THE HIGH-COST ALTERNATIVE TO LASIK

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Dr. Michael Barratt (second from the left in the above photo) is a Mission Specialist astronaut for NASA whose expertise is in space medicine. He was originally nearsighted and needed glasses to see distant objects, while his close-up vision was fine (apparently, you do not have to have 20-20 eyesight to be a Mission Specialist). After several months in space, his vision altered permanently so that he can now see far objects perfectly but needs reading glasses.

This change resulted from a condition called papilledema, which is a swelling of the optic disk in the eye. It affects a large percentage of male astronauts. Essentially, weightlessness alters the shape of the eye. In Barratt's case, his optic nerves became flattened and his retinas developed folds in them. Sometimes the change is temporary; often it is not. Since it can lead to blindness, it is of major concern to NASA, especially if NASA ever gets its funding back to commence long-term 

manned (or womanned) 

space exploration, including missions to other planets.

For some unknown reason, no female in space has ever developed papilledema.

#178--THE INFERNAL COAL TORPEDO

Thomas Courtenay was a St. Louis businessman who developed the "coal torpedo" for use by the Confederacy in the American Civil War. The coal torpedo was a hollow chunk of iron about four inches on each side which was forged to resemble a piece of coal. The torpedo was filled with gunpowder and plugged. It was then coated with beeswax and covered with coal dust so that it looked exactly like a hunk of bituminous. 

Courtenay entered into an agreement with the Confederate government where he was placed on rolls of the Confederate Secret Service and he and his employees threw coal torpedos into refueling bins used by the US Navy or by US freighters.

Eventually, the coal torpedo would make its way onto a US vessel and then into the firebox of the boat, where it would explode from the heat. The explosion by itself would not be able to sink the vessel, but it was enough to rupture the ship's steam boiler. The resulting boiler explosion would cause extensive death, injury, and fire on the vessel and sometimes did result in the ship sinking.

The same concept was adopted in World War II to be used by various resistance groups to sabotage Nazi-controlled steam locomotives, by German saboteurs against American coal-powered plants, and by the British with their dreaded rat bomb.

HOW TO BECOME A POD PERSON

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The latest innovation in travel lodging can be found primarily in Japan but has also spread to a few other countries. It is the "capsule hotel," where the weary traveler can rent what is essentially a well-furnished kennel for his (many of these hotels will not rent to females) overnight stay, which includes a TV, wi-fi, heating and cooling, a bed, a desk, and a large red button which can be pressed to provide, at extra cost, porno movies. Each "room" is a plastic pod of about 6.5 feet by 3.3 feet by 4 feet (2 m by 1 m by 1.25 m).

There is a communal bathroom and a locker room for the traveler's suitcase. The hotel provides sleepwear for use in the cubicle.

The cost per night is usually about $20 to $40 US. 

DISSED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Walt Disney's musical about leprechauns, Darby O'Gill and the Little People, received a rave review from The New York Times when the film was released in 1959. Lavish commendations were heaped on most of the cast. One exception, however, was made for the 29-year old actor who played the romantic male lead. He was condemned with the faint praise of being "merely tall, dark, and handsome" with the clear implication that he was eye candy but could not act.

Despite this set-back, the actor, Sean Connery, managed to salvage his career, at least to some extent, when he appeared in several more pictures after he secured the role in 1962 of James Bond in Dr. No.

Darbvy O'Gill and the Little People is in fact worth watching, if for no other reason than to hear James Bond sing.

A BALLSY MANUEVER

Photo by Lenore Edman (Flickr: SB 206) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

In the 1960s, Wham-O was manufacturing more than 170,000 SuperBalls (those hard rubbery toy balls which have a high coefficient of restitution and which, as a result, bounce incredibly well) a year. Wham-O, as a publicity stunt, made an extra-large SuperBall the size of a bowling ball. One day, during an exhibition in Melbourne, Australia, the sphere fell out of a 23rd story window, hit the ground, bounced back up to the 15th floor, and finally crashed into a parked convertible on the 2nd trip down. The ball was unscathed, but the automobile was totally demolished. 
  

The owner of the vehicle probably had difficulty explaining to his insurance company that his car was destroyed by a toy rubber ball.

You may recall that the SuperBall's other claim to fame is that it served as the inspiration for the name of the Super Bowl.

PROJECT 1794

In 1956, the U.S. Air Force, along with the corporation Avro Canada, embarked on Project 1794, which was the development of a flying saucer which was intended to be used to intercept enemy bombers.  The saucer would be able to take off vertically and turn on a dime.  It would have a top speed of 2,300 to 3,000 miles per hour and would be able to function in altitudes up to 100,000 feet. Later on, the U.S. Army become involved with the expectation that a smaller version of the aircraft could replace the helicopter in transporting troops and equipment.

Avro actually built a functional prototype which looks suspiciously like many flying saucers spotted during the UFO craze.  However, the government abandoned the project in 1961 due to its disappointment in the performance of the aircraft.  Specifically, the government determined that the fact that the prototype became unstable and unflyable in altitudes higher than three feet and could achieve a top speed of only 35 MPH made it unsuitable either to replace helicopters or to shoot down Russian aircraft. 

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HOW TO FIND A VAMPIRE

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For centuries, vampire experts had relied on using a naked virgin child and a virgin horse as a means of locating any nosferatu who might be buried in a graveyard. The child was placed on the horse and the horse was led throughout the cemetery. The horse would stop and refuse to go forward should it encounter a plot containing the undead.

Conservative authorities on vampirism insisted that both the child and the horse must be male and that the horse must be pure white. Their more liberal brethen stated that the sex of the participants did not matter and that the horse could be any color, as long as it was solid without any contrasting markings.