This illustration contains the names of 48 musical groups rendered as icons. Can you figure out the names of the bands? Click on the image at El Espíritu de los Cínicos to see the answers. Link -via Gorilla Mask

The game of marbles is estimated to go back 5,000 years. Through most of their history, marbles were made of stone, bone, clay, or whatever material was available. Truly round marbles were a rare and expensive toy, but we eventually found ways to make enough of them for everyone.

1. The glass maker Elias Greiner Vetters Sohn worked for Farbglashuette Lauscha, a German glass company founded in the 1500s. In 1846 he invented the marbelschere, or marble scissors, with which a glassmaker could cut a rope of glass and forms balls with the soft pieces. Greiner received a patent in 1849 for the invention of "artificial semi-precious and precious stone balls", or as we call them, glass marbles. To produce enough of these hand-made marbles, the company gave Greiner his own factory.

2. Marbles were first mass-produced in Akron, Ohio in 1884 when the Akron Toy Company began producing clay marbles. The man behind the marbles, Samuel C. Dyke, founded The American Marble & Toy Manufacturing Company in 1891, which became the biggest American toy company of the 19th century. For the first time, marbles became cheap enough for children to buy them with their own money.

3. Samuel Dyke also produced handmade glass marbles in Akron. In 1890, he hired master glass maker James Harvey Leighton to train workers in making glass marbles. Eventually, Dyke's factory was turning out a million marbles a day. When it burned in 1904, so many children rummaged through the ruins for marbles that, for safety's sake, the remains of the building were buried. But there was no shortage of marbles for sale, as dozens of companies in the Akron area were making marbles and other toys at the time.

4. Danish immigrant Martin F. Christensen invented a machine to mass-produce glass marbles in 1902, but didn't receive a patent on his creation until 1905. However, by then he had already opened a marble factory in, yes, Akron, Ohio which cranked out 12 million glass marbles every year.

5. In the mid-1990s, the site of the burned American Marble factory was a parking lot. The city decided to replace it with a park, and as the ground was dug up, thousands of very old marbles were uncovered. So a portion of the park became home to the American Toy Marble Museum, which opened to the public in 2002. Many of the unearthed marbles are on display at the museum in Akron.

W00t! It's time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog. Can you guess what this ...thing is used for?

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

For more clues, check out the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!

Update 11/7/10 - The answer is A Japanese traveling candlestick, it's missing the part that would have caught the wax. Oskar got it right first, but didn't specify a T-shirt. Congrats to Cristal who made laugh with "Mr. Burns' liver spot locator."

Prank Packs are gift boxes with ridiculously fake products printed on the outside. Give a gift in one of these and be ready for an uncomfortably awkward expression of gratitude: "Uh, thanks, I always wanted a motorized rolling pin (or a talking coffee cup, or a hat that doubles as a fish net)." That's when you show them the nice personal gift that you put inside! This year's new designs include the pictured iArm, the Pet Petter, and the Family Blankeez. Link

This is a wonderful way to look at the world. I just wish I knew who the original artist is. -via The Daily What

Update: The artist is Selin Jessa. http://positive-posters.com/submission/perspective-5/ -Thanks, Andy!

A return visit to a carbon sink facility
by Nan Swift, Improbable Research staff

The Museum of Burnt Food continues to grow and prosper. Since our last visit to the museum, the collection has moved to a new facility in Arlington, Massachusetts. A small lake next to the building serves as a scenic, yet high-capacity emergency reaction vessel. Curator and founder Deborah Henson-Conant has nearly doubled the museum’s holdings. The photos here represent a small but diverse sampling.

Always a leader in the campaign against global warming—and in particular, the struggle to reduce the amount of carbon accumulating in the atmosphere—the Museum of Burnt Food is the first major museum to develop an in-house carbon sink policy. Every year, every item in the collection is washed in a carbon sink. After washing and drying an item, the museum staff evaluates its condition; in selected cases the item is reburnt.

Cider in Situ #2

Apple cider warmed on a stove ad infinitum. This specimen of Cider-in-Situ is a companion piece to the famous “Free-Standing Hot Apple Cider”—the original seed which grew to become the Museum of Burnt Food. Donated by Gary Dryfoos, circa 2000.

Burnt Whole Wheat Tortilla

What was intended as a “quick snack on a whole wheat tortilla” became this item in the Museum of Burnt Food. Topping unknown. Donated by L. Von Hopper. Acquired in 2003.

Whole Wheat Toast under Glass

Whole wheat toast, burnt. Acquired circa 1995.

“Kruncheroni ’n Cheese”

Remains of attempt by a 14-year-old boy to make dinner from a package of Kraft Macaroni-and-Cheese. On loan from private collection of David and Susan Beno.

Thrice-Baked Potato

Thrice-baked potato (Solanum tuberosum extermino). Acquired pre-1989.

Burnt Lemon

Etiology unknown. Acquired circa 1996.

_____________________

This article is republished with permission from the July-August 2008 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

(YouTube link)

Surely you remember the useless machine, which did nothing but turn itself off (previously and previously). Here is a variation that made me laugh, from Saskview. -Thanks, Brett!

TV has seen a lot of talk shows come and go -some going faster than others. That can really hurt if it's one of your favorite celebrities trying out the talk show format. If you remember those less-than-successful series, you'll do well in today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. I scored 75% -beat that if you can! Link

Illustrator Kevin Kidney once reminisced about the wonderful tree that was the center of the Disney film The Swiss Family Robinson. One of his readers responded by not only tracking down the location of the tree, but taking several pictures of it as well!

"Kevin, I stumbled upon your post of March this year "Some Really Big Roots" which mentioned the original Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse from the movie of 1960. I live on the island of Tobago in the Caribbean and did research on the tree and actually found it still very much alive in Goldsborough!

Link -via Metafilter

How would you advise a student who decides she wants to go for a PhD in English literature? Not that it matters; the student doesn't really want advice, just a written recommendation. Despite the computer generated audio, this animation made me laugh. Warning: it might hit disturbingly close to home. Link

Chopsticks can be just two plain sticks, or they could be works of art, clever conversation pieces, or engineered to make eating simpler. You'll find some of each (except for the plain sticks) in a roundup by our own Jill Harness at Oddee. The chopsticks shown make learning to use them easy and fun for kids! Link

Pure Organic has an infographic with several ideas for what to do with your Jack-o-Lantern after Halloween. How about giving it to the birds?

Instead of throwing your pumpkin away, fill it with bird seed and let it serve as a feeder for birds. When it starts to get soft then compost it or refill with seeds and throw it into the woods.

I normally just paint ours for Halloween, so I can cook it later. Link -via Buzzfeed

The tallest piece in this set is only three inches tall! Kiva Ford makes hand-blown miniatures of many types of glassware and jewelry. Personally, I am a sucker for the cobalt blue glass creations. See more at the Etsy shop. Link -via Evil Mad Linkblog

A large rock stands out in the middle of a plain in Mongolia. The Taikhar chuluu is covered with inscriptions dating back as far as Turkic rule in Mongolia. Those inscriptions were followed by more in the Mongol language, then Tibetan, and even more modern graffiti.

Of course, the rock itself did not come here by itself, the legend says. Long time ago there lived a hero here called Bökebilig (“Strong and wise”). Suddenly a large snake started to come out from under the earth. Bökebilig did not like this, and he pushed back the snake from where it came, and then he closed the mouth of its cave with this rock which has been standing here ever since. Not far from the rock there is a small mountain called Altan sandali (“Golden throne”), of which tradition says that Bökebilig took a rest on it, while washing his hands in the nearby Tamir river.

Link

Allie Brosch, the mastermind behind Hyperbole and a Half, sends out entertaining but infrequent Tweets. This one was illustrated as a Twaggie, which (like all Twaggies) can be made into a t-shirt if you like. Link