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Chat with the Man Who Unleashed 1.5 Million Balloons On Cleveland

Way back on September 27th, 1986, the city of Cleveland was taken over by 1.5 million helium-filled balloons. The photos are amazing. The aftermath was not. Tom Holowach, the project manager of Balloonfest ’86, popped by Kinja to say hello, and has kindly offered to answer all your questions about the event. The sky’s the…

At long last, Roku finally is getting a YouTube app. That closes one of the few streaming holes it had left, and only goes further to make it more important than ever.

Have You Ever Wondered What It Would Be Like To Fly Through Fireworks?

Thanks to one fellow and his Phantom drone, we get to see what fireworks look like up close. Even in the low light, this is a magnificent drone’s-eye view of a fireworks display. Over on Vimeo, one commenter also points out that while the video is fantastic, this is a potentially dangerous use for a…

West Virginia’s Toxic Spill Water Will Be Pumped Into Wells Beneath Ohio

The geology of the Gulf Coast and the Great Lakes makes the land around them particularly suitable for an ugly task: hazardous waste disposal. There, hundreds of injection wells, each up to 10,000 feet deep, contain the chemical leftovers from steel mills, wastewater treatment, and more. Soon, one such well will be home to the…

What Book Shocked You and Your Friends With a Secret Sex Scene?

When you were reading a book, as a kid, did you ever stumble across a little more than you were expecting? Did your friends let you in on the secret? Genre books often come with a secret sex scene. Which books surprised you? When I was in school, the Clan of the Cave Bear series…

The Earth’s Magnetic Field Keeps This Desktop Jupiter Globe Spinning

Jupiter is not only the largest planet in our solar system, it’s also arguably the most stunning. Those massive storms—including that enormous red eye—produce quite an atmospheric show. And as a cheaper alternative to a giant telescope, this tiny desktop-sized version of Jupiter lets you stare in awe at the gas giant when you probably…

So It Turns Out That Monkeys Are Pretty Good At Doing Math

A recently concluded experiment shows that rhesus monkeys are capable of doing simple addition using numbers 1 through 25. But more interesting than that is the observation that they also make the same mistakes as us. To test whether monkeys can represent and manipulate numbers in their head, neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone of Harvard Medical School…

Concerning The Origin Of Dragons, And Smaug The Golden

Ever since The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug came out, everyone knows the terrible dragon’s name. We’ve all seen his nest in Erebor and felt the pain he’s caused the exiled dwarves. But few know where Smaug or his fellow dragons came from. And though this video touches on it very briefly, it’s still a gorgeous…

Did the Roman Empire Really Fall Because of Lead in the Water?

Ever since Neil DeGrasse Tyson mentioned the “lead in the water” theory of why Rome fell on Cosmos, scientists and historians have been tearing up the internet to explain all the problems with this idea. Tyson described the way Romans preferred to use lead pipes for their drinking water, as well as other eating and…

Apple’s OS X beta program is now open to everybody. Previously, you needed a $100 per year developer account to try out Apple’s latest features buried in the beta builds of its operating system.

This Student-Designed Ventilator Is 80 Times Cheaper Than the Norm

Babies born premature or sick are often completely reliant on a ventilator to stay alive. In many parts of the world that’s a $40,000 machine that runs completely autonomously, but in developing nations it’s often the child’s parents—continuously squeezing a hand pump. It’s a depressing image that inspired students at Brigham Young University to design…

These Are The World’s Weirdest Birds

There are almost 10,000 bird species flying the skies, roaming the lands, and diving the waters of our planet. Some of them are pretty similar to one another, perhaps because the two species diverged only relatively recently. But some of them are so unique you won’t believe they’re not made up. The species listed below…

The formation of the United States of America in one animated map

Enjoy this cool animated map that shows the formation of the United States, territory by territory, from its first incarnation to the incorporation of Hawaii on August 21, 1959. Make sure to click on expand to see it big. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook

One of America’s Most Famous Architects Was a Nazi Propagandist

American architect Philip Johnson designed some of the most iconic buildings of the 20th century. Johnson, who died in 2005, has long been hailed as one of the greats. But there’s one fact about the man that many people in the architecture community don’t like to talk about: Johnson was a fascist who openly supported…

Joss Whedon’s New Movie In Your Eyes Is Half-Baked

There’s a famous line in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer finale where Buffy calls herself cookie dough, because she’s “not done baking.” That’s sort of how I feel about In Your Eyes, the paranormal romcom that Joss Whedon just released on the internet. It needed more time in the oven. Spoilers ahead… So this is…

The Mattress Gets Reinvented (and Stuffed In the Trunk of Your Car)

Mattress shopping can be a major pain in the ass. Something that Casper, a newly launched sleep startup, wants to remedy. The supposed solution? One single, painstakingly engineered mattress for the masses. Instead of focusing on the quantity of its offerings, Casper wants to hone in on quality, offering a single, (supposedly) universally appealing mattress.…

Cabin Fever Gets A Complete Reboot Because We’re Out Of Ideas

Eli Roth’s very fun horror movie Cabin Fever was released in theaters just 11 years ago. And now it’s getting a full reboot. Because there are no more ideas left. Cabin Fever was so successful it inspired Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (was directed by Ti West) and Cabin Fever: Patient Zero (which will premiere…

This Exquisitely-Preserved 100 Million-Year-Old Fly Is Just Ridiculous

Finding ancient bugs trapped in amber is hardly new, but this Cretaceous-era assassin fly may be the most pristine three-dimensional preservation of an insect we’ve ever seen. The amber fossil was discovered by Torsten Dikow from the National Museum of Natural History. It’s a newly recorded species of assassin fly called Burmapogon brucksch, an insect…

What Your Poop Is Trying to Tell You

What the hell is that? Seriously, did that just come out of you or did it crawl up the pipe? If you’ve just exorcised a poo that looks nothing like what you’ve eaten recently, it could be a sign of a serious illness. It could also just be that curry from last Wednesday, so it’s…

Twitter’s new, Facebook-style design is now available to all. If you don’t have the new look already, head on over to Twitter’s new profile page and click the button that says “get it now.” [Twitter via Techblock]