Jalopnik asked its readers to tell about their worst automotive breakdown. You can tell these are stories that have been told over and over until they are succinct and even humorous in hindsight. Like how I tell people about my first car, a 1966 MG Midget that lost its tailpipe constantly going over the school speed bumps, and eventually lost its floorboards and steering wheel. There are tales of being stuck for days, incompetent repairmen, and blocking serious traffic. But none can compare to the time Dominic von Stösser's Land Cruiser's electrical system quit working in the middle of the Namib desert, near where they filmed Fury Road. There was no one and nothing around for miles.

Not to worry: the vehicle was primitive enough to run without any electrics at all, but... trying to start a cold 2H diesel (4 litre inline six) with its ~20.7:1 compression ratio without pre-heating the engine is a fool’s errand. Absolute madness.

Thankfully I’d camped on top of a rise, so we made a big fire and boiled a bunch of water. My partner poured the scalding water over the intake manifold, while I shovelled hot coals to underneath the oil pan. When the time came, my partner and I gave the Cruiser a shove, went running after it, jumped in, rammed it into 2nd, dumped the clutch and...

... breathed a massive sigh of relief when the engine turned over, and reluctantly, ROUGHLY, coughed emphysemically to life. Having got it running, we didn’t dare turn it off until I got home, 500km away. Stopped for fuel at one point. The attendant asked me to kill the engine, told him nope; hurry up and fill, the engine is gaining. Got home close to 10pm, driving by moonlight with next to no lights, no indicators, no brake lights, nothing.

That drive sucked.

Indeed. Read 14 other stories of epic vehicle breakdowns, and then make sure your roadside assistance insurance is up to date. -via Digg

(Image credit: Michael Schwarz)

Mercedes-Benz only made nine chassis for the 1955 Mercedes-Benz SLR coupe. The Mercedes SLR was a racing legend. It won every race it participated in, but then an SLR was involved in the 1955 Le Mans disaster, in which French driver Pierre Levegh's SLR was thrown through the air and landed, twice, among spectators. The car exploded into flames. Levegh and 83 spectators were killed, making it the deadliest car race ever. Mercedes-Benz withdrew from racing for three decades.

Two of the nine SLR chassis became street-legal autos for Mercedes executives, one being Daimler-Benz motorsport chief Rudolf Uhlenhaut. These two cars were called Uhlenhaut Coupés. That in itself made each one of the rarest cars in the world. One of those cars is in the Mercedes corporate museum. The other has set a world record for the most expensive car ever sold. In May, the bids went up to €135 million, or $142 million! The previous record was set in 2018, when a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO sold for $70 million.

Of course, that $142 million is just money. The SLR that exploded at Le Mans was much more costly, but in a different way. The buyer has yet to reveal himself. Mercedes will use the proceeds to launch a global scholarship fund.

The Uhlenhaut Coupé has a 300 horsepower eight-cylinder engine, gull-wing doors, and exhaust pipes on the passenger side. If someone offers you a ride in one, take it, but be careful getting in.  -via TYWKIWDBI

(Image credit: Alexander Migl)

Escape from Auschwitz: the most extraordinary Holocaust story you’ve never heard | Holocaust | The Guardian https://t.co/2hahTMhnBI

— Pete Blackman (@peteblackman) June 5, 2022

Walter Rosenberg was only 17 when he arrived at Auschwitz in 1942. Most new arrivals were sent straight to their deaths, but Rosenburg, being young and strong, was assigned to work. Over the next two years, he did almost every job in the camp, and learned the ins and outs of the camp layout and Nazi procedures. He also witnessed thousands of deaths, including the public hanging of two men who attempted to escape. The spectacle was designed to scare other inmates, but it only made Rosenberg more determined to escape. And he did.

In April of 1944, Rosenberg and fellow inmate Fred Wetzler hid under a pile of wood, and stayed there for three days before making their way out of the camp. Once back in their native Slovakia, Rosenberg and Wetzler wrote up a report on everything they'd witnessed at Auschwitz, a document that changed the course of the war. Read about the daring escape in a book excerpt at the Guardian. -via Damn Interesting    

Sometimes a drug's side effects turn out to be more important, or at least more lucrative, than its original purpose. A drug that was developed to address heart problems took off when it was repurposed under the name Viagra. Wellbutrin is used to treat depression, but also became an aid to quit smoking under the name Zyban. These were repurposed after rigorous medical studies. An earlier case of drug repurposing happened outside of the lab and involved an over-the-counter cold remedy.

In the 1930s, phenylpropanolamine (PPA) was developed and marketed as a nasal decongestant, to relieve symptoms of colds, asthma, and allergies. It was sold over-the-counter under many brand names; you are most likely to recall the cold pills called Contac. The drug had a side effect that caused users to feel less hungry. In the 1950s, the patent for PPA lapsed, and manufacturers of diet pills jumped on that side effect, marketing PPA as a miracle diet aid. The FDA had not approved of its use for appetite suppression, but since it was sold far and wide already for colds, there was little they could do about it. It took decades of studies and another rare but scary side effect to take PPA off the market. Read about the rise and fall of PPA at Mel magazine. -via Digg

Tom Scott is at the Wasserspiele of Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe, which is a 590-acre park in Germany. It has spectacular water features, which were built privately by various wealthy former landowners. Now, you may agree or disagree that rich people should build such ostentatious displays of conspicuous consumption, but if they did, they should be enjoyable by the public. The public certainly can't devote money to such a useless display just because it's cool (which it is), because we have more important things to worry about, like crumbling infrastructure and national defense. What's interesting is the technology that made these fountains work merely by gravity, for more than 300 years now. Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  

After two years without a summer road trip, you may be itching to go somewhere new. But you don't want to drive too far with gas prices the way they are, and you certainly don't want to deal with crowds of tourists doing touristy things. The US offers a lot of interesting and different experiences in small towns, and one may be relatively near you.

Cartersville, Georgia, has only 23,000 residents, but has three Smithsonian Affiliate museums, plus historic sites and businesses that keep an old-fashioned aesthetic. Africatown, Alabama, is where the formerly enslaved Africans of the ship Clotilda settled, and some of their descendants still live there. Africatown has a new museum opening this summer. And everyone knows Winslow, Arizona, thank to the Eagles song "Take It Easy"  -they even have a Standin’ on the Corner Park! But Winslow also has Fred Harvey's last railway hotel (now a Historic Landmark), the Old Trails Museum, a Hopi archaeological site, and it's close to Meteor Crater and the Petrified Forest. Read about these towns, 15 of them in all, and what they have to offer at Smithsonian.

Would you like to watch The Terminator again, for just just seven minutes? How about a version starring Sylvester Stallone as the Terminator? Even stranger, Willem Dafoe stars as Sarah Conner! (However, the Terminator obviously still has Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1984 body.) As the scene goes on, you feel like you recognize more and more faces. Jim Carey, Brad Pitt, and Shelly Duval also appear. In fact, the list of cameo appearances in the credits will make you rewind back up the video to check them all out. Was that really Donald Trump? They are all deepfakes, in a video by Ctrl Shift Face and Deep Voodoo that brings the technology to a ridiculously uncanny level. Contains NSFW language.  -via Geeks Are Sexy

If you've been confused about "spiciness" or "hot" warnings on menus, or maybe you'd like to try some new chile pepper but don't know what to expect, science has your back. Most peppers are rated by Scoville units to explain how hot they are. But that doesn't really tell the true story of what it's like to eat those peppers. Ivette Guzmán and Paul W. Bosland of New Mexico State University led a study that looked into "the complex nature of this sensory experience" to give us more comprehensive descriptions of the effects of capsaicinoids, or chile peppers. They found that capsaicin experience can be measured in five different dimensions.  

1) Development    Heat sensation can be felt immediately or is delayed by 5, 15, 30 s, or longer.
2) Duration    Heat sensation lasts for a short time, disappearing quickly, or may last for many minutes to even hours.
3) Location    Where is the heat sensation felt; on the lips, front of the mouth, tip of the tongue, mid-palate, or in the throat.
4) Feeling    Heat sensation feels SHARP like pins pricking the area or FLAT like the heat is being smeared or painted on with a brush.
5) Intensity    Stated as Scoville Heat Units. Normally measured analytically and recorded in parts-per-million (ppm), then converted to Scoville Heat Units by multiplying by 16. Commercial products are labeled mild, medium, hot, or extra hot, however there are no industry standards for these terms.

Mefite lalochezia proposes another dimension, having to do with the effects of the pepper leaving the body.   

The study paper goes on to give us a profile of quite a few different kinds of peppers using the new lexicon. This may be helpful to you in finding your new favorite kinds of chiles. However, capsaicinoids aren't the only ingredient that makes food hot and spicy. There's also horseradish/wasabi, ginger, onion, etc. To get a full profile of a prepared dish, you'd have to have a flavor profile of all the ingredients. -via Metafilter

The Chernobyl nuclear reactor and the nearby town of Pripyat have been pretty much a no man's land since the nuclear meltdown in 1986. In those 36 years, entropy has damaged structures, trees and plants have taken over, wildlife has moved in, yet you can see that it was abandoned so suddenly that evidence of the former residents are still everywhere.    

Joerg Daiber visited Ukraine last year, before the Russian invasion, and got the spend a couple of days in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. He filmed a lot of the landscape by drone, and used the tilt-shift filtering method to give it a miniature toy look, but it's all too real. Eerily real. -via Laughing Squid

The Calgary Stampede is arguably the biggest Western festival there is. This year's stampede will take place July 8-17 in Calgary,  Alberta, in full force after being canceled in 2020 and scaled back to a partially virtual event in 2021. In addition to the rodeos, parade, concerts, and other activities, food vendors are bringing out some experimental fusion fair foods this year.

Some of the new recipes are just cute, like the Duck Pond Lemonade, which comes with a rubber duck. Others are combinations of two or even three cultures, like the Korean Squid Ink Corn Dog. Some are just wild, like Honey Habanero Ice Pops. Would you try out some Pop Rocks Popcorn Chicken? How about savory noodles topped with cotton candy? Kraft Dinner soft serve ice cream? There will be hot dogs made with two kinds of insects, and a dozen new ways to dress up donuts. Check out 45 new fair food creations for this year's Calgary Stampede. Remember, it's not in the US, so not everything is deep fried on a stick. -via Everlasting Blort

The science of color preference among people tells us that the most often cited favorite color among adults is blue, although people often describe different shades of blue. Why is that?  Experiments show that "favorite" colors are anything but innate. They are influenced by association. In other words, we like blue because we like blue things, and we are also exposed to a lot of blue things. Blue is the color of the sky and the ocean, and our planet as a whole. Blue clothing rarely clashes with any skin color, and our jeans are dyed blue, so clothing choices are often dominated by blue. Our least favorite color, as a species, is yellowish-brown, the color of rot or excrement. One experiment showed that a color preference can change in over a rather short period of time when the choices are presented in context, as in people will cite a love for red when shown pictures of strawberries, but not when shown pictures of blood. They will like green when shown a garden, but not when shown pond scum.

Color preferences will change with time, too. Girls like pink between toddlerhood and middle school, because their favorite objects tend to be colored pink, but then other colors take precedence. Young boys as a whole avoid pink because it associated with girl's things, but those preferences are not universal. And even adults will adjust color preference with the seasons of the year. The only time yellowish-brown evokes good feelings is in autumn, for reasons you can read about at BBC Future. -via Metafilter

You've heard how chef José Andrés simply started cooking for those affected by the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and founded World Central Kitchen. His organization rose to global prominence by feeding people in Puerto Rico after 2017's hurricane Maria. Now Andrés and his organization are in Ukraine, providing meals by the millions for displaced people and others who have been affected by the Russian invasion- 34 million meals so far. How is World Central Kitchen able to scale up so much?

The main method of doing that is to use use local chefs and local kitchens. There are plenty of cooks and restauranteurs in Ukraine who aren't getting much paying business these days, and they want to help the war effort. Funding them through the organization puts dollars into the local economy and props up suppliers as well as the restaurant workers. But making a meal for thousands of people at a time requires some specialized equipment, like cambros, combi ovens, and military water heaters. Read how these and other appliances help World Central Kitchen keep the meals coming. -via Damn Interesting

It's official! We have the 2022 Scripps National #SpellingBee Finalists. Their journey took determination, focus, and lots of hard work.#Speller1#Speller65#Speller76#Speller87#Speller104#Speller178#Speller189#Speller197#Speller205#Speller206#Speller231#Speller234 pic.twitter.com/n4B5MVakLT

— Scripps National Spelling Bee (@ScrippsBee) June 1, 2022

Yesterday wrapped up the 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee. After preliminary rounds, 12 finalists faced each other in the final round last night. Most competitors were eliminated quickly, but two held on for several rounds. Twelve-year-old Vikram Raju and 14-year-old Harini Logan went head-to-head, but could not eliminate each other. Every time one would miss a word, the other would also. After several rounds, it was decided to use a spell-off to decide the winner for the first time in the competition's 94-year history. Raju and Logan were to each spell as many words as possible in 90 seconds. Watch them quickly spell a slew of words that I've never even heard of.



After both made their best attempt, it was announced that 8th-grader Harini Logan had spelled 21 words correctly in 90 seconds, and she was crowned the winner of the title and $50,000. Raju is eligible to return to competition next year, and vowed that he will be there. -via Digg

St. Joseph Catholic Church in Parks, Louisiana, has a painting of the Last Supper. It is not the da Vinci version, but an original that shows Jesus with four of his disciples. When Reverend Nicholas DuPré arrived at the parish in 2019, people told him there were rumors of a bottle of Tabasco sauce on the table in the painting! But he didn't think much about it until the folks at the McIlhenny Company, which produces Tabasco sauce, contacted him to ask if the rumor was true. DuPré did his due diligence, and carried a 12-foot ladder into the church and climbed up to check. Yes, right there on the table was a distinctive tiny Tabasco bottle!

For his efforts, DuPré was rewarded with an extra-large commemorative bottle of Tabasco sauce from the McIlhenny Company. He is thinking of displaying it in the church's vestibule.

An article at USA Today goes on to tell us the history of the painting, in which the artist was asked to "make it unique" to the area. In case you're wondering, yes, Tabasco sauce is kosher for Passover. -via Strange Company

(Images credit: Nicholas DuPré)

This lighthouse looks a bit dangerous, doesn't it? This is the Kiipsaare Lighthouse, built in 1933 near the coast of Saaremaa, Estonia. Back then, "near the coast" meant 150 meters inland. Since then, rising sea levels have moved the shoreline, and now the lighthouse stands more than 50 meters out in the sea. And the formerly-stable ground underneath it is no longer stable, so the lighthouse has leaned as much as 15 degrees off plumb.

The lighthouse has been decommissioned and the light removed. It was left abandoned to the sea. But what's really strange is that over time, it has started to stand straighter! But that doesn't mean there's any hope that the lighthouse will ever be useful again. Read more about the Kiipsaare Lighthouse at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Flickr user Jordi Escuer)