Talking about this invention at PhotoBasement just couldn’t do it justice. Please go forth and admire the chutzpah of some twisted inventor.

It comes from this 1936 issue of Popular Mechanics hosted by Modern Mechanix.

New evidence confirms that the sunflower was domesticated in Mexico more than 4,600 years ago, contrary to the widely held belief that it was converted into a food crop only in the Mississippi Valley. Researchers use to believe Spanish conquistadors were responsible for bringing domesticated sunflowers to Mexico from the north. But genetic research on ancient seeds found at formerly inhabited sites indicate that indigenous people in different parts of Mexico were using sunflowers 1800 years before being conquered by the Spaniards.

LA Times has the story.

Many of Egypt’s most famous monuments, such as the Sphinx and Cheops, contain hundreds of thousands of marine fossils, most of which are fully intact and preserved in the walls of the structures, according to a new study.

X-ray diffraction and radioactivity measurements revealed that the Egyptian monuments are filled with the fossils.

Here is a map of the area covered by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on their Apollo 11 moon walks. It overlays onto on a soccer pitch for comparison purposes.

Here’s another version of the map, superimposed on a baseball diamond.

One might think that perhaps it doesn’t cover much area because the aircraft hangar they were filming it in is only so large.

[Via Strange Maps]

Jim Kardach is in the Bluetooth Hall of Fame, his foray into the technology began in the mid-90’s while at Intel he was tasked with bringing to market a new short range PC radio network standard.

At EETimes, Jim writes about some of the behind the scenes details when Intel, Nokia and Ericsson joined forces to develop a single network standard as opposed to their own short range radio technologies. And it sounds like deciding on the name may have been the most challenging aspect!

Link to the article.

In the pic above you can clearly see King Harald Blatang (Bluetooth) in this ancient rune stone with one of the earlier versions of a laptop and mobile phone, wishing we would expedite in delivering this wireless technology.