On April 12th, 1861, 150 years ago today, the first battle of the US Civil War was fought at Ft. Sumter, in Charleston, South Carolina. Southern states had been seceding from the union for months, but the US still maintained coastal forts.

During the four months leading up to Lincoln's Inauguration, the seceding states, one after another, seized federal forts, arsenals, and customs houses within their borders.

There was little to oppose the breakaway forces, a caretaker and a guard or two comprising many of the garrisons. Most of the 16,000 or so regular Army soldiers had been posted to the western frontier to protect settlers against the perceived threat from American Indians.

On March 4, 1861, Lincoln was inaugurated, promising the seceding states that he would use force only "to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places" belonging to the federal government.

The stage was set for the inevitable showdown.

National Geographic takes a look back with a rundown of what actually happened on April 12th at Ft. Sumter, and how those actions sent the nation into four years of war and cost more than 600,000 men their lives. Link

(Image credit: Library of Congress)

Artist Celina Saubidet creates "Osseus Jewelry," with designs based on bones, like this silver-plated skeletal hand necklace. Yes, it's full-size and was inspired by a real skeleton. She also has rings and cufflinks that resemble bones at her Etsy store Link -via Bioephemera

On April 12th, 1961, 50 years ago today, Yuri Gagarin {wiki} became the first human to go into space. Today is also the premiere of a full-length movie First Orbit.

In a unique collaboration with the European Space Agency, and the Expedition 26/27 crew of the International Space Station, we have created a new film of what Gagarin first witnessed fifty years ago.

By matching the orbital path of the Space Station, as closely as possible, to that of Gagarin's Vostok 1 spaceship and filming the same vistas of the Earth through the new giant cupola window, astronaut Paolo Nespoli, and documentary film maker Christopher Riley, have captured a new digital high definition view of the Earth below, half a century after Gagarin first witnessed it.

Weaving these new views together with historic, recordings of Gagarin from the time, (subtitled in Englsih) and an original score by composer Philip Sheppard, we have created a spellbinding film to share with people around the world on this historic anniversary.

You can watch the entire movie (99 minutes) at the website. Link

Places all over have different ways of celebrating the end of winter and the return of warm weather every year. What could be more fun than a spring-cleaning holiday that includes a water fight? That's what's happening in Thailand during Songkran.

On April 12th, old or useless items are thrown out of houses and burned to avoid bad luck, and on the 13th offerings are made to statues of Buddha at the local wat. The Buddha statues are then washed with perfumed water, and Buddhas from important wats are paraded through the streets where the crowds throw more water on them. The water-fight begins in earnest after this, with people dousing each other with buckets and super-soakers on the street.

See videos of Songkran and other spring celebrations at AnyTrip. http://blog.anytrip.com/six-odd-but-awesome-spring-celebrations-around-the-world/ -via Dark Roasted Blend

(Image credit: Flickr user Wyndham Hollis)

(vimeo link)

Alex Crawford and Austin Nelson get their pictures taken by a Rube Goldberg contraption that includes dominoes! They constructed it for a Multimedia Installation class project. -via Boing Boing

The German site Zeit Online posted a map in which you can compare the evacuation around Japan's Fukushima power plant to the populations around nuclear plants in the US and Canada. You can adjust the area of evacuation with a slider. Zoom in on a red dot, and see the stats. For example, 37,513 people live within 18 miles of the Callaway (Missouri) pressurized-water reactor nuclear plant, shown in this screenshot. The same type of evacuation would affect over a million people near the Indian Point plant in New York. However, Japan is beginning to evacuate some areas beyond the 30km (18 mile) radius. Link -via Metafilter

Hong Kong actor Law Lok-lam works for broadcasting company TVB, so he is assured to find other roles after five of his characters were killed off -all in one 24 hour period!

His character met a bloody end during a fight in the martial arts drama Grace Under Fire, and he vomited blood before expiring in Fate to Fate, the Sunday Morning Post reported.

In Relic of an Emissary, Law played the Ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, who died after an illness.

In two other shows, Police Station No. 7 and comedy Virtues of Harmony, the actor did not die on screen but his death was discussed, the paper said.

A company spokesman said the timing of the dramatic deaths were a coincidence. Law said he doesn't mind, but it bothered his daughter. Link -via Arbroath

Liz says she knows nothing about music, but she is willing to learn. So she's set herself a goal.

There's a book out there that I've had on my shelf for years but never really touched. It's the "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die". They start with Frank Sinatra's "In The Wee Small Hours" from 1955 and go all the way up to 2007. (List is over here!)
So here's the plan. 1001 Albums. 1001 Days. I'll listen to the whole album, start to finish, no skipping. I'll write about how I feel about the album, my thoughts about the music, my life, etc. We'll see how this goes..

