We are so used to computer-generated imagery (CGI) in movies that it's hard to fathom that Star Wars (1977) had none at all ...at least until the "special edition" was produced later. Still, that movie set us on the road to modern moviemaking, as George Lucas founded Industrial Light & Magic to create special effects for his later movies. That company debuted CGI in the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and the same year TRON featured an entire sequence made with CGI, animated one frame at a time.

Yet Jurassic Park stands out historically because it was the first time computer-generated graphics, and even characters, shared the screen with human actors, drawing the audience into the illusion that the dinosaurs’ world was real. Even back then, upon seeing the initial digital test shots, George Lucas was stunned: He’s often quoted as saying “it was like one of those moments in history, like the invention of the light bulb or the first telephone call … A major gap had been crossed and things were never going to be the same.”

Since then, computer graphics researchers have been working to constantly improve the realism of visual effects and have achieved great success, scholarly, commercial and artistic. Today, nearly every film contains computer-generated imagery: Explosions, tsunamis and even the wholesale destruction of cities are simulated, virtual characters replace human actors and detailed 3D models and green-screen backgrounds have replaced traditional sets.

Read about the great strides in CGI technology and filmmaking that came after the breakthrough of Jurassic Park at Smithsonian.

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You read about world record stunts that are "retired," or proposed ideas that the Guinness Book of World Records rejects because they are dangerous, but somehow self-immolation is okay. Last month, 32 professional stunt people gathered in Cape Town, South Africa, and were all set on fire simultaneously. That broke the record for the most people performing full-body burns. The rules for this record said they had to remain on fire for 30 seconds. Organizers promoted the event as "some fun."

The fire-proof costumes and gel used were thoroughly tested before the official attempt and every person was shadowed by someone who monitored their safety and health both during and after the challenge.

The Guinness World Records attempt made for an impressive spectacle though, as the 32 flaming participants walked together in a line, lighting up the sky.

Once they were finished, they fell to the floor to be extinguished by their helper.

Prior to this, the record for the Most people performing full body burns stood at 21 and was achieved during an event at the Hotcards Burn in Cleveland, Ohio, USA on 19 October 2013.

The event was organized by Paradigm Shift Special Effects, which employs the stunt men and women. Sometimes you have to do weird things for work.  -via Digg 

PICKLE BULGES pic.twitter.com/FSmVKDTmeX

— Wheel Of Fortune Answers (@wofanswers) June 8, 2018

The TV game show Wheel of Fortune is like a fast-moving crossword puzzle where the audience is always a step ahead of the players onscreen. You can guess the answer before the wheel is spun, and you never have to skip a turn like the competitors do. But how often do you come up with a wrong answer that's funnier than the right answer?

OH SHIT A GHOST pic.twitter.com/lgmmftUiLF

— Wheel Of Fortune Answers (@wofanswers) June 5, 2018

The week-old Twitter account Wheel Of Fortune Answers is full of stuff like this. Some guesses are more plausible than others, and they don't always follow the rules, but the point is not to be right, but to be funny.

Before you scroll through the whole collection, be aware that the "answers" are often profane. -via Buzzfeed

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One of the challenges of filming a skater is keeping up as he zips around. One solution is to mount a camera on a loyal and energetic dog! In this video, a dog named Fatman follows Rob Mathieson, Tom Snape, and Nick Jensen around a London skatepark. The result is a dog video and a skateboard video combined, which is a lot of fun. What's really impressive is the stabilization of the footage. See more of Fatman The Dog at his YouTube channel.  -via Laughing Squid

The first pilot's licenses in the US were issued in 1927. Within two years, there were over 9,000 men with licenses, and only 117 women. Those women were adventurous, independent, and skilled, but they were treated as a novelty. A woman could find blissful freedom in the skies, and still return to headlines about what her makeup looked like when she took off. Many of the women who were pilots knew each other somewhat through competitions and air shows, so in 1929, six pilots, including Amelia Earhart, proposed a club where they could share their experiences and support each other.  

Later that year, [pilot Opal] Kunz explained in a letter to a fellow female aviator why such a group was so critical. It wasn’t, she wrote, that there was any conflict with male pilots. “This is exactly the opposite to the facts. We want no militant girl pilots. We are not fighting for anything.” Instead, the Ninety-Nines wanted women in aviation to be treated as equals, “rather than spoiled as something rare and very precious.” Instead of overblown headlines about minor female achievements, they wanted women to be treated as peers and given identical opportunities to the men who did, as she wrote, such “marvelous things in the air … We believe that our girls can and will learn to fly as well as the average man, better than many, but it does not seem likely that we will ever equal the remarkable skill of countless men fliers both in our own country and abroad.” That same year, Earhart is said to have proclaimed: “If enough of us keep trying, we’ll get someplace.”

The club eventually became known as the Ninety-Nines, with Earhart elected as their first president. They worked to send young women to aviation school, and supplied pilots in World War II. And the club is still going today. Read about the Ninety-Nines at Atlas Obscura.

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Almost fifty years after the fact, Hollywood has finally produced a biopic on Neil Armstrong. First Man covers the years from 1961 to 1969, when Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the lunar surface.

Why was Armstrong the first astronaut to step onto the moon? The official story given to the public is because he was closest to the door of the lunar lander. But there's more to it. Deke Slayton, head of the astronaut office during the Apollo era, assigned crews to the various missions. By tradition, the backup crew for one mission would be the main crew for the third mission after that, although changes were sometimes made. Armstrong was on the backup crew for Apollo 8. When the crew was up for Apollo 11, Armstrong was named commander because of his seniority in the astronaut program. Knowing the historic nature of the mission, Slayton arranged for Armstrong to be the first out because his lack of ego would make him better able to withstand the aftermath of the mission.

Still, Armstrong appeared to be tailor-made for the honor. He was a Korean War veteran, a Navy aviator, but a civilian at the time of the moon shot. Armstrong had a degree in aeronautical engineering and worked as a test pilot for NACA, the precursor to NASA. His civilian status was what kept him out of the first astronaut selection for Project Mercury, but Project Gemini welcomed him in 1962, despite his application being late. The fact that he was the first civilian astronaut to travel in space had no bearing on his Apollo 11 role, but the idea was appealing to enough people to stick around for 50 years.

First Man is set to open October 12. -via Tastefully Offensive

An American soldier found a tiny but full-grown Yorkshire terrier in a foxhole in New Guinea during World War II. Combat photographer Corporal William A. Wynne took a picture of the dog sitting in a helmet to show how small she was. That photo made the dog famous, as it was printed in a military magazine and then in newspapers across the US.

The dog was named Smoky, and over the last two years of the war she accompanied Wynne on 12 combat missions and dozens of air raids, and entertained troops and the hospitalized wounded with tricks she learned during downtime. Those tricks served her well after the war too, used to entertain the world on tours and TV shows. Millions of people knew and loved Smoky the War Dog.

Smoky was so loved that the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran an obituary when she died in 1957, which led to solving the mystery of how a Yorkshire terrier came be in a foxhole in New Guinea. Read that story in a newspaper clipping at FishWrap. -via Strange Company 

Fred Rogers had an uncanny ability to connect with young children through his show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Or maybe it wasn't so uncanny. Rogers put in a lot of work to make sure everything he said was something a child could understand. That wasn't easy, since children lack the years of language practice and references that adults have. Rogers went over every line in a script, consulted with childhood experts, and even reshot dialogue that he later found troubling from a child's point of view.

As Arthur Greenwald, a former producer of the show, put it to me, “There were no accidents on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” He took great pains not to mislead or confuse children, and his team of writers joked that his on-air manner of speaking amounted to a distinct language they called “Freddish.”

Fundamentally, Freddish anticipated the ways its listeners might misinterpret what was being said. For instance, Greenwald mentioned a scene in a hospital in which a nurse inflating a blood-pressure cuff originally said “I’m going to blow this up.” Greenwald recalls: “Fred made us redub the line, saying, ‘I’m going to puff this up with some air,’ because ‘blow it up’ might sound like there’s an explosion, and he didn’t want the kids to cover their ears and miss what would happen next.”

Eventually, a couple of the show's writers jotted down the rules of "Freddish," representing the process of refining a simple line of dialogue to make it perfect for Mister Rogers' audience. You can read that process at The Atlantic.

(Image credit: Flickr user Rogelio A. Galaviz C.)

What is summer like in your state? Is it unbearably hot and humid, or just hot? Are there wall-to-wall tourists, or do they avoid your state because it's boring? There's more to a pleasant summer than temperature, and Thrillist takes many factors into account when ranking where you might want to spend your summer vacation time. For example:

11. Kansas

It's kinda like Oklahoma, but with fewer onions on the burgers and a roughly equal number of tornado warnings.

10. South Carolina

Little-known fact: During the summer months, the South Carolina town of Mount Pleasant renames itself “Mount How Is It Possible That My Body Is Both Slippery and Sticky Right Now Don’t Touch Me I’m Gross It’s Even Too Hot to Enjoy a Plate of Mustard-Forward Barbecue Pass The Cheerwine As It Is My Only Refuge From This Unyielding Hazy Inferno.”

For real. They have to change the signs and everything.

Also, Myrtle Beach has one of America’s most impressive collections of dads in golf shorts.

And to think that there are nine states with more miserable summers than that! See how yours ranks in the list at Thrillist.

(Image credit: Daniel Fishel/Thrillist)

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This guy has a pet raccoon. Tito was a cute baby raccoon, but once they start to become adults, they remind you that they are wild animals. That goes for hand-raised raccoons. Watch Tito being himself as his human lays some truth down. -via Metafilter 

A group of experts, or people who think they are experts, plan the perfect crime. It will make them rich! Sometimes it's a thriller with high stakes, sometimes it's a comedy of errors. Often the plans go way off track. Sometimes they get away with it, sometimes they don't, and the fact that you don't know makes it all the more exciting. These are heist movies, and they come in all flavors. Everyone has their favorite, so Vulture built a ranked list for people to discuss and disagree with.

While selecting the 25 best heist films, we leaned heavily on the importance of the heist(s) to the movie’s plot. So, for example, the crime spree itself is perhaps more entertaining in Fantastic Mr. Fox than in the Wes Anderson film we chose, but the former isn’t really thought of as a “heist movie.” Our choices span several decades and aren’t all in English — most are thrillers, although a few are comedies. In some, our anti-heroes prevail — other times, everything goes terribly wrong. But what connects them all is that primal rush of landing the big score. Don’t try any of this at home.

Whether or not you agree with their selections, you'll probably find one or two that you haven't seen that might be working checking out in the list of the 25 best heist movies of all time. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Maya Robinson/Vulture)

Havre, Montana, is more than meets the eye. The railroad city had its hidden vices: saloons, brothels, and opium dens, mostly in the steam tunnels and basements beneath its buildings. When an arson fire destroyed the homes and businesses of Havre's Chinese railroad workers in 1904, legitimate businessmen moved their stores and offices underground instead of waiting for the town to be rebuilt.   

You’ll know when you’re walking over the Underground when you come across small grids of purple glass that illuminate the darkness below. They cover about ten blocks of the city.

Think of them as pioneer skylights into the non-operational, but still-standing Sporting Eagle Saloon, or one of the many bordellos and opium dens that were popular there in the 1920s-30s. The Great Depression was also a two-sided coin for Havre, whose innocent small businesses were suffering, while the Underground’s clandestine bootleggers were doing quite well…

The thriving underground city included a post office, mortuary, bakery, blacksmith shop, dentist office, pharmacy, barbershop, general store, and a chapel along with the saloons. As the years went by, the underground city fell into disuse, but now the local community has restored and open it up to tourists as Havre Beneath the Streets. Read about the underground city at Messy Nessy Chic. 

(Image credit: Flickr user Pattys-photos)

Isse Ichidai Jidaigumi is a peculiar club that is getting plenty of attention in Japan. The group was born in Hokkaido and now has a branch in Tokyo. These young men dress in traditional Japanese robes and incongruously modern trilby hats, carry swords, and always have at least one basket with them ...to pick up garbage. Yes, they keep the city streets trash-free, with style.

さっき外へ出たら60階通りにいきなりゴミ拾い侍が出現してその太刀さばきが余りにもお見事(´･_･`) pic.twitter.com/2Bxezi8CJh

— ちからや　てんちょー (@burao0304) June 5, 2018

They also sing and dance and demonstrate sword handling at various events. Read more about Isse Ichidai Jidaigumi and see plenty of pictures at Kotaku.

(Image credit: Jidaigumi)

Wallpaper started out as luxurious art that covered the walls of high-class homes, just one step down from handmade tapestries. Then with the Industrial Revolution, mass-produced wallpaper brought the price down and everyone wanted to plaster their home with fancy designs. As the paper got cheaper and cheaper, design suffered until most available wallpaper was just plain ugly. The modern trend is for clean, plain, painted walls, often in light neutral colors. Wallpaper suppliers have dried up and gone out of business in droves over the past few decades. The salvation of wallpaper may be the return to high-quality hand-printed paper, like the designs supplied by Bruce Bradbury and Steve Bauer of Bradbury & Bradbury Art Wallpapers. They both developed a love for Victorian design and architecture early.  

Bradbury’s first wallpapers were homages to William Morris, C. F. A. Voysey, Christopher Dresser, and his other Victorian-era design heroes. In the mid-1970s, there was a nascent market for such wallpapers as increasing numbers of homeowners in Victorian-rich cities like San Francisco were restoring these grand, old structures, which were threatened by both decay and scorched-earth urban renewal. Unwittingly, Bradbury was making the right product in the right place at the right time. “When I finally decided to become a Victorian wallpaper maker in 1976,” he says, “I realized that the walls and ceilings of the Haight and the Western Addition homes I had been seeing since 1967 were blank canvases, ready and waiting for us.” Which is not to say he was immediately successful. “It still hadn’t occurred to me to sell anything,” Bradbury recalls, “because I was so in love with what I was doing. I made it and gave it away.”

He eventually got over that, which saved the business. Bradbury and Bauer tell us about their distinctive wallpapers, and give us a history of wall coverings at Collectors Weekly. 

Have you given up on crossword puzzles because they are full of words you never encounter in your daily life? Maybe they should use some references and slang from the internet to be relatable. Motherboard is beginning a series of crossword puzzles, a new one every week, filled with answers you won't know unless you keep up with internet news and culture. Try the first puzzle here. It's not a big puzzle, but it took me twenty minutes to complete because I'm a little behind on celebrity news. -via Metafilter