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The crazy ones that almost got away.

While researching the many stories that I have written about over the years, I have always made it a habit to look around the printed page of old newspapers and magazines to see just what else was going on at the time. Yesterday’s news is today’s history. And, as expected, history is full of wars, murders, suicides, accidents, marriages, and death.

Every once in a while, in the course of my research, I come across a story that captures my attention and add it to a folder labeled “Possible Stories”. Finding additional information on these little tidbits has proved impossible. After years of filling this folder, I finally decided to just splice the best of them together into one bizarre essay of totally unrelated stories.

So, here we go…

Just a Penny a Pound

Our first story is one that I came across while researching the life of Robert Elliot Burns, author of the book I am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang. Just one column over from where my eyes were focused was a story titled Escorts at M.I.T. Dance Pay 1c a Pound on Girls, Tax on Hair. Yes, you read that correctly. Every male student that brought a girl to the December 17, 1932 “dorm” dance had to pay an admission fee based on his date’s weight. In addition, there was an added tax on the girl’s hair color. Brunettes were an added dime, blondes fifteen cents, and the rare redhead was twenty cents.

At the end of the night, the students were able to raise a whopping $26.42, excluding the hair color tax. And if you are one of the old timers that can do basic math without a calculator, that translates into 2,642 pounds of pure woman. The redheads proved to be the lightweights at an average of just 116 pounds per gal. The blondes came in second place with an average of 117.5 pounds. The brunettes were the heavyweights with a mean of 120 pounds. The lowest cost paid was $1.00 even for a brunette that weighed in at just 90 pounds. I wouldn’t have wanted to be the woman that cost the most that evening. That particular blonde cost her male companion a whopping $1.88.

How About a Tackotomy?

Our next story is one of life saving surgery. In 1912, a New Jersey shoemaker named Abraham Leconey was suffering from very bad stomach pains. Was it an ulcer? Was it the stomach flu? Was it just a bad meal? Doctors were unable to diagnose his condition. Poor Abe was given all types of medications, but nothing seemed to help.

Doctors were forced to turn to a relatively new medical instrument called the x-ray machine (ever hear of it?) to help them in their diagnosis. The x-ray image immediately revealed the cause of aching Abe’s pain. It seems that Abe had a habit of using his mouth as a tack box while he made the shoes at his workbench. Yes, he had swallowed one too many of tacks during his career. There were approximately one hundred tacks stuck into the wall of his stomach.

Ouch!

Make that one really big OUCH!

Leconey was scheduled for surgery to remove the prickly pieces of metal from his interior. The procedure was called a “tack lifting” at the time. No follow-up on the surgery was ever printed in the press, so one has to wonder if he survived the operation. He may have lived one hour, one day, or many years after this surgery, but with the passage of nearly a century of time, we can be most certain that he is no longer with us today.

The Fly Catcher

I am quite envious of messenger boy James Johnson. Back in the summer of 1920, he was able to catch 27-1/2 quarts of dead flies. That is an estimated 334,000 flies. What a catch! Yet, I can’t help but wonder why anyone would want to this. First of all, I can’t imagine living in a place that attracts that many flies. And, how does one catch so many in so little time? Then, once those little creatures are caught, just what do you do with hundreds of thousands of flies? Let’s face it; you can only do just so much fly-fishing. If there is a lucrative market for dead flies, then I need to consider switching jobs. There are dead flies all over the place, so if you are interested in buying them in bulk quantities, please let me know.

Freshly Baked Apples

The August 14, 1920 issue of The New York Times has an article that appears to have been of the utmost importance at the time. The fact that the publisher placed a bold box around this front-page story clearly suggests that the story was of national importance. You see, Mrs. Annie E. Byrnes of South Norwalk, Connecticut was serving freshly baked apples for breakfast. Yet, she did not cook them. She cheated and let nature do her work. Her tree was struck by lightening during the previous night and its fruit was cooked through and through. Mmm, mmm, mmm.

Sucking Brains

Oh, the dangers of kissing. Take for example, two of my students. They are always sucking brain. In plain English, this means that the girlfriend has sucked all of the knowledge out of her boyfriend’s brain. Her giant leap in IQ has left him as brainless as the Scarecrow in search of the grand old Wizard of Oz himself.

Of course, I am exaggerating things a bit here, but there are hidden dangers to sucking brain. Take for instance the case of a thirty-year-old Don Juan named Norman Horowitz of New York City. He was arrested in Westport, Connecticut on August 11, 1936 for kissing his wife.

Did they really have a law against kissing your wife in public? Were the people of Westport that prudish back then? No, not really. But, it was against the law to kiss your wife while driving and then swerve your car into oncoming traffic. That one big smooch not only got him in hot water with the law, but it also got him a fine $15.40 for his offense. That was five bucks for the hot passion and an added $10.40 in court costs.

