Friday links

Harpo Marx Naked (OK for work).

Kurt Vonnegut's May 29, 1945 letter home after imprisonment in an underground slaughterhouse during the Dresden bombing.

Squirrel Tissue in Buttock: until now "gross contamination of an open wound with squirrel flesh [was] an unreported event."

How to make your own wrist-mounted X-Men Pyro flamethrowers, Wolverine claws, and Magneto magnetic shoes.

5 Reasons Why Everyone is Suddenly Putting Butter In Their Coffee. In other news, apparently people are putting butter in their coffee.

33 Graphs That Reveal Painfully True Facts About Everyday Life.

ICYMI, Wednesday's links are here, including a 3 minute time-lapse animated map of World War I, the history of tug-of-war fatalities, and an answer to the age old question: could you get drunk from drinking a drunk person's blood?

How to make your own wrist-mounted X-Men Pyro flamethrowers, Wolverine claws, and Magneto shoes

For hard-core X-Men fans:

First of all, here's the inventor (Colin Furze), who had previously made a set of homemade Wolverine claws and a pair of magnetic Magneto shoes (see below), demonstrating the flamethrowers:

and the tutorial:



Here's a demo of the Wolverine claws:



and the tutorial:



And here he is walking on the ceiling with his homemade Magneto magnetic shoes:

And two tutorials - one for building the shoes and one for walking on the ceiling.  First, making the shoes:

and the ceiling walk:

Check out Colin's youtube channel - he seems to have a penchant for adding jet engines to things like bicycles and strollers.

via Laughing Squid.

Wednesday links

Anoint the gums with the brains of a hare: advice from c. 1450 on soothing a teething baby. Apparently dog milk works, too.

Gallery of vintage toy robots.

3 Minute Time-Lapse Animated Map of World War I (WW II takes 7 minutes), bonus Horrible History explanation.

How To Tell If You've Been Abducted By Aliens.

Could you get drunk from drinking a drunk person's blood?

The Science of Laziness: Is There a Couch-Potato Gene?

A History of Tug-of-War Fatalities.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include the science of Game of Thrones and of Bruce Lee's one inch punch, the 1940's plan to replace jockeys with robots, and ridiculous state fair foods.

3 Minute Time-Lapse Animated Map of World War I (WW II takes 7 minutes), bonus Horrible History explanation

There seem to be a lot of World War I articles appearing recently, presumably as a lead-up to the centennial of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on June 28, 1914, the proximate cause of the beginning of the war. If you're interested in further information on the subject there are hundreds of books and films - the best books I know of (and I'm no expert) are Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August (this won a Pulitzer back when they meant something) and John Keegan's The First World War.

This animated map reflects the daily changes over the course of the war. I'd previously seen the WWII version (embedded below) but not this one.

Here's the The BBC’s Horrible Histories explanation of how the Brits got involved in WWI:

The Atlantic has a series of photoessays entitled World War I in Photos on various WWI topics - there will be ten of these, but they're not all available yet. Of those posted so far, I found technology and animals of particular interest.

Previous posts: Wilfred Owen, the best of the WWI "War Poets", was born 121 years ago today

Anoint the gums with the brains of a hare: advice from c. 1450 on soothing a teething baby

Andrea Mantegna, The Circumcision of Jesus 

(detail, c. 1461)

Old ways are always the best, right?

"Sometimes babies have trouble with teething. In that case you should squeeze the gums with your fingers, and gently massage them, and the palate as well. And you should anoint the gums with the brains of a hare (which are very suitable for this purpose), or with fat or butter or good-quality olive oil; and you should do this twice a day. The milk of a dog is suitable, too. It is also very helpful to use hen's fat for both anointing and massaging the gums." 

~Michele Savonarola, Ad mulieres ferrarienses (c. 1450)

From Ask The Past.


Previous posts: 

Advice from c. 530: How To Use Bacon, including for medicinal purposes such as "thick bacon, placed for a long time on all wounds, be they external or internal or caused by a blow, both cleanses any putrefaction and aids healing".

Mostly weird, and some not so weird, medical treatments from the old days, including this:

How to Stop Bleeding, 1664:

“To Stench a Bleeding Wound: Lay hogs Dung, hot from the Hog, to the Bleeding Wound.”

~Samuel Strangehopes, A Book of Knowledge in Three Parts (166[4])

Dubious medical device du jour - the prostate warmer.

Advice from 1380: How to Tell if Someone Is or Is Not Dead, with bonus Monty Python.

How to Slim Down in Fourteen Days: Advice from 1595.

Urine-drinking Hindu cult believes a warm cup before sunrise straight from virgin cow cures cancer, baldness.