Author: Michele Debczak

John Lennon and Paul McCartney are one of the most famous—if not the most famous—songwriting duos of all time. But their magical chemistry turned into bitter resentment when The Beatles disbanded in 1970. In an undated letter signed from John and Yoko Ono to Paul and his wife Linda, that post-breakup animosity is on full display. Now NME reports that the cringeworthy piece of music history is currently up for bid.

The typed letter, which includes several handwritten annotations from John, is believed to date back to 1971, around the time when John and Yoko moved to New York. It was written in response to a previous letter from Linda, with John writing, “I was reading your letter and wondering what middle-aged cranky Beatle fan wrote it.”

The letter features some colorful language, with John making digs at both Paul and Linda. Despite the salty tone, John insists that he doesn’t resent Paul, as you can see in the passage below:

“Don’t give me that Aunty Gin shit about ‘in five years I’ll look back as a different person’—don’t you see that’s what’s happening NOW!—If I only knew THEN what I know NOW—you seemed to have missed that point….

Excuse me if I use ‘Beatle Space’ to talk about whatever I want—obviously if they keep asking Beatle questions—I’ll answer them—and get as much John and Yoko Space as I can—they ask me about Paul and I answer—I know some of it gets personal—but whether you believe it or not I try and answer straight—and the bits they use are obviously the juicy bits—I don’t resent your husband—I’m sorry for him. I know the Beatles are ‘quite nice people’—I’m one of them—they’re also just as big bastards as anyone else—so get off your high horse!—by the way—we’ve had more intelligent interest in our new activities in one year than we had throughout the Beatle era.”

He ended the letter on the most conciliatory note possible, writing, “inspite of it all love to you both.” But he couldn’t resist adding a post-script calling them out for not addressing their letters to Yoko as well as himself (as he had specifically addressed his letter “Dear Linda and Paul”).

The letter is now up for auction through RR Auction in Boston. Bidding is currently above $4000, with the final selling price expected to exceed $20,000 by the time the online auction closes on November 17.

[h/t NME]

Bruce Pascal is one toy enthusiast who never outgrew his love of Hot Wheels—and his passion has paid off. Today, the collection of 3500 toy cars Pascal has amassed since age 7 is worth over $1 million.

In the below video from Barcroft TV, Pascal shows off a home office that would make many kids jealous. The tiny toy cars are kept in cases lining the walls and life-sized versions of Hot Wheels’s iconic orange tracks curve up toward the ceiling. One piece in his collection, a rare pink Volkswagen Bus from 1969, is worth more than most actual cars at $150,000. According to Pascal it’s the most valuable Hot Wheels toy ever made.

Even if you didn’t start collecting Hot Wheels until the 1990s, there might still be some hidden gems buried in your closet. Cars from 1995’s Treasure Hunt line are hot ticket items today, with original box sets selling for up to $1550.

[h/t Sploid]

When Hayao Miyazaki announced his retirement (again) following the debut of The Wind Also Rises in 2013, he told the press: “This time I am quite serious.” That proclamation lasted a grand total of three years. As the Anime News Network reports, the 75-year-old Japanese animator is coming out of retirement to complete one last Studio Ghibli film.

Though technically retired, the Spirited Away director has spent the past few years working on exhibits for the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo. One such project, “Kemushi no Boro” or “Boro the Caterpillar,” was born from an idea that’s been knocking around in Miyazaki’s head for two decades. When he developed it into a computer-animated short for the museum, he wasn’t happy with the final product. Now he’s looking to realize that vision as a feature film, an endeavor he hopes to have completed by 2019.

Miyazaki is waiting to receive a green-light from the studio, but that hasn’t stopped him from going ahead with the animation himself. The story, which follows a caterpillar “so tiny that it may be easily squished between your fingers,” will still be made into a short for the museum. The project has a year’s worth of work to go before it’s ready to screen.

Miyazaki has teased his exit from filmmaking several times in the past. After making Princess Mononoke, Japan’s highest-grossing title at the time of its release in 1997, he announced that the film would be his last. We all know how that went: A few years later he returned to animation to direct Spirited Away, the movie that broke that record and earned him an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

[h/t Anime News Network]

For Nutella fans in Europe, there’s now a new way to consume the chocolatey hazelnut spread: slathered between two burger buns. As Business Insider reports, the “Sweety con Nutella” is the latest concoction on the menu at McDonald’s Italy.

