COLORED MARGARINE--THE WISCONSIN YELLOW PERIL

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Margarine in its natural state is white and looks exactly like lard. In the 1880s, manufacturers started adding the characteristic yellow hue to make it appear far more palatable and resemble butter.

For some reason, the dairy industry in Wisconsin and some other locales did not approve of this development and convinced the legislature to adopt laws banning the sale of yellow margarine. The margarine companies thereafter included a yellow dye packet with each tub of margarine sold, and the consumer was responsible for stirring in the dye. Depending on how thoroughly the color was stirred, the resulting margarine could be light yellow, dark yellow, or even striped. My mother, who was raised in Wisconsin, had the job when she was a young girl of mixing the family margarine, and she indicated that she was less than thrilled about the whole process.

In 1951, the margarine companies developed a plastic package where the dye packet would automatically be split open when the top of the margarine container was removed; however, the dye would still have to be stirred in. Finally, in 1955, Wisconsin gave up on protecting its citizens from margarine which did not resemble lard and allowed the dye to be mixed into the product at the factory, just like Mother Nature intended.

Oh, by the way, the people in the above photograph are not rubbing margarine on the bird to prepare it for their dinner. They work for the RSPCA West Hatch Centre in Taunton, England, and they are using the fat to remove an unknown pollutant from a contaminated waterfowl. If you look at the scars on the wrist of the handler on the left, you may understand why the rescuers have put a sheath on the bird's beak.

NON-SUICIDAL LEMMINGS

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Lemmings do not commit mass suicide by stampeding over a cliff into the sea. This legend acquired legs in 1958, when Disney released a film called White Wilderness. The director imported some lemmings which had been captured by Inuit children, drove them off of a cliff (the lemmings, that is), and used trick photography to vastly increase their numbers in the movie. According to the film, the lemmings were not intentionally committing suicide, but merely died from exhaustion and drowning in a futile attempt to swim to the opposite shore of the ocean.

However, as revealed by Snopes, these much-maligned mammals do not hurl themselves by droves into the water for any reason, although a few may fall in accidentally.

Lemmings do have large fluctuations in numbers, but so do many wild animals. Lemmings handle the problem of overpopulation through the more traditional means of starvation, epidemics, being eaten by predators (including other lemmings), and migration. 

THE ELEVATED BABY CAGE

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In 1922, Emma Read invented the baby cage. This handy device simplified the lives of urban apartment dwellers by providing them a way to stash their infants in pens hanging in the fresh air outside the window while freeing up valuable floor space. This was at a time when outside air was considered a panacea for all sorts of diseases and an alternative to miasma.

A parent could also put a child in one of these cages for "time out" punishment, where it literally would be a suspended sentence.

Eleanor Roosevelt acquired one of these pens in 1923 to imprison her daughter, Anna. Mrs. Roosevelt was gobsmacked when she was threatened with child abuse charges if she were to actually employ the enclosure.

The cage was popular in some English cities but lost its appeal when the air became filled first with German bombs and then later by killer smog.

The cage was just what every mother needed--a device to teach her toddler to climb out of a window.

THE DIRTY STORY BEHIND PLAY-DOH®

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Play-Doh® was originally developed by Kutol Corporation in the 1930s as a compound to clean coal dust from wallpaper. After World War II, demand for the product plummeted with the demise of coal furnaces and the invention of washable vinyl wallpaper. 

Kay Zufall was a Cincinnati schoolteacher and the sister-in-law of Kutol executive Joe McVicker. In 1954, she saved the company from bankruptcy when she saw schoolchildren making Christmas ornaments out of the wallpaper cleaner, realized its potential as a colorful and pleasant-smelling alternative to modeling clay, and convinced McVicker to market it as a toy. She also came up with the name "Play-Doh®," in contrast to McVicker's ponderous proposal of "Kutol's Rainbow Modeling Compound." Zufall received no compensation for her contributions or acknowledgement in the resulting patent application.

Play-Doh®, now manufactured and sold by Hasbro, Inc., was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1998. It is estimated that over 700 million pounds of it have been kneaded by the fingers of joyful children.

