THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY?

One of the hoary chestnuts in movie and TV westerns is the somber occasion where the cowboy's horse stumbles in a prairie dog hole and breaks his leg. Inevitably, the grim-faced rider will approach the equine with solemnity, stroke the animal's forehead, and then fire a bullet between its eyes.

In a time and place where one might be a hundred miles from the nearest vet, such an action does seem to make sense. However, with today's mobility, communications, and medical facilities, is death still the panacea for a broken limb on a horse?

Sadly, for the most part, the answer is "yes." Unlike humans, dogs, and cats, whose legs are supported by relatively thick bones, muscles, and sinew, horses have spindly little leg bones--especially those high-performance horses bred to go fast. The fact that a horse can weigh 1200 pounds (544 kilograms) puts an intense load on those bones even when the horse is stationary. When the horse's leg bone breaks, it usually shatters into dozens of pieces, and there is nothing left to knit together in a cast.

Complicating this task is the fact that horses evolved as prey animals, not predators, and their one method of defense is to run away fast. They remain standing almost all of the time in order to make a quick getaway and can even sleep on their feet. It is unrealistic to expect that a horse will calmly take to bed rest for months on end while its leg heals.

Consequently, although vets today can sometimes treat greenstick fractures on horses (where the bone is cracked but not broken), the acceptable remedy today for most horse leg fractures still is euthanasia. Those who have tried to buck this trend, such as the owner of Barbora, who won the Kentucky Derby in 2006 and then broke his rear leg, have usually regretted the decision and, as in the case of Barbora, eventually followed through with putting the animal out of its misery.

For the inspiration for this factoid as well as a more thorough treatment of this topic, check out Roger Schlueter's column in the Belleville News-Democrat.

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ROOSEVELT'S FILTHY LUCRE

President Theodore Roosevelt was a man of many interests, and he micromanaged much of the federal government from picking out bayonets for the Army to critiquing coin design. Two of the gold* pieces--the eagle ($10) and double eagle ($20)--produced during his Presidency were designed by noted sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and the double eagle especially is generally recognized as probably the most beautiful coin ever made in the United States. However, Roosevelt also authorized, against the wishes of the mint officials, a new design for the $2.50 and $5.00 gold coins.

One of Roosevelt's close buds, William Sturgis Bigelow, was intrigued by the incuse relief works of art of ancient Egypt and suggested that the new coins be also incuse--i.e., the lettering and design be lower than the surface of the coin instead of raised, as is the normal practice. Bigelow recommended that his highly-regarded sculptor friend, Bela Lyon Pratt, be awarded the commission. Pratt, using for the first time in coinage history a genuine native American as a model (the native American on the earlier-designed Indian head penny was actually a young white girl wearing a headdress), came up with a design for both the $2.50 and $5.00 pieces featuring an Indian chief on the obverse and a walking American eagle on the reverse--all done in incuse. 

Not everyone was happy about the results. A noted Philadelphia numismatist wrote to Roosevelt and complained that the Indian was emaciated, that the incuse coins did not stack properly, that the eagle was "European," that the coins could be easily counterfeited, and most serious of all, that the incuse design would collect bacteria and promote disease. Notwithstanding these objections, the coins remained in production (although not for every year) from 1908 through 1929.

And Bigelow, the man who advocated the purportedly filthy, germy design? He was a prominent physician.

For more information about the Pratt-Bigelow gold coins, click here.

*Many decades ago, American money was actually made of precious metals and had value above and beyond the feeble hope that the fiscal policies of the United States were sound.

By US Mint (coin), National Numismatic Collection
 (photograph by Jaclyn Nash) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

TUDOR CTE

King Henry VIII of England is best known for the synergistic combination of being excessive in corpulence, down on Catholicism, hard on wives, capricious in temperament, and foolhardy in his decisions. It is perhaps surprising to learn that in his younger years, he was apparently quite buff and physically fit with an easy-going disposition and a high intellect.

Researchers at Yale University now believe that Henry's change in behavior and physical condition was due to receiving several traumatic brain injuries, including from two serious jousting accidents (well, you can decide for yourself if "accidents" is the correct term for incidents where one intentionally exposes oneself to being knocked off a horse by a lance) and an unfortunate episode where he attempted to vault over a creek and landed on his head.

Who knows how history might have been changed if Hank had worn a better helmet.

For further information on the Yale study, check out this link.

