• To treat a child’s case of whooping cough, milk was fed to a ferret. Whatever milk the ferret didn’t drink was given to the sick child.
• To eliminate jaundice, nine head lice were drowned in a pint of beer. The mixture had to be drunk every morning for a week.
• For arthritis, the skin of a donkey was worn.
• Gout could be cured by boiling a red-haired dog in oil, adding worms and pig’s bone marrow, and then applying the mixture to the affected area.
• To stop an asthma attack, baby frogs or live spiders were coated in butter and swallowed.
• Venereal disease was prevented by rubbing one’s genitals with vinegar. By the 18th century, a more modern method was favored: The genitals were wrapped in a freshly killed chicken.
• To cure leprosy, a sufferer bathed in the blood of a dog.
• Fractures, abscesses, paralysis, epilepsy, nausea, sore throats, and ulcers could be cured by eating ancient Egyptian mummies—a medical fad of the time. Wealthy Europeans acquired them via a trade route from Egypt. The fad ended when it was discovered the corpses weren’t ancient mummies, but recently murdered slaves.
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.
OOPS!
Have a laugh over some truly weird mistakes.
WATCH YOUR STEP
“A Yorkshire Terrier named Minty fled in terror from his owner’s house as a thief broke down the door. (Owner Pauline Webb was out at the time.) Wearing gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints, the thief escaped with over $10,000 worth of loot—but stepped in Minty’s excitement-induced mess and left a perfect shoeprint. A week later, when John Conroy was arrested in another break-in, police noticed that his shoes matched the poop-print perfectly. Conroy was jailed for two years.”
—Fortean Times
DEAL OR NO DEAL
“Andres-Francois Raffray, 47, a lawyer from Arles, France, thought he’d made the deal of a lifetime. In 1965 he signed a contract with 90-year-old Jeanne Calment, giving her $500 a month for the rest of her life on the condition that she leave him her condominium when she died. But it didn’t work out as he’d planned: 30 years later, Calment became the world’s oldest known living person. “We all make bad deals in life,” Raffray said on Calment’s 120th birthday, by which time he’d paid $180,000 for the property, which was only worth about $60,000. To make matters worse, Raffray died two years before Calment, and was never able to live in the condo.”
—Parade
WHERE’S THE INTELLIGENCE?
“The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is in hot water after a female agent left top-secret files in her car when she went to a hockey game. They were stolen by drug addicts, who then dumped them into the trash. But she didn’t report the theft in time for the plans to be recovered—they’re now believed to be deep in some trash pile. Worse, the head of the CSIS’s oversight board heard about the security debacle from the newspaper.”
—This Is True
“Seizure Alert” dogs can warn their owners up to an hour before an epileptic seizure begins.
FIRE WHEN READY
“An employee of Builders Square in the Cross County Mall poured mineral spirits on the floor and used a cigarette lighter to prove to a fellow employee that mineral spirits don’t burn. The ensuing fire caused $1 million in damages to Builders Square and $2 million to the KMart store next door.”
—West Palm Beach, Florida
OH, BABY
“London paramedics thought they were saving a life when they rushed a fetus to the hospital after finding it on a subway platform. …Until they learned that the fetus wasn’t human at all—it was a toy. ‘They had found an alien egg, the latest toy craze to hit the area,’ Reuters reported. ‘It contains what looks like an unborn child curled in a fetal position and suspended in a gooey placenta-like substance.’ According to the London Underground, the mistake was only discovered when the ‘fetus’ was examined in the hospital.”
—In These Times
LETTER PERFECT
“Oh, the difference a consonant makes. In the first seconds of a TV ad for Allegheny County (Pennsylvania) Commissioner Mike Dawida, a Democratic candidate for county executive, a woman’s voice says, ‘The public record doesn’t lie.’ But when that slogan appeared on the screen in front of a picture of Dawida’s primary opponent, a critical ‘l’ was missing from the word ‘public,’ leaving a much different word—‘pubic.’
“‘Well, we better get that fixed immediately,’ said Dawida’s campaign manager, Karen Hochberg.”
