When there's road work to be done, crews put up cones, barrels and fences to keep workers safe. Now a "smart work" zone system being tested in Virginia could make those spaces even safer.
It's National Beer Day, so it's a good time to talk about a plan from the 1960s, when beer magnate Alfred Heineken tried to rework his company's green bottles so they could be upcycled into bricks for low-income houses.
A lot of us kind of amble through museums, taking a few steps, looking at art, and then moving again. And one posture specialist says that "museum walk" is actually hurting our backs. Plus: a guy in Ontario proves that the best time to play the flute with both hands is not when you're behind the wheel.
It's National Go Fishing Day, though the fish in today’s story aren’t exactly the ones you’d expect to catch. They’re robotic fish called Charlie and Charlene, and they were developed by the Central Intelligence Agency. Plus: tomorrow is National Surfing Day, and one place you might mark the occasion is the Santa Cruz Surfing Museum in California.
Some galleries showcase works of art; others show you what it's like when there's nothing on the canvas. Today we pay a virtual visit to a museum where all the works explore the concept of nothingness. Plus: the Chic!ken photo project aims to show that chickens can be the subjects of fine art.
Today in 1969 Apollo 12 returned to earth after visiting the moon, and if the stories are true, it brought with it a tiny tile containing line drawings by six Earth artists. Plus: since most of us aren't likely to visit the art installation on the lunar surface, maybe we can visit this museum in the Florida Keys that goes below the surface of the water.
Composting can turn some of our food waste back into useful stuff, but it can take a while. A new device out of Germany aims to cut the time it takes to go from food waste to compost to just 48 hours. Plus: on this National Cat Day, we salute the very tiny but impressive Cat Museum in Krakow, Poland.
The Disgusting Food Museum in southern Sweden has a new exhibit on the strangest alcoholic drinks of all time, proving that people will drink some truly revolting concoctions in pursuit of a buzz. Plus: remember how Asbestos, Quebec was going to choose one of four replacement names for the town? Those plans are on hold, cause apparently the people of Asbestos aren't big fans of the new names.
Artist Itsuo Kobayashi has been keeping an illustrated food diary since 1980, drawing and describing each meal, the ingredients, the price and how it made him feel. Plus: for National Banana Day, we go to - where else - the International Banana Museum in California.
Staff at a museum in Turin, Italy called Castello di Rivoli have been working marathon days to digitize their entire collection so that art lovers who can't see the pieces in person can still enjoy them online. Plus: volunteers at a thrift shop in North Carolina spot something unusual in a stack of paintings - a work by none other than Salvador Dali!
