Month: September 2018

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You’ll Love These 15 Outdated Celebrity Headshots

It’s always nice to see celebrities embrace a meme and remind us that they’re just people too. Recently, actors and actresses have started sharing their first (or old, at any rate) headshots…and it’s pure gold. It reminds us that everyone went through an awkward phase, that we all took photographs we thought were a good idea at the time, and also that the eighties and most of the nineties were truly terrible decades for fashion.

So please, enjoy these 15 favorite old celebrity headshots, and check out more on #oldheadshotday on Instagram.

 

#15. Jennifer Garner’s serious face definitely got her the part on Felicity.

Image Credit: Instagram

#14. I love how awesome Viola Davis looks in this snap.

Image Credit: Twitter

#13. The hair envy is real with Reba.

Image Credit: Instagram

#12. The reason Reese Witherspoon was cast in every early 90s movie you loved as a kid is right here.

Image Credit: Twitter

#11. 5th grade me wants to be Kristen Bell’s BFF as much as 39-year-old me wants the same thing.

Image Credit: Instagram

#10. Mark Hamill definitely practiced that smolder in the mirror.

Image Credit: Instagram

#9. I’m not quite sure what to say, Julian Feifel.

Image Credit: Instagram

#8. I think Ben Stiller should still use this one, tbh.

Image Credit: Instagram

#7. Whoa, Matt Damon. Lol.

Image Credit: Instagram

#6. Here’s proof that Amy Adams has always been adorable. Even in mom jeans.

Image Credit: Instagram

#5. Sofia Vergara was even prettier as a teen. No fair.

Image Credit: Instagram

#4. You own that haircut, Leah Remini.

Image Credit: Instagram

#3. Thank you, Ellen and Portia for your equally fantastic eyebrows.

Image Credit: Instagram

#2. Oh my goodness, Andy Dwyer. No.

Image Credit: Twitter

#1. And finally, Joseph Gordon-Levitt throwing down the cutest kid gauntlet next to Ben Stiller.

Image Credit: Twitter

 

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Can You Believe A Typo Helped End World War II?

As World War II tore its way through Europe, the British had to get the best and brightest minds involved in the war effort if they and their Allies were to be victorious. Enter Geoffrey Tandy…a man who was a bit taken aback when he was summoned by the Ministry of Defence in 1939.

Tandy was a volunteer in the Royal Navy Reserves, but his regular job was as a cryptogamist for the National History Museum. Cryptomgamists study algae and Tandy wasn’t sure where he fit in with the war effort. Tandy then guessed that the Ministry had made a mistake and confused his job with a cryptogramist—a codebreaker. Tandy was pretty much useless to the Ministry and didn’t do much for two years until something miraculous happened in 1941.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

That year, the Allies torpedoed and sank German U-boats. Among the wreckage was detailed instructions about how to unscramble messages for the German Enigma Machine.

Photo Credit: iStock

There was one problem: the papers with the instructions were waterlogged and needed to be restored in able to be deciphered and put to use. The Ministry needed a person who was proficient at drying out damaged materials that were waterlogged. Tandy had been trained in preserving algae in that manner and his two years of relative quiet were about to come to an end.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Tandy used absorbent materials to dry out the papers until they were able to be read. The information was used to crack German codes and Allied forces got inside information about their opponent’s war strategies. It’s estimated that the cracked codes caused the war to end earlier than it might have otherwise, and likely saved millions of lives. It’s uncertain how exactly Tandy ended up at his post, if it was a typo or someone misread the spelling of his position. Either way, the misunderstanding turned out to be a godsend for the Allied forces.

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12+ ‘Nice Things’ We Can’t Have Because of Other People

If you are alive in the year 2018, chances are you’ve heard the phrase “this is why we can’t have nice things.” It’s a common colloquialism that is often used to jokingly reprimand someone when they’ve done something wrong.

This list of “nice things” ruined by other people runs the gamut, but I guarantee you’ll find at least one thing on it that hits home.

 

#15. Thanks, criminals!

“24 hour decongestant/antihistamine cold medicine that worked. (Drixoral) Dropped off the market when everyone switched to new decongestant formulas that were somehow more resistant to distilling into meth. * Oh, and anytime I buy decongestants, my DL gets scanned. Thanks, criminals!

* Or maybe the result of big pharma lobbying, trying not to buy into the conspiracy.”

#14. Grownup toy restrictions

“Drones. All it takes is a few idiots doing stupid illegal shit like spying on people and legislators jump at the chance to restrict them.”

#13. Alway that one guy

“Very dumb and minor, but I think it goes to show how selfish people can be.

A few years ago a guy on Twitter shared his Starbucks card information, and told people to put it on their phones. The idea was to have a shared/community card thing. Get a drink if you wanted to, or donate to it so others could get a drink. You would think that people would just grab free drinks, but it actually had a surplus of donations versus people actually using it. I think the card ended up with like $200 at some point.

Anyway, some asshole comes along and locks the card/account, effectively shutting it down. He said he did it because he wanted to prove how ineffective sharing was or something dumb like that.

You always have that one guy who sees other people enjoying something and feels the need to disrupt it.”

#12. When Silicon Valley gets involved…

“Burning Man used to be a really cool, inclusive mini-society. Now it’s just a bunch of people with WAY too much money, isolating themselves from other people in the desert by buying out huge plots of land, and excluding others from their clubhouses. Which is a stark contrast from what Burning Man was fucking supposed to be in the first place.”

#11. No fun for anyone

“Playground equipment. The rolly slides, teeter totters, the merry-go-rounds, and there was even a park I used to play in as a kid that had an old, retired train car we could go in. The rolly slides apparently pinched too many fingers, the teeter totters were too hard to get off of and the merry-go-rounds were spun too fast. As for the train, I’m pretty sure there were people shooting up drugs and/or homeless people sleeping in it. Plus graffiti. Now it’s gated off and no fun for anyone.”

#10. Why they cut it off

“I used to work at Tim Hortons and we were located right beside a homeless shelter, so every night, we would take all the food that was still fresh and give it to charity. It wasn’t a lot, usually like a box or timbits and about a dozen doughnuts.

Until one day, the regional manager came and shut the whole thing down. He didn’t tell us why, only to never do it again or we will be fired. We never questioned it and just held the resentment of Tim Hortons in our hearts, like how cheap do you have to be that you would rather have us throw away consumable food!

A few months later a homeless man came in right as we were throwing food in a garbage bag. He goes, “Ahhh it’s such a pity, I used to love eating your guys doughnuts until that fuckin idiot had to ruin it.” My co-worker said, “yeah that’s honestly fucked up, corporation greed, you know?” The homeless man gave us a weird look, he goes, “nah, that’s not what happened, one of the fuckheads at the shelter faked choking on a timbit and tired to sue this store, that’s why they cut us off.”

#9. Vandals ruin everything

“We used to keep our church doors open 24/7. But then vandals wrecked that so we locked up at night. Then we left it open during the days on Saturdays and vandals wrecked that. So now we keep the place locked up except almost exclusively during banking hours and Sundays mornings.”

#8. Some drunk a**hole

“In California, we used to have backyard pool slides until some drunk asshole hit his head goofing around and drowned. His parents sued or advocated for greater laws restricting these. Now they’re few and far between. In the 80s, a lot of places had them.”

#7. Chronic pain

“Pain management for chronic pain patients.”

#6. Prove I’m not a bot

“buying tickets online.

it used to be easy. now i have to choose all the squares with a fucking car in them to prove i’m not a bot, log in with a password i forgot, get my password link sent to my email address, change my password, prove i’m not a bot again, pick seats, confirm seats, and pay an extra $20 for a convenience fee.”

#5. Still salty

“My parent’s old apartment had this little dog park. Our greyhound loved it because she could go run every morning.

