Relax — it sounds more exciting than it is. But hey, it's still pretty cool. A 2004 photograph released to the public this week shows a coat and boots sunken in the mud near the Titanic's stern. Based on the way the clothing items are "laid out," there is good evidence this was once a person, says James Delgado, director of maritime heritage at the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration.
I don't know much about Greta Van Susteren. Out of all the mouth-breathing pundits on television news channels, my sanity only allows for me to watch a few and she's never really made the cut. I don't know what her beliefs are. I don't much care. She could personally go to northern Uganda or the Democratic Republic of Congo right now and kill Joseph Kony with her bare hands, and I still wouldn't care. Why? Because it appears as if her banal ranting has led to a canceled Louis C.K. performance at the Radio & Television Congressional Correspondents dinner .
A series of violent storms and tornadoes have wreaked havoc on several states, including Indiana (14 dead so far) and Kentucky (19 dead so far). The numbers keep rising as rescue workers continue to find more victims — and that's not counting the staggering numbers of people injured and property destroyed.
The Atlantic has an amazing collection of exact before-and-after photos documenting the reconstruction of Japan in the wake of last year's quake that should, if we're calculating this right, occupy exactly enough time for you to make it to the end of the work day. [The Atlantic, image via Getty/AFP/Atlantic]
Wati was just eight years old when, on the day after Christmas 2004, the massive Indian Ocean tsunami swept her away from her mother and two sisters in Ujong Baroh, Aceh, on the island of Sumatra. Everyone assumed she was dead.
One hundred and forty three—can that possibly be right?—yes, one hundred and forty three people have died so far in one town in India from drinking a batch of bootleg liquor this week. Police say the liquor was spiked with methanol to "boost its kick." That has the side effect of killing you. The AP reports:
A female resident of Portland, Oregon was at home cooking tofu when, suddenly and without warning, her kitchen exploded. The woman said she was rinsing her tofu pan in the sink when a mysterious force—she isn't sure what—burned her hand and knocked a six-foot window out of her home and onto the street.
Nope, it wasn't Santorum. Sticky goo disabled 100 cars on the Pennsylvania Turnpike yesterday, after a tanker spilled a driveway sealant all over the road. If only a camera had been on hand to capture a bunch of cars going slower and sloweerrr until they finally stopped. In the pantheon of highway spills, this ranks right behind chickens. And in the pantheon of goo attacks, it ranks right behind that orange stuff in Alaska.
This glowing fireball is not the coming of Harold Camping's apocalypse but the aftermath of a collision between a tanker carrying 8,500 gallons of gas and a minivan, which took place on the New Jersey Turnpike last night. Citizen journalist @MelissaJoann was there and filmed what she saw; this image is a still from her crazy-looking video.
The end of the world is apparently kicking off in Oklahoma! This weekend the Sooner State was rocked by two earthquakes (spurring a mass bird and bug exodus); today, it was on the receiving end of a somewhat more conventional natural disaster: tornados. Storm chaser Reed Timmer captured this way-too-up-close tornado photo from through his windshield near Tipton, Okla.; 17 counties in the state are under a tornado watch and the AP reports that the Oklahoma State University extension office was destroyed. Sooners, you need to move out of your state before a tsunami hits it. But wait until the tornados pass.
Oklahoma got hit by a record-breaking 5.6-magnitude earthquake last night—its second in as many days—and while there were no injuries or major damages, it could be felt as far away as Wisconsin. And as if two earthquakes in Oklahoma wasn't end-days enough, here's a video from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That big green splotch? That's all the birds and bugs in the area taking to wing in numbers so big they got picked up by the radar. [NewsOK, radar graphics via NOAA]
At precisely 2 p.m. ET on Wednesday, November 9th, FEMA will conduct the first ever test of a Presidential Emergency Alert System — a nationwide public warning system that, according to the FCC, "requires broadcasters, cable television systems, wireless cable systems, satellite digital audio radio service providers, and direct broadcast satellite providers to provide the communications capability to the President to address the American public during a national emergency." Yikes. The original test was planned to run over three minutes — much longer than the ear-piercing localized tests you're already used to — but the test has been reduced to 30 seconds after many jittery people made a stink. Why?
It's an unusually heavy monsoon season in Thailand, and the country is experiencing some of the worst, and longest flooding in memory. Nearly 2.5 million people have been affected, and more than 300 have died; public holidays have been declared throughout the country to give people time to move.
