THE HARRIER HUSTLE

In 1996, Pepsico ran a promotion where empty Pepsi containers could be redeemed for prizes. Each container was worth a certain number of points, and when you accumulated enough points, you could get a shirt, sunglasses, a hat, a Harrier jet, or the like.

Harrier jet? Well, one of the Pepsi commercials featured a teenager using Pepsi points to acquire various personal items in preparation for school while identifying how many points were required for each item. At the end of the commercial, the teen lands a Harrier jet near the bike rack of his school and smugly says "Sure beats the bus." The commercial then flashes on the screen the message "Harrier Fighter: 7,000,000 Pepsi Points."

John Leonard, a business school student, saw the commercial. He discovered that Pepsi points could be purchased directly for cash at the price of ten cents per point. He got together with five investors and, on March 28, 1996, tendered 15 Pepsi points along with a check for $700,008.50 for the remaining 6,999,985 points and demanded his Harrier (the surplusage of $10 represented costs for "shipping and handling.") Pepsi refused to give Leonard his plane (which normally sold for about $33.8 million apiece when they were purchased for the US Marine Corps).

Leonard sued Pepsi for misleading advertising, fraud, breach of contract, and deceptive and unfair trade practices. He lost. The judge bought Pepsi's argument that no objectively reasonable person could have thought that the commercial constituted a genuine offer on the part of Pepsi.

It was probably just as well for Leonard. The Department of Defense would not have allowed a civilian to purchase a Harrier anyway without first gutting it and stripping it of various armaments and military features--including the famous Harrier engine which permits it to take off and land vertically.

Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIREYS?

Dauntless. Hurricane. Avenger. Thunderbolt. Lightning. Spitfire. Hellcat. Komet. Corsair. Mustang. Kingcobra. Meteor. Warhawk. Devastator. Flying Fortress. Superfortress. Dominator. All of these testosterone-laden names for World War II aircraft suggest lethality, power, invincibility, speed, and just general all-round ability to be all over their foes like scum on a pond. Oh, and also, lest we forget, the British Fairey Swordfish.

What sort of plane does one envision with a name like "Fairey Swordfish?" Probably, something pretty close to the truth. The Fairey Swordfish were fabric-covered biplanes which would have looked right at home in the skies of World War I, and they were certainly obsolete by World War II (although they did do very well against submarines). They suffered catastrophic losses in battle (some missions lost 100% of the aircraft) and remained operational in the Second World War only because the British needed every plane they could use. I am not sure of the exact term used to describe someone who flew in a Fairey Swordfish, but I am confident that it is not "coward."

Now, let's switch over to battleship nomenclature. The pride of the German fleet in World War II was the Bismarck, named after Otto von Bismarck, the 19th century "Iron Chancellor" who forged the various German states into one modern nation, As described by Johnny Horton in his 1960 hit ballad Sink the Bismarck--

"In May of 1941 the war had just begun

The Germans had the biggest ship that had the biggest guns

The Bismarck was the fastest ship that ever sailed the sea

On her decks were guns as big as steers and shells as big as trees."

Although technically speaking, the Bismarck at that time was not the biggest battleship afloat with the biggest guns (that honor goes to the Japanese battlewagons Yamato and Musashi), it certainly was the biggest German ship, and the song accurately conveys the perception that any enemy vessel that crossed the Bismarck's path would have its hands full. 

The Bismarck and her twin sister, the Tirpitz, were intended to be surface raiders which would steam out into the Atlantic and methodically sink Allied convoys by the boatload. Quite inconveniently, however, the British took great pains to discourage such ventures and deployed much of their naval and air resources towards keeping the two vessels bottled up in their respective harbors. 

Nonetheless, on May 19, 1941, the Bismarck (sporting dazzle camouflage), along with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, three destroyers, and a number of minesweepers, broke free with the intention to wreak havoc in the North Atlantic. After some brief skirmishes with British vessels, the German fleet encountered the British battlecruiser H.M.S. Hood and the battleship H.M.S. Prince of Wales. Salvos were exchanged between the British and German vessels. Eight minutes into the battle, the Bismarck lobbed a shell into an ammo bunker in the Hood, with the resulting explosion causing the Hood to sink almost immediately with a loss of all but three of her crew of 1,419. 

