Martha, The Last Of The Passenger Pigeons

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The passenger pigeon is an extinct North American bird. Named after the French word passager for 'passing by.' it was once the most abundant bird in North America, and possibly the world. The extinction of the passenger pigeon had two major causes: commercial exploitation of pigeon meat on a massive scale and loss of habitat.

A captive-bred female passenger pigeon named Martha (photo above) was the last of her kind. On September 1, 1914, Martha died in the Cincinnati Zoo.

Wine, Beer Or Spirits?

How much - and which - alcohol is drunk in the world during a week? When on the map, move over countries to learn it, or use the buttons to show the top wine, beer and spirits drinkers or each country's favorite drink.

Nuclear 'Command And Control': A History Of False Alarms And Near Catastrophe

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Globally, there are thousands of nuclear weapons hidden away and ready to go, just awaiting the right electrical signal. American journalist and author Eric Schlosser's new book 'Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety,' is a critical look at the history of the nation's nuclear weapons systems.

It's also a terrifying account of the fires, explosions, false attack alerts and accidentally dropped bombs that plagued America's military throughout the Cold War.

Portugal Hyperlapse/Time-Lapse

Time-lapse of the Portuguese cities Lisbon and Sesimbra.



Vimeo link

(thanks Cora)

The 100-Foot Sea Critter That Deploys A Net Of Death

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Siphonophores are a class of marine animals belonging to the phylum Cnidaria. Although a siphonophore appears to be a single organism, each specimen is actually a colony composed of many individual animals. Most colonies are long (they can grow to 100 feet long), thin, transparent pelagic floaters.

Siphonophores clone themselves thousands of times over into half a dozen different types of specialized cloned bodies, all strung together to work as a team - a very deadly team at that.

Try Before You Die – Macabre Festival Lets Japanese Try Out Coffins

image credit: Haukur Herbertsson

Trying out a coffin while you're still alive can be a rather unnerving experience. But the Japanese seem to love it. They have a 'try-before-you-die' festival where people can lay down in coffins, try out funeral garments and even get a morbid makeover.

Called 'Shukatsu Festa,' the unique event has become very popular in recent years. Participants can choose their funeral outfit, put it on, slip into the flower-filled casket they like and have a picture taken. That way, they get to know exactly what they'll look like on the day of their funeral.

GoPro Best Of Animals 2014

YouTube link

(thanks Alberto)

Millions Of Historic Images Posted To Flickr

American academic Kalev Leetaru is creating a searchable database of 12 million historic copyright-free images. Mr Leetaru has already uploaded 2.6 million pictures to Flickr, which are searchable thanks to tags that have been automatically added.

The photos and drawings are sourced from more than 600 million library book pages scanned in by the Internet Archive organisation. Mr Leetaru began work on the project while researching communications technology at Georgetown University in Washington DC as part of a fellowship sponsored by Yahoo, the owner of photo-sharing service Flickr.

Go Home!

Good bears!

(via Bad Newspaper)

Ants Working Together To Pull Food Home

Ants working in harmony create a daisy chain to pull dinner home.



YouTube link

(thanks Cora)

11 Unique Rocking Chairs

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Though American inventor Benjamin Franklin is sometimes credited with inventing the rocking chair, historians actually trace the rocking chair's origins to North America during the early 18th century when Franklin was a child.

They were originally used in gardens and were just ordinary chairs with rockers attached. It was in 1725 that early rocking chairs first appeared in England.

Meghalaya: The Rainiest Place On Earth

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Meghalaya (The abode of clouds in Sanskrit) in India is allegedly the wettest spot on Earth. The village of Mawsynram in Meghalaya annually receives 467 inches of rain. The outdoor workers often wear water-proof suits made from bamboo and banana leaf.

The most unusual and gorgeous sights in the region are the 'living bridges' spanning rain-soaked valleys. For centuries, locals have been manipulating the roots of rubber fig trees to grow into natural arches, far outlasting man-made wooden structures that rot in just a few years.

Meal Time For Baby Squirrel

Alicia DeMay, clinic director at City Wildlife, feeds a baby squirrel brought to the northwest D.C. wild animal rescue center at the end of March.



