Name That List, #72

What is this a list of? The answer is below in extended.

• The days of the week
• A crater on the moon
• A breed of horse
• A large port city
• A canal
• The months of the year
• The word for bread
• A star in the constellation of Taurus
• Dozens of streets and schools
• An airport
• A type of yogurt
• A perfume
• A dahlia
• A 670-pound meteorite

More in extended >>

Posted By: Alex - Tue Mar 25, 2025 - Comments (1)
Category: Name That List

Follies of the Madmen #619

The Women's Laundromat Chorus.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Mar 25, 2025 - Comments (0)
Category: Domestic, Hygiene, Music, Advertising, 1970s

Unusual Scalp Dermatitis in Humans

Jay R Traver (1894-1974) was an entomologist at the University of Massachusetts. In 1951 she published a paper in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington describing how her body had been infested by mites.

Much of the article reads like a horror story. She details the itching and crawling sensations she felt as mites crawled under her skin, and even in her eyes:


She describes her efforts to capture the mites by digging them out of her skin, and goes into detail about the increasingly caustic substances she applied to her skin in an attempt to rid herself of the mites. She even tried radiation therapy.

The catch is that the medical community refused to believe she was actually infested by mites, and they still don't. The consensus is that she was suffering from "Delusory Parasitosis" (the false belief that one is infested by parasites). As one reviewer has noted, "the article makes no sense entomologically. The house dust mites do not and cannot parasitize humans."

You can find her original article at archive.org, or there's a transcript available at birdmites.org.

Incidentally, the "R" in Jay R Traver didn't stand for anything. Her middle name was R.

More info: "Mad Scientist: the unique case of a published delusion," wikipedia

Posted By: Alex - Mon Mar 24, 2025 - Comments (0)
Category: Insects and Spiders, Science, Mental Health and Insanity

Mrs. Miller

Read her Wikipedia page. Or just dive right into her canon!

One track below, the others at this link.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Mar 24, 2025 - Comments (4)
Category: Fads, Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art, 1960s, Cacophony, Dissonance, White Noise and Other Sonic Assaults

Cyclo-Knitter

This is the only way I'd ever be able to knit a scarf by myself.

More info: bicyclescreatechange.com

Posted By: Alex - Sun Mar 23, 2025 - Comments (1)
Category: Crafts, Inventions

The Deaths of Violet and Daisy Hilton

The recent news about the sad deaths of Gene Hackman and his wife, indicating that they perished days apart in the same house, with Hackman, dying second, not seeking help, has an even stranger precedent in the passing of once-famous conjoined twins, Daisy and Violet Hilton.



You can read their entire story at Wikipedia. But the salient part for our purposes is this paragraph:

On January 4, 1969, after they did not report to work and attempts to reach them by telephone failed, the police were called to investigate. The twins were found dead in their home, victims of the Hong Kong flu. According to the autopsy, Daisy died first; Violet died between two and four days later.[15] Violet had not called for any help.[14]

Realistically speaking, what could Violet do? Perhaps the corpse of her sister could have been amputated safely, perhaps not. Sharing no organs with her twin, Violet might have survived. But she made a choice.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Mar 23, 2025 - Comments (0)
Category: Death, Human Marvels, Twentieth Century

On Kawara’s Date Paintings

Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara began creating his "date paintings" on January 4, 1966. These were paintings of that day's date, done in plain lettering against a solid background. If he couldn't finish the painting on the day he started it, he would destroy it.

Kawara continued creating date paintings until he died in 2014, creating over 3000 of them. Several of these date paintings have now sold for over $1 million.

I like the concept, and I admire his commitment to his routine. But $1 million sure seems like a lot to pay for a painting of a date, especially when there's 3000 similar paintings out there.

More info: OnKawara.co.uk

An example of a date painting

Posted By: Alex - Sat Mar 22, 2025 - Comments (1)
Category: Art, Overpriced Merchandise

N-Zone

N-Zone, Arthur Lipsett, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

In this experimental film, Arthur Lipsett pieces together his vision of this fragmented world using odds and ends from other people’s image and sound recordings. By juxtaposing these snippets of found film with snatches of comment or dialogue echoing the banality of human communication, Lipsett shows the emptiness of much of what we say or do. N-Zone is one man's surrealist sampler of the human condition.

The creator's Wikipedia page.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Mar 22, 2025 - Comments (0)
Category: Ambiguity, Uncertainty and Deliberate Obscurity, Movies, Avant Garde, Surrealism, 1970s

Troubles caused by harsh toilet tissue

We've posted before about the idea of "toilet tissue illness" that Scott Tissues invented and then advertised heavily around 1930. The idea being that if you used the wrong toilet paper (anything not made by Scott Tissues) you might end up a bed-bound invalid. Here's another example of that campaign.

Good Housekeeping - May 1930

Posted By: Alex - Fri Mar 21, 2025 - Comments (2)
Category: Health, Hygiene, Excrement, Advertising

God Is For Real, Man

I don't know where to begin or stop quoting in this amazing book. So much street savvy, telling it like it is!

Read it for yourself at the link.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 21, 2025 - Comments (0)
Category: Crime, Languages, Prisons, Religion, 1960s