Neatorama |
- Dancing for Dollars
- A Preview Of Sci-Fi And Fantasy Movies Coming Out In 2012
- 10 Body Myths That Just Wont’ Go Away
- Bethesda Wins Rights To Fallout MMO
- Typography Made Out Of Ice
- 11 Nerdy License Plates
- Seal Pups Rescued From The Storms of England
- Smart Window Goes Where No Other Window Has Gone Before
- Self Portraits Of Photographer Bathing In Awkward Places
- Baby Corgi Chases Flashlight
- Bang Your Head To Metal Cover Of Skyrim Dragonborn Theme
- Site Specific Camo Lets You Hide Anywhere
- The Handbag Designed by Leonardo da Vinci
- The Icy Beach of Iceland
- Shaolin Monk Walking on the Wall
- Lord Voldemort is Back!
- Itch’n Spoon
- The Richest 1% in the World
- Narco Tanks: DIY Armored Vehicles of the Mexican Drug Cartels
- What Is That Bright Orange Line?
- The Most Extreme Super Bowl Party Recipes
- Bizarre Items Left at Travelodge Hotels
- Head of Anne Frank Carved into a Copy of Her Book
- The Traveling Lakes of Antarctica
- High Tech Car Seat Includes Butt Recognition System
- Fat and Furious: The Rise of Obesity in the USA
- Cat Hat
- Finger Sporks
- The Coffee Shop Where Customers Pay for Each Others’ Drinks
- A 14 Day Apocalypse
| Posted: 16 Jan 2012 05:10 AM PST The following is an article from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again. Dance marathons started out as innocent fun but wound up as grim as the Depression that ended them. Post-World War I America was in a mood to break all records: popular events included endurance kissing and hand-holding contests, eating marathons, and flagpole sitting. A guy named Shipwreck Kelly became national celebrity after sitting atop a flagpole for 7 days, 13 hours, and 13 minutes. When someone challenged Bill Williams to push a peanut up Pike’s Peak with his nose, he agreed. It took him 30 days, and he won $500 (415 euros) for the feat. It all had to do with the mood of the day. But nothing caught the public’s fancy as much as dance marathons. A CRAZE IS BORN The birth of U.S. dance marathons can be traced to early 1923 when, inspired by a record set in Britain a few weeks earlier, Miss Alma Cummings took to the floor of the first American dance marathon, which was held in New York City’s somewhat seedy Audobon Ballroom. Cummings wore out six males partners over the next 27 hours and won a world record. Within a week, a French college student broke that record. A few days later, Cummings retook the title, which was soon broken again, this time by a Cleveland, Ohio, salesgirl. The challenge was on. A few weeks after Cummings’ win, a Texas dance hall owner got the brilliant idea of charging spectators admission (25¢ during the day, $1 at night). He gave his first winner -Miss Magdalene Williams- a prize of $50 (42 euros). On April 16, Cleveland’s Madeline Gottschick beat William’s record with a time of 66 hours. Within days, that record was broken three times. On June 10, Bernie Brand danced for 217 hours (more than 9 days) and went home with $5,000 (4,151 euros) in prizes. In just a few months in 1923, the dance marathon had swept the nation and the world. And so it continued throughout the 1920s. THE DOWNBEAT The deaths of a few supposedly healthy young people -including 27-year-old Homer Morehouse from heart failure after 87 hours of dancing- brought some unwelcome attention. Officials banded together with church groups (who saw the marathons as immoral) and movie theater owners (who saw the marathons as competition) to try to stomp out the fad. Critics called the contestants “dangerous, useless, and disgraceful,” and they even likened them to the dancing manias of 14th-century Europe. In an effort to save their golden goose, promoters added rest periods during which the dancers could lie down on cots, take hot showers, or have their injuries seen to. Some even let dancers take a short walk outside, but eating was still done while dancing, at chest-high buffet tables set up mid-floor. The length and spacing of rest periods varied from contest to contest: 15 minutes every hour, 11 minutes out of every 90 minutes, and so on. Another change was that couples versus individual contestants became the norm. But a dancer wasn’t stuck with one partner for the duration. If your partner gave out, you could dance solo for a set amount of time while seeking another, healthier