Wat Samphran is a Buddhist temple, 260 feet tall and pink, in Amphoe Sam Phran, Thailand. The dragon sculpture that winds around the outside contains a staircase, but only portions of it are open to the public since the stairs have deteriorated. We don't know when the temple was built, although it was registered in 1985. It doesn't appear on a lot of Thai tourist guides, despite being only 40 kilometers from Bangkok. Wat Samphran's existence may have been downplayed after a scandal in 2004 in which the abbot was sentenced to 160 years for rape.

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See more pictures of Wat Samphran at Amusing Planet. -via Laughing Squid

In countries where people celebrate Christmas, the only thing their dinners have in common with each other is tradition. You could be eating fondue, flæskesteg, fried chicken, borscht, tamales, or sauerkraut soup, but you can bet that the family ate that same meal last year, and will come together to eat that same meal next year. It's one way we cement connections with not only each other, but with the past and the future. But still, it never hurts to try something new. Learn how Christmas dinner is done around the world in a list of submitted menus from readers at Buzzfeed.

(Image credit: Flickr user Joel Bez)

There comes a time, usually in your 20s, where it seems more of a hassle than it's worth to deal with the entire family for the holidays. That's okay, you should spend some years doing something completely different for Christmas. Then later on, you'll appreciate the old traditions more, even the not-so-fun parts of them. Another benefit of breaking tradition is the stories you'll be able to tell years later, like "I spent 20 years working on Christmas Day; you kids don't know how good you have it," or "Remember that year we ate chicken noodle soup for Christmas dinner because that's all we had?" This is the latest from Megacynics.

We have four Jurassic Park movies now, and another on the way in 2018. It won't be the last one. That's a testament to the huge popularity of the first film back in 1993. Anyone could have predicted it -bringing dinosaurs into the modern age with state-of-the-art graphics was a win-win formula. Let's take a look back at what went into the original Jurassic Park.

6. Harrison Ford turned down the role of Alan Grant.

He didn’t feel like it was the right movie for him, and once he saw it he felt validated that he’d turned it down.

5. In the movie the reason for the triceratops being sick was never given.

In the book the full explanation was given, it was because the animal swallowed the poisonous berries along with a mouthful of stones and then regurgitated them.

Read more things you didn't know about Jurassic Park at TVOM.

Meteorologist Keith Carson addresses the people who believe that the earth is flat (called flat earthers) by presenting solid evidence for the contrary. He can't help but be a little snarky about it.

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Along the way, we find out how flat earthers explain all the things that tell us that the earth is round: day and night, the changing of the seasons, and NASA. Those wacky explanations are painfully and unnecessarily convoluted. That's what happens when belief shapes evidence instead of the other way around. Occam's razor, y'all. -via Digg    

What could be more fun than watching the destruction of a wrecking ball used on a bunch of cars? Watching it all in slow-motion with the Slow Mo Guys! Gav and Dan start out small, smashing a brick wall, but quickly move on to vehicles. There are many ways to smash a car with a wrecking ball, and they have to try them all out.

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How did they come up with so many vehicles to smash? The video is sponsored by Amazon to promote their TV series The Grand Tour, starring the guys who used to be on Top Gear. -via Tastefully Offensive

Every year, you need a new calendar, so you may as well get one that appeals to your interests and desires. Here are some of the more unusual, attractive, and unbelievable calendars available for 2018. Be warned that some of the calendars listed toward the end of this list are rude, crude, and socially unacceptable, but they are all in good fun and technically safe for work.

1. Flee America Calendar

Alternate Histories presents the 2018 Flee America calendar. The cover has a warning from the Department of Terror: Zombies are Everywhere. It doesn't specify where one should flee to, since they are everywhere. This calendar features art based on the style of propaganda posters from the Great Depression and World War II, but populated with monsters, robots, and zombies.

2. The UK’s Hottest Wheelie Bins

In Britain, they are called wheelie bins. In the US, they are called garbage cans. For some reason, a wheelie bin company in the UK has made a calendar that features the UK’s Hottest Wheelie Bins. The premise is that these bins are super sexy -or something. Each bin is identified with its name, age, and location. The naughty bits are either pixelated or covered with black bars.

