January 2025
January 31, 2025
National Leave Us Alone Week
The first week of April was once set aside as "National Leave Us Alone Week," but observance of this week has fallen by the wayside.The name suggests a celebration of anti-social curmudgeonliness. Unfortunately, the reason the week was invented was more prosaic.
It started in 1949 at the suggestion of PR consultant F. Lander Moorman of Douglas, GA. His idea was that, for one week, merchants should be left alone by solicitors.
Some details from the Congressional record of 1950:
Inevitably, the businessmen chose a Queen of Leave Us Alone Week.
Greenwood Commonwealth - Mar 20, 1950
Perhaps Leave Us Alone Week could be revived as a week in which all spammers and telemarketers have to leave us alone.
More in extended >>
Posted By: Alex - Fri Jan 31, 2025 -
Comments (4)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Business, Holidays, Curmudgeons and Contrarianism, 1940s
Sparky’s Magic Baton
Posted By: Paul - Fri Jan 31, 2025 -
Comments (1)
Category: Music, Fantasy, 1950s
January 30, 2025
Half Umbrella
Mark Piachaud's 2011 patent, granted by the British Patent Office, is below in its entirety (link).I think someone now needs to patent a quarter umbrella (or a half-half umbrella).
Posted By: Alex - Thu Jan 30, 2025 -
Comments (2)
Category: Patents, Weather
The Finkosel
Posted By: Paul - Thu Jan 30, 2025 -
Comments (4)
Category: Cartoons, Fictional Monsters, Cars
January 29, 2025
Perfume from fatbergs
In the future, perfumes will be made from fatbergs. Text from BBC.com:Fatbergs are accumulated lumps of fat from cooking oils, toilet and other food waste that people put down their drains. Prof Wallace gets his from a company that specialises in fishing them out of sewers and turning them into biofuels. They arrive at the lab in a tube.
The first step is to sterilise the material in a steamer. Prof Wallace then adds the specially modified bacteria to the remnants of the fatberg. The bacteria have a short section of DNA inserted, to give the bacteria their particular properties.
The fatberg gradually disappears, as the bacteria eat it, producing the chemical with the pine-like smell - this can be used as an ingredient in perfumes.
Will fatbergs be listed on the ingredients?
Posted By: Alex - Wed Jan 29, 2025 -
Comments (2)
Category: Perfume and Cologne and Other Scents
Two-Way Records
What could this image possible convey? Using two styli at the same time on the same record? No, that was only fanciful and metaphorical.Let's let this website explain:
When stereo was introduced, Design tried to claim that their records were compatible mono/stereo, and could be played on either mono or stereo players. The public soon found out that mono players would damage these records just as easily as other stereo records, so after reissuing or simultaneously issuing about 50 of their albums on a new series (the DCF-1000 Series), they abandoned the compatible stereo series in favor of the normal mono and stereo issues. The good part was, that for folks with stereo players, these records worked fine and were in true stereo, as far as we have heard. The bad side is that by the time the series was winding down, about 1960, the quality of the vinyl had deteriorated to the extent that right out of the wrapper the records were noisy.
So: another technology too good to be true, for which early adopters paid the price.
Posted By: Paul - Wed Jan 29, 2025 -
Comments (0)
Category: Frauds, Cons and Scams, Inventions, Music, Technology, Vinyl Albums and Other Media Recordings, 1950s, 1960s
January 28, 2025
Eterna-Crib
A Polystyrene casket for "still borns, fetals, and prematures" made by Filaform Co.I think it was sold from the 1960s until around the 1990s.
The ad below appeared in the trade journal American Funeral Director, but I'm not sure when. I found it reproduced in a Czech-language booklet, Funebracka Romance (Funeral Romance), by Radovan Kratky.
image source: eBay
Posted By: Alex - Tue Jan 28, 2025 -
Comments (6)
Category: Babies, Death
Tightrope Wedding in France
Posted By: Paul - Tue Jan 28, 2025 -
Comments (0)
Category: Human Marvels, Weddings and Marriage, 1950s, Europe
January 27, 2025
Queen of National Wallet Week
Cindy Heller, shown below, later became a well-known gossip columnist for the New York Post. She's better known by her married name, Cindy Adams. Her wikipedia page doesn't mention that she was Wallet Week Queen.
Macon News - Nov 9, 1949
Glasgow Evening Journal - Nov 7, 1949
Life - Nov 14, 1949
Posted By: Alex - Mon Jan 27, 2025 -
Comments (1)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Money, 1940s
Levitating Necktie
Any gimmick with a string leading into one's pants is a winner!Full patent here.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Jan 27, 2025 -
Comments (0)
Category: Fashion, Inventions, Patents, 1940s, Jokes, Pranks
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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 |
