This week we managed to give away a baker's dozen t-shirts and a hat! Why? A, folks love to win things; b, we enjoy how creative you guys are with your contest entries; and c, we are promoting the NeatoShop, which is Neatorama's main revenue source and the reason we can run fewer ads than most blogs this size. We also had some neat feature articles this week you don't want to miss!

Jiil Harness looked into the darker side of science history with 5 Science Experiments Gone Wrong.

She also brought us some clever and beautiful art, in 25 Artist Renditions of Movie And TV Posters.

We took a peek into The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists, courtesy of the Annals of Improbable Research.

Mental_floss magazine gave us 10 Modes of Transportation that Never Got Into Gear.

From Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, we learned about Hetty Green, The Witch of Wall Street.

Last week, Tiffany invited everyone to share their stories of the strange and funny things little children say at NeatoBambino. The response was wonderful! Read the t-shirt winning responses at Out Of The Mouth Of Babes: Part 2, and all the responses in the comments of part one.

John Farrier came up with a strange and wonderful contest called Besieged by Zombies at the NeatoShop. The idea was to defend yourself from a horde of zombies by using NeatoShop items, which sparked some wild ideas from the people who entered! The winning stories are in the followup post.

The Name That Weird Invention! contest went up Monday from Steven Johnson's Museum of Possibilities. Ladybuggs takes first prize for Convertuble, and Pat wins second place for Car Pool. Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!

In Mal and Chad's Fill in the Bubble Frenzy game this week, amanderpanderer’s line was selected to go in the speech bubble: “We always did make quite the paramecium.” She’ll be getting a t-shirt from the NeatoShop!

To be honest, in the What Is It? game this week it was hard to tell which answers were honest guesses and which were trying to be funny! just a guess was the first with the correct answer: this is a measuring device for a horse’s neck, so collars can be custom-sized. The funniest answer prize goes to The Professor, who called it “Occam’s Hooky-Thing” that wasn’t quite as successful as Occam’s Razor.

Bonus: Neatorama's Facebook page is not just a mirror of what's on the blog. You'll find extra links, discussions, and funny stuff there every day! You'll also find extra interesting things in our Twitter feed, published in small bites. Join in the fun -April Fool's Day is coming up next week, so you can count on some strange things happening!

FAO Schwarz has a Muppet Workshop, where you can have your own "Muppet Whatnot" created just for you. You can design yours online with this generator. I made this one; others have designed Whatnots that look like Charlie Sheen, Bill Clinton, and others. Having it actually made into a Muppet will cost you $129.99. Link -via reddit

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You know how sometimes you hear a word over and over and it starts to sound really silly? Yeah, this is one of those times. Who knew so many movies features this one idiom? Apparently Eddie Murphy says it in every film he's done! The very last word is NSFW. See a list of the films at Pajiba. Link -via the Presurfer

Would you believe... a helicopter ejection seat? A solar-powered flashlight? An inflatable anchor? They're not jokes -well, they are the subjects of some jokes, but these gadgets really exist, and they really do the job, as you'll see in this list from Cracked. NSFW text. Link -via The Daily What

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A low-tech solution to a modern problem! Christopher Locke made an amplifier for his cell phone using a broken trumpet and scrap metal. No power cords, no batteries, no moving parts. And you can slip your Mp3 player in it as well. Link -Thanks, Chris!

A couple of years ago, we posted a link to a Florida story that gripped the nation. "The Girl in the Window" was the victim of severe neglect. Her name is Danielle, and although she was almost seven years old when she was removed from her home, she could not speak or interact with others, and was extremely malnourished. Danielle was a feral child. The St. Petersburg Times has updated the online story several times.

Danielle is now 12 years old, and has been adopted by Bernie and Diane Lierow, who also have five sons. She still suffers from the effects of "environmental autism" due to her earlier neglect, but is making great strides. A book about Danielle will be released later this year. See pictures and video of Danielle at her parent's website. http://www.danisstory.org/ -via J-Walk Blog

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This bookshelf designed by Corentin Dombrecht is purr-fect for a home with cats -since they are going to climb your bookshelves anyway! The wood is unpainted and unvarnished to prevent a cat from slipping, and there's a built-in cat hammock on the top. The Cat-Library™ doesn't seem to be available for sale -yet, but it is making the rounds of design shows. Link -via Metafilter

Aled Lewis is a professional illustrator (featured previously) who posts funny stuff on his Tumblr blog Aled Knows Best. One of his recurring themes is to pose toys to illustrate an unexpected punch line. This is only one of many that made me laugh! Link -via Nag on the Lake

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Midnight the miniature horse was born missing part of one leg, and then was so neglected by his owner that he was seized by authorities. The adorable horse was close to being euthanized when the staff at Ranch Hand Rescue came up with a plan to get Midnight a new leg. You have to watch this one all the way through -you'll be glad you did! Link -via Gizmodo

Rescue workers banded together on Tuesday to retrieve a naked woman from the side of a cliff in the San Diego area. The woman was apparently trying to reach Black's Beach, a traditionally clothing-optional beach below the cliff at Torrey Pines State Park. San Diego Fire and Rescue Department spokesman Maurice Luque told the story.

It took lifeguards about 30 minutes to rig a series of rescue ropes. A female lifeguard then rappelled about a third of the way down the 500-foot cliff to an exposed ledge, where the very exposed 27-year-old woman was stuck.

