How well do you know your world leaders, or NFL placekickers? You'd think this Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss would be easy, but you may need some real luck to identify these twelve names. I didn't know any of them! So I scored 50%, just like the odds said I would. Link

Chris' "permanent roommate" packs his lunch with notes that are kind of like a smile for an appetizer.

Anyway, when we have leftover dinner, the permanent roommate packs us both a lunch. Since they look identical, she started leaving a Post-It note so I would know which lunch was mine. At first they just said Chris but I guess she got bored with just writing my name. She started writing funny messages. I saved my favorites.

http://chrisilluminati.com/?p=1490 -via reddit

Archaeologists have recently found a temple underneath the city of Alexandria, Egypt dedicated to the cat goddess Bastet. It contains around 600 statues of cats!

Egyptian archaeologists who found the temple say it was built by Queen Berenike II, wife of Greek King Ptolemy III, who ruled Egypt from 246 to 221 B.C.

Cats were important house pets in ancient Egypt and were often depicted in private tombs. In some cases, cats were mummified in the same way as humans and buried at temples.

The statue pictured is made of limestone. Link

(image credit: Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities)

Vinegar and milk, together in one commercially-available drink in Japan. Only those who can read the Japanese label will see that it also contains grapefruit juice. Link -via Arbroath

You see here only a small portion of a much larger graphic showing a timeline, or maybe a family tree, of famous LOLcats we all know and love. Happycat, who was the first to ask for a cheeseburger, is at the top and lots of his progeny are at the bottom. Link -via Gorilla Mask

As they say, "an apple a day keeps the doctor away." With this calendar, you get an apple every day of the month and it helps you keep up with the days as well. The Serviceplan advertising agency of Munich, Germany created the apple calendar for AOK health insurance. Every month, fill it with 28, 30, or 31 apples and adjust the numbered calendar behind the transparent tube. Then eat one apple each day and see the calendar advance. Too bad the calendars aren't for sale, but you may see them in AOK branch offices. http://www.ibelieveinadv.com/2010/01/aok-apple-calendar/ -via bookofjoe

The Late Night Wars have given us plenty to read about, but this sort of thing has been going on for decades. You probably don't know the story of the biggest network talk show bomb ever, The Jerry Lewis Show. It only lasted for thirteen episodes and would have been cut sooner if the network hadn't been contractually obligated to air thirteen shows.

"I'd like to say welcome to all you nice..." before being lambasted with screeching feedback. "I realize two hours is an unusual amount of time but I want to answer the big question ... after all let's face it, movies are a lot longer than two hours, you know. Have you ever heard anyone say 'What can Liz and Dick do for two hours?'" Lewis tapped the boom mike and said, "This is on isn't it, sweetheart?" The mugging, the schmaltzy song, the unbelievable feedback and the 'Is this thing on' murmur made it feel like the world's most overwrought screenplay. But it was the real deal. See for yourself here. Jerry continued with a nervous monologue, "Next week, September the 28th, God willing we're still on, September the 28th, I will operate on my own appendix." Three and a half minutes into the highly anticipated production and Jerry was already predicting his own demise.

The article has links to several episodes. Link -via Metafilter

McDonalds in Japan is selling a series of hamburgers called Big America. There are burgers named for Texas, California, New York, and Hawaii and they look really big. Too bad we don't have them in America! Link

Long-time country music fans know that a "Nudie suit" is a stage outfit festooned with rhinestones like Porter Wagoner and Hank Williams, Sr. used to wear. Nudie Cohn is the man who designed these suits for more musical artists than you knew, not to mention cars and other props of show business life. The Selvedge Yard has a look at Cohn and his creations, with lots of pictures. Pictured is Cohn with Gram Parsons in a Nudie suit. Link -via Everlasting Blort

(College Humor link)

It's not "Yum yum yum", it's "Nom nom nom"! This kitten will tell you all about it. -via Unique Daily

Smoking bans are nothing new. The pope enacted one barely after Sir Walter Raleigh taught Europeans how to light up. Mental_floss has collected seven incidences from history, from the papal ban of 1590 to World War II, when smoking was deemed forbidden. Even places that made money from tobacco restricted its use.

In 1632, Massachusetts became wary of the fire danger from smoldering butts, so it banned outdoor smoking. Connecticut followed suit in 1647 when it dictated that citizens could only smoke once a day, and even then one couldn’t be a social smoker, since the law dictated that smokers could only burn one when “not in company with any other.” In the 1680s, Philadelphia joined in with a ban on smoking in the city’s streets.

Those particular laws did not last long. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/45470

The US Airways Airbus 320 that landed in the Hudson River just a year ago is for sale. In the story known as "Miracle on the Hudson", Captain Sully Sullenberger brought the plane down with no loss of life only 23 minutes into the flight when a flock of geese jammed the engines. Now the insurance company is selling what's left of the plane.

The auction — “As Is/Where Is (New Jersey),” Chartis Insurance Group is compelled to disclose — does not include the airliner’s engines or avionics, and the lot is somewhat in pieces. But apart from that it seems to be surprisingly intact for a craft that hit the water at a normal touchdown speed with ad hoc landing gear comprising the entire fuselage and wings — which, by the way supported all 155 people aboard as they safely deplaned and awaited rescue craft on the frigid Hudson.

The offering page is remarkably bland, not even considering the high drama surrounding the most famous water landing ever. Under the formal description of the accident, it says: “Aircraft suffered severe bird strike event resulting in water emergency landing.” The description of the damage is simple: “Severe water damage throughout airframe. Impact damage to underside of aircraft.”

The craft itself is described as “1999 AIRBUS A320-214? and nowhere on the page is even the most oblique mention of the significance of this particular piece of aviation salvage.

Bids are being accepted through March 27. Link

(image credit: Janis Krum)

No, it's not really made of glass, but you can see the heart beating inside this frog, one of 30 new species of creatures found in the highlands of Ecuador. See more of the discoveries in a photo gallery at National Geographic. Link -via Metafilter

(image credit: Paul S. Hamilton, RAEI)

Despite sharing a name with the deadly sin of laziness, sloths aren't all that slow and they don't sleep all day either. But they stay so still that scientists had to glue electrodes to their heads to tell when they slept! The sloth's lack of activity is their camouflage to avoid being eaten by eagles.

To that end, sloths have picked up a couple of useful adaptations. First, they're covered in a unique sort of fur that's an ideal breeding ground for algae. Second, they're able to spend most daylight hours immobile and, when they do move, it's usually very, very slowly. The result: From the air, sloths look more like green vegetation than tasty, meaty eagle snack.

Learn more about sloths at Boing Boing. Link

(image credit: flickrfavorites)

PS: Happy anniversary to Boing Boing, celebrating ten years of blogging!