Today marks 30 years since the first episode of “The Simpsons” aired, and so we pay tribute to the house Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie call home - not to mention a real-life, 3D version of the place in Nevada. Plus: the closest real-life town to Springfield, USA isn't a Springfield at all. 

Duff beers, colorful walls and THAT saggy couch: Inside the real-life Simpsons house that was built as a competition prize in the 1990s ... but the winner decided to take the money instead! (Daily Mail)

25 things you never knew about The Simpsons (Telegraph UK)

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Fruitcake is one holiday tradition that's not for everybody, we know that, but those who love it, love it - like the Ford family in Michigan, which has kept a single fruitcake as an heirloom for over 140 years. Plus: if fruitcake is so infamous, why are there two towns that want to be known as the fruitcake capital of the world? 

For Tecumseh family, 141-year-old fruitcake represents love (Detroit News)

Georgia Town Makes Claim For Fruitcake Capital Of The World (The Salt)

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TubaChristmas is an annual concert tradition in which musicians gather to play festive music exclusively on tubas, baritone horns, sousaphones and and euphoniums. We'll explain how Christmas got so tuba-ey. Plus: Stan Freese got so into his tuba that he decorated the tree in his yard with the horns. 

For a shining moment a year, tubas get spotlight (New York Times)  

About TubaChristmas (TubaChristmas.com)

Placentia musician’s tuba tree is home bass (Orange County Register)

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Many communities put down road salt in winter. It can make the roads safer, but too much salt is bad for the environment and for the roads themselves. Scientists at Washington State University may have found a better way to take the ice off the roads: grapes. Plus: meet the creepiest instrument ever, a baby doll head theremin! 

Sustaining roads with grape and agricultural waste (Washington State University)

Playing the Baby Head THEREMIN (Cubitsocks on YouTube) 

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Today marks one hundred years since the community of Enterprise, Alabama, put up a very special monument in the middle of town: a statue of a Greek woman holding a boll weevil, an invasive pest that had ruined the local cotton crop. Wait, what? Plus: meet the most destructive holiday force ever, Treezilla! 

Boll Weevil Honored (Library of Congress)

Treezilla! The Godzilla Christmas Tree (Steven Newland on YouTube) 

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If you want a good party, you need the right soundtrack: researchers set up underwater loudspeakers in dead sections of the Great Barrier Reef, and playing sounds of healthy reefs attracted twice as many fish as areas where there was no sound. Plus: Pocatello, Idaho will give you something to smile about today. It's the law there. 

Underwater Loudspeakers Make Fish Flock to Dead Coral in Radical Experiment (Washington Post)

U.S. Smile Capital (Pocatello, ID)

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There are tens of thousands of pieces of space debris orbiting the Earth. We've tried a few different ways to bring them back down over the years. Plus: in Huddleston, Virginia, a giant hay sculpture of a country music legend. Meet Will-hay Nelson! 

ESA commissions world’s first space debris removal (European Space Agency)

To Clean Up Space Junk, Some People Grabbed a Net and Harpoon (Wired)

'Will-Hay Nelson' creation at Virginia farm going viral (WSET)

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Today in 1877 the Washington Post published its first edition. It brought us landmark coverage of Watergate, and John Philip Sousa named a march for it. But the Post's biggest achievement is helping to create the teddy bear. Plus: this weekend in Ashland, Nebraska, Santa Goes To Space! 

Political Cartoonist Clifford K. Berryman and the Origin of the Teddy Bear (Theodore Roosevelt Center)

Santa Goes to Space (Visit Nebraska)

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The chessboard known as Square Off works if your opponent is nearby or not, because it can use Bluetooth technology to move the pieces for them on your board, and your pieces on theirs. Ron Weasley would be impressed. Plus: you haven't heard "Jingle Bells" until you've heard "Jingle Bells" played on a comb.

World’s Smartest Chess Board Lets You Move Physical Pieces Without Touching Them (Oddity Central)

Now That It’s December, Here’s Jingle Bells Played on a Comb (Twisted Sifter)

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There's a new medical startup called Cast 21, and, as startups do, they’re looking to disrupt those traditional plaster cast paradigms and make a cast so flexible that wearers could even go swimming. Plus: for National Cookie Day, we pay a virtual visit to the National Cookie Cutter HIstorical Museum in Joplin, Missouri. 

Waterproof cast lets patients swim with broken bones (Yahoo Sports)  

National Cookie Cutter Historical Museum  

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