Lewis Omer’s Hand Grenade Throwing as a College Sport, published in 1918, appears in various lists of books with odd titles.
I was curious about the contents of the book, but I initially came up empty handed. The British Library blog reported that it was a nine-page booklet, but that no copies of the title seemed to remain in existence. The Library of Congress didn't have a copy, nor did any other libraries. And the British Library's own copy was destroyed during aerial bombing in World War II.
So why hand-grenade throwing as a college sport? Because, at the time Omer wrote his book, young American men were being sent to fight in World War I, and some colleges had introduced grenade throwing as a sport, to prepare them for the war. Using dummy grenades, obviously, rather than live ones. Omer's booklet provided the official rules for the new sport.
Submarines were a new menace during World War I, but Louis Schramm figured he had a way to defeat them. His invention (Patent No. 1,143,233) involved powerful electromagnets that would pull submarines to the sides of a ship where they could be electrified, killing their crew.
Critics pointed out that the magnets would attract anything metallic to the side of the ship, including mines.
Thanks to Natalie Teeple's invention, women riding public transportation in the 1910s had the means to give a sharply pointed response if "mashers" pressed up against them.
It is well known that rude and flirtatious youths and men, "mashers," frequently avail themselves of the crowded condition of cars and other means of transportation to annoy and insult ladies next whom they may happen to be seated by pressing a knee or thigh against the adjacent knee or thigh of their feminine neighbor, who, as often happens is too timid or modest to create a disturbance by calling attention to the fact.
It is the object of my invention to guard against undue familiarity of the character designated by the provision of means whereby the offender is automatically warned, punished, and deterred from persistent offense; and to this end my invention consists primarily of an elastic resilient spring arranged in conjunction with a spur or prick and adapted to be attached to an under-skirt in such manner that when subjected to extraneous pressure the sharp point will protrude;
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.