The Germans then savaged the Prince of Wales. They probably would have been able to sink her, but she was effectively neutralized for the time being, and the German orders were to avoid as much as possible any engagement with warships which were not actually protecting a convoy. The Bismarck sailed away suffering damage from three hits--she had inflicted 93 hits on the British in return. 

The damage to the Bismarck, although inconvenient, was not lethal. She headed back to port for repairs. Although her top speed had been reduced to 27 or 28 knots, she was still fast enough that the British ships could not catch up to her. She then subsequently successfully withstood attacks by torpedo bombers, although her speed slowed to to about 16 knots as a result of this additional action. 

The British, who were throwing everything they had into the sea and the air, were desperate. They had miscalculated the course and destination of the Bismarck, and it become obvious that the chances were excellent that the Bismarck would reach her sanctuary. The British finally spotted her by air, but she was out of the range of all British vessels, except one--the H.M.S. Ark Royal. 

The Ark Royal sent out its torpedo bombers to work over the German behemoth. Unfortunately, the bombers attacked a British ship by mistake. Fortunately, none of the detonators on the bombs worked. The British switched to planes equipped with torpedoes and tried again. 

Have you forgotten about our friend the Fairey Swordfish? That is what the Ark Royal had to offer. These delicate and slow cloth-covered kites, each carrying a single torpedo, were the only arrows left in the British quiver. Their pilots were given the unenviable task of lobbing their ordnance at the largest German ship afloat--one bristling with anti-aircraft capabilities. Their only defense would be to fly so low and so slow that the German guns would have trouble tracking them. 

Most of the attacks by the Fairey Swordfish were a failure. One brave pilot managed to lob a torpedo into the side of the ship, causing only minor flooding. Another pilot, John Moffat, sent his torpedo into the port rudder coupling.

Uh oh. With the damage to the port rudder inflicted by Moffat's lowly Fairey Swordfish, the Bismarck could only steam in a giant circle, which is what she was doing when the British fleet finally caught up to her. After the British fired 2,800 shells (400 of which hit the Bismarck) and numerous torpedoes, the German sailors scuttled her to avoid capture of the ship by the British. Finally, the Bismarck finally went down with only 114 survivors from its crew of over 2,200.

"We found the German battleship t'was makin' such a fuss

We had to sink the Bismarck 'cause the world depends on us

We hit the deck a runnin' and we spun those guns around

We found the mighty Bismarck and then we cut her down."

Embed from Getty Images

FLATULENT FISHIES

As reported by a study published in the British journal Biology Letters, herrings pass gas on porpoise in order to communicate with each other. Individual fish use what the researchers call "FRTs" (fast repetitive ticks) when darkness falls to let other members of the school know where they are so that the school can stay together and not flounder around. The FRTs are the sounds resulting from gaseous expulsions through a duct next to the fish's anus.

Contrary to the gas passed by humans, which comes from both swallowed air and the fermentation products of bacteria in the colon, the driving force behind herring FRTs consist solely of air swallowed by a fish from the surface of the water and then stored in its swim bladder. It is thus not particularly malodorous (in fact, you might say that it is not smelt at all). The concept of SBD ("silent but deadly") is a total anathema to a herring fartiste.

The herrings engage in these melodies only when it is dark and only when the density of the population reaches a certain level. The sounds are usually in the range of up to 22 kilohertz and are audible to herring but not to most other species of fish (who apparently either have a poor sense of herring or else just simply tuna it out). They thus provide a means of signaling other herring without provoking piscine predators. 

For further information on this topic, check out the National Geographic News.

Embed from Getty Images

THE COCA-COLA DICHOTOMY

The next time you are at a pool party, toss into the water a can of regular Coke and a can of Diet Coke (preferably, without opening them first). Will they sink or swim? Actually, both.

The can of regular Coke will plummet to Davy Jones's Locker, while the can of Diet Coke will contentedly bob on the surface. Both contain twelve ounces of liquid and the same amount of metal in the can. So what gives?

The answer lies in the evil sugar found in the regular Coke. It weighs in at 39 grams, while the amount of substitute sweetener in the Diet Coke can is only about 0.125 grams. Both cans of pop are about the same density as water, but the can of the diet product is just slightly below water's density and floats, while the sugary original is just slightly above and sinks.

But didn't I say the cans are both twelve ounces? Well, thanks to the Americans' desire to make units of measurement as confusing as possible, there are ounces used to measure volume and different ounces used to measure mass. The twelve ounces in a soda can refers to the volume of the contents, not the weight.

You can try this experiment with other beverages--just be warned that you might not be invited back to the next pool party.

For more information on this fascinating topic, please see the marvelous I Found Out Today website.

Embed from Getty Images

GOYA'S PORN

One of Francisco Goya's most controversial works of art was "The Naked Maja" ("La Maja Desnuda") painted in the late 1790s. It featured a reclining unclothed female who looked quite brazen and comfortable with her lack of garments, unlike the shy and demure subjects of most other nude artwork at that time. Goya also painted a version showing the same model fully clothed (called, appropriately enough, "The Clothed Maja" ("La Maja Vestida")) . Both pictures were commissioned for a private collector. They are displayed at the bottom of this Factoid, so if you are bothered by nudity, please close this window now.

The Spanish Inquisition, which was still around at the time, tried Goya on moral depravity charges in 1808 because of the nude version of the picture. He was acquitted when it was pointed out that the King of Spain had similar types of artwork in his personal collection.

Controversy was rekindled in 1930, when "The Naked Maja" appeared on a Spanish postage stamp. The United States Post Office refused to deliver any mail bearing the stamp and sent it back to Spain.

Controversy was re-rekindled in 1959, when United Artists released a movie about Goya called The Naked Maja. The Post Office refused to deliver post cards advertising the movie because they contained an image of the offensive painting.

Things have changed a little since the 1800s, the 1930s, and the 1950s. I remember my grandmother in the mid-1960s being horrified by a photo in LIFE magazine of a clothed woman with a baby bump. I shudder to think what she would have said if she could have seen a half-hour of a typical premium cable TV program today.

Francisco Goya [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Francisco Goya [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

:Nickpo (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

THE BARBIE-COOKIE CONFLAGRATION

We have already learned about "Growing Up Skipper" and "Slumber Party Barbie." There is still yet another disaster in the Barbie pantheon. In 1997, Mattel teamed up with Nabisco and produced "Oreo Barbie." You would have thunk that someone in these two companies, before they released the African-American version of the doll, would have realized that "Oreo" is a modern derogatory term for what used to be called an "Uncle Tom" and refers to a person who is black on the outside but white on the inside.

Oreo Barbie copyrighted by Mattel.
Image via Wikimedia.

#480--THE SMALL PENIS RULE

We have previously encountered the hazards of publishing a fictitious work which is based on an actual person, as exampled by the lawsuit brought against MGM Studios when it portrayed the victim of a rape committed by Rasputin or by the threat of litigation asserted against the publishers of Ian Fleming's Goldfinger, whose main character was unflatteringly modeled after a humorless architect with the same last name. Much of the legal hassle could have been avoided had the entities accused of committing the libel had simply followed the "small penis rule."

The "small penis rule," described by libel attorney Leon Friedman and reported in a 1998 New York Times article by Denitia Smith, is based on the fact that a real person adversely portrayed as a literary character in a work of fiction cannot prevail in a libel action against the author unless the portrayal of the literary character is so accurate that a reader would have no difficulty in linking the real person to the character. If an author describes a character as having a small penis, the real person upon which the character is based will most likely be very reluctant to come forward with a lawsuit and insist, "Hey, that guy must be me--I have a small penis."

Despite its name, the rule is not limited to genital size. A crafty author could employ one of many negative traits to describe his literary character in order to avoid a real person claiming in a libel suit to be the model for that character. Intense body odor, racism, or a predilection for sex with great horned owls and lesser kudus are examples of characteristics of a person which a writer or filmmaker could use to employ the "small penis rule."

One of the most flagrant examples of the "small penis rule" can be found in Michael Crichton's novel Next. Michael Crowley, a columnist in Washington, D.C., and a Yale graduate, had written a negative review of Crichton's earlier novel State of Fear. In Next, Crichton retaliated by describing an unsavory character named "Mick Crowley," a columnist in Washington, D.C., and a Yale graduate, who not only had a small penis but also sexually assaulted an infant. Michael Crowley did not sue and instead chose to use his column to suggest that Crichton had committed a "literary hit-and-run."

