A Collection of Curiosities (mister-wunderkammer.tumblr.com)
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tomjogi: “UNTITLED” “LE COUPLE” by BOM K. (https://www.facebook.com/bomkdmv)
VibriSee bike whiskers This is a concept for a bicycle safety product, and was developed as part of a biomimicry design challenge. That is, creating inventions which take inspiration from nature. The design is the brainchild of students at California
spring-of-mathematics: Mathematics and Traditional Cuisine The mathematics of Pasta: A process analysis to find unity, formulas and ways to express structure mathematics of pasta shapes, by their mathematical and geometric properties.See more at: The
Why do we have use-by dates on food and drink? An unlikely answer to that can be found in, of all places, Alcatraz Island. During a tour of the former federal prison, a U.S. National Park ranger noted that Al Capone “lobbied for milk bottle dating
freersackler: In response to the September 11 tragedies, twenty Buddhist monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery constructed a sand mandala (sacred painting) at the Sackler in 2002. This seven-foot-square mandala, one of the largest ever created in
libutron: Nomia iridescens a Bee with colourful abdominal stripes This cool bee, scientifically named Nomia iridescens, belongs to the Halictidae Family, a cosmopolitan group commonly referred to as halictid bees and sweat bees. Nomia iridescens
dichotomized: On February 1993, a two-year-old boy was lured away from his mother in a busy shopping mall in Liverpool, England, savagely beaten and callously murdered on a railway track. What made this crime all the more appalling was the fact that
the-cellardoor: In 1961, Leonid Rogozov, 27, was the only surgeon in the Soviet Antarctic Expedition. During the expedition, he felt severe pain in the stomach and had a high fever. Rogozov examined himself and discovered that his appendix was inflamed
trynottodrown: A baby Flamboyant Cuttlefish hatchling only a few seconds old, after it had hatched from its egg sac. (via)
gravitationalbeauty: Auroras over Northern Canada
Stargazers are a family of fish, found in shallow ocean waters all over the world. They bury themselves into the sand, often with just their eyes staring eerily upwards, hence their name. Using this method, they can look out for prey before leaping up
dichotomized: This poem, often attributed to an anonymous Native American, was actually written by Baltimore housewife Mary Frye in 1932. Mary was moved by the grief of a young Jewish woman staying with them whose mother fell ill and died in Germany.
rhamphotheca: STORIES I CANT STOP POSTING ABOUT: If A Fish Grows Up On Land, Will It Learn To Walk? Flipping your fins actually does get you pretty far. by Lauren Grush The old idiom about “being a fish out of water” just lost some of its luster.
Teen survives an attack which left a hammer embedded in his brain Connor Huntley suffered ‘life-changing’ injuries and a chunk of his skull was removed after the brutal homophobic attack in the house he shared with Joseph Williams. His 21-year-old
Wasabi Alarm The scent of wasabi is said to be strong enough to wake the dead, and a team of Japanese scientists have discovered that description is only one word out: the Wasabi Fire Alarm has been invented to wake deaf people in the event of a fire.
ladyinterior: Magnificent Trees Around the World
sargetsi: The Woolly Terrestrial Octopus (Octopus hirtus) is a land-dwelling carnivore that can grow up to four feet in length and weigh as much as seventy-five pounds. It is warm-blooded and lives in northern temperate forests, using its sharp beak
Knocker-Uppers One hundred years ago, before the widespread use of alarm clocks, the phrase “to knock somebody up” meant something a little different. Workers would be awoken in the mornings by people known as “knocker-uppers”.
sixpenceee: THE WYOMING INCIDENT The Wyoming Incident (or The Wyoming Hijacking) is a lesser known case of television broadcast hacking. A hacker managed to interrupt broadcasts from a local programming channel and aired his/her own video. The video
Peanut the turtle is a red-eared slider, found in 1993 in Missouri. She was caught in a plastic six-pack ring at a young age, and was trapped within it until she was taken to a zoo in St. Louis where vets were able to free her. A soft-bodied animal caught
atlasobscura: itscolossal: Good Badlands: Dry Terrain of the American West Captured in a Brief Moment of Color by Guy Tal “Grandfather’s stories proposed to him that the forms of life were volatile and that everything in the world could as
Baarle-Nassau / Baarle-Hertogx x A little north of the main Belgian/Dutch border is one of the most complicated international borders in the world. Baarle-Hertog is a Belgian municipality, but part of it is located inside the Dutch municipality of Baarle-
ravensshire: This is from http://www.egetmann.com/en The Egetmann festival is an ancient festival in Northern Italy, one which still has many remnants of the old European Fairy Faith. You can learn more about this on my site.
