Neatorama

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• Ptolemeic Watch
• Can You Drive Fast Enough to Avoid Being Clocked by Speed Cameras?
• Jarman’s Birthday Cake
• Painting of Spock Luxuriating in a Pile of Tribbles
• The Atomium
• There's A Forest in Minnesota Shaped Like Minnesota
• Guilloché Pattern Generator
• Han Solo and Batman Riding a Flying Unicorn
• One Man And His Dog
• Dressing Babies in Adult-Sized Clothes is the Cutest Trend on Instagram
• Leap of Faith
• Ironmon
• Before the Internet
• Cell Phone Crashing: Prank Someone Who's Talking Too Loudly on the Phone
• Wrod
• The Expert
• Impressive Papercraft Phoenix Sculpture By Zim & Zou
• Piip-show
• Thomas Card Documents Tokyo Street Style
• Close Call
• Nadia Luongo's Fantastic Food Art
• 31 April Fools Day Pranks to Play on Your Kids
• My Little Sky Bison
• Ghost Photographs - Little Spectral Paintings On Found Images
• The Most Interesting Place In Your State
• Morrissey And Phil Lynott Go Head To Head On Pop Quiz
• Simpsons LEGO Minifigs
• This Is The Corey Feldman Music Video You've Been Waiting For
• Pug Has Lil' Pugs for Paws
• The 14 Greatest Hoaxes of All Time

Ptolemeic Watch Posted: 29 Mar 2014 04:00 AM PDT Ptolemeic Watch Nothing feels so right, and yet so wrong, as being the center of someone's universe. Tell someone you love that they are your orbital center with the Ptolemeic Watch from the NeatoShop. This stylish watch features the Sun as the minute hand and the Moon as the hour hand. Both hands revolve around the Earth. Being outdated and old fashioned has never looked so good.  Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Watches.  Link

Can You Drive Fast Enough to Avoid Being Clocked by Speed Cameras? Posted: 29 Mar 2014 04:00 AM PDT (Photo: Elliot Brown) In some jurisdictions, governments set up cameras along roads to track how fast cars move. If a car is traveling over the speed limit, it snaps a picture of the license plate on it. A computer then fines the owner of the car. Would it be possible to drive so fast that the camera wouldn't be able to take a picture of your license plate? Please don't to do it. But, yes, it is hypothetically possible. Physics students at the University of Leicester in the UK determined that if a car traveled at 119 million miles an hour--that's about 1/6 the speed of light--the plate would be unreadable to a speed camera. That's because of the Doppler Effect. As the car moved at that velocity, light from it would shift toward the red end of the spectrum, rendering the car undetectable. Phys.Org explains: Their calculation is based on the Doppler Effect – the physical effect where the frequencies of light or sound waves emanating from an object increase or decrease when it moves towards or away from you. This effect is at work when you hear an ambulance – its siren will appear to lower in pitch as it drives past you. With light, this process creates "red shift" – where the frequency of light from an object travelling away from the observer is shifted towards the red end of the colour spectrum. The faster an object is travelling, the bigger the shift in frequency. This means it would theoretically be possible for the light from a fast-moving car number plate to be shifted out of the frequency range which speed cameras are able to detect. -via VA Viper

Jarman’s Birthday Cake Posted: 29 Mar 2014 02:00 AM PDT Oh look, a lovely cake made in the shape of a bicycle seat covered in flowers! And the inscription… what? Turns out this is supposed to be a tennis racket, and the inscription is supposed to say, “You’re an ACE.” Oops. Just another day at Cake Wrecks. What do you wanna bet that the guy's name is really Jermaine or something besides Jarman?

Painting of Spock Luxuriating in a Pile of Tribbles Posted: 29 Mar 2014 12:00 AM PDT It's been a long, hard day. It's been especially challenging because Spock is on a ship full of illogical humans. When his work is done, Spock knows how to take care of himself. He puts on some soft jazz, takes off his boots and slips into his giant pile of tribbles. The tribbles are responsive. They trill softly, rhythmically, like a white noise machine. Sleep comes easily to Spock in this painting by Cameron Kobe.

The Atomium Posted: 28 Mar 2014 11:00 PM PDT The Atomium was built for Expo 58, the World’s Fair in Brussels, Belgium in 1958. It is a building in the shape of a single unit cell of an iron crystal, or nine spheres connected by tubes big enough to use as passageways. Exhibits were displayed in the spheres during the Expo, and visitors climbed stairs in the tubes from one to another. Today, only five of the spheres are open to the public, and they make up a museum of the 1958 fair. Atlas Obscura tells the story of the Atomium, plus an earlier building from the Brussels International Fair in 1897 that was commissioned and built, but never open to the public until 2002! The building designer and the artist who decorated inside with a mural could never see eye-to-eye. See the mural and find out what the fuss was all about at Atlas Obscura. There are pictures of plenty more buildings built for various World Fairs in Brussels.    (Image credit: Flickr user Charles Roberts)

