Jim Rawlinson was riding the waves at Hanalei Bay, Kauai, Hawaii on Monday when a tiger shark attacked his surfboard.

As he slid backwards what happened next is as frightening as it is unimaginable.  Rawlinson ended up on the back of the  ocean's most feared predator.

"I was onto the shark's back...anywhere from about five to ten seconds.  It was so strange that everything was so slow and yet again so fast."

Rawlinson credits his escape from the large, toothy fish on his ability to stay calm.  As he straddled the fish, he released his surf leash from around his leg and slowly slid off.

From the bite marks left on the surfboard, Rawlinson and marine biologist Terry Lilley, who was shooting video underwater nearby, estimate the shark was around 14 feet long. Link -via Fark

Eddie Feibusch sells zippers at his New York store ZipperStop. He's been in business since 1941. There were once a lot of zipper shops in the garment district, but gradually they relocated overseas, leaving ZipperStop as one of the few remaining specialty shop where you can get a zipper in any size for any purpose.

So when a recalcitrant zipper threatened to be, or not to be, Queen Gertrude’s undoing in a Metropolitan Opera production of “Hamlet” last month, the Met dispatched a costumer, Michael Zacker, to Mr. Feibusch for a new zipper for Jennifer Larmore’s gown. “He really has great products,” Mr. Zacker said.

Retail, they go from 50 cents for a nylon dress zipper to $100 for a No. 10 brass zipper, 350 inches long, to wrap your hot-air balloon.

How great are zippers? Don’t even get Mr. Feibusch started. They are watertight for deep-sea divers, airtight for NASA. “Nothing replaces a zipper,” he said. Buttons? He made a face. “A button is unpleasant,” he said.

Link -via Jason Kottke

(image credit: Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times)

It was a scene reminiscent of Winnie the Pooh and the honey pot. A young bear was spotted in Reading, Vermont wandering about with his head stuck in an old-fashioned milk can.

State biologist Forrest Hammond, along with some help from firefighters and police, spent about 45 minutes Sunday afternoon getting the old fashioned milk jug off the 120-pound bear's head, according to Vermont Fish and Wildlife spokesman John Hall.

The bear was found meandering through the woods along Route 106 in Reading, bumping into boulders and trees with the milk jug stuck on its head.

Hammond had to tranquilize the bear and first tried to soap up his head and pull the milk jug off, but that didn’t work and he eventually had to use metal shears to get it loose. "He just did an excellent job of getting out there," Hall said. "It's important, too, that nobody got hurt," he said, adding that the bear was released into the wild.

Officials think the can had been used as a bird feeder because there was birdseed in the bottom, which may have attracted the young bear. Link -via Arbroath

(YouTube link)

Canine musical freestyle returns to the TV show Britain's Got Talent! Tina and her dog Chandi put on quite a show. -via Buzzfeed

Previously at Neatorama: Carolyn Scott and the amazing Rookie.

Sean Murtagh of London, England was scheduled to marry Natalie Mead of Brisbane, Australia surrounded by family and friends in England. They had a civil ceremony in Australia already, and were on the way to the big British ceremony when they were stranded at an airport in Dubai due to the volcanic ash cloud that cancelled many European flights. Instead of canceling the wedding, they were married via Skype! Assembled wedding attendees in Ealing, west London, watched the couple take their vows aided by a laptop and a webcam at the airport.

Natalie Mead told Gulf News: "Passengers stranded in the hotel were getting excited for the first time in days when they heard about our wedding; some even helped me with my hair and make-up. It was also great to see everyone in the UK on our wedding day, even if it was via webcam.

"It has been an amazing day and we are just so grateful for everything that everyone has done for us. It is definitely a story to tell the grandchildren. There was no way we were going to let this volcano stop us [from] getting married."

Caroline Black, a celebrant who conducted the online ceremony from London, said: "It was just like any other wedding except the bride and groom weren't there."

The airport donated flowers and a wedding cake for the celebration. Link -via Bits and Pieces

Jeff Varasano, a New York pizza chef in Atlanta, shares his love of pizza and pizza making. In this extensive page, he breaks down every ingredient and procedure to explain why each step is important. Then he displays different pies and critiques them.

The quality of the ingredients is very important. I have scoured the lands, trying every brand of flour, tomato and cheese I could find. I've had cheese flown in, paying $75 for enough cheese for just one round of pies, I've even made my own cheese from scratch, starting with just milk. I've tasted every brand of tomato I could find and peeled and blanched my own from local tomato growers. And theses things do make a difference. But there's just no getting around the simple truth of 'the big three' - High heat, good natural yeast, and mixing technique. Getting these right will cover a lot of sins and getting these wrong will screw up the best ingredients.

Varasano even praises and ranks other pizzerias and gives directions to them! Link -via reddit

This site doesn't pretend to know everything; it's a collection of men giving their varied advice on love. Some are practical, some are cynical, and some are philosophical. I particularly like what the old guys have to say. The guy pictured here has the right idea.

“Don’t wait to find the ultimate act of love. Create the ultimate act of love.”

