A couple of weeks ago, we learned of a startup trying to perfect a brain transplant, or more specifically, a body transplant. You might be surprised to learn it's been done before -but not on a human being. A spinal cord can not yet be connected to a brain in a manner that would make the body controllable, but 54 years ago, Dr. Robert White thought that paralysis might be a worthwhile price to pay for continued life. He put his extensive neuroscience research to work on transplanting a monkey's head to the body of another monkey. And it worked -for a few days. You don't want to think too much about that monkey's quality of life for those few days. All these years later, there are still doctors and scientists willing to try body transplants, despite the major ethical concerns. You can read more about Dr. White's career here.
You can peg the rarest thing, or the most expensive thing, by numbers. But how do you measure a thing's value? I was always told that something is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it. By that measure, this rocket-firing Boba Fett action figure from 1979 is the most valuable vintage toy ever. It recently went up for sale by Heritage Auctions and sold for $525,000. That's more than a half-million dollars!
See, the rocket firing Boba Fett was never sold in stores. Kenner scrubbed the model because it was a choking hazard. But there were about 30 prototypes made, in various stages of the design process. One was listed for sale for $365,000 in 2019, but it apparently did not sell for that price, because the record amount paid for a Star Wars toy was $236,000 for a rocket-firing Boba Fett in 2022. That is, until now. This particular Boba Fett was hand-painted, making it one of only three that exist in the world. Read more about this ultra-rare action figure that set a new record at Gizmodo.
(Image credit:Heritage Auctions/HA.com)
A robot rummaging through a desolate planet finds a seed, a cute little sidekick that looks like a plant but moves like an animal. The beginning of this cartoon short may remind you of Wall-E, but in this story, the planet is populated by huge alien predators (I thought of purple people eaters) that swoop in like raptors and target the robot. The first thing they do to the robot is tear off his arm, which seems like a callback to the Star Wars universe, in which everyone loses an arm sooner or later. You have to wonder what the monsters want with the robot, since he's a robot and won't provide much nutrition. Maybe they are really after something else. The Last Seed was an animation class project at 3is International Institute for Image and Sound in France by Christopher Woods, Doryan Beauvillard, and an entire team working together.
In the early days of cinema, actors in movies weren't credited at all, mainly because film studios were afraid they would demand higher salaries if they became well known. That was the way it was for Florence Lawrence, who acted in dozens of silent films for Vitagraph and then Biograph, where she became so recognizable that she was known as "the Biograph girl." Still, Lawrence's name didn't get screen credit until 1910 when she joined Carl Laemmle's movie company, the Independent Moving Pictures Company. Laemmle thought crediting his best actress would be a boon to his studio, and he was right. Lawrence's name alone could draw crowds to see a movie.
But Florence Lawrence was more than a movie star. She did her own stunts. She produced and directed movies. She invented devices that were the precursor to the turn signal and the brake light, for which she also got no credit. Read about the amazing career of Florence Lawrence, the first American movie star, at Messy Nessy Chic.
Talk about soaring music! For his song "Fly," musician Louis Cardozo imagined a video that went with the theme of the lyrics. What better way to illustrate it than by flying? With the piano he's playing? There are no computer-generated effects in this video. He really went paragliding while playing a grand piano. How did he do it? The project was years in the making, and since nobody would believe it was real, Cardozo and his crew documented it. Here's the making-of video.
No harness? Well, I guess falling from the sky may be a bit better than having a grand piano fall on you. It's good to have family with a bit of experience in ridiculous stunts like this. Don't miss the hilarious footage of a test flight that went wrong at about 3:30. Cardozo himself is no stranger to paragliding. See him do it while playing guitar at Laughing Squid.
Georgia and other Southern states were once the center of the turpentine industry due to the huge swathes of pine trees. It was called the naval stores industry because pine tar was used to seal ships. Turpentine is used to make paint and paint thinner, and pine resin, or rosin, makes a violin bow sticky enough to create sound, and makes ballet slippers not slippery. Pine sap products are also used in Pine Sol, Vicks' VapoRub, cosmetics, and even chewing gum. Collecting the gum from pine trees first involved cutting a box into the tree to collect sap, but that destroyed the tree. In 1901, a new method was developed that involved making diagonal slashes in only part of the tree, and collecting the gum in an exterior box or bucket. Trees survived this method to be harvested again. The slashes resembled a cat's whiskers, so the scars from a sap harvest are called catfaces.
The pine sap is distilled to make spirits of turpentine, and what's leftover is the rosin. You can still see the process of distilling turpentine at the annual Catface Turpentine Festival in Portal, Georgia, every fall. Portal has one of only three operating turpentine stills left in Georgia, and they show it off to the public during the festival, which is scheduled for October 5th this year.
This deep dive into the turpentine industry came from a post about rosin baked potatoes, which are actually potatoes boiled in rosin. Boiling rosin reaches a much higher temperature than water, and cooks the potatoes much faster. But you can't eat the skin! You'll find more links about the potato recipe at Metafilter.
(Image credit: Jud McCranie)
You've always been told that dogs are colorblind, but what does that really mean? Dogs can actually see colors, but they have problem distinguishing red as we do. That leads to another question: how do we know this? We can't just ask a dog, because they will tell us whatever we want to hear. And it will sound like a bark. In this video, we learn about a famous dog named Retina who was the first to take a color vision test. Retina may have been the first, but two other dogs were tested before the research paper was published, because they needed to find out whether she was an outlier, or if most dogs have the same color deficiencies. See, dogs only have two color cones in their retinas, while humans have three, and the vision test shows us how that translates into actual perception of color. But you don't have to mourn for our dogs over their eyesight. They have other talents that make them feel sorry for us, like our inability to distinguish odors the way they do. -via Kottke
By July of 1953, most of the fighting in the Korean War was over. Yet many thousands of US service members remained on duty in this explosive war zone.
The following February, Marilyn Monroe married the baseball giant Joe DiMaggio. The couple honeymooned in Japan and, while there, made a brief visit to South Korea. The patriotic Monroe visited about 100,000 troops at ten shows over four days in her official capacity of a United Service Organizations volunteer.
Pictured above is her official registration card with the Department of Defense, using her legal name of Norma Jean DiMaggio. It sold at auction several years ago for $31,250.
-via Book of Joe
The Death of Vulcan
— Tree of Knowledge (@ToK_ScienceTree) May 29, 2024
Few stories capture the interplay between science and culture as vividly as that of HD 26965 b, initially identified as a potential exoplanet in 2018.
It orbits the star 40 Eridani A, which is also the parent star of the planet Vulcan, the iconic home world… pic.twitter.com/9lWjt4lSBF
Many mourned in 2006 when Pluto was downgraded from a planet to a dwarf planet. But Vulcan's fate is even worse- scientists have determined that the planet probably never existed at all! Mr. Spock would like to have a word, but he is processing the logic of millions of voices suddenly crying out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. Oh, wait, that was Alderaan.
In 2018, scientists detected an exoplanet orbiting the star 40 Eridani A, 16 light years from earth. The planet was designated HD 26965 b, but they soon started calling it Vulcan. In the Star Trek universe, the planet Vulcan revolves around the star 40 Eridani A. The exoplanet described in 2018 was bigger than earth, but smaller than Neptune, and orbited its star every 42 days. Vulcan was never seen, but was detected by the radial velocity method, which measures how stars wobble and extrapolates data about the gravitational body that caused a wobble.
In the six years since the discovery, new equipment has been developed to detect planets wobbling stars in finer detail. A new science paper throws water on the idea of Vulcan as a planet. The new data is is attributed to a flickering of something on the star's surface that occurs every 42 days. In other words, Vulcan is probably an illusion.
!
— Miss Cellania (@misscellania) June 2, 2024
At least we still have Vulcan, Alberta. -via Metafilter
You most likely know the story of Pheidippides, the Greek courier who ran all the way from Marathon to Athens to deliver the news of the Greek victory in that battle, and fell down dead as soon as he delivered the message. While that story may be true or not, there's a real 20th century version from Nepal.
When Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary became the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest and return alive on May 29, 1953, the news of their achievement had to be relayed to the outside world. London Times reporter Jan Morris took the news from the camp at 21,000 feet and rushed it down to Base Camp. That's where the mail runners were, men who were part of the expedition charged with carrying news. A Sherpa mail runner, who was never named in news accounts, took that message on foot to Kathmandu, 200 miles away. He ran for five days, delivered the message, and then went home. Within weeks he was dead.
