Virgin's DiseaseYou know you've got it if: You're suffering from green skin, menstrual cessation, and lethargy. Victims: In 1554, doctors determined the green monster was targeting virgin girls with the disease they labeled "chlorosis." Later, various physicians reported that the condition was a direct result of women either being undersexed, or in the case of university girls, over-educated. Treatment: Many believed the cure to ending virgin's disease was as simple as ending virginity. In a letter to a worried father, one physician suggested that he arranged for his daughter to get pregnant as soon as possible. His rationale? "If they conceive, they recover." Amazingly, chlorosis didn't disappear from medical textbooks until the 1930s. These days, doctors recognize the symptoms as part of anemia and prescribe iron supplements instead of sex. Visceroptosis, or "Organ Drooping"You know you've got it if: You think you're sick. If you suffer from occasional headaches, poor sleep, or even if you don't have any real symptoms, organ drooping is probably to blame. Victims: People with poor posture, women who had multiple pregnancies, and - above all - girls who wore excessively tight corsets. Visceroptosis was defined as the downward displacement of inner organs within the abdominal cavity. Testing was simple: if a doctor placed light pressure on patients' abdomens and if it made them feel better, organ drooping was taking place. Treatment: Although organs can cause problems if they get repositioned in the body, the diagnosis was basically a way for surgeons to make money. Organ drooping was such a common diagnosis at the end of the 19th century that specialized surgery clinics popped up across the country to "treat" it. But the popularity of visceroptosis ended with World War I, when surgeons had real problems to fix. The English SweatYou know if you've got it if: You're experiencing fever, aches, exhaustion, and of, course, sweating through your shirt. Worse still, people were said to die within 24 hours of contracting the symptoms. Victims: Strangely, only people living in England. Outbreaks of the sweating sickness broke out in the summer months of 1485, 1508, 1517, 1528, and 1551. Only once did an outbreak make it beyond England's borders. The real cause: Poor hygiene. Although scientists still aren't sure exactly what caused "the sweating sickness," they believe it might have been a flu-type virus spread by filth or rodents. One monarch had a unique prevention technique: King Henry VIII was so scared of contracting the sweat that he moved around the country from manor to manor trying to outrun it. ... And One Real Disease You Might Have: Love SicknessYou know if you've got it: You're listening to a lot of country music. In addition to some unrequited love, you also may experience loss of appetite, trouble sleeping, and an irregular pulse, among other things. What it isn't: One ancient medieval writer claimed the illness could cause the body of a jilted lover to fill with black bile. Also, an Islamic philosopher said lovesick men could turn into werewolves. What it could be: Roman Emperor Commodus' personal physician, Claudius Galenus or Galen, first officially diagnosed lovesickness as a medical disease in the 2nd century C.E. Although that classification eventually fell out of favor, recent brain-imaging studies have shown that people who are madly in love exhibit neurological patterns similar to OCD sufferers. |
|
The article above, written by Josie Swindler, is reprinted with permission from Scatterbrained section of the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of mental_floss magazine. Be sure to visit mental_floss' website and blog for more fun stuff! |
|
Alex Santoso's Blog Posts
For the Adelaide Fringe Festival, a team of artists known as the Crateman Crew created this Katamari-esque sphere of milk crates:
The crate sphere was designed to be rolled down the street as the final act in the parade. Comprising of 688 milk crates and being over 4.5 meters high, it had an estimated weight of over 700 kilograms. It was hoped that upon seeing us struggle with the beast, members of the audience would join in, and help us roll the sphere to a glorious end!
Unfortunately the reality was somewhat different.
Wooster Collective has what happened next: Link
Our friend Tokyoflash is asking visitors to participate in a design process by giving feedback and opinions to help with the development of Buetooth necklaces that let you connect wirelessly to your cell phone or computer (to let you answer the phone handsfree while driving or chat on Skype without having to sit down at the computer).
Some of the designs are very interesting: Link - Thanks Paul!
