Battle of Midway, 1942 (in color)

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Battle of Midway, 1942 (in color)

The Battle of Midway happened six months after Japan's Pearl Harbor attack, and resulted in heavy losses for Imperial Japanese Navy, which wanted to lure American aircraft carriers into a trap and occupy Midway Atoll, but failed miserably. Hollywood director John Ford took this footage, which became part of the color documentary (see the whole film here)

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Today's pictures & links:

Extreme Vortices

Mike Hollingshead from Extreme Instability has some truly scary shots of pitch-black funnels from various storms in the Midwest:

(photo by Extreme Instability)

The "Alligator Head" shown above was captured in June, 2005, in Hill City and Stockton, Kansas. Watch for updates on that site, as the 2009 tornado season unfolds.

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Live Long and Prosper (Economically)

(image credit: New York Times)

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The Aero-Monster

The result of unholy union between Russian KRAZ-255 truck and Russian AN-2 airplane. Whatever it does, it certainly can not fly - more info:

(image credit: Andras Kisgergely, Airliners.net)

Something similarly bizarre has been seen over the fields of Ukraine:

Flying tank T-60 from Antonov's, circa 1931, images via

Speaking of other hybrid monsters, here is a child of a van and a... locomotive:

You could see a lot of these rail road vehicles in this DRB article

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Walk softly and carry a big fish

"A Peruvian fisherman takes a paiche, a giant South American tropical freshwater fish, to sell at a market in Iquitos, Peru, in 1993" - more info

(image credit: Photo by Alex Webb/Magnum Photos, via)

Paiche, also known as Arapaima Gigas can grow more than two meters long, and have quite interesting "facial" expression:

(image via)

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Mixed fresh links for today:

Huge "Skunk Works" Aircraft, info - [futurism]
Sun + Shuttle "Atlantis" = neat picture - [space]
Wolfram Alpha (proto A.I.?) went live, demo, example - [web]
"Macross" Pilot View Becomes Reality - [military]
Playing chicken with asteroid - [funny, some language]
Ladies knit a whole village - [art] - via
Man vs. the Exercise Ball - [fun video]
Robots inspired by animals, more - [geek video]
Dominoes in the office (haven't they got work to do?) - [cool video]
Make stunning Flash websites for free! - [promotion]

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Great 3D robot toys from Japan

We wrote about Maschinen Krieger before, but here is an update, just as fascinating:

(images via)

These are the model kits, made by Japanese model maker / artist Kow Yokoyama.

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First Emoticons

Surprise!... These "proto-smileys" were seen in the British magazine "Puck", No.212, from 1881 -

The whole issue is available here (large image)

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Great street art

The first two images are from the Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, just outside Tokyo:

(original unknown)

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Concorde's Last Flight

BA's Concorde with the Red Arrows on final flight into London Heathrow:

(images via)

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One way in...

...and the other way around -

(originals unknown)

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More befuddling clocks

As an addition to our recent "Extraordinary Clocks and Watches" article:

(original unknown)

I like the last one the best.

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Mystery Photo

Looks like a good way to utilize elephant's power... any background info?