What if Shakespearean costumes were designed by an artist who drew superheroes? That would never happen, right?

In 1969, Sheldon Feldner contacted Marvel Comics, asking if one of Marvel's artists would be interested in designing costumes for a production of William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar by the University Theatre Company at Santa Cruz at the newly-built Cowell College of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

As luck would have it, the Kirby family had recently moved to California, and Stan Lee recommended that Feldner contact Jack Kirby.

Jack Kirby {wiki} was the creator of such characters as Captain America, The Fantastic Four, and the X-Men. But he went to work designing not only the costumes but also a poster for the student production. His sketches, and some pictures of the actual costumes, are posted at the Kirby Museum. Link -via Metafilter

Linda De Croock was injured in a traffic accident 25 years ago that left her with a crushed windpipe. Since then, her throat has been held open by metal stents until a new procedure in organ transplant gave her a new trachea. Dr. Pierre Delaere and his team at the University Hospital in Leuven, Belgium transplanted the windpipe twice to acclimate the patient to the new organ.

The windpipe was taken from a dead man and implanted in her forearm where her own tissue grew around the cartilage scaffold. When the organ came to be transplanted to her throat, her body did not consider it foreign and accepted it.

It is thought to be the first time an organ as large as a windpipe has been implanted into the recipient's body to develop before the final transplant.

Ms de Croock did not have to take anti-rejection drugs, which meant she was not at risk of complications such as a higher likelihood of cancer.

Dr. Delaere waited a year after the successful surgery before reporting on it to the New England Journal of Medicine. They hope this technique will help other transplant patients live without anti-rejection drugs. Link -via Discover Magazine

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This looks like a pile of river stones, but this mat is soft and warm to put your feet on. The hand-felted "stones" are made of wool! Link -via Unique Daily

Why buy a new gadget or chemical when something you have in the kitchen will do just as well? Lifehacker listed ten of their favorite kitchen repurposing tricks. For example, I get plenty of Kool-Aid splashed in the dishwasher, but I didn't know the lemon flavor (without the sugar) can be a cleaning agent.

It kind of makes one concerned about the thought of actually drinking something like Kool-Aid lemonade, but the citric acid in one drink packet is enough to clean the lime stains and calcium deposits that build up over time in the dishwasher.

Link -via Interesting Pile

They call it "The Eighth Continent", and this bathing experience starts at only $50,000 from the ME! Bath® company. You get a combination of glacier water and Hawaiian deep-sea water. Add Arabian Sidr Honey, Peruvian Pink Salt, Illipe Butter from Borneo, Murumuru Butter from the Amazon, Kokum Butter from India, Israeli Jojoba Oil, and 24-karat gold. The final price depends on whether you want to have this bath in a spa or in your home. http://themostexpensivebath.com/-via J-Walk Blog

(image credit: Flickr user dieselbug2007)

Cracked has composed a list of eleven argument defenses you might encounter on all kinds of forums. I believe I've seen every one of these in action. Link -via Digg

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Another of the many ways Queen's classic Bohemian Rhapsody is performed, this time by Hayseed Dixie, from their new album Killer Grass. Link -via Arbroath

Blockbuster movies are often released in several nations at once, and we are used to selecting from several languages on DVDs by now. How much work goes into making other languages work in film? Slate explains how they do it.

The foreign actors' voices have to match the age, texture, and comedic sense of the original. For a big celebrity such as Johnny Depp or Jim Carrey, a single actor in each country will dub all of the star's films. Koichi Yamadera, for instance, is the official Jim Carrey of Japan. Studios also sometimes employ local celebrities, like when Disney hired the French singer Charles Aznavour to do the voice of Ed Asner's protagonist in the movie Up. On rare occasions, the original actor will do the dubbing himself. Viggo Mortensen speaks Spanish, so he did a Spanish dub for Hidalgo. For the Castilian dub of G-Force, Penélope Cruz was unavailable, so her sister, Monica Cruz, got the job instead.

The mechanics of the process are also explained, as well as tricks some voice actors use to tweak their performance. Link

Photographer Brouton Stroube hung his subjects up by their feet before taking a portrait. The result shows some weird gravity effects that you don't expect when seeing the pictures turned upright. Link -via Buzzfeed

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A kitten was stuck on a concrete ledge high above the ground in Spokane, Washington. 60-year-old Kay Leclaire passed by jogging and heard the cat cry for help. So she decided to climb up and get him. The trapped kitten lucked out, since Leclaire is a champion climber who has scaled Mount Everest and holds a record as the oldest woman to climb the highest peaks on all seven continents. The kitten was adopted almost immediately after his rescue. http://www.komonews.com/news/local/81611402.html -via Fark

Three of Eddie Murphy's funniest movies came out in the mid-80s. In this Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss, you are challenged to identify twelve quotes. Did they come from Trading Places, Coming to America, or Beverly Hills Cop? Despite (or maybe because of) the fact that I've seen all three movies again fairly recently, I only scored 33%. Link

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Monta Ellis of the Golden State Warriors lands a basket. He's been "trying to extend his range". I think maybe he succeeded. Link -via Unique Daily

Doctors Without Borders is setting up shop in Haiti to provide medical services to those affected by the earthquake. They will use an inflatable hospital.

It's exactly what it sounds like: a temporary hospital with inflatable components that can be deployed whenever needed. Doctors Without Borders has been employing them for years, including an impressive inflatable nine-tent, 120-bed center in Pakistan following a 7.6 magnitude earthquake there in 2005. The hospital post-and-beam frames can be made from the same fabric in inflatable lifeboats. Nylon interior and exterior walls leave space for air to create an insulating effect.

Link -via Cynical-C, who has a list of resources for sending donations to Haiti.

In First Person Tetris, when you rotate a block, you rotate the entire game! By the time you think you've figured it out, the dizziness begins to set in. It's quite addicting. Link -via Boing Boing

A Russian circus chimpanzee named Lusha picked stocks that tripled in value over a year's time. Lusha was presented with cubes representing 30 different stock options and selected eight to invest money in by picking the cubes. Her chosen portfolio outperformed 94% of Russian investment funds!

'She bought successfully and her portfolio grew almost three times. She did better than almost the whole of the rest of the market,' said editor of Russian Finance magazine Oleg Anisimov.

He questioned why so-called financial whizz-kids are still receiving hefty perks for their expertise .

'Everyone is shocked. What are they getting their bonuses for? Maybe it's worth sending them all to the circus.'

Link -via Blame it on the Voices