Automata have been around for a couple of centuries now. Most of the time they’re enjoyably amazing pieces of craftsmanship that cause people to smile.
There’s been a chess-playing automata, an acrobatic automata that does a trapeze act and even animals have been featured as these intricate works of what seems like robotic art.
Then there’s this.
A coin operated bank automata that features a scene guaranteed to wipe whatever smile you had after watching that whimsical tail-wagging, ball-carrying puppy right off your face.
The auction site has the following description for this fun piece of whimsy: “St. Dennistoun Mortuary” Coin-Operated Automaton, attributed to Leonard Lee, c. 1900, the mahogany cabinet and glazed viewing area displays a Greek Revival mortuary building with double doors and grieving mourners out front, when a coin is inserted, doors open and the room is lighted revealing four morticians and four poor souls on embalming tables, the morticians move as if busily at work on their grisly task and mourners standing outside bob their heads as if sobbing in grief…”
Expected to sell for between $4.000-$6,000, this uniquely strange piece of work blew the lid off that price and ended up as a fun conversation piece for the sum of $13,035!
On July 2, 1937 Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan set out in Earhart’s plane, the Electra, to circumnavigate the world at the equator…and vanished.
Their disappearance has been mentioned in everything from historical documentaries on plane crashes to shows about the paranormal where conspiracies abound about shadowy government projects and even alien abduction.
While most people agree that the Electra simply ran out of fuel, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) has spent the last twenty-four years and nine expeditions to Earhart and Noonan’s last known location in an attempt to find out exactly what happened on that historic journey around the world.
In 1940 artifacts surfaced, renewed interest in the search and were then subsequently lost leading to rumors of a government cover-up and a slew of conspiracy theories.
Recently, pieces of a significant artifact, an anti-freckle cream jar (Earhart had freckles and it was well known that she wasn’t happy about it) turned up. Now, armed with new technologiy, preparations are underway and another expedition is about to commence. TIGHAR is hoping that this search will reveal all of the missing pieces to this seventy-five-year-old mystery.
As of this writing, TIGHAR is in the midst of a three day symposium discussing the flight, its disappearance and what may have actually happened in the final days of a trip that’s still yet to reach its conclusion.
During an early WeirdThings podcast, Brian and Justin were put into one of Andrew’s scenarios involving ‘flying’ snakes in Russia. Neither of them were happy with the idea of snakes launching themselves from trees onto their prey.
Here’s another frightening evolutionary mash-up that was probably fun in a comic book or horror story. In real life? Total fun-suck.
Meet Mecoptera, a tiny nightmare combination of a wasp-like fly with the tail of a scorpion.
Commonly referred to as a ‘scorpionfly’, Mecoptera isn’t a threat…yet. The male’s tale resembles a scorpion’s stinger but is only used for mating purposes…for right now. If you had seen one in the wild and had no idea what the thing was? You’d probably just assume that it was what it looked like, steer clear of the thing and walk briskly away knowing that nature’s working on a game plan to take back the planet.
While Mecoptera looks menacing, it’s not harmful to us squishy humans.
Let’s just hope that nature decides to keep it that way.
[TYWKIWDBI]
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Rainbow? Lame. Double Rainbow? It had its time and people sang its praises.
Fire Rainbow? You have our attention.
A naturally occuring optical phenomenon, the ‘fire rainbow’ or what’s called a circumhorizontal arc is something that requires being in the right place at the right time to witness.
A lot of conditions have to be in place in order for you to witness what happens when the leprechauns decide to pull a Bridge on the River Kwai maneuver in a panic.
Fire Rainbows (we just made it a thing…circumhorizontal arc is never going to trend) take place only in a cirrus cloud which contains very little moisture. Inside the cloud, the ice crystals have to align horizontally just right in order to refract the light perfectly because of the angle of the sun on the horizon. On top of all that, you have to be in the right place on the earth or your angle will be off and your little peepers won’t get to witness the power of the Fire Rainbow!
Along with the jet packs we were supposed to be sporting by now and the hover cars easing our commute was the military’s Flying Platform.
In 1955 a film was shot showing one of the airborne Seqway-like contraptions in operation. Originally developed by the Navy, the US Army deemed them impractical and development halted.
Looking at this now, after six decades have gone by? All we’d need is some PVC, a lawn mower engine, an arduino controller and one of those mini-trampolines.
In an amazing scientific feat, a paralyzed rat was taught to walk again.
First, Courtine and colleagues injected the rats with a chemical cocktail that binds to dopamine, adrenaline and serotonin receptors on the spinal cord’s neurons. This replaced the neurotransmitters that would normally be released in healthy spinal pathways. A few minutes after priming the neurons, the team stimulated the rats’ spinal cords through electrodes implanted into the spinal canal. This sent electrical signals to the roused neurons. Then the rats needed to be trained to use their limbs again. Within a week of their injuries, the rats were on treadmills, forging new neural connections.
Although a human application for this solution is a long way away, clinical trials are on the horizon.
Over the last several decades, small pockets of people have begun taking up residence on the fringes of society.
Almost three generations of ‘mole people’ live beneath the city of New York. A floating island of lashed together debris is home
to a small village of people in Mexico. In Vegas, individuals and even entire families have started living in the aqueducts and waterways criss-crossing the neon desert oasis.
