Weird Universe Archive
January 2009
January 1, 2009
Fish Flour
From Popular Science, Oct 1931. A woman baking fish-flour cookies. Mmmmm.
Tests of fish flour, a new food high in mineral content, obtained as a by-product of the packaged fish industry, are now in progress at a public institution in Washington, D.C. Here eighty children have been selected for the first large-scale test of the food, under Government supervision, to determine its value. The experiment is expected to last a year. The subjects eat samples disguised as ginger cookies, containing as much as fifteen perfect of fish flour.
Fish Flour is basically a powder made from ground-up fish. From the 1930s to the 1960s the fish industry pushed hard to convince people that fish flour was a) palatable, and b) a possible solution to world hunger (because of its high protein content). But I guess it never caught on. There was a last high-visibility pr effort in 1968, when U.N. officials were given fish-flour cookies as a snack, but after that fish flour fell off the map.
Posted By: Alex - Thu Jan 01, 2009 -
Comments (6)
Category: Food
Calendar Recycling
It's the New Year. Time to get a new calendar. But John Walkenbach has a good idea. Don't buy a new one. Recycle an old one:If you think about it, only 14 different calendars exist. January 1 can occur on any of seven days -- but some years are leap years and have an additional day...
you can use any of the following calendars for a 2009 calendar: 1903, 1914, 1925, 1931, 1942, 1953, 1959, 1970, 1981, 1987, or 1998.
By the way, if you start saving calendars in 2009, you will have a complete set of 14 different calendars in 2036.
you can use any of the following calendars for a 2009 calendar: 1903, 1914, 1925, 1931, 1942, 1953, 1959, 1970, 1981, 1987, or 1998.
By the way, if you start saving calendars in 2009, you will have a complete set of 14 different calendars in 2036.
Here's a 1903 calendar you can print out and use.
Posted By: Alex - Thu Jan 01, 2009 -
Comments (0)
Category: Holidays
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction books such as Elephants on Acid. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Chuck Shepherd Chuck is the purveyor of News of the Weird, the syndicated column which for decades has set the gold-standard for reporting on oddities and the bizarre. Our banner was drawn by the legendary underground cartoonist Rick Altergott. Contact Us |
