THE WOOD TURTLE STOMP

WOOD TURTLE UNDER EXAMINATION BY
U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE
BIOLOGIST
(Photo courtesy of FWS)

Wood turtles are handsome reptiles that frequent both land and streams in parts of the northeast quadrant of the continental United States. The scutes on their shells have a radiating pattern similar to that of the rings on a tree stump, which is perhaps why they were named "wood." As with trees, the number of rings on a scute of a younger turtle will designate its age, although on older specimens, the pattern becomes too obscure for that purpose.

Herpetologists consider them perhaps the most intelligent of turtles. They have the ability to learn mazes just like a rat. In addition, they know that they can summon earthworms to the surface by methodically stomping the ground with their front feet--a trick known to fishermen who pound a metal rod into the ground to call worms up for their rendezvous with the bait bucket.

When I was a youth (many, many years ago) a girl gave me a wood turtle (I do not know where she got it, as they were not native to our part of the country). I let him roam in our large back yard which was surrounded by a stout five-foot high chain-link fence which had effectively contained several box turtles. The wood turtle quickly figured out that he could escape by climbing straight up the fence.

They have a strong homing instinct and, if displaced, will return impressive distances to their original location. Perhaps this is one reason why my pet insisted on climbing the fence instead of being happy where I had placed him.

Wood turtles have been observed engaging in homosexual liaisons. They are the only species of turtle to do so, although some tortoises also participate in this practice.

I know now that holding a wood turtle captive is a bad idea and probably even an illegal one. They are endangered throughout most of their range for a variety of reasons, including their removal from the gene pool by people keeping them as pets.  

THE FOLLY OF SCHLATTER

Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In was a very popular fast-paced slapsticky sightgaggy TV comedy show in the mid to late 1960s. In 1968, Presidential candidate Richard Nixon, who had previously had a reputation of having a cold robotic personality, appeared on screen on the show for less than five seconds to state, "Sock it to me?" Many pundits (whatever a pundit is) believe that this brief segment humanized Nixon in the public eye and was literally the turning point which allowed Nixon to win the election.

George Schlatter, the producer of the show, was a flaming liberal (imagine that--a liberal from Hollywood!). Schlatter states that the one thing he regrets doing more than anything else in his life was running that five-second segment.

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THE PERIL OF THE RED PERIL

David Hume Kennerly, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It was a dark and stormy night (at least somewhere) on October 6, 1976--one month before the Presidential election. President Gerald Ford was debating with the Democratic candidate--Georgia Governor and peanut farmer Jimmy Carter--on national television. The Republican brass had been nervous about agreeing to the first Presidential debates since the Nixon-Kennedy fiasco in 1960; however, Ford had done very well in his first session with Carter in the previous month. It also seemed probable that he would clean Carter's plow in this second encounter.

Then, disaster struck.

Max Frankel from the New York Times asked what should have been a softball question about the potential expansion of the influence of the Soviet Union; as part of the question, he referenced the then-current domination of that country in Eastern Europe. In his response, President Ford indicated that "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration." Frankel, obviously gobsmacked by this revelation, explored the topic further, providing the President with ample opportunity to ameliorate his position or otherwise do damage control on his dogmatic utterance. The President instead decided to repeat his verbal gaffe and dig himself in deeper.

Those folks who are too young to have been sentient in 1976 might not realize the extent of the absurdity of President Ford's assertions. The Soviet Union had occupied most of Eastern Europe since 1945 and had firmly in place, in most of the Eastern European nations, strong pro-Soviet governments who were tied to the Soviets militarily through the Warsaw Pact. Those countries who had tried to sever their links with the Soviets, such as Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, found Russian tanks rolling through their streets. In 1976, the Soviet Union was an 800-pound gorilla of a superpower with most of Eastern Europe firmly clutched within its massive hirsute paws.

Viewers of the debate had to choose among one or more of the following options: 1)  The President was an idiot who truly did not believe that the Soviets dominated Eastern Europe, 2)  the President knew that he screwed up but was too incompetent to clean up the damage, and/or 3)  the President realized that his statement was BS but had such contempt for the intelligence of the American public that he figured that he could sell his absurd statements anyway. Enough of these viewers voted for Carter (who until this debate was perceived as the candidate who had a much weaker grasp on foreign policy issues) to provide him with a narrow victory over Gerald Ford. The rest is history.