Broker: what you become after investing
in stocks
-
Wall Street joke
Continuing our quest to unearth fun facts from A to Z, here's the latest Neatolicious Fun Facts article. "D" is for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Given the current economic crisis, here are some timely fun facts about the granddaddy of stock market indices:
1. Origins: Charles Dow
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (the DJIA or The Dow) is a stock market index. It comprises of stocks of select large companies and is used to gauge the performance of the whole stock market.
The Dow was created by American journalist Charles Henry Dow on May 26, 1896, as part of his research into market movements. That explains the "Dow" in Dow Jones, but what about the "Jones" part? That was named after Dow's business partner Edward Davis Jones, a statistician (not related, as far as I could tell, with the current Edward Jones company). Interestingly, Jones didn't have anything to do with creating the stock index, other than being Dow's business partner in their company Dow Jones & Co.
Dow and Jones didn't set out to be in the business of keeping track of the stock market. They were journalists who had been working for a newspaper before they decided to go into the financial news business for themselves in 1882 (with another business partner named Charles Bergstresser). The trio opened shop in the basement of a lower Manhattan candy store that later became the New York Stock Exchange. (Source)
The Dow, Jones & Company (they later dropped the comma) published daily hand-written news bulletins called "flimsies" delivered by messengers to subscribers. A year later, they came out with the "Customers' Afternoon Letter," which contained the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
You may not have heard of the Customers' Afternoon Letter, but I'm sure you know what the newspaper later became: The Wall Street Journal (the first edition of which was just 4 pages long and sold for 2 cents).
2. Was the Dow Jones Industrial Average the oldest stock index?
Nope - on July 3, 1884, Charles Dow created the first one: the Dow Jones Transportation Average. It consisted of 11 transportation-related companies (most of which were railroads).
3. The first 12 stocks listed and what happened to them
The first 12 stocks listed in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, published on May 26, 1896 were industrial (or so called "smokestack" companies). Of these 12, only 1 (General Electric) is still doing business under the same name:
| Company | What happened to it |
| American Cotton Oil | Became Bestfoods |
| American Sugar | Evolved into Amstar Holdings |
| American Tobacco | Broken up in 1991 antitrust action, part of which became Fortune Brands and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. |
| Chicago Gas | Absorbed by Peoples Gas |
| Distilling & Cattle Feeding | Evolved into Millennium Chemical |
| General Electric | Still General Electric |
| Laclede Gas | Still Laclede Gas, but no longer listed in the Dow |
| National Lead | Becomes NL Industries, now manufactures titanium dioxide pigments |
| North American | This holding company for public utilities was broken up in 1940s |
| Tennessee Coal & Iron | Absorbed by U.S. Steel |
| U.S. Leather (preferred stock - a hybrid between a stock and a bond) | Dissolved in 1952. |
| U.S. Rubber | Became Uniroyal, then part of Michelin |
(Source: Dow Jones FAQ)
Oh, and the first day's closing is 40.94. If you had invested $1 then, you'd have $169 today, a return of 16,828%.
4. A "Blue Chip" Index
If you're financially savvy, you'd already know this: the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a "blue chip" index, meaning it is comprised of just 30 of the largest companies in the United States.
But why "blue chip"? The term comes from casinos, where blue chips have the highest values. Its first use to describe stocks was coined by Dow Jones staff Oliver Gingold in the early 1920s:
That term apparently got its start in 1923 or 1924 when Gingold was standing by the stock ticker at the brokerage firm that later became Merrill Lynch. Noticing several trades at $200 or $250 a share or more, he said to Lucien Hooper of W.E. Hutton & Co., that he intended to return to the office to "write about these blue-chip stocks." Thus the phrase was born. It has been in use ever since, originally in reference to high-priced stocks, more commonly used to day to refer to high-quality stocks.
5. How Now, Dow Jones
Marlyn Mason, Tony Roberts and Brenda Vaccaro in How Now, Dow Jones
(Photo and more on the musical by Skip Card of Playbill: Link)
In 1967, lyricist Carolyn Leigh came up with the idea of a Broadway musical comedy based on the stock market. She collaborated with Elmer Bernstein (music), Max Shulman (libretto) and David Merrick (producer) to create the musical How Now, Dow Jones. (Source)
Though How Now, Dow Jones was considered a Broadway failure, one song titled "Step to the Rear" became quite popular and was later adapted into The Fighting Gamecocks Lead the Way, the fight song of the University of South Carolina.
