The Hanshin Tigers baseball club won the Japan Series for the first and (so far) only time in 1985. Fans in Dotonbori celebrated by jumping into the local river. The story goes that the crowd called out the names of the players, and a fan who most resembled each player jumped in. However, no one looked like star player and Oklahoma native Randy Bass {wiki}. So the crowd tossed in a life-size statue of Colonel Sanders taken from a KFC outlet. The statue was lost in the river, and the Hanshin Tigers sunk into a slump. Urban lore says the Tigers performance is due to the lost statue.

Fast forward to 2009. Divers looking for unexploded bombs found the Colonel Tuesday night.

The upper body of the statue was discovered at around 4 p.m. about 200 meters away from where it plunged into the water in 1985. When the figure was being pulled up by the crane on a salvage barge, construction workers could be heard to say, "It looks like a corpse." However, when Tigers fans such as the riverside project foreman saw the statue, they exclaimed, "It's the Colonel!" Passersby also stopped in their tracks to take in the scene.

With the media and locals looking on, divers began their search for the lower body at around 8:50 Wednesday morning, and discovered the right hand some minutes later. About 10 minutes after that, the diver's voice burst from a speaker on the salvage barge, saying, "It's the lower body. There's no mistake about it," bringing on a cheer from reporters and workers alike.

Is the "Curse of the Colonel" over for the Tigers? Link -via Fark

This extensive collection of photographs of New York City starts at around 120 years ago and includes aerial mapping shots, news photos, and work by many acclaimed photographers. This picture shows Times Square as it was in 1922. Link -via the Presurfer

The 1978 brainstorming sessions among George Lucas, Lawrence Kasdan, and Steven Spielberg that led to Raiders of the Lost Ark are now available for your reading pleasure. 45 hours of discussion are transcribed in a 125-page .pdf, but you can see the highlights before downloading the whole thing. Here's Spielberg (S) and Lucas (G) discussing the backstory of Indy and Marion:

G — I was thinking that this old guy could have been his mentor. He could have known this little girl when she was just a kid. Had an affair with her when she was eleven.

L — And he was forty-two.

G — He hasn't seen her in twelve years. Now she's twenty-two. It's a real strange relationship.

S — She had better be older than twenty-two.

G — He's thirty-five, and he knew her ten years ago when he was twenty-five and she was only twelve. It would be amusing to make her slightly young at the time.

S — And promiscuous. She came onto him.

G — Fifteen is right on the edge. I know it's an outrageous idea, but it is interesting. Once she's sixteen or seventeen it's not interesting anymore. But if she was fifteen and he was twenty-five and they actually had an affair the last time they met. And she was madly in love with him and he...

Link -via Metafilter

Fashion photographer Greg Kessler takes pictures of runway models before and after makeup. The Moment, the New York Times fashion blog, posts these together so you can slide back and forth from one image to the other. Scroll down at the site to see models from various fashion shows. Am I the only one who thinks they look better without makeup? Link -via Everlasting Blort

(image credit: Greg Kessler)

Placebos are medicines or procedures that don't have any active medical ingredients. Their effects are all in your mind, but the brain has wonderful ways of making us feel better. eMedExpert Blog looks at the latest research on the placebo effect. Did you know there's such a thing as placebo surgery?

In the 1950s, many physicians treated angina with ligation of the internal mammary artery. Despite claims of up to a 91% success rate, in the late 1950s, two skeptics conducted separate double-blind tests in which half the patients received skin incision, but not artery ligation12-13. In both studies, the placebo surgery proved equally effective as the ligation. And the overall rate of improvement with the placebo was 37%.

A 2002 study of arthroscopic knee surgery found that the outcomes for a placebo procedure were as good as those of the “real” surgery14.

Link -Thanks, Karen!

(image credit: Flickr user Akácio S. [ /photographyk ])

Do you know what a pluot is? It's a hybrid cross between a plum and an apricot. Sounds yummy! The pluot pictured is just one of seven hybrid or genetically modified food items detailed at WebEcoist. Link -via the Presurfer

A recently identified portrait of William Shakespeare, if genuine, would be the only true likeness we have of The Bard. The popular face of Shakespeare that we know was taken from a woodcut by Martin Droeshout that was published after the playwright's death. The newly-identified portrait was painted around 1610, when Shakespeare was 46 years old. The painting has been in the hands of the Cobbe family for centuries. Current owner Alec Cobbe saw another portrait that supposedly depicted Shakespeare and saw a resemblance. He then asked Stanley Wells of Birmingham University to help authenticate it.

