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Way back on August 13, 1903, police entered the Liverpool, England home of William and Emily Shortis. Worried friends had contacted the authorities because the couple had not been seen for several days prior. There they found William near death. Oddly, he was pinned under the dead body of his 224 pound wife. Did she die during a moment of passion? Not at all. The coroner concluded that William was following Emily up the stairs of their home when she lost her balance and tumbled down the steps, pulling him down with her. Emily immediately died from a blow to the head, trapping William under her body for over three days. Sadly, William did not survive his injuries, either.

 

Frenchman Michel Lotito has a very unusual diet. Born on June 15, 1950, he has been consuming large quantities of metal and glass since he was nine years old. To date, he has eaten supermarket carts, television sets, bicycles, chandeliers, razor blades, bullets, nuts and bolts, lengths of chain, phonograph records, computers, and an entire Cessna 150 light aircraft (which took him nearly two years to consume). It seems that his body has adjusted to this unusual diet, as he eats nearly two pounds of metal every day. His technique includes lubricating his digestive tract with mineral oil, cutting the parts into bite-size pieces, and then consuming a large quantity of water while eating this junk. Most people would prefer a nice glass of wine with their dinner.

 

Madame Marie Curie was the first person ever to win two Nobel Prizes. Her first was in Physics (1903) and the second in Chemistry (1911). So what did she do with the money? She used part of the prize to both change the wallpaper and to put a modern bathroom into her Paris home.

 

Marijuana was not illegal in the United States until October 1, 1937, when Congress passed the "Marijuana Tax Act". Total debate time on the House of Representatives floor concerning this issue: 90 seconds. This act did not actually ban the substance - it simply said that one could not sell marijuana without a license. Of course, Congress refused to issue any licenses. Congress finally banned marijuana outright in 1970.

 

Everyone knows that spinach is loaded in iron and makes you stronger - Just look what it has done for Popeye's career. Well, Popeye was wrong. So were all of those parents that stuffed it down their kids' throats. In reality, spinach has no more iron in it than any other vegetable. This spinach misconception dates back to the 1950's when a food analyst made an error while calculating the iron in spinach. His decimal place was off by one place, suggesting that spinach had ten times as much iron content than it really did.

spinach sucked anyway

 

There once was a man from Nantucket.....

 

Darn you guys!

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Get ya clam chowder RIh Hera!

 

Tackleberry is a plethora of useless knowledge... JJ

 

I was thinking the same thing about Racer98.

 

Hey man! I'm all ready for the National Trivia Pursuit competition!

 

No Racer98 just has a cat fetish.. check my next thread about that. JJ

 

haha you guys just couldn't resist. i got 18 says left. relax...it's nice to know you guys are thinking of me =P.

 

Hey there little buddy. We did sort of miss ya.. I had this quote on my mind for awhile and Thought of it and it sort of fits you.. Weather you become sucessfull or not here it goes..

( Documentation Beats Conversation)

If you know what the quote means then you are way ahead of the game.. I know most of us do but do you know what it means.. JJ

 

Only 13 days until X-mas! The poofter can't add either!

 

what, are you british now? Ya bloody minge.

 

These games were a sideshow in every sense.

We usually have the image in our minds that the Olympics are really big business. The hosting cities go out of their way to make sure that everything runs smoothly and that the best facilities are provided for the competing athletes.

But, it wasn't always this way.

Take the 1904 St. Louis, Missouri Summer Olympics for example. These games were only the third summer games ever held (There actually were no winter games at this time - they were added in 1924.). The original games were held in 1896 at Athens and were then followed by the 1900 Paris games.

The St. Louis games could hardly be called an international competition. Since traveling overseas from Europe was extremely expensive at the time, the competition consisted mostly of Americans and Canadians (of the 681 athletes, 525 were from the United States.). It should be pointed out, however, that the Olympics were not intended to be a competition among nations at the time - it was a competition among amateur athletes from around the world. It was the job of the amateur athlete to find his way to the games at his own expense. No one cared if you couldn't get there.

Needless to say, the 1904 Olympics were of relatively minor importance. They were originally scheduled to take place in Chicago, but President Roosevelt urged for the games to be held in St. Louis because the Louisiana Purchase (World) Exposition was being held there at the same time to showcase the world's newest technologies (electricity, automobiles, airplanes, etc.).

The Exposition organizers built a permanent gymnasium and a stadium with enough seats to hold some 35,000 spectators (This may sound like a lot of people, but it's really nothing when you compare it to the estimated 20 million people that attended the Exposition during its six month run.). The entire event lasted from Monday, August 29 to Saturday, September 3, 1904. There were no events scheduled for Friday, so the entire series of Olympic games lasted for just five short days.

At this point you probably don't see too much wrong with this scenario. Unfortunately, when the games were actually held, they were a disaster.

