Tomorrow will mark the 41st anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. LIFE magazine has published a set of pictures taken of the scene at the Lorraine Motel directly after the shooting. The photographs were previously unavailable to the public.

They were taken April 4, 1968, by Life magazine photographer Henry Groskinsky, who was on assignment in Alabama with writer Mike Silva when they learned that King had been shot in Memphis and rushed to the scene.

To their surprise, they had access not just to the motel but to King's room.

"I was very discreet. I shot just enough to document what was going on. I didn't want to make a nuisance of myself," the 75-year-old Groskinsky said in the caption to a photo showing a group of King's associates, including Andrew Young and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, assembled inside the room.

"It's very somber, and there I am with a flash camera. So I took a couple of pictures and just kind of backed off," Groskinsky said.

Link to story. Link to gallery. -via Fark

No, this is not a real space shuttle. It's made of Lego bricks!

Two Japanese LEGOsmiths used a whopping 65,000 bricks and 1,590 man hours to complete the stunning diorama, which even simulates a launch with flashing lights under the boosters and a vocal countdown. The only thing it doesn't do is lift off.

Part of the "Nasu Space Center," it appeared as a scene in Nasu Highland Park, an amusement park in Japan.

Link (with video). -via Digg

You knew it would happen, just like it happened last year. Think Geek added several fake products to its lineup on April Fools Day and now everyone wants a Tauntaun sleeping bag. They've added this to the listing:

ATTN Tauntaun Fanatics! Due to an overwhelming tsunami of requests from YOU THE PEOPLE, we have decided to TRY and bring this to life. We have no clue if the suits at Lucasfilms will grant little ThinkGeek a license, nor do we know how much it would ultimately retail for. But if you are interested in ever owning one of these, click the link below and we'll try!

Link

Next time your boss catches you reading Neatorama instead of what your job description specifies, tell him/her about this study from the University of Melbourne.

Dr Brent Coker, from the Department of Management and Marketing, says that workers who engage in ‘Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing’ (WILB) are more productive than those who don’t.

“People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office - are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t,” he says.

“Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos on YouTube, using social networking sites like Facebook or shopping online under the pretense that it costs millions in lost productivity, however that’s not always the case.”

http://uninews.unimelb.edu.au/news/5750/

(image credit: Flickr use Valerie Reneé)

The Bubal Hartebeest was a magnificent, tough beast which was once domesticated by the ancient Egyptians as a food source and for sacrificial purposes. The creature was even mentioned in the Old Testament.

Although it once roamed throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East, the deep-rooted mythology which surrounded the animal was not enough to save it from European hunters who began hunting them for recreation and meat. The last Bubal Hartebeest was probably a female which died in the Paris Zoo in 1923.

Animals are going extinct at a much higher rate now than through most of the earth's history. Many species have disappeared since the development of photography. Take a good look, because this is all you'll see of these eleven species as they were. http://ecoworldly.com/2009/04/02/11-extinct-animals-that-have-been-photographed-alive/ -via Digg

Previously at Neatorama: Video of a Thylacine and an attempt to resurrect the Quagga.

Classic social programs dealing with long-term alcoholics are expensive and do not have a great success rate. In 2005, a controversial experimental program in Seattle began to put homeless drunks in their own apartment building and let them drink as they pleased.

A new study came out in JAMA this week detailing whether the concept of "Housing First," as it's known, had any impact (here's an AP piece on the study). The 98 street drunks whom the study tracked had cost the public $4,066 a month prior to entering 1811 and afterwards they cost $1,492 a month after six months in the facility and $958 a month after 12 months. That's a pretty big savings and, oddly enough, some of the residents began to drink less. Some even got sober. (Some also died.)

[...]

While this sort of program would have to replicated elsewhere to see if these savings hold, it sure is a vastly more humane way to deal with a chronic urban problem than in the past. It also has all sorts of implications for addressing homelessness among the mentally ill, chronic crackheads and junkies of every stripe. My own guess is that, for example, housing the mentally ill who are homeless instead of herding them into very stressful homeless shelters or leaving them to the streets would improve their mental health issues dramatically, with or without medications. There is something magical about having a roof over one's head, even a modest one.

The financial aspects of this experiment are not all that surprising, but is it really a good idea? Is it more ethical to spend time and money to try to save people from their own bad decisions, or to give them the dignity of living their lives the way they choose, however harmful? Does this kind of program send the wrong message? Or would it make our streets safer? http://www.furiousseasons.com/archives/2009/04/study_housing_homeless_drunks_and_letting_them_drink_saves_millions.html -via reddit

(image credit: Flickr user dno1967)

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Garching, Germany presents a 24-hour webcast involving astronomical observatories around the world. Live streaming video will be available, plus links for each participating observatory and the times they will be online in Universal Time (GMT). The webcasts will start Friday morning at 5AM Eastern Daylight Time, or 9AM UT/GMT with the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii, then move around the world. The webcast is part of the 100 Hours of Astronomy project to celebrate the International Year of Astronomy. Link -via Metafilter

(image credit: Gemini North Observatory)

How does a grown man accidentally swallow a pair of scissors?

