Category:
Love & Romance
Love & Romance
Crook, the Unkissed
Algie R. Crook (or "Alja" Crook, as his name was sometimes spelled) was a professor of mineralogy at Chicago's Northwestern University. His great claim to fame, however, had nothing to do with science. Instead, it was that in April, 1901 he allegedly told his undergraduate class that he had never kissed a woman. More specifically, he reportedly said, "I have never uttered a profane word, never have smoked or chewed tobacco, drank intoxicants, nor hugged or kissed a woman."Given that he was thirty-seven years old at the time, this was considered a remarkable admission. So remarkable that when word of it leaked to the press it became international news.
Great Falls Tribune - May 15, 1901
The media started referring to him as "Crook, The Unkissed." Acquaintances of Crook (or people who claimed to be his acquaintances) readily confirmed the tale, attributing his lack of kisses to his embrace of "austere science." One said, "the scientific atmosphere is inimical to the love germ."
Offers of marriage flooded in, from women hoping to be the one to thaw the professor's icy reserve.
Philadelphia Times - Apr 28, 1901
The French were particularly taken with the story. As reported in the Leavenworth Times (May 8, 1901):
Leading [French] novelists and scientists have been interviewed. Some pronounce the Chicago instructor an "idiot" and a "monster," but a powerful clan uphold his theory that love for woman, even love of the ideal type, seriously impedes a man who would be great and learned.
Supposedly the news even reached as far as China where the dowager empress expressed a desire to see him.
Philadelphia Inquirer - Apr 27, 1901
Crook, for his part, was said to be "abashed and humiliated over the gossip the affair has provoked," and also furious at the "tattling undergraduates."
He issued a denial of the allegation, stating, "I have never told any one that I have refrained from hugging or kissing women, for the reason that I consider it nobody's business but my own."
He recalled having advised a student to do as he did — never to kiss, hug, swear, and so forth. And he figured that's how the story must have started. But he insisted that he hadn't said that he had never done these things at all.
However, it was too late. The story was out there and couldn't be taken back. His denial got buried in the back pages of newspapers, if it was printed at all.
In other interviews, Crook asserted that he had kissed female family members, which didn't help his case much since it implied that he had indeed never romantically kissed a woman. Also, a former student recalled that Crook had made similar claims before, noting, "He is a consistent Methodist, and his convictions sometimes cause him some trouble." So I kind of suspect that Crook really did make the no-kissing claim to his class, but denied it later out of embarrassment.
Whatever the case may have been, the tale continued to haunt him. The following year (1902) a group of students at Northwestern formed an "Anti-osculation Society," claiming that they were "following the teachings of Professor Algie R. Crook, the man who never was kissed." They elected him an honorary member.
In 1904 Crook got married, and inevitably this triggered a renewal of the no-kissing story. "Unkissed Man To Wed," reported the papers.
The Hutchinson News - Dec 28, 1904
Crook and his wife eventually had five children together. He died in 1930, at the age of sixty-six, and the kissing story resurfaced in his Chicago Tribune obituary (June 1, 1930). It was, after all, the achievement he was most famous for:
In 1901 he won fame by being credited with having declared he was never kissed. He denied he had made the assertion after it roused world wide comment.
However, the memorial of him in the Journal of the Mineralogical Society of America omitted the kissing story. Nor is it mentioned on the wikipedia page about him.
Posted By: Alex - Fri Oct 08, 2021 -
Comments (6)
Category: Eccentrics, Science, 1900s, Love & Romance
He’d Have To Get Out And Get Under (To Fix Up His Automobile)
"I have a daughter who's hungry for love. She likes to ride every day."
Posted By: Paul - Fri Jul 23, 2021 -
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Category: Innuendo, Double Entendres, Symbolism, Nudge-Nudge-Wink-Wink and Subliminal Messages, Music, 1910s, Cars, Love & Romance
My Honey Chile
"She's got a wooden leg, all stiff at the knee...just a limb from the old apple tree."
Posted By: Paul - Sun Jun 06, 2021 -
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Category: Humor, Music, 1940s, Differently Abled, Handicapped, Challenged, and Otherwise Atypical, Love & Romance
ISO Man who eats with knife
This sounds like a setup for a romcom. City girl advertises for a cowboy who eats his food with a knife. She gets 175 proposals in response.In a movie she would move out west and have all kinds of adventures with her knife-eating man. But I haven't been able to track down what became of Frances Beauvais.
Casper Star-Tribune - Mar 23, 1922
Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer - Apr 6, 1922
Posted By: Alex - Mon Mar 01, 2021 -
Comments (5)
Category: 1920s, Love & Romance
The Cure
Posted By: Paul - Tue Feb 23, 2021 -
Comments (5)
Category: Music, Television, 1960s, Diseases, Love & Romance
Clair de Lune Espagno
A trip to the moon teaches a lovesick suitor a lesson.
Creator's Wikipedia page.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Feb 16, 2021 -
Comments (2)
Category: Aliens, Costumes and Masks, Dreams and Nightmares, Movies, Special Effects, Spaceflight, Astronautics, and Astronomy, Foreign Customs, 1900s, Love & Romance
The Human Relationship Simulator
This post seemed appropriate for Valentine's Day, since it's about an engineer's attempt to use machine logic to improve the "ambiguities of the woman/man relationship".James F. Hollander was a patent attorney with a degree in electrical engineering. In the late 1970s he invented and patented what he called the "Human Relationship Simulator". It consisted of a box with various dials.
