Preserved plants don't look much like their living counterparts after they are flattened and dried. The Harvard Museum of Natural History instead has displays of plants made of glass!

Leopold Blaschka and his son Rudolf came from a long line of talented glassmakers. As a hobby, Leopold began making glass flowers from illustrations in natural history books. So beautiful, accurate and delicate were these models, a buzz began to generate in his hometown in Germany, and a local aristocrat commissioned 100 glass orchids. Leopold’s son, Rudolf joined him in the painstakingly intricate work. Thus began a prolific career in natural history glassmaking, ending in the largest commission of their lives; an order from Harvard college for over 3000 plant and flower models for their botany students. Leopold didn’t live to see the completion of the project, but Rudolf continued on without him, working alone from 1895 - 1936, three years before his own death.

Link to story. Link to more photographs at Flickr.

(image credit: Curious Expeditions)

A ship discovered off the coast of North Carolina in 1997 has been identified by experts as the Queen Anne's Revenge, a ship used by the pirate Blackbeard. The ship was originally named Le Concorde before the pirate seized it from its French crew in 1717. Artifacts, such as this apothecary weight featuring two fleurs-de-lis, helped to identify the ship as Blackbeard's.

Le Concorde's surgeon, who was forced to serve briefly in Blackbeard's crew, may have owned the weights, designed for pharmaceuticals. Pirates could have also used the weights to measure gold dust, experts say.

See more pictures at National Geographic. Link

(image credit: Wendy M. Welsh, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources)

This wedding dress valued at 1.5 million dollars is made from 2009 peacock tail feathers! It was unveiled at a recent wedding expo in Nanjing, China. Link -via J-Walk Blog

There are plenty of over-the-counter erectile dysfunction pills available now. Whether they work or not, they have names that could fit right in the Star Trek universe! In this mental_floss quiz, can you tell which of ten names are actual pills, and which are characters found on one or more of the various Star Trek series? I scored just 60%; surely you can do better. Link

When you approach the North Pole, compasses don't work properly because the difference between the geographic pole and the magnetic pole are more pronounced than elsewhere. So the Catlin Arctic Survey, currently en route to the pole to measure the Arctic Ice Cap, are having to use alternate methods of navigation. To measure wind direction, they are using a pair of lacy panties! The expedition is led by veteran explorer Pen Hadow.

Mr Hadow, who was the first person to trek solo to the North Pole, said the knickers were kindly donated by a supporter of the expedition.

Speaking from the Arctic via satellite phone, he said: "It an entirely genuine situation. If you can get gossamer thin material and attach it your ski pole it is particularly useful for this project because we can cannot use the compass as we are so close to magnetic north and it is too cold to use the GPS.

This expedition is particularly difficult because they are taking a route that has never been traveled. They expect to reach the pole in May or June. Link -via Arbroath

Shoe designers have been busy incorporating the latest technology into shoes. This list has shoes embedded with iPod transmitters, CDs, MP3 players, GPS trackers, and headlights. Others have springs or computer-enhanced fit. The shoe pictured was produced especially for the social media site Digg, with glow-in-the-dark logos! http://aleptu.com/coolest-geeky-shoes-2919520.html -via Digg

Just reading this article can be painful. It has descriptions of the horrible treatments that were often the only thing available for what ailed you in the Middle Ages.

It was not a pleasant time to be a patient, but if you valued your life, there was no choice. To relieve the pain, you submitted to more pain, and with any luck, you might get better. Surgeons in the early part of the Middle Ages were often monks because they had access to the best medical literature – often written by Arab scholars. But in 1215, the Pope said monks had to stop practicing surgery, so they instructed peasants to perform various forms of surgery. Farmers, who had little experience other than castrating animals, came into demand to perform anything from removing painful tooth abscesses to performing eye cataract surgery.

Some of the medieval medical graphics may be NSFW. Link -via Gorilla Mask

(Vimeo link)

Sound designer Diego Stocco recorded different sounds made by sand, then turned them into music!

I had some sandbags in the backyard that I used in November during a rainy day. I was moving them to a different spot when I heard the noise of the sand. I thought that maybe I could try a new sound design technique so I bought some piezo film transducers and started to experiment with them.

The entire track is created only out of tuned sand tones. No additional sounds or waveforms. I emphasized the inner notes of the sand grains and mapped them on a sampler as a series of instruments. The grooves are all played live with various techniques, including taping two piezo films to my fingers.

http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Music-from-Sand/171792 -Thanks, Diego!