There's A Forest in Minnesota Shaped Like Minnesota Posted: 28 Mar 2014 10:00 PM PDT This isn't photoshopped! You can see it for yourself on Google Maps. Redditor BobinMinn uncovered this treasure. According to another redditor, satellite images indicate that this little Minnesota has been around since at least 1991. What's going on here? 2 commenters at this CityPages post explain. This forest is on state-managed land. The state government hires foresters to cut down sections for ecological reasons: I was a forester in northern Minnesota for some time and I can tell you this.  This is state forest land, managed by DNR Division of Forestry.  The state employs foresters to design timber harvests to meet many objectives including ecological and economic ones.  The forester who designed this timber sale is a veteran at his craft and created this boundary line without the use of gps, but with map and compass instead.  The forest type is jack pine, which is an early successional species that colonizes sites after a major disturbance and needs full sun to thrive. This species occurs in fire dependent forests.  Modern timber sales mimic the effect of fire in these landscapes.  As such this large opening was created to encourage it's regeneration.   Loggers are contractors of the landowners/ land managers, and as such do not have discretion as to the layout of the harvest or other design features.  They perform the contract. This forester must have an artistic side. At 22 Words, you can see more photos of the forest and a lake that is likewise shaped like Minnesota.

Guilloché Pattern Generator Posted: 28 Mar 2014 09:00 PM PDT A Guilloché pattern is a decorative engraving technique, according to Wikipedia. It’s been used in fancy documents such as paper money. But to most of us, it looks like what a Spirograph would create. The Guilloché Pattern Generator is an online generator that makes these patterns, designed by Tom Beddard. You can change the pattern by adjusting the parameters in the control panel on the left. Then press “s” to save your masterpieces. -via Metafilter

Han Solo and Batman Riding a Flying Unicorn Posted: 28 Mar 2014 08:00 PM PDT No world can be truly hopeless if it contains this photo. It's one of several of unknown provenance circulating the internet. Han Solo rides to the Batcave to pick up Batman for a pleasant afternoon outing. They rest on the back of Swift Wind, the magical horse belonging to She-Ra from She-Ra: Princess of Power. You can see more photos in the series at Nerd Approved. P.S. Now before I anger any He-Man and the Masters of the Universe fans, let me say this: yes, my headline is probably incorrect. Swift Wind is not, strictly speaking, a flying unicorn. Nor is he a pegasus, let alone an alicorn. He is a horse with magical transformative powers. Unfortunately, I am unaware of any word that adequately describes a horse that transforms into such a creature, rather than one that is naturally-occurring in this form.

One Man And His Dog Posted: 28 Mar 2014 07:00 PM PDT (YouTube link) A shapeshifting alien with the best of intentions has a rough landing on Earth and meets a man in a van. The man is apparently on the run from the police. Then things get really weird. If you’re in a hurry, you can skip the first two minutes, but the story is not as long as it seems. -via Digg

Dressing Babies in Adult-Sized Clothes is the Cutest Trend on Instagram Posted: 28 Mar 2014 06:00 PM PDT (Photo: Illana Wiles) Got a baby? Got adult clothes? Slap them together and you've got the cutest trend on Instagram right now! It's called #babysuiting. Ilana Wiles got it started with her child and gave it a name. She also considered #robford and #beetlejuicing and, honestly, I can see #robford being a better choice.* Other Instagram users have responded with their own adorable tykes. You can see a selection at My Modern Met. (Photo: the_bothel_bunch) (Photo: shayepentino) (Photo: eahandler) *As far as I can tell, Rob Ford is the main character of an offbeat Canadian comedy show about a presumably fictional mayor of Toronto. It appears to be a deep satire on the political experience of Canada. I've seen several clips, but have been unable to locate full episodes online.

Leap of Faith Posted: 28 Mar 2014 05:00 PM PDT (YouTube link) A tiny French bulldog puppy takes his first ever jump off the couch onto the floor. You have to admit, he’s got style! -via Tastefully Offensive

Ironmon Posted: 28 Mar 2014 04:00 PM PDT Ironmon by SilverBaX What to get that billionaire playboy who's already got everything? Ironmon, I choose you! You can't go wrong with NeatoShop artist SilverBax. Check out SilverBaX's Facebook page, then take a looksie over at his NeatoShop for more enlightening designs: Brahma Built It's A Punk Thing Twinkieland Zloth View more designs by SilverBaX | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

Before the Internet Posted: 28 Mar 2014 04:00 PM PDT My children were all born in the '90s, so they have no concept of life before the internet. It was different. If two people had a disagreement, it would have to simmer until the library opened tomorrow or the TV schedule came in the newspaper. We had to call a phone number to find out what the temperature was. And we carried clocks on our wrists! It was a strange time, kids. But not nearly as strange as the 1950s, before they invented color. Comic by Randall Munroe of xkcd.

