THE ANGUISH OF LEONARD SHERMAN

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(STAMP PHOTOS FROM SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NATIONAL POSTAL MUSEUM ARAGO WEBSITE, WHICH IS COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT OF AND NOT ASSOCIATED WITH  "HENRY'S DAILY FACTOIDS.")

In 1962, the United States Post Office Department issued a yellow, black, and brown commemorative stamp honoring Dag Hammarskjold, who had been the Secretary-General of the United Nations and who had died in a plane crash in the previous year. New Jersey jeweler Leonard Sherman was extremely jubilant when he obtained a sheet of the stamps from the post office and discovered that the yellow color on his sheet had been printed upside down. Sherman realized that previous examples of this type of inverted printing error in other issues of stamps had made those items worth incredible sums of money.

Unfortunately, Sherman should have kept his mouth shut and let the smoke clear before he announced his discovery. Postmaster J. Edward Day, upon hearing about Sherman's find, remarked snarkily that, "The Post Office Department is not running a jackpot operation." Day promptly ordered the printing of an additional 40 million stamps, all with the yellow color upside down, in order to destroy the rarity of Sherman's stamps and to screw him out of his good fortune.

FEELING LOUSY

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One of the most popular forms of recreation for the troops during the Civil War was louse racing. Each soldier would put his favorite louse in the middle of a mess plate with the others, and the louse which reached the edge first would bring his owner fame and fortune. One infantryman insisted on using a single louse on a plate and timing the results, but he was disqualified when it was discovered that he was heating his plate to motivate his steed to move faster. 

Although the combatants were often infested with the three main types of lice--head, body, and crab--the body lice were far more ubiquitous. Considering the fact that the troops wore wool uniforms which they often did not change for months, this phenomenon is not surprising.

Depending on the allegiance of the infected combatant, lice were known by a variety of names, such as bluebellies, rebels, tigers, Bragg's body-guard, Zouaves, graybacks, and just plain vermin. A soldier who killed lice was "fighting under the black flag." If he threw away his licey garments, he was "giving them a parole." If he wore his clothes inside out, he was "executing a flank movement." 

One method of partial louse removal was to briefly suspend the infested garment in the flames of the campfire until the little fellows started popping like an Orville Redenbacher product. Another favorite technique was to boil the verminous garments in a stew pot when the cook was not using it.

Despite the companionship they provided, many soldiers did not welcome the lice due to the fact that their bites transmitted typhus.

THE REBELLIOUS NEPHEW

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Herman Goering’s (pictured above) many duties included commanding the Luftwaffe and serving as the Deputy Fuehrer under Adolf Hitler. He was no small-time Nazi-come-lately.

Werner Goering achieved notoriety as Herman’s nephew. Werner was raised as a Mormon after his father emigrated to Utah. During World War II, Werner joined the U.S. Army Air Force and become a B-17 pilot.

Civilian and military intelligence officials were very concerned about the above familial connection. They thoroughly investigated Werner and could find nothing to indicate that he was anything other than a loyal American and a very competent pilot. Nonetheless, they were still fearful about putting him in a position where he could, either voluntarily or involuntarily, be captured in Germany. At best, the propaganda potential for the Germans in such an event would be immense; at worse, Werner would intentionally land his bomber in Germany, cooperate with his uncle, and share classified information.

Notwithstanding the above, Werner flew 49 missions over Europe before the war ended. What he did not know was that his co-pilot, Jack Rencher, had been recruited by the FBI. Rencher, an expert pistol shot, was under standing orders to execute Werner if it ever appeared possible that Werner could be captured by the Germans. On one particularly bad mission, Rencher was concerned that the aircraft would not be able to make it back to England and was about to complete his assignment. Fortunately, they were able to reach home safely after all.

Werner and Rencher developed a great deal of respect for each other and remained good friends until Rencher’s death in 2010, notwithstanding the revelation after the war to Werner about Rencher’s secondary assignment.

Ironically, although Werner (and everyone else) believed for most of his life that he was Herman Goering’s nephew, recent investigation reveals that he was not. Apparently, Werner’s father had fostered the rumor that he was Hermann Goering's brother merely to gain respect by association from the Salt Lake City German community at an earlier time when his purported sibling was revered as a decorated World War I ace and had not yet pursued his new career as a despot and war criminal.

For more information about the travails of Werner, please read Stephen Frater's book  Hell Above Earth: The Incredible True Story of an American WWII Bomber Commander and the Copilot Ordered to Kill Him. 

  

THE HEIGHTS ACHIEVED BY NAPOLEAN

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Despite the common belief to the contrary, Napoleon Bonaparte was not unusually short in stature. There is no reason to believe that his lust for power arose from "little man syndrome." He actually was five feet six inches tall, which was typical for a Frenchman 200 years ago. Until around 1840, units of measurement in France were chaotic, inconsistent, changed every few years, and varied from region to region. It is believed that rumors of Napoleon's shortness stemmed from a mistranslation into English measurements of his height in French units.

THE JOY OF LEECHES

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It is fairly common knowledge that George Washington's doctors applied medicinal leeches (Hirudo medicinalis) to suck 80 ounces of his blood out of him in 1799 in a futile attempt to save his life.  As late as 1942, medical textbooks advocated using leeches to treat acute pneumonia. Leech therapy has been prevalent for thousands of years in parts of India to treat various skin diseases. In 2004, the FDA licensed a French company who had been in the leech business for over 150 years to market them as a medical device in the USA. 

Leeches are normally used to help heal wounds and restore circulation in blocked blood vessels.  However, a Chicago scientist recently discovered that the use of leeches in the past to treat staph infections, including staph-induced pneumonia, may have actually had a benefit.  The staph germ thrives on iron, which it obtains from the hemoglobin in the blood of its victims.  The removal of blood from the infected area will slow the staph growth by starving it.  In light of the evolution of antibiotic-resistant staph germs, alternative methods of treatment, such as placing clammy blood-sucking worms on the patient, may be an answer to these diseases. 

#206--THE ORANGE BRAWL

The town of Ivrea in northern Italy has a battle each year which consists of huge crowds of people throwing millions of oranges at each other for three days. It can get somewhat sticky.

The tradition originated in 1194 when nobleman Conte Rainieri di Biandrate tried to employ Le droit du Seigneur* against Violetta, the bride of one of his subjects. Violetta construed this as a form of sexual harassment. In response, she decapitated the noble and displayed his head from his balcony. The townfolk then revolted and burned down his castle.

Depending on whom you believe, 1) the throwing of the oranges represents the throwing of stones by the peasants against the castle or 2) the oranges represent the head of the nobleman and the pulp his blood.

Oddly enough, oranges are not native to Ivrea, and tons of them have to be shipped in from the south for the festival.

*Le droit du Seigneur refers to the purported ritual in medieval Europe where a lord had the right, if not the duty, to deflower a peasant bride on her wedding night prior to turning her over to her husband. Many historians claim that the practice actually never formally existed in Europe but merely represents a nobleman taking unfair advantage of his position. The distinction, if any, probably mattered little to the unfortunate newlyweds.

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CHOLESTEROL AND TAILS

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Scientists have discovered that dogs who chase their tails often have much higher levels of cholesterol (both the "good" and "bad" varieties) than canines who do not. 

For further information on tail-chasing in general as well as the particular relationship to cholesterol, please visit the The Dog Daily webpage. For a video of what appears to be cholesterol-cursed canines compulsively chasing their tails, click here.

THE EXCITING HORSEHAIR WORM

Horsehair worms are long (often over a foot (30 cm)) skinny parasites which are especially fond of infecting certain spiders and insects (especially the jumpy kinds like crickets, grasshoppers, katydids, and locusts). They mature and grow inside the insect's body. When they are ready to see the world, they somehow stimulate thirst on the part of their host. Once their host starts drinking, the worm emerges to spend the rest of its life in the water and to engage in sex. The host usually dies as a result.

Their name is derived from the fact that people often found them in watering troughs and thought that they were horse mane or tail hairs which fell into the water and became animated. They are also called Gordian worms from the mythical knot of the same name, due to their tendency to form entanglements with their bodies. They belong to the phylum Nematomorpha, which means "looks like nematodes." They, however, are not nematodes, so do not let anyone tell you to the contrary.

They are totally harmless to mammals. People sometimes see them in toilet bowls, draw erroneous conclusions, and become alarmed. However, what most likely happened is that someone probably flushed a cricket in the bowl, thus releasing the worm.

For you endoparasite fans, the attached link is to a viral video depicting what happens after you bugspray a spider infected with one of these guys.

THE ORIGIN OF RED STATES VS. BLUE STATES

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The concept of "red states" for Republicans and "blue states" for Democrats in United States politics originated in 2000, when the three major networks and the New York Times and USA Today decided, for the sake of uniformity, to institute the same system when displaying political maps showing which party won a state in the Presidential election.  

Prior to that time, there was no absolute consistency in applying the colors, although, as a general rule, most news agencies did follow the custom in Great Britain of representing the more conservative party by blue and the more liberal or revolutionary party by red. The method initiated in 2000 obviously falls contrary to this pattern.

According to the New York Times, it linked "red" to "Republican" for the simple reason that both words begin with "re." The decision purportedly had nothing to do with a fear that if the news media perpetuated the historical use of red, people would associate the Democratic Party with the crimson taint of Communism (even though that train had already long ago left the station).

CARROTS AND SHOOTING DOWN GERMANS

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Notwithstanding any assertions by Bugs Bunny to the contrary, eating carrots will not give you superior night vision or eyesight in general. This concept was a ruse started by the RAF during World War II after the British had developed Airborne Interception Radar which enabled fighter pilots at night to achieve great accuracy in shooting down the Luftwaffe. In order to conceal the successful use of radar on their fighter planes, the British leaked information that the sharpshooting pilots had developed superhuman night vision through excessive carrot consumption.

It is unlikely that the Germans completely bought the story. They, after all, were equipping their own night fighter aircraft with radar.

Carrots do contain beta carotene, which is used by the body to produce Vitamin A, and a severe loss of Vitamin A can cause blindness. However, the average American diet contains enough Vitamin A that consuming additional carrots will have no effect on vision.

THE ROAD ROAD

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LaRue Road (which translates as "The Road Road") is located in southwestern Illinois in the Shawnee National Forest and separates rocky cliffs from a swamp adjoining the Mississippi River. Since 1972, a 2.5 mile stretch of the road has been closed to vehicular traffic for two months in the spring and two months in the fall to allow numerous species of amphibians and reptiles (including rattlers, copperheads, and cottonmouths) an opportunity to migrate safely between their summer homes in the swamp and their winter hibernation dens in the cliffs.

Legend would suggest that during the migration season, there is a writhing carpet of snakes and that you could not toss a dead cat onto the road without hitting at least three herptiles with it. However, I, who have on more than one occasion taken the long pilgrimage to the road during the prime migration period and who have even been provided with a learned guide to the alleged hot spots, gainsay this image. I saw nothing. Nada. Not even a common American toad (Bufo americanus).

The guide did report that a team of photographers from a major and highly-regarded media organization (whose name shall be shielded to protect the guilty) did get some good footage of venomous snakes on the road. However, he also revealed that the photographers had brought their own serpents with them in cages, released them on the road for their cameo appearances, and then recaptured them.

THE COW KILLER

The velvet ant is not actually an ant but is instead a wasp. The female of the species is wingless and looks like a corpulent ant wearing a fuzzy red (or yellow) and black Hudson Bay blanket; the male has wings, can fly, and often bears little resemblance to the female.

When pregnant, the mama velvet ant will enter the lair of other species of wasps or bees which live in dens in the ground and lay her eggs near the host bug larvae, which will then become the food of the future baby velvet ants.  She will also kill the adult host bug.

The female velvet ant is not aggressive (see previous paragraph for a possibly contrary opinion from other wasps or bees) and relies on her bright color and, if molested, a loud chirping sound to deter potential predators. However, if these methods do not work, she will hulk out and go medieval on her attacker multiple times with a huge stinger.

The female velvet ant is also known as the "cow killer," as her sting is so painful (3.0 on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index) that it was once believed to have been powerful enough to dispatch even a 1,500 pound bovine.  The boy velvet ant, who has no stinger, will nonetheless act like he does have one and will usually be able to bluff his way out of dangerous situations.