6. The best and worst days in the history of the Dow
Given the current economic crisis, it seems that every day brings us bad economic news and even lower stock prices. Indeed, we have seen an incredibly volatile stock market and record-setting daily point gains and losses.
The largest daily point loss was recorded on Sept 29, 2008, when the DJIA lost 778 points (7%). The largest point gain happened about two week later (gain of 936 points or 11% on October 13, 2008) only to be followed with another big drop (733 points or 7.9%). You know what happened next: right now, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen by about 45% from last year.
Riding
the Dow T-shirt at Crazy Dog T-shirts
The largest percentage loss occurred in Black Monday of 1987, when the stock markets around the world crashed. The Dow lost 508 points or a drop of 22.6%. Even today economists and financial analysts couldn't come to an agreement as to the reason behind such a crash (some blamed program tradings, others blamed market psychology).
7. Dowism
I can't bear to close on such a DOWn note (get it? it's a double pun), so let's end with this pun: dowism. It's a play on the words Taoism, a Chinese philosophy, and Dow Jones, used to represent the philosophy of consumerism.
Columnist and radio personality Steve Bhaerman, under pseudonym Swami Beyondananda wrote in Duck Soup for the Soul:
That day, the Swami swore off sects completely. Spirit was immaterial, he decided, and he now sought fulfillment by filling himself full of all the material goodies life could provide. He moved to New York to study with the renowned guru of the stock market, Yuan Tibet, who instructed him in the Dowist path. Swami became more and more dependent on the stock market prophet, buying soybean futures like there was no tamari. Suddenly, the price of soybeans plummeted (due, it was later revealed, to a rumor planted by unscrupulous dairy- heir that tofu actually came from between the toes of Himalayan hikers). Swami frantically tried to call Yuan Tibet for his sage advice, but he could not be found. Tragically, there had been some prophet-taking on Wall Street, somebody took him, and he was never heard from again.
(Source)
"Prophet-taking?" Oh hohoho! (by the way, "tamari" is a kind of soy sauce. Clever guy, that Steve Bhaerman).
Next up: "E" (which I haven't decided yet) - in the meantime, check out these articles on Neatorama:
- 10 American Financial Meltdowns in the Past Century
- 9 Most Brazen Ponzi Schemes in History
- Past Neatolicious Fun Facts Articles: Apple, Beer, Chess
- From the Neatorama Online Store: Stock Market, The Ride
In 2007, we saw the Daft Hands: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger video clip swept through the InterWeb. Fast forward two years later and we get this little beaut: Dwarfed Punk, Daft Punk's epic song set to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
An instant classic: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Look At This
Driving through the little town of Tenaha, Texas, may cost you a lot more than just gas money. A lawsuit contends that driving the stretch of highway that goes through the city is akin to highway robbery ... by the police!
Howard Witt of Chicago Tribue has the story:
You can drive into this dusty fleck of a town near the Texas-Louisiana border if you're African-American, but you might not be able to drive out of it—at least not with your car, your cash, your jewelry or other valuables.
That's because the police here allegedly have found a way to strip motorists, many of them black, of their property without ever charging them with a crime. Instead they offer out-of-towners a grim choice: voluntarily sign over your belongings to the town, or face felony charges of money laundering or other serious crimes.
More than 140 people reluctantly accepted that deal from June 2006 to June 2008, according to court records. Among them were a black grandmother from Akron, who surrendered $4,000 in cash after Tenaha police pulled her over, and an interracial couple from Houston, who gave up more than $6,000 after police threatened to seize their children and put them into foster care, the court documents show. Neither the grandmother nor the couple were charged with any crime.
Officials in Tenaha, situated along a heavily traveled highway connecting Houston with popular gambling destinations in Louisiana, say they are engaged in a battle against drug trafficking and call the search-and-seizure practice a legitimate use of the state's asset-forfeiture law. That law permits local police agencies to keep drug money and other property used in the commission of a crime and add the proceeds to their budgets.
