World’s Strangest

In September of 1973 I turned 15 years old. Now I have a daughter who is 15 and she watched the Video Music Awards with the excitement I might have had over a stadium concert back in the day. Here are some of my favorite songs from 1973 on the late movies. I spent a [...]

Fan Video Games Are Much Better Than Fan Fiction A recent Reddit AMA conducted by Dan Harmon, the recently-ousted creator of the show Community, inspired one fan to create a lost scene in video game format. * Chicago Children (And Some of Their Parents) Have Never Experienced School Recess School recess is as American as a dessert [...]

You’ve surely heard the story of the Great Chicago Fire (which wasn’t really started by a cow). Strangely though, the fire really wasn’t that big—at least when compared to many of the others that broke out on that same terrible night of October 8, 1871. The story you probably haven’t heard is how that 24-hour period [...]

Link Scroll down for today’s pictures & links. Library Shelves Catastrophe One of the best pranks we’ve ever seen! Impossible not to stare in utter stupefaction, if such a thing would ever happen to you in real life… Link Today’s pictures & links: Window into the World Not a framed picture! - (image credit: Jeremy Duguid) ———— Light-Hearted! “Light Painting” by Shawn Hoke: read more about [...]

Abraham Lincoln’s personal secretary John Nicolay believed that no photograph could capture Honest Abe’s essence: “There are many pictures of Lincoln,” he said, “[but] there is no portrait of him.” Over 130 photographs of Lincoln exist—here are a few you may not have crossed before. This daguerreotype, taken around 1846, is the earliest known photo [...]

Successfully snagging hosting duties for the Olympic Games is one of the toughest things a city can do. Here in Chicago, we just spent nearly $50 million on our bid for the 2016 Summer Games, and even that eight-figure budget couldn’t grab the rings. Of course, that $50 million pales in comparison to [...]

On this date in 1935, the Dust Bowl heat wave reached its peak, with temperatures reaching 109°F in Chicago, Illinois and 104°F in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As we sweat through another long, hot summer in America, here are six songs inspired by rising temps (or at least six songs that make us think of hot summer [...]

Authors like H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, and Robert Heinlein have long envisioned a future where the automobile gives way to massive, high-speed moving walkways. Some of them merely zoom commuters around cities, while others, like Heinlein’s “mechanized roads,” could take people from Cleveland all the way to Cincinnati. The moving sidewalk is familiar to travelers in [...]

(YouTube Link) This collection of unlikely Batman quotes are brought to you by Chicago’s own Octavarius, a group of folks known for bringing the funny. You’re unlikely to hear Batman say any of these lines in the new Dark Knight movie, so you’ll just have to imagine how much better the film would be if he talked [...]

Image credit: Guinness World Records While an everyday ‘stache might gain you a cult following or a cameo on Reno 911, a truly magnificent mustache could catapult you into the Guinness Book of World Records. Here are eleven tips to help you grow the world’s longest mustache, including tricks from the current record holder himself. [...]