This picture and others from the same sequence are everywhere on the internet today, but rarely is there any source or context attached. These are stills from the movie Rescued from an Eagle's Nest.

(YouTube link)

Rescued from an Eagle's Nest {wiki} is a 1908 film by D.W.Griffith. It featured cutting-edge special effects that were frightening to audiences. -via Dangerous Minds

Vietnamese-American artist Giang Dinh creates wonderful paper sculptures using a wet fold origami technique. It's hard to believe his animal creations were once a single sheet of paper! http://giangdinh.com/giang/fold_animals.html -via Metafilter

Today is the fifth anniversary of the first non-automated Tweet ever sent over the new Twitter social networking site. On March 21st, 2006, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sent this Tweet:

inviting co-workers

Exciting, huh? Dorsey had been working on what would become Twitter for five years by then -it was first called Twttr.

As the story goes, Dorsey elaborated on his idea during a casual Mexican lunch at that San Francisco hotbed of startup DNA, South Park.

Coding began March 13, and eight days later a machine-generated tweet was issued from Dorsey’s account (No. 12):

just setting up my twttr

While this is widely considered the world’s first tweet, Dorsey is adamant that “inviting co-workers” (his Odeo colleagues) was the first, and so is Twitter.

Link

Can you figure out what movie each of these mathematical equations represents? I couldn't. There are a lot of good guesses in the comments at Spiked Math Comics, but no definitive answer list. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy

Artist Clint Wilson interpreted the movie O Brother Where Art Thou? in the style of an ancient Grecian vase. I love it! Link -via Nag on the Lake

Reddit member captaincripple lost a leg in a motorcycle accident a year ago. He asked the forum for design suggestions for his prosthetic, and decided to go with a Terminator theme. He unveiled the finished leg today. The artwork is by Stuart Vimpani of Brisbane, Australia. Link

A fire alarm alerted police to a break-in at Paesan's Pizza in Rotterdam, New York about 1AM Friday. They found Timothy J. Cipriani wedged in an air duct with his legs dangling over a fryer in which the oil was still hot!

Cipriani allegedly told police he was trying to crawl inside the pizza parlor when he became trapped in the narrow vent. He was charged with burglary and possession of burglar tools.

Brown said a second person may have been involved, but disappeared before officers arrived.

Cipriani broke into the restaurant by first scaling a nearby tree and traversing the roof, Brown said. Once on the roof, he used a hammer to smash open air ducts.

Police took several photographs at the scene and shared them with reporters.

Police took 30 minutes to free Cipriani, who was taken, still covered in grease, to the Schenectady County jail. Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Rotterdam Police Department)

German artist Susanne Karg makes awesome little felted caves for cats to snuggle up in. Some are for sale through Etsy. See more pictures at A Polar Bear's Tale. Link -via TYWKIWDBI

(vimeo link)

A particularly steep hill caused grief for many competitors at the BUCS Cycling Championships at Moelfre Hall Downhill Track in Wales. If you think the hill doesn't look all that steep in this video, notice the angle of the spectators. Bonus: Banana Splits music by The Dickies. Link -via Metafilter

It sounds like a simple pun to accompany a funny picture, but Vader's Dark Side Roast Coffee is a real product. It's just one of 17 Weird Examples of Star Wars Merchandise listed at Oddee (some of which are available in the NeatoShop). Some will make you laugh, and others might make your wish list! Link

Here's a tale of an eBay sale that grew and grew. British diver D.H. Morgan posted a wetsuit for sale. In his colorful description, he emphasized that the suit had never been peed in -and posted a picture of a bear at a urinal to somehow drive that point home. The bear picture made the auction go viral, so he changed it to a charity auction (language warning).

This listing for my urine-free wetsuit is getting a lot of unexpected attention which is nice but I'm feeling I should do something positive with all the 'f*cking energy man', so I've decided to give 90% of the money it makes to the Red Cross to aid their efforts in Japan. That sounds all 'oh look at me I'm so nice I'm giving to charity' doesn't it... yeah well p*ss off.

But what! There's more!

Just got off the phone to XCEL wetsuits in Hawaii, who are very kindly donating a BRAND NEW 2011 Drylock wetsuit to the auction, it will remain a 3/2 (summer) but will be available in a range of sizes to suit the winning bidder. So now, in addition to the original p*ss free suit, you'll also get a brand spanker, but still no bears or doors, just TWO wetsuits free of urine, one old and knackered (m) and one lovely and new (any size).

After that, the auction snowballed. Different companies have added a lot more merchandise, like a watch, boots, surfboard, books, and concert tickets. Morgan created a separate website called bears don't wear wetsuits to handle questions and correspondence about the auction. As of this writing, the bidding stands at £9,300.00, which is $15K US. Link -via Metafilter

The New York Zoo and Aquarium has a generator in which you can design yourself as a fantastic wild animal! On the left is my basic although deceptively youthful self, and on the right I have Fennec fox ears, giant tree frog arms, pintail duck legs, and a ring-tailed lemur tail. There are lots of different animal limbs and features to select from for your personal wild self. Link -via Everlasting Blort

[caption id="attachment_43476" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Part of this image first appeared in the July, 1983 issue of Road & Track magazine."][/caption]

It's time for the Name That Weird Invention! contest. Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of crazy ideas in his Museum of Possibilities posts. What should we call these? The commenters suggesting the funniest and wittiest names will win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop. Start your brainstorming and leave an entry in the comments.

