What is this beauty of 1950s Americana? Why was it not mass produced when it offered so many outdoor adventure opportunities? I suppose that sometimes perfection cannot survive in our world.

-via Dude Craft | Photo: unknown

Googly Eyes Luggage Tags 

Are you planning a fantastic spring getaway? Don't let wandering luggage ruin your holiday. Keep an eye on your precious belongings with the Googly Eyes Luggage Tags from the NeatoShop. This eye popping design features a sturdy strap and ID card insert. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Travel Accessories and fabulous Googly Eyes items. 

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Jennifer Lewis of Flavorwire has another round of posters created by making a pun of two themes, at least one of them a movie. Spring Beakers is a movie I'd want to see! Don't miss Jennifer Lawrence of Arabia, Winter is Coming to America, and the others. Link

Redditor Otterdink's co-workers include this Sulawesi Macaque, a monkey native to Indonesia. She doesn't feel respected. I know that feel, bro.

Link -via Blame It on the Voices

Whovians, start Season 7 the right way ... with neat Doctor Who stuff from the NeatoShop. On our next issue of NeatoMail email newsletter, we're going to run something the Time Lord himself would approve: Choose Your Own Doctor Who Prize giveaway, open exclusively to NeatoMail subscribers (no time travel required!)

That's right - you get to choose what you'd like from the NeatoShop's Doctor Who merch. But in order to participate, you have to subscribe to the NeatoMail (don't forget to complete the verification process, otherwise you won't get the email. We won't sell your info, so don't worry about getting spam):

Photographer Matthew Rolston took a series of "portraits" of the ventriloquist's dummies at the Vent Haven Museum in Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky. They are now part of his book Talking Heads: The Vent Haven Portraits. Slate has a selection of those portraits, which are altogether creepy, especially at full size. Link  -via mental_floss

Trichobatrachus robustus is the Wolverine of the amphibian world. You'll know when you've crossed the line because he'll gladly break his own bones to produce weapons to break yours. New Scientist reports on the findings of zoologist David Blackburn and his colleagues:

Trichobatrachus robustus actively breaks its own bones to produce claws that puncture their way out of the frog's toe pads, probably when it is threatened. [...]

At rest, the claws of T. robustus, found on the hind feet only, are nestled inside a mass of connective tissue. A chunk of collagen forms a bond between the claw's sharp point and a small piece of bone at the tip of the frog's toe.

The other end of the claw is connected to a muscle. Blackburn and his colleagues believe that when the animal is attacked, it contracts this muscle, which pulls the claw downwards. The sharp point then breaks away from the bony tip and cuts through the toe pad, emerging on the underside.

Link -via Alyssa Milano 

(Photo: Miguel Artime)

In 1909, back when tall buildings had elevator operators, one such worker was caught stealing from an apartment. A Pinkerton detective confronted the elevator operator to arrest him. But his mistake was to enter the elevator, where the operator was right at home. A newspaper carried the detective's account of the incident:

    We had only gone down three floors before he made a desperate break at me. With one arm he grabbed me around the neck, while with the other he made a grab for the pistol, which I was holding with my right hand. We grappled, and the elevator shot downstairs at its full speed with both of us struggling for possession of the revolver.

    When the elevator got to about the second or third floor I had almost lost my strength when the revolved exploded and off went my left forefinger. This sudden shock seemed to give me strength and I managed to get possession of the revolver again, it having dropped to the floor in the struggle. As I stooped to reach the gun, Johnson grabbed the elevator rope and the elevator shot to the roof again. Then he grabbed me and the gun went off again and again.

    I don't know where that shot went, but I remember that as the elevator reached the top Johnson still had the controlling rope in one hand and was fighting me with the other, for he reversed the machine and down it shot full speed. We grappled again and again, and then there were two more shots from the gun, and Johnson dropped crouching in the corner of the elevator.

Read more at the Atlantic. Link

(Image credit: Library of Congress)

There may be as few as 400 Ploughshare Tortoises in the world. Police in Thailand caught a man trying to sneak out of the country with 54 of them and other rare tortoises in his luggage:

On Friday, authorities arrested a 38-year-old Thai man as he was attempting to collect a bag containing tortoises from Madagascar, from a luggage carousel, at the airport. The bag was registered to a 25-year-old woman who had flown from Madagascar to Bangkok via Nairobi the same day.

Royal Thai Customs officers and their counterparts in the CITES management authority found 54 Ploughshare Tortoises Astrochelys yniphora and 21 Radiated Tortoises Astrochelys radiata, both of which are assessed as being Critically Endangered.

Ploughshare and Radiated Tortoises are endemic to Madagascar, totally protected in the country and are both listed in CITES Appendix I. The wild population of Ploughshare Tortoises, considered among the rarest species in the world, is estimated to be as few as 400 individuals, and is declining fast.

Link -via Popular Science

(Photo: P. Tansom/Traffic)

I have a 50-year-old box of vanilla extract that I keep around for the novelty and the vintage package design. I don't know what the bottle looks like because I've never opened the box. But that vanilla is downright fresh compared to some unearthed foodstuffs studied by archaeologists. Can you imagine a bowl of soup 2,400 years old?   

