Weird Universe Archive

March 2023

March 11, 2023

March 10, 2023

48 Famous Sardine Meals

I accept that there are famous chicken, beef, and pork meals. There are famous fish meals as well (such as fish and chips). But famous sardine meals? Even after looking through the recipe book below (available via archive.org), I'm not convinced there are any.



Also, the book only lists 38 recipes. Either the authors didn't think anyone would actually count, or the archived copy has pages missing. The pages aren't numbered, so hard to know which is the case.

  1. Sardines in the blazer
  2. Sardines on brown bread toast
  3. Sardines with anchovy sauce
  4. Sardine canape
  5. Sardines a la steensan
  6. Creamed sardines
  7. Sardines fried in batter
  8. Grilled sardines
  9. Sardine snacks
  10. Sardine and asparagus timbales
  11. Hot sardine rolls
  12. Mystery sandwiches
  13. Sartuna sandwich
  14. Sardine kedgerel
  15. Sardines "my own"
  16. Fried sardines
  17. Stuffed tomatoes
  18. Pilchered eggs
  19. Sardines lyonnaise
  20. Virginian sardine sandwiches
  21. Sardine salad en mayonnaise
  22. Hot sardine sandwich
  23. Broiled sardines
  24. Sardine relish
  25. Curried sardines
  26. Sardine croquettes
  27. Baked sardines
  28. Broiled sardines
  29. Sardine salad
  30. Sardine and olive sandwiches
  31. Sardine cocktail
  32. French toasted sardines
  33. Devilled sardines
  34. Japanese salad
  35. Pickled sardines
  36. Mayonnaise dressing
  37. Thousand island dressing
  38. Sour cream dressing

Note: my wife says that 'sardines on toast' is quite famous in Britain. So my lack of sardine awareness probably represents an American bias.

Posted By: Alex - Fri Mar 10, 2023 - Comments (3)
Category: Food, Cookbooks

Miss Paramount Week

This beauty prize is plenty weird on its own. Most beauty queen titles are not delimited by a timeframe. Of course, the winners of the most famous contests generally reign for a year. A week seems a short splurge. But this winner, actress/singer/model Sandy Warner, also notches up another claim to WU fame. She was the cover girl for many of Martin Denny's exotica albums. Read about her at the link.



Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 10, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Movies, Music, Space-age Bachelor Pad & Exotic, Television, 1950s, 1960s

March 9, 2023

Miss Unsafe Brakes

According to Railey Jane Savage, in her book We have a winner!, Miss Unsafe Brakes appeared at the 1939 Chicago Auto Show.

Miss Unsafe Brakes represents one of the few examples of a "miss" title named for something that's being criticized, rather than promoted. Another example would be Miss Smog America.

Posted By: Alex - Thu Mar 09, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, 1930s, Cars

March 8, 2023

Hypnosis Test for Divorce

Uncertain about whether to get divorced? Dr. Herbert Mann promised that hypnotism would provide an answer.

Passaic Herald-News - Oct 18, 1965

Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 08, 2023 - Comments (2)
Category: Hypnotism, Mesmerism and Mind Control, Divorce, Marriage, 1960s

Follies of the Madmen #558

The trouble with the culture nowadays is that angst-ridden teenagers do not have enough access to their friendly neighborhood drugstore owners.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Mar 08, 2023 - Comments (3)
Category: Hygiene, Advertising, Teenagers, 1970s

March 7, 2023

The Great Starvation Experiment, 1944-1945

I wrote this brief article a number of years ago. It used to be posted on another site, which no longer exists. So I'm relocating it here. . .

One of the greatest killers of World War II wasn't bombs or bullets, but hunger. As the conflict raged on, destroying crops and disrupting supply lines, millions starved. During the Siege of Leningrad alone, over a thousand people a day died from lack of food. But starvation also occurred in a more unlikely place: Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was here that, in 1945, thirty-six men participated in a starvation experiment conducted by Dr. Ancel Keys.

Group photo of the participants


The Purpose of the Experiment
starvation subject

Dr. Ancel Keys

Keys ran the Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene at the University of Minnesota. He had already achieved some fame as the designer of the army's K-rations — the portable combat food rations carried by American troops. (Rumors persist to this day that the "K" in K-rations stands for Keys, though the army has never confirmed this.)

The starvation experiment developed out of Keys' interest in nutrition. He realized that although millions of people in Europe were suffering from famine, there was little doctors could do to help them once the war was over, because almost no scientific information existed about the physiological effects of starvation. Keys convinced the military that a study of starvation could yield information that would have both humanitarian and practical benefits — because knowing the best rehabilitation methods could ensure the health of the population and thereby help democracy grow in Europe after the war. Having secured his funding, Keys set out on his novel experiment.

More in extended >>

Posted By: Alex - Tue Mar 07, 2023 - Comments (5)
Category: Experiments, Nutrition, 1940s, Dieting and Weight Loss

Electrical Frauds of 1916

Rather than try to reproduce the text that accompanies these illos as an illegible thumbnail here, I direct you to the source, where you can enlarge the image for readability.



Posted By: Paul - Tue Mar 07, 2023 - Comments (6)
Category: Frauds, Cons and Scams, Technology, 1910s

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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 books such as Elephants on Acid.

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.

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Chuck is the purveyor of News of the Weird, the syndicated column which for decades has set the gold-standard for reporting on oddities and the bizarre.

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