You might have recognized a ball turret under a World War II bomber before, but if you're like me, you only found what they were all about from the Steven Spielberg story "The Mission." Ball turret gunners had one of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S. Army Air Force, more from being shot than by getting trapped. And it was quite uncomfortable. Most ball turrets were far too small to allow drawing, as in the TV show, and gunners spent their flight rolled up in a fetal position while spotting enemy fire and firing two machine guns.  

Even with functional landing gear, ball turrets landed perilously close to the ground when a mission was over. They could be retracted on the B-17 bomber, but not the B-24. See plenty of images that give you an uncomfortable feeling and sympathy for these war heroes at Vintage Everyday. -via Nag on the Lake 

(Image credit: the Imperial War Museums) 

Vincent van Gogh has proven to be a popular Halloween costume in the past few years. And why not? The artist did a lot of self-portraits, so he's very recognizable with his red beard and occasionally a missing ear. His distinctive painting style can be imitated. And his most famous works can make a great costume for a companion. 

However, redditor ScrappyMasquerade has taken van Gogh to another level. You might think the image above is a painting, or digitally generated. I can't vouch for the veracity of the background, but that's him. Get a closer look at the makeup work.



ScrappyMasquerade debuted his van Gogh for a recent Halloween party. He said the makeup took about five hours, which was more effort than he had originally planned. He had already spent a couple of weeks assembling the clothing items and painting them with acrylic paints, down to the shoes. The arms are painted gloves. I hope he won a prize at the party! See a gallery of seven pictures of this costume (plus reactions) at reddit. 

Tips for getting better sleep usually tell us the obvious: remove distractions such as your TV or phone, turn all the lights off, stop eating hours before bed, and keep a regular schedule. This video from AsapSCIENCE goes way beyond that, with a couple dozen small things you can do that will add up to a better sleep schedule over the long run. Not only that, but they explain the science behind these healthy habits according to the latest research. 

Some of these tips may be things you've heard before, but when you understand how and why they work, you're more likely to remember them and make them a part of your regular routine. Some may be completely new to you, so they are worth a try. Remember, you can't just try one new tip and expect amazing results. Getting a good night's sleep requires a range of daily habits. -via Laughing Squid 

When you picture someone "walking on their head," you might think of a person moving while doing a handstand, or maybe a contortionist who bends until their feet reach the top of their head. Alexandre Patty (spelled Alexander in English) did neither of those things. What he did was a sort of hop while balancing on his head, moving around and up and down stairs at a jaw-dropping pace. Patty came from a family of French circus acrobats, and he practiced his trick walk for three years before unveiling it in front of crowds in 1904. Did it hurt? Yes, it did, at least at first. Patty eventually got used to it and said, "it doesn’t hurt anymore and I don’t know what a headache is.” Maybe he achieved the point of -dare I say it- being a numbskull. 

Patty's act was a sensation in Europe and it wasn't long before he was signed with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus, where he performed for decades. He earned quite a lot of money doing it, which can numb the pain of banging your head against the ground for a living. Read about Alexandre Patty, and see photos, at Weird Historian. -via Strange Company 

As World War II wound down in 1945, the Allies had to decide what to do with the Nazi leaders. Winston Churchill wanted to simply execute them, but the Russians, French, and Americans held out for putting them on trial. The resulting Nuremberg Trials lasted a year and a half, but paid off by exposing the details of Nazi crimes to the global public while giving those leaders the opportunity to defend themselves, thereby offering a sense of justice and closure to a war-weary world. 

The British prosecuted the charges of crimes against peace, while the Russians and the French tackled war crimes and crimes against humanity. United States prosecuted the conspiracy charges, which tied the crimes -and the defendants- together. The Americans appointed Robert H. Jackson, "arguably the most accomplished forgotten man of the 20th century," as the lead prosecutor for the US. Jackson had skipped college altogether to apprentice under a lawyer, and only attended one year of law school before passing the bar. His practice and his writings were so impressive that President Roosevelt appointed Jackson as a Supreme Court Justice in 1941. Jackson, a staunch advocate for due process, volunteered to leave the Supreme Court to serve the war effort in any way he could. Roosevelt kept that in mind, and his successor Harry Truman sent Jackson to Nuremberg to serve justice. Read his story at Smithsonian. 

An addendum to the linked article recommends four movies about the Nuremberg Trials. 

(Image credit: Raymond D'Addario) 

There have been all kinds of antipoverty programs launched all over the world, with mixed results. Some approaches fail, while others show minimal results, and some that are promising in the short term don't hold up so well in the long term. The most promising idea today is to give money directly to the poor and let them decide how to best use it. After all, need comes in all flavors.  

Of course, massive global antipoverty programs face barriers that make research difficult. Sometimes grants to struggling nations end up in the pockets of corrupt leaders. Funding sources, whether from governments or private foundations, can rise and fall on a whim. An enormous amount of charity funding is dedicated to saving lives in an emergency, such as famine, and aren't designed to address generational poverty. But even when a program is deemed to be ineffective in lifting a significant number of recipients out of poverty permanently, it means the world to the ones who made it out.  

The Sequoia Park Zoo in Eureka, California, has three black bears: Tule, Ishung, and Kunabulilh. But Friday morning last week, they had four bears. Zoo staff arrived to find a juvenile black bear had made its way into the zoo and was hanging around the bear enclosure. The young bear was interacting with all three of the zoo's bears, in a calm and polite manner. 

Zoo staff called the Eureka Police Department and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and then observed from a distance. When reinforcements arrived, they all collaborated to usher the guest out of the zoo and back into the 67-acre Sequoia Park, from which they assumed he had originated. The bear didn't give them any problem about leaving. They never found any breaches in the zoo's fencing, but the zoo's director speculated he may have climbed a tree and made it over the fence. -via Boing Boing

What does a bearded dragon eat? According to Wikipedia, they eat "vegetation and some insects." Lenny wants to expand his palate and eat everything that his human Emily eats. He has learned that the clink of a fork on a dish tells him when she's having lunch, and he comes running to get a taste of whatever she's having. But he's not much on green leafy vegetables, which is what he's supposed to eat the most of. Sharing food with Lenny has expanded Emily's palate, too. 

A lot of people have a hard time wrapping their heads around having a reptile as a pet, because they don't come across as expressive, emotional, or snuggly. Lenny might make you think twice about that, because he has a personality you don't see in backyard lizards. He might be snuggling with Emily for the warmth, but isn't that what cats and dogs do as well? -via Laughing Squid 

The fad of a sunken living room, which later became known as a "conversation pit" was trendy in the 1960s and '70s. They turned a large living room into a cozy, intimate space for socialization. Such a pit was a perfect place for a huge wraparound couch and getting close to your guests. It just seemed cool. But sunken living rooms didn't spring up full blown in the '60s. The idea actually goes back to the 1920s, and was admired by a generation of innovative architects before they hit the mainstream. 

But while the design magazines were full of conversation pits, everyday people saw problems. Digging a pit in one's living room was not only an expensive upgrade, it also assumed that one had a living room that was big enough to add a smaller section. Besides that, you had to consider who these pits were for- cool young adults who threw parties. They certainly weren't practical for anyone who might someday have children or grow old. Read about the rise and fall of this design trend that required a long term commitment at Mental Floss. 

You'll see more than one octopus here, but you should know that the pink one is a ringer. It's a robotic octopus sent to study and film deep sea life. The question that's never really addressed is who is filming the robot? Anyway, the real action comes from a coconut octopus, who lives in a coconut husk. When he goes out, he takes his husk with him, and collects other useful things like seashells and trash. He only leaves his coconut husk long enough to chase down some lunch and get into a fight with another coconut octopus. Meanwhile, we see him (or her) change size, shape, and even color. We see him walking around on his tentacles, carrying his husk, until swimming proves more effective. He seems quite antisocial with the other coconut octopus, but he apparently feels some affection of sorts for his pink robot friend. At least the robot isn't trying to attack him. This scene is from the BBC series Spy in the Ocean.  -via Born in Space

