Wednesday links

For NatGeo's Shark Week: here's the Batman 1966 Shark Repellent Bat Spray scene, a Lego re-enactment, and Mythbusters "Essence of Dead Sharks" shark repellent test.

The length of a music single was determined by the weight-driven pulley system on a 1920's recording machine  - it allowed approximately three and a half minutes to record before a 100 pound weight hit the floor.

Sherlock Holmes gets a lot of mail. What happens to it?

17th century infertility remedies.

How tech's richest plan to save themselves after the apocalypse.

A free online course offered by MIT: How to Win at Texas Hold 'Em.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include a brief history of prosthetic limbs, the anniversary of the 20th of July plot (the unsuccessful bomb attempt to kill Hitler in 1944), the science of the perfect s'more, and an analysis of the Bayeux Tapestry's 93 penises. 

NatGeo shows you how easily rats can swim up through your toilet

Afraid to go into the ocean after the first time you watched Jaws? This could have a similar effect, although it's largely an urban phenomenon. National Geographic shows just how easy it is for sewer rats to swim up through a toilet bowl. Their ribs are hinged at the spine, which makes it easy for them to travel through pipes and plumbing. Rats are also expert swimmers, they can hold their breath underwater for up to three minutes and can tread water for three days in a row.

via Laughing Squid

Video of the slowest chase scene ever: guy interrupts mating giant tortoises, gets chased away by male

National Geographic expedition leader Paul Rose is in the Seychelles:

Rose, who was part of a “Pristine Seas” expedition on a small island in the Indian Ocean republic, became involved in what the network described as “the slowest chase ever” after being sniffed out by two giant tortoises that were mating.

The male didn’t care for the intrusion–who would?–so it turned toward Rose and went after him, slowly but relentlessly, across the island landscape.

“This is what you’d call dogged tortoise determination,” Rose says, while backing away during a chase that covered 400 yards. “[But] he hasn’t seen my finishing sprint yet.”

Once Rose was coaxed a safe distance away, the tortoise turned and beat a hasty retreat back to the female. Well, it wandered back as quickly as it could. Presumably, the female was still waiting in the bushes.

GrindTV, via Daily Picks and Flicks