THE NOBLE SPORT OF PG

One of the weirdest events in the 1900 Paris Olympics--an Olympics which had many weird events--was poodle grooming, which took place in the pastoral location of  Bois de Boulogne.

The rules were fairly simple. The goal of each contestant was to clip the most poodles within a 2-hour period. Out of the 128 competitors who participated, a 37-year old farmer's wife from the Auvergne region triumphed by shearing 17 poodles within the allotted time.

The event was one of the most popular and was witnessed by 6,000 spectators. It was held over the objections of the founder of the modern Olympic movement--Baron Pierre de Coubertin--and was never repeated. 

The sands of time have obscured answers to many questions, such as who provided the poodles, were they all of the same size and temperament, how much hair had to be removed to constitute an acceptable clip, etc.

A routine internet search will yield many sites describing the poodle grooming competition of the 1900 Olympics.

But, wait a minute... none of these sites predate an article on the subject published by Christopher Lyles, a writer for The Daily Telegraph in London. Lyles was writing a series of stories about the Olympics in anticipation of the then upcoming 2008 games in Beijing. His poodle-clipping article appeared on April 1 of that year. In the story, he mentioned that the name of the first-place winner was "April  Lafoule" and that the competition took place in 1900 on April 1. 

Notwithstanding the obvious and correct conclusion that the story was an April Fool's Day prank, it started circulating on the internet (albeit sans reference to the blatant April 1 clues) and eventually found itself published as true in many news outlets. Finally, on August 15, 2008, The Daily Telegraph released a story specifically describing and admitting the hoax. 

So, that was that. Not really. Remember, I said that a routine internet search will yield many sites describing the poodle grooming competition of the 1900 Olympics. They have not apparently gotten the message that it was a joke. Most of these sites still maintain the fiction that there was such an event at the Paris Olympics. 

It is thus important to remember that anything on the internet should be taken with a grain of salt (including, of course, Henry's Daily Factoids). As Shakespeare wrote, "The evil that men do online lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones."

Belinda Hankins Miller, CC BY 2.0
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

THE SOGGY HOOPS SYNDROME

The 1936 Berlin Summer Olympic games not only auditioned the tradition of the Olympic Torch Relay; it was also the first Olympics to feature basketball as a medal sport. Twenty-three nations entered the competition, although two eventually withdrew.

Jim Naismith, who invented the sport in 1891 in Massachusetts, was privileged to present the gold medal to the United States team, who defeated Canada 19-8 in the final round (which was attended by almost a thousand spectators). The player who made the most points in that game was Joe Fortenberry, with the impressive tally of 8.

Basketball enthusiasts may opine that this was a low-scoring game. Most experts attribute this phenomenon to the fact that the games were played on outdoor dirt tennis courts. The final match was conducted over two 20-minute halves in a monsoon-like deluge, which turned the area into a sea of mud and made dribbling impossible.

Photo copyright International Olympic Committee

FOWL PLAY

Pigeon shooting was featured in two different sessions at the 1900 Paris Olympics, although it was not considered an official event by the International Olympic Committee.  Birds were released 27 meters away to be shot one at a time, and each contestant was allowed to continue to proceed until he missed a total of two birds.  The winner of the main event was Donald Mackintosh of Australia, who killed 22 pigeons.  By prior agreement with the other participants, he split the 20,000 franc prize among the top four contestants.

Approximately 300 pigeons died in the process.

The resulting scenario of bloody feathers floating in the air, maimed birds flopping on the ground, and nearby spectators weeping in horror provoked the use of clay pigeons in subsequent competitions.

JOSY BARTHEL'S UNEXPECTED OLYMPIC VICTORY

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In the 1952 Olympics at Helsinki, Josy Barthel (second from the lead in the above photo) of Luxembourg won the gold medal for the men's 1500 meter competition. This victory was considered a real gobsmacker, as Luxembourg had never won a gold medal before in any Olympics and the competition featured several more likely and famous candidates--including Roger Bannister, who held the British record for the event and who thereafter became the first man to run the 4-minute mile.

The Olympic Committee was so unprepared for this development that it did not even have the musical scores available for the band to play the Luxembourg national anthem. The musicians improvised, and the resulting rendition was spectacularly cacophonous. Barthel cried unabashedly on the podium, and no one was sure if it was tears of joy over his triumph or instead tears of anguish at the butchered rendition of his homeland's melody.

For a video of the race, click here.

"OLD BLOOD AND GUTS" AND THE OLYMPICS

In Stockholm during a broiling summer heat wave in 1912, 26-year old George S. Patton and future general of WWII fame became the first American to compete in the Olympic Pentathlon. Accepted in May of 1912, he had less that two months to train for the games.

The Pentathlon, originally open only to military officers, was a five-course event based on the loose premise that the officer had to deliver a vital message by first proceeding on horseback, then fighting his way through enemy lines by using his handgun and sword, and then finishing his quest by swimming and running to his final destination.

Patton's first event, marksmanship with a pistol, was the most controversial. Most contestants used special .22 caliber handguns, which were highly accurate for target shooting but ineffective as a military weapon. Patton eschewed the .22 with disdain, as he thought that the spirit of the event required that the competitor use a firearm which would actually be a military service weapon. He thus shot the course with an Army .38 revolver, which left much larger holes in the target than a .22. Unfortunately, the judges could locate only 17 holes in the target out of the 20 rounds he fired. Patton claimed that the three missing rounds had gone through the huge jagged hole in the target created by his first 17 shots, but his arguments did not prevail. His resulting low shooting score cost him dearly in his overall rankings, and he would have probably won the Pentathlon had all 20 rounds been scored.

This type of problem was eventually eliminated in later Olympics by the use a moveable backdrop to make sure that every round was recorded. In 1994, air pistols were substituted for real firearms in the Olympic Pentathlon, and in 2012, the air guns were eliminated in favor of pistols which shoot only a beam of light. It is far easier to obtain higher scores with an unrealistic non-recoiling light-emitting pistol than with a genuine handgun, although, of course, all of the contestants share the same advantage.

Patton's second event was swimming for 300 meters. Patton loathed swimming but trained on board the ship taking him to the Olympics in a 20-foot canvas pool by tying a rope attached to the deck around his waist and swimming in place (aficionados of "The Simpsons" will recall the episode featuring "Tethered Swimming" as part of the school's PE program). During the Pentathlon, Patton placed 7th in the aquatic portion after he swam himself to exhaustion and had to be fished out of the water with a boat hook.

In 1996, the swimming portion was wimped down to 200 meters in order to make the event go faster.

Patton's next event was fencing, and he had to have a separate duel with each of the 28 other contestants. Although he finished 4th, he was the only person to defeat Jean de Mas Latrie of France. This was a landmark accomplishment, as the French were respected as the premier fencers and Latrie was considered the greatest fencer on earth at the time. Patton's fencing technique was to ignore any defensive moves and concentrate only on attacking--a system he utilized thirty years later when he was dealing with Germans.

In the current Olympics, although each fencer still faces each other contestant in individual duels, the duels cannot last more than one minute. If there is not a winner at the time, then both participants are credited with a loss.  The equipment is set up so that a hit is registered when the sword touches the opponent's garb and an electric circuit is completed. In 1976, a Soviet duelist was disqualified when officials discovered that his epee had a button on it that he could press which would send out the electrical signal at will.

Patton's next course was the steeplechase. Patton was an excellent rider, but his favorite mount was injured, and he had to complete the course on a loaner horse. Nonetheless, he racked up a perfect score, but was still ranked 6th based on the amount of time it took him to do it.

In the current Olympic Pentathlon, all riders are assigned to unfamiliar horses--they do not bring their own anymore. They are given a little time to practice with them prior to the actual competition.

The final event was a 4,000 meter run through a Swedish forest on one of the hottest days of the year. The contestants were not allowed to view the course in advance, and were dismayed to discover that much of the trail consisted of six inches of mud. Two runners fainted on the course, and one of them died. Patton received a large dose of opium prior to the race to help kill the anticipated pain (this was perfectly legal at the time), but his body gave out about 50 meters from the finish line. He walked the remaining distance and then collapsed unconscious. There was concern that he was going to die on the spot, but obviously he did not.