PAINTING WITH COW URINE

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"Indian yellow" was a bright yellow pigment first used by Dutch artists but later by all painters until the early 20th Century. It was fluorescent and, as a result, produced a particularly vivid hue when the painting was seen in sunlight.

It was purportedly made from the urine of cattle in India which were fed on an exclusive diet of mango leaves. The production was banned in 1908 on the basis of cruelty, as the mango leaves contained urushiol, the active agent found in poison ivy, and bovines on this diet were both very uncomfortable as well as extremely malnourished. For a practice to have been banned as long ago as 1908 on the basis of cruelty, it must have been cruel indeed.

  

The pigment has now been replaced by a substitute manufactured in boring chemical plants.

OHIO--THE 48TH STATE?

In 1953, Congress adopted legislation admitting Ohio as a state. Prior to this time, many persons were under the general impression that Ohio had already joined the Union in 1803. However, when preparing for celebrations for the 150th anniversary of statehood in 1953, the organizers discovered that there was never a joint resolution signed by Congress formally admitting Ohio as the 17th state. In order to resolve any potential legal complications, the Ohio legislature approved a new petition for statehood. At the federal level, Ohioan George Bender of the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a bill which would admit Ohio retroactively as of March 1, 1803. Congress passed the joint resolution which was then signed by President Eisenhower on August 7, 1953. 

For reasons explained in exquisite and painstaking detail by The Green Papers, it may not have been legally necessary in the first place to have a joint Congressional resolution admitting Ohio (or, for that matter, any other state). Nonetheless, creative tax protesters have argued that the 1953 date applies and that since William Howard Taft was born in Ohio prior to it becoming a state in 1953, he was not a natural-born citizen and was thus barred by the Constitution from becoming President. The protesters then conclude that the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, which authorized the income tax, was as a result invalid when it was adopted during Taft's Presidency in 1913. These arguments have been universally found wanting by the courts who have considered the issue. 

THE NOTORIOUS HANS ULRICH-RUDEL

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Hans Ulrich-Rudel was a German pilot in World War II who flew 2,530 combat missions at a time when most airmen failed to survive 25. He piloted primarily Stukas, which had powerful cannons but which were slow and unwieldy. He nonetheless destroyed 11 aircraft, 519 tanks, 4 armored trains, 70 landing craft, 150 artillery pieces, several bridges, over 1,000 trucks, 2 cruisers, 1 destroyer, and, with the assistance of another Stuka pilot, the Soviet battleship Marat. He was shot down 32 times by anti-aircraft fire, often behind enemy lines.  In the middle of the war, one of his legs was shot off, but he continued to fly in combat.

The only German more decorated than Rudel was Herman Goering; however, Rudel was the only person ever to receive the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with gold oak leaves, swords, and diamonds. Ironically, for nearly the first two years of the war, he was in a non-combat role because his superiors thought him to be a poor pilot.

After the war, Rudel went to Argentina and played tennis and climbed mountains while hobnobbing with the Perons and Joseph Mengele. He returned to Germany in 1953 and became a successful businessman until his death in 1982.

Purportedly, Rudel provided technical advice on the development of the American A-10 aircraft.

I wish I could tell you that Rudel was not a rabid Nazi and that he eventually had regrets about serving Hitler's agenda. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be any evidence available which would support such assertions.

For further information about Hans Ulrich-Rudel, check out his biography at the Badass of the Week website. This site, which is one of my favorites, features extremely colorful accounts of extremely colorful people (or sometimes animals), both good and evil, doing extremely dangerous things without regard to personal safety.  Be prepared, however, for a little profanity.

DIREWOLVES AS PETS

The extremely (and rightfully so) popular Game of Thrones on HBO features feuding kingdoms in a dark and bloody medieval fantasy world. The sigil of House Stark (who are the good guys in the series--although there aren't that many of them left by now) is that of a direwolf. In the show, a direwolf is essentially a gray wolf on steroids and is renowned for its strength, intelligence, and ferocity. Each of the five Stark children was given a direwolf puppy who grew up to protect loyally its respective master and who could be relied upon to rip out the throat of an attacker—a service which has to be rendered on a frequent basis.

Early in the series, the direwolf named Lady, who was the pet of Sansa Stark, was put to death. However, the actress portraying Sansa (Sophie Turner) grew so fond of Lady during the brief time that Lady was on set that she adopted Lady in real life.