Contest rules: one entry per comment, though you can enter as many as you like. Please make a selection of the T-shirt you want (may we suggest the Science T-shirt, Funny T-shirt, and Artist-designed T-shirt categories?) alongside your entry. If you don't select a shirt, then you forfeit the prize. Have fun and good luck!

Update: Ladybuggs takes first prize for Convertuble, and Pat wins second place for Car Pool. Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop! Check in next week for another chance to Name That Weird Invention, from the Museum of Possibilities!

The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists is, as the name implies, a club for scientists who have luxuriant flowing hair. LFHCfS, as it is known unpronouncably to its members and their admirers, was founded in early 2001. Anyone can join, provided only that she or he is a scientist and has luxuriant flowing hair, and is proud of it.

The “proud” part is important. The club is not for the morbidly shy, people-averse scientist of stereotype and legend. Every LFHCfS member’s hair is on display on the Improbable Research web site.

LFHCfS was founded by admirers of the famously curly mane of psychologist Steven Pinker. Dr Pinker, then a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and now head of the psychology department at Harvard University, became the first member. He proudly lists the club on his academic web page.

The ranks now include mathematicians, astronomers, linguistics professors, organic chemists, computer researchers, immunologists, geneticists, physicists, neuroscientists, three sisters, a married couple, and other men and women of science, of both sexes, all hair colors, and many hair styles.

Dr. Piero Paravidino, 2002/3 LFHCfS Man of the Year, is a research chemist at Isagro Ricerca Srl, Novara, Italy, and a guitarist in the heavy metal band Mesmerize.

There is even a real rock star.* Italian chemist Dr Piero Paravidino plays guitar for the heavy metal band Mesmerize, and co-authored the paper “Synthesis of Medium-Sized N-Heterocycles Through RCM of Fischer-Type Hydrazino Carbene Complexes.”

The following is an article taken from the book Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History.

She walked up and down Wall Street in rags -but in her day she was the richest woman in America. Meet Hetty Green, financial genius and obsessive skinflint.

The employees at Manhattan's Chemical and National Bank were too intimidated to laugh at the strange woman who visited their vaults on a daily basis, even though she had a laundry list of eccentricities as long as your arm. She wore clothes so worn out they were falling apart on her body, she never washed her underwear because it was "too expensive," and she spent almost every day locked in the bank's vaults eating raw onions and counting her riches. Had Hetty Green been a different kind of woman, those who saw her marching down Wall Street might have snickered. But Hetty's reputation  was every bit as formidable as her scowling, forbidding face.

BORN CHEAP

Stinginess came naturally to Hetty's family. Born in 1835 to a family of wealthy blue bloods, including a father who wanted his daughter to manage her fortune well, Hetty could read the daily financial papers to her dad at age six and opened her own savings account at age eight. By 21, she was so miserly she didn't even want to light the birthday candles on her own cake because it would waste them. Eventually, the party guests convinced her to light them, but she blew them out immediately so she could return them to the grocery store for a refund.

SHE'S A RICH GIRL

This was the same birthday at which Hetty came into a multimillion-dollar trust. Almost a decade later, her father died and left her his vast estate. Hetty cleverly invested her money, increasing its value enormously. But she still wore secondhand clothes, took her meals in workingmen's dives, saw doctors at free charity clinics, and lived in cheap boardinghouses to avoid paying property taxes.

ON THE DOTTED LINE

She was suspicious of the many suitors who courted her, believing they were all after her money. But at age 33, she agreed to marry businessman Edward Henry Green -after he agreed to sign a prenuptial agreement renouncing all rights to her money. Two children and a lot of angst later, Edward Green divorced her. When he died in 1902, Hetty Green moved to Hoboken, New Jersey, with her children and commuted daily to her bank in New York City.

POOR LITTLE RICH KIDS

Vowing to make her son Ned the richest man in the world, Hetty saved every cent she could. She gave up washing her clothes, never changed or washed her sheets, tried to evade paying bills, and went to bed at sundown to avoid burning candles. She never turned on the heat or used hot water.

But she refused to spend any money on her kids, either. When Ned broke his leg, she wouldn't take him to a doctor, saying it was too pricey. His gangrenous leg later had to be amputated. She forced her daughter Sylvia to wear old clothes, too, and she wouldn't let her date the "fortune hunters" Hetty believed were everywhere. When she finally let Sylvia marry, she forced the new husband to give up all rights to his wife's fortune.

SHE'S A RICHER GIRL

Through it all, Hetty made one shrewd financial decision after another. She made terrific investments, owned thousands of plots of land, and had enough cash to make loans to major businesses -even New York City itself- extracting heavy interest on each loan.

But Hetty's penny-pinching ways continued. She spent hours each day counting her money. Her habit of walking down to her bank each day in a ragged, black dress with a scowl on her face earned her the nickname "the Witch of Wall Street."

THE DECLINE OF HETTY

Eventually, Hetty's health failed. She suffered from a painful hernia but refused to have an operation because it cost $150 (123 euros). She became even more paranoid and suspicious, believing kidnappers and murderers were after her and her fortune.

Eventually, her bad temper was the end of her. She reportedly died of apoplexy, in 1916, after an argument with a servant (not one of her own, of course).

GIVING AWAY THE GREEN STUFF

Hetty Green left $100 million to her children, who, ironically, became some of the most generous philanthropists of their time, donating money to numerous museums, libraries, and civic institutions. Hetty Green would have been horrified to hear it.

___________________

The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!