THE SHOCKING SAGA OF R. C. SULLIVAN

Between 1942 and 1977, Shenandoah National Park Ranger Roy C. Sullivan was struck 7 times by lightning without serious injury. He had also been previously hit by lightning once as a youth, but this strike was not "officially" documented. 

The odds of the average person being struck by lightning once in his life time is one in 10,000.

 

Sullivan felt hurt and rejected by the fact that people, for some inexplicable reason, would avoid getting physically near him.  Sadly, he committed suicide when he was 71 years old.

By Griffinstorm (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)],
 via Wikimedia Commons

WERE VIKINGS HORNY?

Despite numerous cartoons and other depictions to the contrary, there is no evidence that Vikings ever wore helmets with horns on them. While some pre-Viking cultures possibly had individuals who sported headgear with antlers or horns attached thereon, the wearers were generally priests who donned such a cap for ceremonial occasions and not a warrior who would prefer to avoid having his helmet catch on tree branches or other objects when he is running or fighting an opponent.

The horned helmet stereotype sprang primarily from the minds of creative Scandinavian artists in the 19th Century. The imagery became ubiquitous as a result of the costumes used in Richard Wagner's  “Der Ring des Nibelungen” opera in the 1870s.

For more information on Norsemen cerebral fashions, please click on the History Channel website.

DEATH DEALS THE CARDS

In 1930, William Kogut committed suicide while on death row at San Quentin. He did so by cutting out the hearts and diamonds symbols from several decks of playing cards, soaking them in water, sealing the mixture in one of the metal legs of his bunk, and placing the leg next to the radiator in his cell. The watery paste composed of the red dye and the paper from the pieces of the card contained our old friend, nitrocellulose. The nitrocellulose, while relatively intact while wet, became highly unstable when it dried out, and it exploded.

Modern playing cards are usually coated with plastic and contain far more benign dyes, which makes this trick much harder to perform today.

For more information about Mr. Kogut's spectacular demise, click here.

View image | gettyimages.com

THE DAILY GRIND CIVIL WAR STYLE

Fans of True Grit and Quigley Down Under appreciate the quality and utility of the fine rifles made by Sharp in the 19th Century. These weapons were also favored by buffalo hunters due to their ability to lob a thumb-sized chunk of lead far distances with great accuracy and massive killing power.*

Yankee soldiers during the American Civil War also appreciated one other feature which was available on a small quantity of Sharps carbines and rifles--namely, a mill in the stock where a soldier could grind corn or wheat for breakfast for his unit. These firearms were general referred to as "coffee-grinders," but tests by the National Park Service suggest that they were far more effective at grinding grain than breaking down beans.

Today there are probably only about a dozen genuine "coffee-grinders" still known to exist, although reproductions abound. The real things are worth a fortune.

Photo by National Park Service/Springfield Armory

*However, the most famous bison slayer of them all, Buffalo Bill Cody, preferred using a Springfield Trapdoor rifle named "Lucretia Borgia."

THE PARCEL POST BANK

The Bank of Vernal in Vernal, Utah was built in 1916 and is the only known building constructed out of bricks sent through the U.S. Post Office.  It was cheaper to have the brickyard mail thousands of packages (each containing seven bricks) than to have the approximately 75,000 bricks sent down by commercial carrier from Salt Lake City. Due to the extremely rugged terrain between Vernal and the rest of civilization, the Post Office lost huge amounts of money delivering this mail. In response, it finally imposed a requirement which, for all practical purposes, limited a customer to receiving only 200 pounds of mail a day without special dispensation.

The building is still in use as a branch of Zions Bank.

For more information on the "parcel post bank," click here.

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE DE HAVILLAND COMET

The De Havilland Comet was the first jet aircraft used for passenger service. The original flights occurred in 1952 between London and Johannesburg. The BOAC version was the size of a Boeing 737 but only had 36 seats. The rest of the space was occupied with a galley for hot and cold meals, a bar, and separate male and female bathrooms. Unlike most US designs where the engines hang from the wings in pods, the Comet had its engines actually flush within the wings. This reduced the change of the engines ingesting bad things like birds; however, it increased the risk to the passengers should an engine disintegrate. The earlier Comets suffered from metal fatigue around their square windows, especially at the corners. These were replaced by aircraft with an improved oval window design which is now standard in the industry. However, by the time all the corrections were made, Boeing had taken over the passenger jet market, and the last Comet was produced in 1964.  The fact that the metal fatigue had resulted in several Comet crashes did not help matters.

View image | gettyimages.com

THE FLOUR OSSIFICATION FACTOR

Remember the story of Jack and the Beanstalk--that happy tale about a wayward juvenile delinquent who commits burglaries involving coins, a harp, and an auric-oocyte-laying goose and then follows it up with a felony murder when the homeowner attempts to regain his stolen property?

If so, then you will recall the catchy phrase bellowed by the giant of:

"Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum! 

I smell the blood of an Englishman.

Be he 'live, or be he dead, 

I'll grind his bones to make my bread."

This utterance always seemed a little weird to me. However, that was before I heard through mental_floss that bakers in England in the 1600s were accused of cutting their bread dough by the addition of ashes and bones. In that context, the rhyme makes perfect sense.

Contrary to these rumors, the bakers probably did not actually employ ashes and bones to dilute the flour; however, they did use alum, which can be bad for you if you eat too much of it. Where did they get the alum? From urine.

View image | gettyimages.com

THE LEGO CONCENTRATION CAMP

One of the hardest to obtain Lego building sets is the concentration camp series created in 1996. These kits are fairly realistic and feature items such as barracks surrounded by barbed wire along with guard towers, a gate shaped like the entrance to Auschwitz, crematoria, and guards tormenting emaciated prisoners represented by skeletons.

View image | gettyimages.com

Before you start boycotting Lego products and smashing your Lego Death Star in protest at the insensitivity of the company, you should probably know that this series was designed by Polish artist Zbigniew Libera, who made a total of seven boxes of concentration camp kits. They were not issued by Lego and were never mass produced. Although Lego provided the artist free building blocks for his project, it did not know ahead of time the subject matter of his work. When the company found out what was going on, it initially tried to convince Libera to withdraw the displays from public view.

The kits had been on loan to various museums throughout the world. In 2012, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw purchased them for about $71,800, and it describes the acquisition as "one of the most important works of Polish contemporary art."

POT PARTIES IN THE OLD SOUTH

During the American Civil War, one popular social event of patriotic Southern belles was the urine drive. They would go from house to house and collect hundreds of gallons of "chamber ley," also known as "pee." The liquid gold was refined to make saltpeter, which, along with charcoal and sulphur, is one of the three components of gunpowder.

View image | gettyimages.com

THE GRISLY SAGA OF THE WEST VIRGINIA THREE

One of the battleships sunk at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 was the West Virginia. Six months after the attack, the vessel was refloated and the remains of 66 crewmen were recovered. The salvage team made the ghastly discovery of the bodies of three crewmen who had been trapped under the water in a sealed compartment and who had survived until December 23, until either their air or water supply had run out. The doomed men had kept track of the time by marking through the days on a calendar.  

This discovery was not a surprise to the sentries who had been patrolling the damaged vessels in the harbor after the attack, as they had heard and had been tormented by the sounds of the slowly expiring crewmen pounding on the hull below the waterline.

The relatives of the 66 men were informed that all of the casualties had died on December 7. The story of the three trapped crewmen was not released until several decades later.

The West Virginia was eventually fully repaired and upgraded and served with distinction in several campaigns in the Pacific.  She was put in mothballs in 1947 and decommissioned and sold for scrap in 1959.

View image | gettyimages.com

THE CUR VARIABLE

It is fairly common knowledge that due to inbreeding, purebred dogs are often subject to various genetic maladies such as hip dysplasia. Mongrels, with their diverse DNA background, are far less prone to these ailments. In addition, these ordinary mutts also get still another advantage--they generally have a lifespan which exceeds that of their snotty aristocratic "I have papers" cousins by about ten percent.

THE SCATOLOGICAL IMPACT OF "PSYCHO"

Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho was groundbreaking in its shock value--and not because of the shower scene. It was the shot immediately prior to the shower scene which gave the movie censors fits and introduced an element so intense that it had never been before depicted on the silver screen. Specifically, soon-to-be murder victim Marion Crane is shown flushing paper evidence of her earlier embezzlement down the toilet. This was the first time that a potty had been featured in a movie, let alone one which was actually flushed. Hitchcock managed, after much argument, to get the scene approved by the censors by maintaining that the flushing of the paper, coupled with a later discovery of an unflushed paper scrap by a private investigator, had to be included in order to advance the plot.

You will recall that the initial crapper breakthrough in television occurred three years earlier in Leave it to Beaver, where Wally and Beaver raised a baby alligator in a toilet tank. However, Leave it to Beaver never dared to push the envelope so far as to show the bowl itself or the toilet being flushed.

