April 2023
April 10, 2023
Music of the NY Times Financial Section
I posted a month ago about Rhapsody in Big Blue, which was Darryl Gammill's transformation of the stock price of IBM into music. It turns out that Gammill wasn't the first to use asset prices as the basis for music. Back in the 1930s, composer Joseph Schillinger came up with a system that allowed him to convert "fluctuations in wholesale prices of agricultural produce," as listed on the NY Times financial page, into music. Details from A Thing or Two About Music by Nicolas Slonimsky:
Posted By: Alex - Mon Apr 10, 2023 -
Comments (0)
Category: Money, Music
The Mole Torpedo
Weapon tunnels through the earth to the enemy. Why is this not in constant use today? Too easy nowadays to sense seismic activity?Full patent here.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Apr 10, 2023 -
Comments (0)
Category: Death, Inventions, Patents, War
April 9, 2023
Exploding Easter Eggs
Happy Easter!
Sioux City Journal - Mar 28, 1983
Posted By: Alex - Sun Apr 09, 2023 -
Comments (4)
Category: Explosives, Holidays, Easter, Eggs, 1980s
Truman Capote, Broadway Lyricist
Did the same author who penned IN COLD BLOOD write "Two Ladies in De Shade of De Banana Tree?"Indeed he did!
Posted By: Paul - Sun Apr 09, 2023 -
Comments (0)
Category: Ethnic Groupings, Fey, Twee, Whimsical, Naive and Sadsack, Stereotypes and Cliches, Theater and Stage, 1950s
April 8, 2023
Dead Opossum Design
Reported in the Los Angeles Times (June 3, 1980). Sounds like an urban legend to me. But maybe there really was a lady in Riverside who was matching her home furnishings to her dead opossum.
Posted By: Alex - Sat Apr 08, 2023 -
Comments (1)
Category: Animals, Telephones, Interior Decorating
Artwork Khrushchev Probably Would Not Have Liked 49
Eugène Brands: De Tang - The Pincers signed and dated '8/51
The artist's Wikipedia page.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Apr 08, 2023 -
Comments (0)
Category: Art, Avant Garde, 1950s
April 7, 2023
Electro-Stimulation Bicycle
Inventors Young Sam Chun and Hyoung Tae Kim of Korea were recently granted Patent No. 11,458,310 for an "electro-stimulation type indoor bicycle." If I'm reading the patent correctly, it gives you an electric shock if you pedal too slow:
Posted By: Alex - Fri Apr 07, 2023 -
Comments (5)
Category: Exercise and Fitness, Patents
Señor Wences
Once upon a time, pop culture was very different.The Wikipedia page.
Posted By: Paul - Fri Apr 07, 2023 -
Comments (4)
Category: Puppets and Automatons, Television, Surrealism, Twentieth Century
April 6, 2023
Biggest gratuity ever?
In 1941, when Dolores Moran was 15, she worked as a waitress at a drive-in restaurant in San Jose, California. One day she served a local farmer some coffee and hamburger. The next year Moran left San Jose and moved to Hollywood where she achieved brief fame as an actress.
Dolores Moran. Image source: wikipedia
By the 1960s her acting career had ended. But then, in 1968, Moran learned that the farmer she had served at the drive-in 27 years ago had died, leaving her his apricot orchard valued at around $300,000 (or $2.5 million in today's money).
Moran had no memory of serving the farmer, whose name was Anthony Ponce. Nor had the two ever communicated since then. She said, "for the life of me I can't remember the man." But evidently she had made a big impression on him.
Monroe News Star - Dec 18, 1968
Ponce's relatives contested the will, arguing that he was not of sound mind when he made it. I haven't been able to find out how the case was settled, but I'm guessing Moran got to keep the orchard since it's usually fairly difficult to invalidate a will.
If she did get to keep it, then that would have to count as one of the biggest gratuities of all time. Perhaps the biggest? Especially for an order of coffee and hamburger.
Peninsula Times Tribune - Feb 19, 1969
Posted By: Alex - Thu Apr 06, 2023 -
Comments (3)
Category: Death, Law, Restaurants, Actors
Sex, the Key to the Bible
If you want to peruse 172 pages of this kind of analysis, dive right in!
Posted By: Paul - Thu Apr 06, 2023 -
Comments (5)
Category: Eccentrics, Religion, Sexuality, 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. Chuck Shepherd 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. Our banner was drawn by the legendary underground cartoonist Rick Altergott. Contact Us |
