THE WEALTHIEST PRESIDENTS

In the early 1990s, Donald Trump's organization and subsidiaries owed debts of $9 billion, while Trump personally was on the hook for $975 million. Purportedly, during this time, Trump and a companion were walking down the street when Trump pointed to a homeless man and stated, “That guy isn’t worth 10 cents, but he’s got $900 million more than me!” Trump eventually resolved his financial problems at the bankruptcy courthouse.

If Trump is elected President, he will have the dubious distinction of being both the richest and the poorest man to have held that office.  

Disregarding the Trump factor, the ten wealthiest Presidents of the USA, after adjusting for inflation, and ranking the richest first, were:

1. John Kennedy (Democrat)

2. George Washington (no party affiliation)

3. Thomas Jefferson (Democrat-Republican)*

4. Theodore Roosevelt (Republican)

5. Andrew Jackson (Democrat)

6. James Madison (Democrat-Republican)

7. Lyndon Johnson (Democrat)

8. Herbert Hoover (Republican)

9. Franklin Roosevelt (Democrat)

10. William Clinton (Democrat)

The ten least wealthy Presidents, after adjusting for inflation, and ranking the poorest first, were:

1. Harry Truman (Democrat)

2. Calvin Coolidge (Republican)

3. Woodrow Wilson (Democrat)

4. Chester Arthur (Republican)

5. James Garfield (Republican)

6. Ulysses Grant (Republican)

7. Andrew Johnson (National Union/Democrat)

8. Abraham Lincoln (Republican)

9. James Buchanan (Democrat)

10. Warren Harding (Republican)

Barack Obama currently ranks near the middle as the 21st wealthiest (or the 22nd poorest).

*The Democrat-Republican Party eventually evolved in 1828 into what is now the Democrat Party.

THE MAGNIFICENT ELEVEN

It was a tough assignment for Hungarian refugee and war photographer Robert Capa. Under contract to LIFE magazine, he was one of only four individuals authorized by the Americans to take pictures of the actual D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944. This was a date prior to modern point-and-shoot automated cameras with a storage capacity of thousands of images. Capa had to manually focus, compute aperture settings, set shutter speeds, and reload film after every few pictures. However, unlike Civil War photographer Matthew Brady, Capa did not have the luxury of time to accomplish these tasks leisurely after the battle was over. It is hard enough taking pictures right after you have submerged your equipment and yourself in the surf; it is even harder when thousands of bullets and shells are directed at your general location and you see men blown to pieces on all sides of you.

Nonetheless, he managed to ply his trade and shoot four rolls of precious footage and send them, undeveloped, to his editor, John G. Morris, in London. Under intense deadline pressures, the editor ordered that the negatives be processed immediately and contact prints made. Under the same intense deadline pressures, the darkroom employee goofed and set the dryer too high. Morris and the employee stood horrified as they examined the first three rolls of film and saw that they were completely blank, as the emulsion had melted off. Some historians have speculated that profanities may have been uttered as a result of this event. Roll No. 4, however, yielded eleven powerful images. These were published and defined the chaos of the invasion for the American people and the world. Morris received hearty congratulations. He did not immediately mention to his superiors that many more pictures had been destroyed. Capa received well-deserved renown as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, war photographers in history. The photos themselves were dubbed "The Magnificent Eleven."

One of the images, The Face in the Surf (shown below), features the blurred visage of an American soldier struggling to reach shore. Capa obviously took this picture while on the beach with his back to the German fire. It quickly became the icon for the whole invasion.

Notwithstanding the loss of the majority of his pictures, Capa fared better than the other photographers and cinematographers who covered the landings. He personally took his negatives with him off of the beach. The other film artists entrusted their undeveloped images and movies to an Army colonel, who accidentally dropped them into the briny deep when he was boarding a transport ship back to England. Some historians have speculated that profanities may have been uttered as a result of this event.

To view The Magnificent Eleven as well as the story behind them, click on the TIME magazine website and watch the video.