To start, if you were considered to be a minority, you had to compete in separate games. These games came under the high-sounding name of "Anthropology Days" which were held on August 12 and 13, 1904. These games were designed to face "costumed members of the uncivilized tribes" against one another. Never-to-be classic Olympic games were included - mud fighting, rock throwing, pole climbing, spear throwing, and... you get the idea...

Things went downhill from there.

In swimming, Hungary's Zoltan Halmay won the 100m and 50m freestyle. Originally, Halmay beat American J. Scott Leary by just one foot in the 50m event. However, the American judge ruled that Leary had won. This ruling resulted in a brawl between the two, so the judges ordered a rematch. Halmay won on the second attempt. (They couldn't check the videotape at this time in history.)

An American gymnast named George Eyser won two gold, two silver, and one bronze medal at the games. Quite a remarkable feat when you consider the fact that he only had one real leg - the other leg was solid wood (His leg was amputated when he was run over by a train - Ouch!).

Now for the competition that they would really like to strike from the record books - the Marathon.

The marathon was run on a very humid, 90+ degree day. The 40 kilometer course started with five laps around the stadium track. The runners then left the stadium and embarked on a dusty, unpaved course that took them up-and-down over seven different hills. The path was marked by red flags that designated the way. A vanguard of horsemen cleared the trail along the way. They were followed by doctors, judges, and reporters in the newly invented automobiles. The net result was a constant cloud of dust kicked up into the runners' faces. They were literally forced to eat dust.

The first man to cross the finish line was Fred Lorz from New York City. Lorz had completed the race in just over three hours time. When he entered the stadium, the crowd roared with excitement. Photographs were taken of President Roosevelt's daughter Alice placing a laurel wreath over Lorz's head.

Lorz's moment in the limelight did not last very long. Just as Lorz was about to accept his medal, officials learned that Lorz had been spotted passing the halfway mark in an automobile. It seems that Lorz had been suffering from cramps, so he hitched a ride at the 9 mile point. He then rode in the vehicle for another eleven miles, at which point the car overheated and broke down. He waived at the spectators and fellow runners along the way. Lorz, now rejuvenated from his ride, chose to run the rest of the race.

Lorz claimed that he never meant to fool anyone - he just couldn't resist the praise and adulation of the roaring crowd. Lorz was immediately banned for life from any future amateur competition. This ban was lifted a year later allowing him to win the Boston Marathon (we'll assume that he was closely watched).

So, if Lorz didn't win, who did?

It was a British-born man named Thomas Hicks who ran for the American team. Hicks ran the race in 3:28:53. When he ran into the stadium the crowd was less than enthusiastic. After all, they had already cheered for a winner, even if he had been disqualified.

Of course, good little Alice Roosevelt was again ready to pose with the winner. But she couldn't. Hicks had to be carried off of the track. It seems that Hicks had begged to lie down about ten miles from the finish line. Instead, his trainers gave him an oral dose of strychnine sulfate mixed into raw egg white to keep him going. This was not enough - they had to give him several more doses, as well as brandy, along the way. By the end of the race, Hicks had to actually be supported by two of his trainers so that he could cross the finish line (essentially, he was carried over the line with his feet moving back-and-forth). Hicks was very close to death's door. It took four doctor's to get him in good enough shape just to leave the grounds, eventually falling asleep on a trolley.

Wait! That's not the end of the story! (can it get any more bizarre?)

It seems that another entrant was a Cuban postman named Felix Carvajal. Once Felix heard about the marathon, he announced that he was going to run. He had no money, so he quit his job and went into the fund raising business. He ran around the central square in Havana and jumped on a soapbox pleading for donations. He repeated this several times until he raised the necessary cash.

On his way to the race, Felix managed to lose all of his money in a crap game in New Orleans. As a result, he had to hitchhike his way to the games (not an easy thing to do in 1904). When Carvajal arrived at the games, he lacked any type of running gear. The officials were forced to postpone the start of the marathon for several minutes while he cut the sleeves off his shirt and the legs off his pants. He ran the race in lightweight street shoes.

During the race, Felix didn't seem to fatigue easily. He constantly conversed with the crowd, even running backwards at times while he spoke to them in broken English.

But wait, in keeping with the 1904 tradition it had to get worse for poor Felix:

He blew any chance of victory by getting hungry. He first ate some peaches that he stole from a race official. He then took a detour into an orchard to munch on some green apples. Big mistake - he developed stomach cramps and had to temporarily drop out of the marathon. Eventually, Felix got back in the race and managed to come in fourth place. He probably would have won if he had not gotten the munchies.

Hold it - the marathon is still not over!

The marathon included the first two black Africans to compete in the Olympics - two Zulu tribesman named Lentauw (real name: Len Taunyane)and Yamasani (real name: Jan Mashiani). They wore bibs 35 and 36, respectively.

The only problem was that these two tribesmen were not in town to compete in the Olympics - they were actually the sideshow! Yes, they were imported by the exposition as part of the Boer War exhibit (both were really students at Orange Free State in South Africa, but no one wanted to believe that these tribesmen could actually be educated - it would have ruined the whole image).

