- May 23: A ring of water vapor forms as an F/A-18F Super Hornet piloted by Navy fliers Lt. Justin Halligan and Lt. Michael Witt breaks the sound barrier over Jones Beach in Wantagh, N.Y., during the New York Air Show.
Though many forms of currency are visually conservative—featuring portraits of notable figures and leaders—there is a class of cool cash from around that globe with eye-popping colors and designs. More than just legal tender, some banknotes serve as an artistic merging of technology, color schemes and cultural references. From Egypt’s display of ancient pharaohs to Kazakhstan’s exotic electric-blue design, Woman’s Day has collected some of the world’s most beautiful bills.
For example, Kazakhstan’s monetary unit, the Tenge, was introduced in 1993, replacing the Soviet Ruble as the national currency. The most current design of the banknote features a geographical outline of the country on one side and overlapping national treasures on the other, which include the Astana-Baiterek Monument, the Kazakhstan flag, the signature of President Nazarbayev and lyrics from the Kazakh national anthem. Estimated Exchange Rate: 1 U.S. dollar = 148.330 Kazakhstan tenge
Czech photographer Vlad Artazov is well-known to photography fans. His works are full of humor, irony and insight. For example, his “Nail’s Life” series depicts a lifetime of experiences as lived by a common house nail.
Michael Bay will likely never win a Best Director Oscar, but Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese will likely never claim an even higher honor: the Guinness Record for biggest explosion ever caught on film with actors present. The world-record blast takes place in Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, which opened in theaters on June 24. In honor of this big bang, Popular Mechanics ranks the ten greatest explosions in movie history.
For example, explosion #8 is in the original Die Hard movie. In one of the film’s climactic moments, Bruce Willis uses a fire hose to jump off the roof of the building just as it explodes. According to director John McTiernan, most of the exterior building explosion shots were real explosions set around the building.
Pierre Cardin is an Italian-born French fashion designer. Cardin is known for his avant-garde style and his space-age designs. He prefers geometric shapes and motifs, sometimes experimental, and not always practical.
Case in point, his Bubble House. As the story goes, Pierre Cardin was looking to buy a house on the Cote d’Azur in the French Riviera, but he was horrified by all the unoriginal designs, none of which that matched his avant-garde fashion designs.
Then one day Cardin happened upon a construction site where architect Antti Lovag was building a “bubble house” for a wealthy industrialist who happened to have died. Cardin was thrilled to discover a house that matched his modern taste. Not everyone like the Lovag house when it was finished in 1990, and some even called it “Crazy House.” But it has since become a national historic monument.
More photos here and here.
More Crazy Stuff
When used wisely, credit cards can be the cornerstone of a sound financial strategy. A solid credit history makes you a good credit risk, and that in turn allows you to purchase the necessities of life. But credit cards can also be a slippery slope to financial ruin. One misstep, and you’ll tumble into the abyss of credit card debt hell, a mounting spiral of missed payments, fees, high APRs, and rate increases that will take you years to recover.
Mint.com provides an illustrative guide on how to avoid this fate.
The game of chess takes cunning and intelligence and can sometimes be incredibly intense. But your standard Chess Set just doesn’t reflect the intensity of the game. If you prefer to play on a board that’s as mighty as your chess maneuvers, then check out the 12 Amazing Chess Sets at CoolMaterial.com.
For example, everyone knows that Pirates are better than Ninjas. Or is it the other way around? Either way, you wouldn’t want to cross one of these fierce warriors in a dark alley. Maybe a nice game of chess would be better. Each piece is hand painted and awesome, though it’s not clear how you would tell the pieces apart.
You would think the list of the longest-running shows in U.S. television history would begin with something like Law & Order or The Simpsons, right? But those shows are mere pups compared to the following lions of the American TV landscape. Excluding soap operas and non-primetime news programming, Woman’s Day lists the the top 10 longest running TV shows that have been the beacons for television audiences for as much as 50 years.
For example, #9 is Saturday Night Live on NBC, which has been on air since October 11, 1975. Regardless of its ups and downs, there’s no other show that has so thoroughly infiltrated our collective pop-culture consciousness. And then their is the talent that SNL chieftain Lorne Michaels has unearthed and delivered to the masses: Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey and the list goes on.
An eighth grader in Ohio shows the NBA professionals a basketball move to remember. He does a head-over-heels flip and sinks a full-court shot.
Ryan McGinnis shot this panorama of New York City on June 2. He created this photo by stitching together more than 20 images to produce a monster 25,162 x 3,830 pixel image.
McGinnis shot this panorama from Jersey City, directly across from the former site of the World Trade Center. The shoot took so long that the light changed from the time he started shooting lower Manhattan to the time he panned the camera to upper Manhattan, which caused a bit of a serendipitous color gradient effect.
