Oh sure, blame it on the plant! No word on where this photo was taken, as it was posted without a source. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy

Actress Marilyn Monroe was born on June first, 1926. If she hadn't died in 1962, she would be 85 years old today. In 1961 Monroe was committed to a mental hospital in New York. She stayed four days, during which she wrote a six-page letter to her psychiatrist. Here is just a part of one passage:

I didn't sleep again last night. I forgot to tell you something yesterday. When they put me into the first room on the sixth floor I was not told it was a Psychiatric floor. Dr. Kris said she was coming the next day. The nurse came in (after the doctor, a psychiatrist) had given me a physical examination including examining the breast for lumps. I took exception to this but not violently only explaining that the medical doctor who had put me there, a stupid man named Dr. Lipkin had already done a complete physical less than thirty days before. But when the nurse came in I noticed there was no way of buzzing or reaching for a light to call the nurse. I asked why this was and some other things and she said this is a psychiatric floor. After she went out I got dressed and then was when the girl in the hall told me about the phone. I was waiting at the elevator door which looks like all other doors with a door-knob except it doesn't have any numbers (you see they left them out). After the girl spoke with me and told me about what she had done to herself I went back into my room knowing they had lied to me about the telephone and I sat on the bed trying to figure if I was given this situation in an acting improvisation what would I do. So I figured, it's a squeaky wheel that gets the grease. I admit it was a loud squeak but I got the idea from a movie I made once called "Don't Bother to Knock". I picked up a light-weight chair and slammed it, and it was hard to do because I had never broken anything in my life -- against the glass intentionally. It took a lot of banging to get even a small piece of glass - so I went over with the glass concealed in my hand and sat quietly on the bed waiting for them to come in. They did, and I said to them "If you are going to treat me like a nut I'll act like a nut". I admit the next thing is corny but I really did it in the movie except it was with a razor blade. I indicated if they didn't let me out I would harm myself -- the furthest thing from my mind at that moment since you know Dr. Greenson I'm an actress and would never intentionally mark or mar myself. I'm just that vain.

Read the rest of the missive at Letters of Note. Link

Jeff Horn conducted a two-year study for his master's thesis at the University of Illinois on roaming cats. For the study, 42 adult cats were fitted with electronics to trace their movements. Cats with owners had an average roaming territory of 4.9 acres, while feral cats roamed a much wider territory. One feral cat covered 1,351 acres! Data was also retrieved that showed owned cats were "highly active" only 3% of the time, compared to 14% for feral cats. That is very low, especially for an animal that must forage for food, but should not surprise anyone who knows cats. Link -via Pawesome

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Playing for Change, the folks who brought us "Stand By Me" a couple of years ago, traveled the world to bring many artists together for a performance of the Rolling Stones classic "Gimme Shelter." http://www.playingforchange.com/ -via Gizmodo

Sam "No Nickname" Saxton makes vertical ambigrams with illustrations that read the same whether you hold them right side up or upside down. He's given the treatment to presidents, pop culture figures, and even Star Wars characters! Link

This particular Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss will be hard for many, but a piece of cake for political animals of a certain age. In July of 1987, way before the presidential primary of 1988, seven democratic contenders met for a debate. They were later dubbed "the Seven Dwarfs" by the news media. How many can you name in three minutes? As I was a news director for a radio station at the time, I named them all with a minute to spare. It might not be that easy for anyone else -the average score right now is 25%. Link

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Someone got into the trash! The homeowners have two dogs, so how can they determine which one is the guilty party? -via Arbroath

Orata at Feather and Fan made this knit dalek with a zippered compartment in the front, where the dalek can stash a knitted Kaled mutant (or some other other freakish being). The knitting pattern is included in the post. Link -via Rue The Day

John F. Ptak came across an 1908 newspaper photo essay entitled "The Pleasant Lot of the Inebriate in Captivity: The comfortable quarters of the inmates of a state reformatory for inebriates."

The life in the state reformatory as an alcoholic British woman was hardly "pleasant" as the title states, though we don't know what the author was comparing this to.  I suspect it was a general prison that was the benchmark for pleasantness, though perhaps it could have been an insane asylum , assuming of course that they didn't seem nearly as pleasant as the "pleasant" scenes in these pictures.  The reformatory for alcoholics in Great Britain was established more along the lines of an almshouse or mental institution and seemed not terribly coercive--though given the border decorations for the photos on these pages--keys--there is no doubt that these people were incarcerated "for their own and the community's good."

Although the photographs are obviously posed, they are worth a look for their historic value. Link -via Everlasting Blort

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It's a ridiculous game of one-upmanship between Michael Jackson and Mr. Bean! Patrick Boivin directed this stop-motion animation from Pascal Blais Studios. -via Laughing Squid

 

 (YouTube link) Frida, a cat that lives in Berlin, has a good eye! -via reddit

John Krayeski of West Palm Beach, Florida, was spear fishing in the waters off Singer Island, specifically at an artificial reef called the Triangle on Mothers Day. A responsible diver, he often picks up trash he sees underwater. On this trip, he picked up an old JC Penney credit card. Back on land, he read the name on the card: Jack Jacobs. He knew the guy!

"I said to my friends, 'We did an addition to this guy's house a while back," said Krayeski.

At his office, he compared the signature to contracts in his files.

Sure enough, the brown-and-white card belonged to Jack Jacobs, a Delray Beach caterer.

Jacobs' wife told Krayeski that they never had a card from JC Penney, but later Jack Jacobs called and said he'd lost that card 25 years ago, before he was ever married! However, he had no idea how it ended up a mile out at sea.

"I told John I'm going to drop another credit card in the ocean and he has 25 years to find it."

"Make it a gold American Express and I'll find it a lot sooner," Krayeski said.

Link -via Fortean Times

(Image credit: Libby Volgyes/Palm Beach Post)

The Great Pyramid of Giza contains narrow passageways and chambers that have never been explored. A small robot was sent into an 8-inch wide chute in 1993 and 2002, but both expeditions ran into something impassable. Now a new robot called Djedi with the ability to take pictures around corners is making headway and sending back pictures of previously unseen hieroglyphs and architecture.

The winning robot, designed by Leeds University, has indeed gone further than anyone has ever been before in the pyramid.

The project began with the exploration of the southern shaft, which ends at the so called "Gantenbrink’s door."

The robot was able to climb inside the walls of the shaft while carrying a "micro snake" camera that can see around corners.

Unlike previous expeditions, in which camera images were only taken looking straight ahead, the bendy camera was small enough to fit through a small hole in a stone "door," giving researchers a clear view into the chamber beyond. It was at that time that the camera sent back images of 4,500-year-old markings.

"There are many unanswered questions that these images raise," Richardson told Discovery News. "Why is there writing in this space? What does the writing say? There appears to be a masonry cutting mark next to the figures: why was it not cut along this line?" Roberston wondered.

Read more about the Djedi project at Discovery News. Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Djedi Team)

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A Danish football league for 14-year-olds got a boost reminiscent of Improv Everwhere's Best Game Ever when a group that was "tasked with making the Under 21 European Football Championship more visible" converged on a game unbeknownst to the players and made it feel like a championship final! They brought spectators, avid fans, cheerleaders, a marching band, vendors, sports journalists, and even soccer stars. A good time was had by all. -via reddit

May 27th would have been Vincent Price's 100th birthday. In honor of the occasion, artist Zach Bellissimo drew 100 characters played by Vincent Price on sticky notes! See the whole thing at DeviantART or you can enlarge them enough to see each drawing at his blog, Snaggle-Tooth Salad. Link -via Nag on the Lake