Cell Phone Crashing: Prank Someone Who's Talking Too Loudly on the Phone Posted: 28 Mar 2014 03:00 PM PDT Cell phone crashing at Disneyland - via BGR Don't you hate it when someone around you starts talking loudly on their cell phone? Don't just give them a dirty look and suffer in silence, join in on the fun! That's what comedian Greg Benson of MediocreFilms did. When someone is talking loudly on their mobile phone, Benson would sidle up next to them and pretend to talk on his phone as well. Except that he'd join in on the stranger's phone conversation. Benson called this "cell phone crashing." Some of his unwitting victims are oblivious, a few of gave him quizzical looks and one even ran away. But in the end, most of them appreciate the humor. Here are a few more of Benson's cell phone crashing clips: More at Disneyland: At the airport: More at the airport: At the park: At the soccer game: In San Francisco:

Wrod Posted: 28 Mar 2014 02:00 PM PDT How fast can you spot a misspelled word? You might think it’s easy, but that’s just the first few levels. There are ten in the quiz called Wrod, and they get faster along the way. Now, by reading my writing, you may think I have no spelling ability whatsoever. I actually spell well, but I type very poorly and my eyesight is a problem in proofreading. The words in this quiz are large enough, but as the game speeds up, your shoulders may start to tense up. I finally managed to make it through all ten levels. Can you? Good Luck! -via b3ta

The Expert Posted: 28 Mar 2014 01:00 PM PDT (YouTube link) There are business people and there are engineers. They almost never overlap, but occasionally they have to deal with each other. In this sketch, an engineer gets roped into attending a corporate business meeting, where he doesn’t quite fit in. It's more like falling down the rabbit hole into a world where nothing makes sense. He’s the expert. He eventually learns what works in this atmosphere -tell them anything they want to hear. This scenario strikes a chord with anyone who’s been in this situation.  -via Daily Picks and Flicks

Impressive Papercraft Phoenix Sculpture By Zim & Zou Posted: 28 Mar 2014 12:00 PM PDT Paper has been used as an artistic medium for centuries, with papercraft creations used as decorative elements and inexpensive works of art by many cultures across the globe. This amazing papercraft phoenix sculpture created by papercraft superstars Zim & Zou looks like it could be the centerpiece for a fiery fall festival. However, this particularly vibrant work was created for a pro-recycling campaign put together by French environmental organization Ecofolio. The phoenix looks so delicate, with intricately detailed layered elements that look like they’d end up ripped or wrinkled during transportation, but surprisingly this papercraft masterpiece was placed on display under glass at a bus stop in Paris.  -Via Laughing Squid

Piip-show Posted: 28 Mar 2014 11:00 AM PDT (Image credit: Magne Klann og Lars Aurtande/NRK) We’re not sure whether the new Norwegian TV series Piip-show is a drama, a comedy, or a soap opera. It’s real “reality TV” that takes place on a tiny miniature set modeled after a popular Oslo coffee shop called Java. (Image credit: Andreas Grimsæth/NRK) The set is littered with seeds, to attract the main cast: birds and squirrels. A Google translation of the show’s website gives us a rundown of some of the “regulars”: The perky tits The most stable regulars are tits. They are loud and talkative, and bursting with speed and energy. They are represented by several species, all with the perky personality of the joint. Blue Tit and Great Tit is both flashy appearance, with green back and yellow belly with black longitudinal stripe in the middle. Tit is the largest of the two, and got its name because in the old days were often found hacking by fat, such as the Christmas ham that hung out to dry. The easiest way to distinguish great tit and blue tit facial expression: A squirrel walks into a bar and all tits break loose -via Nag on the Lake

Thomas Card Documents Tokyo Street Style Posted: 28 Mar 2014 10:00 AM PDT Tokyo’s Harajuku district is known as the place to go if you want to see outrageous street fashions and uniquely Japanese counterculture movements, and even those who are in the know can’t seem to keep up with all the iterations of style which are constantly appearing in this most fashionable district. Photographer Thomas Card travelled to Japan one year after the tsunami devastation to document some cutting edge Japanese street styles for his book Tokyo Adorned, but unlike previous photo series featuring Harajuku style Card’s series documents the subjects in front of a white background, so their crazy clothes and accessories can take center stage. There are so many different elements to their outfits that it may take a second or third look to see it all, and can you imagine how long it takes them to get dressed? -Via Beautiful/Decay

Close Call Posted: 28 Mar 2014 09:30 AM PDT (YouTube link) Freddie Wong walks around, enjoying the internet on Google Glass. What could possibly go wrong? Well, considering it’s Freddie Wong, the sky is the limit! Google Glass, used for the purpose for which it was designed, can be hazardous to your health. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Nadia Luongo's Fantastic Food Art Posted: 28 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT Roger Rabbit will switch from carrots to strawberries when he sees his wife Jessica now! This portrait was made by Nadia Luongo, an artist in Naples, Italy. She's trained in biomedical engineering, but found bliss in creating incredible works of food art. Goku from Dragon Ball Mick Jagger made with brown sugar Marilyn Monroe Turtles made of kiwifruit

31 April Fools Day Pranks to Play on Your Kids Posted: 28 Mar 2014 08:30 AM PDT One of the great things about having children is that they laugh at your stale old jokes because they haven’t heard them a million times like your friends have. To them, you are a treasure trove of knowledge because you know a little more than they do. And depending on their ages, they will fall hard for April Fools Day pranks. Buzzfeed put together a list of simple tricks aimed at kids, which are mostly harmless. Your mileage may vary, so keep your child’s level of sensitivity in mind. Making candied apples with onions inside might not be appropriate for young kids, but putting googly eyes on everything in the refrigerator might be just the ticklet. (Image source: Imgur)

My Little Sky Bison Posted: 28 Mar 2014 08:00 AM PDT My Little Sky Bison by Synaptyx and Fanboy30 Yip-yip! Forget ponies! Summon the neatest T-shirt design today, no bison whistle required, with this nifty My Little Sky Bison design, a collaboration by NeatoShop artists Synaptyx and Matt Parsons AKA Fanboy30. Visit Synaptyx's official website and Facebook page, then visit his NeatoShop for more geeky designs: Groovy Nerd Bowtie I'm Your Density Pikamitey View more designs by Synaptyx | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

Ghost Photographs - Little Spectral Paintings On Found Images Posted: 28 Mar 2014 08:00 AM PDT Even though we can’t see them with the naked eye, there are ghosts hanging around everywhere we go, revealed in the developed photographic image. In fact, some of our friends and neighbors are ghosts, at least according to Angela Deane’s Tumblr site Ghost Photographs. Angela ghostifies found photographs with a little paint and a lot of tongue in cheek, revealing the spectral side of the human world and using her skills as a ghost whisperer for good. Turns out all those Halloween costumes we were right- ghosts really do wear white sheets with cut out holes for eyes, I guess those costumes weren’t so cheesy after all! -Via Booooooom!

The Most Interesting Place In Your State Posted: 28 Mar 2014 07:30 AM PDT Redditor Midwester looked up each state on Wikipedia, and grabbed the first item under “points of interest” to compile this U.S. map of the most interesting place in each state. I was surprised to realize how many of these I have actually been to. Large size here.  Then a day later, he came up with a second map, this time using number counts for the most popular attraction in each state. Large size here. As you can see, they don’t match with Wikipedia’s “points of interst." I like the first map better. Land Between the Lakes is nice, but it's mostly in Tennessee, and only really enjoyable if you have a boat or a vacation home. Mammoth Cave is awesome! -via Uproxx

Morrissey And Phil Lynott Go Head To Head On Pop Quiz Posted: 28 Mar 2014 07:00 AM PDT (Video Link) (Video Link) Pop Quiz is a star studded British game show that has been revived many times over the years yet never seems to live up to it's original incarnation from the 80s, mostly because pop stars were way cooler back then. This totally rockin' episode from 1984 stars Kim Wilde, Derek Forbes from Simple Minds, rock legend Philip Lynott and the Moz himself- Morrissey! Watch as Morrissey suddenly regrets his decision to appear on this painfully milquetoast show, laugh as the host in the funny shirt, Mike Read, tries to act like he’s totally New Wave while using hip lingo like “groovy” and calling people “captain”, and wonder how they got Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott to stay so mellow throughout the entire show.  -Via Dangerous Minds

Simpsons LEGO Minifigs Posted: 28 Mar 2014 06:30 AM PDT You’ve seen the minifigs for Homer, Bart, and the rest of the Simpsons family. Now the LEGO Company is giving us a sneak peek at 16 more Simpsons minifigs, from Krusty the Clown to Itchy and Scratchy and the citizens of Springfield. Each minifigure appears to come with its own character-defining accessory, like a Squishee soft drink for Apu or a newspaper for Grandpa. The series also features new accessories for each member of the Simpsons family, including a doughnut for Homer and a saxophone for Lisa. The Simpsons and Ned Flanders minifigures come included in the Lego Simpsons house set, which went on sale in early February. Look for these in stores on May first. Click “show as list” to see each of them at Mashable.

This Is The Corey Feldman Music Video You've Been Waiting For Posted: 28 Mar 2014 06:00 AM PDT (Video Link) Don’t call it a comeback, he’s been here for years, you just haven’t been able to see him because he hasn’t been in any TV shows, or movies, he’s been playing music and trying to keep Corey from being so Corey. Corey Feldman is back, with a new music video for his band Corey’s Angels called Corey Feldman’s “DUH!” In the video we see Corey wearing his signature Michael Jackson inspired outfits, busting some MJ style moves and clowning around classic TV style with a bunch of scantily clad babes. I'm sure you'll have lots of questions after watching the video, but unfortunately there are simply no answers to be found. This is, after all, a product of the enigma known as Corey Feldman. -Via Cheezburger

Pug Has Lil' Pugs for Paws Posted: 28 Mar 2014 05:30 AM PDT Oh, I 'SPOSE I will wear these if U WANT me too. pic.twitter.com/57z9iIHR7W — Cute Overload (@CuteOverload) March 22, 2014 Move over, LOL cats! Here comes a pug slipper-wearin' pug. Pawesome, fur sure! What? You don't like dog puns? What a ruff crowd.

The 14 Greatest Hoaxes of All Time Posted: 28 Mar 2014 05:00 AM PDT Anyone can toilet paper a house or slip a whoopee cushion onto a chair. Pulling off a truly legendary prank is harder. To fool the media, crowds, and even the military, you need patience, planning, and more than a little genius. But when everything comes together into one big victimless laugh, it’s a thing of beauty. Here are history’s greatest hoaxes, each one proof that with effort and a little luck, you can fool a lot of the people, all of the time. 1. The Birth of the Bathtub! December 20 gets no respect. On the calendar, it’s just another winter day best known for not being Christmas. But in 1917, writer H. L. Mencken set out to change that. When readers of the New York Evening Mail opened the paper in late December, they found Mencken’s 1,800-word essay “A Neglected Anniversary,” detailing the arrival of the bathtub in the United States. Mencken meticulously cataloged the tub’s rocky debut in 1842, explaining how the bathroom fad had caught on only after Millard Fillmore installed one in the White House. By the 20th century, Mencken explained, the momentous anniversary had fallen into obscurity. “Not a plumber fired a salute,” he lamented. “Not a governor proclaimed a prayer.” There’s a good reason why. Mencken had made the whole thing up. The humorist figured everyone would see through the ruse, and he later wrote that the article was “harmless fun” meant to distract readers from World War I. “It never occurred to me it would be taken seriously,” he wrote. But printing the piece in the Evening Mail gave Mencken’s little joke extra credibility, and he was stunned by how the story snowballed. Within a few years, it had been referenced in “learned journals” and cited “on the floor of Congress.” The tale became so pervasive that the Boston Herald ran an article in 1926 debunking it under the headline "The American Public Will Swallow Anything." Three weeks later, the same paper cited Mencken’s bathtub origin tale as fact. Mencken tried to set the record straight, but his efforts were futile. People were more interested in hearing about President Fillmore’s tub than hearing the truth. Even today, the nugget resurfaces from time to time: In 2008, the story was featured in a Kia ad, which hailed Fillmore as “best remembered as the first president to have a running water bathtub.” Poor guy can’t even be remembered for something he actually did. 2. Sherlock Holmes Finds the Missing Link Ever since Darwin published On the Origin of Species, scientists have been looking for the missing link—a transitional fossil that would seal the argument for human evolution. In 1912, an amateur geologist and archaeologist named Charles Dawson found it. The skull he pulled from a gravel pit in Piltdown, England, seemed to conclusively fit the part, and the discovery rocked the scientific community. Skeptics claimed the fossil was exactly what it looked like: a human skull cobbled together with an ape jaw to fool gullible scientists. In the ensuing excitement, believers shouted down deniers, and in December 1912, the Geological Society of London hosted a ceremony where Dawson presented his fossil, the Piltdown Man. The doubters continued doubting until 1917, when researchers discovered a similar fossil nearby. The Piltdown faithful were thrilled: the new find, Piltdown II, seemingly legitimized the old one. But the Piltdown Man’s scientific legitimacy gradually eroded over the next few decades. Other early human skulls began popping up in China and Africa, and each had an apelike skull with a human jaw: the opposite of the Piltdown combo. The jig was finally up in 1953. After conducting tests on the skull, anthropologist Joseph Weiner and geologist Kenneth Oakley determined Piltdown Man was no man at all. Rather, he was a combination of man (the skull), orangutan (the jaw), and chimp (the teeth). What’s more, fluorine dating showed that the bones were no more than 100,000 years old, certainly not new but not missing-link ancient. The head looked older only because the hoax’s perpetrator had stained it with iron and chromic acid. While the hoax was eventually exposed, the prankster behind the caper is still at large. Dawson is the most likely culprit, but literary sleuths have turned their suspicions to another man: Sherlock Holmes’s creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Not only was Conan Doyle a member of Dawson’s archaeological society and a frequent visitor to the Piltdown site, he hinted in his novel The Lost World that faking bones is no tougher than forging a photograph—the ultimate smoking gun! If only Holmes were on the case. 3. Italy’s Secret Pasta Gardens Where does spaghetti come from? On April 1, 1957, the BBC news program Panorama tackled the question with a segment about a Swiss town’s robust spaghetti crop, brought on by a warm spring and the disappearance of the spaghetti weevil. “For those who love this dish, there’s nothing like real homegrown spaghetti,” anchor Richard Dimbleby said. Viewers ate it up. On April 2 the BBC was flooded with hundreds of phone calls from people eager to grow their own noodles, then a rare treat for British diners. Keeping the whimsy going, the BBC instructed anyone interested in a pasta-bearing tree to “Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.” 4. The World’s Worst Bestseller Everyone knows you can’t judge a book by its cover. But the aphorism got an extra dose of validity in 1969, when Penelope Ashe, a bored Long Island housewife, wrote the trashy sensation Naked Came the Stranger. As part of her book tour, Ashe appeared on talk shows and made the bookstore rounds. But Ashe wasn’t what her book jacket claimed. The author was as fictional as the novel she supposedly wrote—and both were the work of Mike McGrady, a Newsday columnist disgusted with the lurid state of the modern bestseller. Instead of complaining, he decided to expose the problem by writing a book of zero redeeming social value and even less literary merit. He enlisted the help of 24 Newsday colleagues, tasking each with a chapter, and instructed them that there should be “an unremitting emphasis on sex.” He also warned that “true excellence in writing will be quickly blue-penciled into oblivion.” Once McGrady had the smutty chapters in hand (which included acrobatic trysts in tollbooths, encounters with progressive rabbis, and cameos by Shetland ponies), he painstakingly edited the prose to make it worse. In 1969, an independent publisher released the first edition of Naked Came the Stranger, with the part of Penelope Ashe played by McGrady’s sister-in-law. To the journalist’s dismay, his cynical ploy worked. The media was all too fascinated with the salacious daydreams of a “demure housewife” author. And though The New York Times wrote, “In the category of erotic fantasy, this one rates about a C,” the public didn’t mind. By the time McGrady revealed his hoax a few months later, the novel had already moved 20,000 copies. Far from sinking the book’s prospects, the press pushed sales even higher. By the end of the year, there were more than 100,000 copies in print, and the novel had spent 13 weeks on the Times’s bestseller list. As of 2012, the tome had sold nearly 400,000 copies, mostly to readers who were in on the joke. But in 1990, McGrady told Newsday he couldn’t stop thinking about those first sales: “What has always worried me are the 20,000 people who bought it before the hoax was exposed.” 5. Bipedal Beavers, Unicorns, and Other Moon Monsters Much like submarines, submarine sandwiches, and the U.S. Constitution, the ethics of journalism were still evolving in the early 19th century. One rule that hadn’t totally sunk in yet: Don’t ply your readers with outright fabrications. The newspapers of the day routinely manufactured stories to generate sales, but none was as outrageous as the New York City rag The Sun’s “Great Moon Hoax,” a series of six articles published in 1835 about the discovery of civilization on the moon. The articles claimed that a British astronomer named John Herschel had used a powerful new telescope to spot plants, unicorns, bipedal beavers, and winged humans there. The articles even went a step further, claiming that our angelic moon brethren collected fruit, built temples from sapphire, and lived in total harmony. The hoax was debunked immediately. Soon after the first installment ran in The Sun, its uptown competition, the New York Herald, slammed the story under the headline "The Astronomical Hoax Explained." But the American public preferred a universe dotted with angels, unicorns, and bedazzled architecture. The story created such a buzz that papers around the world rushed to reprint it, while a theater company in New York worked out a dramatic staging. Before long, The Sun was making extra coin selling pamphlets of the whole series and lithographic prints that depicted life on the moon. It took five years for the story’s writer, Richard Adams Locke, to finally confess to making it all up. As he wrote in the New World, his intention was to satirize “theological and devotional encroachments upon the legitimate province of science.” But in all this, the thing we can’t believe is that no New York team has embraced the moon beaver as its mascot. 6. A Math Whiz Horse! Is a hoax still a hoax if the perpetrator doesn’t know it? Wilhelm von Osten would likely say no. At the turn of the 20th century, the German math teacher was determined to prove the intelligence of animals. After trying (and failing) to teach a cat and a bear how to add, he finally found a sufficiently studious beast. With years of training, a horse named Hans could add, subtract, multiply, and read German. Von Osten held regular displays of his star pupil’s intelligence. Hans would calculate sums and convert fractions by tapping a hoof to indicate numbers. He became a national sensation, made headlines in the United States, and earned the nickname Clever Hans. To prove that the horse’s skills were real, Von Osten allowed a group of experts to examine his equine genius. They found nothing fishy, and Germany embraced Hans as a marvel until psychology student Oskar Pfungst came along. Unsatisfied with the work of the experts, Pfungst examined Hans and figured out how the horse was doing its calculator act. Von Osten was sending him subconscious signals. Each time Hans was presented with a math question, he’d tap away until a subtle cue on his owner’s face told him to stop. The cues were so subtle that Von Osten didn’t even know he was giving them. Indeed, the horse got problems right only when they were simple enough for Von Osten to solve, and his percentages plummeted when he wasn’t allowed to face his master. When Pfungst exposed the truth, Von Osten denied it, insisting that Hans really was clever, and he continued to parade his horse before happy crowds. Today, animal psychologists know to write off these cues as the “Clever Hans effect.” 