No Theme

Handcuffed and shackled, and fighting against strong winds, Jack LaLanne swam 1.5 miles, towing 70 boats with 70 people on it. . . he was 70 years old. LaLanne, called the Godfather of fitness, gave up white flour and white sugar at 15 and has been devoted to healthy living ever since. Among other things, he is responsible for the first"nationally syndicated exercise show on television." A firm believer in healthy living, he avoids steroids, takes a myriad of daily vitamins and even avoids aspirin. LaLanne will be 94 in September.
Source. Source. Source.

In Detroit, this house was foreclosed and sold for $1. It was on the market for 19 days. Once selling for $65,000, the house had be extensively vandalized, had attracted squatters and had racked up $4,000 in back taxes. The house's bank owner payed "$2,500 in sales commission and another $1,000 bonus for closing the $1 sale [and payed] $500 of the buyer's closing costs. . . The agent did say that the buyer agreed to pay the full list price of $1"
Source.


Following Wilhelm Roentgen's discovery of the x-ray, one London company began selling x-ray proof underwear (probably lead-lined).
Source.

Tremayne Durham agreed to plead guilty to murder after Oregon prosecutors took the death penalty off the table, and agreed to his demand to have two special meals. He will immediately receive a meal of "KFC chicken, Popeye's chicken, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, carrot cake and ice cream. " On his sentencing date (also his wedding-date), he will receive a meal of "calzones, lasagna, pizza and ice cream." "Prosecutors said they hated appearing to cater to the whims of a murderer, but eying the expense of a long trial and lengthy appeals, as well as the turmoil for the victim's family, they agreed."
PETA sent a letter protesting the conditions and demanding that Durham only be served vegetarian meals while incarcerated. The final paragraph of the letter reads, "Feeding prisoners corn chowder rather than chicken will go a long way toward ending the cycle of violence. You can help prevent Durham from contributing to any more suffering and death by mandating that he be placed on a healthy, humane vegetarian diet." The letter can be read here.
Source. Source.

For Your listening

In 1625, all of the sopranos in the Sistine Chapel choir were castrati who had been castrated as young boys to achieve a unique singing voice. Castrated before puberty, they would retain their boy soprano voice but sing with the strength and breath capacity of a man. Part of their necessity was the fact that at that time, women could not sing in church choirs, but the men were said to be extremely popular and have the "voice of angels". "During the 17th and 18th centuries in Italy, some 4,000 - 5,000 boys were castrated annually for the purpose of singing alto in the church choirs." By 1640, castrati were used in choirs throughout Italy. The practice was officially banned by Pius X in 1903.
The only audio recordings of a castrati is of Alessandro Moreschi (1858-1922). Critics say Moreschi was past his singing prime wen he made this recording. Because the style of music has changed so much, keep this in mind: "Many of the seemingly imperfect vocal attacks, for example, are in fact, launched from as much as a tenth below the note - in Moreschi's case, this seems to have been a long-standing means of drawing on the particular acoustics of the Sistine Chapel itself."
Here Morschi sings Ave Maria.
Here he sings Domine Salvum Fac.
Source. Source.
Georgia Brown is a Brazilian singer who holds the Guinness World Record for singing the highest recorded note. Her vocal range spans 8 octaves. A word of warning on the audio link. It is, how to put it, all very very high notes. Here. is her song. For a smaller dose of high notes, here is a video where she only sings high at the end.


In 1877, Thomas Edison recorded the first sounds for play back. He recited Mary Had A Little Lamb. Here is the recording which is very clear. Up until recently, Edison was thought to have made the first recording, but an 1860 recording of "Au Clair de la Lune" by French inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville has been found. Scott recorded by "etch[ing] representations of sound waves into paper covered in soot from a burning oil lamp." The distinction is that Scott's recordings were not designed to be played back. Here is the recording. Source.


Florence Foster Jenkins (1868-1944) was famous for being a terrible singer. Despite this, or because of this, she managed immense popularity and was able to draw 5,000 people to a 3,000 ticket Carnegie Concert performance. It is agreed that Jenkins was sincere in her belief in her singing, dismissing laugher as "professional jealousy." Her balls and recitals each had a theme. Between every song, Jenkins would change costumes. Both Enrico Caruso and Cole Porter were admirers. Cole Porter never missed her concerts. "He apparently screamed with laughter all the way through . . . but at the end he was the first one to stand up and scream and shout 'bravo'." While making this recording here, she allegedly only snag the song one time. She told the sound engineer it was perfect so no second try was necessary.
Source. Source. Source.

For more audio, you can visit here, and also here for such recordings as: Einstein explaining E=mc^2, Ted Bundy confessing, King Edward VIII abdicating and Neville Chamberlain's declaration of war.

By the way, I am currently on vaccation. I scheduled this to post automatically. (creepy music) Hope it works correctly.

ancient history

Everyone recognizes the classical white marble statutes of the Greeks and Romans, but most of these statutes were painted. Specialists were able to determine this fact due to trace amounts of paint they found on the statutes and and references to painted statutes in ancient literature and history.
Here are some examples of how we are used to seeing the statutes and how the statutes probably originally appeared.





To see more comparisons, go here.
Source. Source. Source.

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Peterhof, officially began in 1710 by Tsar Peter the Great, boasts a 256 acre territory. It also contains 64 fountains which use 8,189 gallons of water per second. The fountains are operated entirely without the aid of machinery and rely solely on gravity.

The joke fountains are particularly interesting. One fountain, called "A bench," appears like a regular bench but soaks those who sit on it. Another, called "Oak let fountain," contains 500 hollow branches and is surrounded by tulips. It also soaks unsuspecting guests.

To see a satellite image of Peterhof, click here.
Source. Source. Source.

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Charles Seymour (1662-1748) earned the nickname of "The Proud Duke." He did not allow his children to sit in his presence. He refused to talk to his servants, but used sign language instead. When he traveled, Seymour had the roads cleared. He also had a number of houses built between his town and country house so he did not ave to stay at public inns.

Source. Source. Source (page 28).

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Prussian King Frederick William I (1688-1740) was obsessed with his Potsdam Giant Guards. Height was the only criterion for admission, and most of the men were over 7 feet tall.
Frederick was ruthless in his recruitment tactics using bribery, political influence, rewards, force and kidnapping. Every year, a few hundred new recruits were found. At one point, there were 2,000 men in the Guards.
One tall priest was kidnapped in the middle of his sermon. An Austrian diplomat was kidnapped but able to escape. Kirkman from Ireland was kidnapped off the streets at a cost of a thousand pounds.
Frederick also started a genetic engineering program, marrying tall men and tall women together.
When foreign courts caught the hint, tall men became diplomatic tools and gifts to Frederick. Peter the Great, who also admired giants, send Frederick hundreds of Russians all over 6 foot four.
Because height was the only requirement, the men were sometimes mentally retarded. The only case of a man being allowed to leave freely is a Swedish man sent as a gift from Augustus the Strong of Saxony. Despite frequent beatings, the man could not be drilled and was released to die a beggar in Berlin.
Because of the horrible living conditions, many of the men mutinied. About 250 were able to dessert each year, but if they were caught, their ears and nose would be cut off.
The men never fought in battle, but were kept for the amusement of Frederick who would often have them parade and drill for him.
Frederick was 5 foot five inches himself.
After his death, the Guards were disbanded.

Source. Source. Source. Source (p.168).

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Thank you once again to I Beati for this award. Am I allowed to give this award to all my readers? I hope so, because that is what I am going to do. My reasoning? My blog is so fabulous that those who read it regularly must be fabulous too. But seriously, thank you for reading my blog. I love researching and writing it, and having readers makes it even better.

These museums are far from average.

The Museum of Bad Art: "[O]ur mission: to bring the worst of art to the widest of audiences."

• The caption for the picture above is: "The flesh tones bring to mind the top shelf liqueurs of a border bistro. With an astonishing emphasis on facial bone structure, the artist flirts with caricature and captures features of Mamma's face which remind us of a Presidential candidate. The upright marionettish pose of the babe hints that the early bond between mother and child is as formal as it is familiar. Good old fashioned parental respect is at the center of this celebration of color and contour."

The Cockroach Hall of Fame Museum in Texas: "A museum of cockroaches that everyone can love."

• The museum has life Madagascar hissing cockroaches and "cockroaches that have been dressed in costumes to portray various themes." Below is Liberoachi.

You may not want to read on if you are squeamish.


The Mutter Museum by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia: "Disturbingly Informative"

• Grover Cleavland's secret tumor
• John Wilkes Booth's thorax
• The "Soap Lady" who died of Yellow fever in the 19th century and whose body has turned into soap.
• The nine-foot colon of a man who only had a bowel movement once a month. A picture can be seen here.
  
• A collection of 2,000 objects that were swallowed and removed without surgery by Dr, Jackson.

The Icelandic Phallological Museum

• "[P]robably the only museum in the world to contain a collection of phallic specimens belonging to all the various types of mammal found in a single country."

The Vrolik Museum in Amsterdam: "over two thousand specimens of humans, mammals, and other vertebrates"

• "Since 1994, 150 specimens of congenital malformations have also been on display."
• congenital malformation: "physical defect present in a baby at birth[.]"
• From what I understand, the babies are in formaldehyde jars.

China

For some context:

• In July 2007, China's population was 1,321,851,888. With a world population of approximately 6.6 billion, one out of every five people on earth lives in China. In 1950, China's population was 563 million, but had grown to one billion in the early 1980s. For a stable population, the national fertility rate must be 2.1; China's is 1.7. China's population is expected to peak in 2030. India has a much faster rate of growth and is expected to surpass China's population in 2040. Source.
• For a live counter of Chinese population, go here.
  

All of these statistics come from the May 2008 edition of the National Geographic magazine. Because it is hard to paraphrase statistics, they are all selected quotes.

• 119 baby boys are born for every 100 girls.
  
• The number of unmarried young Men-called bare branches-is predicted to be 30 million by 2020.
• China's one-child policy created a generation of only children numbering 90 million.
• Beijing enforces a one-dog policy that prohibits pets more than 14 inches high.
• China is expected to overtake the U.S. as the world's largest economy in ten years.
• Urban Chinese earn more than three times as much as those in rural areas[.]
• Authorities have added 171 new pop culture references to China's national language registry.
• Percent of the world's umbrellas made in China: 70
• Percent of the world's buttons made in China: 60
• Percent of U.S. shoes made in China: 72
• Percent of U.S. kitchen appliances made in China: 50
• Percent of U.S. artificial Christmas lights made in China: 85
  
• Percent of US toys made in China: 50
• Percent of Chinese goods sent to the U.S. that end up on Wal-Mart's shelves: 9
• Percent of the U.S. toys recalled in the U.S. in 2007[:] 100
• Number of months a Chinese factory worker would need to work to earn the money to earn the cost of a Thomas the Tank Engine train set: 6

More facts gleaned from the articles and paraphrased.

• "Wang" is the family name of 93 million Chinese.
  

• Sheng Qi, a Chinese artist, cut off his own finger in protest of the 1989 events of Tiananmen Square. (Picture above.) Visit his website.
  

Oops. I also forgot to add Minimal Ramblings of an Incoherent Mind :"A little home on the Internet where the quiet voices inside of my head can escape to be shared with the world. The loud voices, on the other hand, are silenced and stuffed into the basement to be punished for all eternity."

History

To be a Pontifical Swiss Guard, one must be a Roman Catholic single Swiss man aged 19-30 who is beardless, attended Swiss military school and is at least 5 foot 8.
The Swiss guard was established on January 22, 1506 when 150 Swiss mercenaries pledged their loyalty to Pope Julius II. Now, they guard the Vatican, including the entrance to the Pope's private apartments. Source

Not many people know that the 300 Spartans did not make their last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae alone. Seven hundred to one thousand Thespians stood with them. Source. Other source.