After hooking up the young woman in a rescue harness, the lifeguard helped her rappel to the beach several hundred feet below, where she was provided with clothing. The entire operation took about an hour from start to finish.

The young woman was unharmed, Luque said. She will not be charged for the rescue, he added.

However, the unidentified woman was ticketed for disregarding signs and entering a restricted area. Link (with partially blurred video) -via Arbroath

Andrew Evans of National Geographic is on a photo expedition to the Tristan da Cunha island group in the South Atlantic. He expected to get beautiful pictures of wildlife and their natural habitat, but fate took another turn. A cargo ship crossing from Brazil to Singapore crashed on the rocks of Nightingale Island, and began to spill the 800 tons of fuel it was carrying.

The captain and all crew escaped the vessel, but by last Saturday the ship had begun to break up in the heavy surf. The oil slick had spread around the island and then out to sea in the direction of Inaccessible Island.

Our ship, the MV National Geographic Explorer arrived at Tristan Da Cunha yesterday and sailed to Nightingale Island this morning, as intended on our original itinerary with Lindblad Expeditions. Instead of mere bird watching, we were met with the disturbing sight of penguins and seals coated in sticky black oil.

Nightingale Island is home to some 20,000 of the endangered sub-species of Northern Rockhopper Penguin. Sadly, these are the birds that were hit the hardest—thousands are expected to die from the effects of the oil spill. While this spill is relatively minor in comparison to so many in the world today, it represents a major calamity for the fragile birdlife on pristine Nightingale Island and a heavy blow to the small group of islanders of nearby Tristan da Cunha.

Although hundreds of the rockhopper penguins were collected to be cleaned, many more hundreds are left covered with oil, along with seal pups and other wildlife. Read Evans' report and see more pictures at National Geographic's Digital Nomad blog. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!

(Image credit: Andrew Evans/National Geographic)

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Terje Sorgjerd took footage of the Aurora Borealis around Kirkenes, Norway, near the Russian border. A week of footage is condensed in this beautiful time-lapse video. -via Metafilter

1. The Monowheel




In 1869, French craftsman Rousseau of Marseilles built the first in history's line of unsuccessful monocycles. Sitting inside the monowheel, the rider steered the contraption by shifting his or her weight in the desired direction. As if that wasn't difficult enough, the massive outer wheel remained directly in the driver's line of sight at all times. Braking was also potentially hazardous, as stopping too abruptly would cause the rider to be propelled forward along with the outer wheel. But perhaps the biggest strike against the monowheel was the immediate comparison of any rider to a gerbil -something even the French wouldn't tolerate.

2. The Daihatsu Trek




It's a car! It's a bed! It look suspiciously like a child's toy! For the outdoorsman who has everything except a really expensive Big Wheel, there was the Daihatsu Trek. A single-passenger off-road vehicle, the Trek not only allowed drivers to travel to remote areas, it also gave them a place to bed down for the evening. With its collapsible seat, steering wheel, and roll bar, the boxy monstrosity from 1990 offered all the comforts of a really cheap motel room. And while we can't be sure why the car never made it past the concept stage at Daihatsu, we can only guess members of the off-road focus groups felt silly driving a Transformer.

3. The Avrocar



A quasi hot potato of international engineering, the Avrocar was initially funded by the Canadian government, designed by a British engineer, and eventually assumed by the U.S. Defense Department as part of the Cold War weapons race. The UFO-like contraption was 18 feet in diameter, but only 3 feet thick. It featured vertical takeoff and landing and was designed to reach speeds up to 300 mph while remaining elusive to radar. Unfortunately, the two-person craft was never able to stabilize at heights above eight feet, nor travel faster than 35 mph. After eight years and more than $10 million, the project was abandoned in 1960.

Do Americans smile too much? An opinion piece at Pravda says "Americans smile all the time as if they are plugged in." That is, compared to Russians.

For some reason, a smile makes a Russian person suspicious. Many Russians think that those who smile a lot are not really healthy mentally.

American Annette Loftus, who visited the Soviet Union for the first time in 1991, said that she was culturally shocked when she returned to the USA and saw the smiling Americans around.

Many Russian tourists traveling to Thailand still feel uncomfortable about this country. Thailand is known as a country of a thousand smiles.

"No smile feature is one of the brightest traits of a Russian individual," professor Sternin believes. "In Russia, a smile is not a signal of politeness. It is not considered normal in Russia to smile to strangers, the Russians do not return a smile for a smile automatically."

"The paradox is: the Russians smile less because they are more open to others. The Russian seriousness is a habit not to conceal people's feelings and emotions. Historically, the Russians are mostly in a bad mood, but they are not hiding it," the professor believes.

But what if you genuinely feel good and want to share the happiness? Maybe that's the problem with Americans. Link -via J-Walk Blog

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Captain Linda Cavitt caught some footage of a 20-foot basking shark from the safety of the pier in Panama City Beach, Florida. Josh, the kayaker, was a bit closer.

yes he was eaten part 2? is coming....j/k no it's a docile basking shark, they eat plankton. The kayaker did jump in the water and swim with the shark though but as soon as Josh grabbed it's tail the shark swam away from him

Yes, he really did. -via BroBible