Although the Lunar New Year doesn't begin until February third, 2011 will be the Year of the Rabbit. Pink Tentacle welcomed the year by posting several beautiful antique bunny illustrations from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The rabbit shown dates from 1903. Link -via Right Brain Terrain
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
Although the Lunar New Year doesn't begin until February third, 2011 will be the Year of the Rabbit. Pink Tentacle welcomed the year by posting several beautiful antique bunny illustrations from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The rabbit shown dates from 1903. Link -via Right Brain Terrain
The biggest dinosaur discoveries of the year include dinosauromorphs, or dinosaur precursors, plus dinosaur diets, dino nurseries, and dinosaur colors. Shown is the feathered dinosaur Anchiornis, whose colors were determined by feather fossils. Check out the entire list, with links to further reading, at Smithsonian. Link -via The Dystenium Science Daily
(Image credit: Michael DiGiorgio)
Scout checked out Rye Playland, the amusement park where Tom Hanks found the Zoltar machine in the movie Big. However, Zoltar has been replaced by another machine that can make you big.
There are more pictures of the park as it appears now at Scouting New York. Link -via The Daily What
This Italian photo site documents the fashions of the 1960s and '70s -miniskirts, bellbottoms, platform shoes, hot pants, go-go boots, and that hair! You'll see some famous faces among the models. Elements of these styles come back every once in a while, but the total look of those days of fashion will never be duplicated. Link -via Metafilter
The Alcowebizer is a generator that simulates what a website would look like if you were under the influence of alcohol. Enter the address of a website, then you can adjust the look according to your blood-alcohol level. At the first level, Neatorama just looks like it has a few typos -which is not at all surprising. Set it further along, and colors and strange fonts appear. The screenshot here (of this post) is only about half as far as you can take the Alcowebizer. Beware -if you set it far enough, there will be music. Link -via Nag on the Lake
Gaspare Tagliacozzi, professor of surgery at the University of Bologna in Italy, published a book titled De Curtorum Chirurgia Per Insitionem (The Surgery of Defects by Implantations) in 1597. It describes procedures used to repair faces damaged by war -in other words, plastic surgery.
After Tagliacozzi's death, the procedures were forgotten in Europe, probably because of the disapproval of religious authorities. A rare copy of the book was recently sold for £11,000 -to a plastic surgeon. Link -via TYWKIWDBI
The tome, which is written in Latin, is illustrated with diagrams, including the rhinoplasty, in which the patient's nose was attached to a flap of skin from his upper arm.
In one plate, the patient is seen in bed with his forearm attached to his head and a flap of skin from his bicep region stuck onto his nose.
The book tells how he stayed like that for about three weeks until the skin from his arm had attached itself properly.
After a further two weeks the flap of skin was shaped so it resembled a nose and the process was complete.
After Tagliacozzi's death, the procedures were forgotten in Europe, probably because of the disapproval of religious authorities. A rare copy of the book was recently sold for £11,000 -to a plastic surgeon. Link -via TYWKIWDBI
Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the internet. – @AdviceToWriters
Ain't that the truth! And it's a occupational hazard when your job is to offer internet distractions to everyone. This Twaggie was inspired by @AdviceToWriters. Like all Twaggies, it is available in print or t-shirt form. Link
It's time for the Name That Weird Invention! contest. Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of crazy ideas in his weekly Museum of Possibilities posts. Can you come up with a name for this one? The commenters suggesting the funniest and wittiest names will win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop. Let your imagination run wild, and good luck!
Update: First prize goes to inky for StairChaise. The second place winner was steamtroll for the Stratolounger. Third place: DS for the name Lofty-Boy, and in fourth place was yuck2me for Loft-o-Lounger. T-shirts from the NeatoShop go out to the two winners who posted shirt selections with their entry! Honorable mentions: The Over-Study, The ChairCase; Over Easy Chair, Chairway to Heaven, Thermo-Chair, The Vertigo Lounger, Decliner, and Reclimber.
The following is an article from the book History's Lists from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
Rumor has it that Amelia Earhart and the grassy-knoll gunman have been found in a bar in Atlantis. Whew -three mysteries solved. Now, on to these.
1. THE BABUSHKA LADY
The Mystery: President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Many people lined the motorcade route, filming the event with still and video cameras. In the days after the shooting, police and the FBI confiscated a lot of the footage, and someone interesting shows up in many of the images -a woman wearing what looks like a traditional Russian headscarf called a babushka tied underneath her chin. Her back is to the camera, but it looks like she is also filming the event, and even as the people around her run for cover or hit the ground when the president is shot, the woman stands her ground and continues to film. Who is she?
Solved? No. In 1970, a woman named Beverly Oliver came forward, claiming to be the babushka lady. She said that all the hoopla and conspiracy theories around Kennedy's assassination scared her into silence. She also claimed to have handed over her video footage to some mysterious men who identified themselves as FBI and CIA agents.
