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- The History of Surfing
- Pranksters Stack Picnic Tables into Giant Pyramid
- Chatroulette Call Me Maybe
- Make Your Own Rainbow
- Giant Squid Eye
- Gorilla Nail Art
- The Glass Staircase
- Big Cats Eat Watermelons!
- Moleskine LEGO Large Ruled Notebook
- The Evolution of the Uneven Bars Event
- Foot-powered Washing Machine
- Kitten Drinks Milk
- How to Eat Like Your Favorite Authors
- The Wizard of Meh
- 80 Years of Lego
- Batman Fan Film: <i>Puppet Master</i>
- Dragonborn Fluttershy
- The 100 Greatest Maniacal Laughs in Film
- Job of the Future: Space Travel Agent
- Lucie Cooking Oven Mitt With Bow
- A Classy Replacement for the Fanny Pack: A Holster
- Borg Wedding Cake
- Spider Named for Sir David Attenborough
- Geeky Nesting Dolls By BoBo Babushka
- Rubber Band Gatling Gun
- Kingdom Hearts Keyblades Never Used In The Series
- This Real Life Fruit Ninja Shows Off His Deadly Playing Card Skills
- American Geeks Photographed In The Wild
- Ice Noodling
- Wilders Sculptures By Wilfrid Wood
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From the warm-water beaches in South America to the frigid waters off the north coast of Scotland, if it can be surfed it probably has been. But it wasn't too long ago that the sport was unknown outside of Hawaii. HE'E NALU For at least 3,000 years, seafaring Polynesians who settled the many islands in the Pacific Ocean have been surfing. The Hawaiian Islands were among the last the settlers reached, sometime around 400 A.D. These pioneers depended on the ocean for their livelihood and were skilled at navigating the white water that surrounded their island homes. Their surfing skills were a byproduct of their canoeing skills -the ability to pilot a canoe through heavy surf onto an unprotected beach was key to their survival. Early Hawaiians called the sport he'e nalu, or "wave sliding," and rode two different types of boards: Olo boards were 16 to 18 feet long (or even longer) and could weight 150 pounds or more. More common was the shorter type of board called alaia. At 8 to 10 feet long, it was lighter and more maneuverable than the olo, and is the forerunner of the modern surfboard. WALKING ON WATER Surfing played a huge role in Hawaiian culture. The most revered wave riders were called ali'i, or "high class." They were often political leaders who competed against each other while entire communities cheered from the beach. The priests, or kahunas, would pray each morning for good waves. Surfboard construction also had a set of rituals, performed in beachfront temples dedicated to the art. But it wasn't just the leaders who surfed -nearly everyone in old Hawaii rode the waves, regardless of age, gender, or class. When British explorer Captain James Cook's Third Pacific Expedition arrived there in 1778, his men thought their eyes were playing tricks on them -the natives were zipping through the sea while standing upright on wooden planks. One sailor wrote, "The boldness and address with which I saw them perform these difficult and dangerous maneuvers was altogether astonishing and is scarcely to be believed." WIPEOUT Although the Europeans who first landed in Hawaii were awed by the native surf culture, the missionaries who came later were not amused. They disliked the idea of scantily-clad natives frolicking on the beach, so they tried to supress the sport. In the century after Captain Cook's arrival, the native population of Hawaii dropped from an estimated 300,000 to just 40,000 -and surfing nearly vanished. Fortunately, the determined Hawaiians who survived 19th-century colonialism refused to stop riding the waves. And later visitors were just as impressed as Cook's men had been. On a trip to Hawaii in the 1860s, Mark Twain gave "surf bathing" a try. "I got the board placed right," he wrote, "and at the right moment, too; but missed the connection myself. The board struck the shore in three-quarters of a second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time, with a couple of barrels of water in me."
