Holgate Windmill in York, England was a working grain mill for over a hundred years before it was shut down 70 years ago. It was never torn down because of its historic charm, and a neighborhood grew up around it. Now, thanks to The Holgate Windmill Preservation Society, it will begin to mill grain once again.

By 2008 the Society had secured £250,000 in grants, prizes and donations – and in winning the People’s Millions award in November 2010, they finally have the money to rebuild the sails.

After decades of neglect, this mill will mill. Using locally produced grain, the Society will provide bakers with specialty flours milled in the traditional way, allowing them to make specialty breads with a 250-year-old heritage. Any profits will be reinvested in the mill so it pays for its upkeep by doing what it does best.

Read all about the project at ecosalon. Link -Thanks, Sara!

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What kind of entertainment would you expect at Maker Faire? Arc Attack performing the Dr. Who theme on Tesla coils as Adam Savage of Mythbusters dances in a Faraday cage. Of course. -via Buzzfeed

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No matter what kind of dreams you have, it's all right when mommy holds you in her arms. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

The Norwegian browser company Opera has received emails for years that were intended for Oprah Winfrey. Now that Oprah has concluded her daily talk show, Opera executives posted some of the best letters as a tribute to her. Link -via Boing Boing

The Humane Society of the United States named Yogi, a golden retriever, the 2011 Valor Dog of the Year for saving his owner's life after a bicycle accident. Paul Horton of Austin, Texas, went over the handlebars on his mountain bike and landed on his head.

Horton was knocked unconscious. When he woke up, he couldn't move and was bleeding from the nose and mouth. Yogi was at his side.

For the next 45 minutes, Horton pleaded with the 85-pound dog to go home and get help. Yogi didn't want to leave. Horton couldn't yell, and he was out of sight of passers-by, about 100 feet from a dead-end street.

Finally, Yogi headed back to the main road, where Horton's neighbors Bruce and Maggie Tate were walking. The normally mellow dog barked frantically. The Tates knew something was wrong and followed Yogi to Horton. There, Yogi stood protectively by his friend.

"It's pretty amazing that Yogi first stayed with Paul when he needed to, then recognized us and came to get us," Bruce Tate said. "Paul was in desperate shape. He wasn't in a place where there's a lot of traffic."

Doctors found that Horton's vertebrae had pinched his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. They credit Yogi with saving Horton's life. Horton has since regained some sensation, and has limited use of his arms. And Yogi is still his best friend. Link -via Arbroath

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If you leave a camera sitting in the open and drive off, you shouldn't be surprised when someone makes off with it. Photographer Roger de la Harpe laid a running camera down when he retreated from a pride of lionesses in Tswalu Kalahari Game Reserve in South Africa. There was a happy ending for de la Harpe, although the lioness is presumably off in search of something tastier than a digital camera. Link -via The Daily What

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This short film is subtitled "A quick tale of violence," but it's more odd than violent. A driver picks up carrots off the highway and eats them. Then it gets weird. Produced by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan. -Thanks, Benjamin Hertel!

Just look at this lovely sculpture of flamingos by artist Sarah Knouse! She has other mixed media sculptures made with thread and liquid plastic at her site. http://sarahknouse.net/-Thanks, Ethan!

The first 500-mile race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway took place on May 30, 1911. That very first race was a story for the ages. Forty cars started, but only  a dozen finished.

People were excited by the amount of money at stake (the winner’s share would be $10,000, an impressive sum in an era when Cobb, baseball’s highest-paid player, made $10,000 a season) and the danger. (In the downtown saloons you could bet on how many drivers, who wore cloth or leather helmets and had no seat belts or roll bars, might be killed.) But with every mile the story line had become more and more scrambled and the spectators more and more subdued. Those charged with describing the “excitement” to an eager audience of millions were feeling the first damp signs of panic. Like every other lengthy automobile contest these experts on baseball and boxing had ever witnessed, this one was damnably confusing. The auto racing tracks of the day simply did not have the technology to keep track of split times and running order once cars began passing one another and going into and out of the pits.

Between crashes and the extreme length of the race, there was a time when no one was keeping up with how many laps each car raced. One hundred years later, people still argue about who actually won the first Indy 500. Link

Back in 2008, Stacy posted a roundup of wonderful quilts that included this Harry Potter quilt by Jennifer Ofenstein. This week, Jennifer was shocked to find that the Harry Potter quilt she completed years ago has gone viral. Better late than never! This quilt certainly deserves another look. Each block of the pattern is available if you want to make one yourself. Link

A 48-year-old truck driver was the victim of a bizarre accident in New Zealand. It must have been horrific, but it reads like a classic cartoon script.

