Canada Day (Fête du Canada) celebrates the formation of Canada on July first, 1867. The holiday was once known as Dominion Day, but was changed after Canada gained full independence from Britain in 1982. You can learn more about the holiday at Wikipedia. Canadian Heritage has information about the celebrations in Ottawa and other parts of the country. http://www.pch.gc.ca/eng/1292265752243/1292265752246 -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Flickr member Lone Primate)

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

Here's your question for the day: In what activity were men once 100% in control, but now women are in almost totally in control?

Did you say, "cheerleading?" Well, you'd be correct if you did. One hundred years ago, cheerleading was an entirely male activity, but by the 1920s (1927 is usually given as the first year), the girls moved in. By the 1940s, girls (and the newly-invented pompon) had almost totally overtaken the males as the nation's cheerleader.

Why did girls so quickly overtake the guys in people's hearts? No one knows the exact reason. Quite possibly, it was the lack of any sports for girls at the time, and they just wanted to get involved. Interestingly, as it usually does, the sex angle played a part. Male cheerleaders still dress almost exactly the same as they did 100 years ago, i.e. full pants, full shirts, and a sweater with the team emblem. The female cheerleaders' outfits, over the years, became skimpier and skimpier.

The well-known cheerleader short shorts or short skirts became the custom. This of course, please the guys in the crowd immensely. Also, by the 1940s, tumbling and gymnastics had become a popular part of cheerleading. The guys would stand and catch the girls, hold them aloft, or throw them up in the air. Obviously, the reverse was not possible, so the ladies became the stars of the act. In any cheering squad with both sexes, the girls inevitably are the center of attention.

Famous Girl Cheerleaders? The list goes on and on and includes Meryl Streep, Ann-Margret, Sally Field, Alicia Silverstone, Halle Berry, Katie Couric, Vanna White, Raquel Welch, Sandra Bullock, and Cybill Shepherd. Madonna was a cheerleader (and a straight A student, too!). Even Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsberg (!!!) was once a cheerleader.

Famous Guy Cheerleaders include Jack Lemmon, Jimmy Stewart, Michael Douglas, Steve Martin, Samuel L. Jackson, and Jerry Lewis. But did you know four U.S. presidents were once cheerleaders? It's true, can you guess who they were?

Former president George W. Bush was the head cheerleader for Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts.

Ronald Reagan, "The Gipper" himself, was a cheerleader at Eureka College.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was actually a cheerleader at West Point Academy.

And Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a sad twist of irony, was actually a cheerleader at Harvard in the early part of the 20th century, long before polio befell him.

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Special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen created cinema monsters and other creatures for decades. In this video, you'll find every one of them, presented in chronological order. See a list of them at the associated website. Link -via Boing Boing

Good magazine has a post entitled The Eternal Shame of Your First Online Handle, in which people share how they selected their first internet pseudonym. In the last few years, more and more people are using their real names online instead of anonymous identifiers.

Those of us who came of age alongside AOL must contend with something even more incriminating than a lifelong Google profile: A trail of discarded online aliases, each a distillation of how we viewed ourselves and our place in the world at the time of sign-on. The dawn of the Internet was an open invitation to free ourselves from the names our parents gave us and forge self-made identities divorced from our reputations IRL.

Here at Neatorama, every author either uses their real name or a made up name that sounds like a real name so they don't have to explain it (except for me, which means I am a dinosaur in internet terms). However, the majority of our commenters use pseudonyms. Would you like to share with us the story of how you selected it -or the story of some abandoned name you once used? Link -via Metafilter

The Dickin Medal is a British award given to animals who served faithfully in wartime. Buzzfeed listed the stories of one cat, several dogs and a surprising number of pigeons who were so honored. One of those pigeons was named G.I. Joe.

G.I. Joe was enlisted in the United States Army Pigeon Service and went on to save the lives of the villagers of Calvi Vecchia, Italy, as well as the British troops occupying it. This village was going to be bombarded by Allied forces, but he delivered the message just in time to prevent it. He was awarded the Dickin Medal for gallantry in November 1946.

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The footage is from a webcam mounted outside the CFHT astronomical observatory in Hawaii (another view of it from a different webcam can be found here; sadly, both webcams are on Mauna Kea, not Haleakala). You see some stars and the horizon, then suddenly an ethereal pale arc pops into view. It rapidly expands into a thin circular shell, then fades away as it fills the view. The whole thing takes a few minutes to expand; you can see the stars moving during the event (some of the pixels on the webcam are very sensitive and make stationary "hot spots" in the field of view).