On September 15, 1896, two locomotives were crashed head-on in a publicity stunt in Texas. The event became known as "The Crash at Crush." A similar stunt was successfully performed a few months previously.
For "The Crash at Crush," a special four-mile track was laid and two telegraph offices were built. For the crowd, two water wells were drilled, five tanks of water and several tons of ice were brought in and several hundred faucets were built. Three hundred policemen watched the 30,000 to 40,000 person crowd that sat 200 yards away in a grandstand.
The trains barreled closer and collided. "There was just a swift instance of silence, and then as if controlled by a single impulse both boilers exploded simultaneously and the air was filled with flying missiles of iron and steel varying in size from a postage stamp to half of a driving wheel."
Three were killed and six were seriously injured. Souvenir hunters cleared debris, the railroad made quick compensation and a ragtime song was composed to memorialize the event.
Source.

Old Al

In 1924, Al Capone was 25 years old. In today's money, Capone had a gross income of $1.27 billion and paid his workers $3,000 a week. Capone's suits cost $60,300, and he spent $603 million on police bribes. Al Capone ruled over 20 brothels, 150 "gambling places" and 161 speakeasies.

Source. In Today's St Louis Post Dispatch "NO Kidding" column, and from this book.

I never knew that!

• In 1939 President Roosevelt changed the date of Thanksgiving. By moving the holiday a week earlier, he hoped to lengthen the Christmas shopping season and boost sales. He announced this in August and created a controversy especially among calender makers and football coaches. Twenty three states celebrated Thanksgiving on the old date, twenty three celebrated on the new date, and Texas and Colorado celebrated both. In 1940, Roosevelt returned Thanksgiving to its original date and Congress passed a law banning any future president from changing the date of Thanksgiving. Source
• September 1914, German troops were close to taking Paris prompting French military officials to send 6,000 troops to the front. To transport the troops, they called on taxis. Six hundred cab drivers left their passengers and lined up for inspection, transporting the troops and saving Paris. Click here to see footage of the taxis in Windows Media Player. Source
• In May 1902 on the island of Martinique, a nearby volcano started to act up near the city of Saint-Pierre. Worried about his party losing power in the upcoming election, the governor of Martinique set up roadblocks to contain the citizens and instructed the newspapers to minimize the danger. Pelee erupted anyway, killing the governor and 30,000 people in less than two minutes. One of the only two survivors was scheduled for execution the next day, and was protected in his underground cell. He later toured with Barnum & Bailey Circus in a copy of the cell. Source: The Greatest Stories Never Told: 100 tales from history to astonish, bewilder, and stupefy by Rick Beyer
• While everyone knows about the Great Chicago Fire, hardly anyone knows about the deadliest fire in US history: the Great Peshtigo Fire. Killing between 1,200 to 2,400 people in northern Wisconsin, it had the misfortune of occurring the same night as the Great Chicago Fire. Source.

Rome

And now, for a few blips from Rome from the book Working IX to V: orgy planners, funeral clowns, and other prized professions of the ancient world by Vicki Leon

• In the Greek city-state of Sybaris, the law required a year of advance notice for celebrations to allow the women to have a full year to shop for the perfect outfit.
• Roman cities had public unisex bathrooms. Rome had 144. Under the toilet openings, ran continuous running water. Opposite of the toilet, ran another trough of running water. In that trough were the shared sponges-on-sticks for cleaning up.
  
• In Rome, there were people who specialized in armpit plucking. Somewhere around 1 AD, Roman aristocrats interested in fashion, removed all of their body hair. Requirements for the profession were tweezers, a strong arm and the ability to deal with their customer's pain.
  

And now, I was tagged by Rusin Roundup for for a New Year's Resolution meme. To save space, to see all of the meme go here. But my New Year's resolution is to focus more on my writing. (By the way, my dream is to be a famous writer some day. I have several novels that I am working on. I only need to finish them and start the publishing process. "Only"-ha!)

And I couldn't help myself. I have to quote Terry Pratchett, who I have been reading.

- "Let's just say that if complete and utter chaos was lightning, he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'."