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Shocking News: Hello Kitty Isn't Actually A Cat

image credit: Di Lujan

It appears we've all been wrongly assuming that a character that looks like a cat, and has Kitty in her name, is actually a cat, because Sanrio recently revealed that their beloved character Hello Kitty is actually a human girl. Not a cat. She's a little English girl called Kitty White from outside London. Here's what Sanrio had to say:

Hello Kitty is not a cat. She's a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat. She's never depicted on all fours. She walks and sits like a two-legged creature. She does have a pet cat of her own, however, and it's called Charmmy Kitty.

The Overgrown, Disused Railway That Still Runs Around Paris

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Paris has a lot of history embedded in its sprawling urban grid, which has seen thousands of years of structural change. But even though space is at a premium, there are still spots that have evaded development and slowly drifted into obscurity.

Like the Chemin de fer de Petite Ceinture (or Little Belt Railway), a 20 mile stretch of disused tracks along the Parisian perimeter. The railway was constructed in 1852; at that time, the major stations were owned by different companies, and this was a way to streamline connections through a path that tunneled, bridged, and cut a deep-walled passage within the crowded streets.

If A Fish Grows Up On Land, Will It Learn To Walk?

The old idiom about 'being a fish out of water' just lost some of its luster. Researchers from McGill University in Canada successfully trained a group of fish to live on land and strut around.

The idea was to simulate what might have happened 400 million years ago, when the first group of ancient fish moved from water to land, eventually evolving into the amphibians, reptiles, birds and other animals roaming the Earth today. The researchers wanted to see if their land-dwelling fish looked and behaved similarly to the ancient fish, based on what has been learned about them from fossil records.

How To Peel A Pinapple Clean And Easy

How fast can you peel a pineapple? A pineapple seller at the Bankerohan market in Davao City, Philippines, does it in approximately 50 seconds.



YouTube link

(thanks Cora)

Threatening Message

(via Bad Newspaper)

10 Of History's Deadliest Construction Projects

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The Panama Canal opened 100 years ago this month, one of the greatest engineering achievements in history. It was also one of the greatest sacrifices of human life in the name of construction, but tragically, it was far from the most deadly project in modern history.

Here's a sampling of projects - not a complete list - finished since 1900 using numbers reported by McGraw Hill's Engineering News Report, along with the explanations for how record-keepers decided upon those numbers.

Sheep

Counting sheep. Funny advertisement for the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada.



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(thanks Cora)

The Mystery Of Extraordinarily Accurate Medieval Maps

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One of the most remarkable and mysterious technical advances in the history of the world is written on the hide of a 13th-century calf. Inked into the vellum is a chart of the Mediterranean so accurate that ships today could navigate with it. Most earlier maps that included the region were not intended for navigation and were so imprecise that they are virtually unrecognizable to the modern eye.

These beautifully detailed portolan charts present historians with a puzzle: How were they made? A mathematical analysis offers some clues.

Paper Dresses And Psychedelic Catsuits: When Airline Fashion Was Flying High

image credit: Tom Wigley

In the mid-century, flying was just cooler. Flight attendants - and even the ramp workers - had fabulous clothing designed by the likes of Emilio Pucci, Jean Louis, and Pierre Cardin. Beautiful stewardess wore wild psychedelic getups, space-bubble helmets, and paper dresses as they served the elite crowd that was wealthy enough to afford air travel.

Collectors Weekly talked to two collectors about changes in airline style.

(thanks Lisa)

The Urban Oil Fields Of Los Angeles

image credit Library of Congress

In the 1890s, the small town of Los Angeles (population 50,000) began a transformation driven by the discovery and drilling of some of the most productive oil fields in history. In the decades that followed, many wells closed, but even more opened, surrounded by urban and suburban growth. Machinery was camouflaged, loud noises were abated, methane pockets were vented, as residents learned to live side-by-side with oil production facilities.

To this day, oil fields in the Los Angeles Basin remain very productive, and modern techniques have centralized operations into smaller areas or moved offshore. Here are images of some of the sites and machinery still in use among the homes, golf courses, and shopping malls of Los Angeles.

