No, the school isn't tiny. This is actually a bus for a campground in Nova Scotia. The owners call it "Canada's smallest operational school bus." Mark Stevenson of Jalopnik took a few photos of it, which you can view at the link.

Link | Campground Website

Om nom! Cassius the Croc, the world's largest crocodile in captivity, turned 110 this week. Just be thankful that you are not the cake:

Far North Queensland keepers of the world's largest saltwater crocodile in captivity sang the old croc Happy Birthday before giving him the 20kg meat cake topped with candles.

"He destroyed it in about 30 seconds," Marineland Melanesia croc wrangler Billy Craig said. "It's one of the biggest meals he's had - we decided to spoil him."

Cleo Fraser of NT News has the story: Link

(YouTube link)

A classic skit. Some people have no idea how offensive they are until you turn it around on them. And the real kicker is that turning it around often doesn't even get the point across. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

Trolltunga is an odd rock protrusion jutting out over Ringedalsvatnet, a lake in southern Norway. The name means "the troll's tongue." Would you be willing to sit on the end? He promises not to eat you.

Link -via TYWKIWDBI

(Photos: Steinar Talmoen, Jan Skrodzki

Sugar isn't always sweet, especially when Darwin's involved. Entomologists at North Carolina State University showed that when glucose is used in roach-bait poison, cockroaches evolve to dislike sweets:

Glucose sets off bitter receptors in roach taste buds, causing roaches to avoid foods that bring on this taste-bud reaction. This aversion has a genetic basis and it eventually spreads to offspring, resulting in increasingly large groups of cockroaches that reject glucose and any baits made with it.

In normal German cockroaches, glucose elicits activity in sugar gustatory receptor neurons, which react when exposed to sugars like glucose and fructose – components of corn syrup, a common roach-bait ingredient. Generally, roaches have a sweet tooth for these sugars. [...]

Glucose-averse roaches that were forced to taste glucose refused to ingest the sugar, akin to a child who spits out her bitter-tasting food.

Link

A hedgehog in Bude, Cornwall, England, was taken to the vet because he was so big and round that he couldn't walk or curl up. Veterinary staff were puzzled, because the huge hedgehog was of normal weight. An x-ray revealed that the animal was, indeed, inflated. Veterinary surgeon Adam Revitt said he had never seen a case of "balloon syndrome" before.

Balloon syndrome occurs when bacteria gets into a wound and gives off gas that becomes trapped under the skin, Mr Revitt explained.

He added: "This is the first case I had ever seen. It is uncommon. There are very few things published about it.

"Without the treatment it couldn’t breathe and would probably have died."

Revitt used a syringe to slowly deflate the hedgehog over about five minutes. The animal is now on antibiotics and is recovering nicely. Link  -via Arbroath

Previously at Neatorama:A similar case from 2007.

If Klein Bottles - which have neither an inside nor an outside surface - aren't confusing enough for your, check these glass Klein bottles made by Alan Bennett for the Science Museum in London:

A single surface model made by Alan Bennett in Bedford, United Kingdom. It consists of three Klein bottles set inside each other to produce, when cut, three pairs of single-twist Mobius strips. A Klein bottle has no edges, no outside or inside and cannot be properly constructed in three dimensions. (Source)

A single surface model made by Alan Bennett in Bedford, 1995. It consists of a sphere with three interlinked loops the equivalent of three interconnected Klein bottles. (Source)

A single surface glass vessel made by Alan Bennett in Bedford, United Kingdom. It consists of a triple loop Klein bottle which when cut gives a pair of five-twist Mobius strips. (Source)

View those and many more neat Klein bottle images over at this Dark Roasted Blend post aptly titled Topological Marvel: The Klein Bottle in Art - Thanks Avi!

Erin Bradley's Park Slope Family Circus imagines Bil, Thelma, Billy, Dolly, Jeffy and P.J. not in Scottsdale, Arizona, but a wealthy neighborhood of Brooklyn. They're rich enough to afford absurdities.

Link -via 22 Words

Live Long and Prosper Star Trek Photo Frame

Father's Day is right around the corner. Are you looking for the perfect gift for your Star Trek loving Dad? Get Dad the Live Long and Prosper Star Trek Photo Frame from the NeatoShop. This fantastic frame features Spock and the U.S.S. Enterprise. The opening is in the shape of the Sarfleet insignia. The frame holds a 4 x 6 photo.    

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Star Trek items. 

