learn to walk all over again,

“Our vet had said, “you know that she had broken her back,’” said Tom.

They never thought Chelse could walk again. Tom says that if she can do it, why can’t he?

“[She] basically said, ‘don’t you quit.’ Anyway, I won’t,” said Tom.

With video. Link -via Arbroath

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced they will install new software in their body scanners that will somewhat protect travelers' dignity.

A software upgrade that the TSA has been testing in airports in Las Vegas, Atlanta and Washington since February would instead create a generic human form (as shown above) and indicate if the scanner detects a hidden object under the clothing. The technology would also show the TSA agents on what part of the body the object has been found.

As with the current system, if the scanner detects a hidden object, TSA agents will peform additional screening. If nothing is found, the scanner clears the passenger to move on.

“This software upgrade enables us to continue providing a high level of security through advanced imaging technology screening, while improving the passenger experience at checkpoints,” TSA Administrator John Pistole said.

It will take months to complete the tests. Link -via The Daily What Geek

When a movie becomes a hit, the studio's natural tendency is to do the same thing again. However, making a sequel that is anywhere near as good as the original film is hit-or-miss. Making a third movie that is worth watching is even more difficult. There have been many attempts, many failures, and a few successes. Unreality magazine looks at the few successes that had a certain something that other movie trilogies don't. Link

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

The comic strip Peanuts was originally called Li'l Folks. The great Charles M Schulz created it in 1950, and it soon became the most popular comic strip in history. Like so many of the great cartoon characters we all love, the main characters went through a metamorphosis before they became the characters we are all so familiar with.

Two characters in the comic became the "stars" of the strip, the runaway favorites. The two were, as we all know, Charlie Brown and his dog, Snoopy. The original Charlie Brown character was not the wishy-washy loser we all now know. Amazingly, the original Charlie Brown was quite popular with the Peanuts gang. He was addressed, frequently, as "Good ol' Charlie Brown." Several of the Peanuts girls actually had crushes on him.

And Lucy, who was to become his main nemesis, actually fantasized about getting married to him!!! It even took a few months before he adopted that famous zig-zag shirt. Slowly but surely, Charlie Brown got more and more insecure. And eventually he evolved into the lovable loser we can all associate with.

Snoopy, Charlie Brown's dog, soon became the comic's runaway most popular character. But the early Snoopy was pretty much just an ordinary, slightly mischievous dog. Introduced almost immediately in 1950, Snoopy walked on all four legs, much like any other dog.

It wasn't until 1956, six years later, that Snoopy got up and started walking in his famous walk on two legs, like a human would. Snoopy, again, very ordinarily, would sleep "inside" his dog house. It wasn't until two years later, in 1958, that he started lying on top of the dog house, as we remember him. And the first time Snoopy tried that, he had a nasty fall.

Eventually, Snoopy, who originally was a mute dog, developed the trademark "thought balloons" over his head. These enabled readers to follow his thoughts and responses, verbally as well as physically. Over the years, almost in an inverse ratio to his owner Charlie Brown, Snoopy became cooler and more confident.

Charlie Brown and Snoopy became a kind of yin-yang of the two sides of all of us. One side, Charlie Brown, symbolized the lack of confidence, shyness, and insecurity we all harbor, to a greater or lesser degree. And the other half, Snoopy, is the confident, totally-in-control, cool character we all, in our hearts (and fantasies) want to be.

Remember the good old science kits of yesteryear that contained things like cyanide, uranium, and ammonium nitrate, as well as Bunsen burners and glass vials that are now considered too dangerous for children? Why, you can't even blow up the kitchen anymore! How do the original science toys stack up against their modern counterparts? Collectors Weekly looks at both the old and the new science kits, which include a lot more than chemistry, and rates the old against the new. We may not have ammonium nitrate anymore, but we have some science kits that our parents and grandparents never had. Link

The BBC News Magazine recently posted an article about "Americanisms" creeping into the English language (meaning British English in this case). That article brought many responses, as British readers shared their pet peeves about the language as spoken by Americans. Some are just examples of bad grammar.

2. The next time someone tells you something is the "least worst option", tell them that their most best option is learning grammar. Mike Ayres, Bodmin, Cornwall

40.I am increasingly hearing the phrase "that'll learn you" - when the English (and more correct) version was always "that'll teach you". What a ridiculous phrase! Tabitha, London

41. I really hate the phrase: "Where's it at?" This is not more efficient or informative than "where is it?" It just sounds grotesque and is immensely irritating. Adam, London

While others are purely cultural differences.