Lin Kong had borrowed a four-inch-long pair of nail scissors to use instead of a toothpick to clean his teeth after a meal.

But as one of his friends told a joke, the 27-year-old laughed and swallowed the clippers.

As he tried to cough up the scissors, the points, which were facing upwards, dug deeper into his throat, causing serious damage.

Surgeons in Putian, China used local anaesthetic and surgically removed the scissors. Link -via Unique Daily

Mock Duck is "a delicious assortment of thrift store cookbooks", with scanned pictures and descriptions that will make your mouth water... NOT. This page is from a 1962 British cookbook called TV Suppers from Heinz.

Gaily coloured peppers almost make you forget you're eating beans again.

Pizza is topped with canned spaghetti and a lattice of anchovy fillets and processed cheese.

http://www.swankola.com/md/mockduck.html -via Everlasting Blort

Celebrate April Fool's Day as you like, but what if you were born on April first? Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss celebrates 15 notable people who happen to have a birthday today. I scored 73%; the average at the time was 59%. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/24213

This high-quality sleeping bag looks just like a Tauntaun, complete with saddle, internal intestines and glowing lightsaber zipper pull. Now when your kids tell you their favorite Star Wars movie is "Attack of the Clones" you can nestle the wee-ones snug in simulated Tauntaun fur while regaling them with the amazing tale of "Empire Strikes Back".

Use the glowing lightsaber zipper pull on the Tauntaun sleeping bag to illustrate how Han Solo saved Luke Skywalker from certain death in the freezing climate of Hoth by slitting open the belly of a dead Tauntaun and placing Luke inside the stinking (but warm) carcass. If your kids don't change their tune on which Star Wars film is the greatest ever, you can do your best Jar Jar impression until they repent.

Why has no one thought of this before? I, of course, clicked the "buy now" button. Color me disappointed. Like the Personal Soundtrack T-Shirt from last year, this will be the in-demand product Think Geek will actually have to produce sooner or later. Link -via Unique Daily

From NASA's always-amazing Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Now, as part of the planned upgrade of the International Space Station, an Expedition 18 astronaut has upgraded her own head. The Human Extended Analog Device 9000 was attached with only minor delays, making the astronaut's remaining spacewalks over 40 percent more efficient. With the HEAD 9000 attached, an astronaut can now directly access 4 Gigabytes of computer flash memory with their own brain, perform complex mathematics by "directed thinking", and play a pre-installed game of Tetris at no additional charge.

Link -via Digg

These ten different timelines, which are all affected whenever someone uses a time machine, can be confusing (as all time travel stories are), but reading them may help you prepare for the new movie Terminator: Salvation.

I've mulled it over some more, and I still believe there has to be a timeline where someone other than Kyle Reese is John Connor's father. When The Terminator was a standalone movie, you could read it either way. Either there's a circular causality, where Kyle is "always" John Connor's father, or Kyle's time travel creates a new branch. But Terminator 2 pretty much establishes that time travel always creates new branches, because there's no fate but what we make. And the Connors, with their friendly T-800, are able to stop or at least delay Skynet. But of course, your mileage, even backwards and forwards through time, may vary.

Link -via reddit

Preserved plants don't look much like their living counterparts after they are flattened and dried. The Harvard Museum of Natural History instead has displays of plants made of glass!

Leopold Blaschka and his son Rudolf came from a long line of talented glassmakers. As a hobby, Leopold began making glass flowers from illustrations in natural history books. So beautiful, accurate and delicate were these models, a buzz began to generate in his hometown in Germany, and a local aristocrat commissioned 100 glass orchids. Leopold’s son, Rudolf joined him in the painstakingly intricate work. Thus began a prolific career in natural history glassmaking, ending in the largest commission of their lives; an order from Harvard college for over 3000 plant and flower models for their botany students. Leopold didn’t live to see the completion of the project, but Rudolf continued on without him, working alone from 1895 - 1936, three years before his own death.

Link to story. Link to more photographs at Flickr.

(image credit: Curious Expeditions)

A ship discovered off the coast of North Carolina in 1997 has been identified by experts as the Queen Anne's Revenge, a ship used by the pirate Blackbeard. The ship was originally named Le Concorde before the pirate seized it from its French crew in 1717. Artifacts, such as this apothecary weight featuring two fleurs-de-lis, helped to identify the ship as Blackbeard's.

Le Concorde's surgeon, who was forced to serve briefly in Blackbeard's crew, may have owned the weights, designed for pharmaceuticals. Pirates could have also used the weights to measure gold dust, experts say.

See more pictures at National Geographic. Link

(image credit: Wendy M. Welsh, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources)