molasses, clouds, drowning and profit

The Boston Molasses Flood. My favorite man-made disaster.

I don't even know what to say about this collection of cloud pictures. They're pretty much all this incredible.

Very important for those around water, especially kids and water: DROWNING DOESN'T "LOOK LIKE DROWNING"

TIL that George Lucas thought Close Encounters of the Third Kind would be a bigger hit than Star Wars and Steven Spielberg thought that Star Wars would be bigger and they bet each other 2.5% of each other's total profit and that Steven Spielberg still recieves that 2.5%.

Salt, M*A*S*H, cows and Brits

Deep below the Mediterranean island of Sicily, thousands of tons of salt are excavated every year. The mining leaves behind miles of tunnels that are “vaulted alabaster corridors” under any available light. See a great set of pictures here.

Robert Altman directed the original MASH movie, and made $70,000 for doing so. His 14 year old (at the time) son wrote the lyrics to the theme song, Suicide is Painless, and made over $1m. Because I live in Wisconsin: The Atlantic has a more-interesting-than-you’d-think article about the genetic science of producing both cows and bulls that drive the efficiency (and profitability) of the dairy industry to ever-greater heights. Did Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie invent Google? Well maybe not but ask the right questions and Google can give you a lot of the same information.