Dean Durrant and Alison Spooner of Fleet, Hants, England had twins seven years ago, two girls, Hayleigh appearing black, Lauren appearing white. The odds of such a combination are quite high -but now they've done it again! Alison gave birth to twin girls November 13th. Miya has dark skin and Leah appears white.

Alison said: "I was shocked when I first found out I was pregnant with twins again — but I never thought for one second they would turn out the same as last time.

After the babies were born they weren’t breathing properly, so they were taken to a special care unit.

It wasn’t until about five days after they were born that we saw them side by side for the first time.

And when they were together it was clear that one was darker than the other. It was unbelievable."

The babies are now home and reported healthy. Link -Thanks, Sharyn Bramscher!

(image credit: Solent News & Photo Agency)

"Neatorama isn’t a political blog," so here's a t-shirt depicting president-elect Obama riding a unicorn, signifying a wonderful fantasy. $19 from Chris Bishop. Link -Thanks, Andrew Crocker!

Mata Hari was the stage name of Margaretha Zelle, an exotic dancer who was lured into the spy business during World War I. The French, who recruited her, suspected her of being a double agent and sentenced her to death. Read an eyewitness account of her execution on October 15, 1917, from Henry Wales, a British reporter who covered the event. Link -via Cynical-C

Logos are everywhere. Because of this, only a few can rise among the noise -- and often it's the more unique logos that are most memorable. Sometimes to be unique, you've also got to be weird. In this post, we showcase twenty lovably strange logos that work.

The pictured logo is for Rehabilitation Hospital Corporation of America. Makes sense to me! Link -via the Presurfer

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He's got more self-control than any human I know! Yeah, this would be even better without the laugh track. -via Bits and Pieces

Scientists have long pondered an event 12,900 years ago that caused the disappearance of the Clovis people of North America and the extinction of large mammals such as the mammoth, mastodon, saber-toothed cat, and the North American camel. One theory is that a comet broke into fragments and showered burning material over the continent. Now there's some evidence -a layer of nanodiamonds have been found at a layer of sediment buried 12,900 years ago. The diamonds could have only been formed by a high-pressure high-temperature event.

These diamonds are measured in nanometers -- mere billionths of meters -- and one of them would not suffice for an engagement ring unless the recipient had an extremely small finger. Indeed, these diamonds are visible only with the aid of the most advanced microscopes.

The wide distribution of the nanodiamonds could be a sign that the comet broke into pieces in space and that the fragments burned up explosively over a broad area of North America. The heat and pressure from the event transformed carbon on the planet's surface into the tiny diamonds, the scientists said.

"Imagine these fireballs exploding in the air. A Clovis hunter standing and looking at these things would have seen a canopy of fire as these things came in and exploded," said Allen West, a geophysicist and one of the paper's co-authors. "There would have been no sound. There would have been massive explosions. Brilliant light, brighter than the sun. There would have been radiant heat -- it would have been capable, at the very least, of giving him serious burns and, at the maximum, of incinerating him."

This theory would explain the climate change at the time, when the warming planet was plunged into another, shorter ice age. Skeptics cite lack of a crater or other surface evidence in refuting the theory. Link -via Digg

Volcanos are the most dangerous type of natural catastrophe, and have killed more people than most of us are aware of. Read about each of the ten deadliest eruptions in recorded history. To give you an idea, the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which you are probably most familiar with, only comes in at number ten. Pictured is Galunggung Volcano in Indonesia. http://www.hottnez.com/10-deadliest-volcanic-eruptions/ -Thanks, Grzegorz Paslawski!

The final Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss for 2008 challenges you to cheat death -retroactively. Match the famous dead person with the object that might have prevented his or her death. Some are easy; other I had to guess, and I ended up with a score of 70%. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/21340

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Uncle Jay wraps up the entire year to the tunes of your favorite Christmas carols. -Thanks, Duke!

Even Dick Tracy would be amazed at a normal-sized watch that can record eight hours of color video with sound! Just plug your watch into your computer via USB and download your recordings. On sale for only $199.95. Link -Thanks, =RaZ34=- Ron!

Anyone who's been around Neatorama for any length of time is familiar with the Rickroll. For New Year's Eve, Randall Munroe of xkcd takes the Rickroll concept and stands it on its head to surprise a girl. Link -Thanks, mmat!

You don't need a new calendar for the new year, if you've got 12 cents and an understanding of binary numbers! Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories posted instructions for making your own perpetual calendar.

It's Wednesday, the fourth day of the week. The binary number for 4 is 100. We use "heads" for 1 and "tails" for 0. So the left hand column has (top to bottom) heads-tails-tails = 100 binary = 4th day of week = Wednesday. (If you don't already speak binary, no biggie. Start here or here and join us in a minute.)

It's December, month 12, and 12 in binary is 1100, so the middle column is heads-heads-tails-tails.

Finally, the last column is all heads, since it's December 31, and 31 decimal = 11111 binary.

Got that? Me neither. Link

British inventor Josh Silver began working on eyeglasses that can be tuned by the wearer in 1985. His goal is to bring better vision to a billion people worldwide who cannot afford, or don't have access to, an optometrist.

Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device's tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.

The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.

Silver's goal is to distribute a billion pairs of his adaptive glasses to poor people by 2020 (the pun in the year is intended, I'm sure). Already, 30,000 pairs have been given out in 15 countries.

"The reaction is universal," says Major Kevin White, formerly of the US military's humanitarian programme, who organised the distribution of thousands of pairs around the world after discovering Silver's glasses on Google. "People put them on, and smile. They all say, 'Look, I can read those tiny little letters.'"

Silver hopes to get the cost of manufacturing each pair down to a dollar each. Link -Thanks, Cuimhne!

(image credit: Michael Lewis)

Imagine bungee jumping off the Bloukrans Bridge in South Africa -it's 710 feet high! Fantastic view, but um, I think I'll pass. But you can watch others do it, because 20 Amazing Places to Bungee Jump has videos to go with each venue. http://www.hottnez.com/20-amazing-places-to-bungee-jump-be-a-james-bond-or-jump-into-a-volcano/ -Thanks, Grzegorz Paslawski!

Karen at HealthAssist measured and photographed amounts of food that have 300 calories. Each is pictured with a $10 bill for scale, and the cost of the amount is also noted. If you are counting calories, this is good news in that 300 calories of the most nutritious foods will fill you up. The sad news is that the cost of 300 calories in breads, pasta, and sweets is so much cheaper than fresh fruits and vegetables. Link -Thanks, Karen!