In the small town of Glacier View (population 375), Alaska, they've held a unique Fourth of July celebration since 2006. In midsummer, the sun stays out too late for fireworks, so instead they launch cars off a cliff and watch them soar through the air before landing on the beach below. Of course, there are no drivers. The steering wheel is tied to stay straight, and the gas pedal held down somehow. They have ramps for a better launch, but not all the cars find one without a driver. Spectators gather perilously close to the landing area. This year's launch included a school bus, a police car, an RV, a Barbie Corvette, and a replica of the General Lee. The destruction was massive, and the crowd was satisfied. This video shows only the car launches; you'll find a video of the entire show at Born in Space. A good time was had by all.

The sign above, displayed at a bar in Paris, is from the 1950s campaign to fight alcoholism and promote sobriety. The text above the graphic says, in English, "Never more than one liter of wine per day. The correct serving: one quarter of a bottle per meal." I don't know about you, but that's more wine than I have drunk in the last ten years. But this is France.

France is no stranger to temperance movements. In the early 20th century, the country waged a war on absinthe, with the help of the nation's wine industry. Daily wine wasn't at all universal until soldiers from France's different regions met each other to fight World War I. By then, French wine was stronger than it had been historically. By the 1950s, many people had cars, and that's why a national campaign was waged to get people to limit themselves to a liter a day. In 1956, France outlawed wine at school for children under 14. That was amended to include high school students in 1981. Read about the French campaigns to get citizens to limit the amount of alcohol they consume at Messy Nessy Chic.

You've seen a lot of creative LEGO projects here over the years. Some are from kits that have exactly the pieces you need, but even more satisfying are the weird and creative things people did with their existing collection of weird-shaped bricks and LEGO pieces. In this video, we get a glimpse into the process of repurposing those odd pieces into something new and different. The first section is about individual pieces and their potential, so you get the idea. I was already impressed in the first minute. But as the number of available pieces grows exponentially, so do the finished products, and these are things you won't find in a LEGO set no matter how much you spend. When the projects get into the 100,000 and up categories, you'll see some truly amazing projects. The upper limit is two million pieces, which are only found at LEGO Land. The word is "versatility." The other word is "imagination." If you have those, there's nothing you can't build with LEGO pieces.   

Fly Me to the Moon is new movie starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum in theaters now. It's a romantic comedy about the 1969 Apollo 11 mission that saw the first men walk on the moon. The premise is an alternate history in which NASA was simultaneously trying to get men to the moon, and staging a fake mission to present to the public just in case the real one failed. If that's not romantic comedy material, I don't know what is.

The movie riffs off the conspiracy theory that the moon shot was completely faked, an idea that sprang up almost immediately after the Apollo 11 mission. A conspiracy like that would have involved too many people to ever succeed, and might have been even more difficullt than landing on the moon. NASA is fine with Fly Me to the Moon, and even cooperated in its making. This movie is far from the first to address the conspiracy theory, and Smithsonian introduces us to several other other films that include a faked space mission in one way or another, along with the history of the faked moon landing theory itself.

Today we have plenty of cameras that will take an up close and personal look at the the creatures that surround us, down to microscopic size, as we've seen in the Nikon Small World photography competitions. But 100 years ago, just seeing a spider's face was a rare treat. Sure, there were people who had mounted insect collections, but those weren't available to everyone, and David Fairchild considered them unnatural after they had dried up. He and his wife Marian published a book in 1914 full of photographic images of the insects, spiders, and other tiny creatures in their backyard called Book of Monsters.

Cameras of the time were not up to macrophotography, so they came up with a system that separated the lens from the photographic plate by a cardboard tube that went up to twenty feet long! The exposures were between 50 and 80 seconds, so they couldn't use live specimens, but their "fresh" specimens were fixed with wax to remain in place for the photo shoot. The text in Book of Monsters was overly dramatic, like a spider killing a fly was a “true picture of merciless cruelty.” The spider just considers it lunch, but such prose got kids interested in the book. Read about the making of Book of Monsters and see a gallery of the images it contained at the Public Domain Review. -via Nag on the Lake

Everyone knows the name Al Capone, and we all know he was a Chicago mob boss during Prohibition. Due to his mobsters' loyalty, corrupt deals with city officials, and the goodwill of the common people he helped out, federal agents could never get enough evidence to convict him of bootlegging or murder. They eventually imprisoned him for tax evasion, and that's you know about Al Capone. His story ends with prison, illness, and death.

But what did he leave behind? What happened to Capone's many family members? Or the gang he left behind in Chicago? A video from Weird History runs down the folks Capone left behind, and their stories vary immensely.

We know the story of Goldilocks as that of a little blonde girl who invades the home of a bear family and gets away with it because she's so young and not at all dangerous like you'd expect a home intruder to be. Besides, she's the protagonist. But it wasn't that way with earlier versions.  

The earliest documented version of the story of the three bears was from 1831, when Eleanor Mure wrote about an old woman who went into the bears' home and drank milk instead of eating porridge. But a version that could be from an earlier tale starred a fox named Scrapefoot who ventured into the three bears' castle. When the protagonist was changed to a little girl, she was first called “Silver-hair.” However, the story of a home invasion may go back much further if you don't have to have three bears in it. Read about the evolution of the tale of the three bears at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Elizabeth Tyler Wolcott)

One particular exit off the 110 in Los Angeles was both frustrating and dangerous because not only was it a left turn, it lacked a directional sign that would give drivers a chance to get in the left lane! After years of frustration, artist Richard Ankrom took matters into his own hands in 2001, literally, and added the instruction that the traffic sign needed. Ankrom is a professional sign maker, and went to great lengths to make the sign accurate to Caltrans standards and install it in a manner that no one would question. The result was indistinguishable from a genuine officially-sanctioned highway sign.