In defense of Ford, most historians agree that what he really was trying to say was that the loyalty of the citizens the Eastern European nations was not vested in the Soviet Union and that the U.S.S.R. did not dominate their hearts and souls. Unfortunately, that message was totally obfuscated by Ford's poor choice of wording.

To view a video of the relevant portion of the October 6 disaster, click here.

THE RASPUTIN CINEMATIC PERMEATE

In 1932, MGM released a movie called Rasputin and the Empress which was about, not surprisingly, Rasputin a/k/a "The Mad Monk" and an empress.  It was the only film starring all three Barrymore siblings--John, Ethel, and Lionel.

In the movie, Rasputin seduces a character named Princess Natasha who becomes his eager mistress, but the relationship eventually turns sour when he rapes her.  A real Russian Princess, Irina Romanoff Youssoupoff, and her husband claimed that Natasha was modeled after Princess Irina.  They sued MGM for invasion of privacy and libel.  The plaintiffs collected a large sum as a result of the litigation (reports vary on what the actual amount of money was).

MGM cut all reference to the rape from future releases of the movie, which created a major continuity problem in that a viewer would have no idea why Natasha suddenly turns from loving Rasputin to fearing him.

This incident is what provoked all movie studios thereafter to insert a statement in the credits substantially as follows: "This picture is a work of fiction. The characters and events portrayed in this motion picture are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to any persons, whether living or dead, is entirely coincidental." This disclaimer even appears in many films which are clearly not works of fiction and where the resemblance to actual persons is in fact intended.

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TOKEN SUCKING

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One of the many venerable professions which has been rendered obsolete by advances in technology is that of "token sucking." The craft of token sucking originated in the subways of major cities where passage to the trains was obtained by depositing a coin-shaped metal token into a slot in a turnstyle. A TS ("token sucker") would stuff paper into the slot so that a token deposited by a rider would not pass into the guts of the machine. After the frustrated rider would move onto a different turnstyle, the TS would clamp his mouth on the slot and suck the token out. On busy days, a dedicated TS could make a decent amount of change, especially when tokens were as much as $1.50 apiece.

Frustrated transit employees would try to thwart the practice by pouring chili powder or mace on the turnstyle slots. A TS plying his trade was also subject to arrest for fraud against the transit authority. Because a TS would be putting his lips on an object which thousands of persons a day would be touching with germ-laden hands, you would think that being a TS would put one in the prime of health due to the immunities one would have to be developing. Unfortunately, the opposite was usually the case.

Because of the extensive exposure to the sordid side of microbes, token sucking was perhaps the second-skankiest occupation in New York. The skankiest of all was probably that of the poor cop who had to wait around to collect a token as evidence whenever a TS would swallow one upon being arrested.

For additional information on the demise of the grand art of token sucking, please check out the New York Times article here.

"NAKED CAME THE STRANGER"

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One very successful bestseller in the late 1960s was the salacious work of Long Island housewife Penelope Ashe, who penned Naked Came the Stranger. The book is centered around the adulterous adventures of heroine Gillian Blake and featured, among her many other sexual encounters, a tryst with a Shetland pony. Ashe was the guest at numerous bookstore signings and talk shows.

Towards the end of 1969, nineteen males appeared on the David Frost Show as "Penelope Ashe" and revealed that they, along with five female colleagues, had actually written the book and that there was no real Penelope Ashe.

The scheme had been concocted by Michael McGrady, a columnist for Newsday. McGrady had developed the hypothesis, based upon other literary triumphs of the time, that all any author needed for a modern bestseller was to put as much prurient garbage in his work as possible. To test this theory, he enlisted the above-described 24 individuals from the Newsday staff and instructed each one to write a chapter in the book. He emphasized that there could be no redeeming social value or literary merit in their efforts and warned them that any true excellence in writing would quickly be blue-penciled into oblivion. In order to avoid any real plot or continuity within the novel which could be associated with decent literature, each author was to follow his or her own path--although there was one meeting in advance to determine a bare (so to speak) amount of consistencies, such as whether Gillian's skin was milky or tawny and whether her breasts were pert and patridgey or instead bodacious and melony*. The paramount requirement that McGrady imposed was that there had to be "an unremitting emphasis on sex." When the chapters were done, McGrady painstakingly edited the prose to make it worse.

McGrady then enlisted his sister-in-law to portray Penelope Ashe, and the book was immediately picked up by a major publisher and started selling like hot cakes. The revelation of the scheme later on sent sales even higher. It is available for Kindle even today.

*The final decision was that her breasts would be "pendulums of passion swinging in the winds of lust."

THE SENSITIVE GOLDFINGER

In one sequence in the James Bond movie Goldfinger, the arch-villain for whom the film was named kills off a bunch of mob bosses by sealing them in a room and filling it with nerve gas. Gert Fröbe, the actor who portrayed Goldfinger, was extremely reluctant to participate in this scene because he was worried that it would offend Holocaust survivors. He was finally convinced to do so by the argument that the whole movie was fantasy and would not be taken seriously by anybody. Perhaps his contractual obligations to the studio were also a factor in his final decision.

Israel had initially banned the showing of any movie starring Fröbe on the basis that Fröbe had been a Nazi party member and had served in the German army. The ban was lifted when a couple of Jewish survivors revealed that Fröbe had concealed them during the war and had saved their lives.

THE VERSATILE JAWBONE OF AN ASS--IT'S NOT JUST FOR SLAYING PHILISTINES

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The Lombards were a Germanic tribe which hung out for about a thousand years until the 11th Century. For a period of time, they ruled large parts of Italy, and the Lombardy region in northern Italy was named after them.

One of their greatest accomplishments was the perfection of the craft of kephalonomancy as a tool for criminal investigations--especially those involving theft. In a trial based on kephalonomancy, the accuser would take the head of a donkey (or sometimes a goat) and roast it on a bed of coals. The accuser would then read out loud a list of suspects while sprinkling carbon on the head of the animal. If the jaw of the animal appeared to move (or the skull cracked or a crackling sound erupted) during the reading of the name of a person, then that individual would be found guilty.

THE OUTRAGEOUS CONDUCT OF HIRAM BINGHAM IV

Hiram Bingham IV, son of a US senator and great-grandson of the founder of Tiffany & Co., was the perfect stereotype of the snooty rich ivy-league WASP kid who ties the arms of his sweater around his neck while carrying his tennis racket (I mean, really, what else would you expect from someone named "Hiram Bingham IV?"). Raised in Massachusetts, he attended Yale University and then obtained his law degree from Harvard. His classmates characterized him as having a stick-up-his-butt rule-following personality.  

In 1929, he sought and received employment with the State Department, which at that time was saturated with employees of similar high-level socioeconomic status. His career progressed nicely on course, and he was appointed in 1937 as a vice consul in Marseille, France. However, in 1941, his rising star status at the State Department inexplicably plummeted, and he was transferred to various dead-end posts during the remainder of World War II. After the war, he finally gave up altogether on foreign service and lived for the remainder of life in genteel poverty as an ineffective farmer in Connecticut and a substitute school teacher. He died in 1988.

Several years after his death, his children discovered what had torpedoed Bingham's State Department career. Bingham had had the audacity in 1940 and 1941 to save the lives of over 2500 Jewish refugees (including artist Marc Chagall) and other persecuted persons by issuing them exit visas in Marseille for passage to the United States. He also traveled around to internment camps, attended secret meetings with refugees, and personally hid fugitives from the pro-Nazi Vichy French government.  He even pressed the US government to provide official assistance to the refugees in the camps. All of these activities were directly contrary to the policies of the State Department at that time, who thought that it would be politically undesirable for the Democratic administration to be perceived as being possibly pro-Jewish. The State Department therefore got mad, and Hiram found himself in a situation not unlike that of Custer giving the finger to Crazy Horse.

Bingham is now being venerated for his good works and has received posthumously several awards as a result, although obviously now it is a little late for him to enjoy it.

By Kaltj (Public Domain) [CC BY-SA 4.0
 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

THE GOMER PYLE HANDGUN TEST

REVOLVER

SEMI-AUTOMATIC

In the 1960s, many law enforcement agencies started trading in their revolvers for semi-automatic pistols (which are often incorrectly called "automatics" in pulp fiction). This change was motivated primarily because the pistols were faster to load than the revolvers and could carry more rounds than revolvers before reloading was necessary--even though a semi-automatic pistol was often perceived as less accurate, less reliable, and more complex than a high-quality revolver.

However, some police departments favored the semi-automatic pistols specifically because they were more complicated to use. Those in charge in these departments wanted to make it more difficult for an untrained assailant who wrested away a police officer's weapon to be able to deploy it quickly against the officer. Purportedly, one police agency devised what it called a "Gomer Pyle" test where civilians unfamiliar with weapons were asked to seize an officer's handgun (unloaded) and pretend to use it against him. When the test subjects had a revolver, they instinctively were able to "shoot" the cop within an average of 2.1 seconds after the seizure. In the case of an M1911* semi-automatic pistol, however, the average time rose to 16 seconds before the citizen could figure out how to "fire" the sidearm.