O.J.'S LOST OPPORTUNITY FOR METHOD ACTING

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When Orion Studio executives were casting the first Terminator movie over thirty years ago, they wanted the role of the murderous cyborg to go to O.J. Simpson. However, director James Cameron (pictured on the right above) decided that the public would not be able to accept in its mind the concept of Simpson being a killer, so he instead picked a monosyllabic Austrian actor whose prior screen experience consisted primarily of wearing a loincloth while decapitating bad people. It turned out, of course, to be an inspired choice.

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THE WRONG CAR FOR ANTI-SEMITES

The Dodge automobile emblem was not always a ram's head--it once was what appears to be a bi-colored Star of David over a map of the Western Hemisphere. This symbol was used on the first car produced by the Dodge brothers (John and Horace)  in 1914 and was continued after the brothers died and even after the company was eventually acquired by Chrysler.

The brothers never revealed how they came up with the emblem. They were not Jewish. One of several theories holds that the brothers wanted to spite Henry Ford, who was a notorious anti-Semite. However, at the time the emblem was designed, the brothers were good personal friends of Henry Ford and were in a profitable business arrangement providing Ford Motor Company with various car parts. Another hypothesis was that the brothers liked law enforcement and were modeling the trademark after a six-pointed Sheriff's badge. Still another unproven explanation is that the brothers, who were very close (rumor had it that if a letter was sent to the company addressed to only one brother and not both, it was discarded unread), coincidentally used double deltas (the Greek letter for "D") in the emblem without even knowing about the existence of the Star of David.

By another strange coincidence, Chrysler dropped the "Star of David" trademark for Dodge products in 1938--the same year it decided to aggressively market Dodges overseas in certain European countries.

THREE OUT OF FOUR AIN'T BAD

Photo stolen from Matthew Thompson

The state in the USA which lies furthest to the north is Alaska.

The state in the USA which lies furthest to the west is Alaska.

The state in the USA which lies furthest to the east is Alaska (the part of Alaska which lies west of the 180th meridian is eastier than Asia, Europe, and Maine).

THE TEENY TINY MESSERSCHMITT

By Lars-Göran Lindgren Sweden (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

After World War II, the occupying nations in Germany strongly discouraged the Messerschmitt company from producing aircraft. In 1953, as one alternative, Messerschmitt started manufacturing a super-miniature bubbletop automobile. It had bicycle handlebars instead of a steering wheel. The massive 10.6 cubic inch (0.17 liter) engine was located behind the rear seat and was started with a pull cord like on a lawnmower, unless the owner purchased the optional electric starter feature. The car had only three wheels but was still very stable due to its low center of gravity.

Messershmitt was allowed to build airplanes again in 1956 and promptly thereafter sold its car business to another company, who continued to make the vehicles until 1964. By then, the booming German economy had greatly reduced the consumer lust for ultra-cheap cars.

There purportedly was one Cadillac dealer in the late 1950s who offered a free Messerschmitt with each new Cadillac. The Messerschmitt allegedly would be placed in the Caddy's trunk and would be available as a spare car in the event of a breakdown.  While I can readily accept the premise that there probably was a Cadillac dealership who would throw in a Messerschmitt in a deal, I somehow doubt that it would actually put a 450-pound (205 kilogram) car into the trunk of the larger vehicle.

As would be expected, both Messerchmitt fighter planes and Messerschmitt automobiles are highly prized by collectors today.

THE ROLEX HONOR SYSTEM

British pilots in World War II prized Rolex watches because of their phenomenal accuracy. Unfortunately, German troops who captured downed airmen also coveted the watches and confiscated them as wonderful trophies--almost as desirable as Zippo lighters or American .45 pistols.

Hans Wildorf was a German expatriate who moved to Switzerland and founded the Rolex company. Displeased with the actions of his former countrymen, Wildorf had a standing offer that he would immediately send a replacement watch to any British pilot who wrote to him and explained that the pilot's watch had been taken by the Germans. Wildorf would send the watch to the Stalag where the pilot was imprisoned* along with an invoice indicating that the pilot was not to "even think about settlement during the war." Most pilots honored their commitment and paid their watch bill upon their release after the end of the conflict. 