We now know that man was Ten Tsewang Sherpa, a 20-year-old father of four. His grandson, photographer Ang Pemba Sherpa, teamed up with journalist Peter Frick-Wright to run that route again. They were not able to do it, and hiked the 200 miles instead. In the fascinating account of that trip, we learn about Ten Tsewang Sherpa and his family, the 1953 British Expedition, the Sherpa people, low-altitude sickness, and the climbing culture of Nepal. -via Strange Company
Weird History tackles the subject of that Uruguayan rugby team that was stranded in the Andes in 1972. Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Santiago, Chile, crashed into a mountain in Argentina at an elevation of 11,710 feet. Search teams scoured the area, but eventually gave up. Of the 45 people aboard the plane, only 16 survived to make it home.
Being stranded on a high mountain in the snow for two months called for some hard decisions. They could melt snow for water, but there was nothing to eat -except for the frozen corpses of those who had already died. There's a huge difference in killing someone in order to eat them and taking advantage of someone who already died, but cannibalism is a deep-seated taboo either way. The survivors really had no choice, because otherwise they would have all perished. But their story stays with you, no matter how many times you've heard it.
How quickly could you type the alphabet with your nose (with spaces)? India's Vinod Kumar Chaudhary did it in 26.73 seconds ⌨️👃 pic.twitter.com/IBt7vghVai
— Guinness World Records (@GWR) May 30, 2024
In his biography of Alexander the Great, the First Century AD Roman author Quintus Curtius Rufus described the seemingly limitless physical courage of Alexander, who often led his armies from the forefront. Curtius praised his courage, but also leveled at Alexander:
[...] the charge of reckless daring, which he had in abundance, can have less force, because there was never an opportunity to decide whether he had acted rashly.
Great men of transcendent ambition, such as Alexander the Great and Vinod Kumar Chaudhary, are compelled to push themselves past ordinary limits--to accomplish the impossible again and again. Great striving brings great risks.
Chaudhary established a Guinness World Record last year when he typed the alphabet with his nose in 27.8 seconds. Yet, like Alexander after Issus, Chaudhary was only getting started. He insisted on breaking that record, setting a new one of 26.73 seconds. Now, he's broken that record, striking the keystrokes, with a space between each one, in a mere 25.66 seconds.
Will Chaudhary press forward again? Or will he face a mutiny as Alexander did and be forced to settle for the empire has has been able to conquer?
-via Dave Barry
The next time you're in Nashville, you might want to stay at the Dive Motel. It's got a bar and a pool, and we think the name is supposed to come from the pool instead of the bar, but either way it's a clever name. Anyway, the entire facility is furnished in mid-20th century splendor, so you'll feel like you're back in the 1960s or '70s throughout your stay. Each of the 23 rooms and suites in this motel has a unique retro decor in several categories, and you can take your pick of neon disco colors, rustic cabin themes, or even a puffy pink room. However, all rooms have a "party switch" that activates a disco ball and music! You've never seen so much shag carpet, at least since the 1970s. The pool is open to guests, and even if you aren't staying there, you can purchase a pool pass. Strangely, the Dive Motel pool prohibits diving. They also host a variety of food trucks and have a full calendar of special events. See lots of pictures of the Dive Motel in a mini-tour at The Awesomer.
Alanis Morrisette is going out on tour with Joan Jett & the Blackhearts this summer for the Triple Moon Tour. Master remixer DJ Cummerbund naturally celebrated this news by making a mashup. This song is a combination of Morrisette's 1995 hit "You Oughta Know" with Joan Jett's "I Hate Myself for Loving You" from 1988. There's also a cameo appearance by Randy "Macho Man" Savage. It's a double dose of rock 'n' roll and the fury of a woman done wrong. In case you aren't familiar with Alanis Morrisette's hit, there is one NSFW lyric. This is an officially sanctioned mashup, as Morrisette posted it to YouTube at about the same time DJ Cummerbund did. -via Laughing Squid
In one of the holiest temples of America's civic religion there is a bullet hole. Search carefully in the frieze of the Lincoln Memorial and you may be able to spot it.
Here's a clearer image. How did this happen?
In September 1942, when the U.S. government worried about Axis attacks on the American homeland, anti-aircraft defenses stood guard over major cities and important sites. One soldier manning a .50-caliber machine gun in Washington, D.C., accidentally discharged his weapon, firing a burst. Three bullets struck the Lincoln Memorial. One of bullet holes could not be practically repaired, so it remains there to this day.
-via U.S. Naval Institute | Photos: U.S. Park Service