This act of vandalism immediately improved traffic flow and the peace of mind of the millions of drivers in Los Angeles looking for I-5. The new sign probably saved lives, too. Did Caltrans investigate this illegal change to their signage? No, they didn't even notice! Drivers were happy with the change, and just assumed it was official. Ankrom was surprised by his success, and eventually 'fessed up to the project about a year later. He even made a documentary about the project, which you can watch here. The stunt got all kinds of publicity, but Akrom wasn't arrested. After all, he did what needed to be done, and everyone was happy about it. Caltrans left Akrom's sign up for eight years before it was replaced with a new sign that has the proper directions. -Thanks, Brother Bill!

Japanese artist Itō Jakuchū painted many subjects in the 18th century, but he tended to favor birds, especially chickens. Jakuchū's chickens are more realistic and less stylized than other artists of the mid-Edo era, and hold up well today as beautiful images of nature.

Here in 2024, daiouika is an owner, admirer, and photographer of chickens. The chicken photographs he posts are akin to portraits. But daiouika's most fascinating project is recreating Jakuchū's paintings from almost 300 years ago in photographs! While you can't really make a chicken pose, he goes to great lengths to match the appearance of the chicken(s) and the background details. The results are exquisite. This kind of photo requires infinite patience, plus the subject's trust. And that's saying something, because chickens are the very definition of bird brains. But we love them, whether in the backyard or coming through a drive-through window. Check out daiouika's technique and see more of his Jakuchū recreations at Spoon & Tamago. -via Everlasting Blort

Dutch people saw a pole vault competition and said, "That looks like fun but this is the Netherlands; we have to do it over water." And so the sport of fierljeppen was born. It's also called polsstokverspringen, or in English, canal jumping. But seriously, folks, this was once the way to get to the other side of a canal efficiently if there is no bridge. It's far from the only time an everyday activity was turned into a competition, because that's what people do. The poles are between 26 and 43 feet long, and you are supposed to climb it while you are flinging yourself across the canal. Fierljeppen may look strange, but it takes strength, skill, and often a bit of luck to successfully complete a jump without looking utterly ridiculous. Great Big Story talked to champion jumpers Ruben Van Eijk and Mark Van Der Horst about this strange sport and what goes into it. -via Damn Interesting

Hurricane Beryl hit the Houston area this week, leaving at least 1.9 million people without electricity in 100°F. The response of the CenterPoint utility company has been . . . suboptimal. It can be hard to track which areas of the city have or do not have power, which is why, a few days ago, X user BBQ Bryan turned to the Whataburger app. Restaurants that are closed are greyed out on the above map.

KHOU News contacted the corporate offices of Texas's own haaaamburger chain, which advises also calling ahead to verify that particular restaurants are open.

-via Not the Bee

Alessandro Tappa is an artist in Vigevano, Italy who designs and builds wonderfully weird bicycles that are just normal enough to serve as functional means of transportation. The above model, which has a name that translates as "bike on the belly", requires a fully prone position to ride.

Back in 2015, Meagan Abell bought some vintage slide film transparencies at a thrift shop, which she first thought were photo negatives. There was no information about the pictures that showed two women, one in a red dress, the other in a blue dress with a red sash, posing ethereally on a beach. The photos appeared to be from the 1950s. Abell took to social media to enlist help in identifying the women in the pictures, with the aim of finding the story behind the photos.

First, the location was identified as Dockweiler Beach in Los Angeles. Then the purpose of the photoshoot was revealed -it was for an album cover! Once the woman in red was identified, the discarded slides led us to a tragic story about a music career in which everything that could go wrong happened. That includes the frustrating missed connection as the singer never knew of the search for her before she died. Read the entire story of #Find the Girls on the Negatives at Flashbak. -via Strange Company

My clay mascot made me some pancakes!
byu/guldies inanimation

This little dude didn't get the memo about not cooking nude. His downfall is not burns, though, it's the mess he made. This very short animation by Guldies is 100% old-fashioned claymation, as we can see in the full video at YouTube. Oh, the finished product is just as short as it is here, but then he goes into the making-of process, which is long but fascinating. Watching a lump of plasticine turn into Chef Boi is a trip. Guldies got caught up in the incredibly-detailed clay kitchen. The furnishings are not painted, but covered in clay for color. The tiles are each individually set! Then we see how the animation was shot frame by frame, including the genius detail of a blur effect while Chef Boi tries to break the more stubborn egg. Then we see the soundtrack recording, and you'll be surprised at how authentic the sound effects are. -via Everlasting Blort

Cornell University has a research paper that starts with the assumption that parents naming a new baby are rational creatures working on reasonable assumptions, and pick a name for its uniqueness. They also work with the assumption that parents are myopic, meaning they can't see the possible consequences of their actions. The paper is authored by Katy Blumer, Kate Donahue, Katie Fritz, Kate Ivanovich, Katherine Lee, Katie Luo, Cathy Meng, and Katie Van Koevering. So you can see where this is going.

The entire paper is available as a PDF. This is real research, which they admit is incomplete in several places. The theory is that parents find a name they like that has the low popularity they desire, seen as the frequency of it being used, which can be ascertained by Social Security records. However, they should (but don't) also look for changes in that frequency year over year. This omission results in a shock when the child they so carefully named ends up at school with an extra initial attached to their name because there are so many others with the same name. Those who know say the study has some really good math jokes, but don't let the math put you off; you can skip over the numbers and just read the text to understand just how tragically real yet funny this project is. -via Metafilter

PS: Current naming strategies have left us with several songs about the phenomena, like Multitude of Amys, Daves I Know, and 27 Jennifers.