Have you ever seen a collection of cars this recognizable all in one place? From the top left, they are Herbie from The Love Bug, a motorcycle from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Jurassic Park Ford Explorer, Batmobile, Jurassic Park Jeep, Delorean time machine from Back to the Future, and Ecto 1 from Ghostbusters. You can see a bigger picture at Facebook.
All these vehicles (and most likely the truck, too) belong to one man. Franck Galiègue is an actor who collects cars from movies. You can rent one through his business Movie Cars Central in Saint-Denis, France. -via reddit
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A cockatoo is learning how to bowl. The lesson is going great, but when he fails to get a spare, he resorts to cheating. Can you blame him, when he gets such great feedback for knocking down any pins? The game descends into chaos, with both the bird and the coach dissolving in laughter. -via Digg
Do you like butter tarts? Have you ever heard of a butter tart? I had to see a recipe to know what they are, and have ascertained that they are like tiny pecan pies, except sometimes they are made with walnuts or raisins instead of pecans, and sometimes with no nuts at all. In fact, Wikipedia describes them as just that, except the filling is runnier than American pecan pie because they don't use corn starch, and that's why they are in individual crusts. Sweet! Butter tarts are a favorite Canadian treat and comfort food. This came up because Saturday, June 9, is Ontario's Best Butter Tart Festival in Midland, Ontario. The festival opens with The Piping of the Tart with a bagpipe and drum band, and includes all the normal festival trappings, but the main event is the butter tart cooking competition. So if you want to try Canada's best butter tarts, you've got a week to get there. -via Fark
(Image credit: Rob Campbell)
In the internet tradition of designing incredibly complicated machines to do something useless yet impressive, YouTuber TECHNICally Possible made a LEGO contraption that displays the lyrics to Daft Punk's song "Harder Better Faster Stronger." It's a mechanical remake of the mega-viral Daft Hands video from 11 years ago. The words are displayed on a scaffolding in a way that makes them visible only from a certain angle. Then there's a second scaffolding that moves the GoPro camera, which is the magic part that we only see in a small portion of the video. The builder says he's run it dozens of times and it hasn't broken yet, although there is wear in some spots. -via Geekologie
This is my life. I'm outside inspecting my garden. I see something that needs to be done, but I need to check the weather forecast first. I go inside to my office, and whatever is on the computer screen reminds me of what I was doing before going outside, so that's what continues. One thing leads to another, and an hour or two later I hear rain falling. If I'd actually checked the weather map, there would have been time to do that one chore, but now it's too late. If it doesn't rain, it eventually gets dark. And that happens every day. In case a raccoon eating cotton candy sounds familiar, you're recalling a post we published a couple of years ago. This is the latest comic from Megacynics.
Experimental YouTuber Ryan Higa (previously at Neatorama) admits he's not a good dancer. But what if he danced without moving? Then he could control the look image by image, and even let others decide what makes an aesthetic dance move. So Higa took 4,000 photos of himself over six days to make a stop-motion dance video just to see if he could pull it off. While he was at it, he tried quite a few visual tricks to see what they look like. -via reddit
Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, was executed in 1918 along with his wife, five children, and a few servants after the Russian revolution. It was not a public execution, and the remains were buried at an undisclosed location. Rumors grew that at least one princess has survived being shot due to the royal jewels sewn into her bodice. At least ten women later claimed to be the youngest of the Tsar's daughters, Anastasia, but the most famous was Anna Anderson, whose story was fictionalized in movies in 1956 and 1997. Anderson's story began when she was confined to a German mental hospital in the early 1920s.
A fellow patient first claimed that Anderson, who had been rescued following a suicide attempt, was Grand Duchess Tatiana of Russia, the second eldest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II. A former Russian captain came to visit the unknown woman and intrigued, he began persuading other Russian émigrés to visit the mystery patient, who spoke German with an accent described as “Russian”. Eventually, Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden, a former lady-in-waiting to the Tsar’s wife, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, visited the asylum.
