Blonde Bombshells

(image source: Psywar.org)

The Plan: During WWII, Axis powers attempted to wage psychological warfare against the Allies in a highly unusual way. They'd fly over enemy camps and drop pictures of buxom ladies on the troops. The twist? Most of the women were pictured in passionate embraces with strange men.

The Hope: According to German officials, the drops were meant to get GIs thinking about their wives and girlfriends back home-specifically, thinking about them being unfaithful. Axis propaganda wasn't always so convoluted, though. Sometimes the Germans simply dropped pictures of scantily clad women posed over quotes such as "You can enjoy this if you surrender."

The Disappointment: Surprise! Apparently, giving out free pictures of sexy women isn't the best way to demoralize soldiers. Far from being upset, the GIs began collecting the pics and using them as pinups.

WISDOM FROM ABOVE

(Image Source: Flight's Image of the Day)

The Plan: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin wanted to spread the message of communism far and wide, so in 1934, he enlisted the ANT-20, a massive aircraft with a wingspan of more than 200 feet.

The Hope: In addition to its jaw-dropping size, the plane contained multiple radio stations, a photo lab, and even a printing press for distributing leaflets midair. But the best thing about the plane (from a propaganda point of view) was its loudspeaker. Known as the "Voice from the Sky", the sound system was so powerful that it could broadcast speeches and songs to the public from hundreds of feet in the air.

The Disappointment: Unfortunately for Stalin, the plane's lifespan didn't match its wingspan. In 1935, a fighter plane crashed into the giant aircraft during a demonstration over Moscow, killing 45 people. But that didn't stop the propaganda from living on. Soviet officials quickly blamed the crash on the fighter pilot, Nikolai Blagin, and a new word, Blaginism, was introduced into the Russian language. It translates to "a cocky disregard of authority."

BOW TO YOUR NEW RULER

(Image source: Awful Library Books)

The Plan: In 1975, President Ford signed the Metric Conversion Act, and the United States embarked on a full-fledged campaign to join the rest of the world in using meters and grams.

The Hope: The federal government tried to get Americans on board by pumping tons of money into the effort. It funded metric-touring posters, pamphlets, and TV spots-including a series of animated shorts by the same team that did "Schoolhouse Rock."There was even an answering service set up to help confused citizens.

The Disappointment: It turns out that citizens weren't exactly rushing to borrow 225 grams of sugar from their neighbors or ask the grocer for 3.79 liters of milk. In 1982, President Reagan cut the campaign's funding. Instead, he supported "voluntary metrication." lettiing Americans choose whether or not they wanted to embrace the new measuring scheme. (They chose not to.)

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The above article was written by Maggie Ryan Sandford. It is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the July-August 2010 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss' entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!

We've addressed the problem of the methane from livestock farts and burps contributing to global warming. One way to attack the problem is to breed sheep that produce less methane. But researchers at Newcastle University say that adding curry spices to livestock feed could produce the same results.

Research has found that coriander and turmeric - spices traditionally used to flavour curries - can reduce the amount of methane produced by sheep by up to 40 per cent.

Working a bit like an antibiotic, the spices were found to kill the methane-producing ''bad'' bacteria in the animal's gut while allowing the ''good'' bacteria to flourish.

The findings are part of a study by Newcastle University research student Mohammad Mehedi Hasan and Dr Abdul Shakoor Chaudhry.

Spices also help an animal digest its food more efficiently, which could reduce the amount of feed needed. Coriander was the most efficient spice in the experiment, followed by tumeric and then cinnamon. Link -via Fortean Times

(Image credit: Flickr user Tambako the Jaguar)

In some places, US bank notes are considered filthy lucre. So filthy, in fact, that they have to be washed. This isn't what you normally think of when you think of money laundering. This is actual washing-machine laundry in Zimbabwe! Since Zimbabwe dollars are near-worthless, American dollars are preferred, and they change hands a lot.

Low-denomination U.S bank notes change hands until they fall apart here in Africa, and the bills are routinely carried in underwear and shoes through crime-ridden slums.