While excavating to make way for a new airport, Chinese workers struck liquid gold. Well, liquid gold if you happen to be an archeologist. Or really into soup. The soup, sealed so tightly in its bronze cooking pot that it was still in a liquid state, was discovered in a tomb near Xian. It didn’t look too savory, having turned green from 2400 years of bronze oxidation. It also still contained bones, which delighted archeologists, probably because they didn’t actually have to eat it.

That's one. There are six other examples of food surviving a very long time in a recognizable form (even if only after testing) at mental_floss. Link

When the competition is so fierce, how do you rank librarians by coolness? Flavorwire's Emily Temple found a way. She's compiled descriptions of ten hip and innovative librarians, including MetaFilter's own Jessamyn West:

The tagline of West’s website, Librarian.net, is “putting the rarin back in librarian,” which should give you an idea about her attitude. A library technologist based in Vermont who spends her time thinking and talking about “the digital divide,” she is the irreverent, awesome librarian of the future (and also the present).

Link | Photo: Jessamyn West

P.S. If the list was expanded, I'd linclude io9's Jess Nevins, an expert on pulp fiction and comics, as well as Amanda Brennan, the resident librarian at Know Your Meme.

A post at Cake Wrecks featuring the pictured cake of a lamb with a cigarette in its mouth led me to a previous collection of such cakes, which led to a post about the possible meaning of what appears to be a tradition, although not common enough to be well documented. Lamb cakes are baked for both Passover and Easter, and sometimes for a Catholic child's First Communion. The blog Romantoes gathered several theories from commenters.

* It's Joe Camel.

* The lamb is smoking to signify the end of Lent, and the enjoyment of vices one might have given up for Lent, such as smoking.

* The cigarette is supposed to represent a paintbrush, and is colored on the end to suggest the lamb's blood that was used to paint door frames during the original Pesach.

* What looks like a cigarette is actually a scroll, and is in the lamb's mouth to illustrate a passage from Revelations: "Then I saw, between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. The Lamb went and took the scroll from the right hand of the one who was seated on the throne."

I looked around at forums that discussed the matter, but no one knew with authority what the "cigarette" meant. However, a few people mentioned that they had seen such lambs for sale at Jewish delis, which leads me to think the third explanation may be the one. Link

(Image source: Cake Wrecks)

Medical Supplies Messenger Bag

Are you having a fashion accessory emergency? Get the Medical Supplies Messenger Bag from the NeatoShop STAT. This fantastic bag can be carried across the body. It features an adjustable strap, strong magnetic closure, and an inside pocket perfect for your favorite iPad or tablet. The bag is made from 95% post-consumer material.  Hidden under the flap are vintage style first aid graphics. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Bags & Totes. 

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How do you make Greek epics even more, um, epic-er? Add superheroes. That's what Nicholas Hyde AKA Harshness did by featuring Thor, Spider-Man, and Batman in the style of ancient Greek pottery. Via Geek Art

(YouTube link)

The Highland Trouveres, a group of students at Highland High School in Pocatello, Idaho, performed a lip-dub of thd mashup Pop Danthology 2012 by Daniel Kim. This video was made from a single take -although I doubt it was the first one. They did an awesome job! -via Digg

Photo: Vitaliy Raskalov

When Russian photographers Vadim Makhorov and Vitaliy Raskalov went to the Pyramids at Giza, Egypt, the duo couldn't resist embarking on a great adventure: climbing to the top of the Pyramid and taking photos of the world below.

Problem was, it's illegal to do so. Makhorov explains to CNN:

"No words can express the fascination I felt when seeing my childhood dream come alive. Probably this very feeling made us climb onto the top of the Pyramid and see the the panorama of the whole complex, the desert and Cairo itself.

"It was already pitch black and nobody paid us any attention. We started climbing as fast and as soundless as we could. You have to be quite strong and agile to climb onto a meter-high block covered with dust.

"It was exhausting, but the thought that we were going to witness something spectacular pushed us forward.

"It took us around 20 minutes to get to the top. We were taken breathless by the view.
"What we saw from up there was the seventh wonder of the world. We tried to capture the beauty of the scenery in the photos, so that the others could also see this magnificent panorama.

We're left with the magnificent photos from the duo's criminal adventure, which you can see over at CNN: Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Jeffrey Pott)

A woman shoots her husband. Then she holds him under water for five minutes. Finally, she hangs him. But five minutes later, they both go out and enjoy a wonderful dinner together.

How can this be?

When you want the answer, continue reading.


Highlight here for the answer: The woman was a photographer. She shot a picture of her husband, developed it, and hung it up to dry.

_________________________

This article is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader. Uncle John rules the world of information and humor. It's simply Ahh-Inspiring!

