There is something mysterious and intriguing about spiral staircases. Atlas Obscura looks at some of the most magnificent spiral staircases in the world, with lovely pictures and facts you might not know. For example, the staircase at the Vatican Museum, pictured here, is actually a double helix, with one staircase going up and the other coming down. Link -via Curious Expeditions

If scientists and police investigators can reconstruct a face from a skull, why can't we figure out what Skeletor looked like before he was a skeleton? David at Ironic Sans went to work, or to be accurate, his wife did, and recreated faces for Skeletor, Manuel Calavera, and Jack Skellington. Link -via Laughing Squid

A few people were lucky enough to be pan pals of a sort with Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh often added sketches or paintings to his letters, to illustrate what he wrote about. BibliOdyssey has a collection of these letter sketches, along with the letters that accompanied them. Link

A cat named Krillen survived 19 hours in a freezer in Te Kuiti, New Zealand. Sarah Crombie heard a faint meow when she approached the freezer, which hadn't been used since her partner Sid Sisson shut it the night before. He didn't realize that Krillem had jumped inside. The freezer was set to -18C, the coldest possible setting. She opened the lid and saw him on a bag of dog food.

"I raced inside to get Sid and as I came out, Krillen rolled off the bag in an attempt to get out, but he was that frozen he just rolled to the bottom of the freezer on his back," she said.

"At first we thought his eyeballs were frozen. I've never seen a cat with such big eyes."

Fortunately, Sid, 28, knew it was essential to raise the body temperature of hypothermia sufferers slowly. So he put the cat under his shirt and got into bed with him.

It took three hours under the covers for the cat to stop shaking. Krillen appears to have recovered without frostbite. Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: Bruce Mercer)

Sangbae Kim, a robot designer from MIT, is probably best known to Neatorama readers as the inventor of the Stickybot, a robot that can climb walls with feet modeled after a gecko's sticky feet. He also used the idea of scuttling cockroaches for a robot called the iSprawl.

Kim’s latest project is a robot inspired by the cheetah. The idea is build a prototype robot from a lightweight carbon-fiber-foam composite that can run at the cheetah’s speed of 70 miles per hour.

It’s an ambitious project. Current wheeled robots are efficient, but can be slow in rough terrains. For instance, iRobot’s PackBot, which is used by the U.S. military, can only travel at speeds of up to 5.8 miles per hour.

“Most wheeled robots today can do very well on flat surfaces, but they are slow,” says Kim. That’s why he’s looking to the cheetah for ideas. The cheetah has an extremely flexible backbone that gives extra speed or force to its running motion.

The project is expected to take about 18 months. Link

During president Richard Nixon's administration, he and his staff compiled a list of political enemies. How well do you know (or remember) this list? Take the challenge in today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. My memory isn't what it used to be; I only scored 50%. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/37434

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Noble used the opportunity of shooting a zombie movie last spring in order to propose to Claudia. Claudia was willing to help on the movie, but she had no idea the whole thing was staged for her benefit (the rest of the 20-person crew all knew). She said yes, which led to an October wedding complete with a Zombie Wedding Cake. Read more about the proposal at the YouTube link. -Thanks, Noble!

Flickr user noblerobinette was delighted with her wedding cake, a zombie scenario created by Mike's Amazing Cakes in Seattle. Even the attendants were modeled after the real people! See more views in her photo stream. Link-via Digg

This post at The Future of the Cookbook tells how Jell-O became “America’s Most Famous Dessert,” before it was even familiar! Jell-O's early promotional advertising included recipes, recommendations from doctors, and adorable kewpies. Link -via Everlasting Blort

I wasn't all that impressed with these swirling colors until I started playing with the sliding controls. You can change the size of the colored splotches, the amount of blur, the color change rate, and other dimensions until you find a very pleasing sequence of eye candy. http://bestiario.org/research/eyecandy/ -via Gorilla Mask

If you've ever wondered what's inside Hello Kitty, we now know there's a Valentine-shaped heart with a little bow as well as lungs that look at you and cute little intestines. Of course. Designer Dr. Romanelli made these for MediCom Toy Incorporated. http://inventorspot.com/articles/anatomically_correct_hello_kitty_not_what_youre_thinking_33598 -via Buzzfeed

Letters of Note has a form letter from the 9th century found in western China produced by the Dunhuang Bureau of Etiquette. They had insisted officials issue letters of apology to dinner hosts after any embarrassing drunken escapades. The offender was supposed to recopy the characters in their own hand while inserting the recipient's name. The translation:

Yesterday, having drunk too much, I was intoxicated as to pass all bounds; but none of the rude and coarse language I used was uttered in a conscious state. The next morning, after hearing others speak on the subject, I realised what had happened, whereupon I was overwhelmed with confusion and ready to sink into the earth with shame.

Link -via reddit

When Mother Teresa died in 1997, she was buried at the Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Calcutta. Now that she is expected to be canonized as a saint, the government of Albania has asked that her remains be disinterred and turned over to Albanian authorities. India has formally rejected the demand.

"Mother Teresa was an Indian citizen and she is resting in her own country, her own land," Foreign Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said.

A spokeswoman for the nun's Missionaries of Charity described the Albanian request as "absurd".

Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, was born in Skopje, now part of Macedonia.

Correspondents say that the row over her resting place could develop into an ugly three-way squabble between India, where she worked most of her life, Albania where her parents came from and Macedonia where she lived the first 18 years of her life.

Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha said his country will continue the quest to regain Mother Teresa's remains before the 100th anniversary of her birth next year. Link -via Arbroath

Considering the earlier story of Falcon Heene and the flying saucer, this Public Service Announcement by Ebru strikes home. She named it "The Truest Venn Diagram I Have Ever Made." Link -via Buzzfeed

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A skunk in Tulsa, Oklahoma got his head stuck in a jar. Now you'll know what to do when this happens in your neighborhood. -via Blame It On The Voices