This week we made the announcement that Neatorama is on Google+! We launched the page by giving away t-shirts from the NeatoShop. The first ones went so fast that we started up another giveaway immediately. Congratulations to winners Derrick Rossignol and Jeff Smith! There will be more giveaways at Google+ as well as links and extra stuff beyond the blog. See you there! Plus, you'll want to catch up on the features you may not have had time to read during the week:

Eddie Deezen told us A Few Facts You May Not Know About Some Like It Hot.

Jill Harness got us in the mood for the holidays with 14 Great Examples of Thanksgiving Food Art.

Uncle John's Bathroom Reader gave us Doolittle's Raid, the story of America's first response to Pearl Harbor.

A Penny’s Not Going to Kill You. But how many pennies will? Find out in the article from the Annals of Improbable Research.

From mental_floss magazine, we learned out 10 Massive Screw-Ups in Paleontology.

NeatoBambino took a geeky turn this week, with baby and child stuff mixed with Star Wars, Dr. Who, and Batman. And you have to see the video of the new book Goodnight, iPad!

In the What Is It? game this week, the pictured object is a real stumper. Rob at the What Is It? blog admitted that he doesn't know what this tool is for. It's an enduring mystery. Since we don't know who is right (if any one is), we selected TWO winners with the funniest answers! Galen said this was a specialized whisk for making wavy gravy. That’s funny! And Augie explained:

After a horrible zipper accident Stan “Soprano Singer” Stevens spent 20 years and his family fortune designing and developing this tool to remove stray body parts from pant zippers.

Stevens patented the device, but allowed other companies to freely manufacture, distribute and sell them for the common good (i.e. pro boner).

Both will get t-shirts from the NeatoShop!

The posts that got the most comments this week (besides the contest) were about the Duggers expecting their 20th child, and the pros and cons of an "opt-out" system for organ donation. We welcome your opinions!

Want more? Be sure to check our Facebook page every day for extra content, contests, discussions, videos, and links you won't find here. Also, our Twitter feed will keep you updated on what's going around the web in real time. And now, Google+, too!

Laci Davis, an 8-year-old in Cincinnati, Ohio, accidentally ingested her necklace and heart-shaped locket, which lodged in her throat.

The third-grader was in excruciating pain.

"It felt like something was stabbing me right in the middle of my chest," she said.

Doctors at St. Elizabeth sent her to Cincinnati Children's Hospital. It was the car ride that changed everything.

"We hit a pot hole and she looked at me and said, 'oh mom, I feel better.' I said what do you mean you feel better and she said 'I don't feel it anymore,'" Amanda Cullum, Laci's mother, said.

The pothole dislodged the locket, which then dropped down into Laci's stomach. The pain was gone, and Laci could breathe normally.

"It was my hero and I when I got home I was like thank you bump," she said.

Doctors told Laci the locket will come back out "the old-fashioned way." Laci says she'll get a new locket instead retrieving this one. http://www.kptv.com/story/16018828/pot-hole-saves-girls-life -via Fark

(Image source: WCPO/CNN)

This shopping center in Reading, Pennsylvania has a crosswalk that leads to nowhere. Codes required a certain number of pedestrian crosswalks, despite the fact that there are no sidewalks. This is the required accessible crosswalk with curb ramps. But it isn't going to get you anywhere, whether you are in a wheelchair or walking. Get an explanation of how this kind of thing happens at Greater Greater Washington. Link -via Metafilter

Scheveningen prison near the Hague in the Netherlands holds prisoners for the the UN International Criminal Court. Some of those inmates think that Dutch food served in the prison is a form of torture.

“My rights are not being violated, but the food is an abomination,” declared former Liberian president Charles Taylor when he was brought to trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in Scheveningen in 2006.

Taylor, who was accused of crimes against humanity and orchestrating war crimes carried out by militias, was used to his own personal cook who made spicy African meals.

Unable to adjust to Dutch culinary blandness, he set up a cookery club using the facilities at the Scheveningen remand centre.

Yes, inmates are allowed to cook for themselves, but they have to buy their own ingredients from the prison shop.

Extreme Serbian nationalist and former paramilitary leader Vojislav Seselj is another notorious prisoner who slams the Dutch diet. Seselj, who was charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) with crimes against humanity, arrived in Scheveningen in 2003.

During one of the hearings in his trial, he publicly castigated the remand centre’s menu. The food was “a daily torture. Even pigs wouldn’t go near it.”

Prison officials defend their menu as "healthy and balanced." Just one more reason you shouldn't commit crimes against humanity. Link -Thanks, Ed!

Mental_floss is marking 11/11/11 by posting lists of 11 things all day long! It's also Veterans Day, so what better time to learn about some heroes that you might not otherwise know, like eleven women of various nations who served in World War II. One was Nancy Wake, a New Zealand native who was living in France when Germany invaded.

Wake immediately went to work for the French resistance, hiding and smuggling men out of France and ferrying contraband supplies and falsified documents. She was once captured and interrogated for days, but gave no secrets away. With the Nazis in hot pursuit, Wake managed to escape to Britain in 1943, and joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a British intelligence agency. After training with weapons and parachutes, she was airdropped back into France -as an official spy and warrior. Wake had no trouble shooting Nazis or blowing up buildings with the French guerrilla fighters known as maquis in the service of the resistance. She once killed an SS sentry with her bare hands.

