THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY (FORTUNATELY)

By Natalie Maynor [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

During World War II, German U-boats roamed the Gulf of Mexico looking for Allied shipping from southern ports. Once in a while, a Nazi sub would intercept a civilian pleasure craft and then let it go after pillaging it for food and water. Ernest Hemingway, who resided in Cuba at the time, convinced the US Navy to loan him a Thompson submachine gun and grenades so that he could go hunting for subs in the Pilar, his 38-foot cabin cruiser/fishing boat (pictured above). Hemingway's plan was to entice a surfaced sub to approach his boat for boarding. He would then kill any of the crew on the deck of the U-boat with his Thompson and then drop grenades and a homemade explosive device down the conning tower to take care of the remaining enemy. 

Hemingway saw only one sub, and that one refused to take the bait and instead sailed off into the sunset. This was very fortunate for Hemingway's two young children, who often accompanied him on these missions. Notwithstanding the element of surprise, it was very naive and unrealistically optimistic of Hemingway to believe that a cabin cruiser, even one with a light machine gun and grenades, would not have been instantly annihilated by a trained German Kriegsmarine crew and the sub's deck gun. 

Some cynics have even suggested that the scheme was primarily a ruse so that Hemingway could endear himself to the Cuban authorities and obtain extra gas rations as well as avoid arrest while driving around drunk in his boat.

THE HIGH-COST ALTERNATIVE TO LASIK

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Dr. Michael Barratt (second from the left in the above photo) is a Mission Specialist astronaut for NASA whose expertise is in space medicine. He was originally nearsighted and needed glasses to see distant objects, while his close-up vision was fine (apparently, you do not have to have 20-20 eyesight to be a Mission Specialist). After several months in space, his vision altered permanently so that he can now see far objects perfectly but needs reading glasses.

This change resulted from a condition called papilledema, which is a swelling of the optic disk in the eye. It affects a large percentage of male astronauts. Essentially, weightlessness alters the shape of the eye. In Barratt's case, his optic nerves became flattened and his retinas developed folds in them. Sometimes the change is temporary; often it is not. Since it can lead to blindness, it is of major concern to NASA, especially if NASA ever gets its funding back to commence long-term 

manned (or womanned) 

space exploration, including missions to other planets.

For some unknown reason, no female in space has ever developed papilledema.

PILGRIM POOCHES

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The records are scarce concerning the importation of dogs to the New World on the Mayflower. However, it is known through a 17th century publication that Pilgrim John Goodman did bring with him a mastiff and an English springer spaniel. He reported that he was glad for the presence of the dogs when he was lost in the woods and heard the cry of lions (probably cougars), and the spaniel in another incident cowered with him and provided limited moral support when he was surrounded by, but not attacked by, wolves. Goodman died within a year of coming to America, but his canines no doubt found employment with someone else thereafter.

There are no records of cats on the Mayflower. Cats were commonly found on ships during that era due to their rodent-killing proclivities and were ubiquitous in English households at that time. It is very likely that several cats traveled to America with the Pilgrims but that no one made a note of it because it would not have been regarded as a remarkable event. Domesticated felines were definitely in New England by 1634, as there is a report indicating that they saved crops from squirrels and chipmunks during that year.

#178--THE INFERNAL COAL TORPEDO

Thomas Courtenay was a St. Louis businessman who developed the "coal torpedo" for use by the Confederacy in the American Civil War. The coal torpedo was a hollow chunk of iron about four inches on each side which was forged to resemble a piece of coal. The torpedo was filled with gunpowder and plugged. It was then coated with beeswax and covered with coal dust so that it looked exactly like a hunk of bituminous. 

Courtenay entered into an agreement with the Confederate government where he was placed on rolls of the Confederate Secret Service and he and his employees threw coal torpedos into refueling bins used by the US Navy or by US freighters.

Eventually, the coal torpedo would make its way onto a US vessel and then into the firebox of the boat, where it would explode from the heat. The explosion by itself would not be able to sink the vessel, but it was enough to rupture the ship's steam boiler. The resulting boiler explosion would cause extensive death, injury, and fire on the vessel and sometimes did result in the ship sinking.