They closed it because people wouldn’t pick up their dogs’ poop. They would just leave piles of shit, despite management sending letters out.

I’m still salty about that one. Don’t get a dog if you can’t pick up their messes.”

#4. Air travel

“I used to be able to walk into an airport, book a flight, walk to the gate and get on the plane. I have flown from SFO (where I live) to LAX (where my sister lives) countless times in just that fashion.”

#3. What is history, even?

“MTV, TLC, History Channel.

Thanks, assholes……”

#2. Ruined with powerboats

“Our parents had a small summer cabin on a quiet, wooded lake. The water was pristine and ideal for fishing and swimming. The air smelled of fresh pine.

Then it caught on, and the lake became overtaxed and ruined with powerboats – polluted with gasoline, oil, and junk tossed into the water (tires, mattresses, washing machines, solvents, etc.)

Now, the fish are gone, the water stinks, and the pine trees have been cut down.”

#1. Paranoia ended that

“A sense of community in your neighborhood.

As a kid (2nd grade ish) I used to walk over to my friends and wemd play in each other’s backyards. We learned how to bike together, would “explore” the woods between yards, play with the older middle schoolers.

A lot of paranoia kinda ended that. The DC sniper shooting, fear of kidnappers, it all kinda hit at once. Well that and cicada season. After that summer people around here kinda kept to themselves more.”

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7 Historical Figures Who Were Notoriously Poor Spellers

Being good or bad at spelling isn’t necessarily a sign of intelligence. In fact, some of the most famous historical figures were pretty terrible spellers. Some even made a living as writers, despite definitely flunking out of a spelling bee or two in their day.

Here’s a look at 7 infamously bad spellers who might surprise you.

 

#7. Agatha Christie

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

She’s inarguably a fantastic author, but that doesn’t mean she knew how to spell. Christie herself admitted that she had issues, saying, “[I was an] extraordinarily bad speller and have remained so until this day.”

#6. Winston Churchill

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

He might be remembered as one of the best speechwriters and orators in history, but as a child, teachers commented that his “writing was good but so terribly slow — and spelling about as bad as it well can be.”

#5. Andrew Jackson

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Jackson’s ineptitude when it came to spelling was something of a political punchline. In fact, John Quincy Adams denounced him as a “barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar and hardly could spell his own name.”

#4. George Washington

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Multiple missives exist in which Washington misspells common words, but historians at the National Archives warn against assuming Washington was to blame. It was widely known that the letters he wrote between 1787 and 1790 were copied by his nephew so it’s possible the young man could have been the one responsible for the errors.

#3. Ernest Hemingway

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Hemingway struggled with certain words, so he added unnecessary letters here and there. What’s worse, he had no time for editors’ complaints on the matter, and reportedly snapped at them, often saying, “that’s what you’re hired to correct!”

#2. Jane Austen

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

She might be one of the most famous authors of all time, but Austen employed editors to fix her many spelling mistakes. It’s a good thing she finally started getting a second pair of eyes on her work, considering one of the books she wrote as a young teenager was titled Love and Freindship.

#1. F. Scott Fitzgerald

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Yet another person remembered for their ability with a pen, but not so much for the spelling of the words themselves. The original draft of The Great Gatsby contained hundreds of spelling mistakes, some of which can hardly be puzzled out by modern editors.

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12+ Travelers Reveal Their Scariest Experiences Abroad

For most of us, traveling is a treat. We save up a nice chunk of change to see a part of the world we’ve never seen before. But the more you travel, the more likely you are to run into the darker sides of the world abroad.

And that’s exactly what happened to these 15 people.

 

#15. Incredibly lucky

“I was traveling in Nicaragua several years ago when I got lost and ended up having to take a taxi at 9:30pm back to my hostel. When the taxi pulled up to the curb, the taxi driver locked the taxi doors and told me that I had misunderstood the fare. He claimed I owed him $100 USD which was several times more than we had agreed upon. I tried to pry the doors open from the inside but was completely trapped. Thankfully, he let me out of the taxi after taking all the money I had on me.

The hostel workers told me I was incredibly lucky. A few days earlier, a taxi driver had kidnapped another young female, assaulted her, then dumped her barely conscious body in a field outside town thinking that she was dead. A few local schoolchildren found her on their way to school in the morning.”

#14. The cops spoke with us

“On the red-eye train, stopped for a layover in New York. My friend and I are half asleep, sitting across from each other. A homeless guy snuck into the train, pulled his pants and underwear down and tried to sit with my friend, encouraging her to “help him out.” I woke up just in time to see it happen. Took me telling at the guy to find another place to sit for him to hurriedly pull his pants up and move somewhere else… only to try the same thing to another woman, who was extremely vocal about it.

The cops spoke with us. Apparently this guy was known for stealing cans from the subways and this was a new MO for the guy.”

#13. A Russian militant roadblock

“I went to visit Ukraine with my parents because they wanted to see the small villages where their parents were born. We have no family in the area so we hired a guide to take us around since the country can be a bit corrupt. As we were driving around on a highway we suddenly were stopped in traffic (literally middle of nowhere). The guide gets out of the car and takes a look, then quickly jumps back into the car, does a U-Turn and drives off telling my mom we can’t go to her mom’s village. We ask why and he says that was some kind of russian millitant roadblock. This was during the whole Crimea thing.”

#12. A night train in Naples

“A friend and I were waiting for a night train in Naples and after someone tried to steal our bags decided to go everywhere together. It was a good thing because a man who had been whistling at us for an hour tried to follow us into the bathroom.”

#11. I would be safe from then on

“I was walking around in a town in Algeria. I wandered in to a neighborhood, and noticed there were hardly any people out. A little further, and there were literally no people out. I started to feel a little uneasy. And then I see an extremely tall man walking towards me, straight towards me, obviously with intent. He gets closer, and I see an older gentleman with a long grey beard and wearing a grey tunic. I stop. He comes right up to me and says, in pretty good English, “you’re not safe here, we need to get you off the street”. I say “OK”, and he says “follow me”.

We walk a few blocks and we come to a door, he says “wait here a minute”, and he goes inside. He opens the door again and invites me in. When I get inside, there are maybe a dozen men. They are all dressed in black, and they are staring absolute daggers at me. Grey-beard lays in to them, starts shaking his fists at them, gets really worked up. Then one of the younger guys goes in to the kitchen and brings out some tea and cookies, and offfers them to me.

So, I’m drinking tea, and trying to smile, and one of the young guys asks where I’m from and I say “The States” and he starts talking about the CIA and stuff… and then I say “you think the CIA is bad here? Let me tell you about Central America”, and then pretty soon everybody is warming up to me and we’re laughing and talking shit about American foreign policy and drinking tea.

After a bit of that the older man invites me back to his apartment. He has a huge library. I gift him a book that I had finished. And then he tells me what had just happened. His little brother, who was one of the younger men, was the leader of a radical group, all the other men I had met. He had overheard them getting ready to kidnap me. But he had shamed them for not being good hosts, and for disrespecting him because it was his house. He said that I would be safe from then on.

TLDR: Gandalf saves my life and got a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for his trouble.”

#10. A long screwdriver

“1992 I was walking up the stairs to the ticket booths in the Warsaw, Poland central train station. All of a sudden this dude is falling down the stairs coming to rest a few stairs above where I was standing. Dude had a long screw driver sticking out of his abdomen.”

#9. Screaming like they were going to die

“Was on a flight once going into Orlando that hit some unexpected turbulence. This was no ordinary turbulence. We went from 0 to 100 in an instant. People literally flew out of their seats, luggage fell from the overhead bins, people screamed like they were going to die. There were several sudden drops in elevation strong enough that people’s arms flew up in the air and my butt came out of the seat. I’ve flown quite a bit and sometimes it gets bumpy. This was the first time I seriously thought something bad was going to happen.”

