World’s Strangest

(YouTube link) Willie the goat sends his mother for a ride in a wagon. Goats are nice like that. -via Arbroath

In A Perfect World, Science Museums Wouldn’t Have to Advertise But since it isn’t and they do, you might as well make sure the advertisements are geeky and cool to show off your science smarts. * Energy: Sure. Education: Absolutely. Cancer: Huh? Until I read this article, I never really considered that carcinogens might have their own [...]

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 [...]

While it’s not unusual for a film to have unused screenplays hiding in a filing cabinet somewhere, the lost scripts of Indiana Jones are a fascinating look at what might have been for everyone’s favorite whip-wielding, fedora-wearing archaeologist. Today let’s discuss Indiana Jones and the Saucermen from Mars. The Story Behind the Story After the success of [...]

NASA has been waking up astronauts using music since the Apollo Program. Sometimes those wakeup calls get pretty weird. 1. STS-111 – “I Got You Babe” from Groundhog Day On June 19, 2002, the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavour awoke to a tinny rendition of “I Got You Babe” by Sonny and Cher, taken [...]

Two years ago, Julie "Bunny" Rodgers and Willie "Bear" Pittman met at IKEA, so what better place to get married? ‘She mentioned IKEA and the fact that on Tuesday the special was meatballs,’ said Pittman. ‘So we came [...]

We’re going region by region, giving you one fun fact about each team in the tournament. (1) Kentucky Kentucky got its royal blue team color from a piece of clothing. In 1891 the school needed a set of team colors before a football game against in-state rival Centre College. After some debate, the students settled on [...]

Ub Iwerks was a Disney animator from the early days of the company. He first worked for Walt Disney in 1922, and created the character of Mickey Mouse. Iwerks left to form his own animation company in 1930. He did some Looney Tunes work, then returned to Disney in 1940. Cinderella This 1922 version from Walt Disney’s [...]

Some of the most famous séances took place in the White House in 1863, when Mary Todd Lincoln invited the female medium Nettie Colburn Maynard to help her contact the spirit of her dead son Willie. Colburn’s stories from the Lincoln séances include some fantastic occurrences: supposedly a grand piano began levitating when she played [...]

In case you haven’t already heard, Punxsutawney Phil predicted another six weeks of winter this morning. Stupid groundhog. But there’s good news – if you don’t like what he had to say, there are plenty of other groundhogs you can consult instead. Here they are, complete with what they predicted today: 1. Punxsutawney Phil. We’ll start [...]