Monday links

Yesterday was the anniversary of the Wright brothers' first flight in 1903.

Why Is Your First Instinct After Hurting Your Finger to Put It in Your Mouth?

The Scientific American Guide to Cheating in the Olympics.

How to Have a British Christmas.

So, it's not just humans - High-Ranking Male Primates Keep Wafting Their Sex Stink at Females, Who Hate It.

5 Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Someone: Backed By Research.

ICYMI, most recent links are here, and include how rats conquered New York City, a ‘smart condom’ that will give you more insight into your sex life than you (probably) want, and calculations showing that, if spiders worked together, they could eat all the humans in a year.

Monday links

Dorothy Parker's birthday: quotes, poems, a brief bio, and the weird journey of her ashes

Five Ancient Athletes Who Dominated the Olympics Thousands of Years Ago, and The United States' First Trip to the Olympics.

In Jerusalem, the World's Only Surviving Tattoo Shop For Medieval Pilgrims.

Excellent supercut of technology breaking down, then being beaten until it works again.

The Rules About How to Address the U.S. Flag Came About Because No One Wanted to Look Like a Nazi.

This Incredible Wooden Book Is a Series of Puzzles That Have to Be Solved to Continue Reading.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include bizarre Victorian inventions, hackers and lock picking, missing counterfeit money, and Australian weird wildlife.

Wednesday links

When the Roomba runs over dog poop.

Vaguely Olympic links: Hy-Brassil: Irish origins of Brazil, an infographic of how Human Athletes Fare Against Average Animals, and a brief history of athletes drinking their own urine.

Davy Crockett, hero of the Alamo, was born on August 17.

What Happened in the Seconds, Hours, and Weeks After the Dino-Killing Asteroid Hit Earth?

Erwin Schrödinger's (he of the famous half-dead cat) birthday: explanation, quotes, jokes, video.

From 1779: His Royal Highness, the Teen-Aged Midshipman.

A Visual History of the Human Pyramid.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include car hacking, Revolutionary War Olympics, predicting weather with bug sex, and travel tips from the age of Napoleon.

Friday links

The Jeep Hackers Are Back to Prove Car Hacking Can Get Much Worse.

Revolutionary War Olympics: The Games Our Founders Played.

The annual Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight, with the best viewing after local midnight. Too late for you? NASA will live-stream the shower.

Predicting weather with bug sex.

Laziness is a sign of high intelligence

10 Travel Tips From the Age of Napoleon.

ICYMI, Tuesday's links are here, and include the history of French fries, the anniversary of the battle of Thermopylae, a supercut of "We don’t negotiate with terrorists", and a roundup of wooden skyscrapers.

Friday links

If you grew up in the 1980s, or have kids who did, you'll love this: Supercut of dancing in ‘80s movies (set to Lionel Richie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling”)

Habits of highly mathematical people.

11 Weird Sports That Were Actually In The Olympics. Kind of related: Watch The Opening Ceremony of the 1936 Nazi Olympic Games.

From 1944, head shots of all of the ways US intelligence thought Hitler might try to disguise himself.

A 1730 map of Paris.

The Origins of All 30 Major League Baseball Team Names.

ICYMI, Wednesday's links are here, and include the experimental nuclear reactor secretly built under the University of Chicago, photographs of elegant in-flight airplane dining from the 1950s, the use of trial by touch to determine guilt in colonial America. and a set on anti-communist propaganda posters (including my personal favorite, "Is Your Washroom Breeding Bolsheviks?").

Gently but flamboyantly launching the over-sized walnut down the frozen river: David Attenborough Narrates Women's Curling

BBC Radio 1 asked David Attenborough (wiki) to narrate a few moments with Great Britain's Olympic curling team as if it were a nature documentary.



via io9.

Not The Onion: Ballet Skiing

I have zero interest in skiing, but for those of you who like it, here's a sub-genre that somehow never made it to the Olympics: