Hey, wherever you pick up lifesaving information is OK with me! Would you believe a woman's life was saved by her poor performance on the British talent show The X Factor?
In 2007, 46-year-old Jacqui Gray was one of many contestants in the fourth season of The X Factor. Like most talent show contestants, she had little in the way of actual talent. After smirking throughout her entire performance, Cowell asked Gray the patronizing question, "You have a very weird sounding voice, are you aware of that?" Both he and fellow judge Sharon Osborne suggested that she see a throat specialist, saying that it sounded like "somebody else is in there".
Displaying what has to be the world's least attuned sarcasm detector, Gray decided to take the advice of the judges and see a throat specialist.
What the doctor found was quite surprising. As are the other stories in this list at Cracked. Link
Now, this is the perfect family portrait. You see, everyone is smiling naturally, as if they are really enjoying themselves. Continue to see how this feat was accomplished.
"Big Nose" George Parrot got his nickname for the fact that he had a very large proboscis, but his real claim to fame comes from something much stranger than a prodigious schnoz.
THE (NOT SO) GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY
In the late 1870s, a band of Wyoming outlaws called the Sim Jan gang decided to try their hand at robbing Union Pacific trains. Most banking was done by cash in the 19th century, and much of the cash moved by rail. This made trains very tempting targets for criminals looking for big scores.
Some gangs, the James-Younger and Hole-in-the-Wall gangs among them, became quite adept at train robbery. Sim Jan and his gang never did: When, for example, they tried to derail a train out of Medicine Bow, Wyoming, by loosening a length of rail, a railroad crew on a handcart came by and discovered the damage to the track. After repairing the track, the crew sped off to report the incident to the sheriff, all in plain sight of the gang, who were hiding in the bushes nearby. The next day the gang shot it out with the two lawmen sent to find them, Deputy Sheriff Robert Widdowfield and railroad detective Henry Vincent, killing them both. They were the first Wyoming lawmen killed in the line of duty.
FRONTIER JUSTICE
Frank Tole was the first member of the gang to pay for his crime; he was killed a few weeks later while trying to rob a stagecoach. Then came "Dutch" Charlie Buress, who was arrested for the murders and put on a train bound for Rawlins, Wyoming, where he would have gone on trial had he lived long enough to see a trial. He didn't: when his train made a stop in the town of Carbon, which was deputy Widdowfield's hometown, an angry mob pulled him from the train and hanged him from a telegraph pole.
"Big Nose" George Parrot
Next up for justice: "Big Nose" George Parrot. His turn might never have come at all, had he not gotten drunk in Montana two years after the killings and been overheard boasting of his involvement in the crimes. He, too, was arrested and put on a train bound for Rawlins; when the train pulled into Carbon, history seemed about to repeat itself, because once again a lynch mob was waiting. But Big Nose managed to talk the mob out of the hanging by admitting his guilt and promising to tell all if they let him live long enough to face trial. Had he known what fate awaited him, he probably would have preferred being lynched.
DOPE ON A ROPE
Big Nose George lived long enough to be sentenced to death by hanging, to be carried out in 3 and 1/2 month's time. But he didn't live long enough to see the sentence carried out, because when he nearly killed a guard trying to escape from jail, the lynch mob decided that a speedier, unofficial hanging would do just fine. On March 22nd, 1881, a crowd of about 200 people dragged Big Nose George from the jail and hanged him from the crossarm of a telegraph pole.
Twice.
The mob had to hang him twice because the first rope broke. After a sturdier rope was found, Big Nose George, still very much alive, was hanged again. By now, however, George had managed to untie his hands from behind his back without anyone noticing. Then, when he was strung up the second time, he swung himself -by the noose around his neck- over to the telegraph pole, wrapped his flailing arms around it, and held on for dear life.
It's the Name That Weird Invention! contest. Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of crazy ideas for the Museum of Possibilities. Can you come up with a name for this one? Commenters suggesting the funniest and cleverest names will win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop.
Contest rules: one entry per comment, though you can enter as many as you like. Please make a selection of the T-shirt you want (may we suggest the Science T-shirt, Funny T-shirt, and Artist-designed T-shirt categories?) alongside your entry. If you don't select a shirt, then you forfeit the prize. Good luck!
Update: We have winners! First place goes to amanderpanderer, who called it "Petal Stool...you know, for putting women up on." Ha! Second place to Mysfyt for "The Sit and Stay-Man. (Petal Powered)." Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!
Sharktopus, Mansquito, Frankenfish -the only place you'll find movie monsters this ridiculous is SyFy! The network has over 200 original creature features. If you've missed any, you'll want to check out this list so you'll know what to look for. Link -via mental_floss
Double Moonbow! What does it mean? It means that photographer Ethan Tweedie, after trying for quite some time, captured rare images Thursday in Kamuela, Hawaii. A moonbow {wiki} is a rainbow created by the light reflected off the moon. In this instance, there was enough moonlight for two of them! Link -via Fark
This trailer is a parody from Rooster Teeth, but you know it will really happen some day. Sooner or later, there will be a full-length movie based on an iPhone app. -Thanks, Brother Bill!