CALIFORNIA DREAMIN' Twain's and London's colorful accounts caught the attention of mainlanders looking for new adventures. In a bid to bring that island culture to the States, a wealthy California businessman named Henry Huntington hired Freeth to come to California and give regularly scheduled surfing demonstrations. Huntington's goal: To promote the seaside town of Redondo Beach. He'd recently built a rail line connecting it to Los Angeles, and Freeth was instrumental in convincing the citizens of L.A. that a weekend at the beach was a good way to spend their leisure money. Once the idea caught on, Huntington made a fortune selling oceanfront property. Southern Californians came out in droves to see Freeth ride the waves -and many didn't want to go back home at the end of the weekend. Another surfing ambassador, Olympic swimming star Duke Kahanamoku, came to California in 1912 and gave similar demonstrations. He'd go on to become the most famous surfer of the early 1900s. Solidifying its place as a viable sport, in 1928, Californians organized the Pacific Coast Surfriding Championships at Corona Del Mar and held the event annually until it was interrupted by World War II in 1941. After the war, California culture exploded. Americans from all over the country headed west in droves to take advantage of the good jobs and the booming economy. With an ever-increasing number of people on the beach, just one last piece remained to move surfing from a niche hobby to a national phenomenon: the development of cheap, lightweight, mass-produced surfboards. BUSTIN' SURFBOARDS Until the late 1940s, boards were made of solid wood and weighed 80 to 100 pounds. It took a great deal of physical strength and determination to wrestle one of those old planks through the waves. That all changed when board makers figured out how to seal lightweight balsa wood inside of a thin layer of fiberglass resin. These new boards were about ten feet long, weighed only 20 to 30 pounds, and were far more buoyant then their heavier predecessors. In time, expensive balsa wood was replaced by molded plastic foam, making true mass production possible for the first time. With that, surfing suddenly became a lot cheaper ...and a lot easier. And just as it had in Hawaii centuries before, surfing became more than just a sport, but a center of an entire culture -in this case, pop culture. It began in 1957 when Hollywood screenwriter Frederick Kohner created a character based on his teenage daughter's exploits in the burgeoning surf scene at Malibu Beach. He named the character Gidget, short for "Girl Midget." The Gidget franchise went on to include seven novels, three films, and a television series. Surf movies became a drive-in staple: Elvis Presley rode the waves in 1961 in Blue Hawaii; and in 1966 filmmaker Bruce Brown made what has become the classic surf documentary, The Endless Summer, which followed two surfers as they spent the summer chasing waves around the globe. By the mid 1960s, teenagers from the quiet shores of the east coast to the land-locked Midwest were watching Gidget movies and listening to The Beach Boys. Those kids dreamed of moving to California to take up the surfing lifestyle. And they did -in droves. WAVE GOODBYE For the old guard of surfers who'd pioneered the California version of the sport, all this new attention wasn't necessarily a good thing. More than the Hollywood sanitization of their lifestyle, they grumbled that their once-pristine beaches had become crowded overnight. Many of them left California and relocated to Hawaii ...or to wherever on earth thy could find big waves.
That emigration, along with the advent of wetsuits for surfing cold waters, made the possibilities endless. In the chilly seas off Alaska, extreme surfers wait for chunks of glacier to fall into the sea and then try to ride the massive waves they cause. In the Amazon River, waves from the Atlantic Ocean, known as tidal bores, can roll 100 miles or more upstream from where the river meets the ocean. Surfers sometimesride a single wave for as long as half an hour, covering distances up to seven miles. Yet Hawaii remains the Mecca to surfers the world over. Enthusiasts make pilgrimages to the islands not just for the near-perfect conditions, but also to surf the same waves where the kings of old perfected the art so many generations ago. RANDOM FACTS * One of the strangest surfing records was set in the summer of 2005 at a surfing competition in Australia: 47 surfers rode together on one giant, 40-foot, 1,200 pound surfboard. * The most surfers ever to ride a single wave was 73, set in 2006 at Muizenberg Corner, a beach in Cape Town, South Africa. * Dave "Daily" Webster of Bodega Bay, California, surfed every day from September 3, 1975 to February 29, 2009 -10,407 days in a row. (He worked nights so he'd never miss an opportunity to catch a wave.) _________________________
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  |
| Pranksters Stack Picnic Tables into Giant Pyramid Posted:
Spokane Washington officials have had it with pranksters who stack picnic tables into pyramids. This one above, made out of 36 picnic tables, was even crowned with traffic reflectors. Guess how they're planning on dealing with the pranksters. Find out over at KXLY: Link - via MSN Now |
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| Posted: Red Bull shared this photo titled "Make Your Own Rainbow" via Google+ and my first thought was how in the world could those 10 bike riders synchronize themselves perfectly like that. My next thought was how in the world did they get 10 bike riders that look exactly identical to each other ;) |
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That blob in a jar used to belong to a giant squid. That's right, you're looking at the eyeball of a giant squid looking right back at you! Chris Mah of the National Museum of Natural History's Department of Invertebrate Zoology gave the tour:
Christine Dell'Amore of National Geographic News has the post: Link (Don't miss the video clip about Chris talking about the giant isopod!) |
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Pennsylvanian artist Bill Secunda created this life-size silver-back gorilla from over 500 pounds of common hardware store nails. Bill, a professional welder and a nature lover, has also made numerous other nail art creatures, including full size elk, bears, and a moose. Bill's amazing nail gorilla sculpture currently resides at Ripley's Odditorium in Williamsburg, Virginia - Thanks Scott! |
| Posted: I was enthralled by the image of what looked like a staircase of ice over at Tokyomango. No, it's not ice (that would be deadly slippery) - instead, the steps are made from optical glass. Designed by Hiroshi Sugimoto, the glass staircase decorates the Go-Oh Shrine at Naoshima, Kagawa prefecture, Japan. In the project, titled Approprite Proportion (2002), the staircase connects the Shinto shrine with an underground room: Feast your eyes on these amazing photos:
Photographer Rick Elizaga took this amazing photo of the Go Oh Shrine in 2009. (BTW, Rick has got tons of very neat photos of Japan on his blog Son of Soy- be sure to check it out!)
