Palm Trees of Canada

image via FGnation

Palm trees. For as long as Earth has been inhabited, they have been associated with tropical paradise. When you see a palm tree, warm weather abounds, t-shirts are optional, and a beach or retirement home is never far away. So it's obvious that you won't find any palms much farther north than Alabama and South Carolina right?

Wrong.

The Real Life Ghost Ship

image via WordPress

The MV Lyubov Orlova was constructed in 1976 as an arctic cruise ship. After cruising the Arctic Ocean for nearly thirty years, the ship was seized in 2012 upon docking at St. Johns, Newfoundland for unpaid debts of $250,000. Considering that the fifty-one strong crew hadn't been paid in five months, it was unlikely that the owner, Cruise North Expeditions, was going to be able to pay off the debt.

After two years of sitting in port, it was sold to a scrapping company to be broken up, and thus began the most interesting chapter of the ship's history.

Michael Bay's Reused Shots

image via SheKnows

Film-making is tough. It takes months of work and millions of dollars for big budget studios to release a complete film to the public. Fortunately, one film-maker has managed to figure out a way to cut a corner.

Michael Bay, known for slowly making all millennials deaf via movie explosions, has gotten into the habit of simply reusing footage from his previous films. Because if you've seen one explosion you've seen them all, right?

The Young Guns of Barbershop

image via BarbershopHarmonySociety

Barbershop is a style of music that society as a whole has reserved exclusively for old people it seems. That's a problem, because some people believe that the art form is dying out. These days, the average age of a barbershop singer is a whopping forty-nine. 

But that's where one new Californian barbershop chorus is changing everything.

Air Force One's Last Minute Soundtrack

image via Thrillist

Air Force One was a blockbuster hit from 1997 that featured President Harrison Ford single-handedly fighting off terrorists who have taken over the president's personal aircraft. From beating the sinister evil Russian, to the night-time special operations raid, all capped off with an enormous plane crash, the film is so full of "America, fuck yeah!" motifs you'd think George Washington himself had directed it.

Capping off the massive patriotic tone of the film is the score by Jerry Goldsmith. The music for the film is enough to make anyone within a fifty foot radius pop a freedom boner, which is surprising since Goldsmith haphazardly threw the entire thing together at the last minute as a favor to director Wolfgang Peterson.

Aircraft Carriers with Bouncy Flight Decks

image via AWDNews, Amazon

The late 1940s were an exciting time for aircraft. With the advent of jet engines, all sorts of advancements were being developed for warfare. But the prize for the weirdest idea of all has to go to the British, who pioneered what is known as the "flexible" flight deck.

Or rather, they covered an aircraft carrier in rubber and tried to land aircraft by bouncing them.

China's Insanity Timezone

image via EarthScienceEducation

Time zones were invented around the time of train travel in order to coordinate the time of arrivals and departures. This way time became universal and everyone could tell what time it was in a given location. The continental US is spread across four of them in order to best try and match "solar" time, or so that when it's noon, the sun is directly above.

Most nations across the world adhere to this method. Except for China. In China, the entire nation runs on the same time-zone, all other neighboring countries be damned.

The Most Perfect US Map Ever

image via 17Apart

Located in elementary schools around the United States, maps have been as much a staple of the classroom as apples on teachers desks. But aside from most probably still listing the Soviet Union as a nation, there isn't much to be improved upon right? It's a map, draw some lines, slap some labels, and you're done right?

Wrong. Just ask David Imus who has created what is considered one of the best maps of the United States ever. And he did it all by himself meticulously over the course of two years.

The Ship that Literally Shot itself to Death

image via Wikipedia

World War II was called a "world war" for a reason; aside from the I'll-have-no-part-of-anything Switzerland, virtually every nation worldwide had a stake in the war. Among them was Brazil, who declared war on Germany in August 1942. They sent 25,500 troops to help retake Italy from Germany, becoming the only South American country to send troops to fight in Europe. Not bad.

In addition to troops, the Brazilian navy participated in anti-U-boat operations in the Atlantic. They lost several ships in the process, including the BZ Bahia. But the story of how the BZ Bahia sank is less one of enemy action, and more one of utter stupidity.

The Science Behind Avatar

image via WallConvert

The 2009 film Avatar by certified film-god James Cameron was released to fantastic reviews and went on to become the highest grossing film of all time. In it, a paralyzed marine is assigned to deal with diplomatic efforts via an alien body to move the native Na'avi from their home tree so that RDA, the mining company, can mine out unobtanium from underneath it because . . . you know what, whatever. Most people didn't pay attention to the plot because they were so stunned by the beautiful visuals and realistic portrayal of the future.

And that's probably because more thought went into the science behind the film than you think.

The Longevity of Tail Gunners

image via Wikipedia

During World War II, heavy bombers flown by all sides were armed with many gun positions located all around the aircraft for defense against fighters. The US even fielded a special B-17 that traded bombs for even more guns.

image via Wikipedia

Because the first thing cut from any WWII design was "restraint"

Designs had these guns all the way until the 1950s when the age of the jet fighter began. With fighters travelling faster than airmen could manually keep up with them, gun positions were eliminated from bombers. Except for the tail gun, which persisted for far longer than you may think . . .