In the modern Pentathlon, the running has been reduced to 3,000 meters, and the shooting aspect has been combined into it (run 1,000 meters, shoot, run another 1,000 meters, shoot, etc.). Shooting with an elevated pulse and heavy breathing after running probably is a more realistic representation of combat conditions. However, the primary result and motivation for all of the rule changes is that the Pentathlon competition has been shrunk from five days to one, leaving additional broadcast time for coverage of the more popular events.

Patton registered to return to the 1916 Olympics, but later political events (i.e. WWI) made it impractical for him to do so.

PATTON (ON RIGHT) FENCING WITH LATRIE

THE UNWITTING VICTOR

Bored with visiting the 1900 World's Fair in Paris, American Margaret Abbott decided to compete in what she thought was a simple women's golf tournament celebrating the fair. She won the match and returned to the United States. She died in 1955 without ever knowing that she was the first American female to earn gold* in a sport in the Olympics.

*Actually, in the 1900 Olympics in Paris, the first place contestants received trophy cups, while the second and third place winners were awarded silver and bronze medals, so actually Ms. Abbott was morally, but not technically, a gold medalist.

THE BIENNIAL NAZI TRIBUTE

One of the most iconic traditions of the Olympic games is the torch relay carrying the fire from Olympia to the site of the competition to light the Olympic Flame. This bit of theater originated as a Nazi propaganda stunt for the 1936 games in Berlin.

Adolf Hitler originally was opposed to hosting the Olympics--he considered them a decadent invention of "Jews and Freemasons." However, he did love showmanship, and his myrmidon Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, convinced him in 1934 of the golden opportunity the games would provide to demonstrate German superiority. Hitler and Goebbels were thus very receptive to the suggestion of Carl Diem, the secretary general of the organizing committee for the games,  that a 1500 mile (2400 kilometer) torch relay from Greece to Germany would be the cat's meow.

Parenthetically, although Diem was a Nazi, he lobbied to allow German Jews the opportunity to compete in the Olympics. His efforts in this regard were less than successful.

So, whenever you watch the dramatic sequences of an Olympic torchbearer bringing the fire to the games, just remember that you are being subjected to a ritual inspired by the Third Reich.

View image | gettyimages.com

DEATH RIDES A PALE VAN

The People's Republic of China, which carries out thousands of executions a year (the exact number is kept secret), has a fleet of dozens of shiny modern killing vans cruising throughout the country waiting and ready for customers. Each is equipped with a lethal injection chamber. The vans are currently supplementing, but probably have not yet fully replaced, the alternative PRC method of execution, which is a gunshot wound to the head (with the relatives of the deceased required to pay for the bullet before the body will be released to them).

Jinguan, one of the the manufacturers of the vans, is proud of its product and will provide color brochures in English and Chinese for any potential purchasers in foreign countries. 

There are at least 68 offences in the PRC which are capital crimes, including tax evasion. A convicted prisoner is allowed one appeal--frequently without the assistance of counsel. The execution is carried out immediately after an appeal is denied.

Although organ harvesting has been illegal in the PRC since 2006, activists claim that the vans still provide an excellent source of organs for transplant, as the execution procedure can be done under sterile conditions and the executees are always cremated afterwards, leaving no evidence of whether or not any of their body parts were removed after death. 

The Red Chinese were not the first to come up with the concept of a death chamber in a motor vehicle. That distinction, of course, belongs to the Nazis.

View image | gettyimages.com

PREPARE TO BE DAZZLED

View image | gettyimages.com

Most warships are painted gray in order to blend in with the sea and the sky and to become less visible to enemy vessels.  However, in World War I and, to a lesser extent, World War II, some nations experimented with what was called "dazzle" camouflage.  Ships in dazzle camouflage were painted in highly conspicuous and sharply contrasting zebra stripes or other bold patterns which changed directions in a random fashion.