Steven McCormack was standing on his truck's foot plate Saturday when he slipped and fell, breaking a compressed air hose off an air reservoir that powered the truck's brakes.

He fell hard onto the brass fitting, which pierced his left buttock and started pumping air into his body.

"I felt the air rush into my body and I felt like it was going to explode from my foot," he told local media from his hospital bed in the town of Whakatane, on North Island's east coast.

"I was blowing up like a football," he said. "I had no choice but just to lay there, blowing up like a balloon."

Co-workers released a valve to stop the air pressure, and he was taken to a hospital. Doctors say the air inflated McCormack's body under his skin as it separated fat from muscle. He is expected to recover. Link -via J-Walk Blog

Tatiana and Krista Hogan of British Columbia are twin 4-year-olds who are joined at the skull. They are too young for thorough testing, but they have given hints that they share some information between their brains!

Twins joined at the head — the medical term is craniopagus — are one in 2.5 million, of which only a fraction survive. The way the girls’ brains formed beneath the surface of their fused skulls, however, makes them beyond rare: their neural anatomy is unique, at least in the annals of recorded scientific literature. Their brain images reveal what looks like an attenuated line stretching between the two organs, a piece of anatomy their neurosurgeon, Douglas Cochrane of British Columbia Children’s Hospital, has called a thalamic bridge, because he believes it links the thalamus of one girl to the thalamus of her sister. The thalamus is a kind of switchboard, a two-lobed organ that filters most sensory input and has long been thought to be essential in the neural loops that create consciousness. Because the thalamus functions as a relay station, the girls’ doctors believe it is entirely possible that the sensory input that one girl receives could somehow cross that bridge into the brain of the other. One girl drinks, another girl feels it.

The New York Times magazine has an extensive article on Tatiana and Krista, covering their lives, medical condition, and the very rare opportunity they may present to learn about how the human brain works. Link | video (Image credit: Stephanie Sinclair/VII, for The New York Times)

You know about Lenin's body and Mao's body, embalmed and on display to inspire the citizens of their countries. But there are plenty of other communist leaders in the same boat, and they all have a story behind them. Atlas Obscura has the stories of the mummies of the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Vietnam, North Korea, and even a couple of non-communists who remained above ground many years after their demise. Joseph Stalin is one who is no longer on display.

Seen now as one of the worst dictators in history, in his personal life Stalin lived like he meant it; a heavy smoker and drinker, most historians and specialists agree that vice-induced atherosclerosis led to a series of debilitating -- and ultimately fatal --strokes. Others claim that Stalin was assassinated by means of warfarin, an odorless and tasteless poison that causes strokes.

Regardless of the cause, Stalin's dead body was embalmed and placed along side Lenin's mummy immediately after his death in 1953. Mourners could gaze up on both of the Republic's founding fathers in conjunction until Halloween of 1961 when Stalin (sort of) rose from the dead. Officials had him buried next to the Kremlin as part of the process of de-Stalinization. Lenin has been lonely ever since.

Stalin is only one of ten corpses profiled at Atlas Obscura. Link

I can't vouch for the quality or the safety of this recipe, since I haven't tried it (and probably never will), but English Russia has a how-post on making your own absinthe. There are a lot of herbs involved.

Wormwood: 100 g
Fennel (fruit): 50 g
Anise: 50 g
Mint: 15 g
Melissa: 8 g
Chamomile: 3 g
Cumin: 10 g
Angelica: 10 g
It would be nice to add 5-10 g of hyssop, but it is difficult to find.

And then later another round of herbs.

Melissa: 8 g
Licorice: 10 g
Mint: 15 g
Chamomile: 2 g
Angelica: 2 g

One of the steps is to put the concoction away for two weeks, presumably to give you time to ponder the wisdom of the whole enterprise. Link -via Dangerous Minds

Google Maps has a list of punny slogans that users have tagged onto towns and cities. A sample:

Gas, KS
"Don't pass gas, stop and enjoy It."

Hooker, OK
"It's a location, not a vocation."

Bushnell, SD
"It's not the end of the earth, but you can see it from here"

Walla Walla, WA
"The city so nice they named it twice."

Click on a slogan at the site and the map will show you where the town is. Link -via Buzzfeed