A new power plant in Switzerland will be situated up in the Alps. Construction requires huge excavator trucks, but there is no road to the site. What to do? Oh, there's a cable! It must be pretty strong, because that's how they are transporting the heavy equipment. See more pictures at Biglorryblog. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend
When I heard something on TV about getting an Phone for $50, I thought about the people I know who paid $600 for theirs. I am not an early adopter of new technology (unless it is free, of course), since I am old enough to remember Betamax. You might have to look that one up, since it is not on the list of the 15 Biggest Fails for Techies Who Bought the Wrong Gear Too Early. This is a slide show of things you may regret having bought when they first came on the market, because the price dropped, it became obsolete, or you can't upgrade the early models. Shown is the Amazon Kindle.
The Kindle's transformation from luxury gadget to impulse buy isn't based on a single moment but rather on a series of price drops that broke the hearts of early adopters. If you bought a Kindle 2 in February 2009, it cost $359. Five months later, $299. Three months after that, $259. By June 2010, the Kindle 2 cost $189--and if you thought that was a good time to pull the trigger, July brought word of the Kindle 3, including a Wi-Fi model for $139. In less than a year and a half, the Kindle had become thinner, lighter, and $220 cheaper.
Forts and the Inbetween is a club founded by adults around the building of forts and the psychological and social effects such activities have.
For us, to build a fort is to create a safe space where we can freely use our imaginations and be ourselves; a space where we can relate to each other and ask questions. By acting on those questions, a fort becomes the starting place for an experience that will empower and grow both us and our communities into something exceptional. These forts inspire us to live brilliantly, profoundly, and generously.
The club is taking their philosophy on the road. You're invited to build your own fort and submit to their site. Link -via Videogum
You may be asking for trouble when you commission taxidermy work from someone who is unfamiliar with the species. That was just the case for King Frederick I of Sweden in 1731. The lion was a gift, but after it died, the pelt and bones were presented to a taxidermist who had never seen a lion. You see the result looks more like a cartoon character than the king of beasts. The stuffed lion is still on display at Gripsholm's Castle. Ulrika Good tells us the story, with the help of Google Translate, and has more pictures. Link -via The Daily What
Update: Ulrika Good has posted an English version, which is better than the Google translation linked above.
Dig up your dessert! Make your next cupcakes in these fun cupcake molds featuring four different dinosaurs. Each cupcake mold has 3-D "fossil" at the bottom: Triceratops, Pteranodon, Hadrosaur, and T-rex. There's an archeological expedition in every serving! Fossil Food Dinosaur Cupcakes Molds are new at the NeatoShop, where you can find more dinosaurs and more neat cooking gadgets!
Inventables is a store where you can find special materials for filmmaking effects or for science demonstrations -or just for fun! If you're going to smash through a window, consider making a pane of rubber glass. Mix two chemicals together and mold it into whatever glass or ice shape you need, then let it cure for a day. Once cured, it will look like glass, but cut your skin like rubber (meaning it won't). They also have bendable wood, stainless steel paint, aluminum foam, and squishy magnets. Link -via Metafilter
The ninth song in the Symphony of Science series uses auto-tune to melodize scientists telling us about the amazing human brain. This creation features Robert Winston, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Jill Bolte Taylor, Bill Nye, Oliver Sacks, and the already-melodic Carl Sagan. Link -via Everlasting Blort
This week we managed to give away a baker's dozen t-shirts and a hat! Why? A, folks love to win things; b, we enjoy how creative you guys are with your contest entries; and c, we are promoting the NeatoShop, which is Neatorama's main revenue source and the reason we can run fewer ads than most blogs this size. We also had some neat feature articles this week you don't want to miss!
Last week, Tiffany invited everyone to share their stories of the strange and funny things little children say at NeatoBambino. The response was wonderful! Read the t-shirt winning responses at Out Of The Mouth Of Babes: Part 2, and all the responses in the comments of part one.
John Farrier came up with a strange and wonderful contest called Besieged by Zombies at the NeatoShop. The idea was to defend yourself from a horde of zombies by using NeatoShop items, which sparked some wild ideas from the people who entered! The winning stories are in the followup post.
The Name That Weird Invention! contest went up Monday from Steven Johnson's Museum of Possibilities. Ladybuggs takes first prize for Convertuble, and Pat wins second place for Car Pool. Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!
In Mal and Chad's Fill in the Bubble Frenzy game this week, amanderpanderer’s line was selected to go in the speech bubble: “We always did make quite the paramecium.” She’ll be getting a t-shirt from the NeatoShop!
To be honest, in the What Is It? game this week it was hard to tell which answers were honest guesses and which were trying to be funny! just a guess was the first with the correct answer: this is a measuring device for a horse’s neck, so collars can be custom-sized. The funniest answer prize goes to The Professor, who called it “Occam’s Hooky-Thing” that wasn’t quite as successful as Occam’s Razor.
Bonus: Neatorama's Facebook page is not just a mirror of what's on the blog. You'll find extra links, discussions, and funny stuff there every day! You'll also find extra interesting things in our Twitter feed, published in small bites. Join in the fun -April Fool's Day is coming up next week, so you can count on some strange things happening!