Upon seeing Anderson, she declared, “She’s too short for Tatiana,” and left convinced the woman was not a Russian grand duchess. A few days later, the nameless woman noted, “I did not say I was Tatiana.” She began opening up to the nurses of the asylum, confessing that she was in fact another daughter of the Tsar– Anastasia. She explained how she had hidden among the bodies of her family and servants, and was able to make her escape with the help of a compassionate communist guard who noticed she was still breathing and took sympathy upon her.
The late Tsar had plenty of relatives and associates in Europe, and they were split between those who believed Anderson was the Grand Duchess Anastasia and those who did not. Read her story at Messy Nessy Chic, where you can also learn about the fake Princess Cariboo and the fake Princess Susanna.
When prominent Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe died in 1601 at age 54, the story arose that it was due to a burst bladder. Brahe had attended a banquet where he drank a lot, and would not leave to hall to pee, because that would be rude. Eleven days later, he was dead, presumably from the resulting infection. An analysis of Brahe's hair from a 1901 exhumation led to speculation that he instead died from mercury poisoning, either from his alchemy experiments or from intentional murder. Further analysis of his remains in 2010 indicated that he was not poisoned by mercury or other toxins. So what killed Brahe? A recent study concludes it was his high station and lifestyle. First off, his obesity.
Turning to historical literature, the researchers learned more about Brahe's symptoms in his final days, including coma and urinary retention, and scoured contemporary medical literature on hyperosmolar hyperglycemic state (HHS), which is common in people with type 2 diabetes. Symptoms of HHS include "signs of dehydration, weakness, legs cramps, delirium, and an altered level of consciousness that evolves not infrequently to profound lethargy or coma," the researchers write. "Such a syndrome appears as a possible cause of the symptoms Brahe endured during his very last days. This hypothesis is compatible with the known fatal outcome of his sudden illness, since mortality associated with HSS is between 10% and 20% in current clinical practice."
However, one final clue from historical records is Brahe's alcoholism, as he was notorious for drinking great quantities of wine and other alcoholic beverages. Alcohol abuse may cause serious metabolic disturbances, including alcoholic ketoacidosis, the researchers note. "This condition manifests itself suddenly and constitutes in modern days a fairly common cause of sudden, unexpected death in heavy drinkers" known as ketoalcoholic death.
A combination of obesity, diabetes, and alcoholism would have been fairly lethal in the 16th and 17th centuries, although limited to the upper classes who could choose their own food and drink. Brahe suffered from other medical conditions, too, which you can read about at Forbes. -via Strange Company
Devin Supertramp and his band of stuntmen recreate a chase scene from the Jurassic Park movie series. Since CGI is expensive, they used parkour athletes in T-rex costumes for the dinosaurs. That makes this video no less exciting for all the action, but does make it funnier than it should be. There's a behind the scenes video, too. -via Geeks Are Sexy
The way milk was regarded during ancient times is an illustration of how simple geographical differences get turned into xenophobia. The Roman Empire had plenty of reasons to distrust the people it conquered (and vice-versa), but milk-drinking now seems an odd thing to complain about. It was just another custom that separated the "civilized" Romans from everyone else, and it disgusted them.
During a visit to conquered Britain, Julius Caesar was appalled by how much milk the northerners consumed. Strabo, a philosopher, geographer, and historian of Ancient Rome, disparaged the Celts for excessive milk drinking. And Tacitus, a Roman senator and historian, described the German diet as crude and tasteless by singling out their fondness for “curdled milk.”
The Romans often commented on the inferiority of other cultures, and they took excessive milk drinking as evidence of barbarism. Similarly, butter was a useful ointment for burns; it was not a suitable food. As Pliny the Elder bluntly put it, butter is “the choicest food among barbarian tribes.”
Romans didn't drink milk because they couldn't keep it fresh in the Mediterranean heat. Northern tribes did because they could. Yet milk gave the Romans another reason to feel superior to their colonies. Cheese? That was another story entirely. Even after the fall of the Empire, the controversy over milk remained and eventually went global. Read about barbarians and their milk at Atlas Obscura.