Some have become almost too smelly to handle, so Zimbabweans have taken to putting their $1 bills through the spin cycle and hanging them up to dry with clothes pins alongside sheets and items of clothing.

It's the best solution—apart from rubber gloves or disinfectant wipes—in a continent where the U.S. dollar has long been the currency of choice and where the lifespan of a dollar far exceeds what the U.S. Federal Reserve intends.

The recommended method is hand washing, but washing machines are also used. Those who know say chemical dry cleaning will cause the ink to fade. Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: AP/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)

Showing your emotional side will endear you to the ladies -that is, if you are a mouse! A study led by Kazushige Touhara of the University of Tokyo finds that male mice tears contain a sex pheromone that female mice find irresistible.

Male mice shed tears to keep their eyes from drying out. As they groom themselves, the tears—and the pheromone—get spread around their bodies and nests.

When female mice come in contact with a male or his nest, they pick up the pheromone via a nose organ called the vomeronasal, where the pheromone binds to a specific protein receptor.

"She has to touch it, because this is not a volatile compound like a fragrance," Touhara said, referring to the ease with which some chemicals turn into vapor.

Upon contact, the pheromone is sent to sex-specific regions in the female's brain. The female mouse is then three times more likely to engage in what's called lordosis behavior, a posture shown by many animals in heat in which they thrust their rumps and tails upward.

Humans don't have the gene code for the chemical or its receptor, so crying isn't an automatic aphrodisiac. Link -via Holy Kaw!

(Image credit: Joel Sartore, National Geographic)

(Image credit: Flickr user Northampton Museum)

There is an argument over where the story of Cinderella came from, China, Egypt, or Greece. But the ancient tale of Ye Xian contains a rather creepy clue that the story originated in the land of the original foot fetish. In the Chinese version, the king never even meets our heroine at the ball -he becomes obsessed with finding her solely because of the miniscule size of the shoe she left behind. This makes sense in light of the traditional practice of foot binding. It is estimated that somewhere between a billion and four billion women in China had bound feet between the 10th and 20th centuries.

(Image credit: Flickr user Okinawa Soba)

Foot binding began in the late T'ang dynasty and lasted for about a thousand years, until the 20th century when the practice was outlawed. Why it ever started is the stuff of legends. Some say the public wanted to emulate a Emperor's favored concubine who had unusually small feet. Others tell of an Empress with club feet and followers who bound their feet in sympathy. There are even tales of an Emperor who ordered his female subjects to undergo the procedure. Whatever the reason for the first foot to be bound, the custom caught on. The reason most often given is that small feet were sexually alluring. Now, anything can be sexually alluring if you are told that it is. Why would crippled, deformed feet make a woman more attractive? The underlying reason is that a woman with bound feet is a status symbol, an indicator of wealth and social standing. Only a man of considerable means could afford to have a wife, concubine, or daughters who couldn't work.

(Image by Flickr user Okinawa Soba)

The problem with status symbols is that even people without status crave them. In reality, most women in China had to work, whether their feet were bound or not. With their feet mangled in this manner, women were essentially going through life balancing on their heels. As the practice spread from the upper classes to the rest of the population, the only groups that did not bind a daughter's feet were the Manchus (who still developed a shoe style to imitate the Chinese "lotus walk"), a few ethnic minorities, and some of the women who worked in southern rice paddies. Even poor families doomed their girls to a life of pain, in hopes that she would be able to marry up.

Slate is starting a series of posts on the periodic table of elements, with author Sam Kean writing a separate post about each of about two dozen of the most interesting elements. The first entry is for antimony, which I believe, is the sexiest of the elements. It was widely used in alchemy, but had better results elsewhere.

Egyptian women used one form of antimony, stibium, as eyeliner (hence the symbol for antimony, Sb, even though neither letter appears in the element's name). Pills of the element became popular as a medicine in the 1700s, especially as a laxative, able to blast through the most compacted bowels. It was so good the chronically constipated would root through their excrement to retrieve the pill and reuse it later. Some lucky families passed down antimony laxatives from generation to generation.

