What’s in a Name?
“Liver-Eating Johnson” had the coolest nickname in the Old West — cooler, perhaps, than the truth warranted.
The “mountain man” was actually born in New Jersey around 1824. He deserted the Navy after the Mexican-American War and lit out for Wyoming, where he trapped, hunted and supplied cordwood to steamboats.
The legend starts in 1847, when the Crow tribe killed his Indian wife and he launched a personal war that lasted 20 years, in which, supposedly, he would cut out and eat the liver of each man he killed.
Did he really? Who knows? But it made a good story, and Johnson’s stature began to grow — literally and figuratively. His Civil War records put him at less than 6 feet tall, but local yarns soon said he was 6 foot 6.
After serving the Union Army as a sharpshooter, he spent the 1880s as a deputy sheriff in Leadville, Colo., and a town marshal in Red Lodge, Mont. He died in 1900.
But a century later the nickname was still working. The 1972 Robert Redford film Jeremiah Johnson was based in part on his life — and Redford even served as one of the pallbearers when Johnson’s body was reburied in Cody, Wyo., in 1974.
Arf!
Yes, that’s a real dog, and no, the photo isn’t doctored. During World War II the Soviets experimented with “anti-tank dogs,” dogs that were trained to run under enemy tanks with explosives strapped to their backs.
Unfortunately, the Soviets trained the dogs by putting food under their own tanks, which led to some Three-Stooges-style hijinks on the battlefield. In 1942, an entire Soviet tank division was chased into retreat by its own dogs. Serves ‘em right.
Here, Boy!
The French Romantic poet Gérard de Nerval had a pet lobster, which he would walk through Paris on a blue ribbon.
He said he regarded lobsters as “peaceful, serious creatures who know the secrets of the sea and don’t bark.”
Floor?
American building designers often skip the number 13 when numbering their floors, because 13 is considered an unlucky number.
The Chinese are similarly superstitious — they omit the fourth floor, because the word “four” sounds like “death” in Mandarin.
Clean Your Room
If you think you’re a packrat — cheer up.
In 1929, brothers Homer and Langley Collyer holed up in a Harlem townhouse and basically set the all-time record for reclusive hoarding. They kept to the house during the day, and at night Langley fetched their water from a park four blocks away, dragging home abandoned junk.
In 1942, when they missed a mortgage payment, the police investigated but couldn’t get past a solid wall of junk behind the front door. In 1947, when rumors surfaced that Homer had died, a team of seven men finally began excavating the foyer, which was choked with old newspapers, folding beds and chairs, half a sewing machine, boxes and parts of a wine press. A patrolman broke into the second floor and spent two hours crawling through packages and newspaper bundles before he discovered Homer, dead in a bathrobe, his head on his knees. The recluse had been dead only 10 hours, so the smell was coming from somewhere else.
Authorities began unpacking the house. Among other things, they found baby carriages, rusted bicycles, a collection of guns, gas chandeliers, the folding top of a horsedrawn carriage, three dressmaking dummies, a kerosene stove, thousands of books about medicine and engineering, human organs pickled in jars, a clavichord, two organs, the chassis of an old Model T, a horse’s jawbone, an early X-ray machine, and more than six tons of newspapers, magazines, and wood. After several weeks of searching, they found Langley 10 feet from his brother. He had been crushed in one of his own booby traps.
In total, police and workmen took 136 tons of garbage out of the house, including 14 pianos and more than 25,000 books. It was eventually torn down as a fire hazard.
Shut Up, Bruce
The Cadillac Ranch is a public art installation in Amarillo, Texas: Ten junker Cadillacs are buried nose-first in the ground, at an angle corresponding to that of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
What will future archaeologists make of this?
Find of the Week
A note found stuffed in a vase in a Massachusetts thrift store.
More at Found Magazine.
Personality and Blood Type
Personality traits associated with various blood types, according to Japanese superstition:
Type A:
- Best traits: Conservative, reserved, patient, punctual, perfectionist, and good with plants.
- Worst traits: Introverted, obsessive, stubborn, and self-conscious. Anal retentive.
- Famous examples: George H.W. Bush, O.J. Simpson, Britney Spears
Type B:
- Best traits: Creative and passionate. Animal-loving. Optimistic and flexible.
- Worst traits: Forgetful, irresponsible, individualistic.
- Famous examples: Akira Kurosawa, Jack Nicholson, Luciano Pavarotti
Type AB:
- Best traits: Cool, controlled, rational. Sociable and popular. Empathic.
- Worst traits: Aloof, critical, indecisive, and unforgiving.
- Famous examples: John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Mick Jagger
Type O:
- Best traits: Ambitious, athletic, robust, and self-confident. Natural leaders.
- Worst traits: Arrogant, vain, and insensitive. Ruthless.
- Famous examples: Ronald Reagan, Queen Elizabeth, John Lennon
Interestingly, Type A blood is the most common in Japan, while Type O is most common in the United States — and among Japanese prime ministers.
Slow Going
In 2002, charity fundraiser Lloyd Scott ran the London Marathon wearing a 120-pound deep-sea diving suit.
He finished the 26.2-mile course in five days, eight and a half hours — a record high.
Freudian Skip
The youngest confirmed mother in medical history is Lina Medina of Paurange, Peru, who gave birth to a 5.9-pound boy at age 5. The delivery was done through caesarian section; it’s not known how she conceived the child. Her son, Gerardo, was raised believing that Lina was his sister.
Wheels Within Wheels
An optical illusion. Move your nose toward the dot in the center.
(Image: Wikimedia Commons)
Boo!
Freud would have loved San Jose’s “Winchester Mystery House,” a mansion-sized emblem of its owner’s mental illness. Rifle heiress Sarah L. Winchester started construction in 1884, and never stopped. A medium had told her of a family curse, and convinced her that she would die if the construction ever ceased.
So it went on, 24 hours a day, for 38 years. There was no plan; the house was just continuously rebuilt. Worse, Sarah believed that vengeful spirits of gun victims were seeking her, so she slept in a different room each night, and the layout is full of secret passages and stairways and doors that lead nowhere.
The result shows what $5.5 million worth of insanity looks like. Altogether there are 160 rooms, including 40 bedrooms, 47 fireplaces, 1,260 windows, 17 chimneys (with evidence of two others), two ballrooms, two basements and three working elevators.
It takes 20,000 gallons to paint the place, so painting never stops. In that sense, Sarah’s weird wish lives on.
SPCSCPG
The Society for the Prevention of Calling Sleeping Car Porters “George” was a lighthearted association with a useful, if incidental, cause. Most railway porters were black, and many passengers called them all George, following the racist custom of naming slaves after their masters. (George Pullman ran the company that made the cars, so the porters were regarded as his servants.)
Strangely, the prevention society was founded not by the black porters, but by white railway employees who were actually named George. Apparently they were either annoyed by the tradition or thought that such a society would be a good joke.
People did think it was funny, or at least inoffensive. At its peak, the society had 31,000 members, including King George V of the United Kingdom, Babe Ruth (whose given name was George), and French politician Georges Clemenceau.
Left Turn at Albuquerque
Late last year, somewhere in the lonely New Mexico desert, someone began broadcasting a strange shortwave radio signal.
At regular intervals, on several frequencies, Yosemite Sam says, “Varmint, I’m a-gonna blow you to smithereens!”
The FCC thinks the signal is originating in the desert near Albuquerque, but no one knows who’s broadcasting it, or why.
Speak Up, Please
The appropriate word here is “Bleeaagh.” In 897, Pope Stephen VI dug up the decomposing body of his predecessor and put it on trial for violating church law. Formosus, who had been dead for nine months, was found guilty and buried again. Rome turned against Stephen, who was eventually strangled in prison. It’s known as the cadaver synod or, in Latin, the “synodus horrenda.”
Watch Your Step
Vaucanson’s Shitting Duck was one of the more unsavory products of the French Enlightenment.
When it was unveiled by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1739, thousands watched the “canard digérateur” stretch its neck to eat grain from a hand. The food then dissolved, “the matter digested in the stomach being conducted by tubes, as in an animal by its bowels, into the anus, where there is a sphincter which permits it to be released.” These inner workings were all proudly displayed, “though some ladies preferred to see them decently covered.”
Why make fake duck shit when the world is so well supplied with the real thing? It was part of the Enlightenment’s transition from a naturalistic to a mechanical worldview. Suddenly a duck was not a God-given miracle but a machine made of meat, and complex automatons carried the promise of mechanized labor, stirring a cultural revolution.
Goethe mentioned Vaucanson’s automata in his diary, and Sir David Brewster called the duck “perhaps the most wonderful piece of mechanism ever made.” Sadly, the whole thing was a fake: The droppings were prefabricated and hidden in a separate compartment. Back to the drawing board.
Jersey Devil
The Jersey Devil may be a figment, but it’s an admirably hard-working one. Since 1840 the creature has been haunting the southern Pine Barrens, killing livestock, leaving strange tracks, flying, barking, attacking trolleys, eating chickens, biting dogs, and generally expressing a vituperative disapproval of Garden State settlement.
Its appearance matches its disposition. This drawing was made for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin in 1909, but eyewitnesses have also reported a ram’s head, a long neck, thin wings, short legs, thick black hair, a monkey’s arms and hands, a dog’s face, split hooves, a foot-long tail, and “the general appearance of a kangaroo.”
Laugh if you will, but don’t underestimate it: To date the Devil has been shot, electrocuted, and hosed by the West Collingswood fire department, but sightings have continued through 1991, when a pizza deliveryman encountered a white horselike creature in Edison. Watch your back.
Poe’s Death
What killed Edgar Allan Poe?
On Oct. 3, 1849, Poe was found on the streets of Baltimore, delirious and wearing clothes that were not his own. The man who found him said he was “in great distress, and … in need of immediate assistance.” He remained incoherent and died four days later. He was only 40.
An acquaintance said it was drunkenness, but he turned out to be a supporter of the temperance movement who distorted the facts. The attending physician wrote that “Edgar Allan Poe did not die under the effect of any intoxicant, nor was the smell of liquor upon his breath or person.”
Well, what, then? Other theories include a rare brain disease, diabetes, enzyme deficiency, syphilis, even rabies. Some people think Poe was accosted, drugged, and used as a pawn in a plot to stuff ballot boxes that day.
There’s no surviving death certificate, so we’ll never really know. Today Poe lies in the churchyard at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, where mystery follows him even in death: Every year since 1949, the grave has been visited by a mystery man in the early hours of the poet’s birthday, Jan. 19. Dressed in black and carrying a silver-tipped cane, the “Poe Toaster” kneels at the grave and makes a toast with Martel cognac. He leaves behind the half-empty bottle and three red roses.
Future Perfect
Predictions made by John Titor, a “time traveler” from 2036 who appeared briefly on the Internet in 2000 and 2001:
- The United States will go to war with Iraq over claims that the latter has nuclear weapons, and these claims will later prove false.
- Civil unrest will follow the presidential election of 2004, escalating into civil war in 2005.
- The war will pit cities against rural areas, with the government controlling the cities.
- When the old system cannot be restored, a new president will take power in 2009.
- As American support for Israel wavers, a nuclear war will occur in the Middle East.
- China will take over Korea, Taiwan, and Japan.
- In 2015 there will be a global nuclear war among United States, China, Europe, and Russia. Nearly 3 billion people will die.
“Perhaps I should let you all in on a little secret,” he wrote. “No one likes you in the future. This time period is looked at as being full of lazy, self-centered, civically ignorant sheep. Perhaps you should be less concerned about me and more concerned about that.”
On the other hand, he also claimed that Y2K would lead to martial law and that “Russia is covered in nuclear snow from their collapsed reactors.” So, maybe not.
Ameranthropoides Loysi
What is this? Is it a spider monkey? Or is it some unknown primate? We may never find out — this is the only photograph that survives from a strange encounter in the Venezuelan jungle in 1920.
Swiss oil geologist François De Loys was exploring near Lake Maracaibo when two creatures angrily approached his camp. The animals behaved like monkeys, holding onto shrubs and branches. The male escaped, but De Loys shot the female, which proved to be 1.57 meters tall, about half a meter larger than any known spider monkey. He said the creature had no tail, though it’s impossible to tell from the single photo he took.
All traces of the creature itself are lost — De Loys skinned it and kept the hide and skull, but he lost them during the difficult expedition (20 of the 24 explorers died).
Since then, authorities have argued endlessly about “Ameranthropoides loysi” — but it’s worth noting that that’s a regulation crate it’s sitting on, which supports De Loys’ contention about its size, and that its face, chest and hands differ in significant respects from a spider monkey’s. And there have been occasional reports of similar creatures in South America: “Mono Grande” may yet be discovered there.
Malden Island
This is Malden Island, an uninhabited speck of land more than 1,500 miles from Hawaii. When Lord Byron’s cousin discovered it in 1825, he found a series of ruined stone temples in the interior, but the island was deserted. Who were the builders, where did they come from, and what became of them? No one knows for sure.
“The Human Lightning Rod”
A U.S. forest ranger in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, Roy Cleveland Sullivan (1912-1983) survived being hit by lightning seven different times:
- In a lookout tower in 1942, the first bolt struck him in the leg. He lost a nail on his big toe.
- In 1969, a second bolt struck him in his truck, knocking him unconscious and burning his eyebrows.
- The third strike, in 1970, hit him in his front yard, burning his left shoulder.
- The next bolt struck in a ranger station in 1972 and set his hair on fire. After that, he began carrying a pitcher of water with him.
- In 1973, a bolt hit Sullivan in the head, blasting him out of his car and again setting his hair on fire.
- The sixth bolt struck him in a campground in 1974, injuring his ankle.
- The final bolt hit him in 1977, when he was fishing. He was hospitalized for burns on his chest and stomach.
Sullivan shot himself in 1983 … reportedly over a rejected love.
A Note From the Neighbors
At 5:12 p.m. on November 26, 1977, an unidentified voice appeared on the transmitters of Southern Television in the United Kingdom. Identifying itself as Vrillon, representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, the voice broke in to a news broadcast to warn viewers of “the destiny of your race,” “so that you may communicate to your fellow beings the course you must take to avoid a disaster which threatens your world and the beings on other worlds around you.”
Accompanied by a deep buzzing, the voice warned against the use of nuclear weapons and stated that humanity had “but a short time to learn to live together in peace and goodwill” before it destroyed itself.
Investigators decided that pranksters were behind the broadcast, aiming a transmitter at a VHF receiver to overpower the “official” signal with a joke message.
But no one knows for sure.
Jerimoth Hill
If you’re visiting Rhode Island, you might be excused for wanting to visit Jerimoth Hill: It’s the highest point in the state.
Unfortunately, you’d be taking your life in your hands. Jerimoth is private property, and it’s owned by a singularly cranky 77-year-old named Henry Richardson, who monitors the trail with motion sensors. Here’s how he’s greeted other visitors:
- Assaulted them verbally (“Shoot all the damn highpointers!” “Get the hell off my property!”)
- Threatened to break cameras
- Started fistfights
- Let the air out of their car tires
- Shot them with rock salt
- Chased them through three states by car
Under pressure, Richardson’s son agreed in 1998 to let hikers visit the highpoint on national holidays. Before that, the 812-foot rise “was considered less accessable than Mt. McKinley.”