Read what happened to Wake and ten others in this list of eleven at mental_floss. Link

(YouTube link)

The dog Kenzie cannot reach the pot at the back of the stove, so now he's glad to have spent all that effort protecting his friend Queenie the cockatoo from the cat. Rodents aren't the only pets who like spaghetti! -via Arbroath

Have you ever taken a vacation from one job so you could catch upon your other job? I have. This is from the webcomic Mr. Lovenstein by J.L. Westover. Link -via The Daily What

This picture came in from redditor zynoda, who lives in Australia where it's starting to look like summer. Link

One of the few drawbacks to an outdoor grill is the difficulty of making french fries to go with your hamburgers. No more! The Blacktop 360 grill has a deep-fryer right in the middle. Plus a griddle, a warming plate, and an infrared grill. Plus an optional cutting board. And the legs fold up, so it's completely portable. I know some men who will cook, but only outdoors. Now they can do all the cooking! Link -via Fark

Doctors save lives every day, but as in any profession, there are a few bad apples. The manslaughter conviction of Michael Jackson's personal physician Dr. Conrad Murray inspired this list of horrible doctors. For example, there's Dr. Prabir Kumar Ghosh, who had a perfectly logical explanation for working while drunk:

A doctor in India was arrested recently when he showed up drunk for his emergency room shift. It may not have been the first time he knocked back a few before turning up for work: local complaints said that he's been drunk on the job for years. Dr. Prabir Kumar Ghosh admitted he was intoxicated but said he had his reasons, one of which was that he was simply trying to relieve his joint pain. If only he could've gotten to a hospital for proper treatment, then this whole problem could've been avoided and... oh, wait. Never mind.

There's more medical misery and malpractice at Ranker. Link

What could be cuter than a squirrel eating penne? A hamster eating ramen? A guinea pig eating mostaccioli? A hamster eating macaroni and cheese? A chipmunk eating noodles? The adorable hamster enjoying spaghetti here is named Lupin. See the rest of the collection at Environmental Graffiti. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user LuLu Witch)

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The Koren Ensemble has an ode to today's date: 11-11-11. The Koren Ensemble is eleven copies of Daniel Koren. -Thanks, Daniel!

Many businesses will be offering free stuff or discounts to veterans and active duty military on Friday the 11th -Veterans Day. If you are, or know a veteran, don't let the day slip by without taking advantage. You deserve it! Most will require proof of service. Some participating restaurants include:

Applebee's will say thank you to military members with a free meal November 11 (dine-in only).

Champps Americana Restaurant will offer free burgers to veterans and active-duty military November 11 at participating locations.

Chili's is offering a free meal to veterans and active-duty military between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. November 11.

Denny's will offer a free Grand Slam breakfast 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. November 11 in select restaurants in Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, Texas, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

But that's just the beginning. Check out the list at Kiplinger. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Garry Wilmore)

The following is an article from the book Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.

Astronomy wasn't invented a couple of hundred years ago. The study of stars is almost as old as humanity itself.

(Image credit: Wikipedia member Prof saxx)

The oldest and most famous cave paintings (16,000 to 20,000 years old) are in Lascaux, France. The animals and human figures in the cave were long thought to be symbols of magic or worship to help hunters. Eventually someone noticed that the dots of paint that decorate the animals are actually diagrams of groups of stars. Most constellations have different symbols today, but the giant bull (possibly the best-known image in cave art) is actually the constellation we still call Taurus -the bull. His eye is the star Aldebaran, and a V-shaped decoration of dots around it represents the Pleides star cluster.

NOT JUST A PILE OF STONES



The first ancient monument to be identified as an astronomical observatory was England's Stonehenge. It's attracted a lot of interest from wanna-be Druids over the years, but current researchers think it was built and rebuilt by three separate cultures between 5,000 and 3,000 years ago. While it's not clear exactly what it was used for, the astronomical alignments of the stones are unquestionable. The stones mark out the sunrise at midsummer and midwinter, and the rising and setting of the moon (which repeats in a cycle of 8.6 years). Some people claim to have found many more significant alignments and have suggested that Stonehenge could have been used to predict eclipses -pretty sophisticated stuff. But did the Druids actually make these calculations? We'll probably never know, darn it.

STONEHENGE SOUTH

(Image credit: Wikipedia member Raymbetz)

Just as mysterious is the recently discovered stone circle of Nabta, Egypt, which at 7,000 year old is the oldest astronomical observatory of its kind so far discovered. Like Stonehenge, it marks sunrise and sunset at midsummer, but other than that, no one knows who built it or what else it might be for. The site was abandoned after 2,000 years, just before the rise of the Egyptian Old Kingdom. Did the ancient Egyptians get their astronomical knowledge from an older civilization in the Sahara?

SERIOUS ABOUT SIRIUS

There are no landfills for garbage in Antarctica, at least none near McMurdo Station, the American research outpost. Therefore, recycling is a serious endeavor, with a very extensive list of items to be recycled. Still, the residents have a sense of humor and added some "extra" bins for even more stuff to be recycled! See more at Boing Boing. Link (Image credit: Henry Kaiser)