These markings were intended to make enemy gunners and torpedo launchers confused about the speed, distance, and course of the dazzled vessel and even about whether it was coming or going.  Because each ship had its own special individual pattern and width of dazzle stripes which obscured the actual angles and features of the vessel, it was often hard to tell even what kind of boat it was. 

Also, at the time, most ships and subs used optical rangefinders similar to the ones in older cameras which the operator would focus by aligning two halves of a split image in the viewfinder.  The dazzle pattern made it very difficult for the enemy to match the two parts of the image.

For a look at numerous examples of ship dazzle designs maintained by the Rhode Island School of Design, click here.

Automakers also use dazzle camouflage to mask the details of prototype or test vehicles which have not been officially released to the market, as witnessed by the below photo taken in St. Joseph, Michigan, on August 7, 2015. Although the basic shape of the car may still be discernible, many of the styling details are obfuscated. In addition, and at least purportedly, with many automatic cameras (including cell phone cameras), the contrasting shades of the dazzle paint scheme can sometimes confuse the infrared focusing mechanism, thus making it harder to create and circulate images of the vehicle. Of course, despite the manufacturers' claimed lust for secrecy, they really don't mind people being fascinated and intrigued by these cars that the companies are conspicuously driving around in public places and which represent models that will no doubt be put on sale in the near future.

Photo courtesy of Patricia Grauer

THE SPACE PEN PREVARICATION

A common story circulated on the internet and elsewhere goes something like this:

In the mid-1960s, NASA spend over $1.5 million to develop a pressurized pen which the astronauts could employ to write in weightless and low-atmosphere conditions. The Russian cosmonauts used a pencil.

In reality, the truth is not nearly as interesting. Initially, both the Americans and Soviets used pencils on their space flights. However, in capsules with 100% oxygen atmospheres*, wooden pencils were highly inflammable. Broken pieces of pencil lead (which are actually graphite) were also a hazard.  They could easily float into an eye or nostril or other body cavity. Pencil lead could also short out electrical equipment and render it useless. In addition, when graphite is involved in an electrical short, it produces intense temperatures, which again is nothing you want in a confined cabin filled with 100% oxygen--or even normal levels of oxygen.

Fisher Pen Company used its own funds, not the government's, to develop a pressurized pen which would write in the adverse conditions of space, and Fisher patented it in 1965. It then offered the pen for sale to both NASA and the Soviets, and both entities became highly satisfied customers of the product. The pen, which has a shelf life of over 100 years, is still used today and is also available to the public in a variety of models, including refills which can be inserted into "normal" pens. Each refill is good for about 30.7 miles (49.4 kilometers) of writing, and since it does not depend on gravity for the ink to flow, can be used to write while held upside down.

*American space capsules initially used 100% oxygen levels in order to save weight, but NASA changed this policy after the Apollo 1 disaster in 1967.

By Cpg100 (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

THE GREAT IMPOSTER

A true Renaissance man of the 20th century was Ferdinand Waldo Demara (1921-1982). Demara achieved a wide variety of careers and accomplishments, including serving in the US Army during WWII and the Canadian Navy during the Korean War.  He also was a lawyer, a surgeon, a civil engineer, a deputy sheriff, an assistant prison warden, a doctor of applied psychology, a hospital orderly, a movie actor, a child-care expert, a Benedictine monk, a Trappist Monk, a founder of a college, an editor, a cancer researcher, and a college professor.

He had a very high IQ and an eidetic memory.  These assets served him well in his careers, since he was not actually qualified to take on any of these positions, except perhaps that of movie actor.  Demara was nothing but an imposter who obtained these jobs using fake names and credentials.  Once he was established in a new post, he would read the relevant textbooks or manuals and become an actual expert in the field.  His work itself was never questioned, but he did run into difficulties when fate or simply bad luck would expose him.

