World’s Strangest

A combination fortune cookie and piggy bank, the corezone is a place to store your feelings until you need to open them. Dorota Skalska and Agnieszka Mazur made it in “an attempt to fulfill emotional needs by the means of an object, a try to withhold immaterial being in a material space.” Link -via Ian Brooks

Despite being one of the richest people in Europe, Alfred Nobel was not a happy man. The Swedish industrialist made his fortune by inventing (and later producing) dynamite. But his work made him a recluse. He spent most of his life traveling to oversee his vast multinational business, and he filled the rest of his [...]

Many years ago, my mother got a fortune cookie that said, “You got the wrong cookie!” That particular message has cropped a couple of times since then. Americans crack open so many fortune cookies that it keeps the industry busy coming up with sayings, pithy or not, to make us think, laugh, or even cringe. [...]

Remember when we all thought Beanie Babies would be worth a fortune someday, or when Pogs ruled the schoolyard? Then check out this gallery of Christmas list toppers from the 90s, some of which are still around while others have fallen by the wayside, and see if you still have some of these treasures lying [...]

The industrialist Andrew Carnegie used his vast fortune to build 2,509 libraries around the world. The people of Little Free Library would like to continue that philanthropic tradition and make it accessible for people without Carnegie’s wealth. So they sell birdhouse-sized libraries that you can fill with books that people in your neighborhood can read. Link [...]

If you’re looking for a little home-decor inspiration but don’t want to spend a fortune on materials, this great WebEcoist article has a great collection of easy-to-make and eco-friendly crafts to help you spruce up your home. While I love the look of the lace lanterns, I have to say the most functional would probably [...]

Have you ever aspired to be a fortune cookie writer? Most of us who ever received a lame fortune have contemplated it for a short time. However, there aren’t many of these positions available. Donald Lau is the vice-president of Wonton Food, Inc. in Queens, New York. In addition to his financial work, he has [...]

In this four-minute video clip, the late author Kurt Vonnegut shows us his “story shapes” — simple graphs of plots along two axes. I’ll tell you the labels for the Y axis: it runs from G (Good Fortune) to I (Ill Fortune). That’s about all I can say without ruining this whole. Sample quote regarding [...]

Wellington R. Burt (d. 1919) amassed a vast fortune during his lifetime, but he didn’t want it to spoil his children or grandchildren. They needed to make it on their own in the world, so he bequeathed to them comparatively small stipends and ordered that the rest of his fortune — now measured at $100 [...]

Witches in Romania could face jail time if their fortune telling predictions turn out to be incorrect. This comes as another blow to witches practicin…