Even after reading his patent, and an article about his invention, I'm not exactly sure how the thing operated. From what I can gather, if a couple were having an argument, or needed to make a decision (such as where to go for dinner), they could both adjust dials on the Simulator, and it would give them an answer. And measure the intensity of their feelings.
Here's more info from a 1977 article in the Asbury Park Press:
Taking a hypothetical issue, such as a man and woman deciding whether or not to go out to dinner, information is fed into the panels. One represents the man; the other, the woman.
Each subject uses dials that represent four areas — compliance with society, attention to own desire, social pressure and personal inclination. The personal inclination and social pressure gauges are intricately detailed to show adamant 'yes' or 'no' responses, or degrees such as strong preference, or very much or some.
Attention to desire is measured in readings of low, medium and high, as is compliance with society.
As the subjects feed this information into the panels, other gauges measure tension, feelings, guilt or pride, emotional independence, like and dislike, and influence, based on each decision.
The machine does the thinking, lights a decision of 'yes' or 'no' and tells the subjects their emotional responses....
In a marriage situation, Hollander said the device could show the individuals why something is going wrong in the relationship if arguments are portrayed and feelings defined.
"I wanted to pick out the ambiguities of the woman/man relationship," he pointed out.
Each subject uses dials that represent four areas — compliance with society, attention to own desire, social pressure and personal inclination. The personal inclination and social pressure gauges are intricately detailed to show adamant 'yes' or 'no' responses, or degrees such as strong preference, or very much or some.
Attention to desire is measured in readings of low, medium and high, as is compliance with society.
As the subjects feed this information into the panels, other gauges measure tension, feelings, guilt or pride, emotional independence, like and dislike, and influence, based on each decision.
The machine does the thinking, lights a decision of 'yes' or 'no' and tells the subjects their emotional responses....
In a marriage situation, Hollander said the device could show the individuals why something is going wrong in the relationship if arguments are portrayed and feelings defined.
"I wanted to pick out the ambiguities of the woman/man relationship," he pointed out.
Asbury Park Press - Aug 29, 1977
If that doesn't seem entirely clear, then here's a sample from Hollander's patent:
The decision voltage output of the man-simulator is connected to the threshold detector of the woman-simulator via a sense port. Similarly, the woman-simulator has a decision voltage output port connected to a sense port and input to the level threshold detector of the man-simulator. A switch interrupts each output so that the effect of relationship can be shown. By adjustment and interpretation of the dial settings and decision indications, paradoxes and problems in man-woman relationships are demonstrated.
Posted By: Alex - Sun Feb 14, 2021 -
Comments (0)
Category: Technology, Patents, Psychology, Marriage, 1970s, Love & Romance
My Girlfriend in Walk
For those who would like to hold someone's hand as they walk around, but can't find anyone human who will oblige, engineers at Gifu University in Japan have invented the "My Girlfriend in Walk". It's a robotic hand covered in soft, skin-like gel that will grip your hand. Plus, it emits the scent of a woman's shampoo, and (through a smartphone app) can simulate the sounds of breathing and rustling clothes.The inventors hope that it might help people who have been isolated due to the pandemic.
More info: SoraNews24
Posted By: Alex - Sun Nov 08, 2020 -
Comments (5)
Category: Technology, AI, Robots and Other Automatons, Love & Romance
Follies of the Madmen #492
Is Miss Fixit a nurse or a child--or both? I'm confused....
Source.
Posted By: Paul - Sun Nov 01, 2020 -
Comments (3)
Category: Business, Advertising, Corporate Mascots, Icons and Spokesbeings, Hygiene, 1950s, Love & Romance
VARIACIONES 1/113
In the Parque del Retiro (Retiro’s Park) in Madrid, Ines Sastre runs to meet Javier Bardem who is waiting for her with his arms wide open and they embrace one another in a passionate kiss. This only one shot which lasts one minute twenty seconds is subjected to a hundred and thirteen changes for one hour and seventeen minutes. “I wanted to exhaust the possibilities of changing a shot by changing the music, the colours, by burning it, by making some holes…” remembers Aguirre; “sometimes, the heads are not visible, or we can only see her legs, or the image seems to be scrapped off”… /… the variations of this shot are preceded by the ones of another couple taken in the beach of La Concha in San Sebastian that maybe acts as a suggestion of a merely real support for this ideal meeting. The images are accompanied by not only Borges’ voice-over but also Fernando Fernan-Gomez and Francisco Rabal’s voices-over among some not so well-known other voices …/ … disparate prints, sometimes unpredictable, that Borges’ literature proposed to moviemakers of this period and from distant cultures. It is the disparity of Javier Aguirre’s experimentation along with the contradiction that seems us so provocative.
Alas, I cannot find this film online, or even any clips. But I felt WU-vies should know about it, in case any art-house showing appears in your neighborhood, or you find it on disc, or on streaming!
Posted By: Paul - Fri Dec 06, 2019 -
Comments (0)
Category: Annoying Things, Excess, Overkill, Hyperbole and Too Much Is Not Enough, Movies, Avant Garde, Twenty-first Century, Love & Romance
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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, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. 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. Contact Us |