Richard Sullivan posted this lovely color footage from August 14, 1945.
65 Years Ago my Dad shot this film along Kalakaua Ave. in Waikiki capturing spontaneous celebrations that broke out upon first hearing news of the Japanese surrender. Kodachrome 16mm film: God Bless Kodachrome, right?
There is more information about the film in the comments at the vimeo link. -Thanks, Duke!
Aren't these adorable! Etsy seller CraftyisCool is selling the patterns so that you can crochet Pee-Wee Herman and his friend Chairy. Contact her if you would like to buy the dolls themselves. Link -via Sofa Pizza
Think Geek added several new products on April Fools Day, as they do every year. The page for one of those products, canned unicorn meat, used the words "the new white meat." The National Pork Board objected to the phrase, which is somewhat similar to their slogan "The Other White Meat." The board sent a 12-page cease and desist letter to the management of Think Geek, who called it "Officially our best-ever cease and desist".
First, it's 12 pages long and very well-researched (except on one point); it even includes screengrabs of the offending item from our site. And we know they're not messing around because they invested in the best and brightest legal minds.
But what makes this cease and desist so very, very special is that it's for a fake product we launched for April Fool's day.
Think Geek also said:
We'd like to publicly apologize to the NPB for the confusion over unicorn and pork--and for their awkward extended pause on the phone after we had explained our unicorn meat doesn't actually exist.
There is much more to the produce aisle than lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers! Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss will find out how much you know about other, more obscure vegetables -and you might even learn something new. I scored 67%, which you can well beat. Link
The octopus makes a great metaphor -it has many arms that can do multiple things at once, it is strange and unfamiliar, and it has a long reputation for grabbing things. It's no wonder the cephalopod gets used in political cartoons and propaganda. The blog Vulgar Army documents these historical uses of the octopus, usually to make some entity look too powerful and/or evil, with pictures and in-depth information. Shown is "The Devil Fish of California Politics" from 1889. Link -via Nag on the Lake
Look at that massive chimney! Can you imagine the size of the fireplaces inside? This is Windsor Shades in King William County, Virginia. In colonial times, it was a tavern, one of George Washington's favorite hangouts. Read more about this unique house at TYWKIWDBI. Link
Neatoramanaut SenorMysterioso liked the creature the Alot a lot! He even made one of his own, for a competition among a knitting group called Knit Knack. See the winner and the other runner-up in this post. You can see more of this alot at SenorMysterioso's Flickr stream. Link
Diego Stocco (previously at Neatorama) combined parts from a bass guitar and a piano to make a new musical instrument he calls a bassoforte. http://www.behance.net/gallery/Bassoforte/535175 -via Metafilter
Some things we use all the time seem like they've been around forever. They haven't. Uncle John's Bathroom Reader looks at how a few items came to be parts of our world.
BAND-AIDS (1921)
In 1921, Earle Dickson, and employee of Johnson & Johnson, married a woman who kept injuring herself in the kitchen.
* As he repeatedly bandaged her cuts and burns with gauze and adhesive tape, he became frustrated; the clumsy bandages kept falling off. So he decide to create something "that would stay in place, be easily applied, and still retain its sterility." He stuck some gauze in the center of a piece of adhesive tape, and covered the whole thing with crinoline to keep it sterile. It worked.
* He made up a batch for his wife and took a few in to show his co-workers. The company's owner, James Johnson, heard about it and asked for a demonstration-which convinced him to begin manufacturing the product.
* By the '80, over 100 billion Band-Aids had been sold. Dickson, who became an exec at J&J, was amply rewarded for his efforts.
Harley Procter and his cousin, chemist James Gammble, came up with a special new soap in 1878. It was smooth and fragrant and produced a consistant lather... but it wasn't Ivory-it was called White Soap-and it didn't float.
* One day in 1879, the man operating Procter & Gamble's soap mixing machine forgot to turn it off when he went to lunch. On returning, he discovered that so much air had been whipped into the soap that it actually floated.
* For some reason, the batch wasn't discarded-it was made into bars and shipped out with the other White Soap. Soon, to their surprise, P&G was getting letters demanding more of "that soap that floats." So they started putting extra air into every bar.
* Now that they had a unique product, they needed a unique name. And they found it in the Bible. Procter was reading the 45th Psalm-which say: "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces..."-when it hit him that ivory was just the word he was looking for.
* In October 1879, the first bar of Ivory Soap was sold.
VELCRO (1957)
A young Swiss inventor named George De Mestrel went for a hike one day in 1948. When he returned, he was annoyed to find burrs stuck to his clothes. But his annoyance turned to fascination. Why, he wondered, wouldn't it be possible to create synthetic burrs that could be used as fasteners?
* Most people scoffed at the idea, but a French weaver took him seriously. Using a small loom, the weaver hand-wove two cotton strips that stuck together when they touched. The secret: one strip had hooks, the other had loops.
* But De Mestrel had to figure out how to mass-produce it... and he needed tougher material than cotton, which quickly wore out.
* Years passed; De Mestrel experimented constantly. Finally he found a suitable material-nylon, which, it turned out, became very hard when treated with infrared light.
* Now he knew how to make loops by machine-but he still couldn';t figure out how to mass-produce the hooks.
* Finally a solution hit him. He bought a pair of barber's clippers and took then to a weaver. With the clippers, he demonstrated his idea-a loom that snipped loops as it wove them, creating little nylon hooks. He worked onthe project for a year-and when it was finally completed, Velco ("Vel" for velvet, "cro" for crochet) was born. The product had taken a decade to perfect. Image credit: Flickr user Janice Yuvallos.
POP-UP ELECTRIC TOASTER
(Image source: The Cyber Toaster Museum)
The first electric toasters, which appeared around 1900, were primitively constructed heating coils that were terrible fire hazards. However, they were a luxury-it was the first time in history that people didn't need to fire up a stove just to make a piece of toast.
* There was a built-in problem, though-the bread had to be constantly watched or it would burn to a crisp.
* In 1919, Charles Strite, a Minnesota factory worker, got sick of the burnt toast in the company cafeteria. So, in his spare time, he designed and patented the first pop-up toaster. Then he went into business manufacturing them. It took years to work out the bugs, but by 1926, Strite's "Toastmasters" were relatively fireproof.
* A few years late, a New York businessman purchased Strite's company and invested heavily in advertising-which proved to be the key ingredient in making the toaster a common household appliance. Every home "had to have one" ...and now they do.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
Jill also pointed out that June is Adopt-A-Cat Month with a look at some notable cats in history and on the internet in the article Looking For A Purrfect Best Friend?
Wednesday was the 50th anniversary of the premiere of the movie Psycho. In honor of the occasion, we posted the first chapter of the reference work Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho by Stephen Rebello. It's now available in a lighter, more affordable ebook form.
The Spotlight blog also had excerpts from the upcoming book Poster Boy: The War of Art by the New York street artist who makes advertising into political collages.
At NeatoGeek, we have a collection of videos in which all kinds of folks performed the theme from The Legend of Zelda in a wide variety of styles.
At NeatoBambino, we were treated to a virtual tour of the botanical gardens of The Huntington in San Marino, California. Looks like a fun trip for the family!
Ana made a real impression by modeling the new Reverse Polish Notation shirt from the NeatoShop.
From Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, we learned about some of the many insects and parasites that target humans as well as other animals in What's Eatin' You?
Want to write for Neatorama? Try your skills at posting great links with our Upcoming Queue -it's easier than you think! Or if you'd rather not, you can send link suggestions to tips@neatorama.com anytime. Thanks!
The short answer is that our brains are programmed to see the world in three dimensions instead of two. There are more details at Discover magazine, as well as a gallery of colorful optical illusions. For example, these two Rubik's cubes do NOT have the same colors. The "blue" squares in the left picture and the "yellow" squares in the right picture are gray.
I took samples from each and put them on a white field to make sure. Link
In 1966, England was preparing to host the World Cup games when someone stole the championship Jules Rimet Trophy out from under their noses! Police received a ransom note and met with the contact -and arrested him. But it took a little dog named Pickles to actually find the trophy. Read the story of how Pickles became the hero of the World Cup at mental_floss. Link
One way to keep oil from the Gulf of Mexico from creeping into Louisiana's marshlands would be to keep water flowing from the opposite direction. Scientists think rerouting a small part of the Mississippi river would do the trick, at least temporarily. A fork in the river normally sends some water to the south via the Atchafalaya River, which empties into the ocean west of the oil spill. If more of that water were directed instead to the mouth of the Mississippi, the marshlands would be flooded with fresh water. National Audubon Society coastal scientist Paul Kemp says this idea should be put in place soon, because it won't work if we wait.
The Mississippi will not be able to keep the oil at bay indefinitely, however. The river's flow naturally declines each summer, and by August, Kemp's idea will no longer be effective.
That's why Kemp rushed to submit a memo on June 9 outlining his idea to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which would have to approve any short-term river diversions.
In addition to rerouting the Mississippi, Kemp suggests that water currently held behind dams farther upriver should be slowly released. This would keep the flow of water as strong as possible.
Today is the official opening of the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity in Orange, California. In honor of the occasion, Baierman listed some of the many things he (and the rest of us) learned from watching the cartoon characters Jones created (including Bugs Bunny, the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Daffy Duck, and others).
1. Never stick a body part, or your gun, in to a hole.
2. When your life is on the line, it’s okay to dress like a girl and seduce your captor.
3. Even a Grinch can be lovable.
4. Control your anger at all costs. Otherwise you will end up repeatedly falling off a 500-foot tall diving platform.
There are 25 things in this list; maybe you could think of more! Link
