Taking a look at the Fictional Character Birthday Calendar, I see that I share a birthday with Scott Pilgrim, who was born in 1981. Maybe I should see that movie. The calendar at Flavorwire has birthdays of your favorite movie, TV, comic book, literature, and game characters on each day of the year -and you didn't even know fictional character had birthdays! They do, they're just fictional birthdays. Which one is your fictional birthday buddy? Link

Of all the coverage of the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster, has anyone thought about the dogs? There were a dozen canines aboard the ship when it sank. J. Joseph Edgette, professor emeritus of education and folklorist emeritus at Widener University is curating an exhibit devoted to the dogs of the Titanic.

Those that were saved included a baby Pomeranian named Lady, owned by Margaret Hays of New York City, who kept the puppy in the cabin with her, Edgette said. When passengers were evacuated, Hays wrapped it in a blanket. Crew members allowed her to get in a lifeboat with the puppy. “Because they assumed it was a baby, it survived,” he said.

Others that lived were Sun Yat-sen, a Pekinese belonging to Henry and Myra Harper (of Harper & Row publishing fame), also of New York City, and a small Pomeranian owned by Elizabeth Rothschild from Watkins Glen, N.Y.

All surviving dogs were small and were kept in the first-class cabins of their owners, Edgette said. “The crew was very respectful of first-class passengers and usually gave them what they wanted to make them happy.” The nine dogs kept in the onboard kennel perished, though the kennel was well-kept and the dogs were well taken care of, he said, by crew who fed and walked them.

The exhibit at the Widener University Art Gallery in Chester, Pennsylvania, will run through May 12. Admission is free. Link -via Time

Once again, it's time for our collaboration with the always fascinating What Is It? Blog. Do you know what this thing is? Or can you make an amusing wild guess?

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. 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 another picture of this item at the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!

Update: the mystery item is a surveyor's cross (explained here). It was used to align right angles and stuff when surveying land. Anker was the first to know that, and so wins a t-shirt! The funniest answer comes from Carey, who said, "Known as a “slotted and wired hollow brass wooden handled cylinder,” this ingenious hand-tool was used in the early 1900s to illicit inquiries regarding its function and purpose. It fell out of use due to rising production costs and decreasing levels of curiosity." That is a long-winded way of saying it's an "idiot attractor," but it's good for a t-shirt! See what all this week's mystery objects are at the What Is It? blog. Thanks for playing, everyone!

Kiran Hungin designed and crafted this Pac-Man mosaic in glass tile on top of a 1960s-era Formica table. It's one-of-a-kind, for sale at Folksy, which is a British craft market. Link -via Boing Boing

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Watch Zach as he shows you all the necessary steps to chicken bathing. Link -via Swiss Miss

Maybe we should have kept Pluto! A star 127 light-years away shows evidence of having a record (as far as we know) nine planets revolving around it. The star is designated as HD 10180, in the southern constellation Hydrus. The discovery is the culmination of ten years of data crunching. See, we can't see these planets.

Instead, astronomers detected the planets by measuring their gravitational tugs on the host star using the High Accuracy Planet Searcher (HARPS) instrument on the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter telescope at La Silla, Chile.

The five established planets are between 12 and 25 times the mass of Earth and are all around the sizes of Uranus or Neptune, meaning the worlds are most likely icy gas giants.

Of the two newly confirmed planets, one is about 65 times the mass of Earth, and it orbits farther beyond the main group. The other planet is a super-Earth 1.3 times the mass of our home world that circles very close to the host star.

The two new, unconfirmed planets also have tight orbits: A planet thought to be 1.9 times the mass of Earth completes its orbit in 10 days, while the other world is likely 5.1 Earth masses with an orbit lasting 68 days.