The same concept was adopted in World War II to be used by various resistance groups to sabotage Nazi-controlled steam locomotives, by German saboteurs against American coal-powered plants, and by the British with their dreaded rat bomb.

#177--THE GREAT AND WONDERFUL OZ COINCIDENCE

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During the 1939 filming of The Wizard of Oz, the wardrobe folks were combing second-hand shops looking for a coat to be worn by the huckster character Professor Marvel. They were seeking "grandeur gone to seed" and found in a used clothing store a Prince Albert style coat which had obviously been very elegant and expensive when new but which had since become ratty with age.

One day during filming, the actor portraying Professor Marvel turned out one of the pockets of the coat and found the name on it of "L. Frank Baum." L. Frank Baum, who died in 1919, had achieved fame and fortune in 1900 when he wrote "The Wizard of Oz." The studio thereafter confirmed with Baum's tailer in Chicago and with Baum's widow that he had owned the actual coat in question.

THE SEARS KENMORE BABY COOKER AND BODY PART ROASTER

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Sears once offered on its website a Kenmore gas grill under "Human Cooking > Grills to Cook Babies and More > Body Part Roaster."  The description ran for a half-day on August 20, 2009, until it was pulled.  Sears claimed, quite convincingly, that it was not responsible for the questionable verbiage.

For further information, as well as a picture of the offending listing, please take a gander at Snopes.

WHAT HAPPENED TO KENNEDY'S BRAIN?

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After the autopsy was conducted on President John F. Kennedy, his brain was placed in a stainless steel container and stored by the Secret Service in the Executive Office of the President. On April 26, 1965, a footlocker containing the brain, as well as other autopsy-related items, was placed in the custody of Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy's former personal secretary, who maintained an office at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in order to organize Kennedy's papers and other materials. On Halloween day of 1966, pursuant to an agreement between the Kennedy family and the government, the footlocker was formally transferred to the custody of NARA, whose representatives immediately noticed that the brain was missing. It has not been seen since.

There is no conclusive proof establishing what happened to the brain, but what little evidence there is suggests that the brain was probably removed from Lincoln's custody prior to October 31, 1966, at the direction of Robert F. Kennedy, the President's brother. Why RFK did so (if he did) is open to speculation. One unlikely theory is that an examination of the brain would suggest that the President was not only shot by Lee Harvey Oswald in the back of the head but also by a second gunman in the forehead. Another hypothesis is that RFK simply did not want his brother's brain put on public display. However, while there are in fact many interesting and unusual items which are available for viewing at Presidential Museums (most of which are managed by NARA), it appears unlikely that such a gory exhibit would ever see the light of day. The final theory, and perhaps the most likely one, is that RFK did not want an researcher down the road to do a chemical analysis of the brain and discover the presence of various pharmaceutical compounds. President Kennedy took high-potency medication for a variety of medical problems (including, at least once, an anti-psychotic drug); he and his family went to great lengths to conceal all of his ailments from the public except for the severe back injury he received in combat in World War II.

If Robert Kennedy did take the brain, did he do with it afterwards? There is no evidence that it was ever reunited with the President's body, and it would be almost impossible to do so secretly. What does one do with a sibling's brain? Virtually any scenario I can imagine steps into the realm of the macabre.

You can read the portion of the 1979 Report by the House Select Committee on Assassinations here dealing with the disappearance of the brain and the surrounding circumstances. Parenthetically, the Committee disagreed with the Warren Commission's finding that Oswald acted alone and concluded that there was a second assassin at the infamous "grassy knoll" who fired but missed. You can form your own opinion on this issue when the primary source documents relied upon by the Committee are released to the public in 2029.

WHEN AMERICA'S INDUSTRIAL MIGHT WAS AWESOME

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During World War II, Ford's huge Willow Run plant located at the eastern edge of Washtenaw County, Michigan, produced one B-24 bomber every 55 minutes. Each bomber had over 1,550,000 parts, which meant, on the average, each component was manufactured and installed in one 25/10,000 of a second. It was the largest indoor factory in the world with 3,500,000 square feet and an assembly line over a mile long. The assembly line at one point made a 90 degree turn, which kept the factory entirely in Washtenaw County and thus not subject to the additional taxes it would have had to pay had the line run straight and entered into neighboring Wayne County.