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THE SELF-MONITOR SELF-DIAGNOSIS

In 1974, psychologist Mark Snyder developed a 25-question test to determine if an individual is a high or low self-monitor. High self-monitors have a strong ability to evaluate their social situations and respond to subtle social cues in order to present themselves in the best light to the person with whom they are interacting at any given moment. If asked by someone "who are you really?" they would respond, if they did so honestly, "whoever you want me to be." High self-monitors get along well with a wide variety of people, often have many casual sexual relationships, and will often deceive their romantic partners. They tend to chose those romantic partners based on appearance. They do very well as trial attorneys, salesmen, actors, and politicians. They often achieve leadership positions, as they tell people what the people want to hear--regardless what the high self-monitor actually believes.

BILL CLINTON

Low self-monitors tend to be either incompetent or apathetic about how they present themselves and do not easily modify their behavior or beliefs in order to accommodate another person. They lack the antenna to pick up the subtle clues of the reactions of others to them and are thus often socially inept and are not good at sucking up to others in order to impress them. Their reactions and statements to others are usually sincere but also often unfiltered, awkward, and disquieting. Not only do they often not have the ability to follow social conventions, they often simply do not care one way or the other--or, if they do care, they usually are at unease. They tend to choose their romantic partners based on personality.

KING GEORGE VI

Low self-monitors tend to have more successful and stable marriages (and fewer of them). A partner of a low self-monitor knows ahead of time what he or she is getting as a mate, and there are no ugly surprises. On the other hand, a high self-monitor might be charming, caring, and sophisticated prior to marriage but abusive after the knot has been tied when there is no longer any need to maintain the deception.

You can take the original Snyder test yourself to see how you rate. A score from 0-8 indicates that you are a low self-monitor while one from 13-25 indicates that you are a high.

THE ADVERSE CONSEQUENCES OF ESCHEWING COMMIE PSYCHOLOGICAL TECHNIQUES

In early 1993, the FBI met in Moscow with Igor Smirnov, who had founded the highly regarded Psychotechnology Research Institute in the halcyon days for mind-control agencies under the Communist government. The feds wanted a psychological blueprint on how to convince Waco cult leader David Koresh to surrender peacefully.

Smirnov recommended using recordings made by Charlton Heston, as the voice of God, to convince Koresh to stand down. However, Smirnov was only willing to estimate that the technique would have a 70% chance of success. The FBI did not want to proceed with anything less than a 100%, as failure could result in public humiliation.  

Ultimately, the Attorney General Janet Reno, with the approval of President Clinton, chose instead the option of storming the compound, which resulted in the death of 76 men, women, and children. Although in hindsight it was probably not the best of decisions and has had negative repercussions even decades later, Reno at least owned up to it and did not try to shift the blame upstream or downstream.

IGOR SMIRNOV

THE COLONIAL COMMONER'S CRIMSON CRUSTACEAN CORNUCOPIA

Lobsters in the United States were not always the high-priced gourmand's fantasy that they are now. During colonial times, they were so ubiquitous that they were ground up and used for fertilizer and were also commonly fed to prisoners and indentured servants. In fact, the practice became so prevalent that the Massachusetts legislature unshellfishly enacted a law prohibiting the serving of lobster to indentured servants more than twice a week.

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THE SCOURGE OF DRUG-DEALING

In the golden days of television, drug commercials were for only over-the-counter remedies. The ads often employed ethnic stereotyping or featured caffeine-containing compounds intended to reduce elder abuse. And, of course, a large number of them were designed for nicotine delivery systems.

Today, however, the airwaves are saturated with pitches for various prescription drugs designed to cure erectile disfunction, vaginitis, and a host of geezer-related ailments. These are then generally followed by a short list of side effects of the product that could kill you or put you in a vegetative state. What happened? When did prescription drugs start to get marketed directly to the consumer instead of exclusively through the old tried-and-true method of providing free drug samples and trinkets to physicians?

Well, it has always been legal in the USA to advertise prescription drugs; however, the Food and Drug Administration required at one time that ALL of the potential side effects of each drug, no matter how rare, had to be disclosed in the advertisement. Obviously, unless the commercial was ten minutes long, there was no practical way of complying with this mandate. That is, there was no way until Hoechst Marion Roussel decided to market its allergy drug Seldane in the mid-1980s. The company described the drug and listed all of its desirable benefits but did not refer to it by name. The viewer was instead told to ask his physician for a medication meeting this description. There was, of course, only one such medication, and Seldane sales skyrocketed as a result. Because the drug was never referred to by name in the advertising, the vendor did not have to disclose its side effects--which was probably fortunate from the drug company's perspective, as the FDA pulled Seldane off of the market in 1997 due to it causing potentially fatal heart arrhythmias.

In that same year, the FDA revised its regulations so that a drug could be described by name with only the most significant side effects listed. The rest is history, we are now deluged with offensive commercials about pharmaceuticals, and doctors are in fact prescribing these drugs in many cases at the suggestion of their patients merely to keep them happy. Only two countries--the USA and New Zealand--currently have this unfettered advertising available, and the American Medical Association is currently attempting to reverse this policy.

So, you hopefully now understand why you are subjected to commercials featuring individuals literally with their bowels in an uproar and why the costs of prescription medicines are even higher now that they have to absorb the expense of television marketing.

For more information on the history of drug TV advertising, see "Answer Man" Roger Schleuter's column on same in the Belleville News Democrat.

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THE PUSILLANIMOUS WOOKIEE

When filming Return of the Jedi in the redwood forests of northern California, Peter Mayhew was  not allowed to walk around alone in costume and was accompanied by crew members in brightly colored vests. Star Wars nerds will recall that Mayhew was  7'3" (221 cm) tall actor who portrayed Chewbacca, the Wookiee. Mayhew's associates were concerned that a hunter might confuse the Wookiee for Bigfoot (or perhaps a bear) and shoot him (notwithstanding the fact that as far as I know, there is no open season on Bigfoot in California, and most bears do not wear bandoliers).

Actor David Prowse was originally slated to play Chewbacca, but he was switched over to portray Darth Vader. Mayhew was a hospital orderly at the time he was called to take over the part and was told that all he had to do was "stand up."

For more information on the Wookiee-Bigfoot controversy, please click here.

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WHAT IS MY MOVIE?

Connoisseurs of elegant filmcraft now have a delightful new website to refine their choices for cinematic excitement--namely, http://www.whatismymovie.com. This is the ultimate movie search engine where you can either 1) insert descriptive terms for that wonderful film you viewed decades ago but cannot recall its name or 2) look for movies which may contain specific topics of particular interest to you. For example, suppose you were trying to remember the name of a movie you saw as a youth featuring aliens from outer space with ray guns which turned their victims into skeletons while, at the same time, the invaders are growing a giant lobster to take over Earth? Simply insert the appropriate search term of "aliens from outer space with ray guns which turn their victims into skeletons while at the same time, the invaders are growing a giant lobster to take over Earth" (without the quotation marks) and VOILA!--up will pop the 1959 classic Teenagers from Outer Space (a movie my beloved big sister took me to see as part of a double-feature along with Gigantis the Fire Monster (also known as Godzilla Raids Again)).

Your searches could, of course, be more generic, using terms such as "ship battles," "witches," or "talking dinosaurs."

The system is not perfect, and often you may come up with choices which at first blush seem inexplicable. However, you have available, in addition to the general search, alternatives for searching by movie title or actors or with a more traditional search engine. With a little diligence, it will be hard not to find the movie you are seeking. It also provides a link for each film where you can watch it online (after paying the appropriate fee, of course). It is also searchable by voice.

If you would rather just read more about this site instead of actually trying it out, there is always the option of seeing what mental-floss has to say about it.

Speaking of Teenagers from Outer Space, it, like another classic, Night of the Living Dead, is now in the public domain. Enjoy.

BAD TO THE BONE--Teenagers from Outer Space

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."

