Weird Universe Blog — March 28, 2024

Miss British Reinforced Concrete

The title was supposed to be bestowed on an employee of British Reinforced Concrete, but it was given to non-employee Nanette Keay by mistake:

"Just as the contest was starting some of the men pushed me into the line for a joke.
"They wouldn't let me leave and so I had to walk past the judges. I was absolutely astonished at winning."

Despite not being an official contestant, they let her keep the title.


Glasgow Daily Record - Apr 6, 1953

Posted By: Alex - Thu Mar 28, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests | 1940s

Dance of the Simpleton

Since the silent dance video has no soundtrack, but is ostensibly meant to be accompanied by a Chopin Waltz, I suggest playing "The Minute Waltz" simultaneously! If you click the dance video, then the music video, they sync up nicely, just like THE DARK SIDE OF THE RAINBOW.



Posted By: Paul - Thu Mar 28, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Eccentrics | Spastic, Uncontrolled, Awkward and Herky-Jerky Movements | 1920s | Dance

March 27, 2024

Is it marijuana or alfalfa?

Peter Hlookoff had an unusual strategy to avoid being convicted for possession of marijuana — he always carried a container of alfalfa with him.

His reasoning was that alfalfa and marijuana smell similar (so he claimed). So if the police ever arrested him for possession of marijuana he could claim that it was actually alfalfa they had smelled (or seen him smoking).

This strategy was put to the test in Dec 1967 when the police raided his apartment and arrested him for smoking pot. During the subsequent court case his defense led to the magistrate arranging for a court employee to smoke marijuana so that its smell could be compared to alfalfa.

Victoria Times Colonist - May 10, 1968



Unfortunately the courtroom experiment was cancelled before it took place, and the magistrate ended up finding Hlookoff guilty. He didn't buy Hlookoff's follow-up argument that if, perhaps, it had been marijuana he was smoking then someone must have (without his knowledge) put marijuana in his alfalfa container.

The Vancouver Province - July 3, 1968



Hlookoff's roommate, Marcel Horne (a professional firebreather whose stage name was 'El Diablo'), later wrote an autobiography in which he revealed that, yeah, they were absolutely smoking pot when the police raided their apartment:

It was now December 12, 1967, Peter Hlookoff, who was now co-editor of the Georgia Straight, and I were up in my room around one o'clock in the morning. I was lying under a sun lamp to get a tan and was high on grass. Peter sat in the middle of the floor with a roach in one hand and enough dope for three cigarettes in a plastic tube on the floor beside him.

We were rapping away very stoned, when we heard someone coming up the stairs. The next thing we knew two cops in uniform walked into the room. Peter tried to drop the roach but the cop saw him. I was too stoned to think properly so I just lay there watching the nightmare. The cops put us up against the wall and frisked us. "Who does the marijuana belong to?" We both answered, "What marijuana?"

image source: Annals of the Firebreather (1973), by Marcel Horne

Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 27, 2024 - Comments (2)
Category: Drugs | Smoking and Tobacco | Law | 1960s

Beatniks Under the Microscope




Posted By: Paul - Wed Mar 27, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Science | Bohemians, Beatniks, Hippies and Slackers | 1950s

March 26, 2024

Hear how to handle your boat

Released in 1961 as part of the "Carlton Hear How Series."

The series started off with fairly mundane topics such as how to handle your boat, how to be a better bowler, how to take better photographs, etc. But as sales lagged (surely because of the dull topics) Carlton introduced more controversial topics such as "Hear how to achieve sexual harmony in marriage" and "Hear how to tell your children the facts of life."

The strategy didn't work, and the series was discontinued after 1961.

More info: bsnpubs.com

Posted By: Alex - Tue Mar 26, 2024 - Comments (3)
Category: Boats | 1960s

March 25, 2024

An Upside-Down Experiment

In 1950, graduate student Fred Snyder of the University of Wichita spent 30 days wearing special glasses that inverted his vision. It was part of an experiment designed by Dr. N.H. Pronko, head of the psychology department, to see if a person could adapt to seeing everything upside-down. The answer was that, yes, Snyder gradually adapted to inverted vision. And when the experiment ended he had to re-adapt to seeing the world right-side-up.

Snyder and Pronko described the experiment in their 1952 book, Vision with Spatial Inversion. From the book's intro:

Suppose that we attached lenses to the eyes of a newborn child, lenses having the property of reversing right-left and up and down. Suppose, also, that the child wore the lenses through childhood, boyhood, and young manhood. What would happen if these inverting lenses were finally removed on his twenty-fifth birthday? Would he be nauseated and unable to reach and walk and read?

Such an experiment is out of the question, of course. Yet another experiment was made: a young man was persuaded to wear inverting lenses for 30 days, and his experiences are reported here. His continued progress, after an initial upset, suggests that new perceptions do develop in the same way as the original perceptions