Author: Richard

Not recently, of course. But during World War II, such a device was tested around New Caledonia and Auckland as a back-up option for use against Japan should the Trinity test fail. The New Zealand tests showed that “the weapon was feasible and a series of 10 large offshore blasts could potentially create a 33-foot tsunami capable of inundating a small city.”

The top secret operation, code-named “Project Seal”, tested the doomsday device as a possible rival to the nuclear bomb. About 3,700 bombs were exploded during the tests, first in New Caledonia and later at Whangaparaoa Peninsula, near Auckland.

The plans came to light during research by a New Zealand author and film-maker, Ray Waru, who examined military files buried in the national archives.

“Presumably if the atomic bomb had not worked as well as it did, we might have been tsunami-ing people,” said Mr Waru.

You can find out more here.

… was not quite as sinister as the name suggests. “Whimsical” is Wikipedia’s term; personally, I find it hilarious. The Order of the Occult Hand is a “secret society of American journalists who have been able to slip the phrase ‘It was as if an occult hand had…’ in print as a sort of a game and inside joke.” The order originated, according to Wikipedia, when 

Joseph Flanders, then a police reporter of The Charlotte News, in the fall of 1965, […] reported on a millworker who was shot by his own family when he came back home late at night. He wrote:

It was as if an occult hand had reached down from above and moved the players like pawns upon some giant chessboard.

After the Order was discovered and its nefarious schemes made public in 2004, it was
“announced that the Order had chosen a new secret phrase at an annual editorial writers’ convention and resumed a stealth operation.”

you’ve idly daydreamed about living in a cozy Hobbit-hole in idyllic Hobbiton (don’t tell me I’m the only one!). Well, a “self-build devotee” named Simon Dale can show you how you can make that happen. For less than $5,000 (excluding labor costs, of course, since he did it all himself), he put together a charming Hobbit-style dwelling over the course of four months. Check out some more impressive pictures here!

Here’s a headline you probably never expected to read, and I certainly never expected to type out. I mean, come on, aren’t the loony birth certificate conspiracy claims enough? Apparently not. Now President Obama stands accused of being part of a “secret CIA project to explore Mars” as a young man in the early 1980s:

That’s the assertion, at least, of a pair of self-proclaimed time-traveling, universe-exploring government agents. Andrew D. Basiago and William Stillings insist that they once served as “chrononauts” at Darpa’s behest, traversing the boundaries of time and space. They swear: A youthful Barack Obama was one of them.

[…] 

According to Basiago and Stillings, Obama isn’t just lying about his identity. He’s lying about his military service record, too. While his political opponents in 2008 attacked him for never serving, in truth, he was concealing his participation in a hidden CIA intergalactic program hosted at a California community college in 1980.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the White House’s official response is that Obama never went to Mars. “Only if you count watching Marvin the Martian,” says Tommy Vietor, the spokesman for the National Security Council. 

Here’s an offbeat entry: 25 of the weirdest toilets from around the world. To be fair, I take issue with some of the items on this list: the pit-toilets of developing countries don’t really belong in the same category as intentionally-zany bathrooms. But no matter – check it out for yourself. This one is my favorite:

In – where else? – Australia, the Land of Thing That Will Kill You (tip of the hat to our Aussie friends). Apparently a flood left several bull sharks stranded in a golf course pond, making it the ultimate water hazard. Bull Sharks can survive and even thrive in fresh water, and have been spotted as far inland as the Kentucky and Ohio Rivers, according to Wikipedia. They are also extremely aggressive, and accordingly are responsible for the majority of near-shore shark attacks. 

English: Frost flowers growing on young sea ice in the Arctic. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When the air gets that different from the sea, the dryness pulls moisture off little bumps in the ice, bits of ice vaporize, the air gets humid — but only for a while. The cold makes water vapor heavy. The air wants to release that excess weight, so crystal by crystal, air turns back into ice, creating delicate, feathery tendrils that reach sometimes two, three inches high, like giant snowflakes. The sea, literally, blossoms. 

If I could book passage on a boat and see a frost flower meadow burst into being, magically growing out of the empty, frosty air and spreading as far as my eyes could see, would I want to see that?

You bet I would. Who wouldn’t?

Every year, they play the same holiday specials and films on television: How the Grinch Stole Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Life, Tim Allen’s cinematic masterpiece The Santa Clause, maybe Home Alone. We know them by heart. But there are lots and lots of Christmas specials out there. Including some you wouldn’t imagine. A gentleman named Zack Smith has rounded up the strangest and most intriguing Christmas specials you’ve never heard of: check out his list here (via BoingBoing). 

Neatorama.com has compiled, for your viewing (dis)pleasure, sixteen of the creepiest Santa photos from CreepySantaPhotos.com. These unnerving St. Nicks make the gruff department store Santa Claus of “A Christmas Story” look like child’s play. Check out the rest here.

We apologize for the limited service interruption you just experienced. Slight issue with our domain renewal. But we’re back in business! 

Here’s a creative way to get around hard-nosed airline regulations: 

A man took to putting on 70 items of clothing to avoid an extra baggage charge at an airport.

The unidentified passenger turned up at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in China, described as looking like a ‘sumo wrestler’.

According to Guangzhou Daily, the man’s luggage exceeded the weight limit. He did not want to pay the extra baggage costs, and thus took out and wore more than 60 shirts and nine pairs of jeans.

Wanting to board a flight to Nairobi, Kenya, he was stopped by the metal detector and had to undergo a full body search.

In his numerous pockets were batteries, thumb drives and device chargers.

(Original article here.)

Well, we believe it’s the oldest mask in the world, anyhow. This stone mask dates from the 7th millennium BCE – the “pre-ceramic” neolithic period – making it around 9,000 years old. For perspective on just how long ago that was, here’s Wikipedia’s summary of the 7th millennium BCE: 

World population was essentially stable at around 5 million people, living mostly scattered across the globe in small hunting-gathering tribes. In the agricultural communities of the Middle East, the cow was domesticated and use of pottery became common, spreading to Europe and South Asia, and the first metal (gold and copper) ornaments were made.

We’ve certainly made some leaps and bounds in the centuries since then. But there’s something striking about this mask: that it’s so timelessly recognizable, despite its antiquity; that the human beings of 9,000 years ago were driven to make something like this at all – it’s almost comforting, somehow.