The Great Gravityo was the stage name of Albert Franklin Davidson (1880-1949), a multi-talented performer whose career spanned the first half of the 20th Century. He's one of many once-popular performers who are now all but forgotten. His specialty was pulling cars and lifting heavy weights with his hair, but he was also a sharpshooter, juggler, magician, and trapeze artist.
He performed right up to the end of his life, dying of a heart attack shortly after a performance at the age of 69. It's amazing he still had his hair at 69, given his occupation.
There was hardly any info online about him. But here's a brief description of his act I found in the Paris Texas News (Sep 4, 1941):
25 year old Russian contortionist "Zlata" has just released a calendar featuring her in 12 of her most eye- (and spine-) popping poses. From cooking in the kitchen with one leg behind her head, to getting off a bus with, er, one leg behind her head, the spry former-gymnast has tied herself in knots to produce something to please her legions of fans.
More facts about Zlata, with many more examples of her art, can be found here, courtesy of the Daily Mail. (Potentially NSFW.)
Readers might recall previous posts here about a newly publicized very tall sexy woman, often pictured in her bikini next to an average-sized gal.
For those who admire such miracles of nature, here info on another, Gwendoline Christie, a mere 6'3", and soon to be starring in THE GAME OF THRONES. She's the subject of the foto book linked-to above on the right.
See an odd and slightly risque foto of her from the book after the jump.
Talk about a mammoth appetite, when most of the world’s large mammals went extinct roughly 10,000 years ago, the vast majority of the vanished species were herbivores. This of course meant that they were no longer around to eat the plants they otherwise would have, and - according to Christophers Doughty and Field from Oxford and Stanford Universities respectively – this freed up an extra 1.4 trillion kilos of food, roughly 2.5% of the net product of all Earth’s dry land. However, the researchers add, this excess had been ‘used up’ by burgeoning human numbers by around 1700 and today we consume six times as much as the Pleistocene critters ever did while simultaneously driving down land productivity by 10% (Nature)(PDF).
That’s not to say that our massive consumption doesn’t have it’s upside, As Vangelis Kapatos of Manhattan discovered when he attempted suicide by jumping from his ninth floor flat, only to survive when his fall was broken by a pile of uncollected garbage. Mr. Kapatos’ timing, from his perspective, couldn’t have been worse, the unusually large garbage pile was due to collections being suspended because of snow. They were due to resume the day after his impromptu dumpster dive (Today Online).
Mind you, we’re not the only animals prone to excess. After finding the bodies of dozens of starlings near the city of Constanta in Romania, locals were concerned that the cause might be bird flu, instead post-mortems of the birds have revealed that they in fact died of alcohol poisoning, having ‘drunk’ themselves to death on the discarded leftovers of the local winemaking industry. A least they died happy (BBC News).
Better than dying happy, though, is living happy, and the secret of that, says the UK’s Office for National Statistics, is having a job. But it’s not the pay but the job security that counts, say the government statisticians, which ironically are facing staff cuts themselves due to the economic downturn. Other key happiness factors, according to the preliminary report, are good personal health and a decent family life. What will we do without these people (Telegraph)?
"In the picture-postcard community of North Vancouver, local bottle pickers have created a thriving subculture of shopping-cart racing. Murray Siple, a former snowboarder and sport film director injured in a serious car accident ten years ago, captures the thrill of a high-speed race of one of the men and compares it to extreme sports."
Category: Human Marvels, ShowBiz