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The designers have named this spectacularly over-engineered cabinet the ‘Cubrick’, but that doesn’t even come close to doing this transforming masterpiece justice. The Cubrick is a piece of furniture from London’s YardSaleProject. I’m hesitant to call it a cabinet, because it’s unlike any other cabined I’ve ever seen — pull apart the two handles, and…
This guy in India must be a superhero because he has superhuman strength and gravity breaking balance. Just check out this video of him carrying a motorcycle on top of his head and then climbing ladder so he can put the bike on top of the bus. I don’t know how they’re going to get…
The Forest Man of India—that’s his official title. Just a regular dude who, one day of 1979, decided to transform a barren land into a forest with an extension of 1,359 acres and counting. One tiny baby tree at a time, seed by seed he created a paradise that is now home for elephants, rhinos,…
I think it’s safe to say that this picture is better than most Michael Bay movies. Taken by Cpl Neil Bryden of the British Army, it shows an Apache attack helicopter flying away from a gigantic fiery Godzilla smoke monster explosion. So damn cool. The Army Air Corps explains what’s happening at the Royal International…
Next time you do laundry, don’t just walk away after you put the load in. You’ll miss the monsters. Because if you stare through the looking glass, you’ll discover terrifying creatures that look like they come from Guillermo del Toro’s imagination trapped inside. Slate pointed to the work of photographer Yvette Meltzer and her photo…
With 15 class V rapids in under 9 miles, Cherry Creek and the Upper Tuolumne River are considered the most technically challenging rafting river in the country. Last weekend, we ran it. Here’s how you can too. Video: Chris Brinlee Jr. I haven’t been rafting in years. So, when a random email showed up inviting…
We’re giving away an All-Outdoors group whitewater rafting trip on a river of your choice in California. Choose the most challenging river in America — Cherry Creek — or something a little more relaxing, it’s up to you. The one-day trip can be on the South or Middle Forks of the American River, the Tuolumne…
Deep under Grand Central Terminal, beyond basements and subway lines and through 10 stories of bedrock lays a secret underground chamber that’s almost as big as Grand Central Terminal itself. What’s inside the room? A machine the Nazis wanted to destroy in World War II. More specifically, the machines were rotary converters. There were 9…
The Molai Forest in Assam, India is unusual for several reasons. The 1,360 acre forest is on a sandbar, for starters. The sandbar is the world’s largest river island, Majuli. And, oh yeah, it was planted entirely by one hyper-dedicated, beautiful maniac named Jadav Payeng. Payeng planted and tended trees for over 30 years until…
Bernard Tussaud, grandson of Madame Tussaud, in September of 1935 holding two wax heads. In his right hand is the wax head of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. In his left, the wax head of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Mussolini, of course, was executed in April of 1945. [Getty Images] Factually…
Christopher Willits is a San Francisco-based musician who does magical, meditative stuff with sound. Gold is a 24-minute track that somehow manages to take all the frenetic flotsam and jetsam bouncing around in your head and morph it into a slow-flowing stream of happy molasses. It’s not a song, really—more of an exploration of sound.…
Avoid Russia. It’s not the human rights situation, their maniac president, or even all those crazy drivers trying to kill you. It’s just that this unholy land will destroy you on its own, without any human intervention: Screaming meteors,massive fires,giant holes, and now living lakes hungry for human bodies. I bet you put a 2-mile-long…
Rising conspicuously above the red-tile roofs and big-box stores of suburban Tustin, California, these two massive hangars stand as monuments to a lost age of aviation, built when lighter-than-air dirigibles held promise as the future of air travel—and air warfare. They rank among the largest wooden structures in the world. Step inside one, and the…
With millions of tons of carbon dioxide billowing into the atmosphere from our power plants, one possible solution to the pollution is carbon capture—sequestering the greenhouse gas before it ever leaves the plant. But then what do you do with all that carbon? Norway has a interesting new plan: farm salmon. Carbon capture has recently…
An artist’s impression in 1958 of the future of commuting: a futuristic monorail to transport people to and from suburbia and their waiting families. Oh, how those monorails never quite arrived as promised. [Getty Images]
A noodle is a noodle is a noodle—right? No way, dude. Though the ingredients are few, the process to make ramen is nuanced. It can (obviously) be done by hand, but Sun Noodle HQ has the help of a long machine that mixes dough into balls, flattens it into sheets, rolls it like toilet paper,…
With the threat of terrorism and extreme weather perennially perched on the horizon, Chicago’s getting creative with its infrastructure upgrades. The city’s primary power company, Commercial Edison,is planning to install superconducting cables to prevent outages in the city center. Why doesn’t every city do this? The job sounds pretty simple. ComEd will lay superconducting cable…
This is one of the most amazing and terrifying things I’ve seen in a long time: Watch Ueli Steck speed climbing the 5,900-foot (1,800-meter) north face of the Eiger—a mountain in the Bernese Alps, Switzerland. No ropes and solo—just him, his crampons, and his ice tools, risking a fatal fall at every single step. A…
So remember how scientists found unapproved vials of smallpox in a forgotten storage room a few weeks ago? Turns out, they weren’t quite finished yet. Now, officials have revealed they’ve actually uncovered over 300 vials of pathogens including dengue, influenza, and spotted fever. Whoops. The Washington Post is reporting that the discovery, which included 327…
Every day we find more exoplanets. With bigger and better telescopes on the horizon, we’ll have far more observations of these planets than ever before — and NASA scientists are optimistic we’ll discover alien life within decades. On Monday, a panel of NASA scientists and engineers discussed the roadmap to the next generations of telescopes,…
