First meal ever eaten in space: “pureed applesauce.”
• For the record, neither Mac Brazel nor Jesse Marcel ever claimed to have seen aliens among the wreckage. No one went public with those claims until more than 30 years after the fact.
WHY BELIEVE IN ROSWELL?
• Why are UFO conspiracy theories so popular? Anthropologists who study the “Roswell Myth” point to two psychological factors that help it endure:
1) It appeals to a cynical public that lived through the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam and other government crises, and who believe in the government’s proclivity for covering things up. As Time magazine reported on the 50th anniversary of the Roswell incident,
A state of mind develops which easily believes in cover-up. The fact that the military is known for ‘Covert’ activities with foreign governments having to do with weapons which could wipe out humanity makes the idea of secret interactions with aliens seem possible. Once this state of mind is in place, anything which might prove the crash was terrestrial becomes a lie.
2) UFO theories project a sense of order onto the chaos of the universe…and they can even serve as an ego boost to true-believers, because they suggest that we are interesting enough that aliens with vastly superior intelligence actually bother to visit us. Believing in aliens, the argument goes, is much more satisfying than believing that aliens are out there but would never want to visit us.
WAS THERE A CONSPIRACY?
So is our government hiding evidence of an alien crash-landing on earth? In 1993 Congressman Steven Schiff of New Mexico asked the U.S. Government’s General Accounting Office to look into whether the U.S. government had ever been involved in a space-alien cover-up, either in Roswell, New Mexico, or anyplace else. The GAO spent 18 months searching government archives dating back to the 1940s, including even the highly classified minutes of the National Security Council. Their research prompted the U.S. Air Force to launch its own investigation. It released its findings in September 1994; the GAO’s report followed in November 1995; then a second Air Force report was released in 1997.
Fewer people golf on Tuesday than on any other day of the week.
PROJECT MOGUL
All three reports arrived at the same conclusion: what the conspiracy theorists believe were UFO crashes were actually top secret research programs run by the U.S. military during the Cold War.
Take Roswell: according to the reports, the object that crashed on Mac Brazel’s farm was a balloon, but no ordinary weather balloon: it was part of Project Mogul, a defense program as top secret as the Manhattan Project itself. Unlike the Manhattan Project, however, Project Mogul wasn’t geared toward creating nuclear weapons, it was geared toward detecting them if the Soviets exploded them.
In the late 1940s, the U.S. had neither spy satellites nor high-altitude spy planes that it could send over the Soviet Union to see if Stalin’s crash program to build nuclear weapons was succeeding. Instead, government scientists figured, “trains” of weather balloons fitted with special sensing equipment, if launched high enough into the atmosphere, might be able to detect the shock waves given off by nuclear explosions thousands of miles away.
Up, Up, and Away
Project Mogul was just such a program, the reports explained, and the object that crashed on Mac Brazel’s field in 1947 was “Flight R-4,” a Mogul balloon train that had been launched from Alamogordo Army Air Field—near the Roswell Base—in June 1947. The train of 20 balloons was tracked to within 17 miles of Mac Brazel’s ranch; shortly afterwards, radar contact was lost and the balloons were never recovered…at least not by the folks at Alamogordo. The Roswell intelligence officers who recovered the wreckage didn’t have high enough security clearance to know about Project Mogul, and thus they didn’t know to inform Alamogordo of the discovery.
On the whole, the program was successful—Project Mogul apparently did detect the first Soviet nuclear blasts. Even so, the project was discontinued when scientists discovered that such blasts could also be detected on the ground, making the balloon-borne sensors unnecessary. The project was discontinued in the early 1950s.
Roughly $20 million in counterfeit U.S. currency is circulating at any given time.
OTHER PROJECTS
The Air Force’s 1997 report suggested that a number of other military projects that took place in the 1940s and 1950s became part of the Roswell Myth:
• In the 1950s the Air Force launched balloons as high as 19 miles into the atmosphere and dropped human dummies to test parachutes for pilots of the X-15 rocket plane and the U-2 spy plane. The dummies, the Air Force says, were sometimes mistaken for aliens…and because it didn’t want the real purpose of the tests to be revealed, it did not debunk the alien theories.