Unfortunately, antimony purges the bowels so well partly because it's poison—the body wants to get rid of it. But these were the days in medicine of fighting fire with fire: Doctors believed the only way to cure a violent illness was with an equally violent reaction to medicine, and antimony's popularity grew.

Other elements will be posted through the month of July. Link to introduction. Link to antimony.

(YouTube link)

You can no longer say you've never seen a tortoise dance. -via reddit

The Great Pyramid, velociraptors, Jesus, would you recognize any of them if you traveled back in time? Probably not, because the image we have of those things is shaped by Hollywood -or in the case of the pyramid, by what it looks like now. Take another look at the way they probably appeared in this list from Cracked. Pictured are velociraptors in the movie Jurassic Park and as they may have actually looked -with feathers! Link (NSFW text) -via Digg

Holy Taco challenged readers to use Photoshop to make Twilight: Eclipse into a watchable movie. They selected the best 19 entries to post. Many didn't really adhere to the original idea of the contest, like the picture here does, but they are funny anyway. Link

Superstitious fans and even players develop weird rituals to ensure a win for their team. Read the origins of some of the strangest, like how fans of the Detroit hockey team tend throw octopuses onto the ice after the Red Wings score a goal during a home game.

The origins of this tentacled tradition began in 1952 when fewer NHL teams meant that the road to the Stanley Cup only took eight playoff wins. Thus, the 8 legs on an octopus would symbolize the road to the Stanley cup with 8 winning games. Since then, hundreds of octopi have rained down onto the Redwing rink.

A list of recommendations state that the octopus should be cooked, as a raw octopus tends to leave slime on the ice. Link

Todd Franklin recalled the Death Star cookie his grandmother made him when he was a child. Recently, he pulled out the directions from his old copy of Darth Vader’s Activity Book and he and his wife made one for their son. A scan of the original recipe is posted at Neato Coolville. Link -via Holy Kaw!

You'd think that anyone could tell the difference between historical figures canonized by the Catholic church and Louisiana football players, but today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss is surprisingly challenging! I scored a dismal 42%. Link

Smithsonian magazine takes a closer look at nine of the 20,000 species of jellyfish that populate the world's oceans. Some are tasty. some are lethal, and some are just plain strange, like this specimen of Bathykorus bouilloni, which somewhat resembles Darth Vader, don't you think? Link

(Image credit: Kevin Raskoff)

A fireworks display Friday at the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton, California drew crowds of people -and yellow jackets! A swarm of insects stung fairgoers when their nest was disturbed.

The wasp attacks began shortly after the fireworks show started at 9:15 p.m. About 5,000 people were in the grandstands, and 15 minutes later sting victims started showing up in the first aid area, Knowles said.

"Apparently there were a number of (yellow jackets) also in attendance for the fireworks display last night," Knowles said Saturday.

She said emergency personnel at the fair set up a triage area to care for those who were stung. Everyone was treated on site and there were no hospitalizations, Knowles said.

By midnight Friday, an exterminator located and removed a ground nest, Mitchell said. The yellow jackets were probably disturbed by the vibrations as the fireworks were launched, not the explosions overhead, she said.

None of the victims were allergic to the stings. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user ChrisK4u)

Mark Lamster interviewed 97-year-old Morris Moel, who immigrated to the United States from Ukraine, a part of the Soviet Union in 1922. The story is typical of that era's immigrants, which means it was a heroic struggle to get here. His father came first, then Moel was separated from this mother when she went to Warsaw, and then his grandmother died. But Moel's mother arranged for strangers to get the youngsters out of Ukraine.

The Russian part of the border was all forest. And we were stopped. I heard rifles being cocked while we were walking. Russian soldiers. And the soldiers searched everyone and took everything that was valuable and said you’ve got to go back, and I guess they [the guides] knew another route so we got through. And the Polish border was absolutely free, but it was all snow. I was so little and my older borther dragged me across that border. Finally we got to the other side inside Poland. Stayed in a house for half a night and we were then taken to a train station. And that train took us into Warsaw. The first time I was in a train. And my mother was waiting for us in an office. We told her my grandmother died. She never knew about it.

It took many more months for Moel to actually reach America. Link -via Jason Kottke