Those tykes today! if they're not wearing Baby High Heels, they're improving their lung capacity like little Wall Street "Masters of the Universe" on special kiddie treadmills. Read all about the craze here.
The most comprehensive weather study ever has confirmed what we all suspected - the weather really is worse at weekends.
Meteorologists at the University of Karlsruhe evaluated 6.3 million pieces of climate data from across Europe between 1991 and 2005.
Their conclusion: On weekends the weather is worse than on weekdays.
But even if the weather had been good, we would have suffered from this campfire phenomenon. As we are told in The Complete Book of Fire by Buck Tilton:
Q: Why does the smoke from a campfire seem to blow into your face no matter where you sit or how many times you change position around the fire?
A: Your body blocks the flow of fresh air drawn to the flames. You are then creating a low air pressure area with your body and the warm smoke moves toward the lowest air pressure. With no wind, no matter where you sit in relation to the fire, the smoke will be drawn toward you.
Of course, we all recall personally or at least have heard of the Davy Crockett Craze of the mid-1950's, when Disney's promotional genius had kids everywhere running around in coonskin caps. But who among us lately has dared to summon up memories of the Castro dressup craze from a few years later?
Yes, once upon a time, at the start of his revolution, Castro was received in the USA as a hero of the oppressed peoples of Cuba, and seen as a fit role model for tykes to imitate.
Please click on the image for the full glory of this era, and excuse any flash glare from my poor photo skills. I had to photograph rather than scan, to capture the full impact of the double page spread.
I'm just now recovered from my viewing of THE WILD WOMEN OF WONGO. But I still cannot say what my favorite moment is from the film. Perhaps the wild dance ordered by the High Priestess. Perhaps the endless scene where our heroine, the cute-as-a-button redhead Jean Hawkshaw, to the right here, wrestles underwater with a rubber alligator.
You'll have to decide for yourself. First, take a look at the unfortunately bleached-out trailer. Then view the whole film--in glorious "Pathecolor"--on YouTube, in several parts, with the first one featured after the trailer.
Here at WU Central, the proprietors believe in training up the next generation to be observant and appreciative of all things weird. Hence the photo you see here.
This image was taken by my tweener niece, Becky Fuller, at the farm my brother Frank and his wife Beverly own in Medford, Oregon. It depicts a curious beast Becky calls "the curly horse."
Becky is enrolled in 4-H, and they've plainly been conducting secret experiments to hybridize sheep and horses. How else to explain the odd woolly fur of this anomalous quadruped, its mullet-like mane, or the unnaturally symmetrical appearance of its brown "stockings"?
Here at WU Central, we're all about providing useful knowledge to our eager readers, serving as a resource to help them with their perplexities.
For instance, I cannot count how many times readers have written in with this question:
Well, now you need no longer live in darkness and confusion, as we present the scanned pages of a 1972 youth sex-education manual: A Boy Today...A Man Tomorrow. The cover is reproduced below, and the rest of the content after the jump.
On a semi-serious note: we've all seen sex-education materials from earlier decades that are full of prejudices and misinformation. While I have not yet read every word of the current sample, I found what I did read to be highly broadminded and useful and in line with current teachings. Note that the version here is a 1972 revision of a 1961 revision of a 1959 original. I'd love to have the earlier versions, to see the differences.
It's easy to make fun of the Sixties, but their legacy in such matters as this is truly exemplary.
[From Fortune for December 1936. Two image files, click separately.]
Sniffles = Death.
Not the most subtle or believable of Madison Avenue appeals. Sure, in that pre-antibiotic age, pneumonia was deadly. But I can't imagine that the proportion of cold-sufferers who contracted pneumonia--at least among the affluent audience for Fortune--was any higher then than it is today. In other words, miniscule.
Category: Boredom, Education, Family, Children, Parents, Futurism, Pop Culture, Yesterday's Tomorrows, Science, Technology, Video, 1950's