Neatorama

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• Rubik’s Cube Movie Now In Development
• The Dance Floor Where John The Baptist Was Executed
• People In 1921 Predicted What Will Happen In 2021
• An Australian Town’s Identity Rests on a Ship That May Not Exist
• Baby Elephant Revived with CPR
• From A School Bus To A Wonderful House On Wheels
• These Fabrics Dance With The Wind Against Stunning Landscapes
• Harrowing Chairlift Rescue
• Who Invented the Alphabet?
• What Kind of UFO Fell in the Ocean in Hawaii?
• This Ring Breaks The Guinness World Record For The Most Number Of Diamonds In A Ring
• The World’s Largest Waterfall Is Underwater
• This Unfinished PS1 Game Was Completed And Released Two Decades Later
• An Honest Trailer for <i>The Shawshank Redemption</i>
• Chinese Man Trains Goldfish To Play Football

Rubik’s Cube Movie Now In Development Posted: 06 Jan 2021 08:49 PM PST Don't worry, it's not a fictional movie. A feature film based on the Rubik's Cube will be made by Hyde Park Entertainment Group and Endeavor Content. The film isn't the only media that Hyde Park Entertainment is making based on the iconic toy. The company, in partnership with Glassman Media, is also making a game show based on the toy.  Image via wikimedia commons

The Dance Floor Where John The Baptist Was Executed Posted: 06 Jan 2021 08:48 PM PST  The deadly dance floor where John the Baptist was sentenced to death has been found by archaeologists. A courtyard uncovered at Machaerus in Jordan is likely the area where Salome danced so well that she was able to ask for John the Baptist's head as a reward. Live Science has the details:  At Herod Antipas' birthday party, Herodias' daughter, named Salome, performed a dance that so delighted Herod Antipas that the king promised her anything she wanted as a reward. Salome, goaded on by Herodias, asked for the head of John the Baptist. Herod Antipas was reluctant to grant the request, according to the Bible, but he ultimately decided to fulfill it and had John the Baptist's head brought to Salome on a platter.  A courtyard uncovered at Machaerus is likely the place where Salome's dance was performed and where Herod Antipas decided to have John the Baptist beheaded, wrote Győző Vörös, director of a project called Machaerus Excavations and Surveys at the Dead Sea, in the book "Holy Land Archaeology on Either Side: Archaeological Essays in Honour of Eugenio Alliata" (Fondazione Terra Santa, 2020). The courtyard, Vörös said, has an apsidal-shaped niche that is probably the remains of the throne where Herod Antipas sat.  Whether or not the discovered area is the actual location where John the Baptist was beheaded remains unknown. But hey, at least we can associate a place in real life towards the event now, right?  Image via Live Science

People In 1921 Predicted What Will Happen In 2021 Posted: 06 Jan 2021 08:47 PM PST People in the past envisioned flying cars by the year 2010. Yeah, sorry about that, but we have yet to achieve the flying cars we see in films. While most of us are scrolling through various 'yearly fortunes' and tarot card readings for a sneak peek of what can happen to us this year, it's also fun to check out what people from a full century ago envisioned for us. Entrepreneur's Jason Feifer compiles the predictions people from 1921 had for the year 2021. Do you think some of it will come true or has already come true?  Image via the Entrepreneur

An Australian Town’s Identity Rests on a Ship That May Not Exist Posted: 06 Jan 2021 08:47 PM PST Between 1836 and 1880, the remains of a shipwreck were visible in the sand dunes near Warrnambool on the Shipwreck Coast of Victoria, Australia. It was one of many, which is how the Shipwreck Coast got its name. This particular wreck was unusually flat-bottomed and was said to have been there so long that it was part of Gunditjmara Aboriginal folklore. Influential writers speculated that it was Portuguese, but it was only after the sands of time had reclaimed the wreckage that the legend of the Mahogany Ship took hold. In 1977, the Portuguese theory was resurrected—and seemingly confirmed—by a book called The Secret Discovery of Australia, written by lawyer and historian, the late Kenneth McIntyre. McIntyre asserted that the Mahogany Ship was one of a trio of caravels captained by Cristóvão de Mendonça in 1522 on a covert exploration through Spanish-controlled waters. Ironically, the ships were searching for another bit of maritime lore: Marco Polo's fabled island of gold, Jave la Grande. According to McIntyre, Mendonça successfully charted the east coast of Jave la Grande before changing course for home after the Mahogany Ship sank in a perilous storm. McIntyre's theory rested more on speculation than evidence, but the book went to the reading list at Australian schools, and the town of Warrnambool hosts a Portuguese cultural festival in honor of the early explorers who supposedly left the Mahogany Ship behind. The buried wreck has not been found, but continues to draw scientists and treasure hunters to Warrnambool. Read the legend of the Mahogany Ship as we know it at Atlas Obscura.