Included in the employee pool were ten midgets recruited from circuses in order to access those hard to get to places on the planes.

For additional information on Willow Run, please click here.

BORED WITH THE WISCONSIN DELLS?

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One of the most beautiful and colorful places in the world is the Dallol desert in Ethopia, which is not a country normally renowned for its tourist attractions. The region is volcanic in origin, and the sulfur salts appear in a wide variety of bright Dr. Seuss primary colors. 

The above photo does not depict inviting pools of water--they are actually composed of sulfuric acid. This feature, coupled with the facts that the average temperature is 93 degrees F (34 degrees C) and that well-armed terrorists from Eritrea are nearby, discourages casual visitation to the area.

For more photos of this interesting area, please visit the Volcano Discovery website.

THE JOY OF LUTEFISK

By Jonathunder (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Lutefisk is pickled cod which originated in Scandinavia. Unfortunately, people who are the descendants of Vikings have a very perverse idea of what constitutes a good pickling agent. Instead of relying on normal edible substances like vinegar or alcohol, they instead soak the fish in lye. If you like the buzz you get from drinking Drano*, then this is the delicacy for you.

Lye of course is an extremely caustic base and will, through the process of saponification, dissolve all of the fatty tissues out of flesh and turn them into soap. In a best case situation, the fish will taste like Lifebuoy; if the preparer screws up the recipe even slightly, it will be your digestive tract which is transformed into soap.

You cannot use silver utensils to eat lutefisk, as they will dissolve. It is safest to serve it on stainless steel; however, almost any dish will be etched and ruined if the lutefisk residue is not immediately scrubbed off.

To read more about this bizarre foodstuff, click on the Smithsonian Magazine site here.
*Unfortunately, in today's litigious society, I have to warn you in an affirmative matter not to actually drink Drano. It will, of course, cause a hideous and extremely painful death.

HOW TO BECOME A POD PERSON

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The latest innovation in travel lodging can be found primarily in Japan but has also spread to a few other countries. It is the "capsule hotel," where the weary traveler can rent what is essentially a well-furnished kennel for his (many of these hotels will not rent to females) overnight stay, which includes a TV, wi-fi, heating and cooling, a bed, a desk, and a large red button which can be pressed to provide, at extra cost, porno movies. Each "room" is a plastic pod of about 6.5 feet by 3.3 feet by 4 feet (2 m by 1 m by 1.25 m).

There is a communal bathroom and a locker room for the traveler's suitcase. The hotel provides sleepwear for use in the cubicle.

The cost per night is usually about $20 to $40 US. 

BETTER THAN GOLD

The capstone of the Washington Monument, when manufactured in 1884, was made out of one of the most valuable and scarce materials of the era--pure aluminum.  At the time, the expense of producing an aluminum capstone was over five times the cost of an equivalent capstone in gold. Like gold, the aluminum did not tarnish, and its durability and uniqueness made it appropriate for this most sacred of American monuments.   Aluminum did not become ubiquitous until a new manufacturing process was developed in 1886 where it could be easily refined by electrolysis instead of by smelting.  Aluminum is actually the third most common element and the most common metal on earth; however, it is never naturally found in its metallic form. For more information on the capstone, click here.

DISSED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Walt Disney's musical about leprechauns, Darby O'Gill and the Little People, received a rave review from The New York Times when the film was released in 1959. Lavish commendations were heaped on most of the cast. One exception, however, was made for the 29-year old actor who played the romantic male lead. He was condemned with the faint praise of being "merely tall, dark, and handsome" with the clear implication that he was eye candy but could not act.

Despite this set-back, the actor, Sean Connery, managed to salvage his career, at least to some extent, when he appeared in several more pictures after he secured the role in 1962 of James Bond in Dr. No.

Darbvy O'Gill and the Little People is in fact worth watching, if for no other reason than to hear James Bond sing.

JUST JOSHIN' YOU

By Brandon Grossardt for the image; Charles Barber for the coin design. (Actual coin) [Public domain, GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

In 1883, the U.S. Mint issued a newly designed nickel.  It featured the Roman numeral "V" for "five" on the reverse as the only indication of value. Josh Tatum, a deaf-mute, gold-plated large numbers of the coins when they were first released and gave them to shopkeepers without comment (obviously) to make small purchases. In many cases, the store clerk believed that he was handed a $5.00 gold piece and gave Josh back over four dollars in change. Josh would graciously accept the change, again without comment.  

Although arrested, Josh was acquitted at trial, as the judge bought his lawyer's argument that Josh never specifically stated that the coins were anything other than a nickel or that he was entitled to more than a nickel's worth of change.  His name lives on, however, in the use of the term "josh" as a synonym for joking or for kidding someone.

The design of the nickel was quickly changed so that it thereafter read "V CENTS."

THE BLACK BOOK

Bundesarchiv, Bild 101III-Alber-178-04A / Alber, Kurt / CC-BY-SA [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

"The Black Book" is the informal name of a list of 2820 names of prominent politicians, artists, scientists, writers, and other persons of note living in Great Britain in 1940 and who for some reason or the other were bothersome to the Nazis. It was compiled by Walter Schellenberg (see above photo) of the SS. It was intended to be a reference guide for German troops on whom to arrest immediately once they invaded England. Twenty thousand copies were printed, but only two examples are known to have survived Allied bombings and exist today. One of them is in the Imperial War Museum in London.

One name not on the list is that of the former King Edward VIII, who had abdicated the throne in 1936. He was perceived, perhaps correctly, to be sympathetic to the Nazis, and the Germans hoped to recruit him as a puppet ruler during their occupation of the United Kingdom.

The list was not completely infallible and included a few persons who had previously died or emigrated from Great Britain.

Some of the names on the list, according to Wickipedia as well as the memoirs of Schellenberg, are the following:

Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook

Sir Norman Angell, Labour MP awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933 

Margery Corbett Ashby, feminist

Robert Baden-Powell, founder and leader of Scouting (the Nazis regarded Scouting as a spy organisation) 

Edvard Beneš, President of the Czechoslovak government in exile 
Vera Brittain, feminist writer and pacifist

Violet Bonham Carter, anti-fascist liberal politician. Cryptically referred to as "an Encirclement lady politician" 

Neville Chamberlain, former prime minister 

Sydney Chapman, economist 

Winston Churchill, Prime minister (well, duh)

Marthe Cnockaert, First World War spy

Claud Cockburn, journalist 

Seymour Cocks, Labour politician (whose name undoubtedly caused him much grief when he was a youth at boarding school)

Chapman Cohen, secularist writer and lecturer

Lionel Leonard Cohen, lawyer

Robert Waley Cohen, industrialist

G. D. H. Cole, academic

Norman Collins, broadcasting executive

Edward Conze, Anglo-German scholar

Duff Cooper, Cabinet Minister of Information 

Noël Coward, actor who opposed appeasement and was an armed forces entertainer, homosexual, and connected with MI5 

Charles de Gaulle, Free French leader 

Sefton Delmer, journalist 

Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for War 

Conrad O'Brien-ffrench, SIS/MI6 Agent ST36, Agent Z3 for Dansey's Z Organization 

E. M. Forster, author 

Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis and a Jew (died September 23, 1939) 

Willie Gallacher, trade unionist 

Sir Philip Gibbs, journalist and novelist 

Victor Gollancz, publisher

J. B. S. Haldane, geneticist and evolutionary biologist and Communist 

Ernst Hanfstaengl, German refugee. Once a financial backer of Hitler, he had fallen from favour and had fled Germany in 1937 

Aldous Huxley, author (who had emigrated to the USA in 1936) 

Alexander Korda, Hungarian-born British producer and film director 

Harold Laski, political theorist, economist and author 

Megan Lloyd George, politician

David Low, cartoonist 

F. L. Lucas, literary critic, writer and anti-fascist campaigner 

Jan Masaryk, foreign minister of the Czechoslovak government in exile 

Jimmy Maxton, pacifist politician 

Naomi Mitchison, novelist 

Gilbert Murray, classical scholar and activist for the League of Nations

Harold Nicolson, diplomat, author and diarist

Vic Oliver, Jewish entertainer, originally from Austria. Married to Winston Churchill's daughter Sarah 

Ignacy Jan Paderewski, pianist, former Prime Minister of Poland 

Nikolaus Pevsner, German-born architectural historian 

J. B. Priestley, anti-Nazi popular broadcasts and fiction 

Hermann Rauschning, German refugee and once personal friend of Hitler who had turned against him 

Paul Robeson, African-American singer/actor with strong Communist affiliations 

Bertrand Russell, philosopher, historian and pacifist 

C. P. Snow, physicist and novelist 

Stephen Spender, poet, novelist and essayist 

Katharine Stewart-Murray, Duchess of Atholl 

Lytton Strachey, died 1932, writer and critic 

Sybil Thorndike, actress

Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus, politician, former German minister 

Beatrice Webb, socialist and economist 

Chaim Weizmann, Zionist leader 

H. G. Wells, author and socialist 

Rebecca West, English suffragist and writer 

Ted Willis, dramatist

Virginia Woolf, novelist and essayist

MOONBOWS

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Moonbows are the same as rainbows except that the moon, instead of the sun, is the source of light.  They are very rare due the fact that all conditions have to be exactly right in order for them to be visible.  The only two places on earth where there is any reasonable chance of finding one on a regular basis are at Cumberland Falls near Corbin, Kentucky or at Victoria Falls in Zambia. 

Due to the low level of illumination, the human eye usually perceives the moonbow as pure white.  However, if a time-lapse photo or a photo with high-speed film is taken, the full colors of a normal rainbow will be visible in the picture.

In the above photo, the splotch of orange on the right is not the sun but instead the glow from an active volcano.

THE START OF A LAMENTABLE AMERICAN TRADITION

There have been quite a few assassination schemes and attempts against American Presidents--probably a lot more than we realize.

The first known such endeavor occurred on January 30, 1835. Richard Lawrence, a mentally ill housepainter, attempted to shoot 67-year-old Andrew Jackson with a pistol after Jackson left a funeral in the House Chamber of the Capitol. Inexplicably, the gun did not go off. Jackson became peeved and started beating Lawrence with his cane. Lawrence then pulled out another pistol, which also misfired. Lawrence was eventually subdued and disarmed by Davy Crockett and others in Jackson's party.

Lawrence was found by a jury to be not guilty by reason of insanity. He spent the rest of his life in a mental institution and died in 1861.

Jackson was convinced that Lawrence was hired by the Whigs to kill him, but there is no evidence to support this paranoia.

The two pistols were tested extensively by researchers at the Smithsonian Institute about a hundred years later, and they consistently functioned perfectly. Some learned guy calculated that the odds of both of them misfiring were one in 125,000. The day of the attempted assassination was damp and humid, and those conditions may have contributed to the end result.

A BALLSY MANUEVER

Photo by Lenore Edman (Flickr: SB 206) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

In the 1960s, Wham-O was manufacturing more than 170,000 SuperBalls (those hard rubbery toy balls which have a high coefficient of restitution and which, as a result, bounce incredibly well) a year. Wham-O, as a publicity stunt, made an extra-large SuperBall the size of a bowling ball. One day, during an exhibition in Melbourne, Australia, the sphere fell out of a 23rd story window, hit the ground, bounced back up to the 15th floor, and finally crashed into a parked convertible on the 2nd trip down. The ball was unscathed, but the automobile was totally demolished. 
  

The owner of the vehicle probably had difficulty explaining to his insurance company that his car was destroyed by a toy rubber ball.

You may recall that the SuperBall's other claim to fame is that it served as the inspiration for the name of the Super Bowl.

THE SWIMMING DEAD

From USFWS

They are in fact in real life animated rotting corpses which engage in homicidal frenzy and are obsessed with only one thing.  It is not, however, eating brains--it is sex. 

Salmon, as most people know, migrate from the ocean into the stream in which they were born in order to spawn. The journey is not a pleasant one. The male salmon's jaw grows into a tooth-filled hooked weapon, called a kype, so that he can go medieval on other male salmon. Their color changes from a bright ocean silver to red or random streaks of purple or black. Their flesh and muscles deteriorate and fall off as they encounter rocks and waterfalls. By the time a salmon makes it to its spawning area (if it gets that far), much of its body will be moldy and rotten and the spines will be sticking out of its fins. These gangerous tattered beings are piscatorial versions of the ghouls so vividly depicted in movies and TV, and their decay rivals the special effects from Hollywood.