Diego Carrera (previously at Neatorama) made an really pleasant music video that uses well-edited dancing clips from movies you've seen. Or at least most of them. They run the gamut from Al Jolson to Emma Stone -and it ends with a clip from 1896. It's like a 5-minute vacation from all the cares of the world. -via Digg
Franceska Mann was a talented dancer, a rising star in the entertainment scene in pre-war Poland. During the Nazi occupation, she was confined to the Warsaw ghetto, where she performed at the Melody Palace nightclub. In 1943, Germans rounded up the 600 or Jewish people living at the hotel and told them they would either be exchanged for German POWs or allowed to emigrate to South America. They were taken to Birkenau. Among them was the 26-year-old ballerina.
According to Jerzy Tabau, a prisoner who later escaped from Birkenau and wrote a report on the incident, the new arrivals were not registered at Birkenau. Instead, they were told that they had to be disinfected before crossing the border into Switzerland. They were taken into an undressing room next to one of the gas chambers and ordered to undress. The beautiful Franceska caught the attention of SS Sergeant Major Josef Schillinger, who stared at her and ordered her to undress completely. Suddenly Franceska threw her shoe into Schillinger's face, and as he opened his gun holster, Franceska grabbed his pistol and fired two shots, wounding him in the stomach. Then she fired a third shot which wounded another SS Sergeant named Emmerich. Schillinger died on the way to the hospital.
The other women took this as a signal to attack the SS men. Read the conflicting reports of what happened when the ballerina fought back at Vintage Everyday. -via Strange Company
Have you ever wondered about the small border that the US shares with Russia? The tip of Siberia comes right up to the western islands of Alaska, and that's where the line is drawn, between the islands of Big Diomede and Little Diomede. What's even weirder is that the International Date Line runs between them. And there are people living on those islands. Half as Interesting explains the two islands to us. At about 4:20, the video cleverly segues into an ad. -via Digg
Thanks to companies like 23andMe and AncestryDNA, personal DNA testing is hot. For a couple hundred dollars or less, you can find out where your ancestors came from, in case you need to swap out your lederhosen for a kilt, as in one memorable ad. Most of us recall when DNA sequencing was cutting edge technology, and took years and millions of dollars to accomplish. How do these companies do it for so many people? Well, for one thing, they don't map all your DNA.
2. THE KITS LOOK FOR GENETIC VARIATIONS CALLED SINGLE NUCLEOTIDE POLYMORPHISMS.
After extracting DNA from your cheek swab or saliva sample, DNA testing companies search your DNA for certain genetic variants. The building blocks of DNA are chemical bases called nucleotides, which come in four varieties—A, T, C, and G (adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine, respectively). We have 3 billion pairs of these bases, so 6 billion letters in all, strung together in a sequence. Altogether, this genetic information is called your genome.
DNA testing companies determine which of the four letters is present at many locations in your genome. Much of the sequence is shared among humans, so the companies focus on specific letters that vary from person to person, known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Many SNPs have some biological relevance. For example, having one variant of a specific SNP near the gene OCA2, which codes for a protein believed to be involved in producing the dark pigment melanin, makes it much more likely you’ll have blue or green eyes. Other traits and even some diseases are also associated with certain SNPs, some more strongly than others.
That's one of the many ways that commercial DNA testing stands on the shoulders of earlier, more expensive research. Read more facts about personal DNA tests at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Flickr user University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability)
Get your world globe out. You'll see that a polar route is often the most direct way to get from many places in the Northern Hemisphere to other places in the Northern Hemisphere, where most of us live. But there is one big problem: so many of those polar routes go over Russia. The USSR didn't allow other countries to use their airspace. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia relaxed the restrictions, but only to a point. Airlines saved a lot of money by flying more directly, but Russia takes a big chunk of that money for itself. They also have control of who gets to use those routes. Wendover Productions explains the complexities of polar air routes.
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