The tunnel of Love is an amusement park ride that you might only know from movies and cartoons, or maybe that Bruce Springsteen song. Oh, it was real enough at one time, but you don't see them anymore, at least as they were in their heyday. A Tunnel of Love was a boat ride, somewhat like Disney's It's a Small World without all the music, the lights, and the kids. So really nothing like that at all, except it was an indoor boat ride. The first such rides at the turn of the 20th century carried people into a darkened cave-like course where amazing scenes were lit up along the way, and were not called a Tunnel of Love. They were for entertainment. However, they way people used those rides to sneak a kiss or much more in the dark led them to evolve into a romantic-themed ride. The entertainment shifted into scary displays in the dark, all the better to give one half of a couple an excuse to grab the other and get closer.

The Tunnel of Love was naturally limited to permanent amusement parks, and it died out pretty suddenly. Read the history of the Tunnel of Love and what brought it to an end at Mental Floss. 

Swedish musician Seth Everman (previously at Neatorama) does a duet with his father, who is also a musician. That's a really nice, wholesome thing to do. I think we are supposed to be surprised that a 70-year-old musician segues into Metallica and really shreds, but you know who else is in their 70s? Jimmy Page is 78, Keith Richards is 78, Eric Clapton is 77, Jeff Beck is 78, David Gilmour is 76, Brian May is 75... you get the idea. But Everman the elder is also an artist, recreating the scene on canvas during the video! But what I found most surprising is in the flashbacks at the end of the video. Imagine giving a three-year-old a drum kit! -via Digg

During the Cold War, the US wanted to be able to drop nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union with only 15 minutes' notice. Between 1960 and 1968, that meant keeping pilots in the air with nukes aboard around the clock, taking off from US bases around the world. Yes, there were accidents, and nukes sometimes went missing. The most terrifying of those accidents occurred in 1965 on the USS Ticonderoga aircraft carrier 80 miles off the coast of Japan. A Douglas A-4E Skyhawk aircraft rolled off the side of the carrier into the ocean, and neither the plane nor the pilot was ever seen again. Only his helmet was recovered. That plane not only carried a nuclear bomb, but it was armed and ready to go.

That wasn't the only mishap. Another plane carrying four bombs got the US nuclear program banned from Spain. A plane with nukes was abandoned over Greenland in 1968. By then, we had submarines that could launch a nuclear missile, and ICBM silos as well, but the real reason the 24/7 airborne nukes were abandoned was because there were too many things going wrong. Read about this program and the crashes the military doesn't like to talk about at Vice.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Lt.JG Nelson, U.S. Navy)

The African jacana is a bird with long skinny feet and... how many of them? This image appeared at the no context subreddit,  so there's no explanation for a bird with what appears to be eight legs. Maybe you can guess. Or you can just watch a video about these birds.



Okay, so there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for all those legs. It's even adorable. But before you get to it, you have to marvel at these tiny chicks with enormous feet bearing toes and claws that are as long as their bodies. They act almost like snowshoes for walking around on water lilies. Our earth is an amazing place. -via TYWKIWDBI 

English people who voluntarily settled in Australia wanted to bring a bit of their homeland with them. They had no clue what damage that could do to a continent that had been isolated for millions of years. In 1859, Thomas Austin received a Christmas gift in a shipment from his brother: two dozen rabbits. They were not the first British rabbits to be shipped to Australia by a long shot. But they were the ones who multiplied until Australia was overrun by a billion rabbits that ate every plant in sight and crowded out native animals.

Even though rabbits had been transferred to Australia at least 90 times before Austin's arrived, it was assumed that his rabbits were the ones that became the invasive hoard. That assumption was due to the timing and the estimated epicenter of the catastrophe. But now there is genetic proof. Researchers studied the genes of 187 rabbits caught between 1865 and 2018, in Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Great Britain, and France. The results of the study determined that the rabbits of Australia were indeed descended from just five female rabbits on Austin's property. While Australia's rabbits are down to around 200 million today, they still cause enormous damage to the ecosystem and agriculture alike. Read about the study of the invasive rabbits of Australia at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: CSIRO)

“Ichiro Girl” reuniting with Ichiro is the most wholesome thing we’ve ever seen 🥹 pic.twitter.com/vrM41SHLaB