For more information on the tiny-tallywacker technicality, see the  fascinating article from Today I Found Out.

Embed from Getty Images

THE CROSSING CONTRADICTION CONUNDRUM

A study in New Zealand revealed that a pedestrian had a 28% greater chance of being hit in an official marked crosswalk than if he had simply jaywalked. A similar study in the United States also revealed that pedestrians using the crosswalks on higher traffic multi-lane roads had a greater chance of being hit by a car than did a jaywalker. Both of these studies involved crosswalks which had no other safety or signaling features.

Experts believe that the phenomenon is caused by a false sense of security on the part of the walkers because they are in a designated crossing area and that they pay far less attention to traffic hazards than if they are dashing across the street illegally.

The studies also reveal that the designated crosswalks are far safer if they equipped with a stop sign, traffic light, or other signal. Perhaps that is why New Zealand and Australia have taken the next step and adopted chirping crossing lights.

Embed from Getty Images

OPERATION FU-GO

It was a glorious spring day on May 5, 1945 in Bly, Oregon. The Nazis were on the ropes and the war in Europe would end two days later. Reverend Archie Mitchell had just accepted an appointment as the pastor of the Christian Missionary and Alliance Church in Bly. He and his wife Elsie were excitedly expecting their first child. In celebration of their good fortune and in order to cement ties with their new parishioners, Rev, and Mrs. Mitchell took five 11 to 14-year old kids from the Sunday school class for a picnic on nearby Mount Gearhart.

Admist the bubbling brooks and ponderosa pines of the beautiful sylvan wilderness, 13-year old Joan Patzke found a strange dirty white sphere on the forest floor. Summoning the others, she shouted out that it appeared to be a balloon. While Rev. Mitchell was absorbed with unloading the car, Elsie and the children formed a tight circle around the object while gaping in curiosity. One child reached forward to touch it. Rev. Mitchell finally observed the tableau and shouted for everyone to withdraw. It was too late. The object exploded, killing Elsie and the five children. When a forest ranger finally came upon the scene, he witnessed the victims lying around the center of the blast like spokes on a wheel with Rev. Mitchell futilely attempting to beat out the flames on his burning wife with his bare hands.

This Sunday school group has the dubious distinction of being the only casualties of an aerial bombardment of the continental USA during World War II. The bomb was the culmination of Operation Fu-Go, where the Japanese launched over 9,000 balloons, each containing thirty pounds (14 kilograms) of explosives, into the jet stream with the intention that they would be carried across the Pacific Ocean into the United States and start forest fires. The balloons were constructed from paper made from mulberry wood, diligently stitched together by Japanese school girls into 30-foot (10-meter) wide spheres, and filled with hydrogen.

The chance of a particular balloon reaching North America and starting a fire was slim. Probably ninety percent of them crashed into the sea. The Pacific Northwest is not known as being an arid area, and often the woods are too moist to sustain a fire. However, balloons eventually landed all over the western states with some as far as Iowa and even Grand Rapids, Michigan. One balloon hit power lines and momentarily disabled the nuclear plant in Hanover, Washington, which was producing the plutonium to be unleashed ultimately on Nagasaki in the form of an atomic bomb.

The American military was not unaware of the Japanese threat and shot down several of the floating bombs. It intentionally did not inform the public in order to avoid panic. The press cooperated in spiking stories of the balloon landings, and citizens who discovered the grounded balloons generally respected the directives of the authorities (usually, the FBI) to keep quite about it. The residents of Bly dutifully obeyed orders to repeat the tale that the explosion was of "undetermined origin," as no one wanted the Japanese to know that any of the bombs had reached the country. A month later (a month too late for Rev. Mitchell's wife, unborn child, and Sunday school class), the authorities relented and suggested to the public that one should refrain from approaching large spherical paper objects.

Operation Fu-Go may still constitute a threat. In 2014, loggers near Lumby, British Columbia, found one of the balloons. Fortunately, they stepped back, and the Canadian authorities were able to destroy it with a controlled explosion,

For more information on the dreaded balloon bombs, please click on the History Channel website.

THE SECRET OF THE HOLEY STONE

A "holey stone" is a stone where erosion or another natural event has bored a hole through it. These rare rocks are highly regarded in folklore and are supposed to possess a wide variety of magical powers. Perhaps the most significant use of a holey stone is to look through the hole with one eye while keeping the other eye closed. If you do so, you are supposed to be able to spot faeries, elves, brownies, or any other fey creature in the area who would otherwise be invisible.

AMERICAN HIGH-LOW CONFLUENCE

The highest point in the contiguous 48 U.S. states is located in Inyo County, California (Mt. Whitney).

The lowest point in the contiguous 48 U.S. states is located in Inyo County, California (Badwater Basin in Death Valley).

On a very clear day, both of these sites are visible from Dante's View in the Black Mountains.

Dante's View is familiar to space opera fans as the site of the panoramic vision of the Tatooine city of Mos Eisley in the original 1977 Star Wars movie. The city was added to the scene through the miracle of matte painting.

Embed from Getty Images

CAN MAN LIVE BY BREAD ALONE?

Although a diet comprised solely of flour, salt, and water might keep you alive for a little while, you would soon die of malnutrition--even if you started out in good health and physical condition.

Now, take the exact same ingredients but mix the flour, salt, and some of the water together, let it ferment for a while, and then bake it. You would then be on a bread and water diet which possibly could keep you alive indefinitely. The leavening and baking of the bread dough would unlock a lot of the nutrients and minerals within--probably enough to sustain life.

Of course, you still would not be in the prime of health, as you would not have vitamin C to withstand scurvy and to help heal wounds, vitamin A to avoid night blindness and your eyes from drying out, the same vitamins A and C to assist in fighting infections, vitamin D to prevent rickets and osteoporosis, or enough fat to maintain hair and skin and to produce adequate levels of testosterone to avoid loss of muscle mass.

Embed from Getty Images

THE TERRIFYING TARDIGRADES

Perhaps you recall the 1950s classic horror movie Attack of the Killer Tardigrades. The tardigrades were eight-legged creatures of loathsome appearance with diabolical claws and fierce appetites who were almost impossible to slay. Traveling through the vacuum of outer space without any protection did not kill them. Temperatures as cold as -453 degrees F (-272 degrees C or 1 degree above absolute zero on the Kelvin scale) did not kill them. Temperatures as high as 300 degrees F (150 degrees C) did not kill them. Radiation over 1,000 times the lethal dose to humans did not kill them. Being subjected to pressures of 6,000 atmospheres (roughly equivalent to being at the bottom of Challenger Deep) did not kill them. They spread their reign of terror throughout the earth from the bottom of the sea to the highest mountains.

All right, I must confess; I lied about the movie. There is no such film. However, tardigrades (also known as "water bears" because of their ursine gait) do exist and exhibit the above-described characteristics. But for the fact that the largest ones are only about a half of a millimeter long, they would comprise a deadly threat to humanity. Depending on the particular species, they feed either on plants or small beasties (including each other) and are found all over the earth, although they are especially prevalent among moss and lichens.

They have the ability in a harsh environment, such as caused by a drop in temperatures, to become desiccated, shut down their metabolism, and lose 99% of the water in their body. Such a condition is called a "tun" state, and they can remain in this stasis situation for over thirty years and still recover.

They are not completely immortal, notwithstanding the hyperbole contained within the first paragraph of this Factoid. Exposure to the extreme of extremes of temperature, pressure, and radiation will eventually kill them--for example, they can live only for a few minutes when the temperature is near absolute zero.

If you want to see some water bears in action, find yourself a microscope and a nice moist patch of moss.

Embed from Getty Images

THE AMBIGUOUSLY-WORDED DINNER INVITATION

Issei Sagawa was born in Japan in 1949 of weathy parents. As a youth, he indulged in bestiality with his pet dog. At the age of 23, he broke into the Tokyo residence of a German women with the intent to consume a gobbet of her flesh. She resisted, and Sagawa escaped unsatiated. He was charged with attempted rape when he failed to reveal to the police his true motivation for the attack.

At the age of 28, he emigrated to France to acquire a Ph.D. in literature at the Sorbonne University. While there, he frequently brought home prostitutes with the intent of shooting them, but he could never force himself to pull the trigger.

In 1981, Sagawa invited a classmate home for dinner but failed to advise her in advance that she was going to be the main course. He was apprehended by the French authorities after he threw the unconsumed portions of her body into a lake. 