The assassination attempt by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme using an M1911 .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol against President Gerald Ford in 1975 illustrates the principle in question. Fromme, not being experienced with the operation of the semi-auto, tried to shoot Ford but was unable to fire the gun because she had failed to rack the slide to cycle a round into the chamber. Had she instead used a double-action revolver (the type of handgun which used to be the mainstay of law enforcement), her pulling of the trigger would have been enough to kill the President.  

Improvements in design, materials, and manufacturing techniques have now made most major brands and models of semi-automatic pistols as accurate and reliable as a revolver while retaining the semi-automatic's advantage of holding more cartridges and being quicker and easier to reload. Semi-autos are currently the standard issue for almost all law enforcement and military agencies.

Oh, and Squeaky Fromme's pistol? It is on display in Grand Rapids, Michigan at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum.      

Photo from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum

*The M1911 and closely related M1911A1 pistols were the primary sidearms for American armed forces for over seven decades during the 20th Century. Numerous varieties of them are still being made by a host of manufacturers today for the police and civilian markets.

THE HIGHEST PLACE ON EARTH? SURPRISE...

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

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

THE PARTIALLY PROGRESSIVE FORD

Despite some serious character flaws (not the least of them being anti-Semitic and an admirer of Hitler), Henry Ford was not a total scum-sucking pig.  He actively pursued hiring the disabled at a time when it was not usual to do so and did a rigorous analysis of the various positions within his company to ascertain which jobs could be done by those who were partially disabled or, according to his autobiography*, were "even women!" He also affirmatively hired African-American workers at a time when many other corporations would not.

None of the positions awarded to the disabled were charitable; he expected the employee to do the same amount and quality of work as a completely whole individual. In many cases, he found that the disabled worker actually outperformed non-disabled persons in the same position. If a worker was sincerely trying to do his job but simply could not hack it, he would be given opportunities to transfer to different positions until he was able to succeed.

Ford provided special facilities and equipment when needed to assist his disabled workers to perform, including constructing a separate building for those employees who had contagious tuberculosis.

World War I provided Ford with a large pool of disabled job applicants. By 1919, over 20% of his employees were disabled.

Ford also paid his workers $5 a day in 1914, which was double what they could have received anywhere else. Critics will assert, however, that Ford used the carrot-and-stick approach to keep his employees from unionizing or leaving to work in union shops with the high wages being the carrot and, in later decades, organized thug violence the stick.  

*a particularly appropriate term for the story of a car manufacturer

THE BRAZILIAN WANDERING SPIDER--THE TOUGH TREATMENT FOR E.D.

Photo by João P. Burini (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

One of the deadliest arachnids in the world is the Brazilian wandering spider (Phoneutria fera), so named because it wanders from place to place instead of building a web or digging a burrow. Its venom is eighteen times more toxic than that of the black widow. The spider is often found in houses, is extremely aggressive, and can jump large distances. 

Male human victims, if they survive the neurotoxin from the attack, are often afflicted with a persistently painful plus potentially permanent priapism. The venom is being investigated as an alternative to Viagra®.

Spiders have to have fangs in order to puncture through the tough chitin exoskeleton of insects. The Brazilian wandering spider has refined exoskeleton puncturing to an ultimate degree. Specifically, its fangs are interspersed with and hardened by copper, iron, magnesium, and zinc atoms. The older the spider, the higher the metal content. The tips of the fangs, where the main action takes place, are almost pure metal.

In the event that you do not live in South America and are thus complacent because these spiders are nowhere near you, don't be. These guys are often called "banana spiders" because of their proclivity for hiding in bunches of bananas. They are, as a result, sometimes unknowingly imported with the fruit where they could then pop up at your local supermarket or kitchen counter.

THE MOBILE MEAT GRINDER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPENCER PHIPS'S FINAL SOLUTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE AGRICULTURALLY-INSPIRED COMPONENT OF MOTOR VEHICLE REGISTRATION

During World War II, a massive campaign was initiated within the United States to divert iron and steel from civilian use into the manufacture of munitions. In Illinois, one of the first casualties of this process was the use of metal in license plates. From 1942 through 1948, Illinois license plates were literally homegrown, where good and noble Illinois soybeans were used as the base material for their manufacture. These soybean fiber plates, although more susceptible to water damage and mold than their steel predecessors, nonetheless usually survived their one-year deployment until the next set of annual plates was released.

