THE AWE-INSPIRING TUCKER TORPEDO

The Tucker Torpedo automobile had many innovative features when it was introduced in 1948 by Preston Tucker, the same guy who invented the ball turret for aircraft. 

The most famous feature was "the Cyclop's eye" third headlight in the center which would swivel to illuminate the road when the car was making a turn. This device was illegal in 17 states, and Tucker made a metal dish to cover the headlight in these jurisdictions.

The car was powered by a flat helicopter engine in the rear. It was designed so that the engine and transmission (known to gearheads as the "drive train") could be removed and replaced in 15 minutes, with the idea that the owner could leave them at the dealer for service while using a loaner engine and transmission.

At a time when safety considerations were totally ignored, the car had seat belts, a frame surrounding the vehicle to protect it in crashes, a padded dash, a windshield designed to pop out in a wreck, a roll bar in the roof, and a special shielded compartment under the dashboard where the occupants of the front seat could leap into and be protected in a crash (how you reconcile this feature with wearing a seat belt is an issue for which I do not have a ready answer).

It had other cute features such as doors which extended into the roof for ease in entering and exiting and a parking brake which you could lock with a key as a theft-protection device. The front and rear seats were intentionally made identical and could be switched with each other to spread out the wear. It had a four-wheel rubber-based independent suspension.

Tucker was also considering magnesium wheels, disc brakes, an automatic transmission, self-sealing tubeless tires, and fuel injection, but these features were dropped from the final product due to cost and lack of time.

The car was extremely streamlined and had a drag coefficient of 0.27, which rivals most vehicles of today and certainly was vastly superior to other cars of its era. The car was originally named the "Tucker Torpedo" but was changed to "Tucker 48" due to the fact that many persons in World War II had unpleasant experiences with torpedoes. However, the "Torpedo" name is the one which stuck in the public's mind.

The company built 51 cars before it was shut down as a result of negative publicity, an SEC investigation, and criminal indictments for fraud against Tucker and his myrmidons. Tucker was eventually exonerated, but the damage had already been done. According to the 1988 movie Tucker: The Man and His Dream, Tucker's legal problems were instigated by the major automobile companies who were afraid of the superiority of his product. I personally gainsay the veracity of this hypothesis, as the established auto companies actually provided assistance to Tucker (for example, all of the steering wheels were surplus donated by Ford to Tucker when Ford no longer needed them for its Lincoln Zephyr production). It also seems illogical that the big car companies, who were still instantly selling every auto they could produce to a public who had been car-starved during World War II, would feel threatened by someone who made only fifty vehicles in a year and who further did not have the ability to purchase steel and other raw materials at the bulk discount prices enjoyed by the major car manufacturers. The bottom line is that Preston Tucker had the dream but not the adequate funds to start a major car company.

With the exception of the first prototype, the Tuckers in fact were extremely well-built and were years ahead of their time. They are highly collectible, and one sold for $2.91 million in 2012. Forty-seven of the 51 cars produced are still in existence.

By Thomas (originally posted to Flickr as Tucker)
[CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
 via Wikimedia Commons

OPERATION TEXAS

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"Operation Texas" refers to activities undertaken by President Lyndon Baines Johnson when he was a young congressman in 1938 and 1939. Specifically, Johnson rescued approximately 400 Eastern European Jews from the Nazis by arranging for visas to be issued to them in Warsaw and setting up their unlawful immigration into the United States through the port of Galveston, Texas. These actions on the part of Johnson were illegal, were against the anti-Semitic policies of the Roosevelt administration, and could have resulted in Johnson's imprisonment and loss of office back in those days where committing crimes was considered a political liability.

Johnson's family had a history of fighting bigotry against the Jews, and, at one point in 1915, LBJ hid in the cellar of his house while his adult male relatives stood guard with shotguns against a potential Ku Klux Klan retaliation for their pro-Jewish stance.

As early as 1934, Johnson provided his fiance with the gift of a book of essays outlining the potential dangers of Nazism.

In 1937, Johnson, as a freshly minted congressman, bucked the Dixiecrats and his party by voting for immigration reforms which would naturalize illegal aliens, primarily Jews, from Poland and Lithuania.

During World War II, Johnson and others arranged to send arms to Jewish underground fighters in crates marked "Texas Grapefruit."

When asked by Soviet premier Aleksei Kosygin in 1967 why Johnson supported three million Israelis over 80 million Arabs, Johnson responded, "Because it is right."

For further information on Johnson's attitude towards the Jews and the nation of Israel, including his actions as President, click here.

MURDEROUS MARY

September 14, 1916--A day that will live in infamy in eastern Tennessee. "Mary" (with no known last name), an Asian immigrant of unusual strength and size who did not speak English, was passing through the sleepy town of Kingsport. Mary was attacked on the street by a white man named Red Eldridge. Mary, in a fit of rage, killed Eldridge. Mary was shot by a witness but was only superficially wounded.

The citizens of the county were riled to a blood-lust and almost everyone, including the Sheriff, concluded that justice for Mary should be both swift and public. In light of what was perceived as her obvious guilt, an official trial was deemed wasteful and unnecessary. In what could be termed a circus atmosphere, it was decided that Mary would be dispatched dramatically in full view of as many persons as possible. Electrocution and a firing squad as well as some other even more sadistic methods were considered as options, but the traditionalists won out and decided that Mary would suffer death by hanging the following day.

The problem was that Mary was so large that it was feared that she would not fit through the ordinary trap door on the county's scaffold. Mary was therefore transferred to the nearby town of Erwin to be hanged from a railroad crane. On the first attempt, the noose broke and Mary plummeted to the ground and fractured her hip. She was rehanged with a large chain and finally succumbed.

Her body was buried in an unmarked grave on the railroad yards, and the exact location is unknown today.

At the time of the unfortunate incident, Mary was the top-billed elephant for the traveling "Sparks World Famous Shows" circus. She weighed 10,000 pounds and was probably larger than even the infamous Jumbo. She was a talented and highly regarded performer (who worked for peanuts) until her new handler Eldridge jabbed her with a sharp hook and she crushed his head like a watermelon.

[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Accounts differ on Mary's prior criminal history. Some versions allege that she was a gentle giant who had been treated with the utmost kindness until she was paired up with Eldridge and lashed out in shock and awe when he jabbed her on an abscessed tooth; others state that she was a vicious rogue who had killed before while working for other circuses and was employed by Sparks Circus under an assumed name. In any event, the owner of Sparks Circus figured that he could no longer display her due to her notoriety and decided instead to capitalize on that same notoriety by selling tickets to her dramatic execution. 

For additional information, read this article from the Blue Ridge County Magazine or acquire Charles Edwin Prices's famed tome on Southern pachydermicide, The Day They Hung the Elephant.

HAVING A BLAST WITH JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

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In an early example of a school overreacting with a zero-tolerance policy, Yale University expelled future author James Fenimore Cooper in 1806 merely because he intentionally blew up another student's room with gunpowder.

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 the corners of their square windows which resulted in several crashes. The defective windows 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.

View image | gettyimages.com

MEMORIAL DAY

 

Memorial Day in the United States was established to honor and remember those in the Armed Forces who died in service of their country. Traditionally, it is marked by placing flowers and flags at the graves of the fallen. Although it is unclear who originally started the tradition, the first national observance was organized for May 30, 1868, by John A. Logan, the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic. In 1968, Congress called for the holiday to be henceforth celebrated on the last Monday in May, and, in 1971, Congress decreed that "Memorial Day" would be the formal name for the occasion.

Lamentably, but not surprisingly, a sizeable number of Americans (including some in very high places) have limited knowledge of or respect for those who gave up their lives for others under very unpleasant circumstances, and the holiday is more often revered as a day off of work and the unofficial start of summer.

