Ask anyone to name a movie about the winter Olympics and chances are that Cool Runnings is the only one they can think of. The 1993 sports comedy was very loosely based on the Jamaican bobsled team that participated in the 1988 Olympics in Calgary. The concept alone was enough to hang a movie script on, and the result was quite funny. It was the final John Candy movie released before his death in 1994. Let's learn some more about Cool Runnings.
8. Two big name actors turned down two of the lead roles.
Denzel Washington and Eddie Murphy turned down the roles of Chatrice and Sanka due to the fact that they weren’t offered enough.
7. There’s actual footage from the 1988 Winter Olympic games in the film.
Some of those moments you see caught on camera are actual shots of the racers as they were back in the 80’s.
Animator Joshua Slice is single-handedly making people fall in love with a spider. Or is it his nephew Lucas, who does the voice of of Lucas the spider? In the latest episode of Lucas' adventures, he tells of his aspirations. He wants to be a musician when he grows up! And for that, we get a little song.
The women of the US Olympic Ski Team have been spotted wearing uniforms that make them superheroes! Marvel teamed up with the sportswear company Spyder for ski gear the team is wearing in PyeongChang. These are not the official uniforms for the actual events, but practice uniforms. They are still getting all the attention. Above you see gold medalist Lindsey Vonn decked out as Captain America. And other skiers are wearing the uniform of Captain Marvel, who'll be seen in her own movie in 2019.
The Abraham Lincoln bloodline shed its last drop in 1985. Or did it?
ROOTS
A year after Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith’s death in 1985, a 17-year-old boy appeared in court to accept a million-dollar settlement from the Lincoln estate. Beckwith was the last of the 16th president’s three great-grandchildren to pass away. None of the three were believed to have produced any kids. So who was this kid, and why did Lincoln’s estate pay him?
At the time of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, his family tree had a single living shoot: Robert Todd Lincoln, the only one of the president’s four children (all sons) to survive to adulthood. Robert Lincoln not only survived, he thrived, perhaps driven by a compulsion to prove he was more than just Abe Lincoln’s son. “No one wanted me,” he once said. “They wanted Abraham Lincoln’s son.” What they got was a Harvard-educated lawyer, banker, and corporate executive who also served as U.S. Secretary of War under President James Garfield. But he was not “a man of the people” like his father. In fact, he was said to have an almost “morbid repugnance” for public life.
BRANCHING OUT
Nevertheless, Robert Todd Lincoln did become president …of the Pullman Railroad Company. (Ironically, he’d been dubbed “the Prince of Rails” during the 1860 presidential campaign because of his presidential father’s reputation as a “rail-splitter.”)
As a railroad tycoon, Robert made enough money to leave his father’s humble beginnings behind. In 1902, he acquired a 412-acre property in Vermont, where he built a luxurious 24-room mansion. He called the estate “Hildene.” Inside the mansion was an impressive library decorated in the style of a first-class Pullman coach and an entry hall that boasted a thousand-pipe electromagnetic organ. The organ was installed in 1908 at a cost of $11,000 -about $282,000 in today’s dollars.
You may recall the cat piano and other weird musical instruments that harness the various sounds of ...various things. This is even weirder. An organ made of Furbys is what nightmares are made of. Since no one in their right mind ever had more than two Furbys, it took a lot of looking to assemble enough of them to build this thing.
The Furby Organ is like a choir of 40 Furbys, all controlled by a keyboard. It was inspired by the Furby Gurdy, although the organ uses a lot more Furbys and cost quite a bit more. Now if we can only find a way to shut them all up. -via Digg
Because Albert Einstein was so well-known and regarded for his theory of relativity, his many other accomplishments are often overlooked. Einstein was interested in everything, and he spent part of his time figuring out how to improve existing gadgets. He held quite a few patents, including one for a refrigerator that would make the appliances much safer.
In the 1920s, nascent refrigerators used highly toxic, corrosive, or flammable compounds like sulfur dioxide or methyl formate as refrigerants. When passed through tubes and chambers while being pressurized and depressurized, these chemicals could efficiently cool a target chamber. However, moving them around required motors, and thus moving parts, which were subject to breaking down or leaking. When Einstein read a news article about an entire family in Berlin who died in their sleep by breathing in leaking refrigerant fumes, he resolved to do something about it.
He and his colleague Leo Szilard thus spent the early 1930s designing a refrigerator that utilized calmer chemicals – butane, ammonia and water – as well as an ingenious electromagnetic pump. The system required no internal moving parts and was completely sealed. All it needed was an external heat source in the form of a contained natural gas flame.
The refrigerator was a great idea, and might have been a success, if freon hadn't eclipsed it before the bugs could be worked out. Eistein also held patents for a hearing aid, a camera, and even a blouse. Read about all those inventions at Real Clear Science.
Have you ever known someone who begged for your devotion, your company, and your loyalty, even though they didn't want to put the slightest bit of effort into doing anything for you? That person had unlimited love, as long as it didn't inconvenience them in any way. This comic lays that idea out in a more humorous vein, as no one cares that an entertainment corporation is breaking the guy's heart. That's the danger of a free trial -don't do the free trial if you can't pay for the continuing service and if you tend to get emotionally involved. A good relationship is worth investing your resources. This comic is from Dystopia. See the Spanish version here. You can follow Dystopia on Facebook and Instagram. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Nicholas Alkemade was a World War II gunner in the Royal Air Force. In March of 1944, his squad flew to Berlin on a raid in an Avro Lancaster II aircraft named Werewolf. Alkemade was in the rear gun turret. On the return flight, the plane was hit by machine gun and cannon fire, and burst into flames. The crew had parachutes, but the rear gunner didn't wear his due to space limitations. When Alkemade opened the turret door, he saw his parachute on fire. The flames were nearing his turret, so he slammed the door shut. He told the story of what happened then.
“I had the choice of staying with the aircraft or jumping out. If I stayed I would be burned to death – my clothes were already well alight and my face and hands burnt, though at the time I scarcely noticed the pain owing to my high state of excitement...I decided to jump and end it all as quick and clean as I could. I rotated the turret to starboard, and, not even bothering to take off my helmet and intercom, did a back flip out into the night. It was very quiet, the only sound being the drumming of aircraft engines in the distance, and no sensation of falling at all. I felt suspended in space. Regrets at not getting home were my chief thoughts, and I did think once that it didn’t seem very strange to be going to die in a few seconds – none of the parade of my past or anything else like that.”
Falling head-first, looking back towards the stars twinkling in the night sky, FS Alkemade, serenity itself, hurtled towards the ground at 120 mph. At some point in the descent, Alkemade lost consciousness, possibly his body’s reaction to the pain where the flames had licked around his skin. Above him, Werewolf exploded.
The first gold medal for the U.S. in the Pyeongchang Olympics has been won by a 17-year-old in an event you probably haven't seen before. Red Gerard came from last place to gold in his final run in the snowboard slopestyle event. He is the first American born in the 21st century to win gold at a Winter Games. Watch him soar in this crazy sport.
When Nicole Renae was 14 years old, she had to give up her beloved little black dog named Chloe. Years passed, Nicole grew up, got married, had a baby, and wanted to adopt a dog for her daughter to grow up with. So she started checking online ads. A notice of an elderly dog that needed a home caught her eye. The dog was named Chloe, and looked like her long lost dog from childhood, but this dog was gray. Nicole decided this was the dog she wanted.
Upon meeting her "new" dog, Nicole was struck with an uncanny feeling.
"She just ran up to me and started licking my face," she said. "As the day went on, all these characteristics just reminded me of my old dog."
Chloe, it seems, knew her adopter was her old friend from the start — and soon Nicole was convinced of it, too.
"She just kept hugging me. I was crying — it reminded me so much of my Chloe," Nicole said. "I never thought I’d see my dog again, but I just knew in my heart that it was her."
Although eight years had passed, Noel was able to get information from the dog's microchip to confirm that she was, in fact, the same Chloe that Nicole had as a child. Read their story and see plenty of pictures at The Dodo. -via Metafilter
Binging with Babish (previously at Neatorama) is the video series where Andrew Rea recreates the food seen in your favorites movies and TV shows. If he's going to do Breaking Bad, you'd expect him to cook up some blue crystal methamphetamine. No, he's not going to do that ...exactly. He's making some dipping breadsticks.
Do you reckon maybe that therapy isn't the best time for dad jokes? The therapist must be a dad. but the tire came in with a pun, so you can't blame the doc for taking advantage. This is the latest comic from Extra Fabulous Comics.
When Pope Benedict XVI was elevated in 2005, people the world over noticed his swanky red shoes made by Italian designer Adriano Stefanelli. Neither the preceding nor the following pope wore such expensive shoes, but Benedict was only continuing a papal tradition that goes back to the Byzantine era, when kings and emperors alike wore red shoes.
Now, historically speaking, Vatican life was pretty luxurious. Pope Martin IV spent a fortune to import his favourite delicacies of melon, and eels boiled in wine. Pope Leo X had a pet white elephant named “Hanno.” Extravagance was standard, and not even the Pope’s shoes escaped it. They became more and more ornate, and were even kissed by visitors just as one kisses the ring of the papa today…
The styles and requirements of each pope have been different, so their shoes have been different, but many stayed with the tradition of the color red, whether they were comfy slippers or dress shoes. Read about the red shoes of the pope at Messy Nessy Chic.
Most predators use stereoscopic vision for depth perception, including cats, dogs, and humans. We have two eyes facing forward, and the difference between the images that are perceived by each eye give us clues about how far away an object is. But what about predatory insects? To find out, researchers put tiny little 3D glasses on praying mantises. Really.
Birds and mammals can see in 3D using the differences between the images observed by each eye. But, the researchers at Newcastle University found, praying mantises have evolved a system that’s based on how each image changes. More importantly, as I said before, this involved attaching teeny goggles onto teeny mantis faces with beeswax.
So if you are an insect and a praying mantis is watching you, your best bet is to be very, very still. See a video of how they did this experiment at Gizmodo.
A new documentary, Three Identical Strangers, tells the tale of Robert Shafran, Eddy Galland, and David Kellman, who met each other as adults and found out they were identical triplets who had been adopted by three different families. The young men moved in together and attended the same college. The delight of their reunion masked the more sinister story of how they came to be separated in the first place.
The most significant twist was yet to come. After doing some research, the boys soon came to realize that their separation had been deliberate as a sinister social experiment by Peter Neubauer, a psychiatrist in New York. In fact Dr. Neubauer was responsible for the separation of dozens of newborn twins, scattering them among similar families to study their upbringing. The doctor used the children to explore the theory of ‘nature vs. nurture’.
Neither the doctor nor the adoption agency ever informed the adoptive family of each boy that they were separated triplets, only that their child was part of a developmental study. Dr. Neubauer had chosen the families because they each had a daughter around two years old at the time of adoption, but had varying levels of wealth.
The triplets were then monitored closely throughout their lives.
