We said goodbye to summer when school started. Then we said goodbye to summer when Labor Day came and went. Now we say goodbye for the final time, as it becomes official. The autumnal equinox is tomorrow, at 4:44 Eastern time, to be precise. From that point on, the nights will be longer than the days in the Northern Hemisphere. But that also means fun stuff like Halloween, football, colorful trees, Thanksgiving, new winter clothes, and fatty foods!
We brought you another fascinating Milestones book this week, called The Drug Book, in the post From Arsenic to Xanax, 250 Milestones in the History of Drugs.
Eddie Deezen posed the question What Did Barney Rubble Do for a Living?
The Dark Side of Peter Pan came from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
The Annals of Improbable Research gave us The Adventures of M.D. Levitt, M.D. A man also known as Dr. Fart.
The Origins of the Periodic Table was from mental_floss magazine.
We also had a list from the Bathroom Reader series in Calculator Words.
Hy Conrad brought us another Whodunit titled All in the Family.
The What Is It game this week had a mystery object that turned out to be a fisherman's surf sinker, also called a breakaway sinker, spider weight, or grapnel sinker. Neatoramanauts had much better answers. Berhard said it was the "matrix bug" that crawled into Neo's belly (in the "only" Matrix movie). That's funny -and worth a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! Another t-shirt goes to DrWhat who said,
I'm just going to go ahead and state the obvious. It's an electric marshmallow roaster. You poke one marshmallow on each of the four wires and then connect the two leads to your power source. A few seconds later, toasted from the inside out all ready for s'mores.
Congratulations to both! See the answers to all this week's mystery items at the What Is It? blog.
We can all learn a lesson in procrastination from Alex. I offered to write congratulatory posts for a couple of contests we had some time ago, but he graciously said he'd do it. A few weeks later, we found out who won the last Neatorama New T-shirts Giveaway and the Dream Picnic Pin to Win Giveaway. However, the actual winners knew much sooner.
Speaking of giveaways, we're having a Halloween costume contest of sorts, but you don't have to dress up -just send pictures! Send in a picture of a costume you've worn or made for Halloween, even if it was a long time ago, and we'll feature them on the Halloween blog during the month of October. Also, the top costume pictures will win t-shirts from the NeatoShop! It doesn't even have to be a good costume -we'd like to see your funny and/or embarrassing Halloween costumes, too! Send your picture, and the story behind it, to tips@neatorama.com and join the roster of featured costumes that we'll start posting in October (that's only ten days away) on the Halloween blog!
John loves polls, even when there's no question in the post. In South Korean Government Workers Are Given Romance Training, the poll he tacked on shows that y'all think the Neatorama crew should not be given romance training because "it should be harder, not easier, for you to reproduce." I did not even see that poll until this morning.
The (non-giveaway) post with the most comments this week was How to Empty a Swimming Pool, followed by The Dark Side of Peter Pan and Escalator Etiquette.
The most popular post was The Dark Side of Peter Pan. Second place goes to Redneck Socks and What Did Barney Rubble Do for a Living? came in third.
The post that people ♥ed most was Dancing Queen of the Bus Stop, with Leonardo Da Vinci’s Incredible Mechanical Lion coming in second, and CCTV Captured Young Men Fixing a Broken Bike Rack was third.
And the most emailed post was A Field Guide to Procrastinators with Ginger Cat vs The Paper Army in second place.
The most Facebook likes went to the post A Field Guide to Procrastinators. That was followed by The Dark Side of Peter Pan, and Hello Kitty: The Contacts got third place.
The most reTweeted post was The Dark Side of Peter Pan.
The big hit on G+ was Custom Car is Driven from the Back Seat, which was shared 605 times. That's outstanding! Thanks to everyone who shared our posts on social media.
There's more to Neatorama than what you see on this main page. Over at the Neatoramanauts Facebook page, you'll see extra stuff like this poster on comma usage. Twaggies has an entire archive of great punny illustrated Tweets. And if you love puns, you'll want to browse the funny t-shirt section of the NeatoShop! Speaking of the NeatoShop, that's where you'll find Halloween costumes, decorations, and accessories to make your party stand out. And don't forget to check out the Halloween blog, which we are in the process of beefing up to help you get ready for a great Halloween!