14. I caught myself saying "shopping cart" instead of shopping trolley today and was thoroughly disgusted with myself. I've never lived nor been to the US either. Graham Nicholson, Glasgow

18. Take-out rather than takeaway! Simon Ball, Worcester

29. I'm a Brit living in New York. The one that always gets me is the American need to use the word bi-weekly when fortnightly would suffice just fine. Ami Grewal, New York

36. Surely the most irritating is: "You do the Math." Math? It's MATHS. Michael Zealey, London

And a couple are just inexplicable.

20. "A half hour" instead of "half an hour". EJB, Devon

44. My brother now uses the term "season" for a TV series. Hideous. D Henderson, Edinburgh

Do all these complaints make perfect sense on the eastern side of the pond? Read the rest at the followup article. Link -via J-Walk Blog

(Image credit: Flickr user Chris Turner)

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories made a whole herd of googly eyes that can be stuck on most metal surfaces temporarily. The possibilities are endless! So, they posted the instructions plus a gallery of examples. They also invite you to make your own and send in pictures of what you do with them. Where would you stuck your googly eyes? Link

Want an edge over the average person playing rock-paper-scissors? Try playing blindfolded! An experiment by Richard Cook at University College in London shows that when players can see their opponent, there is a slight tendency to copy them.

Cook asked 45 people to face off against each other in several rounds of rock-paper-scissors, in exchange for real money. In every game, either one or both players were blindfolded.

Cook found that the players drew with each other more often when one of them could see (36.3% of the matches) than when both were blindfolded (33.3% of them). The latter figure was exactly the proportion of draws you’d expect if the players were choosing randomly; the former was significantly higher than chance.

Cook devised this study because he was interested in the idea that we all automatically and unconsciously imitate one another. There’s plenty of evidence that we do indeed copy one another, from obvious gestures like touching our face to subtle movements like tensing our muscles. But it’s not clear whether these actions are truly involuntary in the way that the knee-jerk reflex is. To find out, Cook wanted to see if people can stop themselves from performing these acts of mimicry.

That’s why he turned to rock-paper-scissors. Here is a game where you have to avoid imitating your opponent in order to win – the rules implicitly encourage people to avoid copying what their adversaries do. The results of Cook’s face-offs suggest that the sighted player has a slight tendency to imitate the blindfolded one – that’s why a blindfolded player will draw more often against a sighted one than another blindfolded opponent. And indeed, players were particularly likely to imitate rocks and scissors.

If that's not an option in your game, Ed Yong offers a list of tips for a beginning player. Link

In this day and age of instant stardom, it's hard to believe that someone can make a public splash and then fade into the background and remain anonymous forever. But a few managed to do that in the past, and were never found out -yet. For example, the fellow at the left who stood in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

The bystander, holding shopping bags, blocked a line of tanks heading into the square, and then climbed onto a tank and started talking to the crew. This happened for a few minutes until two random people ran up and dragged him away before the tank crew could contemplate how they would clean their tank treads of protester.

That man, who briefly stopped the government tanks all by himself and appeared in one of the most iconic photos and pieces of video in world history, was never heard from again.

Of course, no one will say who he is either to protect him or to cover up what may have happened to him. Other mysteries in this Cracked article are just hard to explain. Link -via Digg

A family in Elbert County, Colorado awoke to find their horse Summer trapped in the home's basement.

Summer had fallen down a four-foot window well and landed in the basement, which was not constructed with a walk-out door.

“We thought of bringing her up the basement stairs,” Heap said. “But the stairs didn’t look safe enough to support her weight.”

A veterinarian sedated Summer, who sustained minor cuts and injuries in the fall, and a coring company was contacted to cut into the foundation of the home. The initial plan was to expose an area around a second window well, remove a portion of the foundation and create enough space to bring the horse out of the basement, Heap said.

When the crew had removed enough material around the window, Summer walked out on her own. Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Elbert County Sheriff's Office)

(YouTube link)

Phillip Mendonça-Vieira accidentally found himself in the possession of 12,000 screenshots of the New York Times homepage from September 2010 to July 2011, which he arranged into a video for your perusal. There are some stories that were so big you can follow them even at this breakneck speed. At his site, Mendonça-Vieira writes about the ephemeral quality of pages like this, which are rarely if ever archived. Link -via Laughing Squid