partner in the group. Now, thanks to rest periods and partners who could hold you up while you slept, a marathon could last for weeks. But watching a dance floor full of droopy couples wasn’t going to hold the crowd’s attention, so vaudeville skits were added. So were professional dancers, who worked the crowd and posed as good guys and bad guys, like modern day pro wrestlers. A marathon that started with 100 contestants would dwindle to the hard core after a week or two. The remaining couple would drag themselves across the floor, but at specific times the emcee would make an announcement, and the dancers would be expected to run a ten-minute footrace or perform an all-out foxtrot or tango -the losers of which would be eliminated. TALK ABOUT DEPRESSING Marathons were well established by the arrival of the Depression in 1929, and they became the prefect escape. If you could scrape together the admission, you could come in out of the weather and be entertained; if you were young and strong enough, you could enter and try to win a few thousand dollars. Even if you lost, you’d be well taken care of while you lasted: three square meals, snacks, and medical teams to treat your injuries and give you rubdowns. Of course, you could be mistreated, too, by “grinds,” show employees whose job it was to prod contestants who fell behind, or generally harass the dancers to keep things exciting. Promoters staged weddings and fights and it was hard to differentiate between what was staged or genuine. But there was plenty of real drama: sleep-deprived dancers suffered hallucinations and delusions, hysteria, and bouts of temporary amnesia. THE DANCE IS ENDED By the mid-1930s, the contests had lost their glitter. What had been lighthearted entertainment became a struggle for survival, and it showed. Dance marathons weren’t fun anymore. The country was in a Depression in more ways than one. The marathoners, once viewed a respectable and plucky, were now viewed as being no better than the vagrants who traveled the country looking for food or work. They became a reminder of the filed American dream; a symbol of just how low the country had fallen. One by one, states and cities across the country banned dance marathons. The shows continued on a small scale until the mid-1940s, but their heyday had long passed. Danceathons gave way to walkathons, which gave way to skateathons, which birthed the roller derby. But that’s another story. ______________________________
The book is a compendium of entertaining information chock-full of facts on a plethora of history topics. Uncle John’s first plunge into history was a smash hit – over half a million copies sold! And this sequel gives you more colorful characters, cultural milestones, historical hindsight, groundbreaking events, and scintillating sagas. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute
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| A Preview Of Sci-Fi And Fantasy Movies Coming Out In 2012 Posted: 15 Jan 2012 11:51 PM PST I don’t know about you, but one of my favorite things about the coming of a new year is the slew of new movies on the horizon, and while there are always some stinkers and serious disappointments mixed in with the rest, 2012 looks like a great year for fans of fantasy and sci-fi flicks! The folks at i09 have compiled an exhaustive list of upcoming films, which are full of fantastic elements and storylines of interest to folks who enjoy using their imagination at the movie theater, instead of dozing off into their popcorn. Which films are you most excited to see in 2012? |
| 10 Body Myths That Just Wont’ Go Away Posted: 15 Jan 2012 11:16 PM PST If you get stung by a jelly fish, don’t ask your friend to pee on you. Similarly, reading in the dark won’t make you go blind. For explanations and more interesting body myths, head over to Life Hacker. |
| Bethesda Wins Rights To Fallout MMO Posted: 15 Jan 2012 11:16 PM PST Good news everyone! A Fallout MMO is now on its way, thanks to the lawsuit between Bethesda and Interplay being settled for $2 million dollars. Bethesda has been waiting to get to work on the Fallout online game for over five years now, so I’m sure it will become a reality sooner rather than later, and I think it would offer a refreshing change from the standard fantasy and sci-fi titles which currently dominate the market. Gamers, what do you think? Would you enjoy playing a Fallout MMO, or are you all massively multiplayered out? |