Lentauw finished ninth and Yamasani came in twelfth. This was a disappointment, as many observers were sure Lentauw could have done better - that is if he had not been chased nearly a mile off course by a large, aggressive canine!

The marathon was over, but there is still one more little story to go along with this:

It seems that two of the patrolling officials driving in a brand-new automobile were forced to swerve to avoid hitting one of the runners - they ended up going down an embankment and were severely injured.

In the end, the St. Louis Olympics (along with the previous Paris games) proved to be such a disaster that the Olympic Committee was forced to hold interim Olympic games in 1906 at Athens, in an attempt to revive the flagging Olympic movement. These games were not numbered, but were attended by twenty countries and put the Olympics back on a steady course to success.

 

An interesting useless sidenote: Iced tea made its debut at the 1904 Exposition. It seems that it was so hot during the Expo that the staff at the Far East Tea House couldn't even give away their product.

What to do? What to do?

Very simple - they poured the hot tea over ice cubes! The drink quickly became the Expo's most popular beverage.

And yet another useless fact: A teenager named Arnold Fornachou was selling ice cream at his exposition booth. He ran into a big problem - he ran out of the paper dishes on which to serve the ice cream. In a stroke of genius, he noticed that the guy in the next booth, a Syrian named Ernest Hamwi, was selling waffles. Arnold rolled one of Ernie's wafer-thin waffles up and invented the ice cream cone. Within ten years more than one-third of all ice cream was served in a cone.

 

Antarctica's Red-light District.

How would you feel if your mate came home after spending the night with a member of the world's oldest profession? I think it's safe to say that you probably wouldn't be very happy.

Well, for the first time it has been observed that the male specimen of Homo sapiens is not the only species to pay for someone else's services. Yes, it has been scientifically determined that the male Adelie penguin, which lives on Ross Island down in the Antarctic, also pays for the special favors of a female.

I can just picture it now:

The female gets all dolled up and puts on her sexiest skin-tight tuxedo (what else would a penguin wear?). She then heads out for a night on the town. A potential male customer is spotted out in the distance. She sways her hips back and forth and approaches the gentlemen.

“Hey, honey.” she says in her sexiest Mae West-like voice. “How would you like me to warm your chilled bones?”

The lonely male penguin is attracted to her like steel to a magnet. They agree to terms and do their thing.

Now, I know what you are thinking. (Well, maybe not.) Penguins don't carry cash and they have never been known to carry an American Express card, so just how do they pay?

With stones.

Yes, you read that correctly - stones. Also known as pebbles, cobbles, and rocks. It makes no difference if the payment is sedimentary, igneous, or metamorphic. All types of Flinstonian currency are accepted.

Let's get back to reality...

Actually, the Adelie penguins are known to mate for life. At least that is what the male is led to believe.

Every so often, the female wanders off in search of stones to build her nest with. Since there are no trees or grasses to be found in this frozen wasteland, stones make the best nesting material by default. But even stones are difficult to find in this cold climate. Those that do exist are most likely frozen solid in the mud or ice. The stones are of such great value to the penguins that they will steal them from each other, even though they face a high risk of being attacked by the owner of this hard currency (and this currency certainly is hard).

But wait!

The female Adelie penguin has figured out a better way. She exchanges copulations for the stones. The female slips away from her mate and just happens to wander over to the nest of an unpaired male.

Hmmm… What could she be thinking?

She goes through the standard courtship procedure. You know, the usual dip of the head and the coy look from the corner of the eye. If the male shows some interest, she will just lie prone as an invitation to mate. Once the mating is over, she picks up her payment (the stone) and heads back home to her unsuspecting mate.

Believe it or not, this is truly serious science. A researcher named Fiona M. Hunter of the University of Cambridge has been studying these cheating penguins for years. (Why anyone would ever want to study in such a cold place is beyond me. I was once offered a complete scholarship to do my graduate work in Antarctica. All the money in the world couldn't get me there. Instead, I decided to stay warm and chose a different college.)

Hunter also observed ten different females who played an even smarter game. Each of these penguins went through the whole mutual courtship routine, picked up their payment, and just left before any hanky panky ever took place. Oddly, the males showed no aggressive behavior for being denied their pleasure. In fact, these same females actually had the nerve to return for more pebbles. One female managed to get 62 stones from one male in just one hour. (Obviously, she was the Pam Anderson of the bird world.)

And her husband was the last to know…

 

Band-Aids® actually came from Listerine! Here's the Scope... oops...scoop:

In the 1860's, a British surgeon named Sir Joseph Lister pioneered sanitary operating room procedures. In many hospitals, the post-operative mortality rate was in excess of 90%. I think it's clear to us today that his ideas were well needed.

Why, you may ask?

It seems that the doctors operated with their bare hands in street clothes. Spectators were allowed to observe the operations first hand. For surgical dressings, they used pressed sawdust which was lifted off the floors of the saw mills. Instruments were not sterilized - only washed with soap and water.