(Vimeo link)
Air guitar is something we all do at one time or another, but some folks take it to another level altogether! Watch some of the preliminary qualifiers for the International Air Guitar Championship, competing at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz Theatre in Austin, Texas. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Is this a great way to save public funds or a step down the slippery slope? KFC wants to fix potholes in city roads, then paint the company's name on top. They've already begun work in Louisville, and have offered the service to other cities.

But Brian Steele, a spokesman for the Chicago Department of Transportation, which is charged with repairing the city's potholes, said "We don't allow any type of printing or advertising placed on a city street or sidewalk."

He said the city was looking to promote and seek support for its own pothole repair program, and said they've been "in discussion" with an advertising firm for more than months about the idea.

As for the KFC offer, Steele said the city first learned of it Wednesday. "Were looking into it [the KFC offer].....Until we learn more we don't know how it stacks up."

The KFC offer is part of its "Fresh Tastes Best" advertising campaign. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-090317pothole-kfc-story,0,406116.story -via reddit

Craig Damrauer uses math equations to illustrate concepts that aren't math. For example:

Cleanliness = Godliness - 1

Crazy = Talking to oneself - ( cell phone + ear piece )

Nagging = reminding + reminding + reminding

Link -via Metafilter

Hundreds of detectives in Germany spent two years trying to track down a mysterious female serial killer whose DNA was collected at 39 different crime scenes. When no progress was made in the cases, police offered a 300,000 euro reward for information leading to the killer.

It's no surprise the money was never claimed, however, because the so-called ‘phantom killer’ was a complete myth!

Detectives had apparently been tracking the DNA of a factory worker who packaged cotton buds used by the police to collect samples, according to ‘Stern.de’.

Link -via reddit

This list of manly sports include a couple I've never heard of, including Calcio Fiorentino.

This Italian sport originated in 16th century Florence. Called Bareknuckle Football, it’s a manlier version of, well, everything. Punching, head-butting, and choking are all legal. In 50 minutes each team tries to score as many points (cacce) as possible. In simpler terms this means that whichever team beats up the other more effectively will win. The closest thing we have to modern day gladiatorial combat. Seriously, they used to release prisoners to perform. Manly.

Most of the sports listed are violent or injury-inducing, but not all. Link -via the Presurfer

Continuing the series begun with Fast Food in Europe (previously at Neatorama) HealthAssist takes a look at fast foods found in Australia and various Asian countries. In Indonesia:

In most cities it is common to see Chinese dishes such as bakpao (buns), bakmi (noodles), and bakso (meatballs). Though, pork is not used since the majority of Indonesians are Muslims. Another popular Indonesian street foods and snacks are siomay (mackerel fish meat served with peanut sauce, pempek (fish and sago), bubur ayam (chicken congee), bubur kacang hijau (green beans porridge), satay (diced or sliced chicken, goat, mutton, beef or fish), nasi and mie goreng (fried rice and fried noodle), gorengan (Indonesian assorted fritters).

Link -Thanks, Karen!

The first photograph of Earthrise was taken in 1966 by NASA's robotic probe Lunar Orbiter 1. After the Apollo manned lunar missions brought back better pictures, the original image and other priceless photographs stored on 2-inch tape were dumped into storage and forgotten. In the 70s, NASA hired Nancy Evans to look after their archives. Evans was appalled that a lot of the space agency's original data was regularly dumped to save on storage costs.

When the clerk came in to ask about the Lunar Orbiter tapes, she didn't hesitate.

"Do not destroy those tapes," Evans commanded.

She talked her bosses at JPL into storing them in a lab warehouse. "I could not morally get rid of this stuff," said Evans, 71, in an interview at her Sun Valley home.

She had no idea what she was letting herself in for. The full collection of Lunar Orbiter data amounted to 2,500 tapes. Assembled on pallets, they constituted an imposing monolith 10 feet wide, 20 feet long and 6 feet high.

The mountain of tapes was just part of Evans' new burden.

There was no point, she realized, in preserving the tapes unless she also had an FR-900 Ampex tape drive to read them. But only a few dozen of the machines had been made for the military. The $330,000 tape drives were electronic behemoths, each 7 feet tall and weighing nearly a ton.

The L.A. Times has the story of how Evans fought bureaucracy and outmoded technology for 30 years to preserve the 1966 pictures. Link -via Metafilter

Also see a post with photographs that follow the story of the recovery. Link

(image credit: NASA)