And finally…

And sometimes the headlines are the most bizarre part of the story. Right below the Kissed Wife, Fined $15.40 story, is one tidbit simply titled Crew Recovers False Teeth. Or, how about No Silk Underwear for Capone? But, my favorite headline has to be one that appeared in the April 16, 1912 issue of London’s The Times. It simply said "The Titanic Sunk". The two-sentence story ended with the line “No lives were lost.” I need not say more…

 

What would you do with over 12,000 cups of pudding?

Most people have a junk drawer, but I'm proud to say that I have a junk closet. The only time it's ever cleaned out is when I move. Since that doesn't happen too often, you can imagine the mess in there. This closet just happens to be the place where I store all of those things that I have purchased, but never found a use for. These were deals that just seemed to good to be true when I first came across them.

A Davis, California civil engineer named David Phillips found himself in a similar boat in May of 1999. While cruising the aisles of his local supermarket one day, a promotion for Healthy Choice foods caught his eye. The deal was quite simple: For every ten Universal Price Codes that were sent in to the company, the customer would receive 500 frequent flyer miles. And, if the UPC codes were mailed out by May 31, the value of the labels would be doubled.

Phillips did some quick math in his head and was sure that he had stumbled across a deal that was too hard to resist. He had been considering taking his family to Europe that summer, so why not eat their way there?

Clearly, the cheaper he could get the Healthy Choice products, the lower the cost of the family's vacation. His first discovery was cans of Healthy Choice soup at about ninety cents each. He loaded his cart with the cans and proceeded to the checkout.

His next step was to drive over to the local Grocery Store Outlet, a chain of warehouse-style supermarkets that specialize in overstock and discontinued merchandise. The store was selling Healthy Choice chocolate pudding at twenty-five cents apiece. And, to top that off, each container had its own UPC code. He quickly purchased the store's entire inventory.

Having hit the mother lode, David then continued on to the remaining ten Grocery Store Outlet stores in his area. When they all ran out of pudding, David requested that the store manager bring in an additional sixty cases. His final take was 12,150 containers of pudding. Do a little bit of math and you will quickly realize that he was eligible for 1,215,000 frequent flyer miles!

Now, can you imagine what your neighbors would think if you carried over 12,000 containers of pudding into your home. First, they would probably conclude that you were either crazy or perverted. Then they would think up all kinds of strange uses for the pudding. Could they be using it for pudding wrestling? Pudding baths? Could they actually be eating it? David's answer was perfect: They were stocking up for Y2K.

But, there was one hitch. The May 31st deadline was quickly approaching. His family could not peel the labels and fill out the required reimbursement forms fast enough.

What to do? What to do?

David had the perfect answer. He donated the remaining pudding to local food banks and the Salvation Army. In exchange, their volunteers would peel off all of the UPC codes and give them back to him.

Once all of the coupons were ready to go, they were mailed off to Healthy Choice. David wasn't sure that the company would honor the deal, and when they didn't send him the airline miles in a reasonable amount of time, he began to get nervous. He called the company and they claimed that they had never received the package. Luckily, David had sent the package by registered mail and had photographs to prove his purchases. Shortly thereafter, the company mailed him his certificates.

In the end, David and his family collected 1, 253,000 miles from his puddings and soups. He split 216,000 of the miles among Delta, United, and Northwest airlines. The remaining 1,037,000 miles were posted to his American Airlines account. And since he topped the million mile mark, he automatically became a lifelong member of American Airlines AAdvantage Gold club. David now has lifetime access to a priority reservation number, priority boarding, and additional perks.

Healthy Choice's cost for David's travel bonanza is estimated to be around two cents per mile or a little over $25,000. David's cost, however, was only $3,140.

 

The most unusual instrument collection in the world…

Don't you just feel sorry for the match? Its useful life is just so short. It's brought to life with just one flick of the stick and then …poof!… the match's life is over in an instant. This seems like such a complete waste. Every year, we probably dispose of tons upon tons of these things. Could a matchstick recycling program be of some use here? Possibly, but what would we do with all of these things once we collected them all?

Unbeknownst to most people, one man came up with the perfect solution. He used the burnt wooden matchsticks to build musical instruments. Yes, you did read that correctly. He used those dinky little burnt things to build guitars, banjos, and the like.

This ingenious man's name was Jack Hall. Back in the 1930’s, Jack was a sailor aboard the tramp steamer Eastwick and found himself with just a little bit too much time on his hands. Bored out of his mind, Jack just started messing around with the discarded wooden matchsticks that his fellow sailors had left behind, eventually gluing them together into ever increasingly complex and fascinating patterns.

Jack's first project was nothing to write home to mom about. It was a simple two-ply plank that was basically useless. But, it was a start. Like all hobbyists, as Jack's skills improved, his projects became larger and more complex. He applied his matchstick techniques to the design of boxes, a clock, a windmill, and a lighthouse. All still relatively useless, but they were great to look at up on a shelf.

Creativity led Jack to a major problem. He couldn't get enough matches. (It's hard for me to believe that a boatload of sailors could not be smoking enough cigarettes to keep Jack in bountiful supply!) Jack had to seek alternative sources and began to ask his friends and family to collect and save any burnt matchsticks that they could get their hands on. Each time that his ship pulled into port, Jack would stock up.

It was the offhand comment made by a fellow sailor that he should “make a fiddle and strike up a tune”, however, that sent Jack off into the world of matchstick music. Jack's curiosity had gotten the better of him and he was determined to make that fiddle a reality. But Jack lacked some key skills to pull this trick off. First, he was not a musician. He couldn't read or play a single note. Even worse, Jack did not have any of the construction skills needed to produce an instrument.

Clearly, this lack of skills did not stop Jack, so let's continue our story:

Each time that his ship stopped in port, Jack would visit local music stores and pawnshops to study the various aspects of the violin. He recorded all of the necessary measurements and made rough pencil sketches of the instrument to take back with him to sea.

For the next six months, Jack devoted five hours per day to creating the fiddle. He used little more than a sharp knife, a razor blade, some sandpaper, a file, and glue. Each matchstick was soaked in water so that it could be molded into the proper shape. Bricks and other things were used to hold the matchsticks in place while the glue set.

Some 14,000 matchsticks later, Jack produced a working violin, bow and all. You're probably sitting there with an image of a cheap, flimsy instrument in your mind. Instead, Jack's violin looked as elegant as the best of violins. But, the real question was whether or not it would actually play. Jack, with his little bit of musical skill, was able to crank out a few screeches, but the real test of the instrument's quality would have to wait.

Jack wasn't content to stop with the violin. Between the years of 1936 and 1939, he proceeded to expand his collection, which included two mandolins, a tenor banjo, and an acoustic guitar. Not only did he build the instruments, but he also created carrying cases for each one. The cases, get this, were made from the actual boxes that the matches were sent to him in. The outsides of the instrument cases were painted the traditional black, but upon opening, one would be encountered by a dizzying array of matchbox logos and images. Unintentionally, each case uniquely captured a snapshot of history.

Hobbies of this magnitude require something that so many of us seem to lack these days: time. With the onset of World War II, Jack found himself in a similar situation. By the time of his military discharge in 1945, he had all but abandoned his craft. Over the next forty years, he was only able to add a recorder and a ukulele to his collection.

Excluding a brief exhibition in 1951 at the Festival of Great Britain, Jack's instruments rarely ever saw the light of day. This would all change in 1976 when a reporter/musician from BBC Radio Brighton heard about Jack's collection. Jack pulled the instruments out of his attic and dusted them off. They were in perfect working order and sounded superb.

It would not be until 1991 that Jack's dream for these instruments would actually come true. His instruments were actually played by a quintet of professional musicians before a live audience on BBC Television. Not only did Jack get to see the instruments professionally played for the first time, but everyone was impressed by the amazing sound that they produced.

Sadly, Jack passed away in 1993 at the age of 86. Jack's son Tony now cares for his twenty-six piece matchstick collection, which includes thirteen musical instruments, the windmill, the lighthouse, and his other creations.

Musicians continue to marvel at this unique collection. Most recently, this treasure appeared in an episode of Ripley’s Believe It or Not!. It featured the Rhinestone Cowboy himself, Glen Campbell, playing Jack's 1937 guitar. Glen stated “It's a marvelous work of art and as good as any instrument that I've played of this era.” At son Tony's request, Glen performed Amazing Grace for the segment. It was dedicated to Jack's wife, Tony's mom, who was struggling with the final stages of terminal cancer at the time. Mom was certainly proud and filled with delight. We can certainly be sure that Jack was looking down from above with equal pride and joy.

 

Let's Hear It for Pickle Power!

Several years ago I had a student named Daegan who kept bugging me with the same comment every time that I did a demonstration for the class. Basically, he said that he would not be happy until I set my tie on fire. After months of hearing this comment repeated, I finally decided to make his wish come true. I designed a new demonstration where I took my ugliest tie, soaked it in rubbing alcohol, and then set it ablaze. Daegen was not impressed, however, because the tie was still intact after the fire went out. He wanted the tie to be burned to a crisp. I, on the other hand, wanted to teach some science. (As I tell all of my students, please do not try this at home!)

Obviously, there is some sort of deception going on with my tie experiment. Without revealing my secret, let's just say that the alcohol was not what it appeared to be. This tie trick does, however, lead me to the one demonstration that my students seem to remember for life. This one also has a bit of magic to it. And, because it involves something known as a suicide plug, I am not going to tell you exactly how to do it. In other words, don't try this one at home, either.

Every school year, my last demo is always what my students refer to as the “electrocution of a pickle”. Basically, this works on a principle very similar to that of frying someone in an electric chair. Just put a current through something juicy that conducts electricity and watch it sizzle.

