The Daily Drift

All roads are 'golden' right now...!

 

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The Americas

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Feira de Santana, Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, Brazil

Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec and Toronto, Canada

Chillan, Chile

Bogota and Soacha, Colombia

San Salvador, El Salvador

Mexico City and Tlalnepantla, Mexico

Boaco, Nicaragua

Laredo, Peru

Pajaros and San Juan, Puerto Rico

The Bottom, Sint Eustatius-Saba

Europe

Vienna, Austria

Laktasi and Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Glavinitsa and Varna, Bulgaria

Prague and Stare Mesto, Czech Republic

Cambridge, Chester, Manchester and Sheffield, England

Tallinn, Estonia

Cerny and Lyon, France

Frankfurt Am Main, Gehlsdorf and Kerpen, Germany

Athens, Greece

Reykjavik, Iceland

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Amsterdam, Netherlands

Bergen and Gjerstad, Norway

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Bolshoy Kamen, Moscow, Ryazan and Vladivostok, Russia

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Madrid and Valencia, Spain

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Zurich, Switzerland

Istanbul and Izmir, Turkey

Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine

Asia

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Jakarta, Indonesia

Petah Tikva, Israel

Bayan Lepas, Johor Bahru, Kota Bahru, Kuala Lumpur, Kulim and Subang Jaya, Malaysia

Kyoto, Japan

Islamabad, Pakistan

Doha, Qatar

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

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Taipei, Taiwan

Khon Kaen, Thailand

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Homebush and Sydney, Australia

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Today in History

1790		The U.S. patent system is established.
1809		Austria declares war on France and her forces enter Bavaria.
1862		Union forces begin the bombardment of Fort Pulaski in Georgia along the Tybee River.
1865		At Appomattox Court, Va, General Robert E. Lee issues his last orders to the Army of Northern Virginia.
1866		The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is formed.
1902		South African Boers accept British terms of surrender.
1912		The Titanic begins her maiden voyage which will end in disaster.
1925		F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes The Great Gatsby.
1930		The first synthetic rubber is produced.
1932		Paul von Hindenburg is elected president in Germany.
1938		Germany annexes Austria.
1941		U.S. troops occupy Greenland to prevent Nazi infiltration.
1945		In their second attempt to take the Seelow Heights, near Berlin, the Red Army launches numerous attacks against the defending Germans. The Soviets gain one mile at the cost of 3,000 men killed and 368 tanks destroyed.
1945		Allied troops liberate the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald north of Weiner, Germany.
1947		Jackie Robinson becomes the first black to play major league baseball as he takes the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
1953		House of Wax, the first 3-D movie, is released.
1971		The American table tennis team arrives in China.
1974		Yitzhak Rabin replaces resigning Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir.
1981		Imprisoned Irish Republican Army hunger striker Bobby Sands is elected to the British Parliament.

The Kalash

The White Tribe Of Pakistan

In the mountains of the Hindu Kush in Pakistan, six thousand or so people live who look and sound very different from their neighbors. They claim to have lived in the area for thousands of years and they look to all intents and purposes, European.
Many of the Kalash are blond haired and blue eyed, somewhat of an anomaly in Pakistan. Some believe that that they are descendants of Alexander the Great's army though their true ethnic origins are still unproven.

Utah Site Yields Unique Points & Mammoth Residue

More than 1,000 stone tools were recovered during a survey of a section of the Utah Test and Training Range. The tools belong to the Haskett tradition, which is rarely found in the Great Basin region, including a complete spear head thought to be the largest Haskett point every found. Another weapon had traces of elephant proteins on it, making it the first likely evidence of mammoth hunting in the Great Basin. The oldest of the artifacts were made between 12,000 and 13,000 years ago, when the desert was a wetland. “Haskett is very rare, anywhere. Like Clovis, it relates to the earliest folks. They were probably moving around with a sort of condensed tool kit, and I guess you could say they were low visibility. There weren’t many people around, and they didn’t leave much of a record. But we just got lucky here,” Daron Duke of Far Western Anthropological Research Group told Western Digs. He thinks the points were probably lost in action, during a hunt. His team also discovered 19 sharp, double-sided tools called rectangular bifaces that were fashioned from broken Haskett stems. “These are artifacts that are not recognized in any of the other Paleoindian assemblages,” he said. To read in-depth about the first humans to reach North America, see "America, in the Beginning."

Human-Powered Theme Park

Ai Pioppi is what happens when a man building playground equipment gets carried away in his creativity. The restaurant’s playground has thrill rides for people willing to push, pedal, or otherwise put in their own power to make them run. It doesn’t look at all safe, and indeed, Tom Scott (previously at Neatorama) ended up with seven stitches in a fall, but Ai Pioppi isn’t in the litigious United States. It’s in Treviso, Italy. Watch as Tom and a friend pedal their way around the “bicycle of death." He says,

Thank you so much to everyone at Ai Pioppi: I'm sorry for bleeding on your ride, and for pronouncing your restaurant's name terribly. Thanks to Paul, who drove me to the hospital; thanks to the doctors and nurses at Treviso Hospital, too. And Europeans: remember to take an EHIC card on holiday around Europe, so your healthcare travels with you. I didn't have to pay a penny or deal with travel insurance!

And more than that: if you do go, and I recommend you do if you're ever anywhere near it: TAKE CARE. Even when you're on an adrenaline high and you think you're invincible. I wasn't. You won't be either. Hospital visits in a foreign language aren't fun!

(YouTube link)

You may experience some vertigo, but it won’t be nearly as much as these guys experienced. 

UK Lingerie Brand Launches Campaign to Honor Fuller Figured Women

Last year, lingerie corporate giant Victoria’s Secret caught a backlash when it ran the ad pictured below, which detractors said was unrealistic in terms of supposedly representing a range of women's shapes and sizes.
Now UK-based lingerie maker Curvy Kate, which specializes in bra cup sizes from D-K, has launched a campaign that is an obvious send-up of the Victoria's Secret ad.Curvy Kate is using their ad to publicize their search for a lady to represent their brand. They have selected ten finalists; see all of them and vote for your favorite here.

North Carolina Republicans Decide Teens Don't Need To Know About Sex

Or birth control, either! None of those pesky experts to thwart Dog's will.

Teens Don't Need To Know About Sex

How I spent 16 years in an abusive, religio-wingnut christian cult — and finally escaped

Most fundamentalist christian women seriously delusional.

Escaping an abusive, religio-wingnut christian cult

Man arrested after naked cricket bat-swinging toy shop rampage

A naked man went on the rampage in a toy store on Sunday afternoon.

Witnesses said the man crashed his car outside Toys R Us at the Kingsway West retail park in Dundee at around 3pm.
He then entered the shop and began swinging a cricket bat around as he “ranted and raved” in a foreign language. A police source said he removed his clothes as his violent outburst continued.
Emergency services were summoned and a woman was taken to hospital for treatment. Police confirmed a male had been detained in relation to an incident at the store.

Cross-dressing thief armed with 'homemade machine gun' robbed service station

A man disguised as a woman and armed with a "homemade machine gun" has robbed a service station in Melbourne, Australia.

The cross-dressing thief entered the service station in Taylors Hill at about 7:30pm last Monday.
Police said he confronted a staff member with "what appeared to be a homemade machine gun" and demanded money. The employee handed over cash before the thief fled the store.
There were customers in the store at the time but no-one was injured. Police have now released two images of a man that may assist with their inquiries.

How a Pharmacy in Paris Became a Korean Tourist Attraction

There's a lot to see in Paris, one of the great tourism capitals of the world. You can visit the Louvre and notice how small the Mona Lisa really looks. You can take one of those trick photos that makes you look taller than the Eiffel Tower. And, of course, there's that pharmacy in the Latin Quarter.
Yes, a pharmacy. Specifically, it's the Pharmacie de Monge. It's very popular with tourists from East Asia, especially South Korea. A third of its customers hail form East Asia. It's a popular place to visit while in Paris. That's because it sells cheap cosmetics. The owners have responded to this tourism practice by shifting their marketing to the East Asian tourist market. Quartz reports:

“Here it is seven times cheaper,” one 21-year-old student named Eun Ji, said. “No, not really—but it’s at least three times cheaper. And back home, there is not much choice.” The shop was put on the map 12 years ago, when a Korean journalist living in the area wrote about the pharmacy on a blog. Now, the store features in Korean tourist guides to Paris and—unusually for the city—capitalizes on this notoriety by employing several polyglot employees.
“Of the 50 employees, pharmacists or sales consultants, nine speak Korean, three speak Chinese, one speaks Japanese,” M magazine says. And it’s not just Asian customers seeking out these products in France. Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, and English are also spoken.

Villagers take part in body piercing ritual to cure chicken pox

Villagers in Madhya Pradesh, India, recently performed an age-old tradition of body piercing to cure chicken pox.

Chicken pox is a highly contagious disease caused by infection with Varicella Zoster Virus (VZV) which results in skin blisters. The ritual is performed every year on the occasion of ‘Hanuman Jayanti', which marks the birth anniversary of Lord Hanuman.
Villagers in Betul district pierced thread on the “Chaitra Poornima”, observed on the full moon day in the month of Chaitra as per the Hindu almanac that usually falls in the months of late March or early April.

YouTube link.