Scientists believe the planets, if they actually exist, are too close to the star to ever support life. Link

(Unrelated image credit: NASA)

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Flimmaker Walt Thompson asked Nealey to marry him, by showing her this stop-motion video! Star Wars characters showed up as witnesses.  -via Geeks Are Sexy

 



Sunday will be the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Some people are just finding out that this was a real historical event, and not just a figment of James Cameron's fertile imagination. See the full graphic at TwitPic. Link -via Breakfast Links

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Do you recall The Ennui of Henri? Years later, the existential French cat is back with a sequel. And the angst-ridden Henri is still bemoaning the banality of his existence. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

When you come across an architectural criticism, relax, the critic may well be thinking the same thing you are. Grant Snider of Incidental Comics consulted his twin brother the architect about this comic. All these buildings are within a two blocks of each other in Denver and are listed at his site. Link -via Laughing Squid

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Aren't robots supposed to help us? This Japanese beer-pouring robot seems to have had a few too many himself. And just keeps talking. -via Boing Boing

Lynn Peters of Johannesburg, South Africa, sent out a Tweet that her boyfriend had been kidnapped Sunday night. He was put in the trunk of his own car by armed carjackers! However, the unnamed man was able to contact Peters via phone. Her alert sent the Twittersphere into action.

RT they did, including Peters' friend, Tanisha Reddy. From her it was picked up by well-known SA Twitterer, @pigspotter, who retweeted it to his 100,000-plus followers. @pigspotter specializes in identifying and sharing the location of police roadblocks. The police forces in South Africa have frequently been accused of graft and violence, so it does not seem to be criminals alone who make a point of avoiding roadblocks.

Because @pigspotter's followers include a large number of private security forces, whose vehicles are spread around the country, the Golf was located. Units were notified and in many cases sent out, each team and company retweeted the specifics of their search and kept each other apprised and informed on Twitter.

@afritrack asked if the car was equipped with electronic tracking (it was not.) A volunteer security group called Riga Rescue offered to track the victim's cell signal. The security company K9 Security eventually visually identified the car. The kidnappers were ultimately stopped at a police road block in Ventersberg, 150 miles from where he was taken.

The victim was rescued unharmed. The perpetrators fled on foot, and have not yet been apprehended. Link -via Gizmodo

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YouTube member dondrapersayswhat assembled movie clips to sing the Journey song "Don't Stop Believin," which has somehow become a classic in the blink of an eye (really? has it been 30 years? oh, 31!) in this supercut. Some of the clip selections are a real delight! -via The Daily What

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The artist known as simply ABOVE has been making headlines with his social and political street art for years. His latest installation is painted on a wall in Jewel City, the diamond trade area of Johannesburg, South Africa. The shenanigans involved in getting permission for the paint job ensure that it probably won't last long, but the project is documented both in video and in pictures. Continue reading for the story of how he pulled off this stunt and see photographs of the finished work.

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website. Were there any black people on the Titanic? There have been three excellent movies about the ill-fated luxury liner, the most famous, of course, being James Cameron's 1997 classic Titanic, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. There are also two other very well-made movies about the doomed ship: another entitled Titanic (1953) and A Night to Remember (1958). In none of these three films is any black person depicted aboard the ship. Several insightful, well-researched documentaries have also been made about the Titanic. In none of these (at least to my knowledge) are any blacks shown, seen, or talked about. So, were there any blacks aboard the Titanic? The answer is yes. The Laroche family, consisting of four members, were the only blacks aboard the ill-fated ship. Joseph Loroche was born on May 26, 1886 in Cap-Haïtien (in the northern part of Haiti). As a young boy growing up in Haiti, he was a very good pupil. In 1901, at the age of 15, he decided he wanted to study engineering. Unfortunately, there was no school for such in Haiti, so he decided to emigrate to France. He went to France, traveling with a teacher, Monseigneur Keruzan, the Lord Bishop of Haiti. Joseph was an excellent and dedicated student and made good marks. France was a beautiful country with fine food and beautiful sites. Unfortunately, this couldn't hide the extreme racial prejudice rampant there. The dark-skinned Laroche had trouble procuring employment. He got a few jobs here and there, but his employers made excuses that he was too young and inexperienced. He was paid poorly and often treated shabbily.