What is very unusual about the pickle is that is doesn't just cook. Within a short period of time, steam starts to escape out the sides and, amazingly, it starts to light up like a light bulb. Yes, you read that correctly. It emits light. Yellow light, to be specific. And the smell… Let's just say that the word bad does not describe the scent well enough!

Now, I would be lying if I told you that I came up with this trick on my own. I didn't. In fact, I first saw it demonstrated at a Physics Teacher training course that I was taking back in 1991. I was captivated by what I was watching and knew that my students would find equal fascination with it. That night I went home and built my own apparatus to perform the demo.

Unfortunately, my building principal did not approve of the idea (can anybody say lawsuit???) and forbid me from doing the demo for a couple of years. When a newly hired teacher down the hall from me started doing it, followed by Mr. Wizard performing the electrocution on the Nickelodeon channel, I convinced the administration to let me do it.

What amazes me most about this demo is that no one ever explained to me what it was supposed to prove. It just looked cool. Who cares if it the glowing pickle really ever taught any concept? Again, it just looked cool! Well, I quickly found out that my students really did care.

They thought that they had finally stumped me, but they hadn't. Every good teacher learns that they must be ready for anything, and I was. I gave them some cockamamie story about how it all tied into Niel Bohr’s model of the atom. It seemed to me that the electricity flowing into the pickle excited the electrons in the sodium ions that made up the pickle's salt content. When the electrons fell back down to a stable orbital, the yellow light was emitted. It all made perfect sense to me because I remembered doing flame tests in college chemistry where sodium emitted a similar yellow light.

In plain English, this means that you add energy to throw something up and then you get the energy back when it comes back down. To prove this, just take a rock and throw it straight up in the air. You have to add energy to throw the rock upwards. When it comes down and hits you in the head, you will quickly realize that it just transferred that energy back to you.

Honestly, this did not take much thought on my part to figure out. It just seemed fairly obvious to me. Well, it turns out that scientists have been working feverishly to solve the mystery of the glowing pickle.

I recently learned that two important (yeah, right!) papers have been published on the topic.

Seven researchers at Digital Computers did the first study in April of 1989. Their findings were just amazing. They concluded that Kosher dill pickles were the best because they had the highest salt content. Also, they determined that pickles would not make good light bulbs because they only gave off yellow light and that they smelled really, really bad. Duh! They published their results in a paper titled “Characterization of Organic Illumination Systems”. There is nothing as effective as using big words in a publication title so that no one can understand it. (Do you think that they were trying to fool their bosses into thinking that they were performing serious science?)

The second set of findings was released by a team of four scientists in 1993 and appeared in the Journal of Chemical Education. Their findings? Very simple: The light emitted by the pickle was nearly identical to that released by the sodium atom. Just as I had suspected.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to diminish the need for serious scientific studies. Yet, I can't help but get a small chuckle when I see how much time and energy went into these projects. I have a hunch that they were also laughing while writing these studies up. Sometimes there is a need for making science fun and interesting.

 

So tacky, yet so cool.

The pink flamingo is one of those objects that people seem to either love or hate. Considered by some to be a work of art and to others to be visual pollution, this one object stands for everything that is good and bad about our modern society.

Lawn ornaments are nothing new. From marble statues created centuries ago to the Granny Fannies of the late 1980’s, lawn decorations have been around for an eternity. Some compare a lawn without any ornaments to be like a coffee table that is totally empty. (I can't comment here. My coffee table was empty for years. Now it is covered with junk.)

The history of the pink flamingo can be traced back to 1946 when a company called Union Products started manufacturing “Plastics for the Lawn”. Their collection included dogs, ducks, frogs, and even a flamingo. But their products had one problem: They were only two-dimensional.

Hmmm… World peace surely depended on solving this critical problem.

In 1956, the Leominster, Massachusetts company decided to hire a young designer named Don Featherstone. Although Don was a serious sculptor and classical art student, his first project was to redesign their popular duck into the third dimension. (One must do what they can to pay the bills.) Don used a live duck as his model and after five months of work, the duck was retired to a local park.

His next project would prove to be his most famous. He couldn't get his hands on real flamingos, so he used photographs from a National Geographic in its place. He sculpted the original out of clay, which was then used to make a plaster cast. The plaster cast, in turn, was used to form the molds for the plastic. The original design called for detailed wooden legs, but they proved to be too costly and were replaced by the metal ones still seen today. While the exact date was never recorded, the first pink flamingo was born some time during 1957.

The late 1950’s just happened to be perfect timing for the flamingo. America was moving to the suburbs. Industry was convincing America that a natural lawn was one that was mowed and treated with chemicals. And, every lawn needed a lawn ornament.

But an empty lawn wasn't the only thing in the flamingo's favor. The country was much more mobile and an increasing number of people were traveling to the many hotels, motels, and lounges named after the flamboyant flamingo. The 1950’s was also a time for bright, bold colors. Common colors had been around for years, but plastics now allowed for hot colors like bright green, vivid ruby, and, of course, hot flamingo pink. Pink refrigerators, washing machines, and (obviously) Cadillacs were highly sought after.

