Chicago in the 19th century had a problem. The city treated the Chicago River as a waste-disposal system, carrying sewage, garbage, and dead animals away to Lake Michigan. The problem was that the city also drew its fresh water from the lake. Engineer Ellis Sylvester Chesbrough tackled the problem by moving the city's intake valve further out in the lake. Separating the intake from the mouth of the river was a temporary fix, because how far away is far enough?

It was once again Chesbrough who came to the city’s rescue. Chesbrough proposed an audacious plan—reverse the flow of the river away from Lake Michigan. Chesbrough’s outrageous plan worked like this: just west of Chicago River lies a barely perceptible ridge called the Chicago Portage, that separates the drainage basin of the Great Lakes from that of the Mississippi River. Rainfall on the west of this divide flows naturally towards the Des Plaines River, which moves southward to converges with the Kankakee River to form the Illinois River, a tributary of the Mississippi. Any rainfall on the east of the divide flows into the Great Lakes. Chesbrough thought that if a canal could be dug through this divide and made it deeper than the water level of the Chicago river and the lake, gravity would cause the Chicago River’s stinky water to flow backward away from Lake Michigan.

The plan was massive and took years to complete. And it worked! Chicago no longer had to worry about sewage in their drinking water, because it was going into the Mississippi River instead. Which was now a problem for every settlement along the Mississippi, including St. Louis. Read the story of Chicago's scheme to deal with wastewater at Amusing Planet.

Taking on-site pictures and video of sports events is a pretty prestigious assignment among photographers, but it can be dangerous! This supercut shows that occasionally a cameraman will stick his lens in the wrong place, but most of it involves being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Access has its hazards. -via Digg

Stefani's powerfully rhythmic "Hollaback Girl" rocked us in 2005. YouTube's greatest gift to humanity, There, I Ruined It has adapted it for the ragtime tunes of a century ago. The song speeds up so that Stefani is putting her audience back in their place at a faster pace. It's a wonderful way to enter and take control of the speakeasy.

Content warning: foul language.

Meet the TACS ATL (Automatic Twin Lens), a new camera-inspired watch created by TACS. At first glance, the watch resembles a classic twin-lens reflex camera (which is what its design was based on). The new model is a new addition to the watchmaker’s Lens Series, which are composed of different photography-themed designs: 

TACS writes, 'First released in the late 1920s, twin-lens cameras were widely used by photojournalists and correspondents to document World War II in Europe thanks to its robust and periscopic design. It was said that the inventor came up with the idea for the camera during World War I on a trench while peeping through a periscope.'

The watch was designed over two years and no consideration was spared during the design process. The dial in the center of the watch face looks like a twin-lens reflex camera, complete with a leather design. You can see through where the lenses would be to see the inner workings of the camera. Other features include a rotating bezel ring with etching like a lens's depth of field scale as well as hour and minute indexes. The crown is inspired by vintage focusing knobs and the crown protector looks like a camera strap's eyelet slot.

Image credit: TACS 

In an interesting turn of events, an unknowing teenager who rescued a bumblebee ended up with a new companion! Lacey Shillinglaw spotted the bee with a crumpled wing lying on the road while she was walking her dog. The 13-year-old decided to scoop up the bee and tried to put the insect in a safer spot: 

But it refused to stay put, buzzing back over to Lacey and crawling all over her, and after an hour she gave up and headed home with the creature perched on her shoulder.

And despite repeated attempts to leave her outside, the buzzy friend has refused to leave Lacey's side ever since.

It is always by her side in the house - sleeping on her bedside table - and has followed her to the shops and on a family trip to the bowling alley.

Lacey, from Coventry, West Midlands, said: “Betty is totally amazing - I’ll remember this forever.

“I thought she would fly off on the first day but she just never did.

“I’m so happy and I just love spending my time with her.

“She’s so fluffy and I love our friendship.”

Image credit: Laura Pashley / SWNS

Soulja Boy is known for making outlandish claims online. His announcement of being the new owner of video game company Atari is still shocking, though. The rapper revealed on Instagram that he was the owner, and that the company was going to buy the rapper’s gaming business for a cool $140 million. However, Atari has said the opposite: 

I just signed two deals with Atari. I’m the owner. The first rapper to ever own a video game company. 

It looked like a match made in heaven. A struggling gaming firm had found a celebrated entrepreneur with the industry credentials to return it to past glories.

Unfortunately, cracks have already appeared in the relationship.

In a tweet apparently referencing Soulja Boy’s comments, Atari said the title of CEO “belongs to Wade Rosen.”

Image credit: via TNW 

Meet Mystique, an incredibly intelligent 29-year-old male humpback dolphin. Did I mention that this special dolphin is a treasure hunter? In exchange for food or rewards, the friendly mammal offers an employee or any other person who approaches him with curious items from the sea: 

"What we have to do is give him a fish in return.

"We haven't trained him, but he has trained us to do this.

"He gets under it [and] if he drops it too far out, or we say 'come on, that's not good enough', then he gets underneath it and brings it to us."

The items have included bottles, big bits of timber, shells, and wood, which are brought in on his beak.