OK, I have a jaded view of music because I played some of these albums on radio until the vinyl fell apart. So let me say I find it refreshing to revisit them as heard through the ears of a 25-year-old newbie music critic. Maybe you will, too, or maybe you'll find something new you'd like to listen to. Liz plans to be through the list of albums by May of 2012, and has reviewed 520 albums so far. Link

If you really love your dog, you can immortalize its nose in jewelry! Jackie Kaufman makes these necklaces using a mold of your dog's nose, which you can do yourself using a kit. Find out more at Pawesome. http://www.pawesome.net/2011/04/dog-nose-print-necklace/

To be honest, these really are music videos, but they were recorded as plot points in TV shows by actors playing fictional characters. That doesn't mean they aren't good, but it means you (most likely) won't get to see the artist perform the songs on tour. However, you can find them on YouTube, and in syndication on the original TV shows they were made for. For example, you remember the song "Smelly Cat" from the series Friends.

Friend's Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow) has a long list of occupations during the course of the show, including singer-songwriter for which she is best known for her least popular song, "Smelly Cat". Encouraged by a record producer, she records the song professionally as both a track and a music video, but her voice for both is overdubbed by another artist, E.G. Daily, who is less attractive but a much better singer. However Phoebe still appears in the video, along with three backing vocalists, a cast of homeless people, and a possessed (did you see its eyes?) cat.

Read the stories behind ten such videos (and watch them) in this list at brainwavez. Link -Thanks, Mandy!

(YouTube link)

The term "globally" here does not mean worldwide so much as it means seeing the problem as a whole as opposed to its parts. Dr. Eli Goldratt {wiki} explains what happens to the supply chain of consumer goods during a recession, in terms even I can understand. With animation by Aharon Charnov. -Thanks, Joe Brown!

Artist Ji Lee creates miniature rooms of furniture, and installs them on ceilings!

People fill the floor of their homes with furniture and walls with paintings and pictures. So why are the ceilings left empty? Decorating ceilings was a celebrated art form in the past centuries that somehow got lost through the reductionism of modernism. People don't look at the ceiling anymore. It's a dead space. So I wanted to bring a small wink to this space. I also liked the idea that somehow there's a parallel world which coexists with ours.

One of the installations in Lee's Parallel Worlds project includes R2D2 and a hippo! http://pleaseenjoy.com/project.php?cat=1&subcat=&pid=75&navpoint=4 -via Laughing Squid

(YouTube link)

A driverless tractor runs circles in a Walmart parking lot in Richmond Hill, Ontario, smashing cars and anything else in its way for several minutes. -via Cynical-C

Jim Lewin received a stack of old magazines at his used bookstore that included some issues of The Flapper from the 1920s. A July 1922 issue contained "The Flapper's Dictionary," a glossary of hot slang terms of the time, which he posted in its entirety. Here's a small sample:

Absent Treatment—Dancing with a bashful partner.

Airedale—A homely man.

Alarm Clock—Chaperone.

Anchor—Box of flowers.

Apple Knocker—A hick; a hay-shaker.

Apple Sauce--Flattery; bunk.

Barlow—A girl, a flapper, a chicken.

Bank’s Closed—No petting allowed; no kisses.

Barneymugging—Lovemaking.

Bee’s Knees—See “Cat’s Pajamas”

Bell Polisher—A young man addicted to lingering in vestibules at 1 a.m.

Ask your grandmother (or great-grandmother) if she remembers some of these words. Some I know from watching old movies, and my own mother gave me "mad money" before I went on a date. Link -via Boing Boing

Edward Wozniak, who brought us The Top Eleven Deities In Hawaiian Mythology has posted about the gods of other cultures as well. His latest is a rundown of lesser-known members of the Scandinavian pantheon. For example, you might not be familiar with the goddess Hel.

The goddess who ruled over the land of the dead which shared her name, the name which by some accounts evolved into the common word Hell. She was the daughter of Loki by the female Jotun Angerboda and her siblings from that union were the Fenrir Wolf and the Midgard Serpent. She ruled the land of her namesake from her castle, called Sleetcold, and was often pictured with a body that was half light and fair and half dark and decomposed. Hel was assigned her position by Odin himself and, as a reflection of the hard Viking world-view those sent to her were the souls of any who died of sickness or old age. Their miserable existence in her gloomy realm was in stark contrast to the joyous existence of the brave souls who died in combat, who feasted and drank nightly with Odin in his dining hall Valhalla.

Link