Link

M.C. Escher's tessellated lizards will look great on your floor! The tiles for the bathroom floor pictured were custom-designed, but you can contact the company Arbore about making some for you. Link -via Boing Boing

Eventually, someone will break your heart. Don't wait until s/he has ripped it out of your chest and stomped on it before developing a contingency plan. Be prepared with Melanie Chernock's first aid kit. It contains chocolate, vodka, tissues, bubble bath, a candle and a music CD with appropriate songs.

Link -via Fubiz

(YouTube link)

Maru, the internet's favorite cat, turned six years old yesterday. As is her custom, mugumogu posted a retrospective of Maru's best moments from the past year in a birthday video. Link -via Cute Overload

w00t! If you love Uncle John's Bathroom Reader series on Neatorama, you'd love this: they're having an awesome Father's Day Sale, where the entire Uncle John's store is 30% off from May 20th to July 16th, 2013. They must be off their rockers! Thanks for letting us know, Mana!

Check out the latest Uncle John's Bathroom Readers article on Neatorama:

• Kibble Me This: The History of Dog Food
• Sex in Aladdin: Anatomy of a Rumor
• The Pee-Mobile
• Betty Freeman's Day in Court
• The Birth of the Dishwasher

View all Bathroom Reader articles on Neatorama | Don't forget to check out the official Uncle John's Bathroom Reader website

(Image generated at Word Cloud for Kids)

What do the following words have in common? It's not really that difficult if you chip away at them for a while.

Sheath

Pirate

Ashamed

Brandy

Continue reading for the answer.

Highlight here for the answer:  

By continuously removing one letter from either the beginning or the end of each word, you create new words, until you are left with a single letter.

Sheath, heath, heat, eat, at, a

Pirate, irate, rate, ate, at, a

Ashamed, shamed, shame, sham, ham, am, a

Brandy, brand, bran, ran, an, a

___________________

This brainteaser was reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Unstoppable Bathroom Reader.

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!

(Video Link)

Guys, she doesn't want you to solve her problems or even just suggest possible solutions. Just listen and empathize as best you can. In this hilarious short film, Jason Headley offers great relationship advice.

-via American Digest

What happened after the movie ended? Old Red Jalopy collaborated with Next Movie to envision what would logically happen after the credits rolled.

As you can see above, Willy Wonka's chocolate factory would've been closed by the authorities for sure. Willy himself is probably hiding somewhere in Loompaland to avoid lawsuits.

Take a look at the rest: Link - Thanks Andie!

(YouTube link)

To celebrate YouTube's eighth anniversary, Dane Boe put together a retrospective of viral videos to the tune of Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire." You might recognize all the clips, most of them were posted here at Neatorama over the past eight years. -via Viral Viral Videos   

No ordinary plate will do. The photography duo Nicky & Max photographed food presented in the elegant Bauhaus style. Their simple shapes, colors and forms result in lovely images of fine food. You can see more photos from their series at the link.

Link -via Foodiggity | Artists' Website

Etckt had great success with their Periodic Table of Star Wars (the Original Trilogy), so, just like Lucas did, they followed that up with the prequels. And just like the prequels, this new periodic table has more special effects.

Each element cell is now a cube (rendered as hexagons), with all the pertinent information, and elements/characters categorized as Jedi, Sith, royalty, politicians, droids, etc. Of course, Anakin Skywalker heads the table, along with Qui-Gon Jin. You can see more details and the full-size version by clicking the image at Etckt. Link-Thanks, Matthew Gallagher!

Aragorn & Arwen Salt & Pepper Shakers

Celebrate a love worth becoming mortal for with the Aragorn & Arwen Salt & Pepper Shakers from the NeatoShop. This beautiful set is made of glazed ceramic and feature hand painted details. Magnets hold the two shakers together. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Salt & Pepper Shakers and fantastic The Lord of the Rings items. 

Link

At the age of 80, Japanese mountain climber and adventurer Yuichiro Miura reached the summit of Mount Everest on Thursday. But he may not hold that title for long:

There are reports that Nepalese climber Min Bahadur Sherchan, 81, is planning an assault on the world’s highest peak next week, despite some recent intestinal problems.

Sherchan frustrated Miura’s record-setting ambitions once before when, in May 2008, Miura conquered the mountain at the age of 75, only to arrive a day after Sherchan's ascent at age 76 years and 340 days.

This is Miura’s third ascent of the 29,028-foot peak. He also earned the oldest climber title in 2003, at age 70, a milestone broken four years later when fellow Japanese climber Katsusuke Yanagisawa ascended at age 71.

But at least for now, Miura is expressing nothing but satisfaction at his accomplishment.

"This is the best feeling in the world,” an entry said on his Facebook page. “How could I have come so far at the world's oldest age of 80, I’ve never felt like this in my life. But I've never been more exhausted than this." [...]

The veteran adventurer also hit the spotlight in 1970 when he became the first person to ski down Everest with help from a parachute, a feat documented in the 1975 Academy Award-winning documentary "The Man Who Skied Down Everest."

Link

(Photo: AFP)

(YouTube link)

This video from RTÉ Radio 1 shows a cat in County Offaly, Ireland, suckling ducklings along with her own kittens. Isn't that amazing? Well, from what I can see, the ducklings are not nursing, although they may give it a try after seeing the kittens do it. After all, ducks don't suck. But they sure are craving some snuggling from the mama cat! What really is amazing is that a video from a radio network has no audio. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

"Sorry for trying to enslave Eternia."

"Water under the bridge, man. Water under the bridge."

In an alternate universe depicted by Matthew Skiff, He-Man and Skeletor just talked out their differences.

Link -via Nerd Bastards

Remember that time you gave that long and tearful toast at your brother's wedding, only to find out later that you had a huge chunk of spinach stuck in your teeth? Or the time you stole that basketball and shot that brilliant last-second 3-pointer into the other team's basket? Or what about when you built that giant highway bridge for the city and it suddenly collapsed one day? On second thought, that last one is its own special kind of embarrassing. And one for which you'd probably trade a million spinach-toothed moments. So take comfort in knowing that, if nothing else, your bad hair day didn't put anyone in danger or make the nightly news.

Tacoma Narrows Bridge is Falling Down

Tacoma, Washington, 1940

While buildings and bridges are made to bend in the wind, the engineers behind the Tacoma Narrows Bridge might have benefited from heeding a different aphorism: everything in moderation. Stretching 2,800 feet above the riverbed, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was (at the time) the third-longest suspension bridge in the world, behind the Golden Gate in San Francisco and the George Washington in New York City. Its sleek design incorporated a roadbed only 39 feet wide, making the bridge far more slender and light than its contemporaries. But it was also a lot more flexible.

The simple fact is that any structure built without enough "give" is more likely to break in a strong wind. There's no shortage of mathematical formulas for calculating how flexible a structure should be. Yet, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was only one-third as stiff as common engineering rules dictated. Even in modest winds, the roadway oscillated up and down several feet, quickly earning it the nickname Galloping Gertie.

While drivers found the undulations unsettling, the bridge seemed steady enough from the outset—at least to everyone except University of Washington engineering professor Bert Farquharson. Worried that it was far too flexible, Farquharson began studying the bridge in an attempt to uncover what sort of retrofits might improve its stability. As part of his investigation, he showed up at Tacoma Narrows on the morning of November 7, 1940, to film the movement of the bridge. His timing was eerily coincidental. As he was shooting, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge began heaving, and soon collapsed.

(YouTube link) 

The Moral: It's o.k. to be a stiff. Materials like wood, metal, and concrete vibrate when they're struck—whether it's your fork hitting a wine glass (causing it to ring) or wind pushing across the roadbed of a bridge. If sustained, the vibrations can build to dangerous levels. It's like pushing someone on a swing; when they reach the back-most point in the oscillation, the same light push over and over will make the swing go higher and higher. You don't have to push harder each time; you just have to push repeatedly at the right moment. Similarly, if wind pushes a roadbed steadily for long enough, it can oscillate higher and higher, creating what's known as resonance.

The antidote is torsional rigidity, which is just a fancy way of saying a resistance to twisting. In the case of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the undulating roadbed caused alternating tension and slack in the support cables, creating a twisting motion. The action eventually became so violent that the cables snapped, and enormous sections of the bridge fell into the water below. To prevent this, Farquharson had suggested the addition of stiffeners along the roadbed. Indeed, had this retrofit been made, the collapse might have been avoided.

Citicorp Center's Close Call

New York City, 1978

(Image credit: Amar Raavi)

Talk about narrowly averting disaster. When the Citicorp Center in New York was completed in 1977, it added a dramatic, sloping peak to the city's skyline. But less than a year later, the building's chief engineer, William LeMessurier, helped it avoid destruction by razor-thin margins.

LeMessurier faced a unique situation when it came to designing the Citicorp Center. In the early 1970's, the banking behemoth was looking for a new headquarters and had its eye on a vibrant square block in midtown Manhattan. There was just one small problem: the historic St. Peter's church sat on the block's northwest corner. While the clergy wouldn't let Citicorp tear down the church, after a little negotiating, they did agree to let the bank use the airspace above it. This allowed the engineering team to form a novel architectural plan: build the 59-story rectangular tower atop four massive, nine-story-high pillars so that it actually hovered over the church.

Having positioned the building on what essentially amounted to stilts, LeMessurier knew he would have to make the structure especially resistant to strong winds. To help stabilize it, he embedded special braces in the Center's frame every eight stories or so to prevent the skyscraper from bending too far. What's more, LeMessurier devised an additional (and unique) way to counter any swaying that might occur. At the base of the building's steeply angled roof, he placed a giant pendulum-like mechanism called a tuned mass damper—a 400-ton block of concrete resting on a film of oil and held in place by huge springs. If winds rocked the tower left or right, the block would slip in the opposite direction, counteracting the sway. The skyscraper was the first in the United States to sport such a device.

When the Citicorp Center opened, all seemed well. But less than a year later, LeMessurier got a phone call from an engineering student in New Jersey claiming that the building's four columns (positioned at the center of the sides instead of at the corners to avoid the church) were improperly placed, making it susceptible to what sailors call quartering winds—winds that would hit the building across its vertical corners, pushing on two sides at once. LeMessurier assured him they were fine, but it prompted him to review details of the design for his own students at Harvard—and thankfully so.

That's when LeMessurier got some bad news. The skyscraper's builders broke it to him that they hadn't welded the wind braces' joints together, as LeMessurier had prescribed, but simply bolted them. This met code and saved a good deal of money, but it wouldn't allow the joints to hold in winds above 85 mph—like those that accompany, oh, say, a hurricane. True; hurricanes aren't exactly common in New York City, but LeMessurier wasn't going to take any chances.

During what had to be a rather humiliating meeting with Citicorp, LeMessurier informed the bank that it needed to make additional retrofits to the building. As not to scare the employees (or let the building's problems leak to the press), they launched a plan to make the adjustments in a more, shall we say, subtle fashion. An army of welders worked the graveyard shift seven days a week and bound two-inch-thick steel plates over all 200 joints.

The Moral: Own up to your mistakes. Roughly a month before the welding project was completed, weather forecasters predicted that Hurricane Ella was headed directly for the Big Apple. The welders tried frantically to finish the retrofits early, but ultimately, the bank had to go to city authorities and warn them of the possible catastrophe they were facing. Emergency officials secretly formed a massive evacuation plan for midtown and crossed their fingers. LeMessurier (and Manhattan) finally caught a break as Ella veered out to sea.

By the time the welders and carpenters finished, the building was one of the strongest in the country. Though justifiably annoyed, Citicorp executives commended LeMessurier for coming forward with his concerns, even though his initial work had met all code requirements. And fortunately for all the engineers involved, the entire fiasco was kept under wraps thanks to a newspaper strike that coincided with the events. Virtually no one knew about it for more than a decade, until LeMessurier released a report about the ordeal titled, "Project SERENE," an acronym for Special Engineering Review of Events Nobody Envisioned.

The Millennium Bridge's Not-So-Grand Opening

London, June 10, 2000

The world might have avoided a Y2K disaster at the dawn of the new millennium, but it wasn't immune to the follies of bad engineering. On the morning of June 10, 2000, the Millennium Bridge in London opened with great fanfare. Only two days later, it closed with a sigh of relief from hundreds of nauseated pedestrians.

Intended as a high-profile commemoration of the 21st century, the Millennium footbridge was meant to convey a new, innovative spirit. It was given a prime location smack in the middle of downtown, connecting St. Paul's Cathedral on the north bank of the River Thames to the Tate Modern Gallery on the south. Its cutting-edge design included an aluminum deck supported from underneath by two Y-shaped frames, rather than the more common overhanging arches. The final product was sleek, futuristic—and a wee bit wobbly.

As with all bridges, the Millennium engineers designed the span to sway slightly in the wind so that it wouldn't snap. But even the light breeze blowing on the morning of June 10 was enough to make the $26 million bridge swing like a ride in a carnival funhouse. In an attempt to keep their balance, the thousands of inaugural pedestrians began to do what anybody on a rocking platform does: step in time with the rhythm of the swaying, shifting their weight from side to side to counter the motion. The result was something engineers call synchronized footfall. As more people moved in unison, more force was added to the lateral motion, and the rocking increased. Eventually, the sway was so strong that it threatened to loft people overboard. Police quickly restricted access, and only two days later, city officials closed the bridge indefinitely.