Baby Elephant Revived with CPR Posted: 06 Jan 2021 08:47 PM PST Last month, a motorcyclist crashed into a baby elephant in Thailand. The rider was not badly injured, but the elephant was in very bad shape. An off-duty rescue worker named Mana Srivate came upon the scene and immediately began performing CPR on the elephant. BBC News reports: Mr Mana, who has been a rescue worker for 26 years, told Reuters he came across the accident scene late on Sunday while he was off duty on a road trip. "It's my instinct to save lives, but I was worried the whole time because I can hear the mother and other elephants calling for the baby," Mr Mana told the agency by phone. "I assumed where an elephant heart would be located based on human theory and a video clip I saw online. "When the baby elephant starting to move, I almost cried," he said. After ten minutes, the baby elephant stood up. After subsequent treatment, it was released back into the wild. -via Twisted Sifter

From A School Bus To A Wonderful House On Wheels Posted: 06 Jan 2021 07:44 PM PST US Coast Guard veteran Craig J. Gordnier transformed a 1999 Blue Bird school bus into a house on wheels. The transformation was a solo project that ran for 200 days. The result of his hard work was a surprisingly spacious and cozy home. It even comes with an espresso bar! Designboom has more details:  craig began by raising the original roof by 20 inches, resulting in a maximum ceiling height of 8ft 6 inches. the interior is split into kitchen, living, and sleeping accommodation, with the bed located at the rear of the bus and the kitchen counter positioned at the front.  partitioned off from the bed is a rainfall shower with skylight above. the bus also features a tiled hearth to match the shower, an artificial fireplace, an 11ft poured epoxy kitchen counter, a full espresso bar, a queen size pull out couch, and stainless steel appliances. everything is 100% powered by the sun thanks to solar panels on the roof. the new home was designed and built by craig and he now lives and travels full time in the 1999 blue bird. to see more pictures of the transformation, and to follow craig on his journeys across the US, you can check out his instagram page here, where he posts to over 11k followers. Image via Designboom

These Fabrics Dance With The Wind Against Stunning Landscapes Posted: 06 Jan 2021 07:44 PM PST It even feels like the fabric is sentient as it dances against these beautiful landscapes. London-based photographer Neal Grundy's ongoing series, Transient Sculptures, consists of photos of shimmering fabrics dancing in front of different landscapes. His photos capture the movement of the fabrics in a single moment, as Plain Magazine details:  In his ongoing series, Grundy employs his still skills in capturing a collection of shimmering fabrics dancing in front of a range of landscapes. His work is all the more beautiful given the lives of his 'subjects' that are lost outside of the moment the shutter snaps. His photographic sculptures capture the fabric in a single moment, its solid structure a mere illusion only recorded then and there by the camera. Shot during the UK's Covid lockdown in early 2020, the series is backdropped by East Sussex's coastal landscape. Discover more of his work on his website and on Instagram. Image via Plain Magazine

Harrowing Chairlift Rescue Posted: 06 Jan 2021 07:18 PM PST On Sunday, a 14-year old girl became entangled on ski lift at the Bristol Mountain Ski Resort in Canandaigua, New York. For two minutes, she hung from her jacket, which was wrapped around the lift. The resort's ski patrol quickly brought out a tarp to catch her. She was, thankfully, uninjured and was able to walk away from the scene. The incident could have had a far worse outcome. ABC News reports that chairlifts can, on rare occasions, be deadly: Ski lift accidents are rare. According to the National Ski Areas Association, a person is five times more likely to die in an elevator and eight times more likely to die in a car than on a chairlift. Still, rare does not mean never. In 2019, 17-year-old Connor Golembiewski died after a 20-foot fall off of a lift at a ski resort in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains. In an incident similar to this week's in 2018, a 5-year-old girl dangling from a chairlift was rescued after falling safely onto a tarp at Bear Mountain Ski Resort in Southern California. -via Super Punch