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| Posted: The lions, tigers, and leopards (and other cats) at Big Cat Rescue cool off with some watermelons. That means both playing with them and nomming on them! -via Laughing Squid |
| Moleskine LEGO Large Ruled Notebook Posted:
Attention closet LEGO fanatics! Behold the limited edition Molesking LEGO Large Ruled Notebook from the NeatoShop. This amazing book features a themed black hardcover with embedded black LEGO brick. Get inspired to "Think With Your Hands." Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Back to School items and LEGO fun! |
| The Evolution of the Uneven Bars Event Posted: From the 1950s to today, the sport of women's gymnastics has gone from "That's impressive!" to "These little girls aren't human, are they?" -via Cynical-C |
| Posted: Design students Alex Cabunoc and Ji A You visited Cerro Verde, a slum outside of Lima, Peru, as part of a challenge from the Design Matters program at Art Center College of Design, which focuses on social innovation.
One of the many ideas that came out of the trip is GiraDora, the foot-powered washing machine. GiraDora is a blue bucket that conceals a spinning mechanism that washes clothes and then partially dries them. It’s operated by a foot pedal, while the user sits on the lid to stabilize the rapidly churning contents. Sitting alleviates lower-back pain associated with hand-washing clothes, and frees up the washer to pursue other tasks. It’s portable, so it can be placed nearby a water source, or even inside on a rainy day. It reduces health risks like joint problems, skin irritation, and mold inhalation. Most importantly, it uses far less water and cleans clothes faster than conventional hand-washing. The students have received a small grant to develop their design through a pilot program. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend |
| Posted: Maybe I should have said "Kitten drinks milk ferociously." He knows what he wants! -via Arbroath |
| How to Eat Like Your Favorite Authors Posted: You've probably read more than once about how your favorite authors drank -and how to recreate their favorite beverages. But what about their favorite meals? Flavorwire has a literary collection of recipes such as Ernest Hemingway’s pan fried trout, Vladimir Nabokov’s Eggs à la Nabocoque, and Allen Ginsberg’s Cold Summer Borscht. There are ten authors and their recipes in the list. Eating these won't turn you into a writer, but they might make you feel a little closer to greatness. Or at least full! Link -via mental_floss |
| Posted: Music producer and remix artist Pogo (Nick Bertke) remixed some of the sounds heard in the film The Wizard of Oz. Then he put himself in the video! -via Laughing Squid |
| Posted: Ole Kirk Kristiansen established a business on August 10, 1932 that eventually became the LEGO company. But it didn't start out with building bricks and minifigs. He sold ladders, some furniture, and wooden toys. Eventually, of course, the toys really took off.
Read more about the history of the LEGO company at Smithsonian. Link (Image credit: LEGO Group) |
| Batman Fan Film: <i>Puppet Master</i> Posted: FBI agent Edward Nigma will bring down Batman, the murderer of Harvey Dent. He'll stop at nothing to accomplish that goal--even if it means cutting a deal the mysterious crime boss Scarface. Watch the story unfold in this oustanding fan film by Bryan Nest and Chris Wiltz. -via Nerd Bastards |
| Posted: Modern Warmare's Dovahshy comes with an axe. But she doesn't need it. She has The Stare.