Most investigators, though, think Oliver's story is a hoax. Her account of the day contradicts those of other people there, and the model of a movie camera she claimed to have used wasn't on the market in 1963. No one else has come forward.
2. NEW JERSEY SHARK ATTACKS OF 1916
Mystery: You did not want to be a swimmer along the New Jersey coast in July 1916. Over 11 days that summer, five people were mauled by sharks in three different seaside towns -four victims died. Then, like now, shark attacks were rare; fatal attacks even more so. But newspapers sensationalized the story -nicknaming the shark the "Jersey Maneater"- and rumors about the type of shark and number of sharks terrified vacationers into staying away from the beach towns... which ended up costing businesses along the coast more than $200,000.
Solved? No one is sure. On July 14, a fisherman named Michael Schleisser produced a 325-pound great white shark that he said he'd caught near the town of Matawan, where the last three victims were attacked. When he gutted the animal, Schleisser found human bones in its stomach.
Most people were satisfied that the Jersey Maneater had been caught, and indeed the attacks stopped after that. But as often happens, later research said "Not so fast." In 2002, the National Geographic Society released a report that questioned the species of shark implicated in at least three of the 1916 attacks. Two people were killed in the open ocean, but the three victims in Matawan were attacked in a creek fed by the ocean. According to National Geographic researchers, it's unlikely that the creek would have a high enough salt content to support a great white shark. Most sharks need to keep a constant level of salt in their bodies at all times, and a mixture of fresh creek water and salt water wouldn't do the trick. So these scientists think that an unidentified bull shark was actually the culprit (bull sharks are unique in that they can move easily from saltwater to freshwater environments). Whatever the species, the Jersey Maneater remains part of American lore, and it inspired one of the most successful movies of all time: Jaws.
3. RONGORONGO
The Mystery: Spanish explorers first visited Easter Island in the South Pacific in the 1770s. After they left, the indigenous people who lived there developed a type of picture writing now called rongorongo (which means "to recite" in the native language). They carved this "text" onto hundreds of wooden tablets, but by the 1860s, their descendants had lost the ability to read the rongorongo writing. Only a few dozen of the tablets are left today.
Solved? No. Scientists have been unable to decipher the writing.
4. THE MARFA LIGHTS
Mystery: Unidentified glowing orbs in the desert might sound like something out of the X Files, but they're very real to people in the town of Marfa, Texas. The fist recorded sightings of the lights came in 1883 when a ranch hand noticed them and thought they were Indian fires. On further investigation, though, he found no ash from any fires or evidence that anyone had been there at all. And the story has been like that ever since. The lights glow red, orange, and yellow, appear on most clear nights, and bounce like balls in the sky near where Highway 67 and Highway 90 meet. But no one can actually identify where they're coming from.
Solved? Not really. People with an interest in ghosts and ghost stories claim that the Marfa lights are supernatural spirits (both friendly and harmful), while others claim that they are aliens. But the most likely explanation is that they are some kind of mirage produced when warm and cold layers of air meet and bend light. The fact is, though, that no one really knows. You can't see the lights up close, only from far away, so no one have ever been able to truly identify what they are. Texas considers them a tourist attraction, and the highway department built a viewing area off Highway 90 so that curious visitors could see the Marfa lights for themselves.
(Image credit: Flickr user BrtinBoston)
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!
Rumor has it that Amelia Earhart and the grassy-knoll gunman have been found in a bar in Atlantis. Whew -three mysteries solved. Now, on to these.
1. THE BABUSHKA LADY
The Mystery: President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Many people lined the motorcade route, filming the event with still and video cameras. In the days after the shooting, police and the FBI confiscated a lot of the footage, and someone interesting shows up in many of the images -a woman wearing what looks like a traditional Russian headscarf called a babushka tied underneath her chin. Her back is to the camera, but it looks like she is also filming the event, and even as the people around her run for cover or hit the ground when the president is shot, the woman stands her ground and continues to film. Who is she?
Solved? No. In 1970, a woman named Beverly Oliver came forward, claiming to be the babushka lady. She said that all the hoopla and conspiracy theories around Kennedy's assassination scared her into silence. She also claimed to have handed over her video footage to some mysterious men who identified themselves as FBI and CIA agents.
Most investigators, though, think Oliver's story is a hoax. Her account of the day contradicts those of other people there, and the model of a movie camera she claimed to have used wasn't on the market in 1963. No one else has come forward.
2. NEW JERSEY SHARK ATTACKS OF 1916
Mystery: You did not want to be a swimmer along the New Jersey coast in July 1916. Over 11 days that summer, five people were mauled by sharks in three different seaside towns -four victims died. Then, like now, shark attacks were rare; fatal attacks even more so. But newspapers sensationalized the story -nicknaming the shark the "Jersey Maneater"- and rumors about the type of shark and number of sharks terrified vacationers into staying away from the beach towns... which ended up costing businesses along the coast more than $200,000.