(YouTube link)

The following year, at a cost of more than $7 million, the bridge's engineering firm and a New York-based contractor fixed the problem. Underneath the deck, they installed some 87 dampers—huge shock absorbers—to reduce the forces of synchronized footfall. The bridge reopened on January 30, 2002, but this time around, getting people to cross was going to take some convincing. City officials offered walkers free sandwiches, and even had a Southwick mayor and a London town crier dressed in Victorian garb lead the way. Still, just to be on the safe side, numerous British Coast Guard rescue vessels were placed downstream. Fortunately, the bridge proved rock solid.

The Moral: Beware of people. By the time it reopened, the Millennium Bridge (albeit inappropriately named by this point) was safe, but its engineers were roundly criticized for not having heeded the lesson of synchronized footfall. After all, even Napoleon's troops knew about its dangers. His armies always marched in unison, but whenever they came upon a footbridge, all the soldiers would alternate their stepping cadence precisely to keep the bridge from breaking.

If that weren't enough, the Millennium Bridge engineers had a much more recent call to warning. On May 24, 1987, a major "pedestrian jam" occurred on the Golden Gate Bridge, when more than 250,000 people swarmed up the ramps as part of the bridge's 50th anniversary celebration. The sheer weight of the crowd flattened the roadway (more than motor vehicles could have), putting enough slack in the suspension cables to allow the roadbed to swing. The pedestrians began stepping in time with the motion and the sway increased. Police managed to calmly dispurse the crowd, but the incident was an eye-opening reminder for engineers that even one of the most stable roadway bridges in the world isn't necessarily secure enough for people.

Kansai International Airport Learns to Sink or Swim

Osaka Bay, Japan; 1987 to present

Never mind the two-dimensional cell phones and microscopic digital cameras. If you're talking mind-boggling Japanese inventions, think floating airport. In a country where open land is pretty hard to come by, the Japanese government commissioned the construction of an airport for the growing cities of Kobe and Osaka in the only available space around them: the clear, blue sea.

In 1987, builders started construction on a manmade island a mile and a half offshore in Osaka Bay. To build the 2.5 mile-long, half-mile-wide piece of land, they erected a giant box of rock and concrete in the water and filled it with even more rock, gravel, and sand. The idea was simple, but the process of carrying it out was anything but. It took three years, 10,000 workers and 80 barges to level two mountains and shuttle the material to sea before the box was filled.

Geologists and hydro engineers knew the soft clay seabed would compress from the weight of the "island," but they allowed for settlement and filled the box high enough above water to negate the effect. Unfortunately, their calculations were way off. What they didn't anticipate was the amount of water in the clay bed that would ooze out, as if seeping from a sponge. By 1990, the island had already sunk 27 feet. In an attempt to counter that sinking feeling (and heighten the island surface), workers leveled a third mountain to come up with the amount of earth needed.

(Image credit: Carpkazu)

Complicating matters even more were the builders' plans to erect a mile-long terminal alongside the runway. Engineers knew that if the ends or middle of the span sank at different rates, it would tear the terminal apart. To compensate for the varying rates of sinkage, they decided to rest the terminal's glass sides on 900 cement columns sitting atop two foundation walls. As parts of the walls sank, maintenance crews could jack up certain columns, slip a hefty steel plate beneath them, and level out the terminal as needed.

The Moral: Make sure to overbudget. Thanks largely to the steel-plate system, the Kansai International Airport has proved shockingly stable. Since opening in 1994, the single-terminal marvel has survived the 1995 Kobe earthquake (centered only 18 miles away) and a 1998 typhoon packing 200-mph winds.

Nevertheless, the island continues to sink about six inches per year, which means engineers are still stuffing plates beneath columns. All in all, it's a pricey project. Kansai Airport cost more than $15 billion (almost $5 billion over budget) and is deeply in debt, losing more than $500 million a year in interest payments alone. Some airlines won't use the facility because of high landing fees, and air traffic remains below profitable levels. Amazingly, the regional government is already busy building another nearby island of even larger proportions to support a second runway for the airport.

The article above written by Mark Fischetti, is reprinted with permission from the March-April 2005 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Don't forget to feed your brain, subscribe to the magazine and visit mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog!