A drinking game of the 1960s, invented at European ski lodges:
The Montana Standard - Feb 10, 1963
A few more details from the Akron Beacon Journal (Feb 6, 1963):
Latest sport catching on with the ski crowd at smart Winter spas is "fizz bowling." A large grapefruit serves as a bowling ball and the player bowls at full gin bottles instead of pins... player then drinks contents of all pins left standing. Each player is allowed a "handicap" number of bottles he must knock down.
Some googling reveals that it's now possible to buy gin bottles shaped like bowling pins. Available from Amazon for $18.99 (empty, you add your own gin). However, they're made of glass, so probably not great for fizz bowling.
I'm guessing the people back in the 60s were playing with minis, rather than full-size bottles.
The magazine Leisure debuted in 1963. It was distributed exclusively at barbershops and featured articles intended to be of interest to male readers, on subjects such as hunting, fishing, boating, camping, golf, skiing, travel, hobbies, photography, etc. But what made the magazine unique was that all the articles were printed in extra large type. This was so that barbershop customers who took off their glasses to get their hair cut could still read the magazine.
I’ve found several newspaper articles referencing the existence of this magazine, but I haven’t been able to find any copies of it archived anywhere. It doesn’t even appear in library databases.
NPR’s Jennifer Sharpe has defined eefin music as "a kind of hiccupping, rhythmic wheeze that started in rural Tennessee more than 100 years ago."
Back in the early 1960s, some in the record industry thought that eefin was going to be the next big thing. Though the hopes for it never panned out. The biggest eefin hit was "Little Eefin Annie" by Joe Perkins, which reached #76 in the charts in 1963.
But if you're a fan of Benny Hill, you might appreciate the song 'Eefin Nanny Stomp,' released in 1960 by Billy Hutch His Harmonica And Orchestra. You can clearly hear the Benny Hill theme (Yakety Sax) during parts of it.
Posted By: Alex - Thu Jan 23, 2020 -
Comments (5)
Category: Music, 1960s
Its formal name was the “man-carried auto-navigation device,” but it went by the nickname “Man Can.” The Martin-Marietta Corporation received patent no. 3,355,942 for it in 1967.
It was a device designed to help soldiers avoid getting lost. The patent offered this description:
a lightweight, completely mechanical, low energy device by which small units of men may locate themselves accurately with respect to some reference point when operating in the jungle, darkness or bad weather without dependence upon visual landmarks.
It combined a compass and a pedometer. A GI would record his initial location on a map, and then the device would track his footsteps and the directions in which he turned. When he was done walking, the device would tell him his new coordinates.
A key feature of the device was that it didn't use any battery power. So the GIs would never need to worry about it running out of juice. It operated via a bellows located in the heel of the GI's shoe.
I can't find any follow-up reports about how well this gadget worked. Apparently not well enough to warrant its adoption by the army. But it was an interesting concept.
Percy was a prize-winning racing pigeon with an odd habit:
At the drop of a hat — and even without that signal — he rolls on his back, tucks in his wings, curls up his legs and claws and to all intents and purposes is dead. Only his bright red eyes and an occasional craning of the neck show that Percy is playing possum.
No matter where he is or where you put him, Percy keeps up the pose. On the top of the television, on the rim of the cup he won at the Royal Welsh Show, or tossed in the air, he holds it.
Even putting him on the floor next to Suzie the cat doesn’t cause a twitch.
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.