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

We hear about tech companies going public all the time, but why not actual people? That's what Mike Merrill, 35-year-old tech support rep at a small Portland, Oregon, software company did. He decided to go public with shares of himself:

On January 26, 2008, a 30-year-old part-time entrepreneur named Mike Merrill decided to sell himself on the open market. He divided himself into 100,000 shares and set an initial public offering price of $1 a share. Each share would earn a potential return on profits he made outside of his day job as a customer service rep at a small Portland, Oregon, software company. Over the next 10 days, 12 of his friends and acquaintances bought 929 shares, and Merrill ended up with a handful of extra cash. He kept the remaining 99.1 percent of himself but promised that his shares would be nonvoting: He’d let his new stockholders decide what he should do with his life. [...]

Merrill wasn’t running a startup per se, but he had plenty of great ideas and ambitions—videogames he wanted to develop, a data backup service he wanted to launch, a whiskey-tasting society he hoped to form. He needed venture capital, but as an ordinary guy, he had limited access to capital markets. That didn’t hold him back. He simply relied on the support of the motley group of programmers, bloggers, and baristas he knew in Portland. It was Silicon Valley–style finance, writ small.

But, like many entrepreneurs before him, Merrill soon learned the downside to taking on outside funding. In the ensuing months and years, 128 people bought shares of Merrill, and he fell victim to competing shareholder interests, stock price manipulation, and investors looking for short-term gains at the expense of his long-term well-being. He was overwhelmed by paperwork and blindsided by takeover interest. He found himself beholden to his shareholders in ways he had never imagined, ruining personal relationships along the way. Through it all, Merrill clung stubbornly to the belief that since an IPO had worked for Google and Amazon, it should work for an individual too.

Read the rest of the story by Joshua Davis over at Wired: Link

The security camera caught the whole thing at Kent's Meats & Groceries in Redding, California. When the glass broke, a burglar alarm was set off. The suspect is still at large. Kent Pfrimmer, the store owner, doesn't think the perpetrator is dangerous. He said, "He don't look too, you know, intelligent to me." KRCR-TV has a video report. Link -via reddit

French art collective Maentis spoofed the famous March of Progress by Rudolph Zallinger to create the 99 Steps of Progress. Here are some of our favorites:

View more over at Maentis' website: Link

(YouTube link)

A substantial snowfall in Wales trapped sheep under a blanket of snow. Farmer Gareth Wyn Jones of Llanfairfechan is on his third day of digging them out. This is definite proof that sheep are tough but stupid, and that farming is hard work. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

Dust off your old Atari 2600 console and see if these modern games will work in it. StarRoivas imagined what modern games would look like if they were produced 30 years ago.

Link -via Geek Art

He grabbed her butt; she hit him in the face. Can you guess who pays for the crime? The unnamed man who copped a feel at a nightclub in Lund, Sweden, last summer was charged with sexual assault, but the case was dropped due to lack of evidence. However, he suffered a broken nose, which was plenty of evidence to convict the woman of assault.

In its ruling the Lund District Court agreed that the woman was subject to a "serious provocation", but ultimately ruled her actions couldn't be considered as acting in self-defence.

The court convicted the 23-year-old woman of assault, slapping her with a suspended sentence and a 2,500 kronor ($380) fine, the Sydsvenskan newspaper reported.

She must also pay 1,860 kronor in damages to the man, who had originally demanded 25,000 kronor as compensation for the injuries he suffered during the incident.

Link -via Arbroath

Tattoupees

Do you know someone who is having trouble accepting the fact that they have become follicly challenged? Encourage them to embrace, nay show off, all that hairless real estate with the Tattoupees from the NeatoShop. This fantastic set includes 35 assorted temporary tattoos housed in a neat little tin. Bald is beautiful.    

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Gag Gifts & Pranks. 

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Real police are expensive. But perhaps cardboard cutouts of officers might convince people to drive carefully. That, at least, is what Bangalore's government is counting on:

"It is not a gimmick. Wherever we have put up these cut outs, violations have come down," Traffic Commissioner MA Saleem told the BBC.

Mr Saleem admitted there is a shortage of more than 500 traffic policemen in the city.

"Right now we have put these cut outs in the central district. We will have them throughout the city soon," he added.

Link -via Oddity Central

Now it's time for our collaboration with the awesome What Is It? Blog! Do you know what this thing is? You can win even if you don't know!

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will each win a T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

Check out the What Is It? Blog for more mystery items of the week. Good luck!

With low shutter speeds, photographer David Orias can create stunning images of the waves off the coast of California. He writes:

I often use the camera to see our world in ways our eyes cannot see. I do this by using long shutter speeds and camera motion to achieve this goal. I am often asked where the colors on my waves come from. I shoot mostly at dawn and the geography of the location allows higher ambient light levels before the full illumination by the sun. Colors are created by different weather conditions, amount of clouds or even smoke in the air from local wildfires which are often prevalent.

Gallery and Photographer's Website -via Colossal

Old colorful iMac G3 shells are now overhead lamps at Toronto travel agency G Adventures. Is this brilliantly clever or tragically tacky? Link  -via Gizmodo