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THE GELATIN-PINEAPPLE INCOMPATIBILITY

As any gourmet gelatin chef knows, you cannot make Jell-O (or any other brand of gelatin) with pineapple. Well, technically, you cannot make it with fresh pineapple. Canned pineapple works fine, With fresh pineapple, however, the product simply will remain a liquid and will not gel.

Why not?  Well, gelatin is actually a protein made from boiling animal bones, connective tissue, and skin (yummy). Fresh pineapple contains sulfhydryl protease enzymes, which essentially break down the gelatin proteins into amino acids and prevents them from forming the molecular building blocks which give gelatin its form. Cooking the pineapple (which is part of the canning process) destroys the protease enzymes and renders the pineapple gelatin-friendly.

Actually, pineapple is not the only enemy of Jell-O. Other substances which contain proteases include broccoli, mushrooms, spinach, wheat, soy beans, papaya, mango, guava, pawpaw, kiwi, figs, meat tenderizer, and ginger root. This may well explain why your last mushroom and fig gelatin creation was a flop.

For even more intimate details about the great pineapple/Jello-O dilemma, check out the Today I Found Out website.

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THE CAMP SALINA MASSACRE

GERMAN PRISONERS OF WAR EXERCISING
ABOARD SHIP ON THEIR WAY TO THE USA

During World War II, approximately 425,000 captured German and Italian military personnel were incarcerated in 500 POW camps located within 44 different states in the USA. 

Now, one may wonder why the Allies would go to the trouble of shipping POWs all the way from Europe to America when the prisoners could have been housed in the United Kingdom. Actually, many of them were in fact lodged in Britain. However, the Brits were hard-pressed to keep their own people fed, and the close proximity of the British-held captives to the European continent provided a constant temptation for them to escape. On the other hand, the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean and the subsequent long train ride for the prisoners from the eastern seaboard to camps in places like Kansas or Minnesota were usually enough to overwhelm the captives with a sense of futility with respect to attempting to overcome the huge distances which would be involved in executing an effective departure. In addition, there were plenty of Liberty ships returning empty from Europe back to America anyway, and it thus made sense to use the available space for some POWs.

The majority of the prisoners adjusted very well to camp life in the United States, and most of them were happy to be loaned out to work in American farms, mills, and other industries. It was certainly a more comfortable gig than their compatriots had fighting on the Russian front. Many of the captives became friends with their American employers ("employers" is a correct term, as the prisoners were paid wages), and quite a few returned to the USA after repatriation to become American citizens.

Die-hard Nazis who thought that it was treason to cooperate with their American captors in any fashion (and who would administer harsh sanctions against fellow POWs who did so) were transferred to special camps.

Most of the time, the Americans abided by the 1929 Geneva Convention and treated their charges humanely. However, on July 8, 1945, at the POW camp in Salina, Utah, nine sleeping German prisoners were murdered by 23-year-old Pvt. Clarence V. Bertucci of the US Army and another 19 were wounded. One captive was almost cut in half when Bertucci raked the tents of the prisoners with a M1917 .30 caliber machine gun, firing almost 250 rounds within 15 seconds. Bertucci then screamed for more ammunition, but his request was denied. The survivors of the shooting were taken to the Salina hospital, and witnesses indicate that blood was flowing outside from beneath the hospital door.

Bertucci had had some prior disciplinary problems but had displayed no signs that he was going to go on a murderous rampage. Afterwards, he was unrepentant, expressed disappointment that he had not been in combat, and declared that he did not like Germans. He was pronounced insane by a military panel and was transferred to a New York mental hospital. How long he remained there has been lost in the vagaries of history. He died in 1969. Cynics maintain that Bertucci was not actually medically or legally bonkers but that the Army, obviously embarrassed by the massacre (especially one occurring two months after Germany had surrendered), needed to "justify" how it happened.

The slain Germans were buried with full military honors in American uniforms at the Fort Douglas Cemetery in Salt Lake City. However, contrary to tradition, their coffins were not draped with their country's flag, as the US Army refused to use the Nazi ensign and no other flag had yet been adopted for post-war Germany. The survivors were sent back to Germany after their recovery.

THE CRUCIFORM ANTI-DIURETIC

During medieval times, visitors inside palaces or castles often found themselves long distances away from a privy or chamber pot and would urinate on the interior walls whenever and wherever the urge overtook them. In many such structures, the lord of the manor would order crosses to be painted or chalked over large areas of the walls in the hope that potential micturating culprits would take their bladders elsewhere and spare the wall rather than desecrate a religious icon.