| Posted: 15 Jan 2012 11:14 PM PST You may remember Stacy mentioning Nicole Dextra’s ice typography series in her May article about a dress made out of yucca plants. (link). Well, now you can take a look for yourself at Nicole’s bold statement-typography made out of solid ice, some letters standing over eight feet tall, spelling out thought provoking words that naturally return to the earth over time due to changing climate temperature. Here’s what Nicole has to say about the project: The Ice Typography series consists of three-dimensional words fabricated in ice placed outdoors that speak to how the viewer's gaze frames and informs the landscape. The installations have varied from 8-foot high ice letters on the Yukon River to 18-inch high letters set in downtown Toronto. When the ice texts are installed on site, the temperature determines how long it will take for them to change state from solid to liquid. This phase of transition becomes symbolic of the interconnectedness of language and culture to the land as they are affected by time and by a constant shifting and transforming nature. Now that’s what I call environmental art! Link –via Beautiful/Decay |
| Posted: 15 Jan 2012 11:10 PM PST This might just be the best license plate joke I’ve ever seen. While the rest of the license plates on this Mental Floss list are all pretty funny, this one certainly takes the cake. |
| Seal Pups Rescued From The Storms of England Posted: 15 Jan 2012 10:56 PM PST When big storms hit the coast, adult seals can swim through the rough seas, but little guys often end up abandoned on the beach. Fortunately, the RSPCA is there to help treat them and care for them until the cool weather recedes. Best of all, we’re left with dozens of adorable baby seal pictures to cheer us up during these cold months. |
| Smart Window Goes Where No Other Window Has Gone Before Posted: 15 Jan 2012 10:45 PM PST If you’re worried about a dystopian future where the view from your window is obscured by zombies, rubble piles and the occasional group of bandits, then you’ll want to invest in Samsung’s new transparent Smart Window-a computer screen/window that can make the world outside look like anything you want, even the terrifying real world, if that’s how you get your kicks. You can make it look like still photos, video footage, a computer desktop, even television, if you prefer to imagine a sitcom taking place outside your window over an otherwise bleak reality. It’s large, shiny, and eliminates the need to actually go outside, so what’s not to like? –via Geekosystem |
| Self Portraits Of Photographer Bathing In Awkward Places Posted: 15 Jan 2012 10:40 PM PST This series of self portraits by Japanese photographer Mariko Sakaguchi finds her bathing in some most unusual, and quite awkward, places such as: a restaurant, cluttered apartments, a deserted concert hall and a crowded classroom. This photo series is decidedly Japanese, right down to the fact that the people around her are too polite to react to her presence, and I think the photos not only say a lot about Japanese culture, they also show how easy it is to juxtapose social awkwardness into normally mundane situations by adding even the hint of skin to the scene. I would love to see her do a series which revolves around her taking a bath on various modes of public transportation-subway trains, crowded school buses, in the back of a limo. Time to take the awkwardness on the road Mariko! Link –via DesignTAXI |
| Posted: 15 Jan 2012 10:38 PM PST I don’t often use the word “squee,” but this video just evokes the noise from my lips. What about you guys? |
| Bang Your Head To Metal Cover Of Skyrim Dragonborn Theme Posted: 15 Jan 2012 10:32 PM PST This guy seriously shreds it on the guitar, and his heavy metal version of the Dragonborn Theme from the video game Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim serves as great background music while you’re bashing Blood Dragons about the head with a magic mace. –via Kotaku |