Last week, London, England, hosted the five-day Grand Sumo Tournament at the Royal Albert Hall. It is rare to see sumo wrestling outside of Japan, and this was only the second time the tournament has ever been held in London, the other time being in 1991. Forty sumo wrestlers, known as rikishi, traveled from Japan on the same plane. The flight is somewhere between 12 and 15 hours, so that had to be an ordeal. After five days of wrestling before sold-out crowds, the tournament was won by Yokozuna Hoshoryu, to the delight of fans. 

But the rikishi didn't spend all their time in London wrestling. The massive athletes took in all the London sights that any tourist would, as you can see in the gallery of images above. Click to the right to see the rikishi at Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, Abbey Road, and more, all while drawing plenty of attention from Londoners. -via Kottke 

The latest theoretical question for the What If? series from Randall Munroe and Henry Reich (previously at Neatorama) is "What's the longest possible sunset you can experience while driving, assuming you are obeying the speed limit and driving on paved roads?" While theoretically intriguing, my first thought was that's the last thing you want to do. It's bad enough driving a few blocks with the sun in your eyes! But once we get past the practicalities, it's a valid question. 

First, we get a definition of "sunset," the length of which can vary depending on where you are. Sunset in Antarctica can take days. However, at the equator, the earth is spinning at about a thousand miles per hour, and you can't drive fast enough to make a perceptible difference. Still, the video finds a place where you might make it happen. And unlike other What If? videos, we don't all die. -via Damn Interesting 

In 1998 in the Australian Outback, 36 miles from the tiny town of Marree, an almost two-mile long drawing of a man appeared in the dessert. The satellite image on the left was taken on May 27, 1998, and the image on the right was taken on June 12th. Sometime in between, a figure of an Aboriginal hunter was plowed into the ground. No one noticed it until July, when a set of faxes were sent to Marree, and a local pilot went out to take a look. 

Who drew the Marree Man? It wasn't the local Aboriginals, who own the land. They were angry that someone had plowed through their ancestral land and damaged the protected native plants. A local man who had a tractor and was said to have access to the then-new technology of GPS was suspected. An American flag was found on the ground at the work, throwing suspicion on American defense workers about three hours away. An Australian artist said he did it, but his story wasn't that credible. Tour operators were suspected, because they would have profited from the art. More clues were unearthed when a hotel owner began to restore the Marree Man in 2015, after erosion had blurred the lines. Although there are plenty of suspects, we may never know exactly who carved the geoglyph into the Outback. 

(Image credit: USGS/NASA) 

It's the season for horror films, and Screen Junkies fans has demanded a retrospective of The Thing. John Carpenter's movie The Thing was not a hit when it was first released in 1982, and barely made back its budget. It was depressing, horrifying, and gross. But what really did it in was the other movies we were seeing at the time- and its R rating. Critics panned it, one saying that it was "bereft, despairing, and nihilistic," which turned out to be appealing for later audiences who watched it on home video. And those special effects! More than 40 years later, The Thing is considered a horror classic, with amazing special effects and psychological themes to give it that added terror. 

Screen Junkies finds plenty to skewer about The Thing, but it does what it set out to do. The movie requires a particular type of viewer to appreciate it. Sometimes you just need to watch a movie that's depressing, horrifying, and gross to forget your problems.  

Redditor gomets167 always dresses up in a Tom Hanks role for Halloween. This year, he's Walt Disney from the 2013 movie Saving Mr. Banks. Compare his Halloween getup (alongside P.L. Travers) with the lead image at the movie site. Pretty good portrayal, huh? The kicker is that he's been doing Tom Hanks roles for Halloween for 14 years now! He says he's going to keep doing this until Hanks himself notices, but I doubt he would stop even then. After all, Hanks has been in more than a hundred movies plus a few TV roles. Continue reading to see his previous costumes.