The two men arranged to have the Cobbe painting subjected to a battery of scientific tests — tree-ring-dating to determine the age of the wood panel, X-ray examination at the Hamilton-Kerr Institute at Cambridge University and infrared reflectography. The tests produced convincing evidence that the panel dated from around 1610 and was the source for the Folger painting, among others. Wells is now sure of it. "I don't think anyone who sees [the Cobbe painting] would doubt this is the original," he says. "It's a much livelier painting, a much more alert face, a more intelligent and sympathetic face."

Link -via Metafilter

Just the other day, I thought about how neato my basement would look with a laboratory set up like Dr. Frankenstein, with beakers and burners and electrical gadgets. Now Wired has a how-to video on just that!

They don't make chemistry sets like they used to -- no more uranium or explosives. What's an aspiring mad scientist to do? Go DIY. In your own smoking, bubbling lair, you can make everything from bouncy balls to rocket motors. Here's a catalyst to get you started.

Link

The first quiz about fictional bands was so popular, part two is up today as the Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. How well do you know bands that weren't really bands from movies and TV? I scored 33% despite not knowing any of the answers. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/23435

You thought a boy named Sue would have to grow up strong and tough? Try overcoming life's obstacles as a girl named Marijuana Pepsi Jackson! Ms. Sawyer (her married name) is a schoolteacher who had parents with a sense of humor.

Sawyer's aunt, Mayetta Jackson of Chicago, clearly remembers when the name was picked in 1972. The newborn's mother and father were products of the post-Woodstock era when reefer was rampant.

"And they would cool off with a Pepsi," she said, which makes you think it's lucky for Sawyer that it wasn't Coke instead. "I thought it was crazy," her aunt said about the name, "but they were such fun-loving people that it suited them."

Ms. Sawyer's story does have some elements of the Johnny Cash song.

She gives a surprising amount of credit to her mother for making her resilient and resourceful. "She instilled in me that fighting attitude - never take no, you can do anything," Sawyer said.

By high school, her name was cool to many. "They were like, 'Oh yeah. Man, I wish I had your name. I love that. I'm going to name my kid after you.' I hear that so much and I go, Lord, please don't do that to that child."

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/40874017.html -via Fark

(image credit: Jeffrey Phelps)

Pink Tentacle has a roundup of the different types of mummies found in Japan. There are the monks who mummified themselves in order to attain Nirvana, mermaid mummies made from parts of different animals, and supernatural creatures from ancient legends, such as the three-faced demon shown. Link -via Digg

The entire city council loses it and cannot conduct business when some kid uses a fart machine. There's no indication of what city it is, but they moved to recess in order to regain composure. Link

The breed that normally rescues people in cold weather had to be rescued at the Peter Yegen Jr. Golf Club in Billings, Montana. A 16-month-old St. Bernard named Duke had fallen through the ice on a pond, climbed out, and sat down on the ice. His wet backside then froze to the ice, leaving him immobile.

Two firefighters in dry suits pushed an ice rescue sled over about 10 feet of hip-deep water and 10 feet of ice to reach Duke, who was shivering and occasionally whining.

After trying to free the tail with water and a crowbar-like Haligan tool, firefighter Brandon Fleury broke the ice around Duke's tail with a mallet while firefighter Ben Jares held onto the dog by his collar.

They got the shivering animal onto the sled and were hauled back to shore by seven other firefighters who had arrived.

It took four firefighters - one just to hold up the tail with the large chunk of ice attached - to lift the 118-pound dog into a waiting golf cart.

Duke was OK after the staff at an animal hospital removed the ice. Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: Casey Riffe/Gazette)

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This tells the entire story of Forrest Gump in a most efficient way! (via Buzzfeed)

Circuit City is slowly going out of business and liquidating store inventories. Employees at an undisclosed location had fun filling out a chart of store discounts. After all, what's the worst that could happen -maybe they'll be fired? See a larger photo at Gizmodo. http://i.gizmodo.com/5166344/image-shows-circuit-city-employees-still-have-their-sense-of-humor-dignity-is-02-off