Hartman's Historical Rock Garden

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Hartman's Historical Rock Garden in Springfield, Ohio, USA, is an art project that dates from 1932, when Harry George Hartman lost his job during the Great Depression. The molder occupied his time with creating rock sculptures in his back yard, spanning all sorts of themes. Religion, historic buildings, recreations of famous battles and hundreds of thousands of stones.

Mr. Hartman died in 1944, but his wife Mary took over custodianship of the Rock Garden, welcoming visitors from around the world. When she died in 1997, the garden fell into decline, but was rescued and re-opened in 2010.

(thanks Juergen)

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Mugshot Yourself

The face of history is not in the well-preserved faces of the famous, but in the remains of those who lived in the moment. Join them here, find your place among them. Here, the moment is 1864, and here are the faces of their time, captured on film by lawmen and flatfoots. Con men, petty thieves, prostitutes... Oh, and you.

Meet 1864's greatest rogues, then become one yourself.
Try your face on different mugshots. Here's my mugshot.

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How Common Is Your Password?

A series of hacks to popular sites like LinkedIn, Yahoo!, eHarmony and Last.fm has revealed the startlingly easy passwords we all use. How often have you created a password with words like 'password' or '123456'? The numbers say you're not the only one. Of the 442,773 total passwords hacked from Yahoo!, close to a quarter were used by more than one person.

Although this shows that the majority of us aren't very original when we create passwords, there are clear patterns we can avoid to make our passwords a little more secure. Don't end your password with a year, don't use common base words, substitute numbers or characters for letters when you can, and try to make it something unique to you.

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Velociraptor In Melbourne

A woman taking her velociraptor for a walk in Melbourne, Australia.



YouTube link

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Lightweight Stone Pumice Floating In The South Pacific

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The Royal New Zealand Navy has discovered 7,500 square miles of the lightweight stone pumice floating in the South Pacific. Royal Australian Navy Lieutenant Tim Oscar called it 'the weirdest thing I've seen in 18 years at sea.'

Pumice is a textural term for a volcanic rock which is a solidified frothy lava. Pumice is typically created when super-heated, highly pressurized rock is violently ejected from a volcano. Alternatively it can be formed when lava and water are mixed. Most pumice is light enough to float on water.

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How To Draw A Cartoon Shark

It's Shark Week on Discovery Channel and to celebrate Mark Anderson of Andertoons thought it might be fun to sink multiple rows of teeth into drawing your very own cartoon shark. Just follow 10 simple steps and you'll have a jaws-droppingly good shark to show off.

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A New Human Species Has Been Identified In Africa

Homo erectus was not alone in ancient Africa. Newly discovered fossil evidence, detailed in the latest issue of Nature, strongly suggests that no fewer than three distinct species of early humans from the genus Homo co-existed on the continent between 1.7 and 2 million years ago.

The findings, which run counter to the hypothesis that modern humans evolved linearly out of Homo erectus, provide some of the most compelling evidence to date that there were multiple, parallel lines of evolution early in our genus' history.

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