The 1960’s were not as friendly to the pink flamingo. There was a rebellion against everything man made. It was a time to go back to nature. The plastic flamingo quickly became the prototype of bad taste and anti-nature. By 1970, even Sears had removed the pink-feathered bird from its catalog.

It looked like our fake-feathered friend’s days were numbered. But time was on this bird's side. Some people just love to do things that annoy people. You know: If you are not supposed to do something, you do it just to annoy others. If pink flamingos were the ultimate in bad taste, then people were sure to place them on their lawn to bug their neighbors. And they did so in great numbers.

When I first started college back in 1981, I went to see a movie titled Pink Flamingos. My recommendation is that you never, ever see this 1972 flick. It is the most disgusting movie ever made. You'll probably vomit long before it ends. (My girlfriend back then certainly did!) Yet, this movie clearly marks the time at which the pink flamingo moved from lawn junk to lawn art.
In 1984, Miami Vice kicked the sales of pink flamingos into full throttle. For the first time ever, Union Plastics sold more flamingos than they did ducks. Today they are sold for just about every purpose. They are purchased for use as wedding decorations, housewarming gifts, and as replacements for reindeer at Christmas time.

Some people actually travel with their pink flamingos. The plastic birds go camping, hiking, skiing, and mountain biking. Entire web sites are devoted to the travels of these artificial creatures.

Pink flamingos have also become a prime target of pranksters. Many are stolen off lawns every year, particularly by kids that have been drinking a wee bit too much. Others are kidnapped and held for ransom. One particular pair was kidnapped and had their ransom paid in play money.

We all know that what is art to one person is garbage to the next. Bans have been placed on pink flamingos all over the country. As a result, Union Plastics was forced to introduce a blue flamingo to circumvent the rules. Of course, these communities then changed the laws to ban all plastic flamingos. (That's when I would paint my house purple.)

Should you wish to purchase these decorations, they are readily available. Hundreds of thousands are sold each year in stores and through mail order. Authentic flamingos always have Don Featherstone’s signature under their tails. Each has a yellow beak with a black tip and they are only sold in pairs.

 

IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?

Consider the following:

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical).

This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man- made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight.

On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine.

We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each.

In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second.

Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

 

You're worth more than you think.

Well, I guess you could try prostitution, but that's not what I'm talking about.

Let's suppose that when you die, you wish to sell your body. Now I'm sure that there is some pervert out there that would want to do some things we shouldn't mention. However, many claim that your body is a mineral goldmine. Could the minerals actually be "mined" and sold at market value? Let's see:

According to the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry and Soils, your body is:


65% Oxygen (worthless - meaning that you're mostly hot air!)
18% Carbon (worthless)
10% Hydrogen (worthless)
3% Nitrogen (good for plant food)
1.5% Calcium (worthless)
1% Phosphorous (good fertilizer)
0.35% Potassium (worthless)
0.25% Sulfur (can be used to make that rotten egg smell)
0.15% Sodium (salt)
0.15% Chlorine (not enough for the backyard pool)
0.05% Magnesium (of slight value)
0.0004% Iron (I guess we can rust)
0.00004% Iodine (sell this to the medical industry)
Plus minute quantities of fluorine, silicon, manganese, zinc, copper, aluminum, and arsenic(!). No gold, silver, or platinum deposits.

Value of all this great stuff - less than $1.00. This won't cover the price of the funeral.

I guess if you had enough bodies some money could be earned. Doesn't sound worth it. Just the smell of the decomposing bodies would make me want to live in poverty for the rest of my life.

I overlooked a better money making scheme.

Instead of selling the minerals in your body, you could sell your skin. Those sick Nazis had an entire industry built on this scheme. They made lampshades, shoes, and other things that used leather-like human skins. Thankfully, they lost the war and this practice ended.

The question is, how much skin do we have? We have to know if we intend to sell it.

The average person has between fourteen to eighteen square feet of skin on the body. Each person varies a bit. Things such as your height, how fat you are, and how big your breasts are cause the three major differences.

So how do they estimate this?

I guess that they could skin you after death and measure it that way. They don't.

It seems that the Japanese have the solution. The Imperial State Institute for Nutrition at Tokyo has a method. First, they have you strip naked. They then adhere a strong, thin paper to every centimeter of your body. The paper is allowed to dry and removed. They then cut the paper into small pieces and carefully calculate your body measurements. Sounds kind of kinky.

This could cause a change in our standards. Instead of Miss June being a 36D-22-34 (must be an inflatable model), she would now be a 12,800 square centimeter beauty.

So how much is this skin worth? If we assume that a square foot of cow hide sells for 25 cents, then you would be worth approximately $3.50. Plus, you could still get nearly $1.00 for the minerals contained in your body, as most elements are stored in your bones and internal organs. Hey, if you're lucky, the market could be on an upswing. Maybe you could get five bucks!