(thanks Cora)

The Heroes And The Miracle Baby

The Syria Campaign is an open global movement standing for a free and peaceful Syria. In this video, Khaled Farah, a Syrian volunteer rescue worker who saves people every day, recounts one rescue he'll never forget. That of the miraculous rescue of a baby beneath a collapsed building following a barrel bomb attack.



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Bananas: An A-Peel-Ing History

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According to one legend, the fruit that Eve found irresistible in the Garden of Eden was not an apple, but a banana. Is it true? Who knows? But for thousands of years, the banana has been a source of pleasure... and sometimes trouble.

10 Strange Secrets Of The Moon

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The Moon is humanity's nearest companion in our travels in space and the only celestial body that we have had the chance to actually visit. Still, despite its relative closeness and familiarity, our satellite continues to hold many interesting secrets.

From its scientific strangeness to the many ways it affects our lives, the Moon is a mystery that is definitely worth a closer look.

Angry Dogs In Cute Costumes

Remember Tiny Hamsters Eating Tiny Burritos? Or Tiny Birthday For A Tiny Hedgehog? From the minds behind these videos now comes: Angry Dogs In Cute Costumes.



YouTube link

(thanks Elijah)

Interior Design Trends From Around The World

Take a look at some of the interior design trends from around the world with this interactive site. Scroll down or click on one of the country's flags. Then click on the right arrow to see a color strip of the most used colors.

(thanks Cora)

80 Mountain Dew Flavors From Around The World

image credit: kreezzalee

Last Saturday I posted a link from Now That's Nifty about 63 Pepsi flavors from around the world. This time Nifty has a list of 80 Mountain Dew flavors. Mountain Dew is a carbonated soft drink brand produced and owned by PepsiCo.

The original formula was invented in 1940 by Tennessee beverage bottlers Barney and Ally Hartman and was first marketed with the slogan 'Ya-Hoo! Mountain Dew. It'll tickle yore innards.' Here are 80 Mountain Dew flavors from around the world.

Ohrid's Byzantine Churches

Throughout the Middle Ages, Ohrid, in the Republic of Macedonia, was among the most important religious centers in the Balkans. There were reportedly 365 churches in the small city, one for every day of the year.

Most have since vanished, because they were destroyed or converted into mosques by the Ottoman Empire, but Ohrid still possesses more than its fair share of amazing churches.

Watch A Robot Ride A Hovercycle

A white plastic robot zooms a hoverbike over the English countryside, grains blowing beneath the bike's four fans. The robot's 3-D printed body is lightweight, and where its face would be there's a GoPro camera instead, filming the flight.

This isn't a scene from a dystopian science fiction movie; The bike, created by Malloy Aeronautics, is less than four feet long, and combined robot and bike weighs a maximum of 15.4 pounds.



(via Popular Science)

This Is How Heineken Became The Best Known Brewery In The World

image credit: Ian Lloyd

Heineken turns 150 this year. The Amsterdam based brewery claims to be the world's most international brewery; its beers are available in 178 countries around the world. By production volume Heineken is the number one brewery in the world.

One of the key features of Heineken's success has always been its advertising strategy. Late Freddy Heineken was renowned for his marketing skills. He once said: 'If I wouldn't have worked with Heineken I would have gone into advertising.' Here's an overview of some of Heineken's finest ads over the years.

The Striking Cliffside Town Of Tropea, Italy

image credit: simo0082

Southern Italy is known for its gorgeous coastlines and the quaint cliffside towns that inhabit them. One such town is Tropea, located on the Costa degli Dei (Coast of the Gods) in the region of Calabria.

The Coast of the Gods received its name from the Ancient Greeks and is full of Greek mythology. Tropea itself also has Greek origins in its name and history. The Ancient Greeks called the city Tropheum, which means 'trophy' in Greek, because they believed it to be founded by Hercules as a trophy for completing one of his twelve labors.

Baby Bottle Feeding Monster Koi Fish

The Koi fish at Koi Acres eat their fish food from a baby bottle. Some of the Koi fish are 20 to 30 pounds. The Koi are 4 to 7 years old, but they still will eat from a baby bottle.