A typical example of the above was his role as the ship's surgeon on a destroyer in the Canadian Navy during the Korean War. During one of his stints as a monk, Demara met a Canadian physician named Joseph Cyr. Demara enlisted in the Canadian Navy using Cyr's name and became regarded as a highly competent medical practitioner. One night he had to perform major surgery on sixteen different Korean casualties (including one who needed a sophisticated operation in the thoracic cavity). During that evening, Demara, after directing the orderlies to prepare the patients for the operations, fled to his quarters to speed-read medical textbooks in order to know how to do the procedures. All of the operations were successful and the patients recovered nicely. The only maggot in the broth was the fact that his heroism was reported as a puff piece in the Canadian press. The real Dr. Cyr's mother read the newspaper article and made inquiries concerning how her son could be on a naval vessel near Korea at the same time he was practicing medicine in New Brunswick. The Canadian authorities, embarrassed by the whole situation and mollified by the fact that Demara never killed anyone through incompetence, sent him back to the USA without pressing charges.

Demara certainly had the intelligence to have pursued any of his careers legitimately; he just like the thrill of the game. His exploits were described in the excellent 1959 book The Great Imposter and in the movie of the same name (except for the British spelling of "Impostor") featuring Tony Curtis. The picture was intended as a comedy and did not ever let the facts stand in the way of the story line. The 2002 Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks film, Catch Me if You Can, was based on a totally different real life imposter altogether.

Copyright Universal International
 via Wikipedia

SAVING JUNK

The modern athletic supporter, also known as the "jock strap" or "jockstrap," was developed in 1874 by C.F. Bennett of Chicago as a relief for bicycle messengers in Boston who were having their genitals hammered into oblivion riding over the rough cobblestone streets. Prior to the development of a device called a "suspensory"* in the 1820s, there was no protection for males from the agony of crushing delicate portions of their bodies when bouncing on saddles, wooden wagon seats, and the like. 

In tribute to the original use of the invention, Bennett formed the Bike Web Manufacturing Company (now known simply as the "Bike Company"), which has retained its position for over a century as the major source of athletic supporters in the world (although St. Louis Cardinals fans may disagree). 

One version of the jock strap marketed in the early 1900s was the Heidelberg Electric Belt, which provided a source of current "down there" for the treatment of insomnia and other ailments. I personally would opt to drink a glass of warm milk or count sheep instead.

Jock straps now come in a wide range of styles and materials depending on the fashion taste of the wearer as well as the particular activity for which it is worn. The video of the demonstration of a bulletproof version, "Nutshellz," is excruciating to watch.

*You can see General Custer's suspensory on display at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Whether or not that experience by itself would be worth a trip to Montana is a decision only you can make.

1941 BIKE WEB MANUFACTURING 
CO. AD
Photo courtesy Wikimedia

THE HALE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH

A favorite gathering place for employees of the Central Intelligence Agency is by the Nathan Hale statute found on the grounds of the CIA. It was erected in 1973 as a tribute to America's most famous spy, a schoolteacher who was captured and hanged by the British in 1776.

William Casey, when he later become Director of the agency, ridiculed the choice on the basis that Hale was a rank amateur who did not complete his mission and got caught. 

Although there is some dispute as to whether or not Hale said exactly "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country," witnesses to his execution all agreed that he faced the noose with courage and composure and that if the preceding was not in fact his verbatim final words, he did at least utter something equally cool as his last statement.

All images of Hale, by the way, are strictly a product of imagination, as no paintings were done of him during his 21-year lifetime.

NO PAIN NO GAIN

Congenital analgesia is a rare syndrome where the patient is unaffected by pain. In one variety, the person with the disorder does not undergo pain at all (although he will detect sensations such as something brushing against his skin or changes in temperature); in another version, the individual feels pain, but it simply does not bother him.

Although this condition could be beneficial if you are prizefighting, being tortured, or babysitting my daughter's vicious cat, it generally is not a good thing to have. Victims of this disorder, especially when they are young, often suffer exacerbated injuries or fail to have diseases timely diagnosed simply because they are unaware that anything is wrong. A child with this affliction can often be found with the tip of his tongue bitten off or foreign objects in his eye or parts of his body without him even being aware of it.