On a personal note, I am grateful that I do not have loved ones who have fallen in combat (although many of them had served) and that I am able to respect the holiday in the abstract without direct personal loss. My parents were not so fortunate, with perhaps the most poignant example being that of my father's cousin. He survived through the entire war until he was killed in the Pacific Theater on August 14, 1945--the same day that President Truman announced the surrender of Japan and the end of WWII. His parents were in the middle of hosting a victory celebration party when the dreaded news was delivered.

THE APPROPRIATE WAY TO SALUTE HITLER

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Madame Tussauds wax museum has had only limited success with displaying Adolf Hitler in its historical exhibits, especially in London. The clothing and hair on the figure is subject to rapid deterioration due to the frequent laundering required to remove the large quantities of spittle left on it by British visitors. When a Hitler figure was put on display, with much controversy, in the Tussauds branch in Berlin in 2008 (see above photo), it was decapitated within minutes.  

Ironically, Hitler's wax figure was one of the few to survive a Nazi bomb dropped on the museum in London in 1940.

A BIRDBRAIN AIN'T ALL THAT BAD

Black-capped chickadees (and probably some other songbirds) have an amazing ability to increase the effective size of their brains during the time of year where they need to store more information. Specifically, in preparation for winter, the chickadee will hide seeds and other food in hundreds of locations. In order to remember all of this data, the bird actually grows more neurons in its hippocampus (the part of the brain where one remembers where one stored seeds) each autumn to the point where the hippocampus increases 30% in volume. When springtime comes and the bird no longer needs to recall where all the food stashes were, it can concentrate on sex, and its hippocampus shrinks back to its original size.

It used to be dogma that all higher animals could not make new nerve cells once they had achieved adulthood and that humans could not do so after about the age of two. With respect to humans, this is still fairly accurate, although a human does have a limited ability to renew cells in his or her hippocampus (but not by 30%!) throughout life.

While the idea of having a very flexible hippocampus which can expand to absorb a lot of information is appealing, the more permanent nature of the human brain serves a function. When the chickadee's hippocampus shrinks, a lot of those memories are flushed away. A human, however, with his or her original neurons and pathways, can remember events from fifty years ago (although, as I can attest, not where he put his car keys last night). On the other hand, knowing more about how the chickadee plies its mind-expansion techniques may help scientists treat Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.

For more info on chickadee intellectualism, click here.

A DANGLING PROPOSITION

During World War I, blimps would sometimes hide in a cloud and suspend an observer on a rope ladder about 100 feet (30 meters) below outside of the cloud. The observer would have a clear view of enemy activity but would not be nearly as visible as the blimp itself if it was not in the cloud.

You may think that the job of observer would not be highly coveted, but the contrary is true. If the observer was spotted, enemy planes and anti-aircraft guns would concentrate on the blimp as a far more valuable and easily acquired target. If the blimp was hit, the observer at least would have a chance of parachuting and escaping death, while his comrades aboard the ship would be instantly engulfed in a ball of hydrogen-fueled flame.

However, the above factors pale in comparison to the real reason why everyone wanted the observer's job. Quite simply, it was the only place that a blimp crewman was allowed to smoke.

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THE STIGMA OF GINGERITY

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The prejudice against ginger kids extends beyond the infamous South Park episode alleging that they have no souls. Cryos International, the world's largest sperm bank with operations in over 65 countries, issued a ban in September of 2011 against contributions from red-haired donors. Except for customers in Ireland, there was so little demand for carrot-tops that the product containing red-haired DNA was unmarketable.

However, the tide has apparently turned, and Cryos is once again embracing red-headed donors as of June of 2023.

"THE BLACK CAT"

Considering the gory and sadistic enucleation performed on the narrator's pet in Edgar Allan Poe's tale "The Black Cat," one might assume that Poe probably suffered from ailurophobia or, at the very least, simply didn't like felines. Such, however, was not the case. With the exception of Poe's wife, his most beloved companion was a tortoiseshell kitty named Catterina. Poe wrote many of his works with Catterina contentedly balanced on his shoulder.

WITCHES WITH COJONES

You will recall the courage of British pilot John Moffit, who used his outdated fabric-covered Fairey Swordfish biplane to lob a torpedo into the rudder mechanism of the German battleship Bismarck, making it a sitting duck for the British fleet. Soviet air navigator Marina Roskova also apparently thought that it would be cool to fight World War II with World War I primitive technology. She formed a cadre of female aviators in the 588th Night Bomber Regiment. The Germans had a different name for them -- "Nachthexen" or, in English, "Night Witches."

Like John Moffit, a Night Witch used a primitive and old-fashioned fabric-covered two-person biplane, the Polikarpov Po-2, to ply her trade. The 588th was designated a night bomber regiment because, duh, it dropped bombs at night. To operate in daylight would have been certain death. The Night Witch would approach her target at a low altitude, cut off the engine, and then glide in to release her ordnance. Because each plane could only carry six bombs, a crew would usually have to fly multiple sorties per night. Because of weight limitations and the necessity to fly close to the ground, a Night Witch usually eschewed the carrying of a parachute.

The slow speed of the aircraft as well as its extreme maneuverability were the best protection against German fighter planes. The typical German fighter would stall out if it attempted to match the velocity of the Po-2. 

The Night Witches flew over 23,000 sorties and dropped 3,000 tons of bombs by the end of the war. Thirty members died in combat; the surviving pilots flew over 800 missions apiece. Twenty-three of them were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. 

The Germans did not like the Night Witches. They dreaded the sound of a gliding Po-2 -- a sound similar to a swishing broom. Any German pilot who downed a Night Witch automatically received the Iron Cross.

To learn more about these courageous sorceresses, please click here.

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

WHEN LINCOLN WAS NOT SHOT

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On July 11 and 12 of 1864, the Confederates attached Fort Stevens, which was one of 68 fortifications protecting Washington, D.C. during the War Between the States. Because it was relatively late during the War and the South was on the verge of defeat, the fort was thinly defended by a very small number of unseasoned troops. Fortunately for the Yankees, the defenders of the fort were able to hold on until reinforcements arrived, thus preventing the capture of Washington, which would have been somewhat of a setback for the North.

On both days of the battle, Abraham Lincoln stood on the parapet of the fort to watch the festivities. His top-hatted six-foot four-inch figure quickly drew the attention of Confederate sharpshooters, much to the chagrin of those standing next to him--especially one Army surgeon who was critically wounded by a bullet intended for the President. A Massachusetts infantryman finally told his Commander-In-Chief to "Get down, you damn fool!"  Lincoln complied. Many accounts say that the soldier was future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, but that part of the story is apocryphal at best.

Lincoln was probably the only sitting (well, technically, he was standing at the time) President targeted by enemy* fire in combat.

The Fort Stevens battlefield is now the site of the Walter Reed Army Hospital.

*FDR was actually once subjected to "friendly" fire in combat.

THE BIG BANGS THEORY

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Five states in the USA have been the sites of nuclear explosions--Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Alaska, and Mississippi.

RAPINE SELF-AGGRANDIZEMENT

Although pirate ships are traditionally portrayed as flying one of the numerous variations of the skull and crossbones ensign, many did not. Some buccaneer vessels sported a plain red flag, some had a plain black flag, and some had red or black flags with fanciful designs. The red flag was known as the Joli Rouge ("pretty red"), and this may have been corrupted into the "Jolly Roger" in English. A few captains used flags of other non-traditional colors.

The black flag did not inspire as much terror as the red flag. The black flag signified that the pirates would accept a surrender and spare the lives of the crew of the target ship. The red flag meant that the attackers would give no quarter and that it would be a fight to the death. You might think that a pirate captain flying a red flag would realize that he is just making his job more difficult, as his prey will be markedly more uncooperative. 

Equally confusing is the question of why a pirate would fly a banner advertising his profession in the first place. A corsair who has no trouble stealing and murdering would probably not be troubled by the moral implications of approaching his (or, in some cases, her) prey under a false flag of an appropriate friendly nation or even under no flag at all. 

The single answer to the foregoing mysteries is simply "psychological warfare." Pirates did usually fly "innocent" false flags or no flags until they got within cannon range of their victims and would then strike the decoy flag and raise the black buccaneer banner. The members of a crew of a targeted ship would know that, under the laws of the sea, they could resist with force the boarding by an attacking vessel flying national colors yet still have their lives spared if they eventually surrendered. On the other hand, they also knew and feared that fighting against an attack by a pirate ship flying a black flag would provoke their enemy into raising the red Joli Rouge--an event which could lead to a very bad albeit short day. Depending on the whim of the pirate captain, ship crews who instantly capitulated to the black flag and handled their victimhood in a businesslike and professional matter did not usually suffer physical harm and were sometimes even allowed to retain a portion of their cargo.

For a few examples of the flags employed by historical pirates, click here.

THE MASKED MAN CHROMATIC ABERRATION

Everyone knows that the Lone Ranger was supposed to wear an iconic black mask. He actually did so for the last two years that he was on television--1956 and 1957, when the episodes were filmed in color. However, from 1949 through 1955, when the shows were shot in black-and-white, he sported purple face gear. On black-and-white TV, the purple appeared to have been even a blacker black than if an actual black mask had been used.

By Pleasure Island Uploaded by We hope
 at en.wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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.

Amidst 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 here.

THE PATHOS OF POSTMORTEM PORTRAITURE

Photography for most of the 19th Century was an extremely cumbersome process involving long exposure times and complicated and bulky equipment both for taking and developing the picture. Most people were rarely photographed and then on only special occasions. One such occasion was that of death.

In both America and Europe, it was a once a common practice for the grieving family members of a decedent to commission a professional photographer to take a picture of the freshly departed. Often, the subject would be dressed and posed (with varying degrees of success) in such a fashion that he or she would still appear to be alive. Even more sadly, other family members frequently would appear in the photo at the same time, and it would not be unusual to have a portrait of children sitting on a couch with their dead sibling or a picture of parents holding their lifeless infant.

It is not hard to understand why family members would submit to such a heartbreaking experience as posing for hours with their deceased child or other relative for a photograph. In many cases, the postmortem photo would be the only picture they would have of their loved one, especially if the subject was a baby.

Once the box camera was introduced in 1885 and ordinary people could take snapshots at home without elaborate equipment, families were able to accumulate pictures of relatives under more joyous circumstances. As a result, the concept of formal postmortem photography eventually happily fell by the wayside for most of the world, although it is still practiced in parts of Eastern Europe.

If you wish to see more examples of postmortem photos or just simply feel like getting depressed, click here. If you are really obsessed with the topic, join the Thanatos Archive.

WALLETUS

Consider the vast treasure trove of information contained within the average billfold--credit cards, debit cards, Social Security cards (which, incidentally, should NOT be carried regularly on your person), blank checks, driver's licenses, membership cards, hunting and fishing licenses, security key cards, student and employee IDs, punch cards redeemable for goods or services, insurance cards, etc. and more etc.

What all these items have in question is 1) their loss to you could be very inconvenient, and 2) their misuse by someone who comes across them could cause you all sorts of grief and major financial loss.

Thus the reason for Walletus--the delightful holiday which comes on May 13 of each year. To celebrate Walletus properly, you simply photocopy the front and back of all important documents in your billfold and hide this copy in a safe and secure place which is easily accessible by you. Should you later on lose that billfold, you have instant access to an inventory of all that it contained, and you won't have to undergo the frustration of trying to remember each single item which you had been carrying and which now needs replacement. Perhaps even more important--most of these documents have printed on them contact numbers for you to call in the event of theft, which means that you will have the information to act with expediency in doing damage control.

You may wonder--why not simply make a copy of each credit card or document when you first receive them instead of doing it en masse each year? If you are organized enough to make such a copy each time you get something new to stuff in your billfold, then that is great, and more power to you. However, for unorganized slobs like myself, it is much easier to do it all on once annually on that glorious day in May.

So, HAPPY WALLETUS to you!

WHAT SEX IS YOUR BIMMER?

