Get Cynical

From Damn Interesting:

On the night of 24 February 1942 the Air Raid sirens sounded, and the Coast Guard Anti-aircraft guns were ordered to “green alert,” putting them in readiness to fire. From the time the battle began until it ended in the early hours of the morning, thousands of people had witnessed the search lights around Los Angeles fix on a target hovering above the city, and anti-aircraft rounds detonate in the sky. Reputable news agencies reported the attack, complete with eye-witness accounts. But the Japanese claim that they never attacked, and there was no wreckage to indicate that anyone actually did. These conflicting accounts cast uncertainty on the nature of the unidentified aircraft that caused the Battle of Los Angeles.

Robert Smalls

This looks like a cool new site which gives stories about historical pictures. Here is an excerpt of the story they have for Robert Smalls:

Robert grew up a slave, and experienced the full measure of that corrupt institution. In April of 1862 Robert was assigned work on a Rebel Warship. The “Planter” was a high-pressure, side-wheel steamer, one hundred and forty feet in length, and about fifty feet beam, and drew about five feet of water. She was built in Charleston. She was built to be a Cotton transport boat, but with the outbreak of the unpleasantness of 1861, she was commissioned by the Rebel Navy as a gunboat. She became the prized vessel of the confederate Navy. Her armament consisted of one 32-pound rifle gun forward, and a 24-pound howitzer in the rear. She also sported an eight-inch Columbiad, one eight-inch howitzer, and one long 32-pounder. She was commanded by Captain Relay, of the Confederate navy.

Robert hatched a plan that was so daring it was almost unthinkable . . . he would commandeer the Planter, and use it to steam himself, the crew, and all their families to safety in the North. He shared his plans with the slave crew, and cautioned them against alluding to the matter in any way on board the boat, but asked them, if they wanted to talk it up in sober earnestness, to meet at his house, where they would devise and determine upon a plan to place themselves under the protection of the Stars and Stripes instead of the Stars and Bars.

Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” series was first broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service, and was the most widely watched series in the history of American public television until 1990.

It won an Emmy and a Peabody Award and has since been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 600 million people, according to the Science Channel.

This quiz just proves once again that I know nothing about art.

Have a look at each of the paintings below. Is the painting worth one million dollars or above (that is, what was the last and highest price paid for the painting), or one dollar (based on the fact that the artist was a child, who has never sold a painting)? Just highlight the text to reveal the answer.

This is a cool discovery which was actually found a few months ago by ‘Neutje’ at the Google Earth Community. A satellite photo of the port of Pusan, Korea shows a capsized cruise ship laying on its side after it was hit by the 2003 Typhoon Maemi.

(via Digg)

The institution of photography in Ceylon was first established in the mid 1840′s and was practiced quite extensively towards the end of the 19th Century. During that period there were dozens of local and foreign artist who took up the challenge to record the daily events which took place in the beautiful and mysterious island of Ceylon in the form of a photographic image.

(via Plep)

Print it out and follow the folding instructions.

(via Humu Kon Tiki)

Some pictures of mouse guts so click at your own risk.

(via Make:Blog)

352 feet long.

It has been a generation since most people even thought about a slide rule, but Fort Worth became home Wednesday to the biggest one there is.
It measures 352 feet long, weighs 300 pounds and takes three men to slide.
Skip Solberg and Jay Francis said it will calculate to “six significant digits,” which apparently is a good thing. Some other engineers smiled and nodded when hearing of the “significant digits.”

(via Make:blog)