By Otourly (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)
 via Wikimedia Commons

WHIPPING BOYS

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A "whipping boy" is not merely an expression but actually refers to a position held by, appropriately enough, a boy who was whipped. 

The position of "whipping boy" arose around the 15th century in the monarchy in England. Because of the divine nature of royalty, the only person who could physically punish a misbehaving prince during that era was the boy's father. However, kings were often out doing stuff like beheading wives or fighting the French and were thus frequently not available to handle the discipline of their children. 

The whipping boy was a child of the same age as the prince who would be whipped in place of the prince by a palace employee. The prince, in theory, would feel guilt and remorse and would not repeat the offense which led to the punishment.

While being a whipping boy for a sociopath prince who did not feel guilt or remorse could be a real buzzkill, most whipping boys actually had it pretty good. They were often the only companion of a similar age a prince had and would be BFF with the prince. In most cases, a prince would in fact feel great remorse over getting his only true friend in trouble. 

In short, whipping boys usually had all of the luxury of growing up living like a prince, would often be rewarded with great wealth and estates by the prince when the prince and he achieved adulthood, and would always have the ear of the king once the prince inherited the throne. It generally was worth a few lashes, especially since all boys at that time (except princes) were routinely beaten anyway, regardless of their stations in life.

PRINCE JOFFREY--YOU WOULD NOT WANT
TO BE THE WHIPPING BOY FOR THIS GUY
Image copyright HBO

THE STALAG INCONGRUITY

Those of you who were sentient in the 1960s or had access at a later date to reruns on various networks or streaming services are no doubt familiar with the sophisticated recounting of events in a WWII German POW camp in the TV comedy series Hogan's Heroes. A key ingredient to the success of the show was the outstanding portrayal by Werner Klemperer (see photo below) of the fatuous and incompetent camp Kommadant Col. Wilhelm Klink.

Klemperer was a Jewish refugee whose family had fled to the United States prior to World War II, and he served in the US Army during that conflict. At first blush, he would not appear to be the type of person who would embrace participation in a TV series featuring the lighter side of the Third Reich.

Klemperer, however, made it quite clear that he would only take the role on the condition that his character remained a complete buffoon. He informed the producers that he would leave the show immediately if there ever was an episode where Klink was portrayed as a hero. Klemperer never had to carry out this threat, and after the series, he continued with a distinguished and respected acting career as well as working as a narrator for orchestras.

Anti-Semitism would not have fared well on the set of Hogan's Heroes. The bumbling Sergeant Schultz ("I know nothing") was portrayed by John Banner, who was Jewish. He lost most of his family in the Holocaust. The role of the French corporal Louis LeBeau was done by Robert Clary, a Buchenwald survivor who had immediate family members murdered at Auschwitz. Leon Askin, who played General Burkhalter, was a Jewish refugee from Vienna. Howard Caine, another Jewish World War II veteran (US Navy), did a brilliant job portraying Major Hochstetter of the Gestapo.

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THE PROSAIC ORIGIN OF CANDY APPLES

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Candy apples were not developed as a novelty taste treat. Instead, the apples were coated with boiling sugar syrup originally as a way of keeping the apple fresh for months without refrigeration, as the heat kills all the bacteria on the exterior and the coating seals the apple from further contamination. The delightful sweet flavor is just an added bonus.

British candy apples usually are sealed in treacle, while American candy apples are most likely dipped in caramel or in red-tinted sucrose flavored with cinnamon. Often, sadistic candy apple preparers ruin the whole thing by adding nuts to the coating.

The best apples to use have a rough, not a smooth, skin, as the sugar sticks to them better. Small, crisp apples like Macouns or Pink Ladies also work better than the mealy varieties like Jonathans or Galas.

THE DEATH DEALER

Single individuals, such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, were responsible for the deaths of millions of people. However, they did so primarily by decree, and not by personally performing each killing. Arguably, the persons who directly slew the most individuals would be the toggliers aboard the Enola Gay and Bock's Car, who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, when considering who was the most prolific killer who personally dealt death on an individual one-on-one basis, the Guinness World Records awarded that honor in 2010 to General Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin--Stalin's chief executioner from 1926 to 1953.

Blohkin was the head of the Kommandatura Branch of the Administrative Executive Department of the NKVD of the Soviet Union--the agency in charge of "black work" for the government. Under his tutelage, his agency supervised an estimated 828,000 executions.

Blohkin, however, was not just a bureaucrat who sat in his chair while ordering others to do the dirty stuff. He personally performed at least 10,000 slayings, and perhaps a lot more.