It is for good reason that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service describes them in this video as "Zombie Fish--The Swimming Dead."

From USFWS

FOR THAT PEE-FRESH SOFTNESS

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Ancient Romans would take their dirty tunics to fullers, who would wash the garments in tubs of water by stomping on them like they were grapes.  For highly soiled garments, urine collected from the public restrooms would be substituted for the water.

The fuller business was often the largest commercial enterprise in a Roman town. Because most of the robes were white and easily showed the dirt, there was a lot of the liquid gold consumed in these laundries. Emperor Vespasian, in the true spirit of a bloated governments everywhere, imposed a tax on the urine so used. 

For more information on fullers, please click here.

"...WHERE IS THY STING?"

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In 1983, Dr. Justin Schmidt established the famous "Schmidt Sting Pain Index." This index measures the amount of pain inflicted by the stings of different Hymenoptera (including wasps, bees and ants) on a scale from zero to four.

Dr. Schmidt, from the Southwest Biological Institute in Tucson, Arizona, has been stung over 1,000 times by over 150 species of insects. His scale is subjective and based on the level of pain he perceived as a result of each encounter.

He also provides vivid descriptions for various stings--almost like a wine snob discussing a particular vintage. For example, a bullet ant--one of the few arthropods who has earned the coveted 4.0+ rating on the scale: “Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a three inch nail embedded in your heel.” Another high roller at 4.0, the tarantula hawk wasp (pictured above): “Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has just been dropped into your bubble bath.” For the lowly sweat bee, who scored only a wussy 1.0 on the scale: "Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. As if a tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm." The paper wasp, a strong contender at 3.0: "Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut."

It is always refreshing to encounter someone who so obviously enjoys his work.

NAZI OENOPHILIA

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If you still harbor any doubts that our society is a little sick, I invite you to peruse the website of an Italian wine company who offers a wide variety of products labeled with a picture of Hitler or one of his myrmidons, such as Himmler, Goering, or Eva Braun. Theoretically, the packaging was designed for history buffs, but according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the vast majority of purchasers appear to be either bona fide Neo-nazis or younger folks who really know little about the Nazi Party except that they can shock people by pretending to embrace its philosophy.

WRITING AN EFFECTIVE COLLEGE ADMISSION ESSAY

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John F. Kennedy's essay for his application to Harvard University reads, in its entirety, as follows:

"The reasons that I have for wishing to go to Harvard are several. I feel that Harvard can give me a better background and a better liberal education than any other university. I have always wanted to go there, as I have felt that it is not just another college, but is a university with something definite to offer. Then to [sic], I would like to go to the same college as my father. To be a "Harvard man" is an enviable distinction, and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain."

It is hard to rebut the argument that he did get in, so apparently his efforts were good enough, especially since they overcame a recommendation letter by his own father who said that the candidate "was careless and lacks application."  

HOW TO TRANSPORT A GEM

Public Domain from Wickimedia Commons

One of the most famous, if not the most famous, gems in the world is the 45.52 carat purplish-blue Hope Diamond. From the time of its cloudy origins in the 1600s (where it was then part of a larger diamond of about 112 carats) to its transfer in 1958 to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, the diamond has been possessed by an assortment of thieves, decapitated royalty, unknown individuals, and rich people. Its history, or what is known of it, is available from the Smithsonian.

It is not an inexpensive stone. It is probably worth about $250 million today. It was donated to the Smithsonian by New York jeweler Harry Winston. Winston did not employ a cadre of armed guards and an armored truck to transport the jewel from New York to its new home in the museum. He merely put it in a box wrapped with brown paper and sent it by registered mail, although he did take the precaution of stamping the package "fragile" and insuring it for $1 million.

Rumors abound about the stone being cursed and inflicting horrible consequences on anyone who handles it. Many of these tales no doubt were inspired by the desire of its various owners to inflate its notoriety and consequently its value, although King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette probably would not gainsay their veracity. At any rate, the curse apparently ran out once the diamond was donated to the Smithsonian, as the Hope Diamond has been one of its star attractions for decades and has enticed many visitors to come to the museum.