Lister gave a speech in Philadelphia in 1876, expressing his views on germs. No one was interested.

No one except a Missouri physician named Joseph Lawrence.

Lawrence went back to his lab and developed an antibacterial liquid, which was manufactured locally by the Lambert Pharmacal Company (any idea which Fortune 500 Corp. this became?).

They needed a name. We can be sure that they must have tossed around some great ones in that board room. Maybe 'horrible tasting liquid' or 'Stuff to make your bad breath smell like something else that still smells bad, but not THAT bad'. I guess they weren't interested in these great suggestions.

Instead, they gave it the name Listerine, in honor of Sir Joseph L----r (you can figure out the rest). This gave it an antiseptic image. The right name at the right time.

So how does this lead to the Band-Aid?

It turns out that one other person was impressed by Lister's talk- Robert Johnson, a pharmacist from Brooklyn.

He and his two brothers decided to start a company to produce large dry cotton and gauze dressing. The company had a great name - Johnson and Johnson (why was the third brother excluded?). They were shipped in germ-resistant packages, guaranteeing sterility until opened.

Their next product was baby powder, also still on the market.

I can hear you yelling all the way over here in New York. SO WHERE DID THE BAND-AIDS® COME FROM?

Calm down and let me get a word in edgewise.

In 1920, another brother, James Johnson, heard that his employee had invented a neat product. The guy's name was Earle Dickson (note how his name is lost in history and the company took all the credit and profits).

Way back on December 6, 1917, Earle married Mrs. Earle (the former Miss Josephine Frances Knight). Josephine was extremely accident prone and constantly seemed to be cutting her fingers with those darn sharp kitchen knives. Problem! His company's bandages were too big for her delicate little bruises.

By 1920, he grew weary of having to bandage up his wife's dainty little fingers. He decided to affix small pieces of the sterile gauze to the center of strips of surgical tape. (I can hear the crowds of people now - "DUH! That's pretty obvious!" These are the same people who are unable to figure out how Newton discovered gravity because it's so obvious.)

He mentioned what he had created to a fellow employee at Johnson and Johnson and was encouraged to approach management with the idea.

The Johnsons weren't overly impressed initially. At least not until good old Earle showed that he could easily apply it to himself. No help needed! Wow! Shazaaaaaam! What a great idea!

Unfortunately, the original handmade bandages did not sell - only $3000 worth of the product was sold during the first year. (The New York Times reports that "they came in sections 2 1/2 inches wide and 18 inches long" - does this seem a bit large to you?)

By 1924 the Band-Aids® were produced by machine and sales took off. History was then made. Over one hundred billion have been made to date.

By the way, poor old Earle was not that poor in the end. The company actually made him a vice president (until he retired in 1957) and then a member of the board of directors. Unfortunately, Earle didn't enjoy a long retirement - he passed away on September 22, 1961 at age 68. At the time of his death, Johnson and Johnson was selling over $30,000,000 worth of Band-Aids® each year.

 

The name has nothing to do with distress signals

In 1917, there was this salesman named Edwin Cox who sold something that every housewife dreamed of - the newly invented aluminum cookware (that's another story). Apparently everyone loved this stuff, as no one even admits to cooking with it today.

He was so unsuccessful at selling this junk, that he decided that he needed a gimmick.

Hmmm.... What to do? What to do?

From his years as a pot salesman, he knew that a major complaint was the way that the food stuck to the pans. He concluded that what was needed was something that combined the abrasive nature of steel wool with the cleansing ability of soap. (I have a better idea - throw out the pots and buy new ones!)

In his kitchen, he hand dipped steel wool into soapy water and let it dry. He then repeated this until the steel wool could hold no more. Even though he was dealing with soap, we can assume that he still left a mess for his wife to clean up. After all, he was male...

The idea worked. More housewives let him through the door and more pots were sold. Each woman received one free sample.

He then ran into a problem. The women wanted to purchase more pads, not pots. So he dipped and dipped and dipped and dipped...

Soon he could dip no more. His (?) kitchen was beyond that much dipping. His sales for these pads exceeded that of his pots.

What did he do? He gave up selling pots and set up a real factory. (He should have called it the Dippity-Doo factory, considering that's all that they did all day)

This product still did not have a name. Somehow, the name 'Steel Wool Dipped in Soap Cleaning Pads' was not chosen, though most obvious.

Enter Mrs.Edwin Cox with a solution. She had called them S.O.S pads in her kitchen, meaning "Save Our Saucepans", and the rest is cleaning history.

Many people think that an error was made in the name's punctuation (note the missing period at the end of S.O.S). This was actually done on purpose. It seems that S.O.S. (with the period) is the famous distress signal (and the name of an old ABBA song barely worth mentioning) and cannot be trademarked. By removing the last period, the name was unique and could then be registered with the Patent Office.

As a sidenote, most people think SOS, the universal distress call, means "Save Our Ships" or "Save Our Souls", but neither is correct.

