Axe Cop, a comic written by 5 yr old, illustrated by 29 yr old. It's about a cop with an axe.

Golden Power. (Approx 10min youtube vid). Two very strong acrobats compete in the 6th International Circus Festival of Budapest, 2006.

2009 Venice Biennale. Pics from this contemporary art exhibition. The one of the 3 Maori guys is worth the price of clicking the link.

Pan-kun the chimp rides a skateboard. And a segway.

Viet Photo - A man returns (Youtube). Vietnam war veteran Rich Luttrell returns the photo of a man he shot and killed to the daughter. Background story. more inside

Schnauzbart/Vollbart, it's all art. The disciplined Schnauzbart Kaiserlich. The perky Schnauzbart Dali. The funky Vollbart Naturale. Wild and crazy Kinn- und Backenbart Freestyle! But it's the Vollbart Freestyle that really attracts the nuts!

Old pottery recorded sounds (2 minute, >5MB, mp4 video, in French, from the Lire la vidéo link here). Apparently scientists have decoded the grooves on ancient pottery, which acted as crude sound recording, to get a short snippet of the voices and laughter of the potters. Video includes short sample of the sound. Too cool! [via]

Treasure Box flash puzzle is a whimsical little puzzle where you have to manipulate things in a weird little environment.

WWII photos from the US National Archives. Great photos, and they are in nice, high resolution for your viewing pleasure.

I had been warned of Turkmenistan's liking for bureaucracy. Peter Forwood, who has been travelling around the world on his Harley motorcycle since 1996, has just visited Turkmenistan. more inside

The Dining Room is sort of an interactive flash puzzle horror story. Not very complicated (try clicking on things multiple times), but creepy and atmospheric, with nice sound effects. Turn off all the lights in your room before you start to make it really scary! more inside

Cool Bikes. Some neat futuristical lookin bikes. more inside

Greatest Submarine Rescue in History. On 23 May 1939, the submarine Squalus sank in 243 feet of water off Portsmouth, NH when the engine room flooded due to a catastrophic valve failure. 26 men in the after part of the ship were drowned. Thirty-three others, including the commanding officer, LT Oliver F. Naquin, who were in the forward section, were trapped with no way to escape. Thus began the greatest submarine rescue of all time. Also, here's a short story about one of the survivors, Warren Smith. more inside

I made pizza for Kim Jong-il / Part 2 / Part 3 A curious tale by Ermanno Furlanis about how he was invited to North Korea to teach them how to make authentic Italian pizza for Dear Leader. more inside

The strange story of Napolean's Wallpaper. A curious theory for the source of the arsenic which was later detected in a sample of his hair. more inside

The Massacre of the Cathars at Montsegur. In 1244 a few hundred Cathars held out for 10 months in their mountain fortress against 10,000 soldiers. It was a pretty interesting period in church history. Rome started the Medieval Inquisition in response to the Cathars. And the direct cause of the massacre at Montsegur was the assassination of some Inquisitors at Avignonet by Pierre-Roger de Mirepoix, a dispossessed lord and Cathar who was sort of the main military guy at Montsegur. Although the current ruins on top of Montsegur are from a later period, they are still a striking sight on the granite pog on which they stand. Lots more info about the Cathars here. more inside

"True story about my bitch wife" ("Jitsuroku Oni-yome Nikki") is one of the most popular blogs in Japan. It is written by a 30-something salaryman under the pseudonym "Kazuma" who documents the minutiae of his hen-pecked life. "His blog is a haven for thousands of male readers who write in to say their lives are just like his. More incredibly, he has many female fans who aspire to be just like his wife." Life may sound tough for this poor fellow, but he's making some serious yen off his blog ... and now book. Another Japanese blogger, who blogs in English, has written a little more about poor Kazuma in an entry here.

Perhaps the greatest disaster in the history of rocketry occurred in 1960, at Baikonur Cosmodrome, during the test of a new ICBM, the R16, when the second stage accidentally ignited while sitting on the launch pad, rupturing the fuel tank of the 1st stage below it and causing a huge fireball that incinerated about 100 personnel who were on the launch pad. The Western world would not learn of this incident until James Oberg, an expert on the Soviet space program, pieced it together from various stories and rumors he heard coming out of the USSR in the early 80s. More here.

Nicholas Murray Butler is a Horses Ass. (The good part starts at the 6th paragraph, that begins: One of his former students ...). More info here.

Some proposed Space Rescue systems. My favorite system is the MOOSE, which allows a single astronaut to bail out in space, fire a rocket to head towards Earth, and survive re-entry in a foam cocoon! more inside