• Some balloons also dropped mock interplanetary probes, which looked like flying saucers.
• In one 1959 balloon crash, a serviceman crashed a test balloon 10 miles northwest of Roswell and suffered an injury that caused his head to swell considerably. The man, Captain Dan D. Fulgham, was transferred to Wright Patterson in Ohio for treatment. The incident, the Air Force says, helped inspired the notion that aliens have large heads and that aliens or alien corpses are being held at Wright Patterson for study.
NEVER SURRENDER
Do the GAO and Air Force reports satisfy people who previously believed the object was a UFO? Not a chance. “It’s a bunch of pap,” says Walter G. Haut, who worked at the Roswell base and after World War II, distributed the famous “flying saucer” news release in 1947, and is now president of the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell. “All they’ve done is given us a different kind of balloon. Then it was weather, and now it’s Mogul. Basically, I don’t think anything has changed. Excuse my cynicism, but let’s quit playing games.”
“As the crow flies?” Crows don’t fly in straight lines.
OLD WIVES’ TALES
In modern society, an “old wives’ tale” is a common misconception. But in ancient times, it was essential wisdom. Makes you wonder how the things we believe will look in centuries to come.
In primitive times, people believed disease and death were caused by the invasion of demons. To protect themselves, they devised complex magical rites and ceremonies. Every group had a healer who had been chosen to learn and pass on the tribe’s medical “knowledge” and wisdom.
During the Middle Ages, these healers were “old wives” (wife simply meant “woman”) or “quack-salvers” (from the words quack-en, meaning “one who brags about their expertise,” and salve, meaning a type of cure.) Obviously, this is where the term “quack” comes from. But originally it didn’t imply fakery; “old wives” were respected members of society.
The following are some old wives’ cures which have been used for centuries. Some are strange and some, as it turns out, not so strange.
To reduce fever: Drink boiled onions or carry a key in the palm of your hand.
To treat gout: Walk barefoot in dewy grass.
For a headache: Rub an onion over your forehead. (Another suggestion, popular in the 17th century, was to drive a nail into the skull.)
To get rid of corns: Take brown paper, soak it in vinegar, and place it in a saucer under your bed. Dab the corn with saliva each day before breakfast.
For heart disease: Drink foxglove tea. (Foxglove contains digitalis, which is used today to combat heart disease.)
To cure boils: Carry nutmeg in your pocket.
To treat cramps: Place a magnet at the foot of the bed to draw the pain from the body. Also wear a piece of “tarred yarn” around the upper leg.
Most popular target for shoplifters: food stores.
To get rid of warts: Procedures for getting rid of warts must be done in complete secrecy in order to be effective. Here are three different cures:
• Whirl a strip of bacon around your head until you get tired, then bury it. When it rots the warts will be gone.
• Rub each wart with a bean, a pic
kle, an onion, a slice of potato and the skin of a chicken gizzard—then bury them.
• Tie half of a grapefruit over the wart and wear it each night until the wart disappears.
To cure a cold: Fry some onions, mix them with turpentine, spread them on your chest. (Alternative: boil an old hog hoof and drink the water.)
To cure chicken pox: Lie on the floor of a chicken house and get somebody to chase a flock of hens over you.
To grow taller: Eat a banana. Each time you eat one, you will grow.
To have curly hair: Pour rum or the juice of wild grapes on your head, and eat bread crusts with carrots. But if you are a girl, be sure not to whistle or you will grow a beard.
To cure asthma: Eat carrots.
To keep the brain clear: Sprinkle eyebrows with rosewater.
Relief from lumbago: Roll around in grass at the sound of the first cuckoo.
To gain strength: Drink rusty water from a rain barrel.
To cure rheumatism: Wear an eel skin around your waist.
To get rid of a headache: Stick a match in your hair. (Alternative: Tie the head of a buzzard around your neck.)
To get rid of freckles: Rub a live frog over your face.
To relieve a stomach ache: Take lily roots with wine.
To treat frostbite: Cow manure and milk, used as a poultice.
To cure lameness, muscle aches and pains: Use skunk grease.
The diesel cruise liner Queen Elizabeth II gets 6 inches to the gallon.
GROUCHO MARX, ATTORNEY AT LAW
Here’s the next installment of the radio adventures of Groucho and Chico Marx, from Five Star Theater (which aired in 1933).
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: Is this a detective agency?
GROUCHO: A detective agency? Madam, if there’s anything in it for me, this is Scotland Yard.
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: This man told me he was taking me to a detective bureau.
CHICO: You’re cuckoo, I did not. You stop me in the hall. You say you want a detective. I say, you go see Flywheel. You say alright. Well, here’s Flywheel.
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: Sir, are you or aren’t you a detective? My time is money.
GROUCHO: Your time is money? I wonder if you could lend me ten minutes for lunch, or maybe a half an hour for the rent?
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: For the last time, are you a detective?
GROUCHO: Madam, for the first time I am a detective.
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: Well, you don’t look much like a detective to me.
GROUCHO: That’s the beauty of it. See? I had you fooled already.
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: Is this man who brought me in a detective too?
CHICO: Sure, I’m a detective. I prove it. Lady, you lose anything today?
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: Why, I don’t think so. Heavens! My handbag has disappeared.
CHICO: Here it is.
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: Where did you find it?
CHICO: Right here in my pocket.
GROUCHO: Isn’t he marvelous, madam? He has the nose of a bloodhound, and his other features aren’t so good either.
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: Well, you’re just the men I’m looking for.
CHICO: You’re looking for us? Hey, are you a detective?
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: No, no. You misunderstand me. You see, my daughter is getting married this afternoon.
GROUCHO: Oh, your daughter’s getting married? I love those old-fashioned girls.
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: We’re having a big wedding reception, and I want you two men to come out this afternoon and keep an eye on the wedding presents. They’re very valuable, and I want to be sure that nothing is stolen.
Shortest film role to win an Oscar: Sylvia Miles, onscreen for 6 minutes in “Midnight Cowboy.”
CHICO: How much you pay us? You know it’s very hard work not to steal anything.
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: I think fifty dollars would be adequate. But you understand, of course, that you’re not to mingle with the guests.
GROUCHO: Well, if we don’t have to mingle with the guests we’ll do it for forty dollars.
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: Dear, dear, I must hurry. My daughter can’t get married unless I get her trousseau.
CHICO: Trousseau? You mean Robinson Trousseau?
GROUCHO: Your daughter’s marrying Robinson Crusoe today? Monday? Wouldn’t she be better off if she’d marry the man Friday?
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: Well, I must hurry along now. Goodbye, gentlemen. I’ll be looking for you this afternoon.
GROUCHO: Well, why look for us this afternoon when we’re here right now?
(Later, at the Brittenhouse mansion)
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: Hello, Mr. Flywheel. Hives, our butler, will take care of you. Oh, dear, I’m always so nervous at weddings. I’m really not myself today.
GROUCHO: You’re not yourself, eh? Well, whoever you are, you’re no bargain.
HIVES: Now, on these two tables here, gentlemen, are the presents. Please watch them very carefully. (Receding.) I’ll have to leave you now.
(Tap at the window.)
GROUCHO: I think there’s somebody at the window. You’d better let him in.
CHICO: Hey, boss. He’s a great big guy and he looks very tough.
(Tap again.)
CHICO: Hey, who are you?
MAN: Never mind who I am. Who are you guys?
CHICO: We’re a coupla detectives.
MAN: Oh, you’re a coupla detectives. Ha, ha, ha! That’s a hot one!
GROUCHO: Well, I’ve heard better ones than that, but it’s fairly good.