Annie Edson Taylor was the first person to undertake and survive a daredevil ride down Niagara Falls. She undertook the stunt in the pursuit of fame and fortune, hiring a manager to promote the event. Thousands of people turned out to watch her going
sixpenceee: ROCKY HILL CEMETERY: THE TOMBSTONE THAT “BLEEDS” I am unsure about the entire truth, but this is a description according to this website: “There is a tombstone in Rocky Hill Cemetery that bleeds. The woman it belongs to told her
nubbsgalore: the bioluminescent noctiluca scintillans — an algae known otherwise as sea sparkle — of australia’s jervis bay. photos by (click pic) andy hutchinson, joanne paquette and naomi paquette. see also: more bioluminescence posts)
The Schmidt Pain Index was first devised by entomologist Justin Schmidt in 1984. It rates the bites and stings of insects in terms of pain, on a scale of 0 up to 4, and over the years the accompanying descriptions have begun to read more and more like
thebrainscoop: Remember Martha, the last of her kind, who died on this day a century ago. September 1st marks the extinction of the passenger pigeon, a species of North American bird with incomparable population numbers before they were completely eradic
bbsrc: Flower forces that bait our bees Have you ever felt the hairs on your arm stand on end when you brush past an old television screen? Or stuck a balloon to the wall after rubbing it on your jumper? If so you’ve experienced part of the world
buggerygrips: I have a new favourite order of fish: chimaeras. Chimaeras are perhaps the oldest and most enigmatic groups of fishes alive today. Their closest living relatives are sharks, but their evolutionary lineage branched off from sharks nearly
historical-nonfiction: Welcome to Derinkuyu, an underground city that once housed up to 20,000 people. In the Cappadocia region, famous for its cave dwellings and underground villages, Derinkuyu stands out for sheer size and complexity. Locals began
Sarcastic fringehead (Neoclinus blanchardi) These small fish look unremarkable most of the time, but when threatened they open their jaws to display their impossibly huge, brightly-coloured mouth.Sarcastic fringeheads are territorial: rival males will
buggerygrips: Let me tell you about my favourite shape (it’s normal to have a favourite shape okay), hexagons. Along with squares and equilateral triangles, regular hexagons fit together so that there is no wasted space. Of the three, the hexagon has
sixpenceee: Metalosis Maligna is a fake disease invented by award-winning Dutch filmmaker Floris Kaayk. According to the mockumentary, Metalosis Maligna occurs when a metal implant has a bad interaction with human body tissues, causing the metal to grow
lapetitepetrouchka: A GENIUS YOUNG CHEMIST WHO EXPERIMENTS ON PEOPLE “It grew on me like a drug habit, except it was not me who was taking the drugs.” At an early age, Graham Young had been fascinated with chemistry, particularly types of poison
The Toledo Metro Station in Naples, Italy, designed by Oscar Tusquets Blanca.
dichotomized: H.H. Holmes’ Hotel of Horrors - Behind it’s outward appearance of normality, secret passages riddled the hotel-room walls, with peepholes for spying on the occupants. Trapdoors led into hidden staircasesleading to the street. There
commissar-kalishnikov: Yaakov Vilkovich is a 91 year old Jewish Soviet veteran of World War Two. An estimated 500,000 Jewish men fought in various positions in the Red Army. 70,000 are said to be living in Israel. Many escaped from Poland and various
On May 16, 1975, Junko Tabei, a Japanese mountain climber reached the summit of Mount Everest, becoming the first woman to climb the world’s highest peak, despite the fact that she and her party was hit by an avalanche at 21,000 feet. She later
devidsketchbook: COIFFURE LE BIRD BY SOUVEREIN Souverein (tumblr / facebook) - “Free work done by the photographer Rene Mesman. They are a series of bird portraits done together with a hairstylist and an art-director. It was also shown in Volkskrant
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Flower skeleton sculptures created by Cedric Laquieze.
Handfish are a family of small anglerfish found in the waters of Tasmania and southern Australia.Instead of swimming, they use their specially adapted fins for “walking” along the seafloor. x
Devil’s flower mantis, spiny flower mantis, and Malaysian shield praying mantis.All by Igor Siwanowicz.
archiemcphee: Canadian artist Maskull Lasserre (previously featured here) has recently been “re-carving” mass-produced wooden souvenir sculptures and decoys to reveal intricate an skeletal system beneath each sculpture’s wooden skin. These fascinating
atraversso: Iceland by Tony Prower
artagainstsociety: Creepy creatures by Hajime Emotos
Nellie Bly (1864-1922) Born Elizabeth Cochran in Pennsylvania, Nellie Bly was an American journalist known for investigative and undercover reporting. At the age of 18, she read a piece in The Pittsburgh Dispatch titled “What Girls Are Good For&rdqu
The 1986 Lake Nyos explosion In north-west Cameroon lay Lake Nyos, a picturesque blue expanse lying close to a valley which contained two villages. All was unremarkable until August 1986, when there was a rumbling followed by a spray shooting out and
historical-nonfiction: A Pythagorean cup looks like a normal drinking cup, except that the bowl has a central column in it. It was supposedly invented by Pythagoras of Samos (yes, that one). It allows the user to fill the cup with wine up to a certain
asylum-art: Nonsense Sculptures by Seyo Cizmic
“Electric Blossom” series by Torkil Gudnason.
mapsontheweb: Earth’s ice and vegetation cycle over a year
compoundchem: Honey is a food oddity in that it doesn’t spoil. Here’s the chemistry behind why, as well as an explanation of how bees make honey: http://wp.me/p4aPLT-qn
Psychotria Elatra, also known as the “hot lips plant”, is an endangered plant found in Central and South America.
Fairy insect sculptures by Cedric Laquieze.
asylum-art: Paul Cummins: 888,246 Ceramic Poppies Flow Like Blood from the Tower of London to Commemorate WWIt The moat that surrounds the Tower of London has long stood empty and dry. This summer, it’s getting filled with 888,246 red ceramic poppies,
clemington: DSDN252 Project 1. Bio-mechanics of the finger. http://clementinesmart2012.blogspot.co.nz/
owls-love-tea: Fiery Throated Hummingbird (photos by Sam Bobbing)