Nearly 40 cases of the syndrome have been reported in Gallivare, a small town in Sweden. 

For a first-hand report by someone inflicted with this syndrome, please click here.

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THE BLADDER OF DECEIT

If you need to lie convincingly, first make sure that your bladder is full.

Researchers have discovered that it is easier to lie with a full bladder due to the "inhibitory spillover effect." Lying, at least with normal people, involves an extremely complex cognitive task for the brain. Needing to urinate activates the brain's inhibition control centers. The activation of these centers assists in suppressing the normal desire to tell the truth.

In the study, subjects were asked to determine whether or not other subjects were lying. The subjects in the latter group, when they had full bladders, were better able to suppress their behavioral clues and tell more convincing falsehoods than they could when their urge to purge had been satiated.

So, if you want to call in sick for work for a "mental health day," you should probably phone your boss before your morning potty session.

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THE BASEBALL IMMACULATENESS CAUSATION

It was an overcast misty afternoon in New York City on August 16, 1920. Yankees pitcher Carl Mays (pictured below) was standing on the mound at the Polo Grounds plying his trade against the Cleveland Indians. Mays lobbed a throw at a popular Cleveland batter, shortstop Ray Chapman, and was rewarded with a loud "CRACK" that echoed throughout the stadium.

When the ball dribbled back to Mays from home plate, he threw it to first base. It was then that Mays, the other players, and the thousands of fans realized that the "CRACK" was not generated from Chapman's bat--it had come instead from his skull. Chapman had stood crouched over the plate and did not move a muscle until he was beaned by Mays's pitch. After the pitch, Chapman fell twice while trying unsuccessfully to stagger to first base.

Despite surgery, Chapman died of his head injuries later that night. His pregnant bride was greeted with the news when she stepped off of the train in New York and promptly fainted.

Mays had a well-deserved reputation as an aggressive pitcher, an afficionado of spitballs (which were legal at the time), and a general all-round surly SOB who liked to throw inside at any batter who crowded the plate and who even once heaved the ball at a heckling fan. Most observers, however, believed that the tragedy was a true accident and that Mays did not intend to hit Chapman. The misty afternoon and the soiled tobacco-stained baseball both probably resulted in Chapman simply not seeing the ball. Mays was highly remorseful over the accident and tried to surrender himself to the District Attorney; however, no charges were filed over what has been the only beanball fatality ever in major league baseball.

Carl Mays continued playing the sport. However, notwithstanding having impressive stats, he died in 1971 without ever making the Hall of Fame, no doubt due in part to his normally disagreeable personality and the stigma of pitching the fatal ball to Chapman. 

Nonetheless, Mays did leave a legacy as a result of that dreary and deadly August afternoon. Spitballs are no more, at least not legally. And, during the course of each game, umpires are now constantly throwing in new bright pure-as-the-driven-snow replacement baseballs so that the projectile is always clearly visible to all players. It is believed by those who know these things that this particular concession to baseball hygiene led to higher-scoring games and increased fan interest.

You might also think that this tragedy would have been the impetus for immediate adaption of batting helmets by major league baseball. If so, you would be wrong, as it was decades before there was universal use by batters of protective headgear.

By Harris & Ewing, photographer
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

THE SIN EATER

One prominent figure in 18th and 19th century villages in certain parts of the United Kingdom was the sin eater. If a person died unexpectedly before he could receive last rites, his loved ones would serve food and a beverage over his body to the local sin eater. The sin eater, by consuming the food, was thought to remove all sins from the soul of the deceased by taking them onto himself--just as if he had committed the offenses on his own.

Because a sin eater would be considered to be guilty of every depravity he absorbed and accumulated during the course of his career, he was a social pariah. Like a lawyer, people reviled him until they actually needed his services. He was paid a small pittance (equivalent to maybe $2 in today's currency) for performing his task and would then be turned out of the house as soon as his meal had been completed. It was considered very bad karma to look a sin eater in the eye. Any food left on a sin eater's plate after the performance of his task would be burned in order to avoid any other person ingesting it at the risk of damnation.