 

Usually--not always. One major problem a farmer or other handler of livestock often encountered was to return to his vehicle only to find that his animal charges (especially goats) had eaten a license plate.

Georgia and Virginia also experimented with soybean plates during the war, although not as long as Illinois did. Illinois made a few soybean plates for use by Alaska. Montana bought expired Illinois soybean plates, flipped them over, and printed new Montana plates on the other side.

THE ROSS REVELATION

Edward Percy Moran, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

One of the beloved legends taught to generations of American schoolchildren is that Betsy Ross, a Philadelphian seamstress, made the first national flag of the United States at the request of General George Washington and Continental Congressmen Robert Morris and George Ross when they visited her home in 1776. The story sometimes is presented that she designed the beloved version featuring a blue canton containing a circle of thirteen stars over a field of thirteen red and white horizontal stripes, while other renderings of the tale indicate that she was presented with the basic design by Washington but suggested to him that five-pointed rather than six-pointed stars would be easier to cut out and sew.

There are a few potential inaccuracies to this legend.

1.  First, Betsy was technically an upholsterer, not a seamstress, although the possibility that she also made dresses or other clothing cannot be ruled out. Despite Betsy being raised as a Quaker, it is fairly well-accepted that she repaired uniforms and made tents, blankets, and paper cartridges for the Continental Army during the war.

2.  The first national flag was actually the "Grand Union Flag," which incorporated the flag of Great Britain into its design and was used as a naval and garrison flag extensively by the Second Continental Congress, John Paul Jones, and George Washington prior to the Flag Act of 1777. The famous version of the flag usually attributed to Betsy Ross was the first flag created under the Flag Act, and it replaced the Grand Union Flag. The Flag Act did not specify any particular arrangement of the stars within the union, and any pattern of 13 stars on the canton was "legal."

3.  The traditional version of Betsy Ross creating the first flag originated with her grandson, William J. Canby, in 1870, who claimed that an aunt told him about it in 1857. Because of the patriotic fervor inspired by Centennial celebration in 1876, the story quickly grew legs and became part of American history. However, there is very little evidence that Betsy Ross designed or made this flag.

4.  Betsy Ross is often portrayed as a middle-aged or elderly woman at the time she allegedly created the banner. However, in 1777, she was only 24 years old.

Visitors to the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia can hear the tale of the first American national flag from the lips of a re-enactor portraying the famous upholsterer. However, it is not certain that Betsy Ross actually lived in the home. Due to the vicissitudes caused by the passing of centuries, the records are unclear, and Betsy may have actually lived in the neighboring house.

Betsy Ross died in 1836 at the age of 84. She was first buried in the Free Quaker Burying Ground in Philadelphia. In 1856, her remains were transferred to the Mount Moriah Cemetery, which may have been following the common practice at the time where cemeteries acquired the bodies of historical persons for the purposes of prestige and attracting business. In 1975, in anticipation of the Bicentennial, Philadelphia employees dug up the grave to transfer its contents for burial at the Betsy Ross House, but there was no grave under the tombstone. They instead retrieved bones from a family plot, deemed them to be Betsy's, and interred them at the Betsy Ross House.

Hoshie, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
THE GRAND UNION FLAG 1775-1777

DevinCook / Created by jacobolus using Adobe Illustrator, and released
 into the public domain., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
THE "BETSY ROSS" FLAG 1777

AND YOU THOUGHT CROCS WERE BAD

The second-most dangerous vertebrate to man in Africa is the hippopotamus.  Hippos are very mean, can run at 18 miles an hour (29 kph), and weigh 8,000 pounds (3,600 kg). According to a statistic found on many sites on the internet (but without citing an ultimate source), hippos kill about 2,900 people per year.

Hippos may also be one of the most uncouth vertebrates in Africa. A hippo will  engage in a practice called "dung-showering," where he backs up to a rival or other target and spins his tail like a propeller while violently expelling a mixture of feces and urine through it. For these reasons, many people are loathe to invite hippos to formal gatherings.

The most dangerous vertebrate on that continent is, of course, man himself. Perhaps the deadliest animal of  them all in Africa is the mosquito and the various exotic pathogens it carries.

