Take a step beyond the beautiful patterns and massive displays of dominos knocking each other down. Get ready to keep your cursor over the pause button, because through every step of this video, you'll be saying, "Wait, what just happened?" In this video, dominos fall in ways that make you appreciate the physics of falling.
Domino masters Hevesh5 (previously) and Kaplamino (previously) spent months working on this video collaboration, and it shows. -via The Kid Should See This
The American Frog Canning Company is a business name you'd expect to be a joke, like a company that would sell antiques or gag gifts. But it was real, and they sold frog legs. The company was founded by Albert Broel, and did really well in a niche business. But the supply of frogs brought in by hunters couldn't keep up with the demand. So Broel wrote a book on how to raise frogs for fun and profit, and advertised the idea of frog farming. In the 1930s, when so many people were desperate for income, this seemed like a wonderful business opportunity.
Broel was on the leading edge of what The New Yorker once called “the frog-farm craze of the thirties.” Newspapers across the country mentioned of the numerous letters they’d received asking for more information about raising frogs, and shared stories about frog entrepreneurs, from “society women” in Tennessee to a Japanese frog-raiser in Los Angeles. After Louisiana, Florida had perhaps the next most ambitious frog-farming operations. One, Southern Industries Inc., offered shares to northern investors in order to expand more quickly.
Among all these frog-minded people, Broel was a giant, “the nation’s largest individual producer of frog legs,” the Central Press reported, and a genius promoter of his product. He canned frog legs and “frog à la king,” and dreamed up recipes for Giant Frog Gumbo, American Giant Bullfrog Pie, Barbecued Giant Bullfrog Sandwiches, Giant Bullfrog Omelet, Giant Bullfrog Pineapple Salad, and more.
But like many get-rich-quick schemes, the one who profited the most was Broel. He created a supply of frogs for his canning business, and he was making money teaching others how to raise frogs. Meanwhile, many investors found that raising frogs is not as easy as they were led to believe. Read about the frog farm craze of the 1930s at Atlas Obscura.
They say history is written by the victors, but that ain't necessarily so. In the United States, the education of children is a responsibility of the individual states, and this shows up most obviously in how the history of our Civil War is taught. If you are of a certain age, what you learned was largely dependent on which state you were in.
Vox takes a look at how a deliberate push for "The Lost Cause" by a group called the United Daughters of the Confederacy affected educational materials that have shaped opinions for decades ...and left effects we still feel 150 years after the war.
In the US, we celebrate August 17 as Black Cat Appreciation Day. In the UK, October 27 is National Black Cat Day, so Simon Tofield and veterinarian Nicky Treverrow of Cat's Protection made a video about black cats. In Britain, black cats are not considered particularly unlucky -or else the populace is not particularly superstitious. However, black cats in shelters still get the short end of the adoption stick.
Why don't people select black cats for adoption? Because it's hard to see their facial expressions compared to brightly colored cats. A cat's personality come out in body language anyway, so don't write off the possibility of a wonderful pet when you see a black cat. Tofield lets us in on a secret: both the cat and the kitten in his cartoons are based on real black cats. As usual, this Simon's Cat Logic video is followed by a classic Simon' Cat cartoon.
The 1984 film Revenge of the Nerds preceded the rise of the world wide web, but it foreshadowed our modern sensibilities by at least temporarily making nerdery (or is it nerdism?) cool. The movie fed revenge fantasies for millions of non-jocks who had been shamed or even bullied for not fitting in. Although the film's treatment of women means it will never be remade, many remember the movie fondly for its overall concept. And it had some lasting effects.
8. Lambda Lambda Lambda actually became a real fraternity.
The fraternity was actually created in 2006 at the University of Connecticut.
7. Poindexter’s glasses were so thick that the actor couldn’t see and had to be led around.
So a lot of those scenes where it really doesn’t look like he knows where he’s going or what he’s doing he’s not really acting.
Read more trivia about Revenge of the Nerds at TVOM.
The curse of the Hope Diamond supposedly affects anyone in possession of the gem. Legend has it that Jean-Baptiste Tavernier stole a much larger blue diamond from the eye of a Hindu statue, and Hindu priests conferred the curse. The 115-carat diamond called the Tavernier Blue was later cut down to the 45-carat Hope Diamond. And terrible things befell those who owned it -or even touched it.
9. EVALYN WALSH MCLEAN
Evalyn Walsh McLean was a spoiled heiress who lived a charmed life ... until she bought the Hope Diamond. She happily wore the diamond, and there are even stories that she would affix the jewel to her dog's collar and let him wander around the apartment with it. But wearing the Hope Diamond came at a steep price: First her mother-in-law died, her son died at the age of nine, her husband left her for another woman and later died in a mental hospital, her daughter died of a drug overdose at 25, and she eventually had to sell her newspaper, The Washington Post, and died owing huge debts. Evalyn's surviving kids sold the diamond to Harry Winston. Nine years later, Winston mailed the gem to the Smithsonian for $2.44 in postage and $155 in insurance.
10. JAMES TODD
James Todd, the mailman who delivered the diamond to the Smithsonian, apparently had his leg crushed in a truck accident shortly thereafter. He also suffered a head injury in a separate accident. Oh, also, his house burned down.
Is the Hope Diamond really cursed? It's possible that there were people who came in contact with it and never had any bad luck. Then again, bad things happen to everyone sooner or later. Read about the rest of the 10 victims of the Hope Diamond curse at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Smithsonian Institution Archives)
Australian musician Kirin J. Callinan's song "Big Enough" was released in September. It quickly piqued the attention of the internet, thanks to the sequence below. Fourteen seconds into it, I knew it had to be shared, even before I knew anything else about it.
The whistler is Molly Lewis, and the raging cowboy is Jimmy Barnes. This audio interlude has been remixed into many familiar video sequences for maximum comedic effect. Check out some of them in this video.
