A flock of seagulls does A Flock of Seagulls. I can't believe that in the past 30 years, no one has done this already. Yeah, if the software had been widely available in 1982, someone would have produced it immediately. -via The Daily What
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Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
I've been a Major League baseball nut since I was about 12 years old. I will read and study box scores and baseball record books and derive the same joy other men probably derive from reading Shakespeare, Poe, or Dickens. My mind is a reservoir of odd baseball facts, statistics, and trivia. So here is a list of "only occurred once" baseball facts.
1. STEAL A BASE, GO BACK AND STEAL AN EARLIER BASE, THEN STEAL IT AGAIN
On September 3, 1908, while on first base, Herman "Germany" Schaefer of the Detroit Tigers stole second base, then ran in reverse and stole first base, then stole second base again! Germany remains the only player ever to steal second base twice in the same base-running series. Before 1920, there was no official rule that you couldn't steal bases in reverse order.
2. CHARLIE PICK GOES 0 FOR 11
In the longest game in Major League baseball history, on May 1, 1920, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Boston Braves played to a 1-1 tie after 26 innings. Braves second baseman Charlie Pick has "the bad day" at the plate, going 0 for 11 (poor Charlie made an error that day, too).
3. BACK-TO-BACK NO-HITTERS
4. RICHIE ASHBURN HITS THE SAME LADY TWICE WITH TWO FOUL BALLS
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I've been a Major League baseball nut since I was about 12 years old. I will read and study box scores and baseball record books and derive the same joy other men probably derive from reading Shakespeare, Poe, or Dickens. My mind is a reservoir of odd baseball facts, statistics, and trivia. So here is a list of "only occurred once" baseball facts.
1. STEAL A BASE, GO BACK AND STEAL AN EARLIER BASE, THEN STEAL IT AGAIN
On September 3, 1908, while on first base, Herman "Germany" Schaefer of the Detroit Tigers stole second base, then ran in reverse and stole first base, then stole second base again! Germany remains the only player ever to steal second base twice in the same base-running series. Before 1920, there was no official rule that you couldn't steal bases in reverse order.
2. CHARLIE PICK GOES 0 FOR 11
In the longest game in Major League baseball history, on May 1, 1920, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Boston Braves played to a 1-1 tie after 26 innings. Braves second baseman Charlie Pick has "the bad day" at the plate, going 0 for 11 (poor Charlie made an error that day, too).
3. BACK-TO-BACK NO-HITTERS
(Image source: Number 5 Type Collection)
On June 11 and 15, 1938, Johnny Vander Meer pitched back-to-back no-hitters for the Cincinnati Reds. The second no-no was pitched at Ebbets Field and was the first night game ever played there. Babe Ruth was in attendance. Vander Meer, a lifetime "fairly good" 119-121 pitcher, is enshrined in the Cincinnati Hall of Fame. No, Pete Rose can't get in that one, either.4. RICHIE ASHBURN HITS THE SAME LADY TWICE WITH TWO FOUL BALLS
Personally, I couldn't drink coffee with sweetened condensed milk -certainly not this much! But the video is interesting, and the music is mesmerizing. The song is "Ding Dong" by Waipod Phetsuphan. -via Boing Boing
It's once again time for our collaboration with the always interesting What Is It? Blog. Can you guess what the pictured item is? Or can you make up something amusing?
Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many guesses as you'd like in separate comments. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.
Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?
See more picture of this thing at the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!
Update: the pictured object is a ramp for loading barrels or kegs onto a beer truck. The first correct answer came from Anker, who wins a t-shirt! The funniest answer came from Steve Bennett, who labeled it "a snake winder, used for coiling your snake up on long sea voyages so that it doesn’t get tangled up and annoyed." That was nonsensical enough to win a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! Find the answers to all the mystery objects of the week at the What Is It? blog.
We've posted before about species that have gone extinct in recent history. For some of these species, there was one last specimen that had a name and friends, although sadly, not friends of the same species. Read the stories of five who were the last of their lines at Buzzfeed. Shown here is Martha, the last passenger pigeon, who died in Cincinnati in 1914. Link
Airplanes are built to withstand bolts of lightning, because strikes on planes happen now and again. But in 1999, a glider soaring above Dunstable, England, was struck by a bolt out of the blue -literally, because the plane was not in a storm- which ripped the craft apart at the seams, including peeling apart the laminated layers of its surface.