While most of the fringe populations have made a choice to move into these environment because of poverty and drug addiction, for
almost 30 years the sewers below Bogota, Colombia have been a hellish sanctuary of sorts for these same types of people. In Colombia,
death squads are sent out to perform ‘social cleansing’ of people deemed ‘undesirables’ by the wealthier classes.
Denizens of the Colombian sewer system have been subjected to being burned alive, opened fire on and generally harassed and beaten.
Vice’s Thomas Morton takes you into the dark, horrific and life-threatening conditions that people endure beneath the city of Bogota.
[CNN WORLD]
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In my country there is problem. And that problem is dead antelope.
Three major die-offs of the antelope population have occurred in the past three years due to mysterious causes. In fact, each death boom happened almost exactly one year apart from the previous one. Some suspect overuse of fertilizer, others believe they ate too much “wet” vegetation.
But reasonable minds agree: it’s probably a space disease brought down by the Soyuz capsule.
But some ecologists in Kazakhstan and Russia are instead blaming the fatalities on the April landing of a Soyuz capsule from the International Space Station. At least 120 dead saigas were found near the village of Sorsha, where the Soyuz landed last month. Others see a possible link to the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch site in central Kazakhstan. “It could be from chemical elements left from space rockets that fly over this place,” ecologist Musagali Duambekov, leader of the For a Green Planet political movement, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).
Throw the space disease down the well! So my country can be free!
Depending on how far you want to post-date this trend in California, cage fighter Jarrod Wyatt was convicted for the murder of his training partner. After consuming hallucinogenic tea, Wyatt ripped his training partner’s heart and tongue out before tearing off a substantial amount of his face. A friend found him sitting in his apartment covered in blood with body parts scattered around the room.
Nothing kicks off a summer of fun like the first commercial space craft hitting the waves. Minutes ago, SpaceX’s Dragon Capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, ending a historic trip from GD space to the International Space Station.
Welcome home!
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A derelict, abandoned hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia has attracted hundreds of rookie ghost hunters for years.
Riyadh’s Iraq Hospital, a now abandoned building which treated Gulf War soldiers beginning in 1991 has become the focal point of young ghost hunters determined to rid the site of malevolent Jinn.
According to the Koran and Arabian mythology, Jinn are spectral beings that supposedly tempt people into doing the wrong thing.
Recently, via text messages, dozens of teen ghost hunters broke into the hospital causing massive damage to left-behind facilities before setting it ablaze in order to remove what they believed to be Jinns living within the building.
Local press complained about the unsafe condition of the building. The Healthy Ministry simply shrugged and replied that the building is on private property, cannot function as a working hospital and that it’s basically not their responsibility.
Meanwhile YouTube videos continue to surface showing young ghost hunters exploring the eerie location looking for evidence of the Jinn.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. In a week when the boundaries of humanity’s role in space may have been redefined forever we also got the possible beginning of a zombie outbreak when a naked man was shot dead eating the face of another poor soul. Meanwhile, Andrew alerts the boys to the existence of a flesh eating bacteria that has claimed the limbs of a young Georgia woman.
Also, Justin and Brian are told of a land where dinosaurs exist. After they were built by prison labor.
Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Hollywood Pharaohs just click on the image below.
What better way to support Weird Things and get ready for Prometheus than by watching the original Alien flicks in pristine Blu-Ray quality? This collection includes all four of the series along with extensive behind the scenes features. Get it now for just $29.95
SpaceX and Intellisat, the world’s largest provider of satellite services, have issued a press release announcing that Intellisat has signed up to be the first customer for SpaceX’s next generation rocket, the Falcon Heavy. The most powerful rocket in the world (capable of delivering 117,000 pounds to low earth orbit) and the largest since the Saturn V rockets, the Falcon Heavy is expected to take flight next year.
The previous attempt at trying to build the world’s most powerful rocket was the Soviet Union’s Energia. On its first mission the rocket failed to get the payload to orbit. The second, carrying the Soviet Space Shuttle variation, the Buran, reached orbit, but actual payload capacity was a third less than the Falcon Heavy’s planned capacity.
Consisting of three modified Falcon 9 cores, the Falcon Heavy involves an innovative fuel strategy that’s never been attempted before in this kind of rocket. As the rocket gains altitude, the two outer cores will fuel the main core’s engines, so when separation occurs, the primary stage will be fully fueled and carrying no dead-weight.
Based upon proven Falcon 9 technology, the Falcon Heavy brings about radically lower launch costs of approximately $1,000 per pound, where previous cost to low earth orbit (LEO) was around $10,000 and as much as $30,000 onboard the Space Shuttle when you factor in the total program cost.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said a manned lunar mission on the scale of the Apollo would be capable with two launches using the Falcon Heavy. SpaceX has also proposed using a Falcon Heavy and a modified Dragon capsule to perform an unmanned Mars mission called Red Dragon, for about $450 million – oddly enough the budget and marketing cost of the film John Carter (of Mars).
While SpaceX is preparing the Falcon Heavy, engineers and scientists at their McGregor, Texas test facility will continue developing the technology for their long range plan of making a full reusable Falcon Heavy rocket by the end of this decade. Accomplishing this could bring launch costs to under $10 per pound. For more on the impact of that, check out our article Space Boom.
Andrew Mayne is a science fiction and thriller author. His website can be found at AndrewMayneBooks.com
