THEY REMEMBERED PEARL HARBOR--UNFORTUNATELY

It was a typical balmy winter morning at Pearl Harbor on Oahu that fateful Sunday so many decades ago, with clear conditions over the harbor itself and dense rain clouds over the island towards the north. The Navy and Army were well-prepared for an attack from the ocean from the south, and southern Oahu bristled with ships, submarines, aircraft, coastal artillery, and troops. Unfortunately, the enemy perversely chose to attack from the north from its undetected naval task force. The carriers launched their planes at the break of dawn, and the aircraft achieved total surprise and domination when they flew over the island and popped out of the clouds. Virtually all defending aircraft were parked helplessly on the ground, and the naval fleet lay immobile and helpless bottled up in the harbor. 

The only reason why not all of the defending ships were sunk and not all of the defending aircraft were destroyed was that the enemy planes were armed only with flares and bags of flour. This attack took place on February 7, 1932, when the U.S. Navy was conducting massive maneuvers to test the defenses at Pearl Harbor. Half of the fleet was supposed to "attack" the facility while the other half, along with the ground troops, artillery, and Army Air Corps, was to defend. The commander of the attacking fleet, Admiral H. E. Yarnell, left all of his proud battleships and cruisers behind and relied totally on two aircraft carriers with four destroyer escorts to do the deed--with overwhelming success.

Yarnell and his supporters urged during the post-game analysis that perhaps it was time for the Navy to rely more heavily on aircraft carriers and not so much on its beloved battleships. Unfortunately, the traditionalists prevailed, arguing in part that the exercise was not fair because the attack took place on a Sunday when everyone was less alert and that it would not have succeeded but for the element of surprise and the fact that the attackers approached from the "wrong" direction. 

Although the U.S. Navy apparently did not learn anything from the exercise, such was not the case with the Japanese. They had a well-established intelligence network on the island who reported back to Tokyo exactly what had happened. As a result, nearly ten years later, Japan launched its own devastating attack using the plan which had been devised by the Americans. 

For further information on this initial attack on Pearl Harbor, as well as a second one in 1938, which achieved similar results, click here.

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THE MOBILE MEAT GRINDER

The Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, has an extensive and awe-inspiring collection of European automobiles. It is definitely worth seeing. Further, most of its exhibits are not of the ordinary and mundane.The museum is a haven for many vehicles which can be described only as bizarre and gobsmacking.

Probably the weirdest of the weird in the museum is the French 1932 Helicron. To start with, its body was converted from a Rosengart (a defunct make of French car) by spinning it 180 degrees so that it steers from the rear. The front wheels are not sprung and always face straight forward. And, there is no transmission or gearbox.

Why no transmission? Well, the Helicron is powered by a huge propeller on the nose of the car. Envision an airplane without wings, and you will be right there. The wheels merely hold the car body off of the ground but provide no propulsion.

While this system reduces the need for air-conditioning in the car, there are a few minor drawbacks. The propeller, especially if the car is facing uphill, does not have enough umph to get the car moving from a rest, so the driver has to get out and push the car to gain some momentum and then jump into his seat (fortunately, the hand brake and accelerator--whose sole function is to raise or lower the RPMs of the engine and propeller--are accessible both inside and outside of the car). Acceleration is pathetic, and 0 to 60 MPH would be measured in minutes, not seconds, if only the car was even capable of exceeding 50 MPH. There is no reverse gear, and the driver backs up the vehicle by--you guessed it--getting out and pushing it. The steering is very loose, the car drifts, and the driver does not really steer the auto--it is more that he instead makes suggestions to it. And finally, there is the issue of the propeller itself. Remember the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the Nazi pugilist and a spinning airplane propeller attempt to occupy the same space at the same time? Ditto with any unfortunate pedestrian, June bug, or bicyclist who encounters the front of the Helicron--the victim would be puréed instantly. It would be simply offal. 

The Helicron owned by the Lane Motor Museum was restored in 2000 from a pile of parts found in a dusty barn. It is all original, except that the engine could not be located and was replaced with a more modern Citroën GS flat-four. There is one other known example of the Helicron, and it is in the Automobile and Fashion Museum of Málaga, Spain.

Surprisingly enough, the machine is street-legal both in its old home in France and in its current one in Tennessee. While your new ride purchased in the USA must comply with over 900 pages of regulations imposed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a car from the 1930s with a propeller in the front is lawfully free to ply its trade.

The Lane Motor Museum kindly has provided access to a video of the Helicron valiantly attempting to conquer the rolling hills of Tennessee. On the other hand, if your cup of tea runs more to watching the Helicron's blade vaporize hot dogs into minute gobbets of salty fat, you will want to view instead the demonstration by Jason Torchinsky of Jalopnik.

Photo from Lane Motor Museum website https://www.lanemotormuseum.org

THE HIGHEST PLACE ON EARTH? SURPRISE...

By Kilobug (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

If you define the highest point on earth as the place on the earth's surface which is the furthest from its center, then Mt. Everest is not the winner.  That distinction goes to Mt. Chimborazo in Ecuador. It is true that the official height of Mt. Everest is 29,029 feet, while that of Mt. Chimborazo is only 20,702--almost a mile and a half shorter. However, the earth is not a perfect sphere, and its oblate shape pushes Mt. Chimborazo further from the center of the planet than Everest.

SPENCER PHIPS'S FINAL SOLUTION

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Just how offensive is it to use the term "redskin" to denote a Native American or as the name of a football team? After all, are not whites called "white" and blacks called "black?" Isn't "redskin" merely also a reference to the hue of the skin?

No, it actually is not a description of skin color, and it is easy to understand why any Native American who was aware of the origin of the term would be offended--even if one did accept the questionable premise that the nomenclature would be OK if based solely on epidermal pigmentation.

In 1755, Lieutenant Governor Spencer Phips of Massachusetts issued a proclamation directed at eliminating the Penobscot Indians. It provided for payment of a bounty for action against the Penobscots  as follows:

For males over the age of twelve captured and taken to Boston--50 pounds

For males under the age of twelve or females taken to Boston--25 pounds

For the scalps of killed males over the age of twelve--40 pounds

For the scalps of killed females over the age of twelve--25 pounds

For the scalps of killed children under the age of twelve--20 pounds

In that the annual salary of a schoolteacher at that time was between 60 to 120 pounds, there were many individuals who were able to justify to themselves the morality of genocide. It was the white man who taught the Indians about scalping--not the other way around.

What does this have to do with redskins? Well, "redskin" was the term used to refer to the bloody scalps turned in for the bounty. As such, referring to a Native American as a "redskin" would be as offensive as calling a Jew "crematorium fodder," and its use as a moniker for a sports franchise would be akin to a Berlin soccer team naming itself the "Zyklon B."

THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL--AND YOU THOUGHT THAT JAR JAR BINKS WAS BAD...

Chewbacca from Star Wars has a wife named Malla (short for "Mallatobuck"), a son named Lumpy (short for "Lumpawarrump") and a father named Itchy (short for "Attichitcuk").  

These intimate personal details of Chewbacca's life were revealed to the world in the infamous November 17, 1978 TV broadcast of the two-hour Star Wars Holiday Special, which featured Harvey Korman, Bea Arthur, Art Carney, and all of the principals of the first Star Wars movie, including "Darth Vader and his Raiders." You get a whole new perspective on the Star Wars universe when you see a Dark Lord of the Sith and his Imperial Stormtroopers prancing around the stage in a song and dance number. My wife and I watched the show over 35 years ago on our little Zenith black-and-white portable, and I still have flashbacks to that traumatic experience.

David Hofstede, who authored the scholarly treatise of  What Were They Thinking?: The 100 Dumbest Events in TV History ranks this program as "the worst two hours of television ever." Nathan Rabin, noted film and music critic, opined that it may have been "ultimately written and directed by a sentient bag of cocaine."

The show was mercifully never rebroadcast and never released on any recorded media. Any copies available to the public are the pirated products of nerds who had access to what would have been very expensive videotaping equipment at the time. Carrie Fischer (Princess Leia) compelled George Lucas to give her a copy in exchange for her narration of a commentary for a DVD of Star Wars films. She played the tape of the Holiday Special at the end of parties at her house when she wanted to hustle the guests out to go home.

Photo via Wikimedia

THE BIRTHER CONTROVERSY CONTINUES UNRESOLVED

Despite all of the rhetoric to the contrary, there still remains a reasonable possibility that a person served as President of the United States illegally because he was not a natural-born citizen as required by the U.S. Constitution. The individual in question is, of course, Chester Alan Arthur, who, as Vice-President, was sworn into the Presidency in 1881 as a result of the assassination of  President James Garfield. Rumors abounded in the 1880 election that Arthur was actually born in Canada, instead of the sleepy village of Fairfield, Vermont some fifteen miles south of the Canadian-U.S. border. 

Arthur's father was originally from Ireland before he came to the New World to serve as a teacher and clergyman in southern Canada and northern Vermont. Purportedly, his son born in Fairfield was Chester Abell Arthur and died shortly thereafter. The birthers believe that the next son, Chester Alan Arthur (who eventually become President), was born in Canada during an 18-month period when his mother resided in that country with her parents while Arthur's father was on the road.

The opposing political party (i.e. the Democrats) tried to make as much political hay as possible with these allegations when Arthur was on the ticket as the Vice-President in 1880; however, most persons presumed that Garfield would be serving his full term and really did not care that much about the Vice-Presidential candidates. During a speech to his supporters shortly after the 1880 election, Arthur coyly stated, "I don’t think we had better go into the minute secrets of the campaign, so far as I know them… while I don’t mean to say anything about my birthplace, whether it was in Canada or elsewhere, still, if I should get to going about the secrets of the campaign, there is no saying what I might say to make trouble between now and the 4th of March [Inauguration Day]." Arthur never did 'fess up about his birthplace and burned all of his personal papers prior to his death.

It is quite possible that Arthur himself did not know where he was born. He had no birth certificate, and his family freely traveled to different locations in Canada and Vermont around the time of his birth (whenever that was--even historians do not all agree as to whether it was 1829 or 1830). Records from that era are very sparse and not all that helpful.

Well, was Arthur born in Canada? The evidence is not conclusive either way. However, I do feel obligated to point out that the "Chester A. Arthur Birthplace" in Fairfield was renamed by the State of Vermont to the "Chester A. Arthur State Historic Site."

THE HORRORS OF DR. HENRY COTTON

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One of the most revered psychiatrists of the early 20th Century was Dr. Henry A. Cotton (1876-1933). As Medical Director of the New Jersey State Hospital at Trenton, Dr. Cotton revolutionized the treatment of the mentally ill with innovations such as the elimination of the promiscuous use of mechanical restraints, the institution of daily staff meetings to review the care of each patient, and the advancement of the practice of "surgical bacteriology." 

Surgical bacteriology was based on the premise that mental disease usually was caused not by genetics or environment but instead by infection, as evidenced by the fact that people with high fevers often became delusional and experienced hallucinations. Cotton taught that removal of the infected organ would cure the mental disease. Cotton usually started with extracting teeth as the most likely source of the infection. If this did not do the job, he would then perform a tonsillectomy. If the patient still exhibited signs of a psychiatric disorder, he would then move on to removal of all or part of the testicles, ovaries, gall bladder, stomach, spleen, cervix, or, one of his favorites, the colon. He considered masturbation to be a psychiatric disorder and performed colonectomies on children so that they would not take up the practice.

Cotton claimed a cure rate of 85%, which at first blush contradicted a fatality rate of 30 to 45% (depending on which source you believe). In that there were no antibiotics in use at the time, the higher fatality rate is far more likely. Part of the inconsistency between the cure rate and the fatality rate can be explained by the fact that Cotton would often proclaim that a patient was cured of the mental disorder even while the victim was lying in bed dying of sepsis.   

Cotton's theories were widely accepted by the medical community. He received many requests to speak at prestigious medical institutions and associations in the United States and Europe. Many families of the mentally ill, as well as the patients themselves in some cases, eagerly sought his services as being on the cutting edge of psychiatry.

Unfortunately, many of the patients and their families did not initially realize the extent of the mutilations which would be performed or even that surgery would necessarily be part of the Cotton regime. Once the patient was admitted, no one would obtain the consent of the patient or the responsible family member before Cotton would get out his knife. 

Ultimately, even the most demented patients would see their fellow inmates with missing teeth and gaping surgical wounds and figure out that they should not look forward to "treatment sessions." The situation probably led to a fairly stressful environment for the patient.

Cotton condemned the dental profession for salvaging teeth when they could be removing them instead.

The doctor was, at least, was not a hypocrite. He had his own teeth pulled as well as those of his wife and his two children.

During his 26-year tenure at the New Jersey State Hospital, Dr. Cotton removed over 11,000 teeth and performed over 645 major surgeries.

"Surgical bacteriology" remained recognized as valid psychiatric therapy until the 1950s.

"GROWING UP SKIPPER"--THANKS FOR THE MAMMARIES

Original 1964 version of Skipper

Five years after the Barbie doll was released in 1959, Mattel decided to provide her with a family member in the form of a sibling named Skipper. Skipper originally was much shorter than Barbie and was clearly a young prepubescent girl. Apparently, however, Skipper was not sexy enough, and in 1975, Mattel came out with its bizarre "Growing Up Skipper" fashion doll. If you twirled Skipper's left arm, she would gain an inch in height and would magically pop out a pair of breasts.

It turned out that watching dolls go through puberty was a passing fad, and "Growing Up Skipper" was quickly discontinued and relegated to the ash pit of history and the back alleys of Ebay. However, Skipper never again regained her little girl status, and the modern static version is about the same height and is as equally well-endowed as her more famous older sister.

If for some reason you wish to observe a fashion doll grow boobs, just click here.

COFFEE, OR HOW TO AVOID EXECUTION IN 18TH CENTURY SWEDEN

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Coffee was introduced to Sweden in 1674. It quickly became like a 17th Century version of marihuana, where many folks enthusiastically endorsed its consumption while those in authority eventually banned it as an illegal and dangerous addictive drug. In addition to the usual types of penalties associated with breaking the law, unlawful coffee drinkers had to forfeit their cups and saucers used to facilitate the crime.

One of the java naysayers was King Gustav III, who initiated a scientific experiment to prove the dangers of the beverage. Gustav located twin brothers who were scheduled to be executed and authorized commuting their sentences to life imprisonment when one agreed to consume three pots of coffee a day while the other would drink an equivalent amount of tea instead. The prisoners were closely monitored by two physicians, and Gustav expected that eventually he would receive a report that the coffee drinker had succumbed to an early and premature death while the tea drinker remained perking on.

Unfortunately for Gustav, he discovered that one thing more deadly than drinking coffee was being the King of Sweden. He was assassinated in 1792 before witnessing the results of his experiment. The tea drinker later died of natural causes at the age of 83. The coffee drinker survived them all, but history does not record his exact date of death. Who knows, maybe he is still alive today wandering through various Swedish Starbuckses for eternity.

The Swedish authorities in the 1820s finally abandoned all attempts at banning coffee. Sweden today has one of the highest per capita consumption rates of coffee in the world.

THE TRUCK ROOM

Ford's full-size pickup trucks have been the best selling pickup in the USA for over 45 years and the best selling vehicle--car or truck--in the USA for over 35 years. Ford has a powerful interest in maintaining this popularity. As a consequence, it created the "Truck Room" for its marketing and promotion staff.

The Truck Room is a secret hideaway in Detroit where these individuals can sit down and bond in the midst of manly artifacts sacred to truckers such as lariats, cowboy boots and hats, a duck decoy, Rapala fishing lures, a fish landing net, a T-shirt imprinted with "Big Big Daddy," dirty work gloves, a canoe paddle, and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. There are strict rules of decorum, and anyone wearing a pink shirt or carrying any foo-foo elitist beverage which Frasier Crane would be comfortable drinking is barred from entry. Any individual who speaks with obtuse polysyllabic phraseology (such as by uttering "obtuse polysyllabic phraseology") while within the room is immediately fined a dollar.

The purpose of the room is to make the staff feel like they are in a place like Texas so that they will come up with effective "experimental marketing" ideas promoting Ford trucks. One example of such an idea was the reality show Dirty Jobs, which shows hard-working folks using Ford trucks to accomplish necessary but noisome tasks, such as hauling hog manure, sheep carcasses, or other offal stuff.

The story of the Truck Room is one of many revealing insights into the history of the automobile industry in general, as well as of specific groundbreaking vehicles, which can be found in Paul Ingrassia's excellent book Engines of Change. You might call it the ultimate auto-biography.

WHO PAYS FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL BUDWEISER?

Living in the White House is not a total free ride for the President at the taxpayer's expense. The government does not pay for the President's meals, bedtime snacks, dry cleaning for his suits (although his shirts are done in-house), toilet paper, toothpaste, litter for his cats, and most other types of personal expenses. While the President does not have to go to the grocery store himself and can leave that task to the White House staff, he does receive a bill each month for the costs incurred for him and his family and guests.

Ronald Reagan indicated that the personal services provided at the White House rivaled those of an "8-star hotel" and was happy to pay for them. Other occupants, especially Rosalynn Carter, were less than thrilled to discover the amount of money her family would have to shell out. Fortunately for the Presidents, the costs of official state dinners are not considered personal expenses.

For additional insights from the National Geographic on the nuts-and-bolts of running the White House, check out its issue for January, 2009.

JOHN TYLER--"FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY"

John Tyler (1790-1862) was the tenth President of the United States and served from 1841 to 1845.  He was also the most fecund of the Presidents, having sired fifteen legitimate children through his two wives and possibly many more babies through his slaves. Amazingly, as of the date of this post (6/22/2016), two of his grandchildren are still alive.

HITCHCOCK'S LOST MOVIE RISES FROM THE GRAVE

One of Alfred Hitchcock's early films, The White Shadow (1923), was about twin sisters--one good and one evil.  It is doubtful that is has any connection to the Ken Howard TV show of the same name. The movie bombed in the box office, and eventually all known copies had either disappeared or had simply decomposed, having been recorded on unstable nitrate-based film.

However, in 2011, the first three of the six reels in the movie turned up in New Zealand.  They had been in the storage rooms of the New Zealand Film Archives since 1989.  The Archives had inherited the reels from a local projectionist, Jack Murtagh, who had kept them and hundreds of other early films in his garden shed.

Murtagh was not a movie thief.  Because of the flammability of nitrate film, it was very expensive to transport it.  Since New Zealand was usually the end of the theatrical line, most movie companies simply abandoned the films in New Zealand rather than pay the cost of shipping them back.  Murtagh merely retrieved the discarded reels from the trash bin.

The three surviving reels of The White Shadow are in surprisingly excellent condition.  If the other three reels are ever found, the completed movie would be worth millions of dollars.

To watch the three available reels, click here.

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WITOLD PILECKI--THE ULTIMATE ANTI-WUSS

One unfortunate consequence of ethnic jokes against people of Polish descent is that they obfuscate the fact that there have been numerous Poles who have had cojones the size of bowling balls who have committed incredible acts of heroism and bravery. One such example is Captain Witold Pilecki.

Pilecki gallantly served as a young soldier in the Russo-Polish war of 1919-1920. Although this by itself is a notable achievement, it is not enough to distinguish him from numerous others who also participated. In 1939, he fought Germans and, in collaboration with Major Jan Włodarkiewicz, established a resistance group known as the Polish Secret Army, which spread across the country—again, a very courageous thing to do, but by itself not necessarily the stuff of legends.

However, Pilecki really demonstrated his mettle in 1940, when he deliberately allowed himself to be captured by the Nazis so that he could be incarcerated in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Once in the camp, he enlisted the help of other prisoners to do things to things which would have really gotten him into a fecal-load of trouble with the Germans if he had been caught.

His first task was to infiltrate the administration of the camp, where prisoners were often put in charge of running various functions under the supervision of the Nazis. By doing so, he was able to place his co-conspirators under one roof with a more benevolent Kapo (a prisoner appointed by the Nazis to oversee other inmates) and access to better food and medical care.

He then built a short-wave radio which the conspiracy used for several months in 1942 to communicate with the Allies about conditions in the camp. The radio was hidden in the hospital, where the Nazis usually did not tread, but it eventually had to be dismantled when one of the conspirators got too talkative.

He organized several escapes from the camp, including an exploit which could have come straight from a Hogan's Heroes episode, where four of the prisoners, armed and dressed up as SS officers, stole the camp Commandant’s car and blithely drove out of the camp in broad daylight. He used the prison escapees to transfer additional information to Warsaw and ultimately to the Polish government in exile in London.

The camp had a “suggestion box,” where prisoners seeking to suck up to the Nazis and receive favorable treatment could submit the names of fellow prisoners who had committed infractions. Pilecki's group was able to intercept the contents of the box on a regular basis and replace the names of the anti-Nazi prisoners with the names of the most malevolent ones.

Pilecki's group also assassinated the most dangerous of the prisoner informants. The Germans were not all that concerned about an occasional murdered prisoner in a death camp, although they did frown upon the practice if they themselves were not doing the murdering. However, Pilecki's group also wanted to get rid of the most inhumane representatives of the SS. Killing or incapacitating German soldiers and getting away with it was a far more daunting task than killing prisoners. The group nonetheless achieved this goal without suspicion by raising a colony of typhus-infected lice and turning them loose on the Germans.

In late 1942, Pilecki had a thousand prisoners under his command and formulated a plan for taking over the camp from the Germans and freeing all of the inmates. However, he could only do so with the assistance of the Polish authorities and supplies to be air-dropped by the Allies. The Allies ignored his request, so the escape never occurred.

Pilecki, through the use of his clandestine radio and his reports carried by escapees, was the first to inform the Allies about the crematoriums and the use of Zyklon B in gas chambers. The Allies refused to believe the reports and thought that they were just exaggerations promulgated by the Polish government in an attempt to get more support.

Eventually, Pilecki escaped in 1943 and presented his information in person. The Allies still believed the reports to be exaggerated and still did nothing.

Pilecki then participated in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and fought gallantly against the Germans. He was captured and held as a prisoner-of-war.

After the war, he was repatriated. His grateful government tortured, tried, and executed him in 1948 on trumped-up charges and buried him in a secret location. His real crime was that the Soviet overlords of Poland believed that he was going to be a trouble-maker and plot against the Communist regime. The overlords' belief was most likely well-founded. 

Outside of his native country, Pilecki's name and story are essentially unknown. However, his tale and many others equally compelling was found at the exhibit which had been on display through December of 2016 in Abilene, Kansas at the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum entitled Be Ye Men of Valour: Allies of World War II.

JOSY BARTHEL'S UNEXPECTED OLYMPIC VICTORY

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In the 1952 Olympics at Helsinki, Josy Barthel (second from the lead in the above photo) of Luxembourg won the gold medal for the men's 1500 meter competition. This victory was considered a real gobsmacker, as Luxembourg had never won a gold medal before in any Olympics and the competition featured several more likely and famous candidates--including Roger Bannister, who held the British record for the event and who thereafter became the first man to run the 4-minute mile.

The Olympic Committee was so unprepared for this development that it did not even have the musical scores available for the band to play the Luxembourg national anthem. The musicians improvised, and the resulting rendition was spectacularly cacophonous. Barthel cried unabashedly on the podium, and no one was sure if it was tears of joy over his triumph or instead tears of anguish at the butchered rendition of his homeland's melody.

For a video of the race, click here.

TOOL-USING REPTILES--WHAT A CROC!

A 2014 article in the journal Ethology Ecology and Evolution indicates that certain crocodilians, namely Indian mugger crocodiles and American alligators, have developed the use of sticks as tools--specifically, as bait. 

Some birds, primarily egrets, build their nests near crocodilian-infested waters, as the presence of the reptiles scares off other predators. With the exception of an occasional chick which falls into the water, most egrets know how to avoid getting too close to the leathery leviathans of lethality that they seek out as guardians.

However, certain crocs and gators intentionally lie motionless on the surface with balanced sticks upon their heads and, if they have to move, they do so deliberately in such a fashion that the sticks do not fall off. An unwary egret, desperately looking for sticks for nest building, will reach down to the herptile's head for the bait stick with tragic consequences. Zoologists have further noted that the habit of wearing sticks by the reptiles abates if not totally ceases when nest building season is over.

Those of us who enjoy alligators and crocodiles have known for years that they are probably the most intelligent of reptiles. Their maternal instincts are strong (try digging up a nest of croc eggs if you dispute this assertion), and the mama croc takes care of the crockettes long after their hatching. A bunch (actually, the correct collective noun is "bask") of crocodiles will attack a large animal, and, when the prey has been killed, the participants will politely line up single file with each one taking a chomp off of the carcass in an orderly procession. A crocodile and his buddies will circle a school of fish and force the school into a tight ball where the individual reptiles will then, again in orderly fashion, swim through the center of the sphere of fishes and gulp down a meal. In a scene reminiscent of the stalking patterns of velociraptors demonstrated in the Jurassic Park film series, a single crocodile or alligator often will drive a large prey animal towards other crocodilians lying in ambush. It is thus not surprising that alligators and crocodiles have the street smarts to be master baiters.

Therefore, if you softly and surreptitiously steer your skiff into the Stygian shallows of certain southern swamps late at night, you perhaps may hear some of the the gators gently crooning, "Egrets, I've had a few, but then again..."

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"JUST KIDDING..."

For obvious reasons, Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin found it prudent to surround himself with highly-trained bodyguards who followed him everywhere he went. Well, almost everywhere he went. He issued standing orders that his bedchambers were off-limits to his protectors and that they should never enter therein.

One day, the guards heard bloodcurdling shrieks behind Stalin's bedroom door. They, fearing that Stalin was being assassinated, rushed in only to find out that they were the targets of Stalin's playful sense of humor and that Stalin was screaming merely to find out if his bedroom-avoidance directive would be honored if his men thought that he was in mortal peril.

As a consequence of these loyal myrmidons being willing to take the initiative and disobey orders when they thought it was necessary to do so to save Stalin's life, he ordered them to be executed.

Stalin died in 1953 several days after suffering a stroke. Ironically, at the stroke's onset, he was in his bedroom. When he failed to request his normal morning tea, his guards suspected that something was drastically wrong, but, recalling what had happened to their predecessors, they delayed twelve hours before sending in one very courageous individual who found a urine-soaked Stalin collapsed on the floor. Even more ironically, Stalin had, in a fit of paranoia, recently purged his high-ranking physicians, and they had to dispense their medical advice for his treatment (which included the administration of leeches and the intake of nutrition via enemas) from behind the barbed wire of the Gulags.

It is suspected by many historians that Stalin's Security Chief, Lavrenti Beria, as well as Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev, conspired with other Poliburo members to induce the stroke in Stalin by poisoning him with the blood thinner Warfarin. These officials were purportedly concerned that Stalin's megalomania, impulsiveness, and aforementioned paranoia would provoke him into launching a nuclear war with the United States. Or, maybe they were just fans of John Wayne.

AN EMPTY CONTAINER MAKES THE LOUDEST SOUND--THE SAGA OF THE LOVESICK HOWLER MONKEY

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The loudest noise in the world naturally produced from a land animal is not the trumpeting of an elephant or the roar of a lion--it is instead the call of the male aptly-named howler monkey of Central and South America. The volume of sound produced by a single monkey can achieve 140 decibels--right up there with that of a jet engine and even louder than the crack of a .22 rifle.

As you may suspect, boy monkeys howl for the same reasons that some human males sit around and rev their motorcycle engines--to announce to the immediate world that they are brimming over with testosterone and virility and are eager to couple with a compliant female. Male howler monkeys with the largest hyoid bones in their throats produce the loudest volumes of calls and have the best luck getting the girls.

Ironically, however, these big hyoid-boned calls constitute false advertising. Researchers have discovered that the individual howler monkeys with the quieter voices actually have larger testes than their loud-mouthed associates. What happens is that the loud monkey generally assembles a harem of females who service only him, and there is no evolutionary benefit for him to be able to produce huge quantities of sperm in order to be able to fertilize a mate. The quieter monkeys, however, tend to live in colonies with other males and females. The females in this situation are promiscuous, and a male monkey who has big balls which can provide an elevated sperm count enjoys improved odds that one of his spermatazoa will the be lucky one to reach the egg ahead of the seed of his rival suitors.

Well, what about our human motorcycle exhibitionist? Is his sexual equipment substandard? Well...

THE MAN WHO LOVED TO FILIBUSTER

William Walker (1824-1860) was an American doctor, law student, journalist, and imperialist. Like some other Americans of his day, he loved to filibuster (hence the title of this factoid). Back then, "filibuster" did not refer to what Democratic senators did in 2006 to attempt to derail the appointment of Samuel Alito as Supreme Court Justice; instead, it meant the conquering of foreign lands by a private American citizen in order to establish English-speaking colonies under the control of that American.

Walker's first attempt, in 1853, was to invade Baja California and the Sonora with 45 troops. He captured the town of La Paz, which he named as the capitol of his new nation, The Republic of Southern California--a country which he governed using the laws of Louisiana (which conveniently allowed slavery). After about three months, the Mexicans took umbrage and drove him back to the United States, where he stood trial for conducting an illegal war in violation of the Neutrality Act of 1794. The jurors, being red-blooded Americans in favor of Manifest Destiny, took all of eight minutes before acquitting him.

Undaunted, Walker next  turned his eyes to Nicaragua, which was in the throes of a civil war in 1854 between the Legitimist faction and the Democratic (unrelated to the US Democratic Party) faction. Walker went down to Nicaragua with sixty "colonists" (a/k/a "mercenaries") to support the Democrats. After the normal amount of bloodshed, Walker ended up ruling Nicaragua through a puppet President Patricia Rivas and eventually took over the office in his own name through a fraudulent election. U.S. President Franklin Pierce formally recognized Walker's government in 1856.

But, then, Walker really screwed the pooch. Prior to the construction of the Panama Canal in 1914, Nicaragua was a key element in getting goods and travelers between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. The cargo and passengers would arrive by ship to Nicaragua and would then be transported over inland waters and land by ship and stagecoach. The owner of this profitable route was Cornelius Vanderbilt (whose wealth back then would be equivalent to about $180 billion today). Walker attempted to open a competing railroad with the assistance of former Vanderbilt myrmidons--a foolhardy move against Vanderbilt, who had been noted for proclamations such as "Gentlemen, you have undertaken to cheat me. I won't sue you, for the law is too slow. I'll ruin you."

Vanderbilt got together with a half-dozen South American governments, organized an army in Costa Rica, and toppled Walker's regime, notwithstanding attempts by Walker to enlist aid from the southern USA by authorizing slavery in Nicaragua. Walker was exiled to the USA. He returned to the region in 1860 with the intent of establishing another one of his colonies in Honduras. He was captured by the English and turned over to the authorities in Honduras, who, probably quite prudently, executed him by firing squad.

To read more about Mr. Walker and many other colorful American personalities, check out The Mental Floss History of the United States.