 

It can really kill you!

Throughout the history of humans, the woman's body has been squeezed and contorted into many different forms.

The breasts are certainly no exception.

The female bust has gone in and out of style many times (even more times than John Travolta). At times it has been minimized to be hidden from view. At others, it has been maximized to the fullest extent.

For instance, if we take a look back to 2500 B.C., we will find that the Minoan women that lived on the Greek isle of Crete actually wore a bra-like garment that actually lifted their bare breasts out of their clothes.

Years later, ancient Roman and Greek women took the opposite approach. They actually strapped on a breast band to reduce their bust size.

But where did the modern bra come from? And how can it actually kill?

Let's find out:

As pointed out above, there have been many types of garments that have appeared over the centuries to help enhance the human form.

Many authors claim that the bra was invented by one Otto Titzling. However, it turns out that this story first appeared in the book Bust Up: The Uplifting Tale of Otto Titzling by Wallace Reyburn (the same guy that wrote the humorous book that describes how Thomas Crapper invented the toilet). The book claims that Titzling invented the bra with the help of his assistant Hans Delving in 1912. They designed the bra for a Swedish athlete named Lois Lung. Titzling then sued a Frenchman named Phillipe de Brassiere for patent infringement in the 1930's. As you can see from these names, the story is probably pure fiction (especially since, as we will see below, Mary Phelps Jacobs takes credit for the first documented use of the name brassiere in 1914).

If you check most current literature, you will find the following story:

The first modern bra was invented by a New York socialite named Mary Phelps Jacob way back in 1913 (I'm sure that a lot of women want to believe that a man invented this torturous device, but it was a woman).

Mary had just purchased a sheer evening gown for one of her social events that poor people like myself will never get to attend.

She had a problem.

At that time, corsets that were stiffened with whaleback bones were the accepted undergarment. Unfortunately, whaleback corsets and sheer evening gowns just don't go together well.

In one of those great flashes of genius, Mary came up with a great solution. Together with her French maid Marie, Mary took two handkerchiefs, ribbon, and some cord and devised a simple backless brassiere.

We can be fairly sure that Mary was the hit of the party, but the real hit was her newfangled brassiere among the women in attendance.

Mary was very happy to sew up a bra for all family and friends that were interested. I guess you could say that she started the currently male dominated tradition of giving sexy underwear for those special holidays.

One day, she received a request for one of her contraptions from a stranger, who had happened to enclose a dollar for her efforts.

Mary Jacobs ran to the patent office with her sketches. In November, 1914, she was awarded a patent for the "Backless Brassiere".

Mary made several hundred of the devices (marketed under the name Caresse Crosby), but due to lack of publicity, the business collapsed.

One would think that this would have been the end of the bra, but it managed to live on.

Mary sold the rights to the brassiere to the Warner Brothers Corset Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut for a mere $1500. Just think how much money that would be worth today.

This sounds like a great story, and is almost entirely true, except for the fact that Mary Jacobs did not invent the first bra. Her design was simply the first one to be widely used.

It seems that a man named Hoag Levins had too much time on his hands and did an in depth study of all the sexual devices ever patented by the United States Patent Office. In the book American Sex Machines, Levins presents quite a few patents on bra-type creations.

Levins' conclusion is that a woman named Marie Tucek patented the first brassiere in 1893. This "breast supporter", as she called it, looked very similar to the modern brassiere. The device included separate pockets for the breasts, straps that went over the shoulder which were fastened by hook-and-eye closures.

In comparison, Mary Phelps Jacobs device was patented on November 3, 1914 and was called a "brassiere". She may have had the name correct, but she didn't have the design. Her patent was for a device that was lightweight and flattened the breasts. Her bra did not have cups to support the breasts.

Of course, many innovations were later made to the brassiere: use of elastic, standard cup sizes, and the development of the strapless bra.

During the 1920's, the flat chested "flappers" that my grandmother always reminisces about were all the rage. A Russian immigrant named Ida Rosenthal decided to buck the trend. With the help of her husband William, they founded Maidenform. Ida was responsible for grouping women into bust size categories (cup sizes) and developed bras for every stage of life (puberty to maturity).

Of course, the 1960's was famous for its bra-burnings. One would think that this would have been the end of the bra, but it wasn't. Gravity and aging were on the side of the brassiere manufacturers.

The bra has made a great comeback ever since.

We have the Wonderbra. The 18 hour bra. Cross your heart (and hope to die?) bras. Training bras (training for what?). Jogging bras. Dangerous breast implants that need added support. Madonna walking around in her underwear. Victoria's Secret (she's not very good at keeping her secret - everyone seems to know about it).

So what about bras killing you? (I thought this would get your attention).

In the 1994 book Dressed to Kill by Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Grismaijerin, they suggested that wearing bras may inhibit the normal function of the lymphatic system in and around the breast. The result is a decreased removal of toxins from the breast and an increased occurrence of breast cancer.

