A NUMBER OF YOUNG LOVERS

A rare natural phenomenon turns one of Austria’s most beautiful hiking trails into a 10 meter-deep lake, for half the year.

Located at the foot of the Hochschwab Mountains, in Tragoess, Styria, Green Lake is one of the most bizarre natural phenomena in the world. During the cold winter months, this place is almost completely dry, and used as a country park where hikers love to come and spend some time away from urban chaos. But as soon as temperatures rise, the snow and ice covering the mountaintops begin to melt, and the water pours down, filling the basin below with crystal-clear water.

Water levels go from one-two meters at most, to over 10 meters, in the early summer. The waters of Green Lake are highest in June, when this extraordinary place is invaded by divers, curious to see what a mountain park looks like underwater. Fish swimming over wooden benches, a grass-covered bottom, trees, roads, roads and even bridges create a surreal setting that feels like it belongs on dry ground. That’s because for half of the year, that’s exactly where it’s at.

Old book smell: Did you know? “Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us.” - Perfumes: The Guide

Christopher Milne, A. A. Milne’s son and the real-life Christopher Robin, wrote an autobiography called The Enchanted Places.  A lot of its traffic is the disparity between the Winnie the Pooh children’s books and his real life.  This is a beautiful scene:

On my fifth birthday I had been given a shining suit of armour, and lived in it, almost went to bed in it, was in tears at the prospect of being unstrapped from it.  “One day,” said my father to his tiny St. George, “you will be thinking of nothing but cricket.”  I stared at him aghast.  My breast plate, my back plate, the wonderful things that protected my arms (even though slightly too long and rather scratchy round the wrist), my helmet with its red plume and the visor that I could pull down when danger threatened: how could I ever abandon these?  “Nothing but cricket,”  I said in amazement.  “Not armour?”

A Space Age agricultural festival, via BoingBoing:

Participants in a rocket competition cheer after their rocket was successfully launched during the rocket festival known as “Bun Bangfai” in Yasothon, northeast of Bangkok, May 13, 2012. The festival marks the start of the rainy season when farmers are about to plant rice.

Three boys walking near an elephant from the Barnes Circus which is walking down the middle of Atlantic St. near Nevins, Brooklyn, June 1891.

(Via Retronaut)

fyeah-seacreatures:

Immortal Jellyfish. By: h16nakaji

Turritopsis nutricula, the immortal jellyfish, is a hydrozoan whose medusa, or jellyfish, form can revert to the polyp stage after becoming sexually mature. It is the only known case of a metazoan capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity as a solitary stage. It does this through the cell development process of trans-differentiation. Cell transdifferentiation is when the jellyfish “alters the differentiated state of the cell and transforms it into a new cell”. In this process the medusa of the immortal jellyfish is transformed into the polyps of a new polyp colony. First, the umbrella reverts itself and then the tentacles and mesoglea get resorbed. The reverted medusa then attaches itself to the substrate by the end that had been at the opposite end of the umbrella and starts giving rise to new polyps to form the new colony. Theoretically, this process can go on indefinitely, effectively rendering the jellyfish biologically immortal. 

From Wikipedia:

An “old salt” in the English speaking naval services is often a raconteur, or teller of sea stories. Much of the history and traditions of the naval services are passed from generation to generation of service members by these sea stories as told and retold by old salts. Sea stories may be truthful, half-truths, or falsehoods, however they always enhance the reputations of naval and Marine units, or individuals.

(Source: pincesphoto)