Another contender in the Great Boredom Sweepstakes.
Fine art and British Rail may not seem like they have much in common, but for several decades British Rail, through its pension fund, was a major player in the world of fine art.
From the
NY Times (Apr 5, 1989):
Between 1974 and 1981, British Rail became Britain's first (and it is believed only) large pension fund to enter the collectibles market, acquiring more than $70 million worth of paintings, prints, drawings, furniture and other top-flight works to supplement more conventional investments as a hedge against inflation, which was extremely high in Britain at the time.
The pension fund began selling its art in 1986, and sold the last of it in 2003.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 1996 that the pension fund made a return of 13.1% per year on its art. Which doesn't seem bad at all. However, its stock portfolio, during the same period, returned 22% a year.
If you're looking for a coffee-table curiosity, there are several books dedicated to the artwork owned by the British Rail pension fund.
More info:
"When a railway fund started buying paintings"
Heavy sexual innuendo to sell rice.
Life - Oct 3, 1969
Life - (L) Mar 13, 1970; (R) June 19, 1970
Physicist Cristjo Cristofv claimed that his cocker spaniel, Bijou, could not only detect nuclear fallout but also "changes in the atmospheric electrical field" caused by nuclear explosions halfway around the world.
Certainly a dog like that would be worth at least $10 million. Or so he claimed when the dog died as a result of a bad reaction to medicine given to it by a vet.
Cristofv eventually dropped his lawsuit against the vet due to unexplained "security reasons."
Peninsula Times - July 30, 1965
Chicago Tribune - July 30, 1965
Akron Beacon Journal - May 25, 1966
Just what you'd expect: Bach played on Japanese instruments. Player is embedded below the Tracklist.
In the 1960s, Japan experimented with two ways of improving road safety.
First, it required that new drivers obtain a "sanity clearance" from a doctor. This was supposed to keep psychotic motorists off the road.
Second, it urged pedestrians to either raise a hand or wave a yellow flag to indicate to drivers that they wanted to cross the road.
Both efforts failed and were quickly scrapped.
The "sanity clearance" was too easy to obtain and people disliked the expense. (Imagine flunking your driving test because you failed a sanity clearance!)
The hand-raising promotion actually increased pedestrian deaths. Apparently pedestrians seemed to believe that, as long as they raised their hand, they had "permission to ignore all traffic rules and boldly march out in to the middle of the road whenever they felt like it."
Sydney Morning Herald - Mar 24, 1968
July 1966: The mathematician Mervyn Stone published an article in the journal
Nature that analyzed "the optimal speed and posture to adopt when caught without protection in a rain shower."
The article itself is mostly gobbledygook to me, but apparently he concluded that if the rain is coming from behind you then "walk forward leaning backwards." While if you're walking into the rain then "lower the head and walk as fast as possible."
Reference:
"Kinematic Programming for Rain," Nature - July 23, 1966
The Branford Expositor - Sep 19, 1966
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