Nathan Marshall banned bottle-flipping in his 6th grade class, because after all, that kind of thing is distracting. But what his students didn't know was that Marshall was determined to master the sport. At the end of the school year, he showed this video to his students.
He certainly got the bottle-tossing skills down! However, his Photoshop skills could use some work. As an aside to the students -Marshall did all this in his spare time, not during class. -via reddit
Architectural critic and curator John Margolies (1940-2016) traveled the United States and took pictures of roadside amenities, attractions, and architecture from 1969 to 2008, compiling a unique archive of 20th-century Americana. These include buildings made in the shapes of the things they sold, strange tourist attractions, themed restaurants and hotels, and other oddities offered to travelers. The National Archives has made this collection available to the public for the first time.
Vernacular roadside and commercial structures spread with the boom of suburbanization and the expansion of paved roads across the United States in the prosperous decades after World War II. Yet, in many instances, the only remaining record of these buildings is on Margolies’ film, as tourist architecture was endangered by the expansion of the interstate system and changing travel desires. Small town main streets were bypassed for the speedier travel of the freeway.
For Margolies, the shift to freeway travel took the joy out of the road trip and the architecture it dreamt up. Rather than stopping to enjoy sights passed along the drive, the point became to travel as far and as fast as possible. Yet even he came to recognize the amusement of architecture associated with chain and franchise businesses when designs evolved and iconic examples began to fade away.
The collection has been digitized from 11,710 of Margolies' color slides. Read about Margolies' work and browse through the images here. -via Metafilter
The 7th Regiment small brass ensemble played at the Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Connecticut on Wednesday. They performed "Shut Up and Dance" for a curious and seemingly appreciative beluga whale.
Watch the sequence from a different angle at Facebook, where you can see the beluga posing for a picture with the ensemble. Another song can be found here. -via Tastefully Offensive
The 1815 Tambora eruption led to the worldwide "Year without a Summer" in 1816. We have plenty of evidence of the cause and effect for that one. But there are records of a similar event, with even larger consequences, from the year 1465. October 10, 1465, to be exact, when a sudden darkness in the sky was recorded during the wedding of King Alfonso II of Naples.
This was just the beginning. In the months that followed, European weather went haywire. In Germany, it rained so heavily that corpses surfaced in cemeteries. In the town of Thorn, Poland, the inhabitants took to travelling the streets by boat. In the unrelenting rain, the castle cellars of Teutonic knights were flooded and whole villages were swept away.
Four years later, Europe was hit by a mini ice age. Fish froze in their ponds. Trees failed to blossom and grass didn’t grow. In Bologna, Italy, heavy snow forced locals to travel with their horses and carriages along the frozen waterways.
From all the evidence, these things were caused by a volcanic eruption. But so far, scientists have been unable to pinpoint where it was! Oh, there are clues, many clues, in fact, that lead to conflicting locations, years, and events so that there is still no consensus of what happened. Read more about that research at BBC Future. -via Digg
(Image credit: Kevin.Sebold)
Dr. Shannon Moore of Hocking Hills Animal Clinic in Logan, Ohio, tells how she ran into a former patient while hiking in the woods. Since she's a veterinarian, there wasn't much conversation, but she did stop to examine how her work was holding up, and take a couple pictures.
Several years ago, a client brought me a box turtle that had been hit by a car. I used fiberglass to repair his broken shell and then released him in my woods. Recently, while walking on my hillside, I spotted an odd pattern in the leaves. To my amazement, there was my old patient with the fiberglass still on... years later! Sometimes, being a vet is the best thing there is.
I can imagine that the turtle has spent his time explaining to his buddies that mesh-and-Bondo is a turtle's best friend. And the vet, too, of course. -via Boing Boing
(Image credit: Hocking Hills Animal Clinic)
In this dog show, in which the winner is decided by audience applause, you'll see talented dogs doing amazing things, like singing, playing piano, lifting weights, and even (I am not making this up) creating sculptures with dog poo. But one audience member is waiting for Choupette ("Sweetheart"), knowing that he is the most amazing dog of all.
This stop-motion animation is the work of French animator Chloé Alliez of the Atelier de production de la Cambre (Cambre Production Workshop) of Brussels. -via Laughing Squid
It's rare that a real-life trial draws the interest of strangers (cough*OJ*cough), because a court of law is about the law and legal procedure and proper decorum. That's not exciting enough for the movies, so what we get are scenes that would not be tolerated in real life. Judges will bring the hammer down for shenanigans, as we see in a list at TVOM that contrasts movie court scenes with the way the scene would play out in real life. I am pleased that there is no criticism at all here for the implausibility of my favorite courtroom drama, Miracle on 34th Street.
When we first saw the video of a bus in China that would actually drive over top of other traffic over a year ago, we all thought, "What a terrible idea!" But since what we saw of the Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) was a miniature concept illustration, we just assumed it would never actually go into service. Strangely, a bus was built and tested, but was abandoned on its tracks in the city of Qinhuangdao. It sat there for months, snarling traffic around it. Now it turns out that the whole thing appears to be a scheme to fleece money from investors.
On Sunday, Beijing's Dongcheng district police bureau announced on Weibo that it had started an investigation into the company behind the TEB project—Huaying Kailai, an online investing platform not unlike Crowdcube. The police say they are holding more than 30 people, including Bai Zhiming who runs both Huaying Kailai and the TEB project.
The women -and they are almost always women- who clean hotel rooms before and after you stay there have a hard job. They clean up after guests no matter what kind of mess they leave behind, they are allowed little time do it, and they don't make much money. And if they don't have to use their real names, they will tell you some things you might not know about their jobs.
8. THEY SUGGEST YOU DON’T USE THE CUPS.
Although you’ve probably heard warnings about the bacteria teeming on your hotel room’s remote control, hotel maids reveal that there’s another item in your room that's rarely cleaned as well as it should be. “Not using the cups is my number one rule that I tell everyone,” Booboo_the_bear says. “I’ve definitely seen [other maids] polishing glasses with the same cloth they just used to dust the room. I’ve never seen the toilet brush used but knowing some of the people I work with, it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.”
Author and hotel worker Jacob Tomsky adds that the minibar glasses need to be spotless, but maids don’t have dish soap in their housekeeping carts. “So some housekeepers will wash the glasses in the sink with hot water and shampoo. But many of them use furniture polish because it leaves the glasses spot-free,” he tells USA Today.
That's just one of 12 secrets hotel maids share with us at Mental Floss.
Over 65,000 people attended a Green Day concert in London (there were several other bands, too) on July first. There didn't have to be a band on stage for the crowd to have fun. Between sets, recorded music got the crowd singing along.
Enjoy thousands of people singing "Bohemian Rhapsody." Is there any other song that could get this many people singing together? Marvel at the sound design of the stadium, allowing that many people to hear the same thing at the same time. Don't miss the synchronous headbanging at 4:03. -via Digg
The skyscraper was in decline. Then Fazlur Khan had an idea that would turn architecture on its head.
(Image credit: Antoine Taveneaux)
In December 1965, the psychic Jeane Dixon made a prediction: Chicago’s John Hancock Center would come tumbling down. The astrologer and syndicated columnist had risen to fame after predicting the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and now she foresaw the demise of the Windy City’s newest, and soon-to-be tallest, skyscraper—before construction had even begun.
When Dixon spoke out, crews had just broken ground on a plot of land north of Chicago’s main business district. Those involved may not have admitted it, but the prediction likely made them nervous—and not just because of Dixon’s track record. The 100-story building was to become the second-tallest structure in the world, and its radical design was unprecedented.
Structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan, the man behind that design, was only 35 years old when he submitted his plans. He had worked at the Chicago architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) for just a decade. For the architecture world, he was remarkably young. But if he was wet behind the ears, he didn’t show it.
Khan’s easygoing nature was legendary among his colleagues. And he had his own read on the future. At upper-crust Chicago parties, he’d entertain high-society women by reading palms and telling fortunes, a trick he’d learned as a boy growing up in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Khan was unmoved by Dixon’s prediction. A tumbling John Hancock Center would end his career, but he had worked hard to prove the integrity of his design, and no newspaper astrologer could convince him otherwise.
Then, one day in March 1966, he received a phone call: His skyscraper was sinking.
(Image credit: Flickr user United Nations Photo)
Protecting one book is easy. Saving 377,000 fragile historic documents from gun-toting vandals hell-bent on erasing centuries of knowledge? That takes a different type of hero.
On Friday morning, January 25, 2013, 15 jihadis entered the restoration and conservation rooms on the ground floor of the Ahmed Baba Institute in Sankoré, a government library in Mali. The men swept 4,202 manuscripts off lab tables and shelves and carried them into the tiled courtyard. They doused the manuscripts—including 14th- and 15th-century works of physics, chemistry, and mathematics, their fragile pages covered with algebraic formulas, charts of the heavens, and molecular diagrams—in gasoline. Then they tossed in a lit match. The brittle pages and their dry leather covers ignited in a flash.
In minutes, the work of Timbuktu’s greatest savants and scientists, preserved for centuries, hidden from the 19th-century jihadis and French conquerors, survivors of floods, bacteria, water, and insects, were consumed by the inferno.
In the capital city of Bamako 800 miles away, the founder of Timbuktu’s Mamma Haidara Library, a scholar and community leader named Abdel Kader Haidara, saw the burning of the manuscripts as a tragedy—and a vindication of a remarkable plan he’d undertaken. Starting with no money besides the meager sum in his savings account, the librarian had recruited a loyal circle of volunteers, badgered and shamed the international community into funding the scheme, raised $1 million, and hired hundreds of amateur smugglers in Timbuktu and beyond. Their goal? Save books.
Simon Tofield has entertained us by illustrating the antics of his cats for years. In this video, he shows us what we already know -cats are a lot alike. YouTube is full of real cats getting into funny situations just like Simon's Cat.
Yeah,we already knew that, but isn't it nice to see funny cat videos and Simon's Cat animations at the same time?
Artist James Curran brought us charming animated gifs from his visits to New York City and Los Angeles. Since then, he's spent a month in Tokyo and rendered his daily adventures in 30 new gifs!
His series of Tokyo Gifs can also be found individually at Curran's website and Instagram. -via Laughing Squid
Until the advent of synthetic fabrics, we spent a lot of time trying to keep moths out of our woolen clothing. Textile artist Max Alexander has turned the tables and creates knitted sculptures of moths out of wool! After a friend suggested she knit moths, Alexander started studying the different species of the insects and became fascinated with the diversity of their colors and markings. Three years later, she has knitted 35 different species and has more in progress.
Paying careful attention to detail, Alexander strives to make her knitted moths readily identifiable. "Once I choose a moth, I study as many different pictures and or specimens as I can find. Then I sketch out a pattern for the wings on graph paper and start knitting. I often have to adjust it as I go to keep the shapes as accurate as possible," she explains. Once a sculpture is finished, Alexander mounts and frames the work just like a scientific specimen. "I like to think they'd look at home in a natural history museum," she adds.
See more of Alexander's work at her website and Instagram. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Max Alexandar)