Who Invented the Alphabet? Posted: 06 Jan 2021 07:18 PM PST The Sinai Peninsula in Egypt is the bridge between Africa and Asia. Around 4,000 years ago, the Sinai plateau called Serabit el-Khadim was a center for mining turquoise and other minerals, which drew laborers from neighboring nations who could not read Egyptian hieroglyphs. In 1905, artifacts taken from a temple in Serabit el-Khadim included a small sphinx with strange markings, which have since been identified as an alphabet, and even translated.      "For me, it's worth all the gold in Egypt," the Israeli Egyptologist Orly Goldwasser said of this little sphinx when we viewed it at the British Museum in late 2018. She had come to London to be interviewed for a BBC documentary about the history of writing. In the high-ceilinged Egypt and Sudan study room lined with bookcases, separated from the crowds in the public galleries by locked doors and iron staircases, a curator brought the sphinx out of its basket and placed it on a table, where Goldwasser and I marveled at it. "Every word we read and write started with him and his friends." She explained how miners on Sinai would have gone about transforming a hieroglyph into a letter: "Call the picture by name, pick up only the first sound and discard the picture from your mind." Thus, the hieroglyph for an ox, aleph, helped give a shape to the letter "a," while the alphabet's inventors derived "b" from the hieroglyph for "house," bêt. These first two signs came to form the name of the system itself: alphabet. Some letters were borrowed from hieroglyphs, others drawn from life, until all the sounds of the language they spoke could be represented in written form. The concept of an alphabet profoundly changed the way we communicate. By turning sounds into symbols, speech could be recorded and deciphered in different languages, and new words can be constructed without previous written context. The theory that the idea was developed by itinerant laborers working together to overcome their illiteracy in a foreign country is an intriguing idea, which you can read about at Smithsonian. (Image credit: British Museum)

What Kind of UFO Fell in the Ocean in Hawaii? Posted: 06 Jan 2021 07:18 PM PST Multiple witnesses in Hawaii reported an unidentified flying object Tuesday night. It was bright blue, and described as being "larger than a telephone pole." Is it an advertising stunt gone wrong? Or God seeding the ocean with a new species of nudibranch? What does it look like to you? Check out the footage as broadcast by the local ABC affiliate. -via Geekologie

This Ring Breaks The Guinness World Record For The Most Number Of Diamonds In A Ring Posted: 06 Jan 2021 01:46 PM PST The Marigold, or 'the ring of prosperity', is a circular band with a floral design. What's special about the Marigold is that it holds 12,638 diamonds with a total weight of more than 38 carats. Created by Harshit Bansal from Renani Jewels in India, the jewelry breaks the Guinness World Record for highest number of diamonds in a ring, as CNN details:  The previous record -- 7,801 diamonds in a ring -- was also set in India by the Hyderabad-based jeweler Hallmark Jewellers. Bansal told Guinness that he was first was inspired to break the diamond-studded record in 2018, while studying jewelry design in Surat, India. Two years later, his company completed the ring design on November 30, 2020. Image via CNN

The World’s Largest Waterfall Is Underwater Posted: 06 Jan 2021 01:45 PM PST Sorry guys, no photo-ops on this one. Meet the Denmark Strait cataract, the largest waterfall in the world. The gigantic waterfall is located between Greenland and Iceland, stretching over 100 miles (160 kilometers) wide and plunging 11,500 feet (3,505 meters) down from the Greenland Sea into the Irminger Sea, as How Stuff Works details:  The most astonishing thing about the Denmark Strait cataract isn't, perhaps, how it got to be so tall and mighty, but that an undersea waterfall can exist at all. It's easy to picture an ocean as a giant bathtub that sloshes around with the tides, but seawater is actually very dynamic; waters of different temperatures and salinities — and, therefore, densities — are always interacting on large and small scales. The Denmark Strait cataract is formed by the difference in temperature between the ultra-cold Arctic waters of the Greenland Sea meeting those of the slightly warmer Irminger Sea. Since the molecules in the cold water are less active and take up less space than in warm water, they are packed together more tightly, making colder water denser. That means that when water from the Greenland Sea meets the Irminger Sea water, it slides right down through it to the bottom of the ocean. Image via How Stuff Works

This Unfinished PS1 Game Was Completed And Released Two Decades Later Posted: 06 Jan 2021 01:45 PM PST Magic Castle was a rejected game created by a small team of Japanese developers in 1998. The game never went anywhere after being rejected by seven major publishers, including Sony. Well, two decades later, Magic Castle can now be played thanks to the magic of emulators and one of the original members of the developer team:  One of the team members, PIROWO, recently found the source code for the project—created on Net Yaroze—and decided to tie up its loose ends and release it to the public. This game looks cool as hell, not just for its isometric style, but for a number of very modern touches like a customisable UI and dynamic music. Image via Kotaku

An Honest Trailer for <i>The Shawshank Redemption</i> Posted: 06 Jan 2021 10:50 AM PST The 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption was not a hit in theaters, most likely because of the incomprehensible title and the lack of explosions. In the years since, it's become a favorite drama for the male half of the internet generation. Finally, Screen Junkies did an Honest Trailer for the movie by popular demand, although they had to reach to find anything bad to say about The Shawshank Redemption. They gave it their best shot anyway.

Chinese Man Trains Goldfish To Play Football Posted: 06 Jan 2021 10:49 AM PST The aquarium becomes the goldfish's new home and new football field! A man from Guangdong, China, was able to train his five Ranchu goldfish to shoot a ball into a goal. Wow! Yang Tianxin trained his goldfish for a long time, and the results are worth his efforts. Now I will be waiting for the annual goldfish soccer event at sporting events, thank you very much.

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