7. The Supergroup That Never Got To Rock Music fans got exciting news in 1969 when Rolling Stone reviewed the first album by the Masked Marauders, a supergroup featuring Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney. Due to legal issues with their respective labels, the stars’ names wouldn’t appear on the album cover, but the review extolled the virtues of Dylan’s new “deep bass voice” and the record’s 18-minute cover songs. One of the album’s highlights was an extended jam between bass guitar and piano, with Paul McCartney playing both parts! The writer earnestly concluded, “It can truly be said that this album is more than a way of life; it is life.” For anyone paying attention, the absurd details added up to a clear hoax. The man behind the gag, editor Greil Marcus, was fed up with the supergroup trend and figured that if he peppered his piece with enough fabrication, readers would pick up on the joke. They didn’t. After reading the review, fans were desperate to get their hands on the Masked Marauders album. Rather than fess up, Marcus dug in his heels and took his prank to the next level. He recruited an obscure San Francisco band to record a spoof album, then scored a distribution deal with Warner Bros. After a little radio promotion, the Masked Marauders’ self-titled debut sold 100,000 copies. For its part, Warner Bros. decided to let fans in on the joke after they bought the album. Each sleeve included the Rolling Stone review along with liner notes that read, “In a world of sham, the Masked Marauders, bless their hearts, are the genuine article.” 8. How April Fools’ Day Didn’t Get Its Name As Joseph Boskin would tell you, the origins of April Fools’ are murky. In fact, the Boston University professor and pop culture historian was trying to say just that in a 1983 interview with reporter Fred Bayles. But each time Boskin told Bayles that no one is quite sure how the holiday started, the interviewer pushed him for a more concrete answer. Eventually, the academic got fed up with the aggressive questioning and decided to concoct a story worth printing. Off the top of his head, Boskin began regaling Bayles with a tale from the days when Constantine ruled Rome. Jesters, he said, petitioned the emperor to allow one of their own the chance to rule for just one day. On April 1, Constantine relented. A jester, King Kugel—Boskin named him for the Jewish pudding dish—took over and proclaimed that April 1 would always serve as 24 hours of silliness. Boskin later said he made the story so absurd that Bayles would have to catch on. No dice. The AP ran Bayles’s story about King Kugel, and soon Boskin was fielding calls from news outlets across the country. He initially kept up the ruse, but a few weeks later, the truth slipped out during one of his lectures about the media’s willingness to believe rumors. The editor of the school paper was in the class, and the campus Daily Free Press ran a headline declaring “Professor Fools AP.” Once the truth was out, the AP was predictably embarrassed, but the story has a happy ending. Bayles, no longer an eager reporter, is now a professor of journalism at BU, where he can speak from personal experience about the media’s gullibility. 9. Virginia Woolf Ships Out Before Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster were literary titans and before John Maynard Keynes was the father of modern economics, they were part of a crowd of friends that informally called themselves the Bloomsbury Group. Comprising writers, artists, and thinkers, the group basically functioned as a fraternity for geniuses. So it’s fitting that the group’s lasting legacy is a piece of tomfoolery. In 1910, the HMS Dreadnought was the fiercest, strongest ship in the Royal Navy. To the poet William Horace de Vere Cole, it seemed like the perfect place for the Bloomsbury Group to stage a high-concept prank. Cole, Woolf, her brother Adrian Stephen, and three pals decided to sneak aboard the Dreadnought, disguised as the emperor of Abyssinia and his entourage. Why risk the wrath of the Royal Navy? Because it was funny! The group sent a phony telegram to the ship’s commander, letting him know that a delegation was en route, then they simply showed up at the ship. Amazingly, it worked. Dressed in caftans, turbans, and gold chains and with their faces painted black, the “Abyssinians” were welcomed aboard the Dreadnought with an honor guard, a red carpet, and a naval band. Despite the intentionally amateurish costumes, including at least one moustache that began falling off in the rain, the Abyssinians stayed in character for the entire tour. When they spoke, it was either to exclaim “Bunga, bunga!” in excitement or ramble in an invented language of Latin, Swahili, and gobbledygook. At one point, they were forced to decline a meal, relaying through Stephen, who was acting as translator, that the food had not been prepared to their specifications. In reality, they didn’t eat because they were afraid their makeup would come off. The tour ended without the crew suspecting a thing. But then someone called reporters. British papers had a field day with the story. Sailors were heckled with cries of “Bunga, bunga” in the streets, and King Edward himself made his displeasure with the incident known. In the face of such humiliation, the navy was forced to take action. According to contemporary accounts, the navy got its revenge by caning two of the male hoaxers. Woolf was spared the lash because she was a woman, even though a lady’s mere presence on the ship was one of the greatest sources of the navy’s embarrassment. Eventually, though, the Royal Navy developed a sense of humor about the incident. When the Dreadnought rammed and sank a German submarine during World War I, its crew received a congratulatory telegram from superiors. The text? “BUNGA BUNGA.” 10. A Bordello of Barks Joey Skaggs is a professional prankster who plays the media like his instrument. He’s made waves posing as an outraged gypsy hell-bent on renaming the gypsy moth. He launched Walk Right!—a fictional group dedicated to enforcing proper walking etiquette through militant tactics. But perhaps the best illustration of his life’s work is the brothel for dogs that he opened in 1976. The prank started when Skaggs ran an ad in The Village Voice offering dog owners a chance to buy their pets a night with alluring companions, including Fifi, the French poodle. To Skaggs’s surprise, he began getting calls from people wanting to drop $50 for his service. It didn’t take much for the media to bite, and when reporters showed up with questions, Skaggs reeled them in by staging a night at his “cathouse for dogs.” The stunt worked; TV stations issued breathless reports of the wanton acts of canine carnality. The ASPCA launched an investigation, a veterinarian publicly condemned the brothel, and the New York Health Department raised concerns about Skaggs’s licensing. Skaggs eventually admitted the whole thing was a goof, but not everyone believed him. To this day, a television producer for WABC New York argues that the brothel was real and that Skaggs’s hoax claims are just a clumsy attempt to cover his trail. Of course, WABC has good reason to insist that Skaggs was running a genuine poodle prostitution ring: The station won an Emmy for its coverage of the story. 11. MIT Blows Up Harvard! (YouTube link) MIT students derive great pleasure from tormenting their rivals at Harvard. Our favorite prank of theirs occurred during the 1982 Harvard-Yale football game when a weather balloon emblazoned with the letters “MIT” began emerging from the ground near the 50-yard line. In the preceding days, a group of MIT students had snuck into Harvard Stadium and wired a vacuum motor to blow air into the balloon until it exploded, proving once again why you don’t mess with engineers. 12. Greasing the Wheels Back in the late 19th century, college teams took trains to get to road games, and Auburn took full advantage of the situation. For a few seasons, students ran grease along the train tracks before Georgia Tech games, making it impossible for the train to stop anywhere near the station. Year after year, the poor football team ended up lugging its gear a number of miles back to the station, giving the players more of a warm-up than they bargained for and tilting the games in Auburn’s favor. 13. Card Talk Tricking opposing fans into holding up placards that spell out a hidden message is a prank older than time. It was perfected with the Great Rose Bowl Hoax of 1961, during which students altered the placards given to University of Washington fans so that the giant banner they formed read “Caltech” on live television. The math and science school, which sits just a few miles from the Rose Bowl, wasn’t even involved in the game. 14. The Elusive Northwest Tree-Dwelling Octopus According to the species’s official website, the Pacific Northwest tree octopus is native to the rainforests of Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. It spends most of its time frolicking on treetops and snacking on frogs and rodents. But today, the arboreal cephalopod faces extinction thanks to rampant predation by the Sasquatch. That last detail gives away the joke to most people. But not everyone is so discerning. The octopus’s meticulous creator—known online as Lyle Zapato—doesn’t just throw hoaxes onto the web—he brilliantly links back to dozens of external sites listing everything from short stories about tree octopuses to videos of a baby tree octopus hatching to recipes for cooking them. And he throws in just enough legitimate links to throw readers off his scent. In fact, every statement is laboriously cross-referenced; most Wikipedia pages would be lucky to have this many sources. Taken together, Zapato’s labyrinth of sites can trick even savvy web surfers into thinking this tree-dwelling octopus exists. A 2006 study by the University of Connecticut showed that 25 out of 25 web-proficient middle-schoolers fell for the hoax. Even when researchers told them that tree octopuses don’t exist, the students couldn’t identify the clues on the site to prove that it wasn’t factual. The plight of the Pacific Northwest tree octopus is just one of Zapato’s many causes; he maintains an elaborate site dedicated to promoting the Bureau of Sasquatch Affairs and one that alleges that the nation of Belgium doesn’t exist (the deceptive branding of Belgian waffles fits into his conspiracy theory). Of course, whether you look at it as art or entertainment, Zapato’s handiwork is a reminder not to believe everything you read on the Internet. _______________________ The article above, written by Adam K. Raymond with illustrations by John Ueland, is reprinted with permission from the March-April 2013 issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a subscription to mental_floss and never miss an issue! Be sure to visit mental_floss' website and blog for more fun stuff!

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