So what is it? Is it a trans-dimensional portal into the future, some wormhole from the Pegasus galaxy, or two alien spaceships battling it out?

Dr. Phil Plait followed forum discussions of the event and explains how online astronomy geeks figured out the source of the sight. Link

Our earth is a dynamic place that moves and changes with no regard to humans or anyone else. Every once in a while, those changes occur rapidly and powerfully. Cracked looks at five events that left behind some serious scars, like the 1883 explosion of Krakatoa.

The blast was the equivalent of 200 megatons of TNT. For perspective, the largest explosion ever made by humans was the detonation of a Russian hydrogen bomb, which was 50 megatons. That blast broke windows in buildings 560 miles away. Krakatoa was four times that; the cloud it generated wiped entire villages off the map 25 miles away and created a tsunami that traveled all the way to South Africa. That wasn't all Krakatoa's neighbors got for their birthday that year; giant pieces of rock and coral reef fell from the sky as well.

Now get this: Krakatoa is only number five on the list. Link

The latest do-it-yourself project from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories is this footstool made in the shape of a 555 timer chip. It's a heavy-duty design, made from plywood, glue, and paint. Link -via Laughing Squid

A meme finds its way into toenail art. I honestly envy anyone who has the time to do something like this. Link

The Marble Caverns, as the name translates to English, are in General Carrera, a lake that straddles the border of Argentina and Chile. The lake has thrown gravel against the blue marble cliffs for millions of years, gradually carving these beautiful grottos. See more pictures at Environmental Graffiti. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

(Image credit: Flickr member Nicolas Aracena)

Police in Brandenburg, Germany found a plot of marijuana plants. Upon inquiry, they talked to an elderly woman who said she had been feeding the weeds to her pet rabbits.

“The rabbits really like it,” the woman told officers who called on her in the village of Golzow near Belzig, according to Saturday’s Tagesspiegel.

A police officer had seen the healthy, metre-high plants from the road while on his way to work and told his colleagues, who visited the plot’s owner – the elderly woman.

She told them that she had not grown the plants herself, but that they had simply started growing there, and had proven to be excellent rabbit food. Not only did the rabbits love eating the plants, they grew back very quickly after she cut them down, she told the investigating officers.

Officers did not charge the woman, but did cut the plants down. Link

(Unrelated image credit: Flickr member shesaleo)

(YouTube link) I've never watched the TV show MasterChef, but if it were edited like this, I might make the effort to tune in. This video is a Swede Mason production. -via Arbroath

Christine de Pizan wrote Othea's Epistle to Hector (the Book of Knighthood) around the beginning of the 15th century. She is considered to be the first female professional writer. In 1460, a manuscript of the Book of Knighthood was commissioned, written in Middle French and illustrated with miniatures. Sixteen of those miniatures are reproduced for your pleasure at BibliOdyssey. Link

Designer Kunihiko Morinaga is taking the resolution down a notch or two, all the way down to the pixel level. In his collection called Low (low resolution, that is), you'll find dresses, jackets, sportswear, hosiery, shoes, and accessories all rendered in what appears to be 8-bit patterns. Where would you wear these pixelated pumps? See lots more pictures at Gamma Squad. Link

While some internet groups ignore their very existence, Forces of Geek addresses the growing visibility (if not growing numbers) of geek girls. We have always been here, and it's nice to be included, or even noticed. FOG has posted a list of Geek Girl Commandments, loosely styled after the Biblical Ten Commandments. That is followed by the Geek Girl Bill of Rights, which says (in part):

I have the right to be taken seriously for my interests and not be accused of getting into video gaming, comic books, science, or other traditionally male-dominated geek interests to impress a guy.

I have the right to enjoy non-geeky things without losing geek cred.

I have the right to send angry emails to retailers that only offer geeky shirts in men’s styles and sizes.

I have the right to bare arms, abs, and legs. I can dress as any superhero I want to without being touched, harassed, or being accused of inviting sexual advances. I also understand that dressing provocatively will draw attention, and I will deal with unwanted but harmless attention with class and dignity.

Oh yes, there's more, which you can read at the post. Link