Lady (whose real name is Zunni) and her associates in the show are not actually direwolves. They are Northern Inuit dogs who look like wolves. However, Northern Inuits cannot be relied upon to rip out throats whenever necessary. They are one of the most loveable and gentle breeds around, and it is unlikely that one would ever harm a human. That does not mean, however, that they cannot be incredibly stubborn and try to be the alpha dog over their owners, and they need masters who can devote a lot of time to them along with opportunities for a lot of daily exercise. Ironically, because it is possible that there is some wolf blood in their recent lineage, some local governments have sought to ban ownership of them.

Direwolves are not just fantasy creatures. Real dire wolves (generally spelled as two separate words when not used in a Game of Thrones context) actually existed. Most became extinct about 10,000 years ago, although some paleontologists believe that a population may have existed in Arkansas as late as 2000 BC.

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DENATURED ALCOHOL--POISONING PEOPLE TO SAVE THEM

During Prohibition in the USA, there was still a large need for the production of ethyl alcohol for use in various industrial processes. In order to discourage the diversion of this alcohol for use in illegal beverages, the government required that the makers add poisons to denature it. However, because most bootleggers could pay more for competent chemists than the government would, the bootleggers would quickly develop de-denaturing processes to restore industrial alcohol back to a form which could be consumed, and industrial ethyl alcohol became the primary source of alcohol for illegal liquor suppliers.

However, in 1926, the government finally came up with a formula which could not easily be made safe. It included, among other ingredients, kerosene, brucine (a plant alkaloid closely related to strychnine), gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, acetone, and methyl alcohol (Methyl alcohol, unlike the ethyl alcohol normally contained in booze, is not always fatal. Sometimes, it merely causes permanent blindness.).  Despite the lethality of this mixture, there were always foolish folks who would, either knowingly or unknowingly, feel compelled to drink alcohol laced with it.

The government's witches' brew killed over 10,000 people from 1926 to the end of Prohibition in 1933. Somehow, however, the supply of illegal liquor, regardless of its source, remained plentiful throughout the same time period.

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THE DARK SIDE OF DR. LUKE BLACKBURN

Dr. Luke Pryor Blackburn was a Kentucky physician renowned for his compassionate and caring treatment of yellow fever victims during a Bermuda epidemic in 1864 as well as during earlier outbreaks within the United States. Several of his nurses and fellow physicians called him a saint.

No one questioned why Blackburn, during the Bermuda outbreak, would carefully gather up the bed linens and clothes of the yellow fever victims. If they had, they possibly would have realized that he was packing them up in trunks and shipping them to cities in the northern United States, where he expected that the contents of the trunks would be distributed and would cause extensive yellow fever epidemics in the population centers of the Union. He also prepared a valise containing contaminated fine linen shirts which he attempted to have delivered to Abraham Lincoln.

His scheme was discovered around the time of Lincoln’s assassination, and Blackburn fled to Canada, where he was charged with, but acquitted of, violating Canada’s Neutrality Act.

Although he realized that more serious charges could await him in the USA, he nonetheless returned to Kentucky in 1868. He so endeared himself by again saving the sick that he ran as a Democrat for the governorship in 1879 and won. He used his office to make numerous prison reforms, which did not sit well with his political party. 

The 1864 yellow fever terrorist plot turned out to be a bust. Blackburn did not realize (nor did anyone else until 1900) that the disease was spread by mosquitoes and could not be transmitted via contact with contaminated bedding or clothing.

AUSTRALIAN FUNNEL-WEBS--THE STORMTROOPERS OF THE ARACHNID WORLD

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Most dangerous spider bites in the USA are attributed to a helpless black widow or brown recluse being forced into an untenable position (such as lying blissfully in a shoe until someone inserts a foot into it) and then reacting with a single desperate chomp in self-defense. No such claim is made for any of the three subspecies of the dreaded two-inch long Australian funnel-web spider. Male funnel-webs (who also have more toxic venom than females) affirmatively prowl around looking for trouble, and when provoked, they grab hold of their victim and react savagely and aggressively with multiple bites with their fangs. These are not ordinary fangs. They are big. Further, unlike the opposable fangs of most spiders, the fangs of the Australian funnel-web are pointed downward like daggers. Because of the size and hardness of these fangs, the spider is able to punch them though shoe leather or a toenail. Also, unlike most other spiders, which often bite without injecting toxins, a significant percentage of Australian funnel-web bites involve envenomation of the victim. To see their biting technique in action, watch this National Geographic Channel video.

Fortunately, funnel-web venom is harmless to most mammals. Unfortunately, humans and other primates are the exception to this rule. Australian funnel-web venom, especially from the Sidney subspecies, is an extremely dangerous neurotoxin for humans and can easily cause a very unpleasant death. However, since most of the dangerous Australian funnel-web bites occur in the urban area of Sidney, the plethora of hospitals and antivenom therein has meant that there have been no fatalities attributed to funnel-web spiders in recent years. 

Aesthetically, Australian funnel-web spiders are quite attractive. They sport a very tasteful and elegant glossy dark brown or black carapace. Their beauty was captured by the Perth Mint, who featured them in 2012 on a colorful silver dollar issued by the nation of Tuvalu.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE HALF-BUCKS GONE? LONG TIME NO PASSING---

A few years ago, I was in a McDonald's restaurant and witnessed a man and woman of about 35 years of age and their daughter ogling a treasure they had received in change. Their excited cries revealed that they were holding a half dollar--an object that none of them had ever previously seen.

The foregoing tableau merely reflected the fact that U.S. half dollars are not normally found in circulation. This was not however, always the case. When I was a youth over five decades ago, 50-cent pieces were ubiquitous and had their own compartment in every cash register drawer. Seventy-five cents in change would be tendered in the form of a half dollar and a quarter, not three quarters as it is today.

What happened? As my fellow geezers will recall, dimes, quarters, and half dollars used to be made out of an alloy containing 90% silver. In the mid-1960s, due to the rising price of silver (or the pressure of inflation--take your pick on the description), many folks hoarded silver coinage. In addition, the government was losing its shirt minting silver money, as the value of the metal in it exceeded the face value of the coins (it is pretty pathetic when you have the power literally to manufacture cash but cannot turn a profit). Consequently, the government in 1965 started producing dimes and quarters out of a silverless cupro-nickel alloy pressed over a copper core (called "clad" coinage).

In order to make the fact that cheap copper slugs were replacing honest silver coins more politically palatable to the public, the government did not remove all silver from the 50-cent piece. In 1965, it instead started making half-dollars consisting of silver on the outside with a copper core on the inside. Unless closely inspected, these coins maintained the illusion of being 90% silver, but in reality, the copper core brought down the silver content to 40%, which made them still profitable to mint.

Unfortunately, the price of silver continued to climb, and eventually even the 40% half dollars had more than fifty cents worth of silver in them. People, following Gresham's law (which states essentially that money made out of cheap metal will drive out of circulation money made out of valuable metal), hoarded these 40% half dollars, just as they had been already hoarding the 90% silver version as well as the silver dimes and quarters. After a few years, there were very few half dollars in circulation, and Americans were using quarters in their place in all of their daily transactions.

Eventually, in 1971, the mint ceased using any silver in the making of half dollars and switched over to the same composition used in clad quarters and dimes. However, citizens by then had grown accustomed to not using 50-cent pieces at all, and they (the half dollars, not the citizens) languished for the most part in bank vaults, where they can still be found today. Since 2002, the mint has only made a limited quantity of half dollars each year for collectors and is no longer producing large numbers for general circulation. 

If you wish to buy some of those fresh collectible 50-cent coins from the mint, click here.

HOW WE ALMOST LOST LT. UHURA

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In 1966, Nichelle Nichols was the first African-American woman to be given a major part in a TV series which did not involve the portrayal of a subservient or highly racially stereotyped character. She played Lt. Uhura, which was a significant role in Star Trek. However, NBC was afraid of angering its southern affiliates if it were to officially sign her on as a regular, so she was hired as a "day worker," even though she appeared in almost every episode. Ironically, this system paid her more than any of the regular actors, who were kept uninformed about this fact. Her high wages were not enough to compensate her for NBC studio officials constantly trying to minimize her part, uttering racial comments in her presence, and withholding her fan mail, and she planned on quitting after the first season. However, she was persuaded not to do so by Dr. Martin Luther King, who pleaded with her not to abdicate her position as the leading positive black role model on television.

THE "RONSON" TANK

The US-made Sherman tank, deployed by the various Allied nations in World War II, was nicknamed by its users as the "Ronson" after the Ronson cigarette lighter's advertising slogan of "a RONSON lights every time." It was also known by the British as "The Tommycooker" and by the Poles as "The Burning Grave." These terms of endearment were references to the fact that the Shermans' thinner armor, anemic cannons, poorly protected ammo storage, and gasoline (not diesel) engines made their crews particularly vulnerable to being incinerated in their machines in action against their German counterparts. Part of the problem was that the original version of the Sherman was not designed to fight other tanks but instead was intended only for infantry support and to provide the soldiers with a base of fire. Unfortunately, no one told the Germans that they should not engage these Shermans with their own stout and well-designed Panzers. 

Nonetheless, their numerical superiority and the immense courage of their crews, as well as ongoing improvements and modifications to the original design, eventually enabled the Shermans to prevail in the European theater. They also did well in the Pacific, as the Japanese tanks were even flimsier.

Later in the war, there were actual Ronson Shermans, which were outfitted with flamethrowers made by the Ronson company.

The above photo showing a Sherman at the moment of firing its main gun was taken by my father, who served in the 103rd Infantry Division. He wrote on the back the succinct caption "Tank in Action." He most likely snapped the picture in southern Germany in early 1945.

ÅLE'S WELL

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In August of 2014, Tomas Kiellman of the Swedish fishing village of Brantevick invited some friends over for a crayfish party.  His guests requested to see Åle, who was a European eel who had lived in the well on Kiellman's property since prior to the purchase of the real estate by Kiellman's father in 1962. Lamentably, Kiellman discovered the corpse of Åle at the bottom of the well, and it smelt pretty bad. 

European eels rarely survive past the age of seven, so it is fairly impressive that Åle was at least 52 upon his demise.

However, what is even more impressive is that Åle was actually at least 155 years old when he died. There is ample evidence that Åle was tossed into the well in 1859 by Samuel Nillson, in accordance with the custom in the 19th century for rural Swedes to keep an eel in their drinking water to eat bugs. There is further documentation that Åle was passed down through the several generations of property owners.

In addition, in 1959, the Swedish press reported Åle's 100th birthday. Throughout the years, Åle has often been the subject of various news stories and even a book.

Scientists have opined, based upon the fact that another eel lived to age 85 in an aquarium and that Åle's cold well was probably an ideal locale to practice longevity, that Åle could well have been around when James Buchanan was President. They are examining Åle's remains at the Freshwater Institute in Stockholm to seek further confirmation of his age. Their findings were expected to be available by August 25, 2014, but I have been unable to ascertain whether or not the report was ever released. Something may be a little fishy.

There is another eel in the well on the Kiellman property. However, it is only 110 years old. As all second-born children are aware, it is the first-born who hogs all of the glory and gets all of the attention. This poor guy has been around for over a century and still doesn't even have a name.

"LIMELIGHT" NOT IN THE LIMELIGHT

Limelight was a movie starring Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton which was made in 1952. It received an Oscar for its score in 1973. Normally, only new pictures from the prior year can win an Academy Award, but when Limelight came out, Chaplin was being accused of being a commie, and only East Coast theaters would show it. For Oscar purposes, the official release date of a movie is determined by when it first plays in Los Angeles, and, in this case, that did not occur until 1972.

Limelight received outstanding reviews from high-brow film critics and was very popular in Europe and Japan. Its sales in the USA, however, were a lackadaisical $1 million--most likely because most theaters refused to screen it.

I have never seen the picture and thus cannot legitimately pass judgment on it. However, the descriptions of it I have read suggest to me that it is one of those poignant, bittersweet, feeling-sharing type of treacle fests which would bore me to tears. 