Link -Thanks, Abe Greenwald!

Less murder-y than a real chainsaw and more fun than any Texas Massacre.

Etsy artist SteffBomb has a limited-edition run of plush chainsaws available! Link -via Geekologie

From Raytheon's radar business to your breakfast of leftover pizza, the story of microwave cooking is an interesting read. Like computers, they took off when the size (and price) came down.

The 1947 Radarange was a whopping six feet tall, weighed nearly 750 pounds, and required its own 220 volt electrical line and a dedicated water line for the cooling tube. It sold for $2000, or nearly $22,000 today. Not yet an appliance for the home cook, Raytheon marketed the behemoth appliance to high-volume, quick service restaurants. Busy diners, ocean liners and hospitals all purchased their own Radaranges, cooking hamburgers and sheet cakes in less than 30 seconds.

Link -via Boing Boing

The Brooklyn Ball is scheduled for Thursday at the Brooklyn Museum. One of the activities will be the bashing of a 20-foot-tall piñata in the shape of Andy Warhol's head. What fun! There are treats inside, but the hosts are not saying what they are. Link -via Dangerous Minds

(image credit: Adam Husted)

The Scottish wildcat, also known as the Highland tiger, is so reclusive that scientists don't know much about it. Camera traps set in the Cairngorms National Park are now yielding pictures of the cats that may help conservationists protect the animal.

The research is being led by Dr David Hetherington of the Cairngorms National Park Authority.

He told BBC Scotland: "Wildcats are very shy, secretive animals. They are active mainly at night and it's really difficult for people to get close enough to watch them properly.

"These camera traps are an excellent way of us getting a much better insight into where wildcats live, when they're active, and what habitat they're using.

"We can also get an idea of where they don't live and, of course, that's also really important information."

Experts believe the Scottish wildcat population has fallen to about 400, and work is under way to prevent the species becoming extinct.

The biggest threat to the wildcat's survival as a species is their tendency to interbreed with domestic cats. The Scottish wildcat is the last wild feline predator in Scotland. Link -via ForteanTimes

(image credit: Neil Anderson)

The 18th amendment to the US constitution which prohibited alcoholic beverages was largely the work of one man: Wayne B. Wheeler.

How does one begin to describe the impact of Wayne Bidwell Wheeler? You could do worse than to begin at the end, with the obituaries that followed his death, at 57, in 1927—obituaries, in the case of those quoted here, from newspapers that by and large disagreed with everything he stood for. The New York Herald Tribune: “Without Wayne B. Wheeler’s generalship it is more than likely we should never have had the Eighteenth Amendment.” The Milwaukee Journal: “Wayne Wheeler’s conquest is the most notable thing of our times.” The Baltimore Evening Sun had it absolutely right and at the same time completely wrong: “Nothing is more certain than that when the next history of this age is examined by dispassionate men, Wheeler will be considered one of its most extraordinary figures.” No one remembers, but he was.

Wheeler was the hardest-working lawyer and political organizer the Anti-Saloon League had ever seen. Read about how he manipulated the politics of so many cities and states that the federal government was no match for him. Link

Next month will mark the 30th anniversary of the Mount St. Helens eruption that buried the area in ash, flattened trees for miles around, and killed 57 people. A quarter of the 110,000-acre Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument was set aside as a research area in 1982, so scientists could see how nature alone would reclaim the blast site. National Geographic magazine takes a look at how the area is flourishing now.

A key lesson is the importance of "biological legacies"—fallen trees, buried roots, seeds, gophers, amphibians—that survived the blast, thanks to snow cover, topography, or luck. Ecologists had assumed rebirth would happen from the outside in, as species from border areas encroached on the blast zone. But recovery has also come from within. Starting with a single plant Crisafulli discovered in 1981 on the barren, 3,750-acre expanse known as the Pumice Plain, purple prairie lupines became the first color in a world of sterile gray. In life they were nutrient factories, food for insects, habitat for mice and voles; in death they, and the organisms they attracted, enriched the ash, allowing other species to colonize. Gradually the blast zone began to bloom.

Link

(image credit: Diane Cook and Len Jenshel)

In celebration of today's Boston Marathon, the Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss pits celebrity marathon runners against each other. From ten matched pairs of celebrities, you decide which one could best the other in a marathon race. The secret is that they have all participated in marathons at one time or another and have recorded times, but they didn't necessarily run in the same year, or at the same age. I scored 50%, which tells you I am not a particularly good guesser. Link

Bharti Kumari of Kusumbhara, Bihar, India is the headmistress of the village school at the age of twelve! Every day, she walks two miles to another village to attend school from 10AM to 3PM. Before and after her own classes, she teaches language and math to 50 village children between the ages of five and ten.

Her pupils are among the 10 million Indian children who are outside the state education system because their parents are so poor that they need them to work or no schools are nearby. Earlier this month the Indian government pledged £3.6 billion for a “right to education” scheme which aims to provide free schooling for all.

Kumari has decided she wants to be a teacher, even after she grows up. Link -via Arbroath