In reality, the three letters do not stand for anything. When Samuel Morse developed the Morse Code, he needed a simple distress call, one that those with little knowledge of the code could do. Only O and S consist of three identical signals. The O is three dashes and the S is three dots. Since a dot is shorter than a dash, he decided on SOS to minimize the time to transmit.

 

President of the United States for just one short day.

Quick: Who were the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth Presidents of the United States (under our current Constitution)? If you're like the typical American, you probably have no clue.

So here's a refresher for you:

#11 was James K. Polk

#12 was David Rice Atchison

#13 was Zachary Taylor

Hold it! I can hear you screaming all the way over here - David Rice who?

They never taught you about this guy in history class. In fact, they said that Taylor was Prez #12, not #13.

What's going on here?

First, a bit of background:

David Rice Atchison was born on August 11, 1807 in a place named Frogtown, Kentucky. Today it is called Kirklevington (They should have stuck with Frogtown).

At the young age of 36, Atchison was appointed to the United States Senate to replace a Missouri Senator that had just died. He held this office for 12 years, from 1843 to 1855.

Then it happened:

President James Knox Polk was scheduled to step down from office at noon on Sunday, March 4, 1849.

Uh, oh! BIG problem!

It seems that President-elect Zachary Taylor was a religious man and refused to be sworn in on a Sunday. It was the Sabbath. Taylor insisted on waited until the following day.

The big question arose: Who was going to serve as the President during this twenty-four hour period?

Normally, the Vice-President (George M. Dallas at the time) would fill the position, but his term expired along with Polk's. Dallas had actually resigned as President of the Senate on Friday, March 2nd.

Under the law, the Presidency then fell to the President Pro Tem of the Senate. You can guess who that was - David Rice Atchison! Atchison had just been elected for an additional term to this office during the closing hours of the Thirtieth Congress.

As a result, Atchison legally became the President for a twenty-four hour period, even though he was never elected to this office or sworn in. That's a daguerreotype of Atchison on the right.

Now if you were President for a day, what would you do? Declare war on some dinky little nation? Bomb your enemies? Appoint your friends to office? Make some weird executive decision?

Atchison did none of these things. When asked what he did on this day, he commented "I went to bed. There had been two or three busy nights finishing up the work of the Senate, and I slept most of that Sunday."

In other words, this particular day was uneventful in American history. No major executive decisions needed to be made.

Many, including Atchison, have questioned whether or not he was actually President. Technically, Atchison was appointed as President Pro Tem for each session of the Senate. Since the previous session of the Senate had been dismissed, one could claim that Atchison's term had expired (even though he was to continue in this role when the Senate reconvened for the next session).

This leads to a very interesting question: If there was no President, Vice-President, President Pro Tem, a dismissed Senate, and a dismissed House of Representatives - Who in the world was running this country?

Even if one could prove that Atchison wasn't President for the twenty-four hour period between the two Presidents, he definitely had the job for several minutes.

Here's why:

On Inauguration Day the first person to be sworn in was David Rice Atchison as President Pro Tem. So now he was definitely President (congratulations!). Atchison then ended this short stint as President with the swearing-in of the new Vice-President, Millard Fillmore (he would become President in just sixteen months following the natural death of Zachary Taylor). The entire Senate then proceeded to the east portico for the inauguration of the new President.

So ends the reign of one David Rice Atchison as the leader of the United States. We may never truly know for sure if he actually was President for that short period of time, but, let's face it, it makes for a better story to think that he was.

 

Babies Cooked in the Microwave?

A revolution has occurred. A revolution that you didn't even notice happening.

Where was this revolution?

In cooking, of course. The microwave oven is the first new method of cooking since man invented fire.

Surprisingly, no one ever set out to discover the microwave oven. It was an accidental discovery.

Here's the scoop:

Way back in 1940, two scientists, Sir John Randall and Dr. H. A. Boot, invented a device called a magnetron to produce microwaves in their lab at England's Birmingham University.

What did they want the magnetron for?

Real simple - to cook the Nazi's goose.

The magnetron is a key component to the radar (radio detecting and ranging) which bounced microwaves off the enemy's war machines to detect their presence.

Cooking food was not exactly part of their vision.

After the war, in 1946, a Raytheon Company engineer named Dr. Percy Spencer was about to make history.

Doc Spencer was performing tests on a magnetron tube when he got strong cravings for the chocolate bar that was in his pocket.

He reached into his pocket only to be surprised by a nice gooey mess. (Some claim that the chocolate was on his desk and not in his pocket.) Doc Spencer was well aware of the fact that the magnetron produced heat, but he did not sense any. He suspected that the magnetron had melted the chocolate, not his body heat.

(Now, I don't know about you, but if I noticed that all the food products brought near this thing were being quickly cooked, I would assume that the machine was doing the same to me. I really doubt that a new type of oven would be my first thought...)

He needed to test his theory that the magnetron was cooking his food.

He had to use... (drum roll please)... Science!

He sent out for a bag of popcorn and placed it in front of the magnetron tube.

Guess what? The popcorn popped all over the floor.

The next morning he tried cooking up some eggs. In a very famous incident, one of his fellow colleagues was very curious and happened to get a bit too close - the egg blew up in his face (Is this where we get the expression egg on his face?).

Raytheon set out to make the first microwave oven. Since the magnetrons were used to make radars, they gave it the name Radar Range.

Raytheon succeeded in building the oven, but it was very large. After all, the 1940's were not known for miniaturization of electronics.

These Radar Ranges did not sell well. Most were sold to restaurants or to the military.

In 1952, Tappan introduced the first home model at the very low price of just $1295!

Surprisingly, they started to sell and the rest is microwave history.

Now we are stuck eating all those delicious microwave dinners. Yummy! (Yuk!)

So, what about nuking babies (or cats) in microwaves? Stories of this kind have been floating around the rumor mill for many years. I recall hearing a story about a woman killing her baby in the microwave oven way back in the late 1970's.

So, is it true?

When I first sat down to write this story in 1994, I could not track down any evidence that this had ever really occurred. Even the great Cecil Adams in his book The Straight Dope said that he could not find any evidence that a baby had been nuked in a microwave (he did find evidence of a child being burned).

Sadly, I now have to update my story. It seems that a nineteen year old woman from Lanexa, Virginia was charged with allegedly murdering her one month old baby in a microwave oven on September 23, 1999.

The apparent claim is that Elizabeth Renee Otte had an epileptic seizure, became confused as a result, and placed the baby in the oven. Epileptic experts and prosecutors are not buying this claim, however. It should be interesting to see where this story goes.

Cats being nuked is a totally different story. There are enough whackos walking the streets out there that we can be certain that someone must have tried it at some point in time. (Kfence?) I have had enough students in my classes over the years that have done similar stunts, so I am positive someone has tried it somewhere.

 

He really was a chicken running around with his head cut off.

The e-mail message seemed innocent enough. A reader simply asked "Ever heard of the story posted here at this link?" and offered a hyperlink to another web page. I clicked and came across a story that I was sure had to be pure fiction. The only problem is that the story appears to be totally true.

This is the story about Mike the chicken. Mike, of course, was not your ordinary chicken. No, not ordinary at all. You see, Mike was a headless chicken. If you want to be really specific, Mike was actually a headless Wyandotte rooster.

I should point out that Mike wasn't always a headless bird. In fact, he was born 100% normal, complete with a head (most normal chickens have one of these) in Fruita, Colorado.

On September 10, 1945, Mike's short five-and-a-half month life was about to take a turn for the worse. On this day, Mike received a death sentence. His owners, Lloyd and Clara Olsen, decided that it was time to slaughter a group of birds, some to sell and to prepare others for themselves. Out to the hen house they went…

Watch out Mike!

As you can probably imagine, Mr. Olsen was the one whacking the heads off while Clara plucked and cleaned the birds.

Bash! Down came the ax and off went Mike's head.

Mike's head was surely dead. Mike's body was not.

Now I know what you are thinking - it is well known that chickens will run around frantically when their heads are chopped off. That's probably where that old expression comes from. And, everyone knows that a headless chicken just can't survive more than a few moments.



Apparently, Mike forgot to read the rulebook for playing the game of Life. His head may have been lying on the floor, but he had no problem standing up and strutting around as if nothing had actually happened. The next day, Mike was still flopping around, so Lloyd decided to feed him to see how long he could keep the bird alive. Day after day he continued to gain weight.

Mike could easily balance himself on the highest perches without falling. His crowing consisted of a gurgling sound made in his throat. Mike even attempted to preen his feathers with his nonexistent head (apparently he never noticed). It seems that Mike could do just about anything that any other chicken could do, if you exclude all of the functions of his head.

As I'm sure you can imagine, headless chickens are not an everyday event. In the tradition of that famous huckster Barnum, there was money to be made in this oddity. A promoter by the name of Hope Wade came along and convinced Lloyd that Mike would be a big draw in the sideshow circuit. Miracle Mike, as he soon came to be known, toured up and down the West Coast of the United States. Just six weeks after his beheading, Mike was featured in a Life magazine article and his fame grew. For just 25 cents, anyone could pay to get a look at Mike. At the height of his popularity, Mike was raking in a cool $4,500 per month, which was no small potatoes in those days. They probably would have thrown in his head as a bonus - it was stored in a canning jar and toured along with Mike. (Actually, a cat ate Mike’s head. Some other poor chicken’s head was pickled in the jar.)

And, if there was money to be made, there were also copycats. Other people in Mike's hometown began to chop the heads off of their own chickens in an attempt to get in on the scheme. One copycat headless rooster was named Lucky and he managed to live for eleven days before bashing himself into a stovepipe and dying (Lucky wasn't that lucky after all). Several other headless chickens lived for a couple of days.