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| The 100 Greatest Maniacal Laughs in Film Posted: Well, finally! I've been trying to teach my 3-year old how to laugh diabolically, but we're not making much progress. This compilation of the greatest, evilest laughs from movies will serve as an excellent training film. -via VA Viper |
| Job of the Future: Space Travel Agent Posted: Craig Curran has been a successful travel agent for thirty years by always keeping ahead of emerging trends. One of them, thanks to Virgin Galactic, is space tourism. Now, instead of selling airline tickets to Paris, he's selling suborbital flight tickets to space:
Link -via Glenn Reynolds | Photo: Craig Curran |
| Lucie Cooking Oven Mitt With Bow Posted:
Is your cooking just to die for? Make sure you have an oven mitt that reflects your dangerously delicious culinary creations. Get the Lucie Cooking Oven Mitt With Bow from the NeatoShop. This stylish glove features a playful skull with heart eyes and crossbones made of kitchen utensils. Lucie Adult Apron and Lucie Child Apron also available. Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Kitchen Stuff. |
| A Classy Replacement for the Fanny Pack: A Holster Posted: Fanny packs are stylish and functional. Yet they has acquired popular scorn. Perhaps Jungle Tribe's leather alternatives made to look like holsters will fix that problem. Link -via The Breda Fallacy |
| Posted: The theme of the wedding must have been "Resistance is Futile." It's a good thing pictures of the cake were taken, as it was quickly assimilated by Star Trek fans at the reception. This awesome Borg cake was made by a baker at The Sugarplum Cake Shoppe in Colorado Springs, who has a nephew on reddit. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy |
| Spider Named for Sir David Attenborough Posted:
It was not the first such honor for Attenborough: a fossil fish was named Materpiscis attenboroughi previously. Link -via Not Exactly Rocket Science |
| Geeky Nesting Dolls By BoBo Babushka Posted: Nesting dolls, known as Matryoshka dolls in their native Russia, don't have to feature stoic faced babushkas in sarafans. Take these geeky nesting dolls for example, which were made by Etsy seller Irene Hwang aka BoBo Babushka. They feature characters from such popular geek fare as The Avengers, Black Adder and the Big Bang Theory. What a fun way to show some geek love and spruce up your abode at the same time! Link --via Geeks Are Sexy |
| Posted: The guy in this video has created the ultimate non-lethal squirrel deterrant- a rubber band gatling gun that fires 200 rounds with the crank of a wooden handle. Reloading looks like a huge pain in the neck, but I doubt any invading critters are going to stick around after seeing this thing let loose! --via Stuff I Stole From The Internet |
| Kingdom Hearts Keyblades Never Used In The Series Posted: These Keyblade designs for the Final Fantasy/Disney crossover video game series Kingdom Hearts were never used in the games for a good reason-they're just plain sick! They definitely would have added a touch of morbid humor to the game, but I don't think Disney would have appreciated them very much... |
| This Real Life Fruit Ninja Shows Off His Deadly Playing Card Skills Posted: Farmers markets across the globe better watch out, because the real life fruit ninja is coming to slice and dice produce with nothing more than an ordinary deck of playing cards. Ye Tongxin has been cultivating this strange skill for many years now, and he's hoping to set a world record, but can he slice and dice as well with his clothes on? The world may never know... --via i09 |
| American Geeks Photographed In The Wild Posted: Photographer Jake Warga has traveled the globe as a professional photojournalist, but none of his subjects have been as wild and wooly as the classic American geek. The geeks in this series have been captured in their native habitat, aka various niche conventions across the U.S., to ensure that they are captured where they feel most comfortable. Removing the background and leaving each geek floating in white space makes these images a bit surreal, but it serves to eliminate any distraction from the true stars of the show- American grown geeks. Link --via Flavorwire |
| Posted: Okay, who's got the best "In Soviet Russia" joke for this? It may look like a badass noodling expedition, but that's not what happened. He caught this fish with a line, but could not pull it through the ice without breaking the line and losing the catch, so he retrieved it manually. And you can pronounce that manly. -via reddit |
| Wilders Sculptures By Wilfrid Wood Posted: These whimsical sculptures by Wilfrid Wood are based on characters involved in a not so whimsical event- the 2011 London riots. Wilfrid has captured the chaotic nature of these miscreants in clay, but rather than empowering this rogues gallery he shows the world what they truly are inside- a bunch of dim witted thugs who were having a good time at London's expense. Link --via Hi Fructose |
The following article is taken from the book 
By the turn of the 20th century, tourism had become integral to the Hawaiian economy for both natives and non-natives. White businessmen romanticized the island culture, with surfing at its center. Native Hawaiians found that one of the few ways to earn a living was to provide tourists with an "authentic" island experience. One such tourist was novelist and newspaper correspondent Jack London, who took a surfing lesson at Waikiki Beach in 1907 with a 23-year-old "beach boy" of mixed Hawaiian and Irish descent named George Freeth. In a magazine article titled "The Royal Sport," London described Freeth as "a young god bronzed with sunburn" who "leaped upon the back of the sea" and stood "calm and superb, poised on the giddy summit...flying as fast as the surge on which he stands."
(Image credit: Flickr user 
Photo: Scott Hart/Ripley's
A newly-discovered species of goblin spider has been named in honor of British TV naturalist David Attenborough, and is now classified as Prethopalpus attenboroughi. The informal name will be Attenborough's goblin spider.
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