In some areas, sin eaters eventually were called out on all types of deaths, not just for those individuals who had expired unexpectedly without receiving last rites.

The last known professional sin eater was a Welshman named Richard Munslow, who died in 1906. Atypically, he was a well-to-do landowner and farmer.

Although the concept of someone else paying for your sins is a basic tenet of Christianity, most organized Christian denominations frowned upon the ritual of a local sin eater trying to do so. The practice of sin eating was also somewhat akin to a Jewish tradition where a priest would select a goat to represent the sins of the Jewish people and release it into the wilderness during Yom Kippur.

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THE BACK OF THE BUS DUALITY

As you are all aware (or at least should be), a courageous black female in 1955 refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white passenger. Her resulting arrest and subsequent legal proceedings ultimately resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court overturning bus segregation laws in Alabama and were the catalysts for the modern Civil Rights Movement.

The name of this societal pioneer was Claudette Colvin. Although Rosa Parks did a similar courageous act on a bus and achieved fame and a place in history commemorated by her receipt of the NAACP Springarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, a postage stamp with her image, a statue in the US Capitol Building, lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda after her death in 2005, and consideration of her portrait on the ten-dollar bill, Park's encounter with the Montgomery public transportation system did not take place until 9 months after Colvin had been arrested. In addition, Park's litigation contesting the Alabama segregation laws bogged down in state court while Colvin achieved victory at the Supreme Court. Unfortunately for Colvin, civil rights activists decided that Parks, as a quiet, dignified and married black woman with a job, would project a more sympathetic public image than Colvin, who was an outspoken, unmarried, pregnant, and unemployed teenager.

Colvin has often stated that she is not angry that she has not received the recognition that she deserves but instead is "disappointed."

The segregation of Montgomery buses went above and beyond "merely" stigmatizing Blacks as second-class citizens by requiring them to sit in an isolated area of the bus (although that, of course, was bad enough). Under the system, black passengers would fill the bus from the back forward and white passengers would fill it from the front to the back. When the two groups met in the middle, the black passengers sitting closest to the line of scrimmage were obligated to relinquish their seats and stand instead if any additional white passengers boarded. Also, in many instances, a black passenger had to board the front of the bus to pay his fare and then get off and walk to the back entrance to get to his seat. Often, in the middle of this process, the bus would take off and leave the black passenger stranded.

Both Colvin and Parks had not gotten on their respective buses with the intention of sitting in the white section to make a statement about civil rights; they both had initially sat in the back colored section and simply were fed up and refused to stand and give up their seats to others when the white area filled up and expanded into their locations.

Photo by Maksim via Wickimedia
ROSA PARKS'S BUS

THE TOWN WHERE YOU CANNOT DIE

In the town of Longyearbyen, with a population of approximately 2,600, you cannot paint your house without first getting the color approved by the local authorities. In a world where many people now live in granny states where governments impose their aesthetic standards on their subjects, this type of  requirement is by no means unique or, by itself, even all that noteworthy. However, Longyearbyen has some other peculiarities which can give one pause. It is illegal to die in Longyearbyen. Pregnant mothers do not give birth in Longyearbyen. There are no cats in Longyearbyen. Liquor, although not prohibited altogether, is highly rationed in Longyearbyen. And, it is illegal to venture out into Longyearbyen without carrying, or being accompanied by someone carrying, a high-power rifle chambered for a .308, .30-06, or similarly-sized cartridge. 

Longyearbyen is the seat of government and principle settlement in the archipelago of Svarlbard, which contains the northernmost towns in the world, unless you also count purely scientific stations. It is in the Arctic circle about halfway between the North Pole and the most northern part of mainland Norway. Although under Norwegian jurisdiction and administered by a Norwegian governor, other nations are allowed by treaty to maintain settlements there.