| Site Specific Camo Lets You Hide Anywhere Posted: 15 Jan 2012 10:06 PM PST You know that old joke that people love to tell you when you’re wearing camo-”Oh, I didn’t see you there, because you were camouflaged!” Well, that joke is about to become a reality, as a North Carolina company has begun creating custom, site specific camo gear. Here’s how it works: …because the patterns are created from photos that have been taken at different focal lengths it inhibits depth perception — making it more challenging for the brain to see the camouflaged surfaces as a single object. The camouflage may even receive a further upgrade, with the software firm applying for a patent on an “adaptive” material consisting of a vinyl substrate, a flexible image display that could adjust to the environment, and thermoelectric panels that could modify the soldier’s heat signature. Now no one is safe, because someone may be blending in with the wall, or sofa, or even your front lawn! Better carry around a sharp stick just in case. On the other side-if you hold still too long you may be exposed to things you can’t unsee, and therapy is very pricey these days, so please use this new camo fabric with care. |
| The Handbag Designed by Leonardo da Vinci Posted: 15 Jan 2012 09:12 PM PST For the ultimate retro look, get Leonardo da Vinci’s handbag. It’s a modern leather purse from the fashion house Ghrardini that is based on a design sketched by Leonardo in the Codex Atlanticus, a collection of his notes and drawings. At the link, you can watch a video of an artisan assembling one. Link -via American Digest | Photo: Museo Ideale Leonardo Da Vinci |
| Posted: 15 Jan 2012 07:37 PM PST
Where else but Iceland would you expect to find big chunks of ice on the beach, instead of sand? Behold the (brr!) beautiful beach of Jökulsárlón as photographed by French photographer Ivan Meljac, and featured in Quiet Moments in Iceland's Landscapes by Fotopedia. |
| Shaolin Monk Walking on the Wall Posted: 15 Jan 2012 05:43 PM PST
Oh, don't mind the monks of Shaolin. That one above is just walkin' along the wall, as photographed by award-winning photographer Tomasz Gudozowaty in his photo essay series Shaolin Temple. Visual News has more photos: Link | Tomasz's website [Flash, you'd have to poke around to find the photo series] |
| Posted: 15 Jan 2012 05:28 PM PST
Uh oh! Don't tell Harry Potter but He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has been reincarnated! Via Nerd Approved Previously on Neatorama: 10 Strangest Names EVAR! |
| Posted: 15 Jan 2012 05:06 PM PST Itch’n Spoon – $9.95
Whether you are itch’n to get into the kitchen and cook something delicious or just plain itchy we have the perfect cooking spoon for you. Behold the Itch’n Spoon from the NeatoShop. This beautiful bamboo spoon / backscratcher combo is nice and long for optimal access to those pesky hard to reach spots. Now you can cook and scratch to your hearts content. Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more funny and functional Cooking Tools. |
| Posted: 15 Jan 2012 04:42 PM PST
Did you make $34,000 last year? If so, congratulations! You're now part of the richest 1% in the world. Economist Branko Milanovic puts it all in perspective:
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| Narco Tanks: DIY Armored Vehicles of the Mexican Drug Cartels Posted: 15 Jan 2012 03:41 PM PST
Taking a page from the A-Team, drug cartels of Mexico are creating their own DIY, Mad Max (Mad Mex?)-styled armored vehicles. This one above was captured in a metalworking shop:
The Mexican Army wasn't impressed, though that may not be the point of these monsters-on-wheels:
Link | More Narco Tanks at Telstar Logistics |
| What Is That Bright Orange Line? Posted: 15 Jan 2012 02:40 PM PST
That, Neatoramanauts, is the 2,065 miles-long border fence between India and Pakistan:
The photo was taken by the crew at the International Space Station: Link - via TYWKIWDBI |
| The Most Extreme Super Bowl Party Recipes Posted: 15 Jan 2012 02:36 PM PST But why should we wait for the Super Bowl? When you have recipes like Smokey Jalapeño Cheese Dip, Spicy Bacon Cowboy Chili Cheese Fries, Barbeque Beef Pizza, and Bacon Explosion, you want to try them out now! Shown here is the Black Bean-Habanero Lime Dip, with looks as yummy as it sounds. Link |
| Bizarre Items Left at Travelodge Hotels Posted: 15 Jan 2012 01:39 PM PST
The list of lost-and-found items compiled by the budget hotel chain include Frederick the Hamster and an 18-month-old baby.
