December 2015
December 22, 2015
NASA Presents: Space Food!
Posted By: Paul - Tue Dec 22, 2015 -
Comments (5)
Category: Food, Spaceflight, Astronautics, and Astronomy, 1960s
December 21, 2015
CHEESE POWER
The French are using whey left over from making Beaufort cheese as fuel for electric power stations. Tr`es brillant!
Posted By: Alex - Mon Dec 21, 2015 -
Comments (9)
Category: Food, Utilities and Power Generation
Honor system at police donut shop
The Index-Journal (Greenwood, South Carolina) - Aug 10, 1960
SAN DIEGO, Calif. (AP) — At the police headquarters coffee shop, the Police Relief Assn. reported in its monthly publication: "The honor system of paying for doughnuts and rolls accounted for a loss of only $15.64 during May."
Posted By: Alex - Mon Dec 21, 2015 -
Comments (6)
Category: Police and Other Law Enforcement, 1960s
Follies of the Madmen #268
This was one of a series of postwar ads for magnesium, which illustrated how the miracle metal would allow consumers to do things nobody would ever want to do, like carry a baby carriage on your shoulder.
Original ad here.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Dec 21, 2015 -
Comments (8)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Technology, Babies and Toddlers, 1940s
December 20, 2015
Uncle Wiggly vs. DONNIE DARKO Rabbit
Equally creepy? The earlier guy the inspiration for the later one?
Original ad here.
Posted By: Paul - Sun Dec 20, 2015 -
Comments (7)
Category: Animals, Anthropomorphism, Games, Movies, 1920s, 2000s, Fictional Monsters
Art of Erasure
In her "Dictionaries" series she uses an eraser to "rub away aggressively" at words and printed definitions. (For instance, she has erased the words "white," "yellow," and "black" from old Webster's dictionaries to create "colorblind dictionaries.")
And her erasure sculptures "are made from the eraser residue, which she gathers into modest piles."
Info source: Blouin Art Info. Also check out Collins' website. Her older work appears to be more traditional charcoal and pastel sketches.
Posted By: Alex - Sun Dec 20, 2015 -
Comments (5)
Category: Art
December 19, 2015
Cannibalistic Ducks
Cannibalistic terror in the world of ducks:
El Paso Herald - Aug 18, 1926
A quick google search reveals that cannibalism is a "vice" that ducks are known to sometimes develop. As noted on an Australian government website about the brooding and rearing of ducks:
overcrowding
lack of ventilation
faulty nutrition.
The only known way to stop it is to remove the rim at the front of the bird’s upper bill. Commercial beak-trimming machines are available. They have heated cauterising blades and run on electricity or butane gas. Beak trimming should be performed only by a competent operator and only when it is essential to reduce damage and suffering in the flock.
Posted By: Alex - Sat Dec 19, 2015 -
Comments (10)
Category: Animals, 1920s
Elmer Saves Christmas
Elmer research here and here.
Full story here.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Dec 19, 2015 -
Comments (3)
Category: Animals, Anthropomorphism, Fey, Twee, Whimsical, Naive and Sadsack, Holidays, 1950s
December 18, 2015
Rice recipe caused nervous breakdown
1992: Bobbie June Griggs sued South Carolina Electric & Gas, claiming that its publication of her rice recipe caused her to suffer a nervous breakdown. Her husband also brought an action for "loss of consortium."Griggs had entered her rice recipe in the utility's Third Annual Rice Cookoff in 1989. She wasn't picked as a finalist, but the utility nevertheless included her recipe in the cookoff cookbook (Rice, a lowcountry tradition: the official cookbook for the Third Annual South Carolina Rice Cookoff). This is what triggered the nervous breakdown.
The state court dismissed her case, noting that it was really a copyright case and thus belonged in the federal courts. In 1995, the state supreme court affirmed this decision (although one justice dissented). And it seems that Griggs tried to take her case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, because the AP reported in April 1996 that the Supreme Court also refused to hear her case, noting that "copyright law does not cover infliction of emotional distress" and also that you can't copyright a single recipe.
Her recipe, which she said she spent 10 years developing, involved canned tomatoes, meatballs, onions and bell peppers on a bed of rice. She called it "June's Creation."
Spartanburg Herald-Journal - Apr 23, 1996
Posted By: Alex - Fri Dec 18, 2015 -
Comments (10)
Category: Food, Cookbooks, Lawsuits, 1990s
Emilia Pennanen - Sugar at Labbodies
Posted By: Paul - Fri Dec 18, 2015 -
Comments (3)
Category:
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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 |