So how was Mike able to survive? Scientists examined him and determined that Mr. Olsen had not done a very good job at chopping Mike's head off. Most of the head was actually removed, but one ear remained intact. The slice actually missed the jugular vein and a clot prevented him from bleeding to death. Apparently, most of a chicken's reflex actions are located in the brain stem, which was also largely untouched. Mike was also examined by the officers of several humane societies and was declared to have been free from suffering.

Through his open esophagus, Mike was fed a mixture of ground up grain and water with your typical eyedropper. Little bits of gravel were dropped down his throat to help his gizzard grind up the food.



One serious problem that Mike commonly experienced was that he would start to choke on his own mucus. The Olsens came up with the simple solution of using a syringe to suck the mucus out. But, one day tragedy struck. Mike was traveling back home to Fruita and was roosting with the Olsens in their Phoenix motel room. They heard Mike choking in the middle of the night and quickly realized that they had left the syringe at the sideshow the day before. Miracle Mike was no more.

The exact date of Mike’s belated departure from this world was never recorded. Years later, it was estimated, based on Lloyd’s information, that Miracle Mike died in March of 1947. Eighteen months living without a head could be considered a world’s record. Yet, Lloyd didn’t want to admit that he had accidentally killed the bird, so he claimed that he had sold the bird off. This little white lie is the reason that many of the stories printed about Mike claimed that he was still touring the country as late as 1949.

But wait, the story is not over! Mike actually has his own holiday! On May 17, 1999, Mike's hometown of Fruita held the first "Mike the Headless Chicken Day" in honor of one of its most famous citizens. Some of the events included the 5K Run Like a Headless Chicken Race, egg tosses, Pin the Head on the Chicken, the Chicken Cluck-Off, and the classic Chicken Dance. The food offerings included - you guessed it - chicken, chicken salad, and the like. Let's not forget the great game of Chicken Bingo in which the numbers were chosen by where chicken droppings fell on a numbered grid.

If you are interested, Mike the Headless Chicken Day is an annual event. As peculiar as it is to describe, it actually sounds like a great time. And it’s all done in celebration of the life of one lucky bird named Miracle Mike.

 

Hey! The War is Over!

One of the hot topics that is discussed in my physics classroom every year has to do with space travel. According to Einstein’s theory, as one approaches the speed of light, time slows down. What this means is that you theoretically could get into a spaceship, travel near the speed of light for a year or two, and then return. You will have aged very little. Yet, everyone back here on our mighty blue planet will have aged considerably more. Upon your return, you would also find that the technology, politics, and economics would have changed dramatically. Life would have changed so much that you would no longer fit in.

In one sense, this is exactly what happened to a man named Hiroo Onoda. For thirty years, Onoda was stuck in that time warp known as 1944. The rest of the world continued to change around him, but Onoda stayed the same. When he reemerged into our modern world, he was not prepared for what he would see. Onoda, of course, never did travel into space. Instead he was lost in another form of time.

How Onoda ended up in this situation can really be traced back to his youth. He was born in the town of Kainan, Japan in 1922 and when he turned seventeen, he went to work for a trading company in China. Onoda lived the life of any ordinary teenager. He worked all of the day and partied all of the night at the local dance halls.

In May of 1942, Onoda was drafted into the Japanese military right just after the United States entered the war and fighting escalated to a global scale. Unlike most soldiers, he attended a school that trained men for guerilla warfare. At a time when becoming a prisoner of war was considered by the Japanese to be a crime punishable by death, Onoda was taught that this action was okay and to stay alive at all costs.

On December 26, 1944, Apprentice Officer Hiroo Onoda was sent to the small tropical island of Lubang, which is approximately seventy-five miles southwest of Manila in the Philippines. His orders were straightforward. He was to do anything to hamper enemy attack on the island. This included destroying the Lubang airport and the pier at the harbor. He was sent in alone, ordered not to die by his own hand, and was told to take as many years as was needed to accomplish his mission.

When Onoda landed on the island, he met up with a group of Japanese soldiers that had been sent there previously. The officers in this group outranked Private Onoda and prevented him from carrying out his assignment in a timely manner. This just made it all that much easier for the Americans to take control of the island when they landed on February 28th. Within a short period of time, all but four of the Japanese soldiers had either died or surrendered. Onoda, having just been promoted to Lieutenant, ordered the men to take to the hills. The war ended shortly thereafter, but the four soldiers would not know it for quite some time.

Let’s face reality here. Four surviving soldiers cannot fight much of a war. Basically, they can only fight for their survival. Realizing that it would be unwise to stay in any one location for a long period of time, they developed a circuit, of sorts, in which they moved from point to point. A long stay in any particular place would be three to five days, the length of time was determined mainly by the supply of food. During the torrential rainy season, no one came into the mountains, and they were able to build a camp and sit still for a longer duration.

