I walk past this boulder, located on the grounds of some State Offices near the Rhode Island capitol, about once a week. This week, I happened to notice it featured a plaque. Here's what the plaque says (click to enlarge):
Gift to the future? Where? Is it the boulder? But the boulder is pretty much just a bland frame for the plaque!
This appears to be nothing more than an egocentric tribute to the people involved, a way to memorialize themselves. Or am I missing something?
WU-vies will find much to amuse them
on this page of weird medical gadgets.
One of the prime charlatans whose stuff is on display was a fellow named
Dr. Albert Abrams pictured to the right.
You can read a book he wrote here.
Yeah, right, make money renting out your reptiles to store-owners.
From the 1950 catalog.
Dresden art dealer Petra Kujau was found guilty of forgery this week, after passing off three hundred paintings she had come into possession of as the work of her "great-uncle", Konrad Kujau. The 51 year-old singer turned dealer would add a facsimile of Kujau senior's signature to the paintings, then sell them on at a greatly inflated price.
So far, so mundane. What makes this story particularly WU worthy is that Konrad Kujau was himself a forger, and his self-proclaimed niece was selling her forgeries as "genuine forgeries" created by her famous uncle Konrad. It all begins to make sense once you learn that Mr. Kujau did not limit himself to forging paintings, but was also known to forge the odd diary or two, specifically those of one Adolf Hitler. Although ultimately unsuccessful, his
forgeries of the Hitler Diaries were good enough to fool not just many newspapers and magazines, but also at least two historians, and the unmasking of the hoax caused many a journalist and editor a red face. But the notoriety afforded Konrad Kujau as the man "behind" the Hitler diaries meant that he could command considerable sums for something a small as Hitler's signature on a card, and original "Kujau forgeries" soon became enough of a collector's item that he could make a comfortable living from them after his release from prison in 1987.
After his death in September 2000 his business was carried on by Petra Kujau, who evidently decided that one forgery was as good as another, and began importing cheap copies of famous works from Asian suppliers and passing them off as eminently more desirable "Kujau forgeries", which in one sense they were. But soon the sheer volume of Kujau forgeries on the market aroused the suspicions of at least one collector, who tipped off the police to the double forgery.
Which just leaves the question, just where can I get hold of a genuine Petra Kujau double forgery? Now that's something I'd like to own!
If you lease a car for two years from any car company, you would still say it's "my" car. You wouldn't go around telling people "no that's not my car, it actually belongs to X company, I'm just leasing it." Of course you wouldn't, that would be ridiculous! But apparently the FAA has a very different set of rules. Case in point, the US Department of Transportation recently fined a non-profit air ambulance company (Mercy Flights of Medford, Oregon) $30,000 for saying that the helicopter they are leasing is "ours".
You can read the details here. Thank goodness our government has the time and money to keep such blatant violations under control!
As magic tricks go, the "I can vomit wine" claim has died a deserved death. One imagines that neither David Copperfield, nor even Penn & Teller, will be reviving the spectacle of Floram Marchand any time soon.
Floram Marchand: The Great Water Spouter
In the summer of 1650, a Frenchman named Floram Marchand was brought
over from Tours to London, who professed to be able to 'turn water into
wine, and at his vomit render not only the tincture, but the strength
and smell of several wines, and several waters.' Here - the trick and
its cause being utterly unknown - he seems for a time to have gulled
and astonished the public to no small extent, and to his great profit.
Before, however, the whole mystery was cleared up by two friends of
Marchand, who had probably not received the share of the profits to
which they thought themselves entitled. Their somewhat circumstantial
account runs as follows.
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Category: Annoying Things, Frauds, Cons and Scams, Government, Statues, Monuments and Memorials, 1990's