Barnaby Dixon, who's made some awesome puppet designs before, is back with an impressive finger puppet of a glow-in-the-dark insect!
On the one hand, it's cute and the fluorescent effects are neat. But the real magic here is Dixon's skills as a puppeteer and the way he makes the bug move so naturally with just his fingers. -via Boing Boing
In bygone days when news traveled slowly and records were kept poorly, you have to wonder how many serial killers got away with their crimes completely just by traveling from town to town. But occasionally someone connected the dots, as in the case that became known as "the French Ripper." The 1897 murder of 13-year-old shepherd Pierre Laurent piqued the interest of French detective Émile Fourquet (pictured).
Fourquet was an investigating magistrate, working in the market town of Belley, near Aix-les-Bains in the foothills of the Alps. When he read about the murder of the shepherd boy in the local press, it reminded him of the similar killing of Victor Portalier, aged 16, two years earlier in Bénonces, some 30 km away – the case had been closed unsolved. Fourquet immediately sent for the file and soon discovered some striking similarities: both shepherd boys had been stalked by their assailant, who might have been a vagabond. They were both killed by a deep cut to the throat and their bodies were defiled after death. He also found a letter from another magistrate suggesting a connection between the Portalier case and that of the murder of 17-year-old woodcutter’s daughter Augustine Mortureux, also in 1895. Despite the similarities, it was not thought that all these crimes could have been committed by a single hand. However, in Fourquet’s mind a pattern began to form. After receiving the details of seven cases, he began his meticulous research that would prove the links. The newspapers started referring to the potential murderer as the ‘new’ Jack the Ripper.
After sending his research to all 250 French magistrates, the entire nation was on the lookout for the killer. Read the story of who the French Ripper was and how he was captured at Victorian Supersleuth. -via Strange Company
The many wrought iron and cast iron balconies, fences, and decorative architecture of New Orleans hide fascinating details in plain sight. It's one thing to admire them, and another to learn the history behind them. The ironworks were created by slaves who learned the art from French, Spanish, and West African blacksmiths. Many feature Adinkra symbols that convey West African values and proverbs. Some contain pictures with different meanings. And some have a great story, like the balconies of the Pontalba Buildings, built by Spanish heiress Micaela Almonester y Rojas.
Within the whorls of the balcony’s pattern are the initials “AP,” or “Almonester” and “Pontalba,” the two families that were joined together by the marriage that nearly cost Micaela’s life. In 1811, she was married off to her milquetoast cousin, Joseph-Xavier Célestin Delfau de Pontalba, and dragged from New Orleans to his family’s estate in France. Her father-in-law, the Baron de Pontalba, was desperate to get his hands on her inheritance, which he could legally claim if she left her husband. For years he tried to make her marriage miserable, but his attempts to chase her off were unsuccessful. Unstable and enraged, he shot her four times at point-blank range. When his murder attempt failed, he retired to his study and turned the pistol on himself.
The baroness returned to New Orleans and had several buildings erected which survive to this day. Read more about the ironworks of New Orleans at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Jan Kronsell)
Tattoo artist Richard Batey of Immortal Art Studio in Carlisle, Cumbria, UK, inked a custom optical illusion tattoo on this truck driver. He's driving all the time now! -via Boing Boing
(Image credit: Richard Batey)
We used to call giant pandas "panda bears," but then got corrected by so many people saying they aren't actually bears. But they are bears. Just not scary bears. Strangely, giant pandas are not related to red pandas. Giant pandas are the only bears on this chart that you shouldn't fear, but you still don't want to make one of them mad. Koalas are not bears. Also, you don't want to approach a koala, because they look like drop bears. You don't want to mess with a drop bear. This is the latest comic by Sam Pratt at Rustled Jimmies. -via reddit
British inventor and madman Colin Furze knows the power of explosions in making a viral video. He customized a bicycle and loaded it with 1,000 rockets.
Then he took a little spin as those rockets went off. All for your entertainment. Do not try this at home. As if you could.
...but its ok i have some foam strapped to my back and my safety tie on.
Actually, this stunt is to celebrate Furze achieving five million YouTube subscribers. Congratulations, Colin! May you survive to ten million. -via Laughing Squid
See more inventive projects and dangerous stunts from Colin Furze.
