Marlin Hawkins served as an elected official in Conway County, Arkansas for 38 years — for most of that time as sheriff. He built up a legendary political machine, being able not only to win reelection for himself (19 times) but also to deliver votes for other candidates. He often boasted that he could accurately predict the outcome of every election in the county.
It was long suspected that he was rigging the elections, especially since absentee voters would always vote for him by a wide margin, but no one could ever prove anything.
After he retired in 1978, Hawkins eventually wrote his autobiography, which he brazenly titled How I Stole Elections (available on Amazon). He joked that he "stole" them by "treating my neighbors right."
But no, he stole them by ballot fraud.
His book came out in 1991. The year after, some people who were remodeling their house discovered a whole stash of marked ballots from a 1968 election hidden in their attic. The house had previously been owned by one of Hawkins' deputies.
Hawkins got away with it because the statute of limitations had expired in 1974. He died in 1995.
In his 1953 book Your Feet Are Killing You, Dr. Simon J. Wikler expounded his theory that just about every medical problem one could imagine (cancer, allergies, tooth decay, etc.) was caused by shoes. His solution was to go barefoot. Ideally all the time.
His theory was summarized in The Quarterly Review of Biology (Dec 1954):
The title of this book is not used as an eye-catching facetious comment about a foot-sore individual. The author, described as a "Doctor of Surgical Chiropody," uses the words in their literal sense. He believes that foot imbalance is responsible for such "degenerative diseases" as cancer, rheumatic fever, chronic fatigue, diseases of the uterus, sexual disturbances, neuroses, essential hypertension, chronic alcoholism, narcotic addiction, allergies, eyestrain, and dental caries. He postulates that proper foot care will do much to eliminate these ailments.
The chain of events leading to the development of these diseases is described as follows. The modern shoe deforms the human foot, causes the muscles to shrivel, and leads to foot imbalance. Even the feet of infants are distorted because they are firmly tucked in under blankets or covered by tight stockings. Upon bearing weight, the deformity of the feet leads to a rolling out of the legs that carries the femora into external rotation. This deprives the pelvis of its anterior support, and allows it to dip downward in front. The spine is therefore forced into exaggerated curves, so that the abdominal space is reduced and the chest cavity is compressed. The vital organs and the blood vessels and nerves are displaced or abnormally stretched. The abnormal stresses lead to cancer of the breast, stomach, prostate, and uterus. To substantiate his thesis the author offers case histories and statistics. In addition to the development of this concept, the writer uses the latter part of the book to enumerate some foot ailments and to describe briefly the symptoms and treatment.
Who could resist spending $57.40 plus $10.00 shipping for a book with this description:
Turtle with a small purple alien friend scientific expedition. Crossing the Sea like Crossing the Sea two stories travel the world. Little Turtle purple alien with friends explore the ocean together. they saw the beauty of the Great Barrier Reef. but dangerous whale is near! Little purple alien turtles have a friend who has a cool graduated spaceship! Spaceship. turtles and small purple alien friends a series of scientific adventures. They leap into space. understanding the mystery of the eight planets; they cross the center of the earth. after a dangerous volcanoes . But not all smooth sailing expedition. when they go to sea. but accidentally be swallowed into the stomach.
...by drawing the text letter by letter (and word for word) from a bag containing the twenty six letters of the alphabet, each letter being replaced after being drawn.
For anyone planning to attempt this, John Venn (the guy who invented Venn diagrams) helpfully calculated the odds in his 1888 book The Logic of Chance.
The odds come out to 1 in 26350,000. In other words, not impossible. So start picking those letters!
One of the great mysteries in American literature is the title of Herman Melville's 1851 novel, Moby-Dick. Or is it Moby Dick? Should the title be hyphenated, or not?
The first American edition had a hyphen in the title. But confusingly, inside the book the whale was referred to as Moby Dick, without a hyphen — except for one single time, on page 609, when the name was hyphenated because it spanned two lines.
There have been many subsequent editions. Some of them have a hyphenated title. Some of them don't. It seems to be totally random. But because that first edition had a hyphen, scholars consider that to be the correct spelling. So the title of the book is Moby-Dick, but the name of the whale is Moby Dick.
But why the hyphen? There's a number of theories. Perhaps Melville just liked hyphenated titles. One of his earlier works, White-Jacket, was also mysteriously hyphenated.
Or perhaps the hyphen was a mistake. Supporters of this theory note that the title was changed at the last minute, from The Whale to Moby-Dick, and the title change was communicated to the printer by Melville's brother, Allan. So maybe Allan made a mistake, and it was never Herman's intention to hyphenate the title?
We'll never know. It'll always be one of those mysteries that literary scholars love to debate. (such as here, here, and here).
How To Hide Anything, by Michael Connor (Paladin Press, 1984). The entire book can be viewed or downloaded for free at archive.org.
With little effort and expense, you can hide cash, armaments and even family from the menacing eyes of burglars, terrorists or anyone. Learn how to construct dozens of hiding places right in your house and yard. Here are small hiding places for concealing money and jewelry and large places for securing survival supplies or persons. More than 100 drawings show how to turn ordinary items into extraordinary hiding places.
The notion of Koro, or supernatural penis theft, is practically a NOTW trademark. I'm pretty sure I first learned about this delusion from Chuck about thirty years ago.
Now we can learn even more, thanks to a new book which covers this exotic madness, plus many others.
From the publisher's site:
"The Geography of Madness is an investigation of 'culture-bound' syndromes, which are far stranger than they sound. Why is it, for example, that some men believe, against all reason, that vandals stole their penises, even though they’re in good physical shape? In The Geography of Madness, acclaimed magazine writer Frank Bures travels around the world to trace culture-bound syndromes to their sources–and in the process, tells a remarkable story about the strange things all of us believe."
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.