The item looks like a burger at first glance, but fortunately beef has been left out of the recipe. The official McDonald’s Italy Facebook page describes the fast food treat as “soft bread with a creamy, indulgent center.”

Instead of serving the product alongside traditional burgers over hot food counters, it will be available at McCafés. The post doesn’t specify how much customers will be paying for the glorified Nutella sandwich, but based on the 75,000 “likes” it has received so far, plenty of people are eager to give it a try. This isn’t McDonald’s first bold attempt to mix sweet with savory: A few years ago, the fast food giant experimented with bubble-gum flavored broccoli aimed at kid consumers. (It didn’t last long.) Time will tell if their latest endeavor has more success.

[h/t Business Insider]

The words of Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, and Emily Dickinson are immortalized in their classic novels and poems, and now, book lovers can take them off the page and turn them into fashion statements. These bold tights, featured over at My Modern Met Selects, incorporate passages and illustrations from history’s most beloved texts into their designs.

The artist behind the Jerusalem-based Etsy store TightsShop got into apparel by printing designs on baby clothes, and has since moved on to pantyhose and tights. A few of the items in their inventory include texts from Romeo and Juliet, Winnie the Pooh, “Annabel Lee,” The Secret Garden, and Anne of Green Gables. Other designs feature no words at all, only illustrations from books like The Little Prince, Where the Wild Things Are, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Printed tights range in price from $21 to $29 and are available in a variety of sizes. If you don’t see something you like, the shop also offers custom-printed tights for $34—all challenges are welcome.

[h/t My Modern Met Selects]

All images courtesy of TightShop.

If diners aren’t feeling the menu at EAT Cafe in Philadelphia’s Mantua neighborhood, they only have to wait a week to find something new. The charity-driven restaurant adapts to donations they receive from partners. After serving an Italian menu one week, a shipment of green tomatoes might inspire a soul food theme the next. But no matter what’s for dinner on any given night, the meal’s price tag—pay what you can—stays the same.

EAT, or Everyone at the Table, became Philadelphia’s first nonprofit “community cafe” when it opened in the City of Brotherly Love at the end of October, Philly.com reports. It takes its cues from dozens of similar restaurants around the country: Meals are served for a suggested donation of $15. If you can afford that, great. If you can pay more, less, or nothing at all, that’s fine too.

The Drexel University enterprise seeks to differentiate itself from other pay-what-you-can spots by operating in the style of a full-service establishment. Instead of serving themselves cafeteria-style, diners can come in four nights a week for a three-course meal of restaurant-quality food. Mariana Chilton, who runs Drexel’s Center for Hunger-Free Communities, told Philly.com, “I wanted to make sure this would not be confused with a soup kitchen. It sets the stage for a place where all different kinds of people would want to meet up and intermingle.”

EAT currently sources their food from vendors and donors like Metropolitan Bakery, La Colombe, and Giant Food Stores. Their ultimate goal is to work with 60 percent donated ingredients with a target cost of $3.25 per meal and serve roughly 130 people a night. The cafe isn’t yet where it needs to be (they only served 125 meals in their first week), but the team behind it hopes that once word gets around, EAT will act as a space “to nourish the community through good food and fellowship.”

[h/t Philly.com]

Header banner images courtesy of iStock.

Leprosy in humans was eradicated from Britain by the 19th century, but new research published in the journal Science reveals that a medieval strain lives on in a secluded population of squirrels. As the The Telegraph reports, 25 red squirrel specimens sampled from Brownsea Island, off England’s southern coast, all tested positive for leprosy-causing bacteria.

Mycobacterium leprae is the oldest strain of bacterium linked to the disease. It was the same pathogen responsible for spreading leprosy throughout Europe during the medieval period, with the last case of it in Britain recorded in 1798. Leprosy has entered the country through outside sources since then, but the indigenous strain was believed to have been eradicated. The recent study from the University of Edinburgh and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology shows that Brownsea Island red squirrels have been harboring it for at least a few decades.

Though every squirrel sampled from the island carried the bacteria that causes the disease, only some of them showed symptoms. Leprosy manifested itself in the animals through swelling and hair loss around the ears, nose, and paws. The disease isn’t unheard of in the creatures: Both animal versions and human strains of leprosy that have infected people in places other than Britain have been found in the squirrels in the past. But these results mark the first time a human strain native to the country has been detected in red squirrels.

