"Like" us on Facebook.com/TrendingNow and follow us on Twitter @YahooTrending!
An artist in New York has found a series of hidden images in Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, the "Mona Lisa." Artist Ron Piccirillo says that if you turn the painting sideways, you can see an outline of a lion, an ape, and a buffalo around Mona Lisa's head, and a crocodile and snake coming out of her body. So what's the meaning behind the images? Well, Piccirillo studied da Vinci's journals and says the painting is a representation of jealousy. The telltale journal passage reads, "Give her a leopard's skin, because this creature kills the lion out of envy and by deceit," and that's when he made the connection to the lion's head, hovering above her head. Piccirillo says he's also uncovered hidden meanings in other renaissance paintings by Raphael, as well as in the Sistine Chapel. If you think this interpretation is a stretch, you're not alone. Art historians are skeptical, and most people on social media think Piccirillo is looking too hard and has too much time on his hands.
And next up, the pay site PayPal is drawing flak from the Web for almost being the Grinch who stole Christmas. The popular Etsy spoof blog called Regretsy set up a charity drive to collect donations to buy toys for children in need. In order to collect the donations, Regretsy put a PayPal "donate" button on the site. After receiving a flood of contributions, PayPal suddenly froze the account, forcing Regretsy to return the money. Why? Well, PayPal allows only nonprofit charities to use the donate button, and Regretsy is a for-profit company. Regretsy would need to put a "buy" button on the site instead. And according to two posts (this link is not safe for work) on Regretsy, PayPal also kept the transaction fees. Thousands of outraged Regretsy users commented on those two posts. Then, they quickly migrated over to PayPal's Facebook page. This prompted an apology from PayPal, saying "We can confirm the funds have been released." But even an apology did not stop the online venom. Thousands of people kept criticizing PayPal on their Facebook pages, vowing to close their accounts.
1,576 comments