A producer from Carolco Pictures called James Cameron and told him they'd bought the rights to The Terminator and wanted a sequel made -and they wanted it ready in just over a year. Cameron hadn't considered a sequel. After all, The Terminator was released in 1984 when sequels were not expected, and he'd killed off almost all the characters. Still, he and co-writer William Wisher came up with a script for Terminator 2 in six and a half weeks. Although the idea of spoilers was not as pervasive in the days before widespread internet use, that script was well-guarded because the element of surprise would be important to the story. Co-producer Stephanie Austin talks about the secrecy.
“We were all onboard because it was unusual,” she said. “And until the trailer came out, nobody really understood how you could make a sequel to The Terminator because of the way the first one ended. So there was a lot of secrecy, a lot of confidentiality, and a real need to keep that under wraps until we could make the big reveal.”
That big reveal didn’t happen in the media either. Austin explains it wasn’t until audiences first got a glimpse at the teaser trailer that the ideas behind the movie were revealed—specifically that Terminators could be mass produced.
And we still didn't know that Arnold Schwarzenegger would be the good guy this time. That surprise only added to the movie's popularity, which is hard to imagine when you watch it today. It was a $100 million-gamble that paid off. Read more about the making of Terminator 2: Judgment Day at io9.
Texas is bracing for the largest hurricane to strike the U.S. in more than ten years. Residents along the Texas coast are stocking up on supplies or else heading inland before hurricane Harvey hits. The hurricane is expected to make landfall Friday night or early Saturday. Some areas of the state could get as much as 35 inches of rain.
Harvey is rapidly becoming more powerful and is forecast to become a Category 3 hurricane with winds of at least 111 mph by the time it hits the middle Texas coast late Friday or early Saturday, the hurricane center said Thursday. After hitting Corpus Christi, the storm is expected to stall over the state, forecasters say.
In Corpus Christi, where Harvey could make landfall and Mayor Joe McComb has issued a voluntary evacuation order, Walmart shelves were clearing quickly, as the city canceled Friday's dockets in city court and provided self-serve sandbags to residents.
Read more at CNN. You can get updates on the storm here.
(Image credit: NOAA)
The following article is from the book Uncle John's True Crime: A Classic Collection of Crooks, Cops, and Capers.
Here's proof that stupidity is timeless (and sometimes deadly).
THE DALTON BROTHERS
In the little town of Coffeyville, Kansas, in 1890, Bob, Emmett, and Gratton Dalton, along with two other men, formed a gang of outlaws. Inspired by the exploits of their cousins the Younger Brothers -who 15 years earlier had stolen nearly a half million dollars from trains and banks with the James Gang- the Daltons pulled a few small-time robberies. But they wanted a big payoff and the fame that goes with it -and that could only come from a legendary bank heist. So they planned it all out …all wrong.
Most of the time when we post singing birds here, it's because we find it cute and remarkable that they know an entire song that's familiar to us. This time, it's because this bird and pianist make beautiful music together.
An adorable and talented white-faced cockatiel named Poko songs the theme to My Neighbor Totoro while his human accompanies him on piano. -via Laughing Squid
Neatorama is proud to bring you a guest post from history buff and Neatoramanaut WTM, who wishes to remain otherwise anonymous.
When the Lewis and Clark Expedition made its way through the Pacific Northwest circa 1805, the expedition’s team saw an alien landscape the likes of which no one had ever seen before. Vast stretches of land that had no topsoil whatsoever. A dry waterfall that was miles across. Enormous holes carved out of hard volcanic basalt bedrock. Huge boulders in the middle of an otherwise desolate flat prairie. Gravel bars that resembled those seen elsewhere in small creeks, but that were miles long and hundreds of feet high. These and other similar anomalies presented one of the world’s premier geologic mysteries, a mystery that would confound geologists and other scientists for more than a hundred years.
The Dry Falls, 3.5 miles wide. Photograph courtesy of Tom Foster at hugefloods.com
Today we know the cause of these geological enigmas –megafloods- the like of which the earth had not known since its creation. The flow of a megaflood was more than ten times the combined flow of all the rivers on earth, and these megafloods occurred perhaps as many as a hundred times before ceasing due to climate change.
All evidence indicates that these megafloods, known today as the Lake Missoula Floods, occurred between 11,000 and 19,000 years ago. The largest such flood, identified by the depth of its sediments, is estimated to have occurred about 15,000 years ago, tearing across far western Montana, far northern Idaho, eastern Washington, and northern Oregon en route to the Pacific Ocean.
You might be surprised to learn that Benjamin Franklin even had a wife. Deborah Read and Ben weren't legally married because she couldn't prove her long-gone first husband was dead, but they entered into a common-law marriage and Deborah took in Ben's illegitimate infant to raise as her own. The couple had two more children, but eventually Ben's career took him on many trips outside Philadelphia, often to England, and Deborah waited for him to come home. When she died in 1774, she hadn't seen Ben in years.
We tend to idealize our founding fathers. So what should we make of Benjamin Franklin? One popular image is that he was a free and easy libertine—our founding playboy. But he was married for 44 years. Biographers and historians tend to shy away from his married life, perhaps because it defies idealization. John and Abigail Adams had a storybook union that spanned half a century. Benjamin and Deborah Franklin spent all but two of their final 17 years apart. Why?
The conventional wisdom is that their marriage was doomed from the beginning, by differences in intellect and ambition, and by its emphasis on practicality over love; Franklin was a genius and needed freedom from conventional constraints; Deborah’s fear of ocean travel kept her from joining her husband in England and made it inevitable that they would drift apart. Those things are true—up to a point. But staying away for a decade, dissembling year after year about his return, and then refusing to come home even when he knew his wife was declining and might soon die, suggests something beyond bored indifference.
One possibility is that Ben and Deborah parted ways because of the specific circumstances surrounding the death from smallpox of their four-year-old son Francis. Read that story and and more about Ben Franklin's marriage at Smithsonian.
Black holes are more powerful than we ever imagined. Kurzgesagt drives that point home with frightening words in a calm voice. Then they go on to explain the information paradox.
As explained here, the paradox seems simple. It's the difference between "without form, and void" and the universe as we know it. But it will blow your mind when you think about the size of the universe and the information involved. That said, the art in this video is beautiful. -via reddit
St. Guinefort does not appear in the official canon of the Catholic Church. Or at least, not the Guinefort we're talking about here (St. Cucuphas is sometimes referred to as Guinefort). That's because Guinefort was a 13th-century dog, thought to be a greyhound. According to tradition, he belonged to St. Roch, but after his master's death went to live with a noble family near Neuville, France. And that's where he earned his sainthood.
While both the parents and the nurse were absent, a large serpent entered the house and approached the cradle. Guinefort, however, remained on guard. When Guinefort saw the serpent he attacked it and upset the cradle. The dog and serpent exchanged many bites but in the end Guinefort prevailed and tore the serpent to pieces leaving behind considerable blood and gore. Although injured, the dog remained on guard duty until the family returned.
The family panicked when they saw the gory scene. First the nurse came in and began screaming that the dog had devoured the child. The mother then ran in also thinking Guinefort had killed her child. The child’s father now quickly took action. He drew his sword and killed the dog. Only then did the family see the infant sleeping peacefully off to the side.
Having realized they unjustly had accused and killed Guinefort, the lord took the dog’s body and placed it in a well which he covered with stones. He also planted trees beside it to memorialize the dog’s deeds.
That's a good dog. Villagers started bringing their children to the shrine to pray to Guinefort for their protection, and the dog became locally known as a saint. The Catholic Church was not happy about that. There was even talk that such veneration was a downright pagan activity. The story of Guinefort may remind you of similar tales from all over, which are parables cautioning one against being too quick to judge others. Read the story of Guinefort and why he was made into a saint at the Ultimate History Project. -via Metafilter
There's a long list of prohibited objects and actions at Walt Disney World. Some of them seem so strange that you know there's a precedent behind each restriction, a story of someone ruining the fun for everyone. Before you go, you might want to check out some of the "no-nos" at Disney parks. Like running.
This is prohibited to avoid any lawsuits from bumps, bruises, sprains, broken bones, etc. The park doesn’t want to be liable for any injuries that occur on its grounds and thus if you are caught running from place to place then you might be warned or asked to leave. Granted, there’s a lot to see. But plan ahead of time and make sure you have enough days to see what you want. Or prioritize.
See what else you can't bring or do at Disney World at TVOM.