Solved? No one is sure. On July 14, a fisherman named Michael Schleisser produced a 325-pound great white shark that he said he'd caught near the town of Matawan, where the last three victims were attacked. When he gutted the animal, Schleisser found human bones in its stomach.
Most people were satisfied that the Jersey Maneater had been caught, and indeed the attacks stopped after that. But as often happens, later research said "Not so fast." In 2002, the National Geographic Society released a report that questioned the species of shark implicated in at least three of the 1916 attacks. Two people were killed in the open ocean, but the three victims in Matawan were attacked in a creek fed by the ocean. According to National Geographic researchers, it's unlikely that the creek would have a high enough salt content to support a great white shark. Most sharks need to keep a constant level of salt in their bodies at all times, and a mixture of fresh creek water and salt water wouldn't do the trick. So these scientists think that an unidentified bull shark was actually the culprit (bull sharks are unique in that they can move easily from saltwater to freshwater environments). Whatever the species, the Jersey Maneater remains part of American lore, and it inspired one of the most successful movies of all time: Jaws.
3. RONGORONGO
The Mystery: Spanish explorers first visited Easter Island in the South Pacific in the 1770s. After they left, the indigenous people who lived there developed a type of picture writing now called rongorongo (which means "to recite" in the native language). They carved this "text" onto hundreds of wooden tablets, but by the 1860s, their descendants had lost the ability to read the rongorongo writing. Only a few dozen of the tablets are left today.
Solved? No. Scientists have been unable to decipher the writing.
4. THE MARFA LIGHTS
Mystery: Unidentified glowing orbs in the desert might sound like something out of the X Files, but they're very real to people in the town of Marfa, Texas. The fist recorded sightings of the lights came in 1883 when a ranch hand noticed them and thought they were Indian fires. On further investigation, though, he found no ash from any fires or evidence that anyone had been there at all. And the story has been like that ever since. The lights glow red, orange, and yellow, appear on most clear nights, and bounce like balls in the sky near where Highway 67 and Highway 90 meet. But no one can actually identify where they're coming from.
Solved? Not really. People with an interest in ghosts and ghost stories claim that the Marfa lights are supernatural spirits (both friendly and harmful), while others claim that they are aliens. But the most likely explanation is that they are some kind of mirage produced when warm and cold layers of air meet and bend light. The fact is, though, that no one really knows. You can't see the lights up close, only from far away, so no one have ever been able to truly identify what they are. Texas considers them a tourist attraction, and the highway department built a viewing area off Highway 90 so that curious visitors could see the Marfa lights for themselves.
(Image credit: Flickr user BrtinBoston)
___________________
The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader History's Lists.Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!
Ronald Lee Herrick was 79 years old when he died Monday in a Maine hospital from complications of heart surgery. He did not die from kidney failure, even though he only had one, and his identical twin brother suffered from renal failure in 1954. That was the year Herrick donated a healthy kidney to his brother in an operation that had never worked before.
Despite arguments at the time about the ethics of taking an organ from a healthy body, Herrick insisted on donating to save his brother's life. Link -via Not Exactly Rocket Science
(Image credit: Joel Page/AP)
The successful surgery kept Herrick's brother alive for eight years and was the first successful organ transplant, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Lead surgeon Dr Joseph Murray went on to win the Nobel prize.
The operation proved that transplants were possible and led to thousands of other successful kidney transplants, and later the transplant of other organs.
Doctors around the world had tried a few transplants before the breakthrough operation, without success, said Murray, who went on to perform another 18 transplants between identical twins.
Despite arguments at the time about the ethics of taking an organ from a healthy body, Herrick insisted on donating to save his brother's life. Link -via Not Exactly Rocket Science
(Image credit: Joel Page/AP)
(YouTube link)
A remote-control spider, a slick floor, and a kitten -what could be more fun? -via Buzzfeed
Michael Elias of San Antonio, Texas has been arrested several times for a string of burglaries over several months. His latest arrest was for two burglaries, one in June and the other in November.
Most people keep themselves out of jail by not committing crimes. Link -via Arbroath
(Image source: San Antonio Crimestoppers)
Police said they recovered fingerprints from both locations that later proved to be Elias's.
The affidavit shows that after his arrest, Elias told investigators how he had learned to commit burglaries using a crow bar to gain access to homes.
Elias also told investigators he had to keep committing the burglaries so he could afford to pay his attorney a $150 weekly fee to keep him out of jail.
Most people keep themselves out of jail by not committing crimes. Link -via Arbroath
(Image source: San Antonio Crimestoppers)
(YouTube link)
This is one of those ads in which you don't know what's being advertised until it's over -but you'll remember, once you stop laughing! From Publicis advertising agency in Indonesia. -via Dark Roasted Blend
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