In humans, leprosy—known as Hansen’s disease today—causes painful growths and lesions on the skin. While cases still crop up in certain parts of the world, leprosy is exceedingly rare. It’s estimated that 95 percent of the world’s population has a natural immunity to the disease, and when it is contracted, it can be treated with antibiotics.

The news is more alarming for red squirrels than it is for humans: Thanks to threats like the squirrel pox virus and invasive grey squirrels, their numbers have already fallen from an one-time high of 3.5 million to 120,000 in the UK. The researchers behind the study will now work with conservationists on the island to figure out how to better protect the squirrels in the future. In the meantime, they recommend humans avoid contact with the animals and wash their hands regularly to avoid infection.

[h/t Telegraph]

As the air outside gets frosty, it’s time to start thinking about taking your puffy winter jackets out of storage. A bulky coat is great for protecting kids from the weather outside, but when worn in a car seat it can pose a serious threat many parents may not be aware of.

Kids and Cars vice president Sue Auriemma met with TODAY to explain the worst-case-scenario situation. If a child is wearing heavy winter-wear, they’re at risk of coming loose from their car seat, no matter how tightly strapped in they feel. A child-sized dummy wearing a winter coat was buckled into a car seat at an official crash test lab to demonstrate the hazard: When a 30-mph crash was simulated, the force flung the dummy straight from its jacket and seatbelt.

Luckily there are other ways to keep your child warm in the car this winter without compromising his or her safety. Auriemma recommends laying their coat over them once they’re buckled in or using a blanket for the same purpose.

In some cases, your child’s coat may be light enough to leave it on. Consumer Reports recommends testing this by first strapping them in with their jacket on and tightening the harness until you can no longer pinch the strap between your thumb and forefinger. Take your child out of the seat and strap them in again, this time without the jacket. If you’re now able to pinch the belt between your fingers, the harness is too loose to wear with a winter coat.

Kids aren’t the only ones who are at risk when they wear their coats under their seatbelts. Adults should also remove their puffy jackets before buckling in. Once they have that step taken care of, drivers can focus on staying cautious and alert on the winter roads.

[h/t TODAY]

The Rube Goldberg machine formula leaves lots of room for creativity. Chain reaction contraptions have been built with everything from dogs to LEGOs, but no matter how elaborate they are they’re usually contained within a single time zone. This Rube Goldberg spotted by our very own Miss Cellania at Neatorama breaks that barrier through the power of technology. Using phone calls, text messages, and email, the project called Common Ground unfolds seamlessly across five cities. According to the team behind it, the art installation is about “connecting America through creativity and problem solving.” You can watch it play out in the video above.

[h/t Neatorama]

Header/banner images: iStock

Between 7530 and 7320 BCE, a funeral took place on the banks of the river Shannon in what is today County Limerick, Ireland. Now, more than 9000 years later, the site provides a window into the burial practices of the area’s ancient inhabitants. As The Irish Times reports, the grave suggests that Mesolithic Irish people led more complex lives than we previously believed.

The artifact that led to this conclusion, discussed in a paper recently published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, was a stone axe. The polished shale tool, called an adze, was found buried with cremated remains in a pit first discovered 15 years ago. It appears to have been used only for a brief period before someone went out of their way to blunt it. This might indicate it was made especially for the funeral, and that blunting the blade was a symbolic act performed during the rites.

Handled axes dating back as far as 44,000 years have been found elsewhere in the past, but this highly polished tool is believed to be the oldest adze discovered in Europe. Researcher and paper co-author Ben Elliot said in a statement:

“The adze is exceptional as we traditionally associate this polished axes and adzes like this with the arrival of agriculture in Europe, around 3000 years later. Although polished axes and adzes are known from pre-agricultural sites in Ireland and other parts of Europe, to find such a well-made, highly polished and securely dated example is unprecedented for this period of prehistory.”

The site it was uncovered from is also remarkable: The body was cremated before it was buried, a rare practice at the time, and it had the unusual distinction of a wooden post nearby to mark it. The grave may not be the most famous prehistoric burial site in Ireland—that distinction belongs to Newgrange—but it is the oldest known grave in the country.

[h/t The Irish Times]