(YouTube link)
The Martin Guitar Company marked the milestone of its 1.5 millionth guitar produced by making it a one-of-a-kind Leonardo Da Vinci special edition -with a mosaic inlays of The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa and other reproductions of Da Vinci art. The company unveiled the guitar at the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) show in Anaheim. -Thanks, Stratoblogster!
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
Dr. Chevalier Jackson was a laryngologist who spent a good deal of his career retrieving objects that his patients swallowed or inhaled. And he kept them all. He retired with a collection of over 2,000 bizarre items that had once been inside his patients.
Jackson retrieved these objects from people’s upper torsos, generally with little or no anesthesia. He was so intent on assembling his collection that he once refused to return a swallowed quarter, even when its owner threatened his life.
“He was a fetishist, no question,” said Mary Cappello, the author of “Swallow” (New Press), a new book about Jackson and his bizarre collection. “But his obsession had the effect of saving lives. That’s kind of amazing, and lucky for us that his madness made possible forms of rescue.”
The collection is set to go on display at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia on February 18th. Link -via Bioephemera
Etsy seller Out of the Pink Sky makes jewelry, most notable these catbutt earrings. There are catbutt earrings available in other colors, too. Link -via Buzzfeed
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At a Norfolk Admirals hockey game, 8-year-old Elizabeth Hughes was doing a bang-up job on "The Star-Spangled Banner" when her microphone quit working. Listen to what happened next. -via reddit
It's time for our giveaway collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog! Can you tell us what this object is?
Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop!
Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?
For more clues, check out the What Is It? Blog. Have fun and good luck!
Update: the scary-looking item is a "A corn husk shredder, it was used for making mattresses" It took 72 guesses before Julia Ross gave us the correct answer! The funniest answer selected was from D.Spencer, who said "It was attached to the inside wall of the outhouse and used to hold the sears and roebuck catalogue so that it wouldn't blow out when the door was opened on windy days." Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop!
Snake Oils, Hangover Cures, and Other Questionable Medicine
THE DOCTOR IS IN (THE BARN)
Folk medicine in Ireland used to rely heavily on the belief that you could magically transfer an illness from a person to an animal (usually a pig or a donkey). These "transference cures" were especially popular for treating mumps and whooping cough, and it's no wonder that when Irish immigrants settled in America, they brought the practice of transference with them. Of course, understanding the origin gives a little insight into why some people in Appalachia used to swear that the surest cure for a crick in the neck was nuzzling up to a tree recently rubbed against by a hog. (Image credit: Flickr user Dave Morris)
A LIVER WILD
Folk medicine wasn't just about faking cures; sometimes practitioners went that extra mile and invented entire diseases. Take "white liver", an ailment that supposedly caused white spots to appear on said organ, but whose external symptoms affected organs of a different kind. Sufferers of white liver, which were primarily women, were said to have insatiable sex drives. In the 19th-century American South, women who had survived more than one husband were sometimes known as "white livered widders." The proof being that they had, in fact, pleased their husbands into an early grave.
HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW
Hawkers of quack medicine were always in search of a fortune, but occasionally they lucked into fame as well. In the late 19th century, the seven daughters of former preacher Fletcher Sutherland found their ticket to stardom when they started selling a vegetable oil, alcohol, and water mixture marketed under the name Seven Sutherland Sisters Hair Grower. With a collective hair length of 37 feet, the girls were their own best advertisement, and they knew it. The sisters toured the country as drug reps for 38 years, eventually becoming some of the best-known women in America and earning millions of dollars. Not even death could stop their public relations steamroller. When the youngest of the lot, Naomi, died in 1893, the others simply replaced her with a well-maned actress. But, as anyone who's watched "E! True Hollywood Story" knows, fame is a harsh mistress. By the 1920s, the sisters were broke. Promises of starring in a movie version of their lives brought them to Hollywood, but the deal fell through. Shortly thereafter, when another sister died, the five remaining girls (unable to afford a burial) were forced to leave her ashed in California.
OIL RIGGING
Snakes -you just can't trust 'em. First they go around getting us humans kicked out of Paradise, then they trick us into believing their oil is going to cure what ails us. Turns out, the whole snake-oil scheme started in the late 19th century and took flight thanks to a cowboy named Clarke Stanley, known as "The Rattlesnake King". At the time, snake fat was believed to have curative powers, and no snake-fat solution was more curative than "Stanley's Snake Oil". The king made a name for himself hawking his wares at the 1893 Columbian Exposition, where he dressed in flamboyant Western togs and convinced thousands of customers that his oil could (and would) cure everything under the sun. We're talking mosquito bites to rheumatism! Despite snake oil's miraculous reputation, though, Stanley was careful to point out that it was for external use only. Good thing. When the U.S. government finally ran some tests on the stuff in 1917, they found out that our "oil" tycoon had slipped in a few ingredients you wouldn't want going down the hatch, including: mineral oil, used as a laxative; camphor oil, which is used primarily in perfume or as an embalming fluid; and turpentine, a key ingredient in paint stripper. As for the promised rattler nectar, good ole Stanley had used easier-to-acquire beef fat instead.
TURN YOUR HEAD AND COUGH
Hairballs aren't so pretty when they turn up on your rug, but during the Renaissance, these gross gastrointestinal phenomena were prized for their healing powers. And while we're familiar with the wet, stringy hairballs that kitty hacks up, the pharmaceutical version, called bezoars, were glassy masses formed in the stomachs of goats and other cud-chewing animals. People believed these compressed hair and food balls could suck poison or even rabies out of the body. In fact, members of the Medici family, who controlled much of Europe at that time, carried them around obsessively for protective purposes (though not without reason, as poisoning members of the Medici family was something of a continental sport). Bezoars live on in today's medical literature, but mostly in the psychiatry section. Doctors occasionally have to remove them from stomachs of people who obsessively chew on their hair.
Be sure to visit mental_floss' entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!
THE DOCTOR IS IN (THE BARN)
Folk medicine in Ireland used to rely heavily on the belief that you could magically transfer an illness from a person to an animal (usually a pig or a donkey). These "transference cures" were especially popular for treating mumps and whooping cough, and it's no wonder that when Irish immigrants settled in America, they brought the practice of transference with them. Of course, understanding the origin gives a little insight into why some people in Appalachia used to swear that the surest cure for a crick in the neck was nuzzling up to a tree recently rubbed against by a hog. (Image credit: Flickr user Dave Morris)
A LIVER WILD
Folk medicine wasn't just about faking cures; sometimes practitioners went that extra mile and invented entire diseases. Take "white liver", an ailment that supposedly caused white spots to appear on said organ, but whose external symptoms affected organs of a different kind. Sufferers of white liver, which were primarily women, were said to have insatiable sex drives. In the 19th-century American South, women who had survived more than one husband were sometimes known as "white livered widders." The proof being that they had, in fact, pleased their husbands into an early grave.
HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW
Hawkers of quack medicine were always in search of a fortune, but occasionally they lucked into fame as well. In the late 19th century, the seven daughters of former preacher Fletcher Sutherland found their ticket to stardom when they started selling a vegetable oil, alcohol, and water mixture marketed under the name Seven Sutherland Sisters Hair Grower. With a collective hair length of 37 feet, the girls were their own best advertisement, and they knew it. The sisters toured the country as drug reps for 38 years, eventually becoming some of the best-known women in America and earning millions of dollars. Not even death could stop their public relations steamroller. When the youngest of the lot, Naomi, died in 1893, the others simply replaced her with a well-maned actress. But, as anyone who's watched "E! True Hollywood Story" knows, fame is a harsh mistress. By the 1920s, the sisters were broke. Promises of starring in a movie version of their lives brought them to Hollywood, but the deal fell through. Shortly thereafter, when another sister died, the five remaining girls (unable to afford a burial) were forced to leave her ashed in California.
OIL RIGGING
Snakes -you just can't trust 'em. First they go around getting us humans kicked out of Paradise, then they trick us into believing their oil is going to cure what ails us. Turns out, the whole snake-oil scheme started in the late 19th century and took flight thanks to a cowboy named Clarke Stanley, known as "The Rattlesnake King". At the time, snake fat was believed to have curative powers, and no snake-fat solution was more curative than "Stanley's Snake Oil". The king made a name for himself hawking his wares at the 1893 Columbian Exposition, where he dressed in flamboyant Western togs and convinced thousands of customers that his oil could (and would) cure everything under the sun. We're talking mosquito bites to rheumatism! Despite snake oil's miraculous reputation, though, Stanley was careful to point out that it was for external use only. Good thing. When the U.S. government finally ran some tests on the stuff in 1917, they found out that our "oil" tycoon had slipped in a few ingredients you wouldn't want going down the hatch, including: mineral oil, used as a laxative; camphor oil, which is used primarily in perfume or as an embalming fluid; and turpentine, a key ingredient in paint stripper. As for the promised rattler nectar, good ole Stanley had used easier-to-acquire beef fat instead.
TURN YOUR HEAD AND COUGH
Hairballs aren't so pretty when they turn up on your rug, but during the Renaissance, these gross gastrointestinal phenomena were prized for their healing powers. And while we're familiar with the wet, stringy hairballs that kitty hacks up, the pharmaceutical version, called bezoars, were glassy masses formed in the stomachs of goats and other cud-chewing animals. People believed these compressed hair and food balls could suck poison or even rabies out of the body. In fact, members of the Medici family, who controlled much of Europe at that time, carried them around obsessively for protective purposes (though not without reason, as poisoning members of the Medici family was something of a continental sport). Bezoars live on in today's medical literature, but mostly in the psychiatry section. Doctors occasionally have to remove them from stomachs of people who obsessively chew on their hair.
__________________________
The above article was reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the September-October 2004 issue of mental_floss magazine.Be sure to visit mental_floss' entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!
Press releases are one of the necessary evils of the information business. There are way too many, and they all start to look the same after you've gone through a dozen or so, but they do convey information -sometimes important information. On the other hand, Mitch Delaplane of PitchPoint Public Relations sent out a press release with absolutely no information at all except that it is, altogether, the most wonderful (and self-referential) press release ever. Here's a small part:
Read the rest of this amazing press release at PR Newswire. I believe that Mitch got his point across. Link -via mental_floss
(Image credit: Flickr user Heike Reizenbuchler)
CHICAGO, Jan. 11, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Mitch Delaplane of PitchPoint Public Relations has issued the most amazing press release ever written. While hundreds of press releases are distributed daily, Delaplane feels this particular release will go down in history as the most amazing press release that has ever been written.
"I've been in the business for over ten years and have to say, I'm speechless," claims Delaplane. "The title alone grabs you and demands that it be read. Then there's this quote that completely takes things to an entirely new level. I'm proud of this press release. In fact, I think it is [really] amazing."
Typically reserved for company news announcements and other public relations communications, the press release has long been the favored default for informing media about exciting, groundbreaking news. Then this news release comes along and changes everything people thought they knew about press releases.
Read the rest of this amazing press release at PR Newswire. I believe that Mitch got his point across. Link -via mental_floss
(Image credit: Flickr user Heike Reizenbuchler)
(YouTube link)
This French video shows an interview with a clairvoyant. The word clairvoyant comes from the French words for "see clearly". -via Arbroath
One year ago today, a devastating earthquake shook Haiti. An expedition from Conservation International went to Haiti in October to see how the forest ecosystem was affected. Amphibian Conservation Officer Dr. Robin Moore and Dr. Blair Hedges from Pennsylvania State University led the search for endangered species, particularly for the La Selle grass frog, which hadn't been seen since 1985.
At the Conservation International website, you can hear the sounds of the ventriloqual frog and the Macaya burrowing frog shown here, and see pictures of all the rediscovered amphibians. Link
(Image credit: © Robin Moore/iLCP)
Although they didn't find the "lost" frog in question, the week-long expedition did unearth 23 of Haiti's 49 known native frog species — six of which hadn't been seen in 19 years. Among the rediscoveries: the ventriloquial landfrog (Eleutherodactylus dolomedes), which was previously only known from a few specimens. As its name implies, this species can project its voice to sound as if it's coming from somewhere else, making it extremely difficult to locate. Moore and the other researchers spent hours trying to home in on one individual.