THE GREYHOUND OF THE SEAS

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In 1903, Germany's ships had won the coveted Blue Riband for six years in a row. The Blue Riband was awarded annually to the fastest trans-Atlantic crossing by an ocean liner. The British government, embarrassed by the situation and, similar to the current American government, willing to go through the public money like it was toilet paper, loaned Cunard Lines 2.4 million pounds (equivalent to about 2 billion dollars today) at a low interest rate to construct two fast ocean liners capable of reclaiming the honor. The deal further provided that the British government would also pay Cunard a grant of 75,000 pounds a year as well as awarding Cunard a mail contract for an additional 68,000 pounds annually. There were strings attached—namely, the vessels had to be constructed to battleship standards so that they could be easily converted to warships in the event of a conflict and turned over to the Royal Navy. The specifications included the installation of mounts for a dozen large guns, the ability to achieve a speed of at least 24.5 knots, and the incorporation of longitudinal coal bunkers which ran down each side of the interior of the ship at the waterline. It was believed that these bunkers would provide extra protection to the ship against enemy shells at the waterline. The Admiralty ignored the fact that the protection would be totally ineffective against submarines, as their torpedoes would strike below the waterline.

When World War I broke out, one of the ships, the RMS Mauretania, was in fact turned over to the Navy and retrofitted as an auxiliary cruiser. The other vessel was rejected for service in the Navy because of excessive fuel consumption. With the ability to cross the Atlantic in four days and eleven hours, it proved to be the fastest ocean liner afloat and was nicknamed the “Greyhound of the Seas.” It was officially called the RMS Lusitania.

As we all know, the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk 100 years ago today by the German sub U-20 in the Irish Sea.

Tragically, it was the insistence of the Royal Navy that longitudinal coal bunkers be installed which insured that the single torpedo was adequate to bring down the ship. Because the Lusitania was near the end of its voyage from New York and had consumed most of the coal in the bunkers, the bunkers were for the most part empty. The forward inertia of the boat very quickly filled the bunkers with water through the hole caused by the explosion. The weight of the water when it filled all of the bunkers on one side toppled the ship towards starboard, causing the open portholes on that side also to swamp the ship with water at the rate of over 260 tons a minute. Had the boat been constructed with normal bunkers, it is quite likely that compartments of the ship where the blast from the torpedo occurred could have been sealed off with the vessel being injured but not sunk.

The Germans had previously advised that any ship flying British colors would be fair game in the waters around the British Isles. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill expressed hope that the sinking of the Lusitania would bring America into the war as a result of the loss of the 128 Americans who were part of the total death toll of 1,198 (and, in fact, some historians claim that the British government affirmatively put the Lusitania at risk so that this would happen). Although the sinking galvanized American resentment against Germany, the United States still resisted entering into the conflict. After all, it was widely suspected that the Lusitania had been carrying munitions (which was true, by the way), the ship was flying a British flag, and it had entered a zone where the Germans warned that it could be sunk. The Germans did not merely provide the warning through diplomatic channels; they had also run notices in fifty American newspapers, including those in New York.

Had the Americans stayed out of the war, the British Admiralty predicted that Great Britain would have to sue for peace by November of 1917 due to the losses of shipping attributable to the German Navy. However, as a classic example of the axiom “when a pig becomes a hog, it gets slaughtered,” the Germans committed two major blunders which precipitated America's entry into the conflict. The first was the Zimmerman telegram, where the Germans suggested to Mexico that it might want to consider becoming an ally of Germany, invading the USA, and reclaiming part of the territory it had lost in the prior century. The second was a policy originated by German Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff in early 1917 establishing that all traffic in the restricted waters around Britain be sunk, regardless of the vessel's flag or nationality. Germany started attacking American ships, and the rest literally is history.

For further detailed information about the Lusitania and its last voyage, I recommend reading Erik Larson's excellent book Dead Wake.

Parenthetically, the torpedoing of the Lusitania inspired artist Fred Spear in 1915 to produce one of the simplest yet most devastatingly effective propaganda posters ever: