Turns out politicians are just like us—they were once young and attractive, with their whole lives ahead of them, and now they’re not. Join us on a truly incredible DNC-themed look back at once was, what could have been, and which former cutie you should call “dad” this week on Twitter (it’s Tim Kaine).
Miriam "Mae Mae" Burbank's two daughters told WGNO in New Orleans that their mother was "full of life" and that they wanted her funeral to be just as lively. A "last party" if you will. So they convinced funeral directors to help stage her body with all of her favorite things: Busch beer, menthols, crossword puzzles, disco lights, and tiny New Orleans Saints helmets.
Austin Whitney, a 22-year-old UC Berkeley grad paralyzed in a 2007 car accident (he got drunk and hit a tree), fulfilled a dream today that most of us would take entirely for granted: He walked seven steps to collect his diploma, with the help of a motorized exoskeleton. Watch the video and be inspired. (And don't drink and drive.) [PopSci]
Rita Chretien, a Canadian woman who, along with her husband, had gone missing in late March in northwest Nevada was found alive by hunters on Friday, having survived for seven weeks on trail mix and snow.
How did you celebrate 4/20? Well, you could have lit up a spliff the size of a Volkswagen Beetle and it still wouldn't have come close to what the pothead population of Boulder cooked up. Watch in amazement as a cloud of marijuana smoke steadily grows above a gathering of 4/20 celebrants. Then watch it grow denser and larger still, as coughs and beach balls bounce throughout crowd. The video cuts off before the unruly mob discusses raiding a nearby Costco for free samples, then gives up in a moment of weed-induced apathy. But it's still pretty awe-inspiring nonetheless.
In 1938, the first man to ever climb Eiger—a 13,025 foot mountain in the Swiss Alps—did so after three days. So when Ueli Steck managed to scale the same peak in under three hours (2 hours, 47 minutes and 33 seconds, to be exact), people were flabbergasted. After watching this video of Steck's feat, you'll be flabbergasted, too. [via kottke.org]
Being a cold-hearted snake (look into my eyes) I'm usually not a huge fan of cat pictures on the internet, but these have a bit of cruelty and unbelievability to them. These aren't cat pictures— these are a healthy cat with an arrow through its head pictures!
In 1970, an unknown thief picked Rudolph Resta's wallet from the pocket of his coat, which was hanging in a closet at the New York Times building. Forty years later, a security guard found the wallet hidden in a hole in a wall. After a series of magical coincidences, an NYT reporter tracked down Resta, gave the wallet back to him, and turned the whole affair into a charming story for NYT's City Room blog.
This soon-to-be viral gem straight out of Alabama's local news is probably the best thing to come out of a story about a rapist on the loose. The victim's brother really steals the show around the 1 minute mark.
A 13 year-old Brooklyn boy with Asperger's syndrome got scared of being scolded about school so he spent eleven f'ing days riding the New York subway—alone and undetected—because this world is a cold and heartless place.
PR is a discipline that demands the delicate touch of a surgeon and the sober judgment of a sober judge. You can't just wildly issue press releases like, "Hey, We Got a Lady With Two Vaginas Here!" Or can you?
As long as college kids remain edgy, there will be college sex magazines. And as long as there are a few olds with no sense of mockery, they will be scandalized by them. Still!