MAN: Hey, what are you guys supposed to do here?
CHICO: I watch da presents. Flywheel, he watch me, but we got no one to watcha Flywheel.
MAN: Well, you can clear outta here. I’ll do the whole ting for you.
GROUCHO: Ravelli, that fellow certainly is a prince. I’m getting out of here before he changes his mind.
(Opens and closes door. Footsteps)
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: Why, Mr. Flywheel, I thought you were supposed to stay in that room with the presents!
“Crocodile-tear syndrome” is a nerve disorder that makes people cry when they eat.
GROUCHO: Madam, I couldn’t stand being alone in that room. I just had to have another look at you. And now that I’ve had that look, I can hardly wait to get back to the presents.
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: Why, Mr. Flywheel!
GROUCHO: Don’t call me Mr. Flywheel, just call me Sugar.
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: Oh, Mr. Flywheel, I simply love the things you say.
GROUCHO: Oh, Mrs. Britten-house—I know you’ll think me a sentimental old softie, but would you give me a lock of your hair?
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE (coyly): Why, Mr. Flywheel!
GROUCHO: I’m letting you off easy—I was going to ask you for the whole wig.
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: Well, we’ll discuss that later. It’s too bad you can’t join us now for refreshments, but maybe some evening you’d like to have me for dinner.
GROUCHO: Have you for dinner? Well, if there’s nothing better to eat, I wouldn’t mind, but personally, I’d prefer a can of salmon.
HIVES: Mrs. Brittenhouse! Mrs. Brittenhouse!
GROUCHO: Is there no privacy here?
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: Why Hives, what’s the matter?
HIVES: The presents! The presents!
MRS. BRITTENHOUSE: What about the presents?
HIVES: They’re gone. We’ve been robbed!
GROUCHO: Robbed? Where’s Ravelli? Quick, find Ravelli!
CHICO: Here I am, boss. How you makin’ out?
GROUCHO: Listen, Ravelli. I thought I told you to watch the presents.
CHICO: That’s just what I was doing.
GROUCHO: There you are, Mrs. Brittenhouse. You have nothing to worry about.
HIVES: But, madam, the presents are gone.
CHICO: Boss, I watch them just like a bloodhound. You remember that big fellow? He came in da room …well, I watch him …
ALL: Yes…
CHICO: He walk
ed over and picked up da presents and I watch him…
ALL: Yes…
CHICO: He took them out da window! He put them on a truck and I watch him…
ALL: Yes…
CHICO: But when da truck drives away…then I cannot watch no more.
GROUCHO: You’re a genius. And now, Mrs. Brittenhouse, how about our fifty dollars?
Rule of thumb: if a plant is native to the Arctic circle, it doesn’t have thorns.
LET THERE BE LITE, PART II
First Lite Beer was a hit…then Light Beer…and then, Light Food. Finally, it turned into the most comprehensive labelling law in U.S. history. Here’s the rest of this unlikely story. (Continued from page 322.)
EATING LIGHT
By the late 1980s, the term “lite” had spread from beer to every kind of food imaginable. Consumers could buy “light” oil, cheese, salad dressing, ice cream, whiskey, pudding, crackers, hot dogs, even cat food (Tender Vittles Lite). In fact, by 1991 there were an estimated 10,000 “light” products on supermarket shelves.
“Next to foods that can be microwaved,” reported a manager of the U.S.’s largest supermarket chain in 1989, “light foods are the fastest-growing segment in our stores. If two comparable products are on the shelf next to each other, the one that says ‘Light’ will probably sell better.”
What was behind the lite boom? Polls showed that although most Americans weren’t inclined to radically alter diets or start exercising more, they still wanted to make some kind of “healthy” change. “Lite” food filled the bill perfectly. Everyone knew that “light” or “lite” on a package meant it was better for you. So by eating lite, people eat right—and still enjoy the same food they always had. It was a way to “ have it all.”
Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader Page 45