One of the Rolexes provided through this promotion was used to time the movements of the prison guards as portrayed in The Great Escape.

The Brits raved to their American allies about the glories of the program and of the Rolex watch itself. As a result, Rolex, which had been a relatively obscure brand, suddenly become the must-have watch in both the United Kingdom and America.

*Apparently, prison guards (who usually belonged to the Luftwaffe in those camps housing captured airmen) maintained a code of conduct where they did not routinely steal jewelry from their charges.

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THE RAREST MOVIE SOUNDTRACK

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One of the rarest, if not the rarest, movie soundtrack albums is that of the 1954 film The Caine Mutiny. It was going to be released by RCA, but the author of the book on which the movie was based, Herman Wouk, objected to inclusion on the soundtrack of excerpts of spoken dialogue on the theory that it violated a copyright owned by Wouk. The head of Columbia studios, Harry Cohn, purportedly told Wouk that Cohn was convinced that he could beat Wouk legally, but Cohn then stated that he would still yank the project anyway because the recording was "lousy" on its artistic merits.

 

Less than a dozen copies of the album are known to exist. Should you find one at a garage sale, you should snatch it up immediately.

If you are confused why a photo of strawberries illustrates this factoid, then you obviously have not read the book or seen the movie. You should rectify this omission, as both of them are excellent. In fact, despite any contrary implication by Harry Cohn, the music in the film is pretty good, also.

THE CAPITAL OF PORTUGAL

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Although Lisbon is currently the capital of Portugal, that has not always been the case.

In 1808, the Portuguese royal family and most of the Portuguese aristocracy fled Portugal due to an infestation of French troops under the banner of Napoleon. Since much of Europe suffered from this same blight, the fugitives migrated to Brazil, Portugal's colony in the Americas, and transformed Rio de Janeiro into the capital of Portugal. It retained this elevated status until 1822, when Brazil achieved its independence as its own nation.

This is the only example of the capital of a European country being located outside of Europe.

You might think that the inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro would have been proud of elevated status of their city, but most of them resented instead the fact that many of them were evicted out of their homes in order to make room for the flood of incoming nobles.

MALARIA--THE WONDERDRUG

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From 1917 through the mid-1940s, tertiary syphilis was treated by intentionally infecting the patient with malaria. The malaria would provoke a sustained high fever which essentially cooked the syphilis spirochete. The malaria would thereafter be treated with quinine. A 15% mortality rate and the introduction of new antibiotics against syphillis led to the abandonment of this regime.

The author of this procedure, Dr. Julius Wagner-Jauregg, received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1927 as a result. On a side note, he also believed that "excessive masturbation" was a symptom of schizophrenia, and he treated those who were so afflicted by sterilization. 

Notwithstanding the fact that his wife was Jewish, the doctor became a devout Nazi.  

THE STIGMA OF CABBAGE

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It is against the rules of major league baseball in South Korea for a player to be in the possession of cabbage. This restriction arose in 2005 following a scandal where several pitchers were caught wearing frozen cabbage leaves underneath their caps as a means of keeping cool. It is unclear whether or not other green leafy vegetables are also barred from the playing field.

SEX AND THE SINGLE SAURIAN

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Herpetologists used to believe that like most vertebrates, Komodo dragons always reproduced through sex. However, in recent years, a couple of zoological institutions who had only female dragons on site were very surprised to learn that the girls were able to produce viable young through parthenogenesis (i.e. laying fertile, but non-fertilized, eggs). For genetic reasons too boring to describe, the offspring are always male (on the other hand, if you really want to know the details about the sex chromosomes and all that stuff, just read this article from Scientific American).

Once a female dragon is put back in an environment where males are available, she will revert to normal sexual behavior and breeding.

In a normal egg, half of the chromosomes are provided by the mother and half by the father. At some point in the formation of the parthenogenetic egg, the set of chromosomes provided by the mother double, ultimately yielding the baby with a full set.