This unique geography explains some of the basis for the strange laws of Longyearbyen. Its graveyard has been closed to additional burials for the past seventy years after it was discovered that bodies don't decompose normally in the permafrost and that their pathogens live on in stasis--including those of victims from the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. Consequently, residents with terminal illnesses are required to go to the mainland to die, and those persons who expire unexpectedly are buried off of the islands. Although there are a few physicians in the town, there are no specialized facilities to deal with unusual childbirth issues, and mothers retreat to mainland Norway instead to have their babies. Cats are banned because of the risk they pose to the local bird population. Liquor is rationed because of the increased risk of alcoholism posed by living in an isolated frigid area which sees no sunlight six months of a year. Rifles are required as necessary protection against polar bears, although it is illegal to shoot one except in self-defense. And the house colors? The authorities want the buildings to be cheerful and consistent with the natural colors of the sky, moss, flowers, and sun. 

For a more in-depth look at life in Svarlbard, watch the TV series Fortitude, a drama set in a fictitious town based on the real Longyearbyen. 

By Bjørn Christian Tørrissen
[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

HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW

One of the mandatory scenes required in movies set in 20th century America depicting basic training in the military is the shearing of  recruits so that all of the participants essentially are denuded of facial and head hair and resemble Crenshaw melons attached to torsos. This anti-follicle folly did not and does not apply across the board to all nations, and Great Britain, from 1860-1916, although requiring closely trimmed head hair, also mandated that each member of its armed forces had to sport a moustache. As the British were colonizing India and various middle eastern countries whose inhabitants regarded bare-lipped males as juvenile and not worthy of respect, ordering each serviceman to have facial hair made a certain amount of sense for an occupying power.

This edict was dropped in WWI when it became apparent that the Germans were not all that impressed by the 'staches of their foes and when, more significantly, the Brits discovered that the whiskers made it hard to obtain an effective seal when wearing a gas mask (plus, the guy who signed the new policy, General Sir Neville Macready, personally did not like moustaches and was happy to shave his off).

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THE TWO-FACED TALE OF EDWARD MORDRAKE

Viewers of the FX television series American Horror Story were introduced in the fourth season to a sinister character named Edward Mordake, who was quite handsome except for the fact that he had an additional face on the back of his head. A review of the internet will reveal that this representation was based on a sophisticated and worldly aristocrat of the same name who lived in 19th century England and who had a normal and attractive face in the usual location but also a separate visage on the back of his skull. Depending on the source, the second face was  "evil and twisted" or that of "a beautiful girl" or both. Most of the internet sites contain what they represent as the only known photo of Mordake along with a brief biography (see below).

Mordake's story was reported in an 1896 medical textbook called The Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine (available free to Kindle users). Lamentably, it was not a happy one. Mordake, a rich, scholarly, and brilliant musician, was tormented by his "devil twin" which was independently intelligent and spent its days muttering base and evil suggestions to its host. Mordake finally was driven insane by its mutterings and committed suicide by poison at the age of 23. His final request was that the demon face be obliterated before his burial so that he would not have to endure its taunts for eternity.

Although a rare phenomenon, there are other medical examples of two-faced individuals. One cause is "craniopagus parasiticus," where a parasitic twin sibling is born without a body and attached to its twin's head. Another condition is a rare protein mishap called "diprosopus," where parts of a face are duplicated on another section of the head. Which one of these afflictions tormented Mordake? Probably neither.

Specifically, it appears probable that Mordake never actually existed after all. As researched and revealed by Hoaxes.org, the section of the above-cited medical journal describing Mordake's case was lifted almost verbatim from an article originally published in the Boston Sunday Post newspaper in 1895 and thereafter reprinted in many other papers. The article describes various "human freaks" found in the dusty archives of the "Royal Scientific Society" including the "Norfolk spider" (a creature with a human head who crawled around on six hairy legs) and the "Fish Woman of Lincoln" (a female covered with scales whose legs terminated into the tail of a fish). The article had originally been written by Charles Lotin Hildreth, a poet and author of science fiction. 

The purported photo of Mordake is actually that of a head sculpted in wax, and the where and when of its creation remains shrouded in the unknown.

In short, the only reason that this story had traction and is so often accepted as true is because it was included within a medical textbook instead of a novel.

Photo from Hoaxes.org