On this day in 1941 a man named Witold Pilecki deliberately got himself arrested and sent to Auschwitz. Pilecki was a spy sent in to investigate the camp and establish underground resistance cells. He sent reports to Warsaw, which passed them to London. In 1942, his reports that prisoners were being gassed were not believed.
posted to MetaFilter by up in the old hotel at 7:56 PM on September 19, 2008 (47 comments)

Between 1908 and 1931, French philanthropist Albert Kahn funded The Archive of the Planet. He sent out still photographers and motion picture cameramen who returned with 72,000 Autochrome colour plates, 4,000 steroscopic views, and 600,000 feet of film. BBC4's startling series allows us all to see Edwardians In Colour.
posted to MetaFilter by chuckdarwin at 2:50 PM on August 30, 2008 (25 comments)

We all know what 130 cats look like, but what about 700? Welcome to Cat House on the Kings, California's largest non-profit cat sanctuary.
posted to MetaFilter by MaryDellamorte at 3:20 PM on August 28, 2008 (53 comments)

Society In Decline Project: Intrastate Commerce
posted to MetaFilter by Dave Faris at 3:59 PM on August 18, 2008 (15 comments)

Corrupt U.S. Government officials leased the Teapot Dome oil field to one Harry F. Sinclair in 1922 in a sleazy no-bid contract.

Turn back the clock. 27 years earlier, suspected grifter Gilmer Bonfils had seized control of the Denver Post; he and his family turned it from a sleepy, staid paper into a wild, brazen broadsheet. So brazen they were shot by a furious lawyer. For an editorial page, Tammen and Bonfils substituted invective, raked up so much scandal—a good deal of it true — that they kept a loaded shotgun in their office to discourage reader complaints. As the Post grew in power and prosperity, its proprietors branched into other fields; the Post became the first and last U.S. daily ever to own a circus (Sells-Floto), run a burlesque house and sell coal."
posted to MetaFilter by felix at 9:09 AM on August 13, 2008 (33 comments)

Do-it-yourself film manufacturing. "Can't buy the film you want any more? Just make the stuff! In this set you will find random photos and information on a project a friend has undertaken - a machine to make his own camera film. Plastic and goop go in one end, and camera film comes out the other end. This is not a trivial undertaking."
posted to MetaFilter by ethel at 11:32 PM on May 9, 2008 (14 comments)

Yellow Drum Machine (google video), one of the robots that you can learn to build via Let's Make Robots (.com). This little guy finds a surface to tap a beat onto, then taps a beat on it. The fun starts at about 35 seconds in (via b3ta).
posted to MetaFilter by krautland at 7:54 AM on March 26, 2008 (32 comments)

[Rated NSFW, depending on where you work] | I got a Basketball Jones. (original animation) | D-A-V-E!! Open up! | Earache? Earache, my eye! | class...? Class...? | HardHAT! This is Codename Hardhat! | Ralph and Herbie | Where there's smoke, there's Cheech and Chong!
posted to MetaFilter by not_on_display at 9:07 PM on March 8, 2008 (28 comments)

I just got a waffle iron. Is there anything I can make with it besides the obvious?
posted to Ask Metafilter by Metroid Baby at 1:49 PM on January 14, 2008 (22 comments)

"Puppies Behind Bars" gives cute lil pups to hardened prison inmates, who train them to eventually be guide dogs and police bomb sniffers. The puppies teach the convicts as much, if not more. Being responsible 24/7 for a dog can turn the most hardened criminal's life around. "This is my way of doing something to reparate," says one murderer. Some say it's their first taste of unconditional love. "The strongest guy in here's going to get that lump in his throat," says an inmate. The dogs get weekend furloughs to NYC so they can get used to city streets. No convict who trained a puppy has gone back to prison after being paroled.
posted to MetaFilter by CunningLinguist at 6:54 PM on November 7, 2007 (60 comments)

Legend has it that the world's biggest bible is the work of the Devil. The Codex Gigas (Giant Book), also known as the Devil's Bible, is the largest medieval manuscript in the world. Housed at the Swedish National Library since the 17th century, it recently returned to the Czech Republic (it originated in a monastery in Bohemia) for display. The book contains an entire pre-Vulgate version of the Latin bible, as well as various other texts and illustrations, including calendars, medical formulas and local records. You can browse the complete Codex Gigas in high resolution here.
posted to MetaFilter by amyms at 11:53 PM on September 25, 2007 (32 comments)

The Nebraska Sandhills [wiki] make up the largest vegetated sand dune in the Western Hemisphere-- almost 20,000 square miles of rolling dunes covered with prairie grass. The region is sparsely populated-- dotted with tiny towns, and contains the only man-made National Forest in the US and one of the best golf courses in the world. All told, the area's pretty damn photogenic. Just ask NASA.
posted to MetaFilter by dersins at 9:43 AM on September 7, 2007 (38 comments)

Open access articles at Antiquity, a quarterly review of world archaeology. Recent project reviews cover Aztec cities, earliest rice domestication, and Pleistocene rock art in Egypt. There's lots to read.
posted to MetaFilter by Abiezer at 5:29 AM on August 31, 2007 (8 comments)

My 1952 Federal truck was originally a short frame water tank truck, I needed to lengthen the frame to accommodate the design of the house.
posted to MetaFilter by bigmusic at 10:45 PM on August 28, 2007 (36 comments)

Imogen Heap at her best, recording Just for Now on the spot using a sampler. Not exactly a recent video, but I couldn't help listening to it over, and over, and over again. single-link youtube post, but it's so worth it.
posted to MetaFilter by limon at 2:33 PM on July 27, 2007 (63 comments)

The Mesoamerican Ballgame was central to the culture of pre-Columbian Central America, with Mayan kings using ah pitzlaw (he the ballplayer) as one of their royal titles. It is played with a rubber ball, which sometimes had human skulls for cores. The object of the game was to get the ball through a vertical hoop. Called many names throughout history, pitz, ulama and juego de pelota, this game has been played for 3000 years. Though usually a form of recreation, sometimes it would be played for ritual purposes, with the players of the losing side being sacrificed. [more inside]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 5:52 PM on July 19, 2007 (21 comments)

The Dreaded Half Worcester warning: music is just one of the possible vexing configurations players encounter in candlepin bowling, a regional variation on traditional bowling that's unique to northern New England and maritime Canada. Developed in Worcester, MA, around 1880 (warning: more music), the game is played in gorgeous antique alleys dotted around New England and Nova Scotia, and features a 4 1/2" wooden or rubber ball, three rolls per frame or "box," and 15 and 3/4" narrow, cylinder-shaped pins that are the devil to knock down -- even though you can use the dead wood to knock other pins down, a score over 200 is extremely rare. Find some lanes and play or just take the quiz - like so many regional quirks, this one's undergoing a bit of a revival.
posted to MetaFilter by Miko at 7:43 AM on July 19, 2007 (55 comments)

Is there a way to block comments from a specific user?
posted to MetaTalk by four panels at 9:11 AM on October 31, 2006 (54 comments)