What does a bored billionaire do when he's temporarily run out of hundred-dollar bills to light his cigars with? Now he can turn his champagne bottles into spray guns and soak guests with premium bubbly!
If you need to ask how much this costs, then you're not part of the target market. (It's $495)
February 1967: Munich resident Helmut G. Winter was sick and tired of the noise of military aircraft flying low over his house. So he built a catapult and started launching Bavarian potato dumplings at the planes.
In one week he launched 120 dumplings. He never managed to score a direct hit. But eventually both the West German Luftwaffe and American pilots conceded defeat and agreed to a flight path that avoided his house.
Reportedly, he gave the Americans a model of his dumpling cannon as a gesture of thanks, inscribed "As a souvenir and a warning — Helmut G. Winter, The Bavarian Dumpling Shot." I bet this model has now been lost or thrown away, instead of being in a museum where it belongs.
After Wayne Anthony Evans was pulled over for speeding by a Seattle police officer, a paring knife was found in his pocket, and he was arrested for possession of a fixed-blade knife. In his defense, Evans argued that the Seattle municipal code banning fixed-blade knifes violated his constitutional right to bear arms.
Not so, the Washington Supreme Court recently decided. It didn't consider the constitutionality of the municipal code itself, but (looking narrowly at the facts of this specific case) decided that there was no historical evidence that paring knives are "arms." Therefore, they can be banned.
we hold that not all knives are constitutionally protected arms and that Evans does not demonstrate that his paring knife is an "arm" as defined under our state or federal constitution.
If Evans had been carrying a bayonet, perhaps the outcome of the case would have been different.
Italian toy maker Brumm normally makes miniature models of fancy sports cars (Ferraris, Alfa Romeos, etc.). But in 2006, the company decided to release models of the "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They sold, at the time, for around $10 — but now go for around $36, if you can find any in stock.
The company defended itself, insisting that its intent was to "provide a small historical contribution so as not to forget what generated the worst catastrophe of the twentieth century” and that the bomb models were actually a protest "against the insanity of nuclear war."
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.