His most infamous stint involved the murder in April of 1940 of 7,000 Polish prisoners of war in the Katyn Forest in Poland. Blohkin established for himself the goal of killing at least 300 prisoners each night. He set up an assembly line system where each prisoner was brought to a specially designed soundproofed shed equipped with a sloping concrete floor and a drain. Once the prisoner entered the shed, Blohkin immediately shot him in the back of the head. Blohkin's assistants then removed the corpse and quickly hosed down the floor prior to bringing in the next victim. This ritual was performed from dusk to dawn for 28 consecutive nights.

Blohkin carried a briefcase full of German Walther pistols with him to use for the Katyn killings. He thought the weapon more reliable than the Soviet-issue TT-33 and, if things went south, he wanted the murders to be attributed to the Germans instead of to the Russians.

Blohkin was forced to resign after Stalin died in 1953. He descended into alcoholism and insanity and purportedly committed suicide in 1955. Of course, during that period of time, a lot of Stalin's myrmidons committed "suicide" under mysterious circumstances.

YOU'VE GOT TO BE KITTYING ME!

In 1879, the postal authorities in Liège, Belgium recruited 37 new mail carriers to transport cards and letters to the surrounding villages. The carriers were "plucky" house cats, who were released with a waterproof bag of mail tied to each one. Each feline was then supposed to run to the appropriate village and exchange its cargo for a saucer of milk.

Amazingly enough, this innovative project did not prove to be an unqualified success.

The American government would of course not blunder into trying anything this foolish. It would instead first award some researcher a $1.5 million grant to conduct a feasibility study.

THE UNSANITIZED SLEEPING BEAUTY

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Fans of the 1959 Disney film classic Sleeping Beauty would probably notice a few discrepancies in the story line between it and the original tale published in 1636.

In the original version, the Sleeping Beauty, also known as Talia, is poisoned by a flax splinter in her finger. Her family members abandon their castle, leaving her body behind. When the obligatory prince enters the castle and encounters her inanimate body, he rapes her instead of kissing her. This meeting produces two twins, who are raised by fairies, since Mama is still in a coma. Eventually, the male child sucks on Talia's finger and removes the poisonous splinter. As a result, Talia awakens. The prince eventually returns for a second helping but finds her up and about. He confesses his prior escapade to Talia, and they both then have a weekend of passionate sex, with Talia conscious this time around. 

The prince's wife disapproves of this dalliance, and she captures the twins. She orders her cook to kill them and turn them into a casserole, which the wife then feeds to the prince. She informs him of the source of the meat in the meal after he is done.

The wife is really irritated when she discovers that the cook did not actually kill the kids but instead substituted goat meat for the casserole. She orders that Talia be captured and burned at the stake. However, the prince intervenes, kills his wife, and marries Talia where he, Talia, the twins, and the cook live happily ever after.

A rapist and wife murderer--you would have hoped that Talia could have done better.

THE DEADLY TRI-STATE TORNADO

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The Tri-State Tornado of March 18, 1925, was the most destructive twister known in American history. This tornado, most likely an F5, started in Missouri, tore across southern Illinois, and finally dissipated in Indiana. It killed at least 695 persons, mostly in southern Illinois. Another 100 died in other tornadoes spawned by the same storm system. The small community of Murphysboro, Illinois, by itself had 234 fatalities.  The tornado destroyed, among other things, nine schools (many of the fatalities were school children) and over 15,000 homes. 

Most single tornadoes dissipate before they go five miles on the ground; reports of tornadoes with longer paths are usually found afterwards to have been based on a series of twisters.  The Tri-State Tornado appears to have been a legitimate single tornado which traveled over 200 miles.  The funnel was so wide that most observers did not even recognize it as a tornado but thought it a bank of fog instead.

Looting and theft from the dead were rampart afterwards, much to the shame of decent Midwestern citizens.

For additional information from ustornadoes.com on this disaster, please click here, or, for an even more detailed account replete with numerous photographs, see this article on Stormstalker.

MING--THE LORD OF THE RINGS

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The eldest documented living individual animal in the world was a 507-year old ocean quahog clam dredged up from the waters of northern Iceland in 2006. The clam was named "Ming" for the Ming Dynasty, which was in existence when the mollusk was born in 1499.