3. Social Justice Kittens

We know by now that 2017 was an exceptional year. As we begin to see retrospectives, it's astonishing how many widely disparate things that happened that surprised us, but then were quickly forgotten because there were more surprises the next day. Cracked's latest image macro competition (they call it Photoplasty) reminds us of some of the lessons we should take with us from the year 2017.

But then again, many of these lessons will be gone from our minds again ...as soon as something else surprises and distracts us. There are 21 of these images ranked in a list at Cracked.

Ayrton Little is only 16 years old, yet he's a senior at TM Landry College Preparatory in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. He'll be 17 in February. But students must apply early to get into competitive colleges, and Ayrton's first choice was Harvard University. In this video from earlier this week, he's wearing his Harvard hoodie, surrounded by classmates, as he checks the early acceptance notifications.

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The students are yelling "three-pete" because this is the third year in a row that a student from the school has been accepted to Harvard. There are only 16 students in the Landry graduating class this year, and one of them is Ayrton's brother Alex. He was the first student from the school ever accepted into Stanford University, which was recorded last week.

I can’t believe I got in #Stanford2022 pic.twitter.com/pYF7a6PTWY

— Alex Tha Great (@thealexlittle_) December 9, 2017

WBUR talked to the family about the double accomplishments. 

"Is this really happening?" The boys' mother, Maureen Little, kept repeating the question, delighted that both her sons were invited to the prestigious schools.

She said there were difficult times raising her sons as a single mom, but she felt lucky that she never had to worry about their performances in school.

“They brought home good grades,” she said.

I bet they did. -via reddit

Women know that sexual harassment is nothing new. When women began to travel outside their homes unescorted, especially on public transportation, harassment came with the territory. In the 19th century, the men who accosted women in public were called "mashers," and just like today, their harassment could escalate into sexual assault. Also like today, a woman's wish to be left alone sparked derision.

By the 1890s, women were so fed up with sexual harassment, they refused to grin and bear it anymore. They began to lash out at mashers in earnest—without the assistance of men. Sometimes a woman gave into to indelicate impulses and slapped or punched a masher with her own hands. Mashers were shoved, tossed, or kicked by women, episodes that were comically illustrated in newspapers.

“There were all sorts of cartoons poking fun at women trying out these self-defense tactics, and of course, tying them to the meme of the Angry Suffragist,” historian Karen Abbott tells me. “Men portrayed women’s desire to have the right to vote and to venture into public safely as inherently unladylike.”

In December 1898, Mrs. Charles C. Lane—also known as strongwoman Mademoiselle Suzinetta, a sideshow entertainer who juggled cannon balls and broke iron chains with her hands—punched a stalker so hard he hit the ground. He charged her with assault, and when she testified at the Yorkville Police Court, she said he’d been annoying her for two days so she hit him. The magistrate told her, “You are the woman this town has been looking for for a long time.” He dismissed the charges against her.

Read more about mashers and how women of the time fought back against them at Collectors Weekly.

What we know as Star Wars went through a lot of changes on the way to the silver screen. We know that the film was completely re-edited after shooting. The story went through even more changes between George Lucas' original concept and the final screenplay. To see what his initial ideas might look like in a movie, students from the DAVE School took Ralph McQuarrie's concept art for The Star Wars along with some early script drafts and make an animated trailer-length version.  

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It's pretty cool to see Luke Skywalker as a girl, but hey, we finally got that in the new trilogy. I'm glad they changed Chewbacca from a scary monster into a hairy hero. -via Geeks Are Sexy

In a discussion following an article about Cold War fallout shelter crackers, the subject of blood type tattoos came up. This was a real thing in the early 1950s, that people, including children, would get their blood types tattooed on their torsos to streamline medical procedures during nuclear war. It was less for identifying the blood type of patients than for potential donors, but the area under the left arm was used because that would still be there if one's arms were blown away. We have literature about the tattoo programs in Indiana and Utah, although there were others. The Mormon Church even gave a dispensation on their rule against tattooing, calling it a "permanent imprint" instead of a tattoo. One woman shared her memories of getting a tattoo in Indiana when she was in first grade.  

"The kid closest to the curtain was told to go inside the curtained area, and the rest of us moved up one chair closer. We then heard a buzzing sound similar to a dentist's drill, and a lot of screaming and, a few minutes later, the kid emerged from behind the curtain, crying, and then next kid took his place. The wait probably took about an hour, and during that time, as we inched closer and closer to the curtain, we had to witness each of our classmate's enter the curtained area and come out crying, so you can imagine how frightening it was."

"Once behind the curtain I had to take off my clothes above the waist and show my card and dog tag to the two people in there. Once held me still and the other stuck what looked like a power drill into my left side, turned it on and held it there for a minute or two. Naturally I was screaming and struggling just like the other kids before me."

"I still have my atomic tattoo (O-), but, as I grew it got distorted, so it's pretty illegible today. The tattoo caused a lot of comments during bikini season after I went to college and later moved to Ohio, where no one had seen anything like it. After I moved back to northwest Indiana I tried to search some public records but was never able to find any evidence of the program."

You'll find more recollections here. The tattoo program didn't last very long. One reason was because doctors wouldn't trust the tattoos to be accurate. -via Metafilter

John McPhee was newspaper editor in Mesa, Arizona, in 1932. That year's Christmas parade was important for the small town's businesses as a way to draw in both residents and out-of-towners for Christmas shopping. But the populace didn't seem to be all that excited about Christmas shopping or the parade, either, since the Great Depression was affecting everyone's ability to celebrate as usual. But McPhee had an idea: a spectacular entrance for Santa Claus that would grab everyone's interest. Santa Claus would arrive in an airplane, an unusual site in 1932, and join the parade by parachute! What could possibly go wrong? Um, the stunt man playing Santa could get killed. But that didn't happen. The real story was a comedy of errors that's quite funny if you weren't a young child in Arizona waiting for the arrival of Santa.    

The day of the scheduled take-off, McPhee found the performer at a bar, too inebriated to participate. Faced with the possibility of storekeepers and children being crushed with disappointment, McPhee immediately set another plan into motion. He convinced a clothing store to let him borrow a mannequin, which he dressed in the Santa suit. He then instructed the pilot to make his scheduled run. At the climax, a pilot would push the Santa-dressed dummy out of the plane and into the field. From a distance, the townspeople would be unable to discern the plastic body from a real one—they’d simply see a red-and-white payload drift gently to the ground below. McPhee would be posted to meet the dummy, disrobe it, don the beard, and drive into town as Santa.

A large crowd had gathered to watch Santa arrive. But as you might guess, the scheme cobbled together at the last minute didn't quite go as McPhee had envisioned it. Let's just say that children were traumatized for life. You can read an account of the Christmas parade debacle at Mental Floss. 

Here's a cute Christmas wreath that features Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer. But look closely -Rudolph's face is a bedpan! And that wreath? It's made of urinals. Yes, it was made by a nurse, and was most likely hung in a medical setting where co-workers would appreciate the humor. It's from a list that includes a wreath made of pill bottles, a tree made of rubber gloves, and a Christmas stocking made from scrubs. See more nurse-themed Christmas decorations and the list from last year at Nurse Buff. -via Buzzfeed

The 1995 movie Hackers follows a group of teenage computer whizzes who go from digital pranks to defending themselves against global terrorists. The portrayal of technology in the movie was not all that authentic at the time, and is totally obsolete 22 years later. But who knew that in 1995? Hackers introduced the possibilities of computer technology, if not the realities. We now have a generation of brilliant tech geeks who were inspired, for good or bad, by watching Hackers when they were kids. The movie was also Angelina Jolie's first leading role in a feature film, which didn't hurt at all. If you recall Hackers fondly, you'll want to know something about the production.       

10. Angelina Jolie and Johnny Lee Miller were married after this film.

They split after about four years, and then she went on to marry Billy Bob Thornton.

9. The game being played in the arcade is an early prototype of a Playstation game.

Wipeout was still in the developmental stage when this film was being made but would lose a few features by the time it was released.

Learn more trivia about Hackers at TVOM.