Based on a sample of 4,730 women, they concluded that women that go braless have a 21 times less chance of developing cancer.

The study was torn apart by critics because the authors failed to incorporate the lifestyles (smoking, alcohol, exercise, weight, etc.) of the women into their results. However, it does bring up some good questions.

To end this little discussion on brassieres, I thought that I would mention one documented case of death by a bra.

It seems that a woman named Berbel Zumner was killed at age 23 while walking through a park in Vienna. You see, Berbel was one of those women that many refer to as "well endowed". She wore a bra with metal underwire to support her ample frame. As we all know, metal wire and lightning just don't go together. As a result, Berbel was zapped and killed.

 

What do they have in common with Coca-Cola?

One would think that the Earl of Condom (he really did exist!) actually invented this device, but he only gets the honor of the name.

So who did invent it?

A man famous for a part of the woman's anatomy - Gabriel Fallopius (you can fill in what he is honored for). In the mid 1500's, he designed a medicated sheath to go over the tip of the penis and under the foreskin. It was held on by a pink ribbon so that it would appeal to women.

He was then forced to design one for the circumcised guys - a standard of eight inches (The average man must have been bigger back in those days). It was tested on over 1000 men with overwhelming success.

One would guess that they were trying to prevent pregnancy, but that was the woman's problem in those days. They were actually used to prevent the spread of venereal diseases, syphilis in particular. Men hated them, and gave them the name overcoats.

About 100 years later, England's King Charles II requested his physician, the Earl of Condom, to devise something to protect him from syphilis. He came up with an oiled sheath made from sheep intestine. No one is really sure if he knew about Fallopius' contraption. Soon all the noblemen were using them.

The problem? They reused them (Yuk) without washing them (double Yuk Yuk). Therefore, they still ended up getting that dreaded disease.

The modern rubber was invented in 1870, but was not the thin latex type we see today. Those were developed in the 1930's.

More related info:

It is rumored that in many third world countries, a popular contraceptive is Coca-Cola. It seems that the drink is very acidic and when used as a ******, it annihilates everything in its path. Pow! Zap! Wham! Harvard University actually did a scientific study of this and confirmed that it works. Should you ever decide to use this method (I hope you are very desperate if you do), be aware that Diet Coke is better than Classic Coke.

Sounds like a new ad campaign for the Cola Wars. I wonder if Pepsi works as well?

Today on Sally Jesse... Men that don't use condoms, Women that ****** with Coke instead. I better write to her with this new show idea.

Even more useless birth control info:

On of the earliest methods for birth control was devised by the ancient Chinese. Women inserted Quicksilver (mercury) to abort the fetus. Worked well, but I'll venture a guess that the women died at a young age.

Later the ancient Egyptians came up with a safer method - honey was mixed with crocodile dung. The acidity of the dung killed the sperm.

The ancient Romans had a very effective method. Women were instructed to jump, cough, and sneeze immediately after intercourse!

Ancient Greeks told women to scoop out the seeds of a pomegranate half and insert it as a cervical cap.

All these alternative methods that you never knew about (I am not recommending that you try them)!

 

CONTACT LENSES FOR CHICKENS

Why chickens are seeing red.

It's hard to believe, but at the turn of the century chicken was considered a delicacy. It was one of the most expensive choices on a restaurant's menu. Both steak and lobster were actually cheaper.

Nearly one-hundred years later and chicken has gone to the opposite extreme - it's become the food of the common man.

Of course, this is all due to modern chicken farming. Science has managed to create the superchicken: chickens that grow extremely quickly to a much larger size and produce a greater number of eggs. But this came at a cost - the chickens become more aggressive (chickens were originally domesticated for cockfights, not food). Of course, an aggressive chicken turns around and kills other chickens which in turn lowers the farmer's profits.

The chicken business has also become a very competitive business. It should therefore come as no surprise that these henhouse owners will do anything to cut costs.

Long ago, during the 1950's, the farmers realized that chickens raised under red lights tended to be less aggressive and, as a result, consumed less food. An added bonus was that they produced more eggs. This meant larger profits for the farm owner. Unfortunately, the workers couldn't see what they were doing under the red lights, so an alternative approach was needed.

Someone then came up with the bright idea of putting red glasses on the birds. You know - cool shades. You may recall the Life Magazine photographs from many years ago in which the chickens were wearing these glasses.

But, you can see the problem with this method - the glasses fell right off the chicken's head.

Plop!

Oh, well. Stupid idea. Back to the drawing board.

So enter the latest approach - red contact lenses for the chickens.

In the early 1960's there was a man named Irvin Wise who managed a chicken farm in Northern California. One day, a salesman mentioned to him that there was a farm where chickens afflicted with cataracts behaved better than those with normal sight.

Mr. Wise realized that he needed to alter the visions of the birds, but how could this be done?