Zoologists calculated the age based on the number of annual rings on the shell which, in the case of clams, is a very reliable indicator. Unfortunately and ironically, in Ming's case, the scientists shellfishly froze him* to death before they counted his rings and discovered his hoary age. It is quite possible that Ming could have lasted a good deal longer if he had been left unmolested. Of course, considering the quantity of quahogs which are harvested by fishermen each year who do not bother to count their rings, there may well have been even older individuals caught whose advanced years were never suspected.

Some colony animals like coral or sponges may live much longer than a half of a millennium, and there is a weird jellyfish (Turritopsis dohrnii) which achieves a type of immortality by cycling between an adult and polyp phase over and over again. However, for single individual creatures which start out small, grow to adulthood, and then eventually die, Ming at the moment has the record for longevity of all the animals on the earth.

If you wish to read more about Ming as well as see an actual photo of him (the picture above is just your ordinary run-of-the mill generic quahog), please click on the ScienceNordic webpage.

*It is hard to tell the sex of clams, and sometimes they even change gender during the course of their lives. Thus, the use of the masculine pronoun for Ming is somewhat arbitrary.

THE EXCITING HORSEHAIR WORM

Horsehair worms are long (often over a foot (30 cm)) skinny parasites which are especially fond of infecting certain spiders and insects (especially the jumpy kinds like crickets, grasshoppers, katydids, and locusts). They mature and grow inside the insect's body. When they are ready to see the world, they send chemicals to the brain of the host. Normally, the host would be loathe to approach a body of water because of the potential for fish, frogs, and other predators; however, the brainwashing by the parasite convinces the host that it is thirsty and that approaching a pond or puddle is a good idea. Once the host starts drinking, the worm emerges to spend the rest of its life in the water and to engage in sex. The host is exhausted, underdeveloped, and malnourished as a result of its experience and usually (but not always) dies as a result.

Their name is derived from the fact that people often found the parasites in watering troughs and thought that they were horse mane or tail hairs which fell into the water and became animated. They are also called Gordian worms from the mythical knot of the same name, due to their tendency to form entanglements with their bodies. They belong to the phylum Nematomorpha, which means "looks like nematodes." They, however, are not nematodes, so do not let anyone tell you to the contrary.

They are totally harmless to mammals. People sometimes see them in toilet bowls, draw erroneous conclusions, and become alarmed. However, what most likely happened is that someone probably flushed a cricket in the bowl, thus releasing the worm.

For you endoparasite fans, the attached link is to a viral video depicting what happens after you bugspray a spider infected with one of these guys.

NOTHING LUCKY ABOUT "I LOVE LUCY"

In the 1950s, newspapers often featured a game called "Lucky Bucks" where readers could win prizes by matching serial numbers on dollar bills. This game was a plot element in a 1954 episode of I Love Lucy, but the show's sponsor, Phillip Morris Tobacco, insisted that the name of the game on the show be changed to "Bonus Bucks." Phillip Morris required that the writers of I Love Lucy eschew the use of the term "lucky" whenever possible, as it did not want to remind the viewers of its competitor's product Lucky Strike cigarettes.

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COFFEE, OR HOW TO AVOID EXECUTION IN 18TH CENTURY SWEDEN

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Coffee was introduced to Sweden in 1674. It quickly became like a 17th Century version of marihuana, where many folks enthusiastically endorsed its consumption while those in authority eventually banned it as an illegal and dangerous addictive drug. In addition to the usual types of penalties associated with breaking the law, unlawful coffee drinkers had to forfeit their cups and saucers used to facilitate the crime.

One of the java naysayers was King Gustav III, who initiated a scientific experiment to prove the dangers of the beverage. Gustav located twin brothers who were scheduled to be executed and authorized commuting their sentences to life imprisonment when one agreed to consume three pots of coffee a day while the other would drink an equivalent amount of tea instead. The prisoners were closely monitored by two physicians, and Gustav expected that eventually he would receive a report that the coffee drinker had succumbed to an early and premature death while the tea drinker remained perking on.

Unfortunately for Gustav, he discovered that one thing more deadly than drinking coffee was being the King of Sweden. He was assassinated in 1792 before witnessing the results of his experiment. The tea drinker later died of natural causes at the age of 83. The coffee drinker survived them all, but history does not record his exact date of death. Who knows, maybe he is still alive today wandering through various Swedish Starbuckses for eternity.

The Swedish authorities in the 1820s finally abandoned all attempts at banning coffee. Sweden today has one of the highest per capita consumption rates of coffee in the world.

