We don't know if Arthur was a fictional character when he was first written about centuries after he supposedly lived, but he sure became one with subsequent biographies. The status of the legendary king grew with reworkings of the story by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Thomas Malory, and T. H. White. King Arthur's influence has eclipsed even his mythical deeds.

Henry VII used the popular tales of King Arthur to secure his reign upon seizing the English throne in 1485 after the Wars of the Roses. Drawing from the legend, he even traced the Tudor family tree from Arthur himself. Henry VII also named his first child Arthur, though it was Arthur’s younger brother, Henry, who went on to rule as Henry VIII—and break England from the Catholic Church in the process. Henry VIII grew up fascinated by the tales of Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table, so much so that he ordered the redecorating of the Winchester Round Table, which still hangs in the Great Hall of Winchester Castle today.

The even more contemporary stories of King Arthur's influence may surprise you. Read about them at Mental Floss.

Clink Clink is a cute and rather short animation by Jack Cunningham, James Graham, and Nicolas Ménard, illustrating people enjoying live music at a cocktail party.

Clink Clink is a snappy animation brewed out of a series of drawings left gathering dust in the pitch vineyard. Now aged like a fine wine, it exists for the sole purpose of cultivating smiles and head bops, in a world where boozy benders are a distant memory.

-via Laughing Squid

If you're going to write a fictional story about contemporary people, you need to show them enjoying entertainment, as we all spend so much time doing. Therefore, the characters in a movie go to the movies, or watch TV, or even work on such a production. These are shows within shows, also called nested shows, and they can be as memorable as the movie or TV series itself. Famous examples are Angels with Filthy Souls, seen in the movie Home Alone, or The Krusty the Clown Show on The Simpsons. Nestflix is a compilation of such shows, curated by Lynn Fisher. There are a lot more of these than you may realize, but the archive is not yet complete. You're invited to submit your favorites if you don't see them. Browse through Nestflix here. -via Metafilter

The ANNA Cabin, designed by Caspar Schols of the Netherlands, has an inner and outer walls on tracked wheels that let you move them by hand. By opening these sets of walls, you can transform the cabin from a typical house into a beautiful outdoor space.

From Homes & Hues: This Adjustable Cabin is the Perfect House for any Occasion

Image: Caspar Schols

Don't miss these other Homes & Hues post:

Driveway Turntable is a Rotating Platform That Will Turn Your Car Around in a Tight Space

This Candle Captures the Scent of IKEA's Famous Swedish Meatballs

Samsung The - Wall TV is a Giant Television the Size of a Wall

Amusement parks exist to show lots of people a good time and separate them from their money. There's nothing like a roller coaster ride and something deep fried on a stick to make one sleep well at night. But no matter how much one may regret a day at the carnival, circus, or tourist attraction, things were much worse in centuries past, in several ways. Let's start with the thrill rides.

Consider the infamous Coney Island Rough Riders roller coaster, which killed seven people in a five-year span from 1910 to 1915 before it was shut down. The coaster was an homage to Theodore Roosevelt and his “Rough Riders,” the soldiers who fought in the Spanish-American War. But the coaster was almost as dangerous as Battle of San Juan Hill: According to PBS, in one accident, the speeding coaster jettisoned 16 people, killing four. In another accident, the coaster jumped the track and caused three fatalities. One woman survived the ordeal dangling from a rail with one hand, holding her child with the other hand.

Coney Island featured another coaster that wasn’t fatal, but it was certainly unpleasant. The Flip Flap Railway coaster of the 1890s was one of the first roller coasters to feature a loop-de-loop. But unlike modern loops, which are oval-shaped to lessen forces on the rider, the Flip Flap was circular. This put intense pressure on riders, knocking them unconscious and giving them whiplash. One source estimates that riders experienced a G-force of 12. For comparison, fighter pilots typically experience a G-force of 7. One newspaper declared the Flip Flap and another coaster called the Loop the Loop "the unholy terrors of the beach."

That's just the beginning. Read the disturbing ways amusement parks of the past were dangerous, offensive, cruel, and depressing at Mental Floss.

A new advertisement for Emirates Airlines featured a woman in a flight attendant uniform flipping through sign cards with the skies of Dubai in the background. Then the camera pans out to reveal that she's actually standing on top of the world's tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa.

Pictojam has the video clip of the remarkable stunt - don't miss the behind-the-scenes video clip showing how they did it!

See also: Jetman Dubai Duo Fly in Formation with Emirates Airlines A380

Image: Emirates Airlines

People usually select a diet in order to lose or gain weight and/or to improve their overall health. But this is Neatorama, and we haven't discussed farts in several days. Lucky for us, Mel magazine did one of their food ranking studies and found out which of several popular diets causes the most natural gas.  

To be scientific about it, your own personal gas line is fueled by sugars such as alpha-galactose and raffinose — commonly found in foods like beans, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and pears — which can be difficult to digest at first. “When some people eat these sugars, instead of being digested, they can ferment in the gut, resulting in bad-smelling gas,” explains nutritionist Alicia Harper. “However, your gut can eventually learn to digest fruit and vegetables without flatulence.”

Still, if your gut is trying to learn something new, you might want to consult the ranking of diets by flatulence. Even if you don't change your mind about your diet, it will at least warn you of what can be expected.

The props from the TV show MythBusters are going up for auction! Proceeds will benefit the Grant Imahara STEAM Foundation. Meanwhile, Adam Savage introduces us to the creepiest MythBusters prop ever, designed and built by Imahara. -via reddit

When men try to select an attractive picture of themselves for a dating profile, they sometimes end up sabotaging themselves. Here's an explanation that will make woman go "duh," but might be useful for men. See, men are visual  creatures, and assume that women are, too. Yeah, not so much. When men look at a woman's dating profile, they want to see someone attractive. When women look at a picture, they try to glean information about that person from what they see. An example is a fellow who posted pictures of his muscular physique, but found more success when he covered up.   

Dr Claire Hart is Associate Professor of Social and Personality Psychology at the University of Southampton. She suggests that women aren’t judging the content of these photos, but their implications instead. “Research suggests that women (and indeed men) find well proportioned muscular men more attractive. Based on our ancestral past, signs of physical strength would be linked with an increased chance of survival,” she explains.

“[But] without knowing much else about that person other than what is presented on their dating profile, you may make certain attributes about them which negatively impacts their desirability,” she continues. “For example, how much time do they devote to maintaining their musculature body? Would they do this at the expense of spending time with you? Do they have narcissistic tendencies? You might not stop to find out.”

In other words, how a man chooses to present himself in a picture means more than his basic attractiveness. At least for the most part. Read more about this phenomenon at Refinery29. -via Digg

Political historian Robert Justin Goldstein writes about an extraordinary incident in 19th Century Sweden:

In another case of press repression which succeeded only in creating a martyr, the editor of the Swedish newspaper Stockholms Posten, Captain Anders Lindeberg, was convicted of treason in 1834 for implying that King Karl Johan should be deposed. He was sentenced to death by decapitation, under a medieval treason law. When the King mitigated the sentence to three years in prison, Lindeberg decided to highlight the King’s repressive press policy by insisting upon his right to be beheaded and refusing to take advantage of the government’s attempts to encourage him to escape. Finally, in desperation, the King issued a general amnesty to ‘all political prisoners awaiting execution’, which applied only to Lindeberg. When the editor stubbornly insisted upon his right to execution, the government solved the problem by locking him out of his cell while he was walking in the prison courtyard and then refusing him re-entry.

I encountered this story in the wonderful blog Futility Closet and decided to post about it here at Neatorama. But my efforts at verifying the story (which sounds too good to be true) came to nothing.

So I ordered Goldstein's book through interlibrary loan to check his source. Goldstein's source is a 1940s book series on Scandinavian historian by Swedish author B.J. Hovde. I don't have access to Hovde's book and am thus unable to track his sources. But given the contemporary scholarly book reviews of his work that I have found, I'd say that the likelihood that the story of how Lindeberg escaped is true is, on a scale of 1 to 10, about a 6.

Photo: Der Vollstrecker

CGP Grey is back to show us how the smallest thing can have a fascinating backstory. The name Tiffany exploded in popularity in the 1980s, but we know it goes further back than that, because of the jewelry store. But a little (meaning a lot of) digging takes the history of the name back to antiquity, and in tracing the story, we meet quite a few really neat Tiffanys along the way. While other names might not be as long-lived, you bet Grey could make an entertaining story of it.

Elyse at Second Glance History decided to prepare for a trip to Milwaukee not by checking out its attractions on the internet, but by looking through the newspaper archives of the 19th century. What she found told her that Milwaukee was famous for cheese, old maids, theatrical cats, and haunted places. And puns.

Milwaukee boasts of a haunted distillery, which is just the place where one would naturally look for spirits.
    
– The Columbian, October 1, 1875

Check out quite a few newspaper blurbs that tell us about all those things, in a post that's filled with puns, both current and historical, cheesy but not hysterical, at Second Glance History. -via Strange Company

(Image source: Library of Congress)

This is not an old timey cabin in the woods! LUMIPOD is a small pre-fab circular cabin with curved glass windows that extend from the floor to the ceiling. The windows open almost all the way to expose the interior space to the outdoors. What a gorgeous cabin!

Homes & Hues has the pics and story: LUMIPOD: A Tiny Cabin Perfect for Getting Closer to Nature

Image: Oxygen and Kevin Dolmaire

A round of mini golf while you contemplate the challenges of climate change? If that sounds fun to you, check out the "Putting Green" mini golf in Brooklyn, New York. The 18-hole mini golf course is a collaborative community project, designed by local artists and environmental groups.

Pictojam has the gallery: Climate Change-Themed Mini Golf Course in Brooklyn, New York

Image: Two Trees Management and Putting Green

I was always told that it's rude to eat in front of hungry people, unless you are feeding them at the same time. I was also taught not to hang around the neighbors at meal time, because they didn't want to feed me. So what do you do when a park bench is the only place to eat? This stop-motion animation by Rich Webber is quite short, and you might get a kick out of it. -via Everlasting Blort