"We swear he has a collection waiting to bring to us," Lyn McPherson said.

Image credit:  Barnacles Cafe and Dolphin Feeding

Allen Pan of Sufficiently Advanced has managed to make the samurai sword a bit more menacing by adding 250,000 volt of electricity. Watch as as his electrified samurai sword sizzled and crackled before sending a huge arc through the air to a nearby steel structure!

Image: @allenpan

Photographer and Star Wars fan Daniel Sands cleverly recreated iconic scenes from the movie with LEGO and homemade special effects:

"I want it to be simple with no fancy studio. The first ones I did I used an upturned pizza box on my tumble dryer, used a bike light for lighting and some baking powder to resemble snow,” Sands says about his ongoing project, trying to show everyone that photographers don't need expensive equipment to snap high-quality pictures.

Pictojam has the gallery: Star Wars Fan Recreated Iconic Scenes with LEGO and Homemade Special Effects

Image: Daniel Sands (@danielsandsphotography)

In a game where dachshunds compete, we all win! Watch The Wienerlympics, where three dachshunds named Crusoe, Daphne and Oakley compete in various sports like swimming, weightlifting, fencing, high dive, long jump, wrestling, and, of course, running.

From our new cute animals and pets site SupaFluffy, here's Wienerlympics: An Olympic Competition for Dachshunds

Image: Crusoe the Dachshund

Now this is the ultimate escape from city life!

Homeowner Rosie sold her home in the city and moved to an off-the-grid house built from five interconnected shipping containers in the middle of a forested preserve in the coast of New Zealand. As such, the house is equipped with solar panels, rainwater collection system and even vermi-composting toilets.

All worth it for being able to live in such an amazingly lush forest!

Take a look over at Homes & Hues, our new architecture and home design site: Off-the-Grid Living in a 5x 20ft Shipping Container Home in a New Zealand Forest

Image: Bryce Langston/Living Big in a Tiny House

Monowi, Nebraska, is the smallest incorporated town in the United States, with a population of one person. You read about it here quite a few years ago. Elsie Eiler has been the mayor and sole resident since 2004, when her husband Rudy died. So when Eiler read the results of the 2020 census, the information on her town came as quite a surprise.

The U.S. Census Bureau was reporting Monowi’s population had exploded by 100% and was now home to two people, according to 2020 results it recently released.

“Well, then someone’s been hiding from me, and there’s nowhere to live but my house,” Elise Eiler said Wednesday. “But if you find out who he is, let me know?”

His name is Noise, and he was created by an algorithm to try to protect Eiler’s personal information. Monowi didn’t add another resident to its population, but the Census Bureau did.

“What you’re seeing there is the noise we add to the data so you can’t figure out who is living there,” a Census spokeswoman said. “It protects the privacy of the respondent and the confidentiality of the data they provide.”

It's a bit late to protect Eiler's privacy, as she is well-known for running her small town as she sees fit. She's not alone, so to speak, as the nearby town of Gross went from a population of two to three, unbeknownst to the couple who live there by themselves. Read about the Census Bureau's algorithm that alters the reports we see, called disclosure avoidance, at the Lincoln Journal-Star. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Andrew Filer)

Dutch master Johannes Vermeer painted his Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window in the late 1650s. For about 250 years, it has been in the custody of the museum Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, Germany. We now know that the wall behind the girl has a large picture of Cupid! The existence of the painting within the painting was revealed by x-ray in 1979, but it wasn't known at the time whether Vermeer himself covered it up or not.  

But when a major restoration project began in May 2017, conservators discovered that the paint on the wall in the background of the painting, covering the naked Cupid, had in fact been added by another person. When layers of varnish from the 19th century began to be removed from the painting, the conservators discovered that the “solubility properties” of the paint in the central section of the wall were different to those elsewhere in the painting.

Following further investigations, including tests in an archaeometry laboratory, it was discovered that layers of binding agent and a layer of dirt existed between the image of Cupid and the overpainting. The conservators concluded that several decades would have passed between the completion of one layer and the addition of the next and therefore concluded that Vermeer could not have painted over the Cupid himself.

The restoration is now complete, and the painting will soon go on exhibit. Read the saga of the hidden Cupid at The Art Newspaper. -via Kottke

The ninth, or possibly tenth, movie in the Fast & Furious franchise is called simply F9, or sometimes F9: The Fast Saga, or maybe Fast & Furious 9. At any rate, that's so many movies that the main cast has wandered far from the world they inhabited in the first film, yet they continue to use the same action movie tropes to reel in an audience. Screen Junkies is well aware of this, and so they had plenty of material for this Honest Trailer.

It’s true that the more advanced our technology becomes, older people have a harder time adapting with them. While there’s no questioning their ability in digesting and consuming information, the pace at which technology advances gets too fast for them to cope up with. They try their hardest, and that’s what matters, right? Sometimes, their efforts result in some ...hilarious instances. It is funny and cute, and is in no way a slight against them! Bored Panda compiles some top moments when old people get outwitted by modern technology. Check the full piece here! 

Image credit: Bungalowbeast