George Lawrence used aerial kites to photograph San Francisco after the devastating 1906 earthquake. His photographs appeared in newspapers around the world and generated more than $15,000 for the photographer.

Below is a high resolution GigaPixel scan from the original 4 foot wide photograph. Well, technically it’s only a measly 11,709 x 4,716 resolution - translating to only .55 gigapixels, but we’ll let it slide since this is for posterity’s sake and all that.

For those of you who are unaware, San Francisco experienced a devastating earthquake in 1906 which started fires that burned uncontrollably and essentially destroyed the entire city.
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Thanks to Peggy for sending me this video of a stunt pulled off by Improv Everywhere, whose slogan is “we cause scenes”. The setup is that 207 people all walking through Grand Central Station in New York all freeze in place at the exact same second, and hold still for a full 5 minutes.

Most interestingly, it’s inspired people in 28 other cities in 13 countries to stage their own freeze mission. Thousands people worldwide in places like Romania, Poland, Italy, Germany, Sweden, and New Zealand have come together to make time stop for five short minutes. Below is a roundup of all of the videos of the various global freeze events.
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Deep in the heart of the California desert lies one of the natural world’s most puzzling mysteries: the moving rocks of Death Valley.

These are not ordinary moving rocks that tumble down mountainsides in avalanches, are carried along riverbeds by flowing water, or are tossed aside by animals.

These rocks, some as heavy as 700 pounds, are inexplicably transported across a virtually flat desert plain, leaving erratic trails in the hard mud behind them, some hundreds of yards long.

They move by some mysterious force, and in the nine decades since we have known about them, no one has ever seen them move.
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According to the LA Times:

A report released today by a marijuana public policy analyst contends that the market value of pot produced in the U.S. exceeds $35 billion — far more than the crop value of such heartland staples as corn, soybeans and hay, which are the top three legal cash crops.
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The report estimates that marijuana production has increased tenfold in the past quarter century despite an exhaustive anti-drug effort by law enforcement.
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Nationwide, the estimated cannabis production of $35.8 billion exceeds corn ($23 billion), soybeans ($17.6 billion) and hay ($12.2 billion), according to Gettman’s findings.

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