A list of curious facts

One: Every year in September, the Japanese town of Katakai celebrates a two-day fireworks mega-festival. The 400-year-old Hanabi Takai Festival—which dates back to the Edo period—boasts over 15,000 over the course of two days. The biggest attraction is the Yonshakudama—which holds the Guiness record for the biggest shell in the world: 

This big bad boy is an incredible 420 kilograms (925 lb) in weight and is loaded into the mortar tube (which to be fair is the diameter of a tunnel) by crane to avoid impact damage and of course because it weighs so much.

Unlike other fireworks shells these days, the Yonshakudama is manufactured using traditional methods—and it can take up to one year to prepare. See the incredible show it puts on below:  

Two: Did you know that the first animated film to win an Oscar wasn't Mickey Mouse? The honour belongs to a 1932 film titled ‘Flowers and Trees’—which featured “a romance between two anthropomorphized trees.” The other notable bit: ‘Flowers and Trees’ was the first film produced in colour to receive the Academy award. ‘Gone With the Wind’ became the first feature-length film to do so eight years later. 

You can watch an impressive clip below—and the complete film is available here. Disney’s blog has more on ‘Flowers and Trees’. Variety looks at the rise of Technicolor in films. 

Three: Helicopter parents are a gift that keep on giving. The overwhelming desire to hover over your children has produced yet another bizarre culture trend: The ‘concierge mom’. This is essentially a local guardian who cheers up the college-age kid on birthdays, deals with IKEA-related furniture challenges, escorts them to doctor’s appointments—and way more:

Each student has access to as many as five women, collectively referred to as their second mom. They accompany students through registration, and Kumin assists with professor recommendations. She said she has been around long enough to know, for instance, which instructors give an easy A, as well as how to balance a class schedule between tough and not-so-tough courses. She also has an army of tutors on call.

Everything is on the list except laundry—because mastering the washing machine is considered a mandatory adulting skill (unlike picking your own courses). The most surprising bit: the service is surprisingly cheap—$49 for a month; $250 for a semester; $450 for a year; and $1,600 for all four years of school. Attention, overprotective Indian parents! (Wall Street Journal, paywall, USA Today)