The sitcom starring Hitler, the woman whose skin was used to bind books, the curious origin of money symbols, Fidonet (a network before the Internet) and millions more things. Promised!
Articles
"Heil Honey I'm Home!": The sitcom starring Hitler that only lasted one episode: "What if we made a classic-style sitcom, in the style of 'I Love Lucy', but starring Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun? No matter how much this story seems like an unfortunate joke posted on Guillermo Zapata's Twitter in 2011, it is absolutely true. On September 30, 1990, the satellite TV channel Galaxy broadcast in the United Kingdom the first episode of what may have been the most controversial series ever produced in the British Isles: 'Heil Honey I'm Home'. And the episode is fully available to watch in the article!"
"Hard Target", by John Woo, when an artist makes action cinema: "Van Damme and Woo were made for each other. According to the director, 'his great ability was to make the heroes look very good on screen', a fact that led the actor to surrender to the filmmaker, concluding the effort with one of the most beloved action cult films of the nineties, all despite its immense difficulties during the shooting process. One of the fascinating things about B-action movie productions is that they dug deep themes to tell their stories."
Voltaire, the philosopher who got rich exploiting an error in the lottery: "Towards the end of the 1720s, Voltaire was not yet a socially prominent figure nor was he a wealthy man. Paris had launched a lottery to raise funds and thus help fix its shaky economy. To encourage citizens to buy the bonds the city issued, in other words, to have citizens finance Paris's expenses, a lottery was launched that only those who held official bonds could access, and the prize for the winner depended on the value of the bonds they held. Voltaire, along with some mathematician friend, noticed a small flaw in the design of the lottery."
Mary Lynch, the woman whose skin was used to bind books in the 19th century: "Although it is known that it was done much earlier, binding books with human skin, a practice known as anthropodermic bibliopegy, had its most prolific period during the 19th century. There are numerous examples of books bound with this technique that have come down to us, most of them are in libraries, museums, and private collections, but the case of the Irishwoman Mary Lynch is somewhat particular: the skin from her legs was used to bind three books."
In Japan, they are renting people to carry an iPad with your face to places: "Family dinners, company events, running errands, bureaucratic procedures... is there anyone who loves having to attend those commitments? Most don't, but that's how it is. However, in Japan they have come up with an incredible idea to get out of it: hiring people to go to their appointments with a touch screen covering their face and showing the person's face on the display. Some things can only happen in Japan... and in Black Mirror."
This beetle can free itself from a predator by causing it to vomit from inside its stomach: "This striking ability was first described in 2016 by scientists from Kobe University led by biologist Takuya Sato. The researchers fed a toad a bombardier beetle and observed how the amphibian expelled it from its stomach 44 minutes after swallowing it. They had never seen a toad or a frog vomit that way, but the most amazing thing was that the beetle was still alive and kicking. How was it even possible?"
Scapa Flow, diving among ships from two world wars: "After the war came reconstruction, for which the need for steel drove the price of this metal up considerably. Ernest Cox, a wealthy metal businessman, got to work; between 1924 and 1932 he refloated much of the fleet, both German and some English ships that had been sunk during the Great War. His feat earned him the nickname 'the man who bought a fleet', title of the book written in 1964 in his honor. Although the Great Depression ended the profitability of this operation, which he had to abandon definitively in 1933, leaving still a large number of ships at the bottom of Scapa Flow, awaiting the most illustrious of all."
The curious origin of money symbols: "The main theory has Spain as the protagonist, specifically its silver reals, a coin that between the 14th and 19th centuries was the basis of the Spanish monetary system. According to this theory, the '$' symbol would be a stylization of the Pillars of Hercules that appeared on these coins, which began to spread throughout the American continent after colonization. The vertical bars would be the columns and the S would be the band with the legend 'Plus Ultra' that wrapped around them."
Why do all planets orbit the sun in the same direction?: "Stars form inside dense clouds of gas and dust that float through space. As the densest regions of these clouds begin to collapse under their own gravity, their rotation speed increases due to the conservation of angular momentum (which I mentioned in this other post). Therefore, as the gas compresses to form a star, it inherits the direction of rotation that the material in its nebula region followed. During this process, the material that the star does not absorb ends up forming a protoplanetary disk around it."
The first video game tournaments, the origin of "eSports": "Electronic sports or "eSports" (electronic sports) are video game competitions that have been increasing in popularity over the years, being a lucrative sector that currently moves hundreds of millions of euros. Their origins, however, with the first video game tournaments in history that took place in the 70s and 80s, were very different. Long before eSports became globally popular thanks to the growth of the Internet, during the 1970s and early 80s, the first competitions for video game enthusiasts were already being organized..."
FidoNet, the great public world network born before the Internet: "The main service to highlight of FidoNet was Netmail, a system that allowed network users to send private messages to other users, regardless of the BBS server they usually connected to... it could be considered a parallel service to today's Internet email, but at that time it was a slow service, messages could take several days to reach the recipient due to the complex system required to travel between nodes, and there were also no permanent connections to the network between those nodes."
The art of repairing books in the Middle Ages: "At the beginning of the Middle Ages, instead of paper, books were made from animal skins, known as parchment. Preparing the parchment before it became part of the book required a delicate process. The freshly cut skin was first washed to remove blood and dirt, then soaked in an alkaline solution to remove the hair. After keeping the skin in that solution for more than a week, it was attached to a wooden frame and stretched like a drum to dry. At that point, the skin was given a final once-over with a sharp knife to remove the last layer of hair and achieve the right thickness. This was the most delicate part because pressing too hard at that moment or a simple slip with the knife could cause tears or holes in the parchment."
Videos
Videos: Robot size comparison, filming a plane with a drone, Jack Black in South Korea, Banana Phone, cat playing with pinball, rat on the stairs, melting a keyboard in acetone, interviews with old people in 1929, the best pet videos of the week, how horse sounds are made for movies, the blue ball, playing PONG in the real world, long-necked turtle, don't get too close to a jet engine or it will melt your face, the Falcon Heavy landing, using a squirrel to pull out a tooth, puppy versus lemon, exploring an abandoned building and the shorts: Timmy's Dying Wish, The Time Agent and Your Date is Here.
Galleries
Galleries: Europop album covers for shame, phones for collectors, vintage Valentine's cards, classic portraits by Gemmy Woudbinnendijk, the beauty of chemistry, illustrations of horny frogs, genetic portraits, X-Files through the lens of David LaChapelle, urban coincidences, mini people, kids receiving video game consoles for Christmas, memorable photos of World War II, illustrated phobias and the Tiradero Visual de la Semana, with a movie recommendation included.
This Week on NeoTeo
This week on NeoTeo: Chinese police with smart glasses, the battle for Superman's mustache, the secret senses of human beings, the world's most powerful flashlight illuminating the brightest paint, the sound of the quantum, the craze of cutting soap on YouTube, the spacesuit of the cosmonaut dogs, experiments with mice and mazes, the best deepfakes of Nicolas Cage and the Gompertz-Makeham Mortality Law.
Done! We're done for today! Have a good weekend!
