Origami, obviously one of the coolest paper craft techniques,
was recently taken to another level by Japanese graphic designer and
origami expert Yosuke Hasegawa. Yosuke is representing a new art form
called “moneygami” by taking different money bills from all around the
world and folding them in the manner of origami, he has created
an incredible collection of world leaders donning various hats.
Here you can see Abe Lincoln and Gandhi with baseball caps,
Queen Elizabeth with turban and even Hussein with sombrero all made of a
single dollar bill. According to the artist, he wanted “to make people happy with spending money” and has even created a free Moneygami app that teaches how to make Kid Lincoln out of a five dollar bill.
The second longest geographical name that is accepted in the
world is “Taumatawhakatangihangak oauauotamateaturipukaka
pikimaungahoronukupokaiwhe nua kitanatahu” (85 letters) which is a hill
in New Zealand – it is a maori phrase which translates to “place where
Tamatea, the man with the big knees, who slid, climbed and swallowed
mountains, known as land-eater, played his flute to his loved one”. It
was the longest until recently (though the Guinness Book of Records
still regards it as the longest).
A city in Thailand is called Krung thep maha nakorn amorn
ratana kosinmahintar ayutthay amaha dilok phop noppa ratrajathani
burirom udom rajaniwesmahasat harn amorn phimarn avatarn sathit
sakkattiya visanukamprasit (163 letters). This translates to “The land
of angels, the great city of immortality, of devine gems, the great
angelic land unconquerable land of nine nobel gems, the royal city, a
pleasant capital place of the Royal Palace, eternal land of angels and
reincarnated spirits predestined and created by the highest Devas.”
The shortest named city is simply “Å” it is located in both
Sweden and Norway. In Scandinavian languages, “Å” means “river”. The
image above is one of the newly replaced road signs for the area – they
are frequently stolen for their novelty value.
Halloween’s origins date back more than 2,000 years. On what
we consider November 1, Europe’s Celtic peoples celebrated their New
Year’s Day, called Samhain (SAH-win). According to Irish mythology,
Samhain was a time when the ‘door’ to the Otherworld opened enough for
fairies and the dead to communicate with us; Samhain was essentially a
festival for the dead.
On Samhain eve—what we know as Halloween—spirits were thought
to walk the Earth as they traveled to the afterlife. Fairies, demons,
and other creatures were also said to be abroad. It is still the custom
in some areas to set a place at the Samhain feast for the souls of dead
kinfolk and to tell tales of one’s forebears. However, the souls of
thankful kin could return to bestow blessings just as easily as that of a
murdered person could return to wreak revenge. Fairies were also
thought to steal humans on Samhain and fairy mounds were to be avoided.
People stayed near to home or, if forced to walk in the
darkness, turned their clothing inside-out or carried iron or salt to
keep the fairies at bay. The Gaelic custom of wearing costumes and masks
was a bid to befuddle the harmful spirits or ward them off. In
Scotland, young men would dress in white with masked, veiled or
blackened faces. They were known as ‘guisers’ and the practice was
common in the 16th century in the Scottish countryside. Candle lanterns,
carved from turnips, were part of the traditional festival. Large
turnips were hollowed out, carved with faces and set on windowsills to
ward off evil spirits.
Samhain was later transformed as Christian leaders co-opted
pagan holidays. In the seventh century Pope Boniface IV decreed November
1 All Saints’ Day, or All Hallows’ Day. The night before Samhain
continued to be observed with bonfires, costumes, and parades, though
under a new name: All Hallows’ Eve—later “Halloween.”
Children going door to door ‘guising’ or ‘galoshin’ in
costumes and masks, carrying turnip lanterns, offering entertainment of
in return for food or coins, was traditional in the 19th century and
continued well into the 20th century. At the time of mass transatlantic
Irish and Scottish immigration, the custom of Halloween in North America
began.
A Japanese company is making it just a little easier for
humans to act like cats. But instead of offering nine lives, Japan’s
Neurowear has introduced a wearable cat tail that wags when a user’s
mood changes.
Called Shippo - Japanese for “tail”- the device debuted at
Saturday’s Tokyo Games Show and comes as the latest in a new line of
products that read users’ brain waves. Adding a new twist, Shippo uses a
headset, a clip-on heart monitor, and a neural smart phone app to read
the wearer’s brain waves and sense his or her mood. Once that fluffy
tail is wagging, the device tags the wearer’s mood to a location online,
which can be shared with other users.
As a company, Neurowear has released more than just cat
tails. The company has also released a line of wag-able cat ears which
also read human brain waves and wiggle with mood.
Dr. Seuss uses his witty writing skills to
promote malaria awareness to the troops fighting overseas during World
War II. Ann is the mosquito that will bite the poor G.I. and in eight to
fourteen days, he will develop malaria. Truly a curious route to warn
soldiers about the danger of malaria.
Rockwell used a neighbor, Clarence Decker, as the sailor in the "Tattooist", 1944.
Decker was ‘Master of the Grange’ in Arlington, and shows up in quite a
few of Rockwell’s illustrations.
The Tattoo Archive received an email from Ross Mosher, who is
the great, great nephew of Clarence Decker, the sailor model for The
Tattooist, which read:
“Clarence didn’t have a single tattoo in real life. Also
the last name on his arm is Betty – that’s because my great, great aunt
Belle told Norman that if he put her name in the painting, she wouldn’t
speak to him ever again. So Norman crossed the L’s and added a Y.”
The haunting face of an Inuit child who died in Greenland in the
1400s. In 1972, hunters roaming near an abandoned Inuit settlement
called Qilakitsoq chanced upon the graves of eight people. Six women and
two children that had been buried in the mid-15th century beneath an
overhanging rock that sheltered the burial site from sunlight, rain, and
snow. Slowly but steadily, dry winds and subzero temperatures
freeze-dried their remains as well as their sealskin and fur clothing.
Museum curators today sometimes use a similar process of freeze-drying
to conserve unearthed bog bodies and organic artifacts.