Villager Roop Rao said that this ritual is performed with pomp by the villagers to prevent their family from diseases. Bare-bodied men danced to mark the ritual in the presence of elderly members of the village.

You Can Pick Your Own Mushrooms at This Grocery Store

Redditor BlondeRed snapped this photo. There's a Kroger grocery store in Bloomington, Indiana where customers can pick their own living mushrooms from an active bed of them. That's a fancy Kroger! Or, as some redditors are calling it, "Kro-Gucci."
Some redditors suspect that it stinks, but BlondeRed says that it doesn't smell at all.
It's very impressive, but I'll wait until the store offers Super Mario Bros. mushrooms.

New Carnivorous Plant Named for H.R. Giger

A stunning new cultivar of carnivorous plant is named for none other than H.R. Giger. This Nepenthes (commonly known as the pitcher plant) was registered by photographer and horticulturist Matthew M. Kaelin, whose submission read in part,

"I named this plant Nepenthes ‘H.R. Giger’ in October 2014 in memory of the recently passed Surrealist Artist from Switzerland who is perhaps best-known for creating the Alien creature for director Ridley Scott’s 1979 film “Alien”, which earned him an Academy Award for the Best Achievement in Visual Effects for his designs of the film’s title character, the stages of its lifecycle, and the film’s extraterrestrial environments. As the innovator of the nightmarish “Biomechanical” style, he had a long and well-respected career as a globally influential fine artist in the disciplines of painting, sculpture, industrial design, and interior design. When viewed extremely close and at an angle, the intersection of the peristome teeth and the lid spikes of the cultivar create a frightening alien landscape akin to those imagined by the late H.R. Giger (Fig. 6). This, and because the plant is darkly colored and has such a nightmarish appearance, I feel that it would be a fitting tribute to name the cultivar for the late visionary genius Hans Ruedi Giger."

Read more about and see other beautiful pictures of the H.R. Giger plant here.

The Complete Visual History of MGM's Roaring Lion Logo

The first ever MGM lion, named Slats, debuted with the release of Polly of the Circus in 1917

Did you ever wonder about MGM's roaring lion logo? It certainly has been an eye (and ear) catcher over the years. The interesting video below provides the full history of the lion from its inception to its modern day incarnation.

YouTube Link

The Return of Brontosaurus

If you are lucky to live long enough, the conventional wisdom you were taught in school will be reversed, and sometimes those reversals might surprise you. When I was in school, there were two Germanys, two taxonomic kingdoms, nine planets, and a place called Yugoslavia. You may have been taught that the dinosaur species called Brontosaurus was a mistake in fossil taxonomy, and only existed in movies and old gas station signs.

In 1903, only a couple decades after it was discovered, Brontosaurus was demoted. Leading scientists at the time decided that the fossils found in the western U.S. were merely a species within the genus Apatosaurus. Museum specimens were renamed, textbooks were rewritten, and Brontosaurus was relegated to history’s dust heap. Today the iconic dinos don’t even have a Wikipedia page.

Now, it appears that Brontosaurus was real all along. A new study from Emanuel Tschopp at the Unversidade Nova de Lisboa and his team takes into account recent fossil finds and in-depth study to conclude that Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus both existed in the distant past.

“The differences we found between Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus were at least as numerous as the ones between closely related genera, and much more than what you normally find between species,” explained Dr. Roger Benson, a co-author of the study from the University of Oxford.

A more detailed look at the research can be found at The Guardian.

Horrifying Prehistoric Creatures That Aren't Dinosaurs

If you're scared of snakes then you certainly wouldn't be a big fan of the Titanoboa -the largest snake in history. This creepy critter stretched out 40 feet in length and weighed up to 2,500 pounds. The Titanoboa  appeared right as the dinosaurs started to disappear, which left it a great niche to fill as a top predator. I've heard rumors of man-eating snakes, but all of those have proven to be fictional -on the other hand, this guy could easily munch down on a man.
Read about other terrifying prehistoric creatures over at All That Is Interesting

Hungry sea lion pulled man posing for photo with fish off boat

A man posing for a photo while holding his “trophy fish” was attacked by a sea lion which hauled him over the side of a boat into the water on Sunday.

Disorderly goat detained by police after headbutting door

Police are looking for the owner of a disorderly goat that had been headbutting a door in Paramus, New Jersey, on Saturday.

Multiple residents reported seeing the goat, Paramus Police said.
Officers Jonathan Henderson, Christian Tsentas and Steve Nepola caught the goat running in the road at about 6pm.
Police turned the goat over to Tyco Animal Control. Chief Kenneth Ehrenberg said police are looking for the owner. Anyone who knows the goat should call the Paramus Police Department.

Animal Pictures