—Medford (Oregon) Mail Tribune
CAUGHT CHEATING
“John Issa was ordered by a Painesville, Ohio, judge to submit a urine sample for a drug test before his sentencing on a theft conviction. The sample showed no evidence of drugs, but it tested positive for something else: pregnancy. The judge, who had the option of giving him probation on the original conviction, sentenced him to a year in jail instead.”
—Skeptic
For decades after Nero’s death, people across the Roman empire claimed to have seen him.
WEIRD CHINA
Continuing our weird world tour, we stop in China, home to over a billion people…and a lot of odd news.
MAN BITES PANDA
After guzzling a six-pack of beer, Beijing resident Zhang Xinyan decided to visit the zoo. Thoroughly drunk, Zhang jumped over a waist-high railing and stumbled into the pen holding Gu Gu, a sleeping male panda. Startled awake, the panda instinctively thought it was being attacked and bit Zhang on the leg. Equally startled by the bite, Zhang bit Gu Gu back. Zhang admitted after the ordeal that he had initially climbed into the pen because he wanted to “cuddle” with Gu Gu.
WHERE ARE MY PANTS?
In 2006 a man stole a pair of pants from a department store in the city of Sanya. Employees noticed the pants were gone, but realized the next day that the pants had reappeared on a rack—and that the same pair of pants in a different size was now missing. Police arrested the shoplifter, who admitted that he had stolen a pair of pants from the store, tried them on at home, and, when they didn’t fit, “exchanged” them for a pair that did.
DEAD SEXY
In the rural area of Jiangsu, there’s an ancient and widely held belief that if a person’s funeral is well attended, the deceased is guaranteed a happy afterlife. Result: Family members will increase attendance at any cost. Police have recently begun to crack down on mourners hiring strippers to get funeral numbers up.
LEAD FOOT
In 2006 a 47-year-old man known as “Nai” walked three feet in a pair of 570-pound shoes. Nai made the shoes himself, out of iron. The former security guard quit his job to focus on his long-term goal: compete for China’s kung fu team in the 2008 Olympics while wearing the shoes.
A person who removes armpit hair professionally is called an alipile.
D-I-V-O-R-C-E
In the autumn of 2006, the Tongxing Centre Primary School suspended all classes. Local officials had planned to cut the number of teaching jobs, leaving them open only to teachers who were divorced or widowed and had no other means of support. Result: All 40 of the school’s teachers—all married women—filed for divorce…and got to keep their jobs.
LET IT RAIN
During the 1980s, an old tree in the village of Xinfu attracted thousands of visitors a year. Water seemed to magically poured out of the tree’s leaves, and many people were convinced that the liquid had healing powers. Visits to the tree abruptly stopped, however, when it was discovered that the “water” was actually the urine of the millions of insects that lived in the tree.
KEEP OFF THE GRASS
In 2005, two Chinese men approached the China-Russia border at Slavyanka and attempted to cross into Russia on a lawnmower. Border guards refused to let them pass because they didn’t have the proper documentation. So the men changed their story. Now they said they weren’t trying to sneak into Russia—they claimed they had been “mowing the lawn and got lost.
”
CATCHING A FEW RAYS
A team of scientists in the eastern city of Hefei announced plans in 2006 to build a nuclear fusion device that could produce unlimited clean energy. Free, environmentally safe energy would revolutionize both the world of science and the world economy. How does the team plan to do it? They claim to be building a full-size artificial sun. (Exactly where they’re building it remains a mystery, especially given the fact that the Sun’s diameter is 100 times larger than the Earth’s.)
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“Anyone who stares long enough into the distance is bound to be mistaken for a philosopher or mystic in the end.” —Patrick White
When Nicole Richie was nabbed for DUI in 2006, the arrest report listed her as 85 lbs.
SIGNS OF GENIUS?
Some people are odd in a good way—their oddness changed the world. How did they do it? Scientists think they may have the answer.
THE SYNDROME
It’s called Asperger’s Disorder, or “Little Professor Syndrome.” People who have Asperger’s have many of the same traits as autistic people—social withdrawal, prodigious memory, interest in collecting and naming things, prone to outbursts, and an obsession with order. They also display some symptoms that are unique to Asperger’s: higher IQs, and unusual ability in science, complex calculations, and computer programming. They often learn to speak very early, and usually function much better socially than autistic individuals. But it’s the high incidence of savant skills—prodigy-like skill in music, art, or computation—among people with Asperger’s that has interested the scientific community.
In 2001, an article in Wired magazine noted the unusual coincidence of autism and Asperger’s Disorder in children born in Silicon Valley, California—an area with one of the highest concentrations of smart people in the world. That has led some scientists to wonder if the genetic traits that lead to disorders like Asperger’s, savant syndrome, and autism also contribute to genius. Dr. Hans Asperger, who gave the disorder its name in 1944, states it unequivocally: “For success in science and art—a dash of autism is essential.” Here are a few noted geniuses who fit that model.
GLENN GOULD (1932–1982)
Gould was known by friends and family as a control freak. Like many savants, he had perfect pitch and a steel-trap memory. He also tended to sing along with his playing, which drove recording engineers crazy. But his gifted interpretations of Bach are considered some of the finest ever recorded.
SAMUEL JOHNSON (1704–1784)
The author of the first English dictionary had a tendency to burst out with startling barnyard noises, or bits of the Lord’s Prayer. He was obsessive about doing things the same way, and would have a tantrum if there were any changes in his daily habits.
During his lifetime, the average man removes 28 feet of hair through shaving.
HENRY CAVENDISH (1731–1810)
The man who discovered hydrogen was one of the first people to accurately calculate the mass of the Earth, as well as the chemical composition of the atmosphere. He rarely left his house and went out of his way to avoid seeing anyone. Many discoveries credited to other scientists were found to have been made by him years earlier when his papers, which he never published, were examined after his death.
ISAAC NEWTON (1642–1727)
Another strange scientist who changed the world with his genius, Newton gave us his Laws of Motion, the binomial theorem, and calculus. Reclusive, quirky, mindless of his personal cleanliness, he seldom spoke and was so obsessed with his work that he would forget to eat. At Cambridge, Newton was known for giving lectures… even if no one showed up to hear them.
THELONIUS MONK (1917–1982)
Known as the high priest of bebop, this pianist and composer revolutionized jazz with his original compositions. He also had a unique performance style—personal tics that included unusual syncopations in his rhythms, as well as a tendency to dance around his piano. He spoke in a bizarre medley of grunts and random philosophical mutterings.
Here are some more famous brains who were never diagnosed with Asperger’s but displayed the symptoms during their lifetimes.
• Jane Austen
• Albert Einstein
• Vincent Van Gogh
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Franz Kafka
• Thomas Jefferson
• Ludwig van Beethoven
• Nikola Tesla
• Alexander Graham Bell
• Emily Dickinson
• Charles Schulz
• Thomas Edison
• Henry Ford
• Jim Henson
Insects shiver when they’re cold.
JOIN THE BAD
FILM SOCIETY
How does Uncle John keep busy when he’s not writing great books? He watches bad movies! So many, in fact, that he’s one of the founders of southern Oregon’s Bad Film Society. How bad? Read on…
SILVER SCREEN
Here’s a question no one has probably ever asked you: If you had to choose between watching Citizen Kane and Killer Klowns from Outer Space, which movie would you pick? How about Gone With the Wind vs. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians? Or Casablanca vs. The Brain from Planet Arous? If you picked Killer Klowns, Santa the Conquerer, and The Brain, then you and Uncle John have something in common. He’s had a strange passion for odd and awful films ever since he was a kid.
Several years ago, Uncle John mentioned his peculiar hobby to a friend, who admitted having the same addiction to celluloid crap. How many other lovers of the lame are out there? Apparently a lot. In 2000 they created an organization called the Bad Film Society and scheduled a screening of Frankenstein’s Daughter (1958). That showing drew quite a crowd, so two months later they ran Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952) to even wider acclaim. And they’ve been showing bad movies about every other month ever since.
ANYTHING GOES
The Society keeps the definition of “bad film” as broad as possible. “That includes weird sequels like Airport 75, the worst of Drew Barrymore and Christina Ricci, the later films of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, and the classic Shakes the Clown, starring Bobcat Goldthwait,” says BFS co-founder Ed Polish. TV shows and made-for-TV movies count, too. The Society recently viewed “Soul Club,” an episode of The Partridge Family in which the Partridges help Richard Pryor and Louis Gossett, Jr. save a community club from being shut down by a loan shark by filling in for the Motown act The Temptations at a charity concert. (Who says David Cassidy and Danny Bonaduce don’t have soul?)
In Uruguay, intoxication is a legal excuse for having an accident while driving.
TWO THUMBS WAY DOWN
If you’re interested in sharing your love of Cobra Woman, Viva Knievel! and The Catskill Chainsaw Redemption with others, consider starting a chapter of the Bad Film Society in your town. Here are some society-tested films for you consider for your screenings:
• The Horror of Party Beach (1964). Remember those 1960s “Beach Party” films starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello? Now imagine a ship dumping nuclear waste offshore, and radioactive monsters emerging from the depths to eat the beach bunnies and surfer boys. And then imagine all of the carnage set to surf music…and you get The Horror of Party Beach, also billed as “The First Horror Musical!”
• The Tingler (1959). A coroner (Vincent Price) discovers a creature that lives in people’s spines and grows by—literally—feeding on their fears. This film’s claim to fame is the sneaky technique the producers used to goose the audience during the scary parts in the film—they hid electric buzzers under a few seats in theaters where the film was being shown, and set them off whenever they wanted the audience to scream.
• Eegah! (1963) Richard Kiel, best known for his portrayal of the giant “Jaws” in James Bond movies of the 1970s, plays Eegah, a stone-age caveman who somehow survives into the 1960s and falls in love with a teenage girl.
• Turist Ömer Uzay Yolunda (1973). Better known as the “Turki
sh Star Trek,” this film is a low-budget Turkish rip-off of the classic TV series. Plot of the story: “The Enterprise picks up a Turkish hobo.” If you can’t find it under its original title, sometimes it’s sold under the name “Ömer the Tourist in Star Trek.”
• Rock ’n’ Roll Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Ape (1963). Another foreign classic, this time from Mexico: A mad scientist with an ape-brained human sidekick named Gomar kidnaps women for use as guinea pigs in brain-transplant experiments. Everything goes swimmingly until he kidnaps the sister of Golden Venus, a famous female wrestling star. When the sister dies on his operating table, Golden Venus and her friend Golden Ruby swear revenge on the mad scientist. He fights back by creating Vendetta, a monster who poses as a wrestler to battle Venus and Ruby in the ring.
For more awful films, be sure to review page 271.
• For Your Height Only (1979). A Philippine James Bond-style film starring a midget named Weng-Weng as Agent 00. Standing only 2'9" inches tall, Weng-Weng is believed to be the shortest person ever to star in a feature film. (Verne Troyer, who plays Mini-Me in the Austin Powers films, is an inch shorter, but has played only co-starring roles.)
• Horror of the Blood Monsters (1970). Footage from three unrelated films was slapped together to make this dud, which was released under several different titles, including Creatures of the Prehistoric Planet, Horror Creatures of the Lost Planet, and Space Mission of the Lost Planet. The plot—to the extent that there actually is one—involves a trip to a faraway planet to trace the origins of an intergalactic vampire plague that has spread to the Earth. Hollywood legend John Carradine stars in the film. How did he justify accepting a role in this and many other terrible films over the years? “I made some of the greatest films ever made,” he once explained, “and a lot of crap, too.”
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YOU CAN DO MAGIC
We found these spells in books on witchcraft in the Paranormal Wing of the BRI library. (Really.) Proceed at your own risk.
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wonderful World of Odd Page 18