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FERRET LEGGING

A sport more likely to emphasize the agony of defeat rather than the thrill of victory is ferret-legging, which originated in England but has now also taken hold in parts of Virginia and Manitoba. In ferret-legging, a male contestant dons trousers without underwear and drops in two ferrets (although some more liberal non-traditional competitions now allow just one animal). The rules require that the ferrets must be able to travel from one leg to the other inside the britches but that the waist and cuffs of the trousers must be sealed so that the ferrets cannot escape. The ferrets cannot be sedated and must have their full set of teeth and claws. The winner of the contest is the person who goes the longest without releasing the ferrets.

The natural reaction of a confined ferret is to bite tenaciously and claw viciously anything (and I mean anything--remember, there is no underwear) it encounters, so the duration of the contests was originally fairly short and was generally measured in seconds and not minutes. However, the current record now stands at five hours and thirty minutes--still short of the magic time of six hours, which is the equivalent of the four-minute mile in the sport of ferret-legging. One world champion, Reg Mellor, wore white trousers so that all of the bleeding wounds were clearly visible. According to Outside Magazine, he described ferrets as "things that live only to kill, that'll eat your eyes out to get at your brain."

Ferret-legging was parodied in the Cape Feare episode of The Simpsons, except that the contestants used squirrels instead. Parenthetically, for reasons too many to enumerate here, Cape Feare was and is clearly the best episode of The Simpsons ever.

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BOVINE COMPASSES

Scientists studying satellite images from all over the world were gobsmacked to note that, in the vast majority of instances, grazing or resting cattle line up their bodies so that they are facing either magnetic north or south. The exception to this rule occurs on pastures beneath or near high-voltage power lines which disrupt the normal electromagnetic fields of the earth.

Click here for an abstract of the study as reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (which also contains a PDF of the full report).

MURDEROUS MARY

September 14, 1916--A day that will live in infamy in eastern Tennessee. "Mary" (with no known last name), an Asian immigrant of unusual strength and size who did not speak English, was passing through the sleepy town of Kingsport. Mary was attacked on the street by a white man named Red Eldridge. Mary, in a fit of rage, killed Eldridge. Mary was shot by a witness but was only superficially wounded.

The citizens of the county were riled to a blood-lust and almost everyone, including the Sheriff, concluded that justice for Mary should be both swift and public. In light of what was perceived as her obvious guilt, an official trial was deemed wasteful and unnecessary. In what could be termed a circus atmosphere, it was decided that Mary would be dispatched dramatically in full view of as many persons as possible. Electrocution and a firing squad as well as some other even more sadistic methods were considered as options, but the traditionalists won out and decided that Mary would suffer death by hanging the following day.

The problem was that Mary was so large that it was feared that she would not fit through the ordinary trap door on the county's scaffold. Mary was therefore transferred to the nearby town of Erwin to be hanged from a railroad crane. On the first attempt, the noose broke and Mary plummeted to the ground and fractured her hip. She was rehanged with a large chain and finally succumbed.

Her body was buried in an unmarked grave on the railroad yards, and the exact location is unknown today.

At the time of the unfortunate incident, Mary was the top-billed elephant for the traveling "Sparks World Famous Shows" circus. She weighed 10,000 pounds and was probably larger than even the infamous Jumbo. She was a talented and highly regarded performer (who worked for peanuts) until her new handler Eldridge jabbed her with a sharp hook and she crushed his head like a watermelon.

[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Accounts differ on Mary's prior criminal history. Some versions allege that she was a gentle giant who had been treated with the utmost kindness until she was paired up with Eldridge and lashed out in shock and awe when he jabbed her on an abscessed tooth; others state that she was a vicious rogue who had killed before while working for other circuses and was employed by Sparks Circus under an assumed name. In any event, the owner of Sparks Circus figured that he could no longer display her due to her notoriety and decided instead to capitalize on that same notoriety by making her available for a dramatic execution. 

For additional information, read this article from the Blue Ridge County Magazine or acquire Charles Edwin Prices's famed tome on Southern pachydermicide, The Day They Hung the Elephant.

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"OPERATION NORTHWOODS"

On September 1, 1939, World War II officially started when Nazi troops dressed in Polish uniforms "attacked" a German radio station on the border between Germany and Poland, thus providing Hitler with apparent justification to launch his invasion against the Poles. On March 13, 1962, General Lyman Lemnitzer (pictured above), the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, submitted on behalf of the Joint Chiefs an even more outrageous plan, "Operation Northwoods," to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. President Kennedy, upon review of the proposal, was furious, and General Lemnitzer shortly thereafter was denied a reappointment to the Joint Chiefs.