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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 AVIAN CHROMATIC DECEPTION

Peacocks are actually brown in color. Their famous delightful Technicolor effects which led them to be adopted for years as a trademark for NBC color television broadcasts actually are generated by thousands of microscopic indentations in the feathers which are covered with thin layers called lamellae. When viewed as a whole, these produce interference patterns in the reflected light and the creation of the gorgeous iridescent hues of the feathers. This phenomenon is shared by certain other birds such as hummingbirds and most blue-hued birds as well as with some butterflies and moths and a few other things in nature.

If you ground up feathers from one of these birds and broke up the lamellae patterns, you would end up with a drab earth-colored paste.

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THE ADMIRAL'S BUG

Photo by James S. Davis [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper of the US Navy is usually credited with coining the term "bug" and "debugging" with reference to a malfunction in a computer and the subsequent repair of that malfunction.  In 1947, when she was working on a primitive computer at Harvard University called the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator, her associates found an actual moth which had been shorting out a circuit (the moth is pictured below and is now enshrined at the Smithsonian Institute), and she allegedly came up with these terms as a result.  However, most entymologists (and entomologists, for that matter) believe that the origin of "bug" as a synonym for glitch originated at a much earlier time.

By Courtesy of the Naval Surface Warfare Center,
Dahlgren, VA., 1988. [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

THE HEBREW-VULCAN CAUSALITY

The split-fingered Vulcan salute from Star Trek was derived from the Blessing Hands ritual of Orthodox Judaism, where it is used to anoint synagogue participants on holy days.  It was introduced into the TV show by Leonard Nimoy, who learned it from his grandfather.

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"WE HAD TO DESTROY THE ANIMAL IN ORDER TO SAVE IT"

President Theodore Roosevelt enjoyed a reputation as a fervent naturalist and conservationist. As a result, the Smithsonian Institution commissioned Roosevelt and his son Kermit to travel to Eastern Africa in 1909, along with other zoologists, to harvest examples of various exotic wildlife for display and study in the United States.

The expedition brought back over 11,000 specimens, including insects and plants. However, T.R. and his son personally killed 512 vertebrates, including seventeen times as many lions as Dr. Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who recently got in hot water for hunting the big cat in Zimbabwe. A full casualty list of the two Roosevelts is attached below. Some of the animals are still on display at the Smithsonian.

There is no doubt that Theodore Roosevelt was a devout conservationist who really enjoyed killing animals. This is not necessarily a contradiction, as evidenced by the fact that deer hunting is an important aspect of keeping herds from becoming so large that they end up dying from lack of food. However, it should be noted that several of the Roosevelt trophies included white rhinos (called "square-mouthed" on Roosevelt's list), which even in 1909 were on the brink of extinction and certainly did not need harvesting in order to prevent mass starvation.

For a brief synopsis of the 1909 expedition, please click here. To read the book written by T.R. on the subject, African Game Trails; an Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist, click here.

REMOVING MOLES

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

Most folks who even think about them regard moles (the animal) as a small, gross, ratty mammals which destroy lawns. What they may not realize is that, for a while, moles were highly prized in the fur trade. 

In the early 1900s, Queen Alexandra, the wife of Britain's King Edward VII, ordered a mole-fur garment and started a vigorous fashion trend which resulted in a thriving industry in Scotland of converting what had been major pests into little patches of fur and sewing them together for coats and other wearing apparel. Because the mole travels backwards into his tunnel almost as often as he goes forward, the fur is very short and dense and has little nap. As such, it is very soft and velvety.

Moles have a strange biochemistry which enables them to breathe in very low oxygen areas, such as their tunnels. They decompose extremely rapidly, which means that they had to be skinned almost immediately after their demise in order to avoid ruining the pelt.

1921 MAGAZINE FUR AD FEATURING
A MOLESKIN COAT

THE WYOMANS' PAUCITY OF VERTICAL TRANSLOCATION

There are only two sets of escalators in the entire state of Wyoming. Both are located in bank buildings in Casper.

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SO YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE CRAMPED ON YOUR LAST FLIGHT

The most number of passengers carried on a single aircraft occurred on May 24, 1991, when an El Al 747 transported 1,087* Jewish refugees away from a politically unstable Ethiopia.  Actually, the number increased to 1,090 before the trip was over, as three babies were literally air-born.