YouTube link

(via Neatorama)

Not My Boat!

Please don't call!

(via Bad Newspaper)

Sounds Of Street View

Sounds of Street View is a digital explorative sound experiment by Amplifon which gives users a 3-dimensional sound experience in a Street View environment. Utilising the Web Audio API platform, sounds are designated as though they were ordinary Google Maps markers, but instead of an image and information being assigned to the marker, a sound is instead.

At the moment you can explore Sounds of Street View only in Balboa Park in San Diego, the Place du Palais in Avignon, France and Hawaii's Hapuna Beach.

The 10 Most-Visited Countries In The World

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We all know that Paris is a perennially popular tourist destination, but new data confirms that the city, is, in fact one of the most-visited destinations in the world. The World Tourism Organization just came out with new data on the most visited tourism destinations in the world in 2013, and France took the top spot.

Lake Of Dreams

Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy, which is set alight on Saturday evening. The event is described as an experiment in community, art, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance.

This is Lake of Dreams from Burning Man 2013.



Vimeo link

(thanks Cora)

Saturn's Amazing Six-Sided Hurricane

image credit: Jason Major

At four times the size of our pale blue dot, there is a storm raging over Saturn's north pole - and it is six-sided. That's right - a hexagonal hurricane. How did this geometric shape come to be, what caused it?

A Concise History Of Web Browsers

Waterfox is a high performance browser, specifically made for 64-bit systems, based on the Mozilla platform. I use Waterfox myself because it's probably the fastest 64-bit browser on the web. Waterfox has made an infographic that showes us a concise history of web browsers.

The Portuguese Man O' War Up Close

Despite its outward appearance, the Portuguese man o' war is not a common jellyfish but a siphonophore, which is a colony of specialized minute individuals called zooids. These zooids are attached to one another and physiologically integrated to the extent that they are incapable of independent survival.

For nearly two years, retired U.S. Navy combat photographer Aaron Ansarov has collected and photographed man o' wars that wash up on a local Florida beach.



YouTube link

(thanks Cora)

Are You Groot?

Are you Groot? Well, are you?

Moon Hill: The Hill With A Hole Through It

image credit: Gilles Vogt

The Chinese province of Guangxi, on the border of Vietnam, is renowned throughout the world for the beauty of its karst landscapes. One of the more unusual features the province has to offer is Moon Hill. It has a large semi-circular hole which goes right through it.

As such it struck the imagination of those who first came across it and it has been forever known as Moon Hill. Moon Hill looks almost as if it was man-made. Yet it is the product of almost unimaginable millennia of dissolution by nature.

6 Strange Body Hacks That Are Actually Useful

image credit: Rodrigo Senna

The human body has the potential for amazing feats, but it also has built-in limitations - we can't hear certain tones, we see a limited range of colors, and we can't feel magnetic and electrical fields around us the way some animals do. Some people choose not to accept those limits.

Here are six body hacks that let people sense the world around them in new ways.

Real-Time Face Tracing And Projection Mapping

Project Omote is a cololaboration between Japanese Projection Mapping specialist Nobumichi Asai, makeup artist Hiroto Kuwahara and French digital image engineer Paul Lacroix.



Vimeo link

Illustrated Etiquette Guide Explains How To Ride The Paris Metro In A Civilized Way

image credit RATP

Fellow riders failing to observe proper commuter etiquette ranks high on the pet peeves list of habitual subway users worldwide. France's public transport operator issued a short illustrated manual on subway manners.

The Savoir Vivre Guide For The Modern Traveller is a quaint 1950s-style primer that provides much-needed pointers for hapless foreigners and rural French visitors alike. Its 12 guidelines are a distillation of some 2000 tips that the RATP received in its crowdsourced etiquette campaign.

9 Most Outrageous Things Ever Faked In China

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Yes, yes, we know that China has a lot of fake handbags, knockoff watches, and pirated DVDs. That's ho-hum, but the country seems to be all about pushing the envelope and testing the limits of what can be faked. Let's take a look at the 9 most outrageous things ever faked in China.