(Photo: Howard Witt/Chicago Tribune)
Did you spend a good portion of your childhood (and your allowance) playing video game blasting 2-dimensional aliens to smithereens? Well, here's a fun "Ice Invaders" ice tray that brings back pleasant memory. The silicon tray freezes water into the shape of a retro alien ice cubes.
We've just gotten our shipment of the Ice Invaders for the Neatorama Online Store: http://shop.neatorama.com/product-info.php?ice-invaders-pid226.html - just $7.45 each.
Update: We've also gotten new inventory of the 2-Carat Cup and Fuzz - the Crime Scene Scarf (both which sold out in about a day last time!)
| The following is reprinted from Uncle John's Unsinkable Bathroom Reader If you think about it, Pac-Man is a strange game concerning a tiny, pie-shaped creature who ate power pills so that he could catch ghosts. That's an odd premise, but nothing compared to these ... behold, the 14 weirdest video games in history: SOCKS THE CAT ROCKS THE HILL (1992) Socks, the pet cat of President Bill Clinton, must get to the Oval Office to warn the president about a stolen nuclear bomb. To do that, he must defeat villains including Russian spies, the press corps, and former presidents Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush. CHAOS IN THE WINDY CITY (1994) Basketball superstar Michael Jordan battles an army of basketball-headed zombies that has invaded Chicago. To defeat them, he uses an arsenal of magic basketballs (including fiery-hot basketballs and ice-block basketballs). TOOBIN' (1988) Toobin' Atari game (Source: World of Spectrum) At the beginning of the game, the player floats down a backwoods river in an inner-tube race. Things suddenly take a turn for the worse as the player is chased by dinosaurs, ancient Inca warriors, and angry hillbillies. BILL LAIMBEER'S COMBAT BASKETBALL (1991) Basketball is supposed to be a non-contact sport. Not the way Laimbeer played it. As a Detroit Piston in the 1980s, he was well-known for frequent flagrant fouls and starting fights on the court. His notoriety led to this futuristic basketball game in which players punch, kick, push, and throw bombs at each other. COOL SPOT (1993) In the early 1990s, 7-Up created a mascot - an anthropomorphic dot (with arms, legs, and sunglasses) based on the red dot in the 7-Up logo. The Spot was licensed for this game, which was essentially one long 7-Up ad in which the character wanders around a beach firing soda bubbles at enemies. MICHAEL JACKSON'S MOONWALKER (1990)
[YouTube Link] A drug dealer named Mr. Big has kidnapped some children and takes them to the Moon, where he plans to use a laser cannon to destroy the Earth. As Michael Jackson, you have to defeat Mr. Big and his cronies by using dance moves that shoot "magic rays." THE TYPING OF THE DEAD (2000) Screenshot of Typing of the Dead from Just Games Retro This semi-educational game is supposed to teach kids to type and spell. In order to fend off hungry zombies, you have to accurately type words. Get them right, the zombies leave you alone. Misspell, and the zombies will eat your b-r-a-i-n. EXODUS (1991)
[Google Video Link] After solving some difficult logic puzzle, you have to answer questions about the Bible. Get those right, and you get to control Moses. The goal is to spread the word of God by shooting large Ws (for "word of God") at ancient Israelites. THE FANTASTIC ADVENTURES OF DIZZY (1991) A walking egg named Dizzy must save his family from an evil wizard by solving puzzles. One of the puzzles: Dizzy must pick certain plants and mix them in a bottle to make medicine for his sick grandpa egg. DRUM MASTER (2006) In the game Guitar Hero, you get a plastic guitar and play along with well-known rock songs. Drum Master is made for the handheld Nintendo DS - you get to drum along with popular songs with two toothpick-sized sticks. JOHN DEERE'S HARVEST IN THE HEARTLAND (2007) IGN has the review of this unusual game, John Deere: Harvest in the Heartland Using various John Deere tractors and farm implements, you have to plant crops, fertilize crops, harvest crops, and milk cows. (And it's one giant ad for John Deere.) FACE TRAINING (2007)
[YouTube Link] Using a small camera that attaches to the TV, you have to copy the facial expressions the game tells you to make. PRINCESS TOMATO IN THE SALAD KINGDOM (1991) On a mission from the dying King Broccoli, the noble knight Sir Cucumber has to rescue Princess Tomato from her captor, Minister Pumpkin. Sir Cucumber is assisted by Percy, a baby persimmon. TOILET KIDS (1992)
[YouTube Link] A little kid gets up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and is sucked through the toilet into another dimension populated by creatures who look like bathroom fixtures. The Toilet Kid must then battle with tough toilet bodyguards and an evil giant urinal. |
|
| The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Unsinkable Bathroom Reader. The Bathroom Readers' Institute has sailed the seas of science, history, pop culture, humor, and more to bring you Uncle John's Unsinkable Bathroom Reader. Our all-new 21st edition is overflowing with over 500 pages of material that is sure to keep you fully absorbed. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute has published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute. | |
Photo: NickIsConfused [Flickr]
Photographer Nick Drummond has a neat Flickr photoset of ATilla, his "pet" AT-AT. The best thing about having your very own Star Wars All Terrain Armored Transport Walker? It's easily house-trained, of course! Link - via Super Punch
Last year, vise-grip manufacturer Irwin held a contest called "Tell Us Your Vise-Grip Story" where people share their personal experience of using the tool. They've chosen 3 finalists, one of which is this one by Bryan from Chesapeake, VA:
As a US Navy spine surgeon, I routinely deal with dozens of different types of screws, rods and bolts that have been implanted into the spine. Each manufacturer has their own unique tools to insert and remove their specific hardware. While deployed to the Middle East in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I did not have access to these specialized tools. I did however have some Vise-Grips that could be sterilized and used to emergently remove the screws and rods from this infected solider's spine.
No doubt about it - vise-grips are useful. Almost as useful as duct tapes: http://irwin.eprize.net/visegripstory/index.tbapp - via Popular Mechanics and The Zeray Gazette
Our very own Stacy Conradt wrote a neat article over at mental_floss about 10 people who died on their birthdays (full circle!) Here's one that particularly interesting:
Jean Felix Piccard. Name sound familiar? It’s because he and his twin brother Auguste Piccard were the inspirations for the name of Star Trek’s Jean-Luc Picard. Jean’s inventions have been used in building aircrafts, spacecrafts and balloons (that’s him with his wife in the picture). He died on his (and his brother’s) birthday on January 28, 1963 at the age of 79.
Link - via i met a possum
Unfortunately, I'm sure that some idiot will see that as a challenge instead ... - via Rue the Day and Miss Cellania
Do the two logos look similar to you? They do, according to the trademark attorneys of Re/Max, a national real estate franchise. They're challenging the trademark application of a real estate startup Rehava, which has a new commission structure that is different than the established culture:
Adam Scoville, Re/Max's legal counsel, said he can explain.
First of all, both names start with "r" and have logos with accent lines near the letter "e," he said.
"It goes beyond that," Scoville added. "If you chop the top off of the 'h,' you (almost) have the 'm' in Re/Max. The next letter is an 'a,' and if you take the 'v' then you have half of an 'x.' "
Steve deGuzman, Rehava's broker-in-charge, said he doesn't buy it. He said the trademark challenge is harassment and a form of corporate bullying that will cost his firm thousands of dollars.
"It's a huge distraction, particularly for a startup and also in this kind of a market," deGuzman said.
He suspects the Colorado-based franchise is challenging the trademarkbecause of Rehava's controversial commission rebates, which some in the industry see as a threat to traditional compensation standards.
http://www.charleston.net/news/2009/mar/07/its_big_guy_vs_little_guy74198/ - via reddit
In 1978, Ivan Stang of the Church of the Subgenius created this nifty documentary titled "Reproduction Cycle Among Unicellular Life Forms Under the Rocks of Mars." It's part of a fictional "Early Childhood Enrichment Series, Science for Elementary Schools" series.
Claymation has never been this good: Link [embedded YouTube clip, quite risque yet oh-so-funny. You've been warned ...]