I guess you could somehow blind the chickens, but that would be inhumane. In addition, a blind chicken is not the same thing as one with cataracts. They probably would not survive.

So Irvin decided to design some contact lenses for the birds. Unfortunately, the lenses did what he didn't want them to do - they blinded the chickens. The technology just didn't exist at the time to make a perfect set of chicken contact lenses.

Irvin's company folded.

Now enters his son - Randall E. Wise.

Randall went off to college and founded a very successful computer software company in Boston. After eight years in business, he sold the company for several million dollars to pursue his boyhood dream - designing contact lenses for chickens.

Of course, he needed to perfect the lenses that his father had been unsuccessful with. It took hundreds of pairs of failed lenses until he hit on a useable design.

When they hit the market in 1989, the lenses sold for 20 cents per pair, or 15 cents if bought in bulk.

Fitting a bird with these lenses is quite simple - you hold the bird's head steady for a few seconds and insert the lenses.

They are supposed to stay in for life. Unfortunately, no one told the chickens that.

Many of the lenses fell out and the product continues to undergo modification and further testing.

However, in the flocks that have successfully used the lenses, the costs of producing a single egg has been reducing by a whopping 1/3 of one penny. If you consider that the larger egg farms produce one-half million eggs per day, those red contact lenses have the potential of saving millions of dollars per year.

It's found money.

 

He can't add but he's certainly had a lesson in subtraction.....

____________________________________

I can almost hear the conversation:

Rufus: You're a good soldier Piney! Just hang in there a little longer! As soon as I say, you can sell yours too! Just keep posting on those message boards until you find a patsy. But hey, I think those Ferrari guys are on to you.....try **********!

Piney: My ass hurts!

Rufus: XOXOXO

 

wow tim wow
must love that copy and paste feature

 

Just 8 trading days till X-mas.
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Tim's making a comeback, but still has quite a ways to go.

Who Posted?

Total Posts: 2,438

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alpinesilver19 564
darth550 276
ferrari355fi 232
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Racer98 186
jjay911 169
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charlie_ludden 101
TestShootCom 89
ylshih 61
Alxlee 33
PaulC 30
matteo 26
bb7110 24
Modenafan 24
Webby 22
jsnazzy 21
clandestine 15
dozzina 15
nathan_carpenter 13
KraigG 12
neilmac 11
vtc4198 11
Dom 11
writerguy 9
judge4re 8
AJUFC 7
mnmblu 7
Moving Chicane 7
SimonF40 7
clyde_fernan 5
Supercarlover 5
Sheldon 5
jpress 4
taber 4
OneBadNA1NSX 4
speedy4500 4
Roklobster 4
dm_n_stuff 3
anunakki 3
cshargh 3
CMY 3
NomadM3 3
DavidDriver 3
TIMSBLACKF1 3
lacir 2
markymark360f1 2
Jim Bremner 2
WJHMH 2
hank sound 2
rmk 2
wax 2
luv2detail 2
chase18303 1
MREUS 1
robert_c 1
skee 1
Erich 1
eklover 1
hadley 1
ELIM 1
nocturne1 1

 

Dude, you are making me want to spend my WHOLE day flooding this thread

 

Why does this thread still have a heart beat?

 

Because all this people keep the fire going

alpinesilver19 564
darth550 276
ferrari355fi 232
DrStranglove 197
Racer98 186
jjay911 169
bernardo66 169
charlie_ludden 101
TestShootCom 90
ylshih 61
Alxlee 33
PaulC 30
matteo 26
bb7110 24
Modenafan 25
Webby 22
jsnazzy 21
clandestine 15
dozzina 15
nathan_carpenter 13
KraigG 12
neilmac 11
vtc4198 12
Dom 11
writerguy 9
judge4re 8
AJUFC 7
mnmblu 7
Moving Chicane 7
SimonF40 7
clyde_fernan 5
Supercarlover 5
Sheldon 5
jpress 4
taber 4
OneBadNA1NSX 4
speedy4500 4
Roklobster 4
dm_n_stuff 3
anunakki 3
cshargh 3
CMY 3
NomadM3 3
DavidDriver 3
TIMSBLACKF1 3
lacir 2
markymark360f1 2
Jim Bremner 2
WJHMH 2
hank sound 2
rmk 2
wax 2
luv2detail 2
chase18303 1
MREUS 1
robert_c 1
skee 1
Erich 1
eklover 1
hadley 1
ELIM 1
nocturne1 1

 

"Oh let the circle...be unbroken......."

 

Hi.
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B/c U replied, if you "HADELY" made a reply then it wouldnt be such "McG5ey" thread.

 

Just put an Alpine in the F car. It's silver, too

 

one day...

 

As opposed to what you're doing now??


Neil

(Shouldn't you be busy nailing supermodels or something?)

 

Well, I am icing it up. Was a busy week here so far. I think I dislocated a testicle lol

 

Use the left hand next week...