Most electronic devices which speak to you, such as Siri, have a female voice. This discrimination probably originated for several reasons, including the fact that most persons, according to studies, find the female voice more pleasing. In addition, people old enough to have dealt with telephone operators were used to a disembodied voice belonging to, in most cases, a woman. 

However, according to Dr. Clifford Nass (who wrote The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships), BMW had a rude awakening in the 1990s when it released its 5 Series Model with a female voice on the GPS system. Male German drivers were outraged at the prospect of taking directions from a girl. Besides being offended (or perhaps highly insecure in their masculinity), the drivers considered women to be less than knowledgeable and could not conceive that the directions would be reliable, even when informed that the car and the directions were constructed by males. As a result of the revolt, BMW recalled the cars to install a man's voice.

By IFCAR (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

THE PANSY CARD

The most popular greeting card of all times is Hallmark's Pansy Card, which was issued in 1939 for Mother's Day but was re-released in 1941 as a "thinking of you" card. It originally cost a nickel. It is still available, but at a substantially higher price. Tens of millions have been sold since 1942 (the year which Hallmark started keeping records of cards sales).

The outside of the card features a basket of pansies and reads: To let you know I'm thinking of you. Inside, the verse continues: Pansies always stand for thoughts – at least that's what folks say. So this just comes to show my thoughts are there with you today. Because of the vague wording, the card is suitable for all sorts of occasions. In fact, in 1958, two men bought one to send to a buddy on the eve of his execution.

The design was used by the U.S. Postal Service for its 2010 "Love" stamp.

Copyright Hallmark Cards, Inc. All rights reserved.

TURNING HITLER INTO A FEMINAZI

Adolf Hitler's staff employed over a dozen female food tasters to sample his meals to ensure that they were not poisoned. This was not a voluntary position, and the tasters were not free to leave the premises. However, especially considering that they were well fed, it was a far better gig that many persons had during the course of the war. The tasters would eat the same victuals as Hitler (primarily fruits, vegetables, and pastries, although he once in a while dabbled in ham or sausage), but they did so an hour before he did in order for any poisoning symptoms to have time to manifest themselves.

Hitler had terrible table manners and frequently wiped his nose on his napkin or shirtsleeve. His dining companions were often immersed in a cloud of his pastry-induced flatulence, but most wisely chose to pretend that nothing was happening.

The American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) bribed Hitler's gardener in Berchtesgaden to lace Hitler's vegetables with large quantities of estrogen. The estrogen would not have had any obvious or immediate effects on the female tasters and thus would not have been detected, but the OSS hoped that it would have caused Hitler to lose his moustache, develop an even higher-pitched voice, and grow large breasts, all of which would diminish his luster in the eyes of his followers. The gardener took the bribe but apparently did not follow through with his assignment--or maybe he did, but the estrogen simply did not work.

For more information about the fun activities of the OSS, read the 1962 book by Stanley P. Lowell, Of Spies and Stratagems, or look at the digest of same in the July, 1963, edition of Popular Science.

ZOMBIE CHICKENS

 

In 2006, Petaluma, California survived an invasion of zombie chickens. The hens involved had reached menopause and were no longer laying eggs. They were humanely(?) euthanized by suffocating them in a box filled with carbon dioxide and then buried in a landfill. 

Citizens were shocked later to see brain-damaged chickens dig themselves out of their landfill graves and stagger around, well, like zombies.

The Pentagon actually has a detailed plan ("CONOP 8888") on how it should respond should there ever be a zombie epidemic. One of the contingencies addressed is specifically that of "CZs" ("chicken zombies").

Parenthetically, "zombies" actually refers to dead persons who are raised from the grave by practitioners of Caribbean voodoo and are under the control of a live human.* They on their own are very placid. The aggressive cannibalistic walking dead which have been a staple of movies since 1968 are technically "flesh-eating ghouls" (which is actually somewhat redundant, as ghouls traditionally are flesh-eaters by definition).

*Watch this video link to hear what Bob Hope compared to zombies.

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