If you enjoyed that, check out compilation two here. There will likely be a volume three soon. -via Metafilter
Never tell your plans to the internet. That goes double about changing your personal appearance. You'll get a variety of opinions from friends, colleagues, and total strangers. Some of those comments will elicit a response in the back of your mind that could be expressed as "Don't tell me what to do!" And then a change in plans. That's apparently what happened to Chris Hallbeck of Maximumble. That long, flowing hair does look good, at least on a black and white stick figure.
Sury, Noel, Raon, Iz, and Soul are a family of Scottish fold cats in South Korea. One particularly static-y day, their human decides to annoy them with balloons that stick to their fur. The cats are somewhat bumfuzzled. And a bit annoyed.
Can you imagine how bumfuzzled they'd be if they knew about the speech balloons, too? -via Tastefully Offensive
Here's a murder mystery from 1900 that has too many suspects, and not enough dispassionate investigation. Kathryn Scharn was a young woman living in New York City. She worked at a factory, had an active social life, and lived in an apartment with her younger brother. On August 19, she had plans for a double date with her brother and his girlfriend.
Kathryn did not keep her double-date that night. Some time after midnight, Fred Scharn returned home, after having been out for most of the day. He was deeply puzzled about his sister's failure to join the scheduled outing. He was even more perturbed when he found their front door was unlocked. Kathryn was always careful to keep it locked. The apartment was completely dark, and eerily silent. When Fred went into her bedroom, he found her body lying across the bed. There was a dreadful wound on the back of her head.
When Fred realized Kathryn was dead, he went into a panic. Curiously, he did not immediately send for police. Instead, he ran to the house of the Scharn landlord, one Dr. A.H. Tyler. He was greeted by Tyler's housekeeper, Mrs. Lawler, who told the sobbing, hysterical youth that the doctor was out. When she learned of what Fred had found, she brought him to the police station.
Who could have done the dastardly deed? Was it her boyfriend, who was not only prone to jealousy, but was found to be leading a double life? Was it her brother, who had some shady dealings at work and was thought to be a petty criminal? Was it her landlord, who didn't mention to police a similar murder at his rental property a few years earlier? Or was it the woman at Kathryn's workplace who was feuding with her? The police investigator completely bungled the case, and we are left to form opinions from what we know. See if you can solve the mystery at Strange Company.
Imagine driving down the road and seeing a zebra crossing floating in the air. Maybe that would make you pay attention to the road! Or at least, that's the idea. This Trompe-l'œil illusion was painted on a crosswalk in Ísafjörður, Iceland, for the specific purpose of grabbing the attention of distracted drivers. And it's pretty cool looking, too.
An illusion painted on the road is not a new idea- it's been done in Vancouver, Canada; Ahmedabad, India; and somewhere in Kyrgyzstan. And yeah, it only works in one direction.
Tokyo grew fast in the 1960s, and personal space was at a premium. Architect Kisho Kurokawa designed a unique building as a vision of the future- capsule apartments. It's called Nakagin Capsule Tower.
From the outside, the tower looks like a stack of laundry machines. It is comprised of two concrete cores, 11 and 13 stories high, onto which are attached “removeable” cubes. Each cube, measuring 107 square feet, was prefabricated in a factory and then attached to the cores using 4 high-tension bolts. These capsule rooms, as they are called, are furnished with basic appliances and a bathroom the size of an airplane lavatory.
The building was built in 1972 in just 30 days. Kurokawa envisioned this building as the dawn of a new age.
The capsules were designed to last 25 years and then be replaced. But 25 years later, the cost of replacing them had become prohibitively expensive. Kurokawa died in 2007. So what happened to the building? The building became run down, and the resident investors planned to tear it down. But that also became prohibitively expensive. And there are people still living there today. Photographer Noritaka Minami occasionally visited Nakagin Capsule Tower over the last ten years, photographing the exterior and interior. Take a look inside the capsule apartments at National Geographic. -via Boing Boing
(Image credit: Noritaka Minami)
The 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street was based on a memoir by stockbroker Jordan Belfort. But it was a comedy. And it worked. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew McConaughey, and Margot Robbie, it became Martin Scorsese's highest-grossing film ever.
See 15 illustrated facts about The Wolf of Wall Street at TVOM.
I had to look up "microbladed eyebrows" to find out what it is. It's tattooing. If you remember an earlier comic, Ash had this planned. But most of us don't even think about eyebrows until we see someone who doesn't have any, and it can take a minute to figure out what's wrong. They turn out to be really important in making us look human. This is the latest comic from Megacynics.
How does one celebrate Halloween in Japan? The holiday wasn't a thing until a critical number of American ex-pats made it so, and they dressed up in costumes and did what the Japanese do -ride the commuter trains. In the 1990s, trains became a place for partying on Halloween, and even in the days leading up to October 31st, much to the annoyance of officials and regular commuters.
Year after year, the Halloween trains continued to get more and more rowdy. At the turn of the century, I remember hearing English-teacher friends say that if their school found out they rode the Halloween train, they’d lose their jobs.
Everything seemed to reach fever pitch in 2009 when protesters appeared at Shinjuku Station in Tokyo carrying signs that read, “Stupid Gaijin, Get out of Japan!” and “We Japanese Don’t Need Halloween!”
This was after police had to patrol train station platforms on Tokyo’s Yamanote Line the year before, holding up English language warning signs for the Halloweeners.
Things have changed. This year, the train company in Osaka is sponsoring public Halloween party trains, one for adults and another for children. Maybe it's a case of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." At least that way, the party trains can be separated from the everyday commuters. Read the history of Japan's Halloween trains at Kotaku.
(Image credit: Flickr user Tim Brockley)
