Psychopathic Melodies

Few men are as notorious as Charles Manson, the self-styled messiah who ordered the senseless deaths of several people in the late 1960s. That infamy has served him well – due to his tangential relationship with the music industry he is one of the most mentioned people in popular songs, third after Jesus and Elvis Presley. Among the literally hundreds of songs referencing him, three in particular stand out:

1. The Bee Gees After Dark, a song about misguided love that ultimately leads to murder,
2. Eminem’s Bad Meets Evil, a strident (but conventional) indictment of the US prison system, and
3. Three Dog Night’s Mama Told Me (Not To Come), which recounts the two months that Danny Hutton, TDN’s lead singer, spent living with the Manson Family in Dennis Wilson’s home.

Interestingly, all three songs were #1 hits for their respective artists.

Fast Fact

Mice can climb trees.

Dust Bunnies

In the slums of Owendo, a suburb of the Gabonese capital of Libreville, a strange case of urban adaptation has been occurring over the last three centuries – “city” rabbits.

These rabbits had initially been introduced to the area by Dutch traders in 1637, when an ill-fated expedition was forced to abandon all of its cargo after its hull was punctured during an attack by Turkish pirates. The rabbits were going to be used as a sort of natural pesticide – the tea crops the Dutch were growing in Sumatra were beset by a vine that was ruining the crops, and it had been discovered that the rabbits would devour the vine while leaving the tea crop intact.

Owendo was only recently settled at that point, and the rabbits managed to carve out a niche for themselves amongst the genets, Gambian pouch rats and other predators moving in to the area. Being rabbits, of course their first (and only) thought was to procreate, which they did with abandon; luckily for them, they managed to build up a sizable and diverse enough population that when predators finally did move in to the area in greater numbers the rabbit population was able to survive. Today there are approximately 40,000 rabbits living near Owendo, nearly the size of the human population.

They inhabit markets, warehouses, the local dump – anywhere and everywhere they can possibly find food (the other thought on rabbits’ minds). They are considered pests, vermin, and are treated as such, a nuisance second only to the booming pigeon population.

Although scientifically they can still be classified as dutch rabbits, evolution is occurring, and a small movement is underway to classify these rabbits as oryctolagus harensis, dust rabbit.

Beauty Secrets of the Ancients - I

Many things have been done in the name of Beauty which, in hindsight, were just plain nutso. Mercury facials, lead paste, stinging insects, women and men have gone to extreme lengths to make themselves attractive according to the standards of the times.

Egyptian women of the 16th and 17th Dynasties found that a bite from a young cobra would cause the skin around the bite to contract and become smooth. The neurotoxins in the venom were stimulating paralysis of their facial muscles, but the age of the cobras and the relative strength of the venom meant that the paralysis was short lived and relatively harmless (as harmless as snake venom gets, at least.) A consequence of the repeated snakebites was that the women would develop an immunity to the venom, requiring more and more bites to produce the same skin-tightening effect. Fortunately, one of the reforms that pharaoh Akhenaten introduced when he ascended to the throne was to outlaw this practice.

Fast Fact

Louis B. Mayer, one of the founders of MGM, was born with anosmia, the inability to smell.

Fast Fact

The word "computer" was coined in 1966 by Gene Roddenberry.

An Odd Squirrel

Animals have a variety of methods to avoid predators – octopi release ink into the water to hinder pursuit, hedgehogs can roll into a spiky ball, some lizards can drop their tails to confuse pursuers. But Mother Nature has a weird sense of humor – evolution can create some strange animals. One of these strange animals is the Jansen’s Squirrel.

Discovered in 1980 in northern China, the Jansen’s Squirrel is named after Emil Jansen, the Norwegian biologist who discovered them. Measuring approximately 10 inches and weighing between 2-3 pounds, the Jansen’s Squirrel has white fur to blend in with its snowy surroundings. But the fur is more than just camouflage – due to its thickness and the extreme cold of its habitat, the fur of the Jansen’s Squirrel is capable of generating up to a 15 milliamp charge. This electric charge isn’t much, but it’s enough to momentarily stun a juvenile Siberian tiger (the natural predator of the Jansen’s Squirrel, among other animals.) Of course, as Siberian tigers have become a very endangered species over the last 30 years, the Jansen’s Squirrel population was in danger of growing larger than its habitat could support. Fortunately (depending on your point of view), Northern Hawk Owls have been migrating into the area; since they are airborne predators they aren’t affected by the electrical discharge. This shift of predators in the predator-prey relationship is a dual-edged sword, however – the Jansen’s Squirrel is now in danger of being hunted to extinction by the Hawk Owl. Whether the Chinese government will listen to the recommendations of their biologists to find ways to preserve the Jansen’s Squirrel population remains to be seen.

As an interesting aside, the popular animated character Pikachu is based on the Jansen’s Squirrel – Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of Pokemon, encountered the Jansen’s Squirrel on a trip to northern China in 1993.

Eleanor Roosevelt and the Very Fast Car

First Lady, mother, tireless advocate for the poor and downtrodden, race car driver?

Eleanor Roosevelt had many interests in her life – but even someone who gives so much of herself helping others needs a little “me” time once in a while. For Eleanor Roosevelt, that “me” time was spent trying to break the land speed record.

Mrs. Roosevelt’s lifelong passion for speed started while she was at Allenswood Finishing School in London in 1902. While there she had a brief affair with Henri Fournier, the Frenchman who had recently set the land speed record of 76.5 mph at Dourdan. Over the years she made a total of 15 attempts to break the land speed record, ultimately succeeding on May 7th, 1923 at Arpajon, France with a speed of 140.62 miles per hour over 1 kilometer in a modified Rolls-Royce Railton. Satisfied with her accomplishment she devoted less time to pursuing her hobby – by that time she spent most of her time assisting her husband in his political aspirations. Her record was broken less than a year later, and she was never able to reclaim it. She was the only First Lady to hold any sort of record until 1963 when Lyndon Johnson became president. In 1933 Lady Bird Johnson had set the NCAA Women’s Basketball free throw record of 25 free throws in one game, a record that held until 1972.

Fast Fact

Due to the chemical structure of chlorophyll and the process of photosynthesis, there is no such thing as a blue flower. Photosynthesis works by absorbing sunlight and converting it into energy for the plant to use. Since chlorophyll is able to convert blue light much better than the rest of the visible spectrum, plants don’t reflect that light (as it is all converted); hence, no blue flowers. Most “blue” flowers are actually a shade of purple. For all you greenthumbs out there, this means growing your plants under blue lights will increase their size and health.

Bowlers and Bad Men

The bowler or derby hat has a long history in Britain and the US; most readers will be familiar with it from its numerous appearances in popular culture. However, for a short while in the 1900s it was actually illegal to wear a bowler hat in the British Isles.

The bowler hat was originally created to protect the heads of coke shovelers in the low-ceilinged bowels of oceangoing steamships. It was named a bowler hat because of its shape, like an upturned bowl. Over time the hat became associated more generally with lower class workers in Britain, especially London. As organized mobs began emerging in late 19th Century London they adopted the bowler hat as an identifying symbol, and vicious brawls would happen with regularity in the back alleys of London as competing gangs fought for turf. One gang in particular, the Derbyshire Boys, were so notorious for the brutality with which they ran their protection and debt collection rackets that their name became synonymous with the bowler hat – hence the nickname “derby” hat.

Upon his ascension to the throne in 1901 Edward VII instituted several new laws designed to curb the growing power and lawlessness of these gangs. In addition to instituting a curfew in the lower class neighborhoods of London and closing many of the betting parlors and opium dens run by these groups, he restricted the wearing of the bowler hat to members of the nobility and the House of Lords. Through the use of (some say excessive) police power he was able to bring these gangs to heel, or at least cause them to move most of their activities from London to some of the surrounding cities like Dover and Southampton. The bowler hat ban was lifted in 1910 after the death of Edward VII.

One side effect of the ban on bowler hats was that it was illegal for American film companies to import Laurel and Hardy films into Great Britain. It was felt that the comedies glorified the lives of the “drunkards, indigents and wastrels” portrayed in the films.

Fast Fact

Pope Pius IX suffered from homichlophobia, a fear of fog.

The Origin of the Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan is one of the most violent and racist organizations operating in the United States today. Dedicated to white supremacy and the intimidation of African Americans, few groups are as reviled by modern society as the KKK. However, most people are unaware that the origin of the group was actually a marketing gimmick to “relieve rubes of money they shouldn’t rightly have.”

Richard R. Reed and John B. Kennedy (the originator of the quote above), ex-Confederate soldiers and business owners, returned to their hometown of Pulaski, Tennessee after the Civil War determined to reopen the textile import business they ran before the war. Business was not good, however, as they were unable to compete with the cheap goods flowing south from the northern textile factories. In desperation, they hit on the idea of convincing their neighbors to buy from good Southern boys by appealing to their pride and racism. Reed and Kennedy formed the Ku Klux Klan and, pressing their wives and daughters into service as seamstresses, manufactured cheap robes from the white linen they couldn’t sell and required all new KKK members to purchase their robes only from RK Textile Importers.

So what began as a way to “relieve rubes of (their) money” over time evolved into the virulent, racist organization we know today.