#8. Lost him

“I was stalked by a guy while walking through the Tiergarten in Berlin. I was walking a path, enjoying the park alone. I saw this guy standing on the edge of the walkway just looking off into the distance. I passed him and when I was about twenty feet away, he turned and followed after me, keeping pace. I started to take a very meandering path, even leaving the park and entering again. The guy stuck with me the whole way. Eventually I got to a place with some sharp turns and heavy greenery. I was able to lose the line of sight and put myself up against a corner. I’d just been in Switzerland and had bought a pocket knife, so I opened the blade and held it inside my jacket pocket. I stood there, waiting, and then this guy comes walking out of the path confused and obviously trying to see where I went. When he finally spotted me, he jolted and since I had the drop on him, he played it cool and continued walking as if he hadn’t followed me there. He stopped a little ways ahead, and I kept watching him. I wanted to confront him to find out why he’d followed me, but since I was a visitor in the country, I thought better of it. Instead, I waited until I saw a big group of people leaving and fell in with them. He started to follow me, but I finally lost him outside the garden. It unsettled me because to this day I have no idea why he was following me. I’m a guy and at the time I was in my early twenties, pretty fit, and had a sour disposition, so I didn’t seem like a prime mugging target. But, maybe he thought otherwise.

EDIT: Half the reason I posted this story was because I hoped someone on Reddit would know what the guy was doing. You didn’t fail me.”

#7. Our moms just started calling…

“In 2016 I went to Brussels in a school trip, we were at the train station and we left to Germany I believe. Several hours later all of our moms just start calling and texting us asking where we were and stuff. Turns out there was a bombing in the train station. It’s crazy to believe that the bombs were probably already planted when we were there.

Edit: we didn’t actually got on a train, we were just visiting the station.”

#6. Thankfully

“A good friend of mine in Zimbabwe was grabbed at gunpoint and forced into a van, thankfully they only took her to an ATM and made her drain her account then they left her somewhere outside town. Could’ve been so much worse.”

#5. A pack of wild dogs

“I had a pack of wild dogs chase me from my bus stop to my hotel at 3 am in Kosovo. I also had a old woman yell at me in Russian about not making my bed right on the train and then watched over my shoulder til it was to her satisfaction when I was on my way back to Bucharest from Moldova.”

#4. Losing my wallet

“Got pickpocketed by a group of 3 on a Paris metro. I’m paranoid of losing my wallet, so I’m always checking myself. When I realized it was missing, I made a bigger scene than the pickpockets were making (they shoved me into their friend and were trying to convince people I knocked him down). I stopped the train from leaving the station. One of the other passengers left to get got conductor and security. I guess that didn’t sit well with the pickpockets, so they gave me back my wallet and took off running.

Edit: This event still freaks my wife out.”

#3. Staring at me while I slept

“I was staying in a weird hostel by myself in Barcelona, woke up to a man staring at me while I slept. He was looking over a one of those wood dividing screens that the shared room had. I pretend to still be asleep because I was afraid of what he would do if I move or confronted him and I didn’t know if there was anyone else in the room. He stared for like 2 hours until finally my alarm rang cause I had to to take an early train, so I put all my stuff in my bag and left the room. As I left I told the owner, but I was really in a hurry and didn’t ask what he was going to do with the guy.”

#2. Face to face with a cow

“Hiking in Huaraz Peru, has been told to watch our gear as locals (and apparently foxes) might make off with items left around the campsite. So we made sure to clean the campsite extra well, packing all our gear in the tent and inside the fly. And after a long day hiking, off to bed. Middle of the night our tent starts shaking like crazy, I wake up freaking out thinking we were getting robbed, I started yelling and screaming. Part of the tent pushes in real far. I manage to get outside to start swinging and come face to face with the cow that had wandered into the tent ropes and got startled. Pretty lucky that it didn’t step down into the tent and hit us.”

#1. A bus from the 80s

“In India our bus rounded a corner in the mountains and another bus was on the other side of the curve. Both busses skid to a stop about 1 foot from one another. Both drivers started laughing and poking fun at each other. We saw a bus from the ’80s that fell down the mountain about 15 minutes later. Hella intense.”

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Check out These 7 Interesting Facts About Roald Dahl

Were you a fan of James and the Giant Peach when you were a kid? How about The Witches or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?

One man was responsible for those tales and many more that we devoured during our childhoods (and after): Roald Dahl.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Although he passed away nearly 30 years ago, Dahl remains a literary giant that kids and adult still read on a regular basis. Here are 10 facts about the great author.

1. Writing was not his best subject

A teacher once said about Dahl, “I have never met anybody who so persistently writes words meaning the exact opposite of what is intended.”

2. He served in World War II

Photo Credit: Public Domain

Dahl was a fighter pilot with the Royal Air Force. He crashed his plane in Libya during the war, which inspired him to start writing.

3. He got into some spy games

Dahl supplied intelligence to an MI6 agency called the British Security Coordination along with fellow officers Ian Fleming and David Ogilvy.

4. Quentin Tarantino adapted his work

Dahl’s short story “Man from the South” has been adapted for the screen three times: twice for Alfred Hitchcock Presents (in 1960 and 1985) and by Tarantino for the segment he directed for the film Four Rooms in 1995.

5. Dahl’s first children’s book was inspired by his time in the military

Photo Credit: Amazon

Dahl’s book The Gremlins was published in 1942 and was about a bunch of mischevious creatures who mess with the Royal Air Force’s planes. The rights for the story were purchased by Disney, but it was never made into a film.

6. His first published piece was a bit of an accident

Dahl was assigned to Washington, D.C. to work as an assistant air attaché. Author C.S. Forester interviewed Dahl about his experiences in the war. Dahl wrote some notes about his time during the war, and Forester was so impressed he didn’t change a word. The Saturday Evening Post published the article on August 1, 1942. Dahl was paid $1,000 for the story.

7. He wrote a lot of stories for adults

Dahl is best known for his children’s books, but he also wrote for Harper’s, The New Yorker, and even Playboy. He also wrote about dark subjects including wife-swapping, promiscuity, suicide, and adultery. Who knew?

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Waffle House Can Help You Measure the Severity of a Natural Disaster

Over the course of the Hurricane Florence news coverage, the term “Waffle House Index” has been used quite a few times. The chain restaurant is so prevalent across the country, and their locations are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so FEMA uses it as a barometer to see how bad a storm is affecting an area.

Photo Credit: Facebook,Waffle House

Former FEMA administrator Craig Fugate said, “If a Waffle House is closed because there’s a disaster, it’s bad. We call it red. If they’re open but have a limited menu, that’s yellow … If they’re green, we’re good, keep going. You haven’t found the bad stuff yet.”

Photo Credit: Flickr,mikeporterinmd

If a Waffle House location is having trouble getting supplies, then FEMA knows transportation has been slowed down because of a storm. If only some of the menu items are available, there might have some utilities and not others. If a Waffle House restaurant shuts down and locks its doors, FEMA knows that the weather is really, really bad because many of them will stay open even in the worst weather to help first responders.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

What a brilliant concept. So remember, if you live near a Waffle House and you’re having a storm, see what’s going on there to get a good idea of how bad the weather might get.

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There’s an 1,800 year-old Roman…

There’s an 1,800 year-old Roman version of present day Swiss Army Knife, complete with folding spoon, fork, spatula, pick, spike and knife. It was made mostly from silver, so it has held up pretty well. The spike might have helped in extracting the meat from snails, and the spatula in poking sauce out of narrow-necked […]

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In 2012 a scientific study…

In 2012 a scientific study predicted a 39 inch rise in sea level along the North Carolina coast over the next century. In response, North Carolina lawmakers passed a law banning the use of scientific predictions of sea level rise when considering new developments along the coast. 00