Unfortunately, bathroom taboos went totally out of the window in 1977, when the director of Fun with Dick and Jane, for no apparent reason, decided to include a scene where Jane Fonda sits on the throne, urinates, and wipes herself.

View image | gettyimages.com

THE MIDDLE-CLASS MICHAEL MOORE

Filmmaker Michael Moore achieved the slavish devotion of followers of the Occupy Wall Street movement a few years ago by his appearances at its rallies where he condemned capitalism as "an evil, evil system" which needed to end. He emitted the clarion calls of "Make the rich pay!" and "Tax them! Tax them! Tax them!" He also used the term "us" to include himself among the 250 million non-wealthy Americans. He specifically denied being in the upper-class "1%."

As part of a divorce settlement, he is now attempting to sell his modest home at Torch Lake, Michigan (which is not to be confused with his huge condo in downtown Manhattan or his seven other properties) for $5,200,000.00. You can view the listing on Zillow. Celebrity Net Worth estimated his total wealth at $50,000,000.00.

View image | gettyimages.com

THIS IS NOT YOUR FATHER'S DODGE

If you are tired of your wimpy Harleys or Hondas, then try stepping up to a manly motorcycle. 

The 2003-2006 Dodge Tomahawk was powered by the same 500 horsepower, 510 cubic inch 10-cylinder engine used in the Dodge Viper high-performance sports car. It could go from 0 to 60 MPH in 2.5 seconds and had an estimated top speed ranging from 300 to 420 MPH, depending on whom you believed. The actual top speed is unknown because to date no one has had the courage to attempt to reach it, especially in light of the likelihood that the wind generated would exceed that of an EF5 tornado (200 MPH and higher) and would sweep the rider right off of the bike. 

Dodge executives maintained that the Tomahawks were merely "rolling sculptures," were not street-legal, and were never intended to be ridden. Such a disclaimer was no doubt issued for liability concerns based on the belief that anyone crazy enough to try to ride one had a substantial chance of getting killed. Some folks have ridden them conservatively and survived.

It is believed that nine of these motorcycles were sold through Neiman Marcus at the price of $555,000.00 apiece. Hopefully, each buyer also purchased a decent helmet.

View image | gettyimages.com

SAPEURS

Sapeurs are gentlemen (and occasionally ladies) from Brazzaville (the capital of the Republic of Congo) who have made an art form out of dressing in very colorful yet very elegant French fashion kinds of clothes. They are not rich (the average income is less than $400 per month), but they save their money for designer suits and accessories. There are very strict and well-established rules (such as that a perfect ensemble may not have more than three colors) which distinguish a Sapeur from someone who merely dresses garishly.

They generally act as ambassadors for good moral conduct, proper etiquette, and peace in a country which had a bloody civil war in the late 1990s and which is still recovering from terrible poverty. They have normal day jobs but sometimes get hired out to appear at weddings or funerals. They are well revered in the community and provide onlookers with a momentary respite from the destitution around them. They welcome newcomers to their ranks.

View image | gettyimages.com

HUNGRY FOR JUSTICE?

A study of more than 1,000 parole rulings by experienced judges in Israel indicated that the judges ruled in favor of the prisoner about 65% of the time right after a lunch or snack break but that the favorable rulings dwindled down to about 0% as the day progressed. At the time of the next food break, the rate of favorable rulings immediately kicked up to 65% again.

View image | gettyimages.com

#267--THE EXPLOITS OF DR. MEDICINE CROW

To be even eligible to be a War Chief, a Crow Indian warrior had to perform the following four tasks:

1)    Disarm an enemy

2)    Touch an enemy without killing him or being killed

3)    Lead a war party on a successful mission

4)    Steal a horse

As may be expected, the encroachment of civilization severely curtailed opportunities for braves who were born in the 20th Century to achieve War Chief status.

This brings us to Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow High-Bird, who was born in 1913. Dr. Medicine Crow was the proud descendant of the Crow scout who provided intelligence for George Custer at the Little Big Horn (you could conceivably argue that this scout did not do the best job in the world, but that is a topic for another day). Medicine Crow joined the Army in World War II and was a member of the 103rd Infantry Division. Like his ancestor, he acted as a scout behind enemy lines. In tribute to his heritage, he always wore war paint underneath his uniform and carried a sacred yellow-dyed eagle feather inside of his helmet.

At one point, he was ordered to take seven men, scrounge up some explosives, and blow up a section of the Siegfried line. This was the heavily fortified barrier on the German border, and the Germans took strong umbrage at his actions. Despite heavy machine-gun fire, Medicine Crow and his men fulfilled their mission without any casualties and breached the German fortifications. Task No. 3 accomplished.

Later on, Medicine Crow became separated from his lines and collided with a German soldier. Medicine Crow took the German's rifle and nearly choked him to death until the German cried out for his mother.  Medicine Crow released his choke hold and took the German back as a prisoner. Tasks 1 and 2 accomplished.

Finally, Medicine Crow spotted during one of his scouting mission a bevy of German officers holed up on farm with their thoroughbred horses. Medicine Crow sneaked in, mounted one horse, and led another fifty away, singing a Crow war song while the irate Germans ran into the corral in  their underwear and took pot shots at him with their handguns. Task 4 accomplished.

Medicine Crow did a lot of other good stuff during the war. When he returned home, he was awarded the title of War Chief, which he did not realize he had earned until his tribal elders pointed it out to him.  He is now the only War Chief left.

Dr. Medicine Crow also was made a Knight in the French Legion of Honor, received three honorary PhDs, and authored nearly a dozen books on military history. He has been the official historian for his tribe for the last fifty years.

In August of 2009 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the highest honor awarded to American civilians – for his combined military service and all the work he has done to help improve the lives of the people of the Crow people. He personally led the ceremonial dance after the ceremony.  Hopefully, he will still be around for his 102nd birthday on October 27, 2015.

To learn more details about Dr. Medicine Crow's exploits, go to the ever-entertaining and ever-Badass of the Week website.

UPDATE:  April 3, 2016--This brave warrior and decent human being finally passed on today. You can read about it here.

View image | gettyimages.com

YOU'VE GOT TO BE KITTYING ME!

In 1879, the postal authorities in Liège, Belgium recruited 37 new mail carriers to transport cards and letters to the surrounding villages. The carriers were "plucky" house cats, who were released with a waterproof bag of mail tied to each one. Each feline was then supposed to run to the appropriate village and exchange its cargo for a saucer of milk.

Amazingly enough, this innovative project did not prove to be an unqualified success.

The American government would of course not blunder into trying anything this foolish. It would instead first award some researcher a $1.5 million grant to conduct a feasibility study.

THE HONEY TRAP

It was a grueling campaign for the Roman legions of Pompey the Great around the southern edge of the Black Sea in 65 BC. The soldiers were getting frustrated battling the troops of Mithridates VI of Pontus and were tired and hungry. Suddenly, however, the day seemed much brighter when they encountered a stockpile of honeycombs on the way. They gorged themselves on the bounty like hogs in a corncrib.

Lamentably for the Romans, they began staggering around and falling incapacitated to the ground. The enemy, who had planted the honeycombs, methodically and effortlessly slaughtered three legions of Pompey's men. The foe was apparently aware of the toxicity of the honey and had perhaps heard that  the army of Greek general Xenophon suffered the same reaction from the local honey 400 years previously.

About two thousand years later, brainiacs figured out that the bees in the area fed upon rhododendron blossoms and nectar. In doing so, they also ingested a substance called grayanotoxin and passed it on into the honey. Grayanotoxin is a poison which disrupts neural activity and disables soldiers to the point that they can be easily skewered.

Although Mithridates probably was not up to snuff on the exact biochemistry involved, he was a bottom-line type of guy who was happy just to reap the benefits of the results.

View image | gettyimages.com

THE PUBLIC SERVICE OF DR. KELLOGG

Corn flakes were first marketed in 1894 by Dr. John Kellogg--primarily for altruistic reasons.  Kellogg was a fervent opponent of masturbation and strongly believed that it was the cause of almost all medical and social ills which inflicted mankind. He thought that the regular eating of corn flakes would lower the sex drive of the consumer and result in a reduction of the hated practice. 

For more information on the medical philosophy of Dr. Kellogg and other modes of treatment he advocated when the corn flakes didn't work, click here for an insightful article on the subject in the magazine mental_floss.

View image | gettyimages.com

(Well, just what kind of picture did you think I was going to use to illustrate this factoid?)

JUST STELLA YOU LOVE HER

The "Stella" was an experimental four-dollar gold coin first issued in 1879. It featured on the front Liberty in either a flowing or coiled hair style and a star on the back. The obverse of the coin also indicates the individual amounts of gold, silver, and copper in each unit.

The coin was intended to be used internationally. There were patterns made in several different kinds of metals, and gold examples of the flowing hair style dated 1879 were made available to members of Congress (but to no one else) by the mint. 

Congress did not authorize the general production of the coin, and only a few hundred examples were made--including some made in 1880 surreptitiously by the mint to sell to collectors. 

Oddly enough, shortly after the Congressmen acquired their 1879 flowing hair gold Stellas, the very same coins started showing up mounted on necklaces worn by the madams of some of the most venerable brothels in the District of Columbia, creating a scandal which titillated Washington high society.

Today, a Stella in top condition can easily fetch its owner a sum in the seven-figures.

#262--THE EERIE U-28 ENCOUNTER

In 1915, the German submarine U-28 was doing what German subs were often doing back then--torpedoing British ships. One such unfortunate victim was the Iberian, which quickly sank below the waves. Approximately 25 seconds later, it exploded, sending debris into the air along with something else as described in the German captain's log translated below:

"On July 30, 1915, our U-28 torpedoed the British steamer Iberian, which was carrying a rich cargo across the North Atlantic. The steamer sank so swiftly that its bow stuck up almost vertically into the air. Moments later the hull of the Iberian disappeared. The wreckage remained beneath the water for approximately twenty-five seconds, at a depth that was clearly impossible to assess, when suddenly there was a violent explosion, which shot pieces of debris - among them a gigantic aquatic animal - out of the water to a height of approximately 80-feet [24 meters]."

"At that moment I had with me in the conning tower six of my officers of the watch, including the chief engineer, the navigator, and the helmsman. Simultaneously we all drew one another's attention to this wonder of the seas, which was writhing and struggling among the debris. We were unable to identify the creature, but all of us agreed that it resembled an aquatic crocodile, which was about 60-feet [18 meters] long, with four limbs resembling large webbed feet, a long, pointed tail and a head which also tapered to a point. Unfortunately we were not able to take a photograph, for the animal sank out of sight after ten or fifteen seconds."

There are a limited number of explanations for this phenomenon. The first, and most obvious one, is that the captain was lying. This theory appears problematical, both for the fact that there would be no reason for the captain to concoct such a tale and for the fact that the German Navy strongly discouraged its officers from using their official logs as works of fiction. 

It is equally implausible that all of the individuals who saw the creature suffered from some sort of mass hallucination.

Another alternative would be that the captain and the other crew members saw a whale or other ordinary large sea creature--again unlikely, as no marine animal known to be alive in modern times is sixty feet long and resembles a crocodile with a pointed snout, four limbs, and a pointed tail. 

A further possibility is that it was in fact a saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus)--the huge leviathan known to viewers of Paul Hogan movies and pictured below. Again this scenario is implausible, as the largest known examples are no more than 23 feet (7 meters) in length and only inhabit the warm tropical waters of the Southern Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Embed from Getty Images

Finally, the one remaining explanation is that the creature might have been a prehistoric animal who failed to realize that it was supposed to be extinct. One obvious candidate would be a mosasaur (pictured below), who viewers of Jurassic World will remember as one scaly guy who really kicked some butt. Mosasaurs reached (or, cueing in dramatic music, should I have used the present tense "reach"?) sixty feet long--150% of the length of an adult Tyrannosaurus rex--and do look very crocodilian. There are also many other reptiles from the past which, if not actually huge crocodilians, very closely resembled them.

Is it in fact possible that animals long thought to be extinct are still denizens of the deep? There is a lot of ocean out there, and the vast majority of it has never been explored below the surface. As Sherlock Holmes stated, "When you have eliminated the impossible, then what is left must be the truth."

By Nobu Tamura (http://spinops.blogspot.com) (Own work)
[GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) via Wikimedia Commons

WHY SANTA DOES NOT LIVE AT THE SOUTH POLE

A common misconception is that the temperatures at the North Pole are really cold. In reality, the average temperature in the Arctic is a relatively warm and balmy -30 degrees F (-34 degrees C). If you want to get where it is really frosty, go to Antarctica, where the norm is a -80 degrees F (-62 degrees C). In fact, the lowest official natural temperature recorded in the world was in 1983 in Antarctica, where it plummeted to a -128.6 degrees F (-89 degrees C). Carbon dioxide freezes into dry ice at -109 degrees F (-79 degrees C).

The difference between the temperatures of the two poles is attributed to the fact that the North Pole is at sea level and insulated by the surrounding water, while most of Antarctica is at an altitude of 9300 feet (2800 meters) or more.

View image | gettyimages.com

THE DEATH DEALER

Single individuals, such as Hitler and Stalin, were responsible for the deaths of millions of people. However, they did so primarily by decree, and not by personally performing each killing. Arguably, the persons who directly killed the most individuals would be the toggliers aboard the Enola Gay and Bock's Car, who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, when considering who was the most prolific killer who personally dealt death on an individual one-on-one basis, the Guinness World Records awarded that honor in 2010 to General Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin--Stalin's chief executioner from 1926 to 1953.

Blohkin was the head of the Kommandatura Branch of the Administrative Executive Department of the NKVD of the Soviet Union--the agency in charge of "black work" for the government. Under his tutelage, his agency supervised an estimated 828,000 executions.

Blohkin, however, was not just a bureaucrat who sat in his chair while ordering others to do the dirty stuff. He personally performed at least 10,000 slayings, and perhaps a lot more.

His most infamous stint involved the murder in April of 1940 of 7,000 Polish prisoners of war in the Katyn Forest in Poland. Blohkin established for himself the goal of killing at least 300 prisoners each night. He set up an assembly line system where each prisoner was brought to a specially designed soundproofed shed equipped with a sloping concrete floor and a drain. Once the prisoner entered the shed, Blohkin immediately shot him in the back of the head. Blohkin's assistants then removed the corpse and quickly hosed down the floor prior to bringing in the next victim. This ritual was performed from dusk to dawn for 28 consecutive nights.

Blohkin carried a briefcase full of German Walther pistols with him to use for the Katyn killings. He thought the weapon more reliable than the Soviet-issue TT-33 and, if things went south, he wanted the murders to be attributed to the Germans instead of to the Russians.

Blohkin was forced to resign after Stalin died in 1953. He descended into alcoholism and insanity and purportedly committed suicide in 1955. Of course, during that period of time, a lot of Stalin's myrmidons committed "suicide" under mysterious circumstances.

NOT CRAZY ABOUT THE CRAZY HORSE MONUMENT?

Carving commenced on the Crazy Horse Monument in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1948, and the project today is far from finished. Crazy Horse, of course, is the Sioux war chief who handed General Custer his butt at Little Big Horn. When the monument is completed, it will display Crazy Horse pointing his finger allegedly to where his dead countrymen are buried. While it is sincerely intended to be a tribute to the Sioux people and also to Native Americans in general, many of them are less than thrilled for a variety of reasons, including:

1. The massive sculpture will require the destruction of a mountain sacred to the Sioux.

2. Crazy Horse will actually be pointing his finger directly at a luxury hotel.

3. Finger pointing is considered very offensive by many Native American tribes. Their spokespersons have indicated that it is similar to depicting George Washington on Mt. Rushmore picking his nose.

4. Crazy Horse avoided having his picture taken in his lifetime, and he probably would not have wanted to be the subject of what will be the largest sculpture in the world--even bigger than Mt. Rushmore.

The below photo displays the model for the sculpture, with the actual mountain in the background. You can see that the sculptors have completed the face and top of the arm on the mountain. 

To the credit of those behind this project, no government money is being used to fund it.

View image | gettyimages.com

#258--AURIC EPIDERMAL SUFFOCATION

Early in the movie Goldfinger, James Bond convinces Jill Masterson, the secretary of archvillain Auric Goldfinger, to betray her boss. Shortly thereafter, Bond and Ms. Masterson are inexplicably in Bond's hotel suite with Masterson in a highly unclad state. Goldfinger's myrmidon, Oddjob, then enters the suite, knocks Bond unconscious, and covers Masterson's entire body with gold paint. This, as explained in the movie, quickly results in her death by "skin suffocation," a condition which afflicts cabaret dancers who paint their bodies without leaving a bare patch at the base of the spine for the skin to breathe.

Skin suffocation is probably a myth, although I for one do not intend to test it. The TV show Mythbusters painted the entire body of one of the actors with no ill effect except for a very slight increase in blood pressure. It is quite possible that a person who is undergoing vigorous exercise or in a hot climate may suffer heat stroke if all of her pores are blocked or that chemicals could leach into the body over time, but these effects would not occur under normal conditions in a short temporal period.

Nonetheless, just to err on the side of caution, the director of Goldfinger made sure that there was a bare patch of skin on the actress, Shirley Eaton, when he filmed the above sequence.

This sequence, by the way, is not the most memorable one in the film.  There is another one involving a 1964 Lincoln Continental which is far too visceral, traumatic, and graphic for me, as a fan of special interest automobiles, even to attempt to describe it.

View image | gettyimages.com