During the survey, individuals from 10 Critically Endangered species were collected for a captive breeding program at the Philadelphia Zoo. This captive population will preserve the species (and allow for possible reintroduction) if the wild populations are wiped out — an assured outcome if deforestation is allowed to continue.
"The biodiversity of Haiti, including its frogs, is approaching a mass extinction event caused by massive and nearly complete deforestation," said Dr. Blair Hedges. "Unless the global community comes up with a solution soon, we will lose many unique species forever."
At the Conservation International website, you can hear the sounds of the ventriloqual frog and the Macaya burrowing frog shown here, and see pictures of all the rediscovered amphibians. Link
(Image credit: © Robin Moore/iLCP)
You hear about new technical developments every day, but until you see them together, it's hard to imagine how far we've come in the last few years. Jetpacks, virtual reality, body scanners, personal submarines... all those things were in the realm of science fiction only a decade ago.
See a video of this game in action, and read about the other 8 developments at Geeks Are Sexy. Link
Since the 80s, virtual reality has been the holy grail of video gaming and entertainment. It has often eluded the most brilliant minds who endeavored to develop it. However, two Russian brothers recently have cracked the VR code by simply putting prospective gamers inside a giant hamster ball. The ubiquitous VR headset is equipped with gyroscopes that measure the position of the gamer’s head and swivel the view of the game accordingly. Gamers enter the ball and, thanks to the wheels on which it is mounted, are able to walk indefinitely within the virtual world just as they could in the real one.
See a video of this game in action, and read about the other 8 developments at Geeks Are Sexy. Link
Mouser Williams collects sand from different parts of the world. He photographs his samples using a macro lens to get up close and personal, labeling their composition. This lovely sample is called Star Sand.
This sand, found only on a few beaches in southern Japan, is made up entirely of the calcified shells of tiny organisms only a few milimeters across. It is one of the more sought-after sands for sand collectors despite being readily available on eBay.
Link -via Jason Kottke
(Image credit: Flickr user Mouser Williams)
Talk about unintended consequences! This video shows what would more likely happen to Endor at the end of Return of the Jedi if the normal laws of physics applied to the Star Wars universe. -via Boing Boing
The monster from the Sy-Fy movie has been enshrined in plush! This is a one-of-a-kind Sharktopus was hand-made by Suzannah Ashley. See more pictures at her website. Link -via Laughing Squid
(YouTube link)
Scientists at Vrije University in Brussels, Belgium have developed a robot that looks like a cartoon elephant. Probo has fully articulate features and a flexible trunk that can display a variety of responses and emotions. It was designed as a therapy aid for autistic children. Probo is being tested now at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania, where the team has reportedly achieved some remarkable results so far in interactions with autistic children. http://www.romaniantimes.at/news/Around_the_World/2011-01-09/12521/Robot_Elephant_Offers_Hope_to_Autistic_Kids to story. Link to robot website. -via Arbroath
Archaeologists have announced the discovery of the world's oldest winemaking facility. The winery was found in an Armenian cave near the village of Areni -the same cave where the oldest shoe ever was found last year. Carbon dating shows that the winery dates back 6,100 years!
In September 2010 archaeologists completed excavations of a large, 2-foot-deep (60-centimeter-deep) vat buried next to a shallow, 3.5-foot-long (1-meter-long) basin made of hard-packed clay with elevated edges.
The installation suggests the Copper Age vintners pressed their wine the old-fashioned way, using their feet, Areshian said.
Juice from the trampled grapes drained into the vat, where it was left to ferment, he explained.
The wine was then stored in jars—the cool, dry conditions of the cave would have made a perfect wine cellar, according to Areshian, who co-authored the new study, published Tuesday in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
Analysis of residue found malvidin, a plant pigment found in red wine. Read more about the discovery at National Geographic News. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
(Image credit: Hans Barnard)
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