Sexual reproduction is normally highly favored evolutionary-wise because it reduces the chance of producing individuals with full pairs of recessive genes and the resulting genetic illnesses. In addition, if a population is highly similar genetically, an infectious or environmental disease is more likely to wipe out all of the individuals and not just some.

In the case of the dragons, the above policy considerations are sometimes suspended due to the fact that female Komodos are at risk of washing ashore on one of the many thousands of small islands in Indonesia without having a male to keep them satisfied (what the male dragons do in a similar situation is probably something on which we should not speculate). By using parthenogenesis, the female is able to produce males who, when they mature, will be able to satisfy their Oedipal fantasies by having sex with their mother and establish a breeding colony.

Although the Komodo dragons' sexless reproduction was not known at the time Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park, he nonetheless had the prescience to have the dinosaurs in his story, which were all female, reproduce parthenogenetically. This possibility is one reason why Tyrannosaurs, if actually cloned one day, would probably not make good house pets. The litter box detail is another.

THE ASCENSION OF MS. BROWN

By Evan-Amos (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

M&M's candies were developed in 1941 for the military in order to replace the meltier and messier chocolate bars found in field rations. They were not made available to civilians until after the cessation of hostilities.

Anyone who has not lived on a desert island for the past two decades is well aware that Mars, Inc. has a series of marsvelous commercials featuring various color spokescandies for their M&M's product line--each color with a different personality.  For years, however, Mars thought that one hue to eschew was brown. The company was concerned that the color was too scatological and would become the butt of too much prurient humor. However, Mars eventually relented, and now Ms. Brown, a sexy and sophisticated intellectual (voiced by Vanessa Williams), is a regular in many delightful productions such as this one.

THE HANGMAN

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One of the heaviest burdens on any President of the United States (or, at least, it should be one of the heaviest burdens) is the fact that, as Commander-in-Chief, he is called upon on a daily basis to make decisions which are literally life-and-death. Those Presidents with military backgrounds may enter the Oval Office with previous experience with this type of pressure, while a few have even personally taken lives on the battlefield or ordered military executions to take place. Andrew Jackson went one step further by fighting numerous duels prior to achieving the Presidency, including at least one which resulted in the death of his opponent.

There is one President, however, who was an actual executioner. Grover Cleveland, most famous for serving non-consecutive terms as the 22nd and 24th President, was a highly regarded and ambitious lawyer in the early 1870s. He was convinced to run for the Sheriff of Erie County, New York--a job which was a considerable political plum and which would yield over $20,000 (over $350,000 in today's dollars) to the office holder. Cleveland won the post but was not pleased by the fact that the Sheriff's duties included executing the death penalty within the county.

Prior Sheriffs in Erie County had resolved this moral dilemna simply by appointing a Deputy Sheriff to perform the gruesome task. Cleveland believed that the letter of the law as well as his own concept of integrity required that he do the dirty work himself and not pass it on to a subordinate--especially since the Deputy who had previously administered the punishment and his family were being exposed to public mockery. Consequently, Cleveland personally conducted the two hangings which arose during his term of office, even though the process literally made him sick for several days thereafter.

Cleveland's hanging prowess was raised by his detractors later on in his political career in order to paint him as cold-blooded and heartless; however, the issue actually garnered more votes for him from the law-and-order crowd than any he may have lost from those opposed to the death penalty.

For a 1912 New York Times article on Cleveland the Hangman, click here. Oddly, enough, the article fails to discuss Cleveland's second execution, but you can read about his customer at that event here.

THE CROSSWORD PUZZLE SNAFU

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On August 19, 1942, over 6,000 Allied troops, primarily Canadian, invaded the French coastal town of Dieppe. The attack was a total disaster, as the Germans had been forewarned, and the Canadians suffered over 60% casualties before they were able to retreat. Allied intelligence officers were shocked to discover that one of the answers in the August 17, 1942 crossword puzzle of the London Daily Telegraph was “DIEPPE.” The authorities descended on the offices of the Daily Telegraph and, after intensive interrogation, concluded that the inclusion of the term was a coincidence and that the crossword puzzle was not the source of information upon which the Nazis had relied.

Fast forward to the spring of 1944. The same newspaper had in the crossword puzzle the terms “JUNO,” “SWORD,” and “GOLD”--all code names for specific landing sites of the upcoming D-Day invasion. British Secret Service MI5 agents realized that these were all potentially legitimate answers for a crossword and did nothing other than to keep an eye on the situation. When the remaining two invasion sites (“UTAH” and “OMAHA”) appeared in the puzzle on May 3, 1944 and May 22, 1944, respectively, MI5 began to get really concerned. Finally, when the crossword puzzle yielded the code name of the entire operation (“OVERLORD”) on May 27, the code name for the floating harbors “MULBERRY”) on May 30, and the code name for the naval phase of the invasion (“NEPTUNE”) on June 1, the British Secret Service, quite understandably, freaked out.

MI5 agents located Leonard Dawe, the author of the crossword puzzles, in the town of Leatherhead and were all over him like scum on a pond. After a vigorous exchange of ideas and intense sharing of feelings, Dawe was able to convince the agents that he was not sending information to the Germans.

Nonetheless, the inclusion of the D-Day terms was, in fact, not a coincidence. Dawe's day job, when he was not writing crosswords for the London Daily Telegraph, was that of Headmaster of Strand School, which had been evacuated to the Surrey village of Effingham after the Blitz commenced. Dawe routinely asked his students to provide words to put into the puzzles, and Dawe would then write the clues. A couple of Dawe's charges enjoyed spending their free time in the company of American soldiers who were bivouacked nearby waiting for the invasion. In 1984, these students revealed that they had heard the Americans freely throw around the code words, which students then repeated to Dawe, who had no idea of their ultimate source.

While the American troops should have been more circumspect about using the code phrases, there is a reason, after all, why the terms were in code in the first place. Had the soldiers, for example, uttered the term “Normandy Invasion” instead of “Operation Overlord,” that could have been very bad.

WHEN PIGS SWIM

By cdorobek (Flickr: 08.2012 Vorobek Bahamas - swimming pigs) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Big Major Cay a/k/a "Pig Island" is an uninhabited (at least by humans) island in the Bahamas.  It is, however, the home to a colony of swimming pigs.  The porkers enjoy cavorting in the water and will eagerly paddle out to boats for handouts. 

No one is sure how the colony started, but the first hogs there were probably either left on the island by sailors for a future source of food or were the survivors of a shipwreck.

DANCING WITH THE STARS

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We have previously learned that dung beetles are not a bastion of virtue with respect to sexual fidelity. They also apparently have little respect for property rights.

This accusation is being specifically levied against the kinds of dung beetles which cutely roll around on top of little balls of poop and does not necessarily apply to those more mudane species which merely tunnel into a lump of excrement and make their home therein. A "poop roller" (hereinafter referred to as a "PR") has no qualms about stealing a ball of feces from one of his companions. A PR who freshly puts together a ball of poop from a pile of droppings must thus quickly make a straight-line exit away from the commotion to avoid being hijacked by another PR.

This is not as simple as you may believe. The PR stands on the ball of feces facing backwards when he rolls it and cannot see where he is going. Since the ball is rarely an absolutely perfect sphere and the ground is never perfectly flat, random rolling would routinely result in the PR traveling in a circle back to the other dung beetles, who would then steal his precious cargo.

Instead of operating blind, however, the PR has an exquisitely fine-tuned navigation system. During the day, he can detect patterns (invisible to humans) in the polarization of light from the sun to keep his course. During the night, he navigates by aligning himself with the Milky Way Galaxy. If he loses his bearings, he will dance around the top of the ball of dung until he aligns himself with the stars again.

Scientists discovered that it was the Milky Way Galaxy, and not some other constellation, through judicious experiments involving turning PRs loose in planetariums with the stars displayed on the ceilings. As a control for the experiment, they also at times had to put darling little hats on the beetles to prevent them from viewing the sky.

You may ask, however, what about PRs in the Northern Hemisphere, where the Milky Way Galaxy is not as visible? Maybe this very limitation explains why more PRs are found in the Southern Hemisphere.

For more information on PR navigation, click on the livescience webpage.  To play National Geographic's classic game of  "Dung Beetle Derby," click here.