Sagawa's wealthy father provided him with the best legal assistance available, and the French court determined that he was demented and insane, dropped the criminal charges, and ordered him confined to a mental hospital. After noted author Inuhiko Yomota wrote a book about his exploits, Sagawa achieved celebrity status. The French government, not pleased about the publicity the case was engendering, deported Sagawa to Japan where he was promptly confined to a mental institution.

France sealed its records on the case and refused to provide them to the Japanese authorities. In addition, Sagawa had not been convicted of any crime in connection with the classmate consumption. Consequently, Sagawa's escapades in France could not serve as a basis to deprive him of his liberty. The Japanese psychiatrists all concluded that he was a pervert but that he was not insane and that he knew all along exactly what he was doing. In other words, he was simply evil. However, because Sagawa had not committed a crime in Japan, he was able to check himself out of the hospital in 1986 and has been a free man ever since.

The reason we know as much as we do about the exploits and intentions of Sagawa arises from the fact that he has made a career out of writing about and lecturing about his horrific acts. The closest thing to remorse that he has expressed is his opining that having a reputation as a murderer and cannibal is a terrible punishment. 

As noted in Wikipedia, "Sagawa's continued freedom has been widely criticized." Well, duh.

For further information on Sagawa, click here. 

Embed from Getty Images

THE VICISSITTUDES OF TORTITUDE

"Tortitude," as believed by many pet owners and animal care workers, is a personality frequently found in tortoiseshell and calico cats, characterized by hostility and aloofness towards most persons coupled with an intense loyalty to one particular human being. Cats with this attitude are often characterized as "difficult." According to a 2014 survey by veterinarians at the University of California at Davis of over 1,200 cats, these types of felines are in fact more prone to anti-social behavior such as hissing, biting, swatting, and scratching when a human (other than the one that the particular cat worships) attempts to interact with them.

A tortoiseshell cat essentially is a feline with two different colors (other than white) of fur, while a calico has two different colors plus an area of white. The fur color results from pigment expressed by an X chromosome, so a cat with two different non-white fur colors has to have two X chromosomes, with each chromosome specifying its own pigment for a particular section of the cat . This explains why 2,999 out of 3,000 tortoiseshell and calico cats are female, as only females have two X chromosomes--except for the very rare male who has the feline equivalent of Klinefelter's syndrome with two X chromosomes and a Y chromosome.

Male tabby cats with dark stripes over a lighter background hue do not violate the above rule, as both the dark stripes and the lighter background are a result of the same pigment being applied in different concentrations and are expressed by its single X chromosome. An orange and white male, or an orange, black, and white female calico also is "legal," as the white fur does not count as a color, since it is a result of no pigment being expressed at all on the white area of the animal.

I tend to believe in "tortidude," as we once had a gray calico named Miranda with little smudges of peach color and a white chin and chest. She was absolutely disdainful of most humans and would intercept any attempts of affection with scratching and biting. With me, however, and much to the disgust of my wife, Miranda was absolutely devoted and would crawl onto my stomach for long sessions of petting and purring to the point of drooling.

Could it be that "tortitude" is not a function of the pigment-portions of the X chromosomes but is instead merely a reflection of the fact that the animal is a female? You must be crazy if you think that I would even approach acknowledging that possibility with a ten-foot (3.048 meter) pole.

MIRANDA

THE ANGRY SUN

As you will recall, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a intense burst of energy generated by an atomic bomb which, if detonated high enough over Kansas, would send the USA back to the Stone Age due to the frying of all electronic equipment and the resulting chaos.

Unfortunately, our friend the Sun can also create a huge EMP event. Periodically, the sun ejects billions of tons of highly energized plasma into space in what is called a coronal mass ejection. Should Earth be in the path of this ejection, virtually all electronics would be trashed and there would be no mass communication and virtually no transportation. Like the Roman Empire, most citizens of first-world countries have a high lifestyle due to the elaborate network which brings products to them from all over the world. Also like the Roman Empire, when such a network collapses, so does society. Compared to the panic and fighting for resources which would result, the aftereffects of Hurricane Katrina would look like a picnic.

In short, in such a situation, the survivors would consist of those who possess Model A Fords, precious metals, ammunition, and friendly Amish neighbors.

The odds of the earth encountering a coronal mass ejection are not all that miniscule. There was such an ejection in the spring of 2012 which would have hit the earth directly had it occurred a week later than it actually did. There was a direct collision with the earth of a coronal mass ejection in 1859 which melted out telegraph equipment and caused fires in telegraph offices. In other telegraph offices, the operators unplugged their batteries and ran the devices solely on the current induced by the solar event. As the telegraph was virtually the only electrical device in use at the time and was simple and could be easily repaired, the impact to society then was minimal.

Embed from Getty Images

MRS. CROUCH'S REMARKABLE SHOWER

It was a bright, sunshiney day on March 3, 1876 in Bath County, Kentucky. The sky was perfectly clear. Mrs. Crouch was making soap in her back yard. Suddenly, all around her, flakes fell into the yard.

These were not your ordinary snowflakes. For one thing, they were large--from two to four inches on a side. For another, they were not composed of ice. Instead, they appeared to be hunks of meat. Fresh meat, at that. Two unidentified men (and brave ones at that) sampled the chunks and indicated that they were "gamey" like venison or mutton.

Learned guys were curious about the phenomenon and investigated. Leopold Brandeis (whoever that was) claimed that it was merely bacterial growths that quickly formed on the ground in the presence of rain. Gainsayers pointed out that there was no rain and that witnesses saw the flakes fall from the sky.

Examination of the materials by histologists revealed both lung tissue and muscle fibers.

Finally, Dr. L.D. Kastenbine, MD, Professor of Chemistry at Louisville College of  Pharmacy, with the assistance of a grizzled old Ohio farmer (well, we don't know for sure that he was grizzled, but most old farmers back then were) came up with a conclusion consistent with the facts. The area in question was populated by turkey vultures and black vultures--both who can fly so high that they cannot be spotted from the ground with the naked eye. These species have a tendency to engage in projectile vomiting (considering what they eat, who can blame them). They are also sympathetic pukers, where if one vulture vomits, all of his companions will do so otherwise. Although the sands of time have erased the original provocation for the first vulture's gastric distress, it appears likely that the infamous Kentucky meat shower was because of a bunch of bulimic buzzards of Bath.

To read Dr. Kastenbine's learned treatise on this issue, click here.

Embed from Getty Images

SPECIAL DE-LIVER-EAT

Viewers of the film The Revenant (which at this writing does not yet include me, although I intend to rectify that omission in the near future) were apparently treated with the image of  Leo DiCaprio wolfing down raw buffalo liver--real raw buffalo liver, not some gelatin-based stage concoction which merely looked like raw buffalo liver. Now, I have enjoyed cooked beef liver on many occasions, but I am not all that enthused about the prospect of eating raw out of a wild animal the organ which served as a sponge for all of the toxins in its bloodstream. Maybe I would do so in order to receive millions of dollars like DiCaprio or to avoid starving like DiCaprio's character in the movie, but just for general snacking? Uh uh.

Apparently, however, not everyone shares my disdain. The Fort restaurant in Morrison, Colorado, is renowned for its authentic western fair and atmosphere. In tribute to The Revenant, it recently had a month-long special featuring a platter containing bison sausage, bison Rocky Mountain oysters (i.e. bison testicles), bison tongue on crostini, guacamole, and--bison liver. The liver was available raw, although wimps could order it cooked to medium rare.

The meal served four and was thirty dollars, so you can't complain too much about the price.

Let's just hope that the restaurant does not decide one day to do a similar tribute to The Donner Party.

Embed from Getty Images

THE FALCON OF DOOM

The Ford Falcon was Ford's answer to the compact car lust created by the VW Beetle. It was inspired by Ford General Manager Robert McNamara (who later become Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and a major force in the prosecution of the Vietnam War). Made from 1960 through 1970 in the United States, it was beloved by many owners and outsold the compacts offered by General Motors and Chrysler.

However, Falcons were far less beloved by dissidents in Argentina. One of the most iconic symbols of the dreaded secret police from 1976 through 1983 in that country were the green Ford Falcons without license plates used to transport political prisoners who were never seen again. Even today many citizens of Argentina have a knee-jerk loathing of the vehicles. Green Falcons have become a trademark for despotism in that country.

Falcons were manufactured in Argentina from 1962 through 1991.

By DIEGOERI
[CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)],
 via Wikimedia Commons