But what happened to the glider and the two men inside? Find out at Damn Interesting. Link
Suspicion rapidly settled on the phenomenon known as ‘positive lightning’. Awareness of positive lightning’s significance has gradually increased in recent decades, and it is now believed to comprise up to 5% of all lightning strikes. The negative charge at a storm cell’s base is balanced by a strong positive charge at the cloud’s anvil-shaped top, up to 60,000 feet above the ground. While there is also a positive charge on the ground immediately underneath the storm cell, significant charge differentials can develop between cloud tops and negatively-charged land surfaces much further away. Occasionally these differentials are sufficient to spark a positively charged lightning strike— a huge high-energy arc capable of hitting the ground more than ten miles from the storm itself, often under clear skies and bright sunshine.
Vast energies are required to deliver these bolts from the blue. Research suggests that positive lightning can generate currents and potentials ten times greater than negative strikes: up to 300,000 amps and 1 billion volts, or approximately 300,000.21 gigawatts of power in a single discharge.
But what happened to the glider and the two men inside? Find out at Damn Interesting. Link
Busted! These two guys from Russia were driving through Ukraine and thought they'd be clever and get out of a speeding violation by not understanding the language. They thought. Score one for the Ukrainian cop! -via Bits and Pieces
This fire truck was spotted in Nobleton, Ontario, Canada. Videographer thespadeinator says at the YouTube page:
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My friend says that it is a legit firetruck, but what could that thing honestly do to a fire? Make it laugh itself to death?
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Jerald Reiter of Cascade, Iowa, was arrested Sunday night for drunk driving with a blood-alcohol level of .148. Police had stopped him to check on the welfare of the passengers in his truck: a zebra and a macaw.
Reiter says at no time did he leave the animals in the truck alone. He said when police arrived, he was leaving the bar after being told the animals couldn't come in. Link -via Arbroath
Reiter, 55, told The Des Moines Register that the zebra and parrot are like friends to him and they often spend time indoors and ride in his vehicles. The animals visit neighbors, and the parrot has been on trips to the local feed store, Reiter said.
On Sunday, after doing chores and eating dinner, Reiter said he decided to take the animals to the Dog House, where he thought they’d be allowed.
“I said, ‘Let’s go for a ride. I ain’t been away from the farm for almost two months because I’ve been planting corn and everything else,’” he said. “So I opened the door, the zebra jumps in, the macaw loves to go for a ride, so we went for a ride.”
Reiter says at no time did he leave the animals in the truck alone. He said when police arrived, he was leaving the bar after being told the animals couldn't come in. Link -via Arbroath
Lily Mitchell and Paul Harasiwka at The More I Arty came up with cocktail recipes inspired by the various characters in the movie The Avengers. Link to part one. Link to part two. -via The Daily What Geek
Weird things happen to your peripheral vision when there are different images on each side. Keep your eyes on the center cross and be prepared to freak out at what these celebrities look like. Vision problems may interfere with the illusion. -via Boing Boing
Today's Google Doodle is an interactive Moog synthesizer. You can click to play it, but if you want to make real music, use the QWERTY row of your keyboard for the white keys, and numbers for the black keys. The buttons and knobs work as well, and you can record and play back your masterpieces on the tape recorder! The doodle is in honor of Robert Moog's 78th birthday. Link -via Fark
The website Cymbolism wants your input to help establish what colors people associate with words. You'll be given a word, and you select the color that you most associate it with, from a rather limited selection of colors. Some words are hard to color, like "Brooklyn." The best part is that your response to each word is immediately posted underneath the quiz, along with other people's responses, like the screenshot shown here of my responses. So, I can see that I'm not all that weird compared to those who went before me. I cut off the words in order not to influence your responses, but I'll go ahead and admit that the word "mellow" made me select yellow -and so did others. Link -via Breakfast Links
A Slinky walks down an inclined treadmill for quite some time without tiring. The addition of a dramatic musical soundtrack makes it into an epic struggle of some sort ...I think. -via Buzzfeeed
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