You decide. Whatever the case, it’s kind of amazing.

(via Ectoplasmosis)

I always knew there was a secret reason for my liking James Bond.

Secret reason: James Bond was an ornithologist.  And Ian Fleming enjoyed birding.

Perfect!

(Although I realize this may already be semi-common knowledge that I’ve merely evaded up to this point.)

(via a silly list in The Atlantic)

Which is, really, fortunate.

“10 other dates when the world failed to end.”

One of my favorites:

Sept 11-13 1988 – Former Nasa engineer Edgar Whisenant sold 4.5 million copies of his book 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be in 1988, mostly to evangelical US Christians. Follow-up works, which revised the prediction for dates in the 1990s, failed to sell as well.

Shocking!  (Emphasis added.)

Also, I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be “March 1997″ and not “Match 1997″.

(via Monochrom)

Airline menus through history (plus a steamship menu or two), at the Northwestern University Library Transportation Archives.

(via ResearchBuzz)

No child should touch a gun or pistol, or on any account present one at another person. We behold a little boy shooting his sister dead!

And:

Here we see the danger of playing with lighted candles. One little girl has set the bed-curtains on fire, and the other her hair; and both are in great danger of being burnt to death, unless someone grants them speedy assistance.

From The Book of Accidents (1831), with excellent woodcut illustrations.

(via Ectoplasmosis)

Elizabeth Royte, who wrote the charming eco-logue the Tapir’s Morning Bath, does a piece on New York City’s water supply. It’s interesting, both historically and also in the infrastructural how-it-works sort of gee-whiz way. (It also encourages me to move Royte’s book on garbage further up on my to-read list.)

(If the NYT can make a corny Elia Kazan reference, then I can make a tired Samuel Taylor Coleridge reference, is all I have to say for myself.)