— Seattle Mariners (@Mariners) August 27, 2022

The Seattle Mariners celebrated "Ichiro Weekend" in honor of retired outfielder Ichiro Suzuki, who was inducted into the team's Hall of Fame Saturday night. To throw out the first pitch for Friday's game, the team selected Mariners fan Iris Skinner, who came to be known as "Ichiro Girl" in 2010 after the cameras caught her excited reaction to a brush with celebrity when Ichiro retrieved a ball right in front of her. Yeah, you'll see that clip in this video. Skinner was in for a surprise in her moment of glory when she realized she'd be pitching to Ichiro himself, who donned his Mariners uniform for the occasion. Her adorable enthusiasm will put a smile on your face for sure. -via Fark

If you've ever studied plate tectonics, you know that the Himalayan Mountains were formed when the Indian plate crashed into the Eurasian plate. That area is still geologically active, with lots of earthquakes. But people learned how to build houses that could withstand the tremors. An ancient building technique called kath kuni ("wooden corner") combines layers of stone and alternating layers of deodar wood, with the wood beams interlocking at the corners. The stone provides strength, and the wood provides flexibility to survive an earthquake.



But there is more to the kath kuni buildings. The upper floors are often wider than the first floor. The first floor is a shelter for livestock, which provide heat that rises to the upper floors where people live. The walls are double thickness, and a slate roof holds the whole thing together. The problem is that deodar wood is expensive and hard to get for historical reasons, and new homes in the Himalayas are built with concrete. Earthquakes can destroy concrete homes, but the kath kuni homes of the Indian state Himachal Pradesh can stand for hundreds of years. Read about kath kuni and see more spectacular examples at BBC Travel.  -via Damn Interesting

The University of Texas Austin has a truck that's built to shake the ground under it. It's officially titled the Large Mobile Shaker, but those who use it call it the T-Rex, because its effects may remind you of the earth-shaking footsteps of the T-rex in Jurassic Park. Or that annoying kid who wants to show off his subwoofers. That's cool, but why would you want to shake the ground? It's for research and testing. The research is on what parts of the country could be subject to what kind of damage in an earthquake, and the testing is for projects like construction. Builders need to know if there are soft spots and flaws deep in the ground underneath before they build something massive, like a power plant. Tom Scott talks to Professor Ken Stokoe about they way they use the Large Mobile Shaker. You can read more about this machine at the UT Austin NHERI Experimental Facility.

The Artemis 1 is set to launch Monday morning from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. This is the first launch of the Artemis mission that will send astronauts back to the moon for the first time in almost 50 years. Artemis 1 is an unmanned flight that will test the Orion spacecraft and NASA's new launch system. The spacecraft will travel 280,000 miles from earth, looping around the moon before returning home. The entire trip will take four to six weeks and cover 1.3 million miles. Tomorrow's launch is set for 8:33 AM. Read more about the mission at Jalopnik.
(Image credit: NASA)

UPDATE: The Artemis launch has been scrubbed due to an issue with one of the four rocket engines, and has been tentatively rescheduled for Friday, September 2.

The teased bouffants of the 1950s and the Aquanet curls of the 1980s couldn't hold a candle to these hairstyles! Besides, holding a candle to any such hairdo is a bad idea. For a short time in the 1770s, big hair was bigger than ever. Ladies in England copied ladies in France, and wore elaborate constructions on their heads that saw their hair lifted high and decorated with jewelry, toys, flowers, and whatever could contribute to the look. The style even traveled to America, where it was only used for special occasions by wealthy city dwellers because Americans were pretty busy in the 1770s. How high were those hairdos? We aren't sure, because the artistic depictions of them tended to be caricatures that greatly exaggerated the trend. But those caricatures are scathing and fun to see. The image below not only satirizes the enormous hair, but also the British conflict with the American colonies, as the hairdo depicts the British evacuation of Boston.



The styling of these hair constructions was lampooned, too. Stylists had to climb ladders or hang from ropes to reach the hair they were working on! Big hair wasn't limited to women, either, as men known as macaronis adopted bouffant styles, too. Enjoy a gallery of 36 caricatures of the big hair trend of the 1770s at Flashbak. -via Nag on the Lake

On August 13, 1969, the White House held the largest state dinner ever at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. The 1440 guests included movie stars, politicians, scientists, and diplomats. The guests of honor were Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, who had just returned from the Apollo 11 mission a couple of weeks before. President Nixon presented the three astronauts with the Medal of Freedom during the dinner, and the whole thing was televised. Outside, war protesters chanted.

The hotel kitchen staff, led by chef Walter Roth, cooked so much food that the sprinklers went off, but they still produced an exceptional meal personally approved by Nixon. He had demanded that a fancy new dessert be created especially for the occasion, and his only requirement was that it contain ice cream. The secret menu for the banquet was leaked ahead of time, but no one knew what the dessert called Clair de Lune would be. The dessert, created by pastry chef Ernest Mueller, was brought to guests as the band played "Fly Me to the Moon." It looked like a miniature white moon with craters, with an American flag planted on it, swimming in a "sea of darkness" sauce.