THE CANINE-ARMOR INTERACTION

In the 1930s, the Soviet Union decided that it would be a good idea to train dogs to destroy enemy tanks. Initially, the concept was that the dog's handler would strap a bomb to the dog. The dog would then run over to the tank, remove the bomb with its teeth, drop the bomb next to the tank, and scamper back to its handler. The bomb would then be set off by remote control or a timer. 

There were several flaws with this plan. First of all, the remote devices were considered too expensive to use in any quantity, so most of the bombs were instead detonated by timers. Second, since the tank would be moving, it might be out of range of the blast by the time the charge exploded. Finally, and most unfortunately, if Fido had trouble removing the bomb (or simply declined to do so for whatever reason), he would return with the bomb to his handler, at which point the device could decide that it was time to detonate. This was considered to be bad, so the Russian eggheads designed a more elegant system.

The Soviets were very cavalier about sacrificing their soldiers, and they were even less concerned about killing dogs. Under the new system, the dog was taught to run under a tank with a bomb strapped to his back. When he crawled under the tank, a lever sticking up from the bomb would be depressed, and the dog and the tank would go KABOOM (obviously, the KABOOM portion of the process was eliminated from the training sessions).

Many of these missions had to be aborted, simply because the dogs had not been adequately conditioned to the noise of gunfire and explosions during training, and they ran away when they encountered the sound and fury of actual battle conditions. However, there was even a more serious defect in their education. The Russians used their standard Soviet T34 diesel tanks as a training aids for the canines. During WWII, the German armor was generally powered by gasoline engines. When the dogs were released in combat, they tended to crawl under those tanks reeking of the familiar odor of diesel fuel. Uh oh.

The Germans captured some of the anti-tank pooches early on in the war but decided that the concept was not worth copying for their own forces. However, they did implement a policy of consistently shooting any dogs found within a combat area.

Notwithstanding the foregoing problems, sixteen dogs took out twelve German tanks at the Battle of Kursk. The Soviets also claim that their dogs destroyed 300 tanks (hopefully, at least some of them German) during the entire course of the war.

For more information on tank-busting Bowsers, see the excellent article from the Today I Found Out website.

Photo from Today I Found Out

THE $5.01 FELONY

Jail bait.

It is a federal felony to take more than a $5 combination of nickels and pennies out of the United States without a special permit. Doing so could result in imprisonment of up to five years plus a fine up to $10,000.00 plus forfeiture of the coins themselves.

This penalty is not because of some archaic statute from the 1700s; the provision was actually enacted in 2006 after rising prices for metal caused, at the time the bill was passed, the nickel to have had a melt value of 6.99 cents and a penny (which has been made primarily out of zinc since 1982) to have had a melt value of 1.12 cents. Pennies made prior to 1982 are composed primarily of copper and had (and still have) a melt value of several times their face value. The government was concerned that the coins would be exported and melted down in large quantities with the potential of a resulting shortage of pennies and nickels and the mint having to purchase metal at the higher prices to remanufacture the lost coins.

Well, what about silver coins--the ones generally made prior to 1965? Their melt value at any time is easily ten to twenty times the face value of the coin. Why isn't the government concerned about that? 

At one point it was, but for all practical purposes, there have been no silver coins in circulation in the United States for over 50 years. The mint has plenty of silver available for the limited amount it uses for any special collector releases or bullion items, and the exportation or melting of pre-1965 silver coins would have a very limited impact on the mint's current obligations or operations. Consequently, if you want to fire up your crucible and turn the prized silver dollar collection you inherited from your grandfather into teaspoons or bullets for werewolf hunting, feel free to do so without concerns about legal jeopardy.*

In short, if you keep a coin jar in your Winnebago containing a lot of pennies or nickels, you had better leave it behind if you are crossing the border from the USA into Canada or Mexico.

*Unless, of course, you realize how risky and foolhardy it would be to base your conduct on a legal opinion expressed on the internet by a person whom you do not know and who is not even a lawyer.

THE BUMPY RAILROAD CROSSING AVOIDANCE MOTIVATOR

For its 1956 through 1958 product line, Chrysler Corporation offered as an option an under-dash record player.  It handled special 7" records which would play up to one hour per side (which was fairly impressive in an era where 7" 45 RPM records usually had only about three minutes per side).  The only company which made records which fit the player was Columbia.  For 1960 and 1961 Plymouths and De Sotos only, Chrysler tried again with an optional record player which would play a stack of up to fourteen standard 45 RPMs. Photo of 1960 De Soto Adventurer courtesy of Alf van Deem via Wikimedia