This evacuation was part of Operation Solomon, where the Israeli government transported a total of 14,235 Jews out of Ethiopia in a 36-hour period. 

*This is the official number of passengers registered for the flight, according to El Al on its webpage describing the operation. However, according to many sources, there were numerous unregistered children who were smuggled aboard, and the actual number of passengers on the plane was 1,122 (prior to any births).

By Eduard Marmet [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0),
 CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)
 or GFDL 1.2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html)],
 via Wikimedia Commons

REMEMBER THE MAINE (COON)!

One of the most popular breeds of cats in the United States is the Maine Coon. Its big hair and big body do not fit the standard feline stereotype of a typical domestic shorthair, and one can almost conclude that they look a little weird. However, their playful nature, extreme intelligence, and mellow disposition (where they seek and enjoy the companionship of their owners but without constantly demanding physical attention) more than compensate for their unconventional appearance. In fact, many of them will eagerly learn to do tricks such as fetch (or more accurately, they will teach their owners tricks like how to play fetch).

There are several theories about the origin of the Maine Coon cat. One impossible one, genetically speaking, is that normal house cats mated with wild raccoons (or even tame ones, for that matter). Another one, implausible but not totally impossible, is that Marie Antoinette, after her arrest, arranged for her snobby long-haired Persian kind of cats to be smuggled to the USA, where they bred with conventional style felines. A third theory is that English sea captains, including one named Charles Coon, introduced long-haired cats on trips to America, where they swapped genetic material with the local population. A fourth postulate is that Maine Coons are the result of matings between bobcats and domestic felines. A final possibility is that they are the descendants of Norwegian Forest cats which were introduced by the Vikings in the 11th century when the Norsemen landed in the New England area. This hypothesis may not be totally bogus, as sea captains brought long-haired cats to America all up and down the Eastern Seaboard, but only the Maine Coon cats (which in fact originated in Maine) resemble Norwegian Forest cats.

Whatever their origins, they are pretty cool cats. For more information about them, click here.

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DUELING PANCHOS

Dueling is still legal in Paraguay.  However, duels can only take place between two people, the duel must be registered with the authorities, there has to be medical staff on hand, and the participants must be registered blood donors.

Or is it? There are numerous sites on the internet confirming that duels are still legal in Paraguay--including that of the Chicago Tribune. The statement contained within the first paragraph of this factoid has been asserted as an axiom on so many occasions in so many places that it is almost universally accepted as totally valid. However, one is hard-pressed to find any authoritative source confirming the legality of duels in Paraguay. In fact, in a mind-boggling expose by the Mississippi Library Commission, it confirmed that the Paraguay Embassy had informed the MLC that dueling is NOT legal in that country.

How did the rumor get started? Well, dueling WAS* legal in Uruguay between 1920 and 1992, and probably, in a sad commentary on education in the USA, some writer got confused about geography and mixed up the two countries in a story while omitting the part that dueling was eventually banned. The misstatement grew legs and scurried around the internet until it evolved into apparent truth.

*Or was it? Wahahahaha...

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NOBODY KNOWS THE TRUFFLES I'VE SEEN

The population of wild boars has been increasingly dramatically in Germany recently. And these are not just any old wild boars. Many of them are highly radioactive. Regular wild boars are bad enough without one having to deal with radioactive wild boars. In fact, about the only thing worse would be a rabid radioactive wild boar.

The source of the radioactivity is caesium-137 which escaped from the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986 and was absorbed by truffles deep in the ground. The hogs are now devouring the truffles and incorporating the caesium. Hopefully, if they acquire superpowers as a result, they will use them only for good, not evil, but that seems unlikely.

In Saxony, hunters are required to have their slain boars tested for radioactivity, and the hot ones are confiscated. The government will give hunters the equivalent of about $200 US as compensation for each adult boar that cannot be eaten because of the contamination. As one out of every three boars is unfit for consumption because of the radiation, the total amount of payments has been massive.

Original photo By Jerzy Strzelecki (Own work)
 [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html),
CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0
 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0)],
 via Wikimedia Commons and subsequently modified