Their main source of nourishment was bananas. Now, I don’t know about you, but one or two bananas are just fine, but having them as my dinner every day would not be something that I would look forward to. Of course, they had to sustain their health somehow. They did supplement their diet with other fruits and by hunting wild water buffaloes, wild boar, wild chickens, and iguanas. (Mmm, mmm, good&#8230 They had a preference for beef, but they could not hunt too many of any animal because the sound of their gunshots would quickly indicate their position.

And then there were three….

The first of the four to go was Private First Class Yuichi Akatsu. He got fed up with the whole thing and stormed off in September of 1949. The remaining men figured that there was no way that this weakling could survive on his own. Yet, unbeknownst to them, Akatsu managed to live six months on his own before surrendering to the Philippine Army. In 1950, the remaining three found a note left by Akatsu stating that he had been greeted by friendly troops. He even led a group of soldiers into the mountains in search of the remaining men. Onoda and his men quickly concluded that Akatsu was now working with the enemy and retreated to the other side of the mountain.

In 1952, letters and photographs of family and friends were dropped all over the island from an airplane. The soldiers concluded that the enemy had finally outdone themselves with this clever trick. To the eye of those trained in guerilla warfare, this had to be a hoax.

And another one gone…

In June of 1953, Corporal Shimada, another member of their party was shot in the leg during a shootout with some fishermen. Onoda nursed him back to health, but on May 7, 1954, Shimada was killed instantly from a shot fired by another search party sent in to find the men.

Ten days later, more leaflets were dropped. A loudspeaker blurted out “ Onoda, Kozuka, the war has ended.” Clearly this was another trick by the Americans. They were sure that the war was still on and they intended to get even with the enemy for Shimada’s death. Onoda and Kozuka were positive that the Japanese would be landing on the island any day and that control would be taken back from the Americans.

One day, Onoda’s own brother stood by at the microphone and pleaded for them to give up. Onoda could not see the speaker’s face from his great distance and concluded that the Americans had gone to a really great length to trick him this time. They believed that the Americans had found a man that was built and sounded just like his brother, but was really an impostor!

You must understand their whole rationale. First, they were trained to treat everything with suspect. Second, it was well understood that it could take one hundred years to win the war and that Japan would never surrender until every last Japanese citizen had been killed. In their minds, there were still Japanese citizens alive, so, clearly, the war must have been still going on.

Whenever they needed crucial supplies, the two men would “requisition’ them from the islanders. You and I call it armed robbery, but since this was considered a time of war, these actions were considered acceptable. The islanders had several names for them, including “mountain bandits” and “mountain devils”. The islanders had good reason to fear them since many citizens of the island were wounded or killed in skirmishes with the two soldiers..

In late 1965, the Onoda and Kozuka requisitioned a transistor radio and listened to reports from Peking. Oddly, with their minds still trapped in 1945 war time, they did not believe anything that they heard on the radio regarding military or foreign relations. Yet, they followed the horse races and understood that Japan had risen to be a great industrial power.

The last man standing…

Each year, in an effort to continue on with their military assignment, Onoda and Kozuka would burn piles of rice that had been collected by the farmers. On October 19, 1972, they went about their usual business, but decided to burn one last small rice pile before they went on their way. This was a big mistake. This gave the police ample time to get there and they shot Kozuka twice. One of the bullets went through his heart and he was killed.

Onoda took to the woods once again. He resolved that if he encountered the enemy, he would shoot to kill. The search parties, loudspeaker announcements, and the dropping of leaflets intensified. They left magazines and newspapers behind, many detailing the incredible funeral that was held for Kozuka back in Japan. Yet, to no one’s surprise, Onoda did not buy their pleas.

For almost one more year, Onoda continued to live on his own. He was prepared to die on the island. Then, February 20, 1974, he encountered a young Japanese university dropout named Suzuki living alone in a tent. Suzuki had left Japan to travel the world and told his friends that he was “going to look for Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman, in that order. (He found Onoda, he could go to any big zoo to see the panda, but one can’t help but wonder if he ever found the Abominable Snowman.) Onoda approached cautiously and the two soon struck up a conversation that lasted many hours. The two became friends, but Onoda said that he was waiting for orders from one of his commanders.

Suzuki left and promised that he would return. And he did.

On March 9, 1974, Onoda went to an agreed upon place and found a note that had been left by Suzuki. Along with the note, Suzuki had enclosed two photos that they had taken together the first time that they met along with copies of two army orders. The next day, Onoda decided to take a chance and made a two-day journey to meet up with Suzuki. His long hike paid off handsomely. Suzuki had brought along Onoda’s one-time superior commander, Major Taniguchi, who delivered the oral orders for Onoda to surrender his sword.

Hiroo Onoda’s thirty-year war was now over. He returned to Japan to receive a hero’s welcome. He was a media sensation and was hounded by the curious public everywhere he went.

Yet, Onoda’s mind was still living in 1944 Japan, and he had a strong dislike for what he now saw. After publishing his memoirs, he took his newly found fortune and moved to Brazil to raise cattle. He then married a Japanese woman and moved back to Japan to run a nature camp for kids. (We can be quite sure that he had a lot of expertise about nature.)