This might be the most beautiful photo of a van in the history of photos of vans. I wish I knew who the photographer was so I could tell him that his picture is vantastic.
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In between blowing things up and participating in mayhem some of our favorite characters have to occasionally put down their weapons and deal with mundane chores and issues as depicted in this photo series by Daniel Picard.
I’ve always thought of being in love as being willing to do anything for the other person—starve to buy them bread and not mind living in Siberia with them—and I’ve always thought that every minute away from them would be hell—so looking at it that [way] I guess I’m not in love with you.
- A 17 year old Jackie Kennedy's break-up letter to her Harvard boyfriend R. Beverley Corbin Jr. Corbin passed away in 2004 at age 79.
Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don’t know which half.
- John Wanamaker, 19th Century.
If you had told these two back in 1979 (when they were still friends before Jay Leno reminded all of us that business is business and the only one you should look out for is yourself) that they would someday be replaced by people named "Jimmy Fallon" and "Stephen Colbert" they would have laughed you off the stage.
A delivery truck driver accidentally backed into a $300,000 Ferrari in New York City last week to create this unintentional symbolic representation of the income gap in this country.
This portraiture from approximately 1900 may be the oldest known selfie ever taken.
And here's one taken sometime in October 1914 by the Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna.
Tens of thousands of visitors have probably walked right over the above tiny dot in Disneyland without nary a glance. Located near Sleeping Beauty's castle this dot represents the geographic center of Disneyland.
Browse some pictures from my life over the past few weeks, such as the one above where I couldn't resist joining the other hordes of Banksy groupies at one of the artist's more recent stencils. This one can be found on the corner of 79th and Broadway because nothing screams counter culture street art audience like the Upper West Side.
Accompanying a March 23, 1958 article in the New York Times pondering the then rapidly approaching reality of putting people in space was the above photo of a pilot...and a cat.
The picture's caption: "A kitten floats out of the hand of Capt. Druey P. Parks, inside an F-94C jet plane at 25,000 feet. The speed of the plane, flying a calculated arc, counterbalances the pull of the weighlessness that a space man will experience."
There you have it. Science. With a cat.
In the July 5, 1993 issue of The New Yorker, there on the upper right corner on page 61 was an amusing single panel cartoon by Peter Steiner. A lot of the New Yorker single panel cartoons are amusing and often quite clever, however none of them would quite beat Peter's for its cultural impact and legacy as the magazine's most popular cartoon. Here's a follow-up conversation with the cartoonist about what he's been up to since those early days of the Internet.
These photos are from this year's International Camping Festival held on Mount Wugongshan in the Jiangxi province of China and attracted over 15,000 camping enthusiasts.
Seen 
Telegram from Martin Luther King, Jr to Sammy Davis requesting Frank Sinatra's help. Sinatra and the Rat Pack were vocal in their support of desegregation in Nevada hotels and casinos and would not perform at venues that practiced segregation.
A couple months later on April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr was assassinated.
There's a lot of fascinating anecdotes in this recent provocative Business Week article on Jeff Bozos, but one interesting tidbit in the article is the screenshot of the original Amazon.com website back in 1995.
While we're on the topic, stay inside our Internet time machine to see what other popular websites looked like when they first appeared on the world wide web.
Google (with the exclamation):
Ebay (with the literal headline. It's an auction. On the web. Auction Web.):
MySpace (Awkward....):
Twitter (Creator of this logo has NOT stepped forward to claim credit):
New York Times (:
Yahoo:
Lastly, I shut down the site a long time ago and most of the images are no longer cached, but courtesy of the Wayback Machine, here is a screenshot of my original blog on Xanga back in 2004:
I saw Alfonso Cuaron's "Gravity" this past weekend along with the rest of New York City it seemed if the crowd and buzz in the theater was any indication. I enjoyed it, but I didn't find it quite the cinematic tour de force that everyone else is proclaiming. Some critics have referred to the film's conveyance of a sensation referred to as "overview effect" that astronauts sometimes experience. The film does have its breathtaking moments. One particular scene had me gasp, but in the end I thought "Gravity" sank under its own weight and is simply just an entertaining disaster flick. In terms of the director's body of work, I thought "Y Tu Mamá También" was far more impressive .
Speaking of space, following the successful launch of the Apollo 11 mission in the summer of 1969, the New York Times published a correction (see above) in its July 17, 1969 edition.
This was Al Capone's cell at the now defunct Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia where he lived for 8 months. It was described by the Philadelphia Public Ledger in August 20, 1929 as follows:
The whole room was suffused in the glow of a desk lamp which stood on a polished desk.... On the once-grim walls of the penal chamber hung tasteful paintings, and the strains of a waltz were being emitted by a powerful cabinet radio receiver of handsome design and fine finish...
Say what you will about him, but his lamp game was real strong.
While growing up in Anchorage, Alaska I would often stare at the mountain you see picture above. It's officially called Mount Susitna but more popularly known among locals as The Sleeping Lady for its resemblance to a woman resting on her side in deep slumber. The tale told to every Alaskan child is that only the safe return of her warrior husband from battle would awaken her from her sleep.
Wikipedia has a list of other mountain ranges around the world that also shares Mount Susitna's "The Sleeping Lady" nickname.
[Photo via]
James H. Hare snapped this picture from a balloon of Manhattan in 1906. Some corners of the Internet believe that this may be the first aerial photo of downtown Manhattan.
Love this old Gap ad (note the terrific socks and sandals look) featuring the creators behind Myst which was one of the most influential games and digital experiences of my childhood. In this retrospective piece in Grantland on this seminal game I think this is the truest statement:
Without Myst there's no Grand Theft Auto V orAssassin's Creed — but I'd also argue that there's no late-night bottomless Wikipedia rabbit hole. Maybe Myst didn't change how we approached computer games, but rather how we approached computer lives.
One of my fondest memories was playing this game on a Macintosh Quadra and trying to unlock the puzzles with my dad on quiet weekends.