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| Head of Anne Frank Carved into a Copy of Her Book Posted: 15 Jan 2012 12:41 PM PST To promote an upcoming celebration of Dutch literature, the ad agency Van Wantern Etcetera carved portraits of four Dutch writers into copies of their autobiographical and biographical works. At the link, you can find other book sculptures in the series depicting Vincent van Gogh, Louis van Gaal and Kader Abdolah. Link -via NotCot | Agency Website |
| The Traveling Lakes of Antarctica Posted: 15 Jan 2012 12:38 PM PST
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| High Tech Car Seat Includes Butt Recognition System Posted: 15 Jan 2012 12:22 PM PST
For every lock, there’s a lockpick. How do you think thieves will crack this system? Link -via Technabob | Photo: Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology |
| Fat and Furious: The Rise of Obesity in the USA Posted: 15 Jan 2012 11:01 AM PST
We all know that Americans are getting fatter, but it's still surprising to see just how quickly we get fat. The figure above, compiled using data from the Centers for Disease Control (which began tracking the increase in obesity in the USA since 1985) shows the rise of obesity in just four years. Link - via Kevin Bonham's article over at Science in the News and We, Beasties Previously on Neatorama: The United States of Fat: A Map of Obesity in the USA | More about obesity |
| Posted: 15 Jan 2012 09:24 AM PST |
| Posted: 15 Jan 2012 08:10 AM PST Finger Sporks – $3.45 Are you a fan of finger foods? Does the mere mention of the words canape or hors d’oerves make your fingers tingle with excitement? We know you dream of a world where delicious bite sized meals are always at your fingertips and that is why we present to you Finger Sporks from the NeatoShop. With this colorful set of 4 Finger Sporks (yes, that’s a spoon and fork combo that you wear on your fingers) you will be able to sample fried wontons, tapenades, dip, and crudites without ever clamoring for a plate. Taste to your hearts content and never go home hungry at a cocktail party again. Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic Party Supplies! |
| The Coffee Shop Where Customers Pay for Each Others’ Drinks Posted: 15 Jan 2012 07:16 AM PST
Link -via Adrienne Crezo | Photo (unrelated) by Flickr user The Marmot | Cafe Website |
| Posted: 15 Jan 2012 06:13 AM PST Redditor Vidzilla composed a story about the end of the world using the internet: website screenshots, photographs, social networking, generators, and news sites -you know, the way internet surfers get their information. The saga begins on January 1, 2012 and ends on the 14th (redditors who followed the story had to wait for each installment). You should click on each day in order, and enlarge the images to follow the progress, but beware that the images become increasingly graphic and may be disturbing to some people. There are also some links in the images for further reading. Each day’s reddit link also has a discussion in the comments. Link -via Metafilter |
The article above is reprinted with permission from 
Did you leave your phone at the hotel? Don't feel bad, because that ain't nothing compared to what some people left behind at Travelodge hotels!
When Douglas MacAyeal at the University of Chicago gave undergraduate science interns the boring task of digitizing satellite photos of Antarctic lakes, little did he know that he would stumble upon a neat geographical curiosity: the lakes don't stay put - in fact, 
Science fiction movies such as Demolition Man inform us that the future of locksmithing lies in biometric recognition technology, like retinal scans. They were partially right. Locks will scan users’ body parts, but not always the eyes. Researchers at the Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology have developed a car seat that measures and evaluates the body shape of the person sitting in it:
Two years ago, a woman walked into the Corner Perk coffee shop in Bluffton, South Carolina and paid for a cup of coffee with a hundred dollar bill. She asked the barista to use the change to pay for other people’s orders as they came in. This surprising act of generosity to strangers spun into a cycle of giving:
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