Once, the United States issued $5,000, $10,000, and even $100,000 bills. Why on earth would someone carry bills that big, especially back when they were really worth something?

Believe it or not, it wasn’t just to save space in fatcats’ wallets. When the Treasury started printing these giant bills, their main purpose was making transfer payments between banks and other financial institutions. Before sophisticated wire transfer systems were fully developed, it was apparently easier and safer just to fork over a $5,000 bill to settle up with a fellow bank. Once transfer technology became safer and more secure, there really wasn’t much need for the big bills anymore.

Mental_floss has the story on when and why such large bills were issued, what they looked like, and why they aren't in circulation anymore. Link

Matthew Inman once again puts into comic form what we've all thought at one time or another. Has anyone ever been completely happy with their printer? Between the cost of ink, the difficulty of setting them up, and their reliability, it's a wonder anyone uses them anymore! Link -via Gorilla Mask

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Misery loves company, so this should make you feel as if you aren't alone. -via the Presurfer

Lee at Serious Eats spotted three different vendors in Thailand who sold ice cream sundaes served in hot dog buns.

The dessert was delicious: the bananas were chewy, the pineapple sweet and tart, the coconut ice cream rich, cold, and creamy, and the peanuts added the perfect amount of crunch and toasted flavor and the drop of milk brought all of the flavors together.

The bun? It got soggy pretty quickly (as I suspected) and if I ate it any slower, we would have had a real mess on our hands.

But it was a nice take on a portable sundae, minus the paper or plastic cup to throw out at the end! I kept thinking that it would have been interesting with a toasted bun.

If you toast that bread long enough, pretty soon you'll invent the ice cream cone. Link -via J-Walk Blog

Photographer Susan Mullally took portraits of homeless people who are part of The Church Under the Bridge in Waco, Texas. In each picture of the collection called What I Keep, the subject is holding an object that means something to them, and tells why. In the portrait shown, Vietnam veteran Tindall Herndon keeps his hat to remind him of fallen brothers-in-arms. Link -via Metafilter

Some animals eats algae and incorporates the algae's chlorophyll into its own body. According to Sidney K. Pierce of the University of South Florida in Tampa, the sea slug Elysia chlorotica no longer has to, because it has incorporated enough of the plant's genes into its own DNA to manufacture chlorophyll in its own body!

The slugs can manufacture the most common form of chlorophyll, the green pigment in plants that captures energy from sunlight, Pierce reported January 7 at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. Pierce used a radioactive tracer to show that the slugs were making the pigment, called chlorophyll a, themselves and not simply relying on chlorophyll reserves stolen from the algae the slugs dine on.

“This could be a fusion of a plant and an animal — that’s just cool,” said invertebrate zoologist John Zardus of The Citadel in Charleston, S.C.

Microbes swap genes readily, but Zardus said he couldn’t think of another natural example of genes flowing between multicellular kingdoms.

It looks like the tree of life has some spots where it merges as well as branches. Link

(image credit: Nicholas E. Curtis and Ray Martinez)

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A collaborative art film from a group called Hydra, Homunculus pits "little men" against each other. This is the stuff nightmares are made of. -via Everlasting Blort

Remember when you were a kid and you pulled a string to make a toy do something? Well, I do! Now that principle can charge your batteries. The YoGen hand-held charger was displayed at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where its developers showed how a pull of a string will recharge your phone battery.

A 5 Watt charge can be generated with a very easy pull of the string. It doesn't matter how fast or slow you pull, the same charge is generated. And I'm told it gives the same charge as if you were plugging into a wall, so 1 minute of pulling is equal to the same amount of talk time you'd get after 1 minute of wall charging, or about 5 minutes of talk time. It's intended as a solution for quick emergency charging.

YoGen also demonstrated a foot-powered charger for laptops. Link -via Digg

We looked forward to the promise of video phone calls for fifty years, but now that they are here, no one wants to actually use them. The hassle of dressing up or cleaning the room for a phone call only explains part of it. Joel Stein captures the exact reason why video phone calls never caught on, despite the availability of Skype.

...Skype breaks the century-old social contract of the phone: we pay close attention while we're talking and zone out while you are.

As soon as you begin to talk, I feel trapped and desperately scan the room for tasks I can do to justify the enormous waste of time that is your talking. I wash dishes, I file receipts, I read news sites, I make little fake suicide faces to my wife Cassandra about how much I want to hang up that cause her to yell "Joel, I need you now" in a really unconvincing way that I've asked her not to do, but I still can't stop making the suicide faces. In desperate times, when I am on my cell phone in the middle of nowhere, I will pace. The only other time I pace is when I stub a toe or burn myself. But when I start talking, I assume that you are sitting perfectly still, rapt.

Link -via Digg

(image credit: John Ueland/TIME)

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These folks in South Carolina have another innovative use for heavy equipment. You don't need a lake and a boat to go skiing! -via Buzzfeed

Sal Esposito of East Boston has been summoned for jury duty. He just might be excused for being a cat, but so far he is expected to serve. Sal's owners Guy and Anna Esposito think his name may have been pulled from census records, where he was listed as a pet.

Anna filed for Sal’s disqualification of service. However, the jury commissioner was unmoved and denied the request.

Sal’s service date at Suffolk Superior Court is set for March 23. Anna said that if the issue isn’t cleared up by then, she will simply have to bring the cat to court.

Link -via Digg

Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss is a lot of fun, especially for someone like me who spent decades connecting audio-video equipment professionally. I'm sure you will enjoy it, too! Can you identify ten different types of connecting cables, both old and new? Good luck; I scored 80%. Link

While people all over the world are marking the 75th anniversary of the birth of Elvis Presley, we would like to give a big shout out to a treasure who is still with us -University of Cambridge professor emeritus Stephen Hawking, who turns 68 years old today.

Born on the 300th anniversary of Galileo's death, Hawking is a theoretical physicist who is regarded as one of the most intelligent men alive. He has published numerous papers and books on the nature and origin of the universe, the best known being A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. Hawking also had a miniseries on PBS in 1997, Stephen Hawking's Universe, as well as a long list of TV and movie appearances. He is renowned for making difficult concepts comprehensible to the average reader or viewer.

Hawking has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, which has taken his ability to move or speak under his own power. He uses a speech synthesizer to communicate. Still, Hawking has been heard singing at least three times on Neatorama, in A Glorious Dawn, I Love the World, and in this lecture.

Among Hawking's degrees, honors, and other accomplishments is the awesome fact that he is the only person ever to play himself in any Star Trek film or series.

Happy Birthday, Professor Hawking!

Unusually cold temperatures in southern Florida are causing a novel problem -falling iguanas. Iguanas are an invasive species in Florida due to pet owners abandoning the lizards. When the temperature falls below 40 degrees, they automatically begin to hibernate and fall out of the trees they live in. Ron Magill of Miami Metrozoo has a warning for those who find the iguanas.

"I knew of a gentleman who was collecting them off the street and throwing them in the back of his station wagon, and all of a sudden these things are coming alive, crawling on his back and almost caused a wreck," Magill said.

The stories of "kamikaze iguanas" plummeting from trees were urban legends in Florida, but now have a plausible explanation. Link (with video)

Learn about the different species of big cats as you enjoy photographs by zoo photographer and "cat whisperer" Akishin Vyacheslav. Shown is a leopard with startling blue eyes. Link -via Digg