Clair de Lune contained almond pastry, raisin-brandy filling, meringue scorched with a blowtorch, and a sauce made of mountain-picked Oregon blackberries. Oh yeah, there was vanilla ice cream inside, too. It sounds yummy, but making it is such an elaborate process that you will read the recipe and decide to buy a box of ice cream sandwiches instead. It was the perfect dessert to cap off a performance of luxury dining for a crew of tired astronauts, Hollywood elite, and a president who desperately wanted to take credit for the moon mission. Read about that state dinner and see its memorable dessert at Atlas Obscura.

Hannah Beswick lived at a time when premature burials were a real possibility. In fact, Bestwick's younger brother was in a coffin and ready for burial when someone noticed he was alive, and he lived for quite a few more years. So Beswick went the extra mile to avoid the same fate for herself, making arrangements with her doctor, Charles White, to not bury her until some time had passed and she was dead for sure.

However, the way Beswick's will was worded, there was a financial incentive for Dr. White to do things another way. When Beswick died in 1758, White carried out her wishes to not be buried immediately. To make that experience palatable, White embalmed her, using an ancient technique that dried the corpse out completely. And she was not buried for another 110 years! Beswick got her wish about not being buried too early, but she ended up a mummy, or what we may call a restless corpse. Read the story of the Manchester Mummy at Amusing Planet.

All the letters of the alphabet participate in a story of good and evil, of justice and revenge, of friendship and heroism. The letters are getting along fine, except for F, who terrorizes everyone. G has to take charge, and calls up the superheroes L, M, N, O, and P. An epic battle ensues, in which letters get thrown about left and right, and we learn their various personalities along the way. That just makes their ultimate fates more heart-wrenching. Q is quite the standout, because he knows everything, but fails to warn the others in time because he's naturally slow. The action movie has a bittersweet coda in which we learn why F is such a murderous psycho. You can tell it's a flashback because the same letters are lowercase, indicating they are children.  

How did this happen? Mike Salcedo had an idea for a personal project. He would animate one letter of the alphabet every day. That project turned into something very different.

They were supposed to all just hop in and say their names, but I was already bored of that by C. I had the "FRIENDS" idea the night before I made D, and the rest snowballed from there. I outlined a long list of ideas that kept changing as the series progressed.

You can see the individual letter animations in this playlist. The action movie it culminates in has so many details you may have to watch it more than once. N transforms to Ñ when he needs to. X can multiply! G uses Morse code to call to the other letters. F farts. There are punctuation marks that look suspiciously like Infinity Stones, and they each have the power of their real-world function. The group can call up props by spelling out words, but they can only use the letters that have already been introduced. Altogether, it's a masterpiece. -via Metafilter

The Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group is an extensive website dedicate to the taxonomy of occlupanids. They are divided into 17 families and further classified into genus and species, with descriptions. It is a painstakingly precise project, fine-tuned by decades of work. But you might not know what occlupanids are. They are bread clips. And the group is not really a group; it is the work of computer graphics and visualization specialist John Daniel, who began his work classifying occlupanids in 1994. The website is a throwback to the days when the internet was a wondrous repository of esoteric knowledge made accessible to the world.

Daniel himself coined the word occlupanid, which combines the Latin occlu- (to close) and -pan (bread). The term has entered the general English lexicon, and is now used in the scientific community.   

Input magazine recently discovered the Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group, and sought out Daniel for his story. Learn what sparked his interest in bread clips, how he built the occlupanid database, and what it means to the fans who follow it in the interview. -via Metafilter

The horror film The Exorcist was a hit in 1973, but it wasn't the first time the idea of demon possession was staged for an audience. In the 1590s, a young woman from the village of Romorantin, France, exhibited the signs of possession. Her body would contort in spasms, her eyes would roll back in her head, and she would speak without opening her mouth, emitting guttural sounds seemingly from her stomach. Martha Brossier's family blamed it on a neighbor who was a witch. What would you do in this situation? Would you call a doctor or a priest? Or both?

Martha's father had a better idea. He put her on stage in a traveling show. People would pay money to see a woman under the influence of a demon! Martha and her father traveled throughout France, demonstrating her unnatural symptoms to astonished audiences, and she was often exorcized by local priests. That provided a happy ending for the audience, yet she would be possessed again in the next village. But when the two went to Paris, they found themselves under the scrutiny of Michel Marescot, the personal physician of King Henry IV. Learn how Marescot unmasked the fake victim of possession at Mental Floss. -via Strange Company