Command & Conquer, the history of WASD, the origin of Sonic, cockroaches dying on their backs, and a knife made from frozen feces. A tutti frutti of links, videos, and galleries for all tastes, with the best written and recorded during the week, all in one place.

Command & Conquer, when we conquered the world: "Blizzard beat Westwood Studios to capitalizing on the foundations laid by Dune II and released its own real-time strategy game in late 1994, a medieval fantasy program called Warcraft where orcs and humans fought, shaping the universe that would later host the über-famous World of Warcraft. But when Command & Conquer finally debuted, it blew players' minds."

Why is WASD used to play on PC?: "As a result of this, the controllers were designed to work well in these situations. On PC, however, you had an entire keyboard on which to 'map' controls, so it was easier to find simulators and other genres that used cameras, control schemes, and other more particular features than on other platforms, which is why it acquired a different audience, an audience that would later hugely enjoy the first-person shooters that would see the light on PC."

The secret origin of Sonic the Hedgehog: "The story of how they settled on a hedgehog is a bit curious. Oshima drew examples of the characters on the table while he was in Central Park and began showing them to random people, gauging their reactions. The hedgehog won by a landslide. Apparently, it was the one passersby liked the most. Thus, the hedgehog was chosen as the mascot for the game."

Juggling with a cigar

Why there are bottles of absinthe hidden in Swiss forests: "There is a little-known route in Val-de-Travers (Switzerland). There, if you venture into the forests, you can find small springs hiding bottles of absinthe. The drink is right there waiting for hikers to find it and take a sip. As they tell on AtlasObscura, these hiding spots, known as fontaines froides (or cold springs), serve as a reminder of the halo of mystery that surrounded absinthe in the past."

We've started to understand the purpose of dreaming, it's emotional therapy: "For the first time, a group of researchers has evidence that dreams help calm the impact of emotional events in our lives, acting as a nightly therapy. The finding raises the possibility of hacking our dreams to boost learning, memory, and emotional well-being."

Why do cockroaches usually die on their backs?: "It is in the second scenario (by insecticide poisoning) that it usually happens that in their last seconds of life they end up flipping over and dying on their backs. This is because at the moment known as 'rigor mortis' (rigidity of death) their legs do not contract in unison, so the cockroaches end up tilted and the rounded shape of their shell makes it end up facing upward."

Affetto, nightmare material

The end of the great con man - George C. Parker and his last trip to jail: "If there is a paradigmatic phrase in the world of scams, thanks largely to American pop culture, it's that if you're too gullible, then "I have a bridge to sell you" ("tengo un puente que venderte"). Because, of course, who would believe that someone could sell a bridge from a small city like, I don't know, New York? Well, it seems there were enough gullible people for George C. Parker to manage to sell one a good number of times."

He buys thousands of fake profiles on social networks to make his band believe they have fans and goes on tour in Europe. What could go wrong?: Jered Threatin, leader and singer of the LA-based band Threatin, began a tour of several UK cities last October. He told all the promoters and club owners that the band had sold hundreds of tickets for their performances, and that some shows were marked as sold out. However, what the owners and promoters did not know when the concert dates were booked was that not a single ticket had actually been sold.

Peter Freuchen, the explorer who survived by making a knife out of his own frozen feces: "His name was Lorenz Peter Elfred Freuchen and he was Danish, born in the town of Nykøbing Falster in 1886. Nothing indicated a priori what his calling would be, since he came from a family of merchants and when he came of age he enrolled at the University of Copenhagen to study medicine. But his life was not going to take that path. Already in 1906, barely twenty years old, he made his first trip to Greenland and more would soon come in the company of his friend Knud Rasmussen."

X-Files in Romania

Build your own addition and subtraction calculator: "It may seem strange that today, when we have calculators on our mobile phones, tablets, or computers, online calculators on the internet that allow all kinds of operations, whether with numbers, vectors, or matrices, and sophisticated calculators that increasingly resemble handheld computers, we propose in this entry of the Science Culture Notebook to build a mechanical calculator to perform additions and subtractions."

Tom Tremewan and the coffin lids: "Many boards came out from Perranporth to other beaches in Cornwall. Over time, the boards came to have curved edges, which increased their price. Following in the footsteps of Tom Tremewan, other workshops began to manufacture their wooden bellyboards, before plywood became available in the 1930s. Then came the first boards that allowed Britons to catch waves standing up. But that is another story, which we will tell in the next El Domingo."

The oldest condom in the world: "In 2000, the British Museum in London exhibited for the first time the oldest preserved condoms in the world, about 450 years old, which were found in excavations carried out in the 80s of the last century at Dudley Castle, in central England. The exhibited specimens correspond to the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. It is striking that these specimens are as thin as those currently manufactured industrially with latex."

Restoration of a bench vise

Videos

  • The history of the mouse cursor
  • Runners on a treadmill at world record speed
  • Cat with crazy eyes
  • Broke the matrix
  • Erases chalkboard to the zen
  • Giant worm from the depths
  • Builds a Wall-E
  • Brothers being bad
  • Disguise as a bus to cross a bridge prohibited to pedestrians
  • The scare that almost ended the life of the magician from Pontevedra, Pedro Volta
  • Kitten "lorie lorie"
  • House destroyed by fire
  • Drone steals bicycle
  • Dubbed in real time
  • Stan Lee - a cosplay tribute
  • strikeeeee
  • Manatee in the lake
  • The economy of betting
Timelapse of the earth in 30 years

Galleries

Recommended Links of the Week (N°487)
Debbie Harry
Hi Five the Cactus

Thanks for reading!