These Are The Brave And Fluffy Cats Who Served In World War I

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In World War I, cats were a common sight in the trenches and aboard ships, where they hunted mice and rats. Beyond their 'official' duties, they were also embraced as mascots and pets by the soldiers and sailors with whom they served.

An estimated 500,000 cats were dispatched to the trenches, where they killed rats and mice; some were also used as gas detectors. At sea, cats had the run of the ship - a tradition dating back thousands of years.

The Deadly Dewdrops Of The Drosera

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Look closely, but be wary of touching. Those beautiful glistening drops of dew at the end of the plants you can see in these photographs are not quite what they seem. In fact, rather than being dew, that jewel of the earth, these gleaming globules are in fact mucilage.

Mucilage is a thick, extremely sticky matter which is produced by most of the plants on the planet. It helps the plant to store water and germinate its seeds and is even used as a kind of emergency food store in some plants. The Drosera, however, has a much darker reason for producing mucilage.

Marseille In Motion

Marseille is the second largest city in France. Marseille is a beautiful city at any point. Its architectural heritage, its geographical location and cultural diversity make it one of the most beautiful cities in France.



Vimeo link

(thanks Cora)

Countries That Look Like Other Countries

History and geography conspire to produce political boundaries at random. Each international border is the answer to a question that is contingent to a certain place and time, and irrelevant anywhere (and anywhen) else. Yet out of the chaos of chance comes the order of reality.

For even though the options are limited, the results are not: there are no Mickey Mouse-shaped countries. In fact, the forms and shapes of states can be classified in less than half a dozen morphologies. That's not where the convergence ends. Certain political entities are so similar in shape that they look like each other's double.

5 Delightful Science Experiments From 100 Years Ago

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In 1892, the dubiously named Mr. Tom Tit published a book of at-home activities for children called Magical Experiments: or, Science in Play. He made sure each scientific exploration could double as a parlor trick; something exciting and strange to impress as well as instruct.

Some of his experiments are all but impossible to do today, and some of his once common ingredients haven't been available at drug stores for decades. But if the product still exists, you can find it online. This accessibility re-opens a whole forgotten world of fantastic science fun, one that leaves the tired vinegar and baking soda volcanoes looking hollow.

Why Don't Woodpeckers Get Brain Damage?

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One day in 1976, psychiatrist Philip May asked his colleague at the University of California, Los Angeles a peculiar question: 'Why don't woodpeckers have headaches?' May specialized in treating schizophrenia, but proposed a radical shift: How, he wanted to know, might an animal that repeatedly slams its head into a tree trunk at 16mph keep from getting brain damage?

So, why don't woodpeckers get brain damage?

We Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For... Frozen Custard?

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Ice cream, frozen custard gelato, sherbet, sorbet, frozen yoghurt. What's the difference? Here are the many, and often subtle, differences between all those frozen desserts you've been eating all summer long.

17 Facts You Might Not Know About Bonanza

image credit: James Vaughan

In 431 episodes spanning from 1959 to 1973, the Cartwrights of the Nevada Territory's Ponderosa became a fixture of American life. The show centers on the Cartwright family, who live in the area of Virginia City, Nevada, bordering Lake Tahoe. The series stars Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker, Michael Landon, and later, David Canary and Mitch Vogel.

Let's take a look at some facts that you might not know about Bonanza.

50+ Humorous But Evil True Facts About Our Daily Life

Do you know that 90% of the times you discover spelling errors in an email, it's just after you've sent them? Or do you know which single most useful application Facebook is missing apart from their hundreds of existing applications?

Here are 50+ humorous but evil true facts about our daily life.

Mighty Step's Coffee Stop 'DRIP FOR U'

Yasuo Ishii believes that there is power in which a cup of coffee makes people happy. This mini-documentary explores the root of Yasuo's specialty coffee and how he opened Mighty Step's Coffee Stop, the coffee shop in Nihonbashi, Tokyo.



Vimeo link

(thanks Cora)

63 Pepsi Flavors From Around The World

image credit: Evan Blaser

Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink that is produced and manufactured by PepsiCo. Created and developed in 1893 and introduced as Brad's Drink, it was renamed as Pepsi-Cola in 1898, then to Pepsi in 1961.

PepsiCo has produced a number of variations on its primary cola over the years which are sold all over the world, including these 63 flavors.

The Odd And Controversial Fishing Island Of Migingo

Its hard to believe that a piece of land that barely covers half an acre would be a topic of much dispute, but Migingo Island, a tiny fishing island in Lake Victoria in eastern Africa, does just that.

Both Kenya and Uganda have claimed it's within their own territory, which causes a lot of tension between the fishermen from each country who believe they have the right to use it to fish. Most maps will show that Migingo Island is just barely within the Kenyan border, but Ugandan fishermen are adamant that they deserve the right to fish there. It's just a blip on a map, but it causes quite the uproar.

Nightingale And Canary

Australian artist Andy Thomas specializes in creating 'audio life forms': beautiful abstract shapes that react to sounds. In this animated short, he visualizes two recorded bird sounds from the archives of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.



Vimeo link

(via Nag on the Lake)

The Monumental Cemetery Of Staglieno

image credit: massimo ankor

One of the largest cemeteries in Europe, the Cimitero monumentale di Staglieno in Genoa, Italy covers more than a square kilometer. It opened in 1851 and since then has gained a reputation for its monuments to those buried there.

And what monuments they are. It is a place for contemplation, for reflection on human frailty and the short-lived nature of our time on earth.

If You're Born In The Sky, What's Your Nationality?

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An American woman is about to board a plane and, pregnant as she is, they let her on. Her flight, on Lufthansa Airlines, will leave Frankfurt, Germany, and travel nonstop to the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean.

Hours later, just as her plane passes 37,000 feet above Karachi, Pakistan, heading south, her baby, in an inconvenient act of impetuosity, decides she wants to be born right then, right there. So , we've got an American mom on a German airplane in Pakistani airspace.

What nationality is the baby?

Top 8 Most Innovative Pinball Machines Of All Time

image credit: Adam Fagen

Early pinball machines were built without flippers. Instead of the now-standard paddles, users pulled a plunger to shoot balls onto the playing field, aiming for holes that were worth various point values.

From the invention of solid-state guts to holographic playing fields, from the advent of anticheating devices to online user mods, here's the evolution history's most mechanical video-game console.

How Do You Know You Exist?

How do you know you're real? Is existence all just a big dream? Has some mad scientist duped us into simply believing that we exist? James Zucker investigates all of these questions in this mind-boggling tribute to René Descartes' 'Meditations on First Philosophy.'



YouTube link

10 Little-Known But Amazing Structures Of The Ancient World

image credit: Sarah Jamerson

The Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu and the Great Pyramid of Giza are just a few of the names that come to mind when talking about architectural wonders of the ancient world.

But unknown to many, there are equally numerous other impressive structures that ancient human civilization has left behind for us that will certainly leave you completely stunned. Here are 10 of the little-known but amazing structures of the ancient world.

12 Untranslatable Words (And Their Translations)

image credit: Anette og Jan

Words like the Portuguese saudade, or Danish hyggelig, can only truly be understood by speakers of those languages. Right? We'd all like to believe in untranslatable words.

It's such a romantic thought: that there exist out there, like undiscovered desert islands, ideas we have never even conceived of. Carefully guarded by foreigners they have endured down the centuries, nuggets of culture overlooked by the rest of the world.

Speed Painting Artist

Watch this speed painting artist while he's working on the beach. You won't see what he painted until the very last seconds.



YouTube link

Manul - The Cat That Time Forgot

image credit: Silvain de Munck

Have you ever wanted to take a trip through time to see what animals looked like millions of years ago? When it comes to cats there is little or no need. This beautiful specimen is a Manul, otherwise known as Pallas' Cat.

About twelve million years ago the Pallas' Cat was one of the first two modern cats to evolve and it hasn't changed since. The other species, Martelli's Cat, is extinct so what you are looking at here is a unique window in to the past of modern cats.

For Sale: Electric Wheel Chair Lift

Comes with patient.

(via Bad Newspaper)