Photographer John C.H. Grabill took pictures of the American West between 1887 and 1892, and sent 188 of those photographs to the Library of Congress for copyright protection. Those photographs are now in the public domain, and give us a good look at the people and places of the frontier. The Denver Post published a collection of the pictures, including this portrait of two Oglala chiefs, American Horse and Red Cloud, taken in 1891. The border is printed with "The Grabill Portrait and View Co., Deadwood, S.D. Our company is incorporated under State Laws. Views all copyrighted. Will give a handsome reward for detection of anyone copying our pictures."
A truck full of commercial ink crashed on an I-95 ramp in the Boston area yesterday, spilling the very expensive ink all over the highway. No one was injured in the wreck.
The ink reached two storm drains, but it is not considered a hazardous material. An environmental cleanup company has been summoned to the scene and a "careful cleanup" will be conducted under the supervision of state environmental officials, State Police spokesman David Procopio said in a statement.
Several hundred gallons of ink splattered onto the highway, said Joe Ferson, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.
Approximately 16,000 pounds of ink cartridges from the Flint Group, an Indianapolis-based company selling printing and packaging products, was bound for a newspaper company in Portland, Maine. Red, blue, and yellow ink cartridges were inside the truck, but Ferson said there is no evidence the yellow ink was released.
Although the spilled ink is not considered hazardous, the ramp was closed for hours for cleanup. http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2011/03/truck_crash_spi.html -via reddit
URL Hunter is a game played entirely in your browser's address bar! You are the "O", trying to eat the "a"s (animals), but it's harder than you might think. Use the arrow keys to move and the space bar to consume -but hurry! You only have 30 seconds. http://probablyinteractive.com/url-hunter -via Breakfast Links
Now that Lent is here, we can look back at the pageantry of the Carnival season with a collection of 52 photographs at The Atlantic. See celebrations in Australia, Brazil, Hungary, Italy, Haiti, Colombia, Greece, France, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, and the U.S. Some pictures may be NSFW. Link -via Metafilter
England's King Edward VII started the royal tattoo craze in 1862. During a trip to the Holy Land, the then-Prince of Wales had a Jerusalem Cross inked on his arm. His son, the future King George V, followed in his father's footsteps and got a dragon tattoo while visiting Japan. Then, on his way back to England, the prince stopped by the same Holy Land tattoo parlor his father had visited and got a Jerusalem Cross of his own. Other royal families soon followed the trend. During the Victorian era, the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia, Prince and Princess Waldemar of Denmark, King Oscar II of Sweden, and Queen Olga of Greece all went under the needle.
The Anchor: A Sailor's ID Card
Nothing says "ahoy!" quite like an anchor tattoo. Popeye has one on each arm, and Sir Winston Churchill sported one on his right bicep. The tried-and-true symbol conveys the bearer's love for the sea. But in the late 18th century, the tattoo also served a practical purpose. During that time, almost all sailors received a "sailor protection certificate," which carefully documented the tattoos on their bodies. If a sailor went overboard, the tattoos were a lingering proof of his identity, should the body be recovered. Today, most military navies still catalog their sailor's body art for the same reason. (Image credit: Flickr user K Sandberg)
The Teardrop: A Prisoner's Tale
An entire genre of tattoos can be found behind penitentiary walls, and one of the most famous is the teardrop. Until the 1990s, the tattoo typically meant that the inmate had killed someone. But in recent years, the significance of the teardrop has softened. Prisoners get the tattoo to commemorate someone who had died while they were locked away, or simply to represent the time they've served behind bars. The design has also ventured outside the prison population in the past few years, although not all that far; you can see teardrops on the faces of rapper Lil' Wayne and singer Amy Winehouse. (Image credit: Flickr user Photog*Phillip)
Asian Characters: Lost in Translation
If you're going to get Chinese or Japanese characters permanently inked into your skin, consult someone who reads the language. Basketball player Marquis Daniels of the Boston Celtics thought he'd gotten his initials on his arm, but instead he got a tattoo that reads "healthy woman roof." And when singer Britney Spears got a tattoo of the Chinese word for "mysterious," it turned out to mean "strange."
So why is it so many tattoos get lost in translation? Flash sheets -the patterns used by most tattoo artists- are rarely fact-checked. Instead, they're passed around informally from one professional to the next. Legendary tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle, who started inking people in 1949, was known for a more cautious approach: He refused to tattoo foreign characters at all. If he didn't understand it, he wouldn't tattoo it. (Image credit: Flickr user Bobby Edwards)
Lambda: Gamer Pride
Recently, fans of Half-Life, a computer game series, have begun showing off new tattoos based on the series' logo -a stylized, lower-case lambda. In the game, the Greek letter symbolizes resistance, but in the wider tattoo community, it signifies something quite different: "I'm gay and proud." Back in the early 1970s, when the gay liberation movement was still growing in force, the homosexual community adopted the lambda as a symbol of pride.
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The article by Clay Wirestone is reprinted from Scatterbrained section of the January-February 2011 issue of mental_floss magazine. Subscribe today to get it delivered to you!
Be sure to visit mental_floss' website and blog for more fun stuff!
On one hand, you have to feel for someone who is working in a language they don't know. On the other hand, these are too funny to not pass along! In some cases, you kind of know what they are trying to say, but the writer just doesn't quite get there. Others are totally off in the ozone. Link
Atlas Obscura is hosting the second annual International Obscura Day on April 9, 2011, in partnership with Hendrick's Gin. This is a day set aside for "expeditions, back-room tours and hidden treasures" in places near or not-so-near. Events will take place in 61 cities (so far). Here are some of the most popular:
If none of these events are near you, there are plenty more to find at Atlas Obscura. Make a point to participate in an expedition you'll never forget! Link
Watch grapes turn into raisins in only 30 seconds, through the magic of time-lapse photography. This video follows a bunch of grapes over three months. You can make raisins yourself, in a week or so, but you should separate the raisins to maximize the drying surface and put them in a warm place, like in direct sunlight. -via the Presurfer
UK artist Tom Hardwidge makes intricate steampunk insect sculptures he calls Arthrobots from recycled materials, including deactivated ammunition and watch parts. Some of these delicate artworks are for sale!
Amy from Very Culinary made a trailer for her site that mirrors the Inception trailer exactly, except that it's about cooking. She also posted a shot-by-shot comparison in case you want to see how closely the two trailers match. Link -via The Daily What
Happy Alfred Hitchcock Day! In honor of the great filmmaker, here are five things you may not know about the legendary director, courtesy of Stephen Rebello, the author of Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho.
1. Alfred Hitchcock never won a Best Director Oscar, yet sixteen of his films garnered fifty nominations, his 1940 classic Rebecca won Best Picture, and he was nominated as Best Director for Rebecca, Suspicion, Spellbound, Lifeboat, Rear Window and Psycho. “Always a bridesmaid,” he philosophized, “never a bride.”
2. Although Hitchcock, who once called actors “cattle,” was not considered an “actor’s director,” such stars as Cary Grant, James Stewart, Ingrid Bergman, Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Robert Walker, Grace Kelly, Doris Day, Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh and Tippi Hedren gave some of their finest performances in his films.
3. Hitchcock admired the work of fellow directors F. W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder, but he also repeatedlywatched guilty pleasures Smokey and the Bandit and Benji; the latter 1974 stray dog hit reportedly made the dog-loving Hitchcock cry.
4. Hitchcock married his screenwriter-editor-assistant director wife Alma in 1926 and they remained constant companions and working partners until he died in 1980. Their only child, actress Patricia Hitchcock appeared on Broadway and in her father’s Stage Fright, Strangers On a Train and Psycho.
5. Hitchcock was famed for his wry, very British sense of humor which often expressed itself in practical jokes: pretending to lose the key to the handcuffs that bound together for an entire day his The 39 Steps stars Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll; giving an elegant dinner party at which every course, from soup to dessert, was bright blue; and switching off the lights on the set of Strangers On a Train and stranding his daughter Patricia for three hours at the top of a Ferris wheel.
Stephen Rebello is a screenwriter, journalist, and the author of Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, which has been bought by Paramount Pictures and The Montecito Picture Company for production as a dramatic feature film. Get more Hitchcock news from Rebello on Twitter at @HitchandPsycho.
She loves playing Dungeons & Dragons, but she wants more. Can true love drag a nerd out of the basement long enough for a dinner date? The animation by Brad Jonas accompanies a song by the Doubleclicks. -Thanks, A Seventy!
After reading these notes to anonymous troublemakers -and every office has one or two of those types- I realize how glad I am to work from home, despite the relatively minor annoyances. At least now when someone steals my lunch, its someone I have to feed anyway. See 39 more of these notes that you will probably relate to. Link-Thanks, Jane/Sierra!
A rather large solar flare occurred on February 14th, which signals the beginning of cycle of flares that will reach its peak, called a solar maximum, in about two years. How bad can they get? The worst solar flare on record occurred in 1859 and was named the Carrington Event, after the scientist who studied it.
The flares were so powerful that "people in the northeastern U.S. could read newspaper print just from the light of the aurora," Daniel Baker, of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, said at a geophysics meeting last December.
In addition, the geomagnetic disturbances were strong enough that U.S. telegraph operators reported sparks leaping from their equipment—some bad enough to set fires, said Ed Cliver, a space physicist at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Bedford, Massachusetts.
In 1859, such reports were mostly curiosities. But if something similar happened today, the world's high-tech infrastructure could grind to a halt.
Such a flare today could disrupt our cellular signals, internet, GPS system, satellite transmissions, and even our electrical grid. Read all about it at National Geographic.