Lemnitzer and the other Joint Chiefs were virulent anti-Communists and were outraged by the humiliation inflicted on the United States by its mishandling of the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba. Their proposed response of "Operation Northwoods" was the stuff that tin foil-hatted conspiracy theorists dream about--except that this time it was all true. "Operation Northwoods" called for the performance of various bad things by the U.S. and then blaming them on Cuba in order to garner public support for military action against that nation. 

The most benign component of this scheme was based on the hope that John Glenn's Mercury capsule would explode in flight. If it did, there would be evidence placed to suggest that Cuba had sabotaged it. Since Glenn thwarted this aspect of the plan by surviving his space mission, there were backup scenarios, including the bombing of civilian targets in the United States, the faked shooting down of a civilian airplane over the water in or near Cuban airspace, the sinking of refugee boats coming from Cuba, the blowing up of an American warship in Guantanamo Bay, the gunning down of Cuban immigrants in the streets of the United States, the flying of a U-2 spy plane over Cuba at such a low altitude that it would be brought down, and the launching of military sorties against countries near Cuba--again, with all of these actions to be attributed to Castro.  

This plan was submitted at a time when the military leaders were convinced that the Kennedy administration was too soft on Communism and that something had to be done (even including, according to some theorists, Kennedy's assassination). It is perhaps not coincidence that one of the most popular literary works published in 1962 was Seven Days in May, an excellent novel whose premise was based on an attempted military coup against the United States. Kennedy himself affirmatively encouraged the adoption of the story into a movie, which was released in 1964. 

After Kennedy vetoed "Operation Northwoods," Lemnitzer was transferred to Europe to become the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. He was later appointed by President Gerald Ford to the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States (also known as the "Rockefeller Commission" to see if the CIA had broken American laws and if government officials had been involved in the Kennedy assassination.

For additional information on "Operation Northwoods," please obtain a copy of James Bradford's book Body of Secrets. 

RAT BOMBS

In 1941, one of the weapons developed by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) was the dreaded rat bomb. The rat bomb consisted of the skin of a Rattus norvegicus stuffed with high explosives and a heat-sensitive detonator so that the resulting package looked like a stiff dead rat. The rat bombs were to be thrown into German coal piles for ships and locomotives. The fireman, in the course of his duties, would shovel the rat into the firebox and the rest would be history.

Unfortunately, the Germans discovered a shipment of unexploded rat bombs early on and became extremely diligent about not incinerating rats, so the project had little direct success. On the other hand, many thousands of man-hours were expended by the Germans looking for remarkedly rigid rodent remains.

Some of the rats were to be loaded with time-delay fuses instead of heat sensitive detonators.

You may be wondering why anyone would even shovel a rat into a firebox. You are sweltering in an overheated confined space with a stinking dead rodent. You cannot leave your post. You are going to be there for several more boring hours. There is a white-hot cleansing inferno right in front of you. What would YOU do?

WHY BARNS ARE RED

Until the mid 1850s, farmers almost always made their own paint, as commercial products were not readily available. Typically, they would mix milk or lime with a base of linseed oil. They often then added powdered rust (which also acted as a fungicide for the wood) or blood from slaughtered animals, as either of these ingredients was readily available. The presence of the blood or rust (or both) produced a paint with a dark red hue, which is why barns were painted that color for centuries until it simply became a matter of tradition.

THE CARBROOK GOLF CLUB WATER HAZARD

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The Carbrook Golf Club in Queensland, Australia, has a water hazard in the truest sense of the word, especially for a golfer who wades in trying to retrieve a lost ball.  The lake on the course contains at least thirty bull sharks, many over ten feet long.  Bull sharks are maneaters who attack people more than any other shark species, as they like to cruise in shallow water and are very aggressive. 

The sharks populated the lake in 1990 when a flood temporarily connected it to the ocean.

Bull sharks have been known to travel up freshwater passages and have been caught in the Mississippi River as far north as Alton, Illinois.

If you wish to know what a bull shark who calls a golf course home looks like, please click on this video clip.