MODERN ALCHEMY--TURNING SILVER INTO URANIUM

During World War II, when copper was being diverted to make munitions, the atomic bomb laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, borrowed 14,700 tons (13,336 metric tons) of pure silver from the U.S. Treasury to be used for the huge amounts of electrical wiring required by the giant calutrons which separated the isotopes of uranium. By 1970, all but .04% of the silver had been replaced by copper and returned to the Treasury vaults. 

There is no evidence supporting the common belief that silver coins were withdrawn from circulation specifically to make the wiring.

The amount of silver in question would form a cube 35 feet on each side. It would be very heavy and worth a lot--over 6.4 billion dollars based on a price for silver of $15 an ounce.

HOW TO RAED

A sramt guy in Eglnand woshe nmae I do not rmbeemer dcisroveed a wilhe ago taht msot preosns raed by lkoonig at the frist and lsat letters of ecah wrod. In oehtr wdors, if you wree to see a snetncee wrehe all of the wdros bigen and end wtih the rhigt leretts but all of the iennr lreetts were jmubeld, you wulod slitl be albe to raed the msagese whitout too mcuh tuorlbe.

THE Tu-4: IMITATION IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY

As an ally of the Soviet Union in its fight against Germany during the Second World War, the United States provided Brobdingnagian quantities of armaments and other materials to assist the Reds in that conflict. One item requested more than once by the Russians, and refused every time by the Americans, was the Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bomber. 

The B-29 was developed to carry 20,000 pounds of explosives up to 4,100 miles away in order to rain fire (and ultimately two atomic bombs) on the Empire of Japan. You may wonder, provided that you have read this far, why didn't the USA, instead of designing a new bomber, simply station some of its bombers already in its fleet, like the B-17 or B-24, in Siberia in the Soviet Union and use those to fly the relatively shorter distances to Japan? Well, there may have been logistical problems in establishing American air bases in the remote areas of eastern Siberia (as if there were non-remote areas of eastern Siberia), but the more pressing consideration was that while the Americans were allies of the Soviet Union in fighting Germans, the Soviets were not allies of America in its conflict with Japan. With respect to the Japanese-American war, the Russians were neutral, just like Switzerland--at least until August 8, 1945, when the Soviets finally declared war on Japan two days after the Hiroshima bombing.  

Although I do not know of the specific reasons cited by the Americans for their refusal to supply the Soviets with B-29s, one could easily speculate that the USA wanted them all itself in its campaign against Japan and further saw little good arising from giving a potential foe in the future a long-range heavy bomber, especially when the Russians really did not require one in its fight against Germany. However, Stalin wanted B-29s, so what to do, what to do? 

Well, during the course of the war, four American B-29s on bombing raids to Japan landed or crashed on Soviet soil. Pursuant to international law, the Soviet Union, as a neutral country, interred the crews and kept the planes. Some of the crews were sent to camps near the border of Iran. Depending on your viewpoint, Iran was either a member of or occupied by the Allied Powers, and the flight crews were able to easily "escape" into Iran with the tacit approval of the Russians and into friendly hands. Their planes still remained behind until after V-J day, when the Soviets returned one and a remaining crew back to the United States. 

No one outside of the Soviets knew what happened to the remaining aircraft until the Aviation Day parade in Moscow on August 3, 1947. At that event, three B-29s majestically flew overhead. Western observers concluded that these must have been the three planes which had remained in Russia. Then, a fourth Superfortress appeared. It was apparent, much to the dismay of the Americans, that the Soviets had reverse-engineered the B-29 and now had an aircraft capable of bombing Los Angeles or Chicago on a one-way mission (or, once in-air refueling was perfected, on a round-trip run). The fact that the Russians exploded their first atomic bomb later that same month did little to assuage the concerns of the Americans. 

Stalin had issued strict orders to mobilize over 900 factories and design centers to produce exact clones of the B-29s based on the examples in Soviet custody. Stalin made it clear that "exact" meant "exact." Stalin's myrmidons strictly complied with Stalin's decree (which was a smart thing to have done if you were a myrmidon of Stalin).  In fact, one of the downed American planes had been hit with Japanese fire on an earlier mission and sported a repair patch covering the damage. The Soviet drones methodically put a patch on the same place on the cloned planes. Even if the Soviets had a better design already available for a particular component, they dutifully copied the American version instead. There were in fact a few deviations made (such as the use of Russian parachutes), but only after review by the highest authorities. 

The Soviets built about 847 of these aircraft, which they designated as the Tu-4, until the end of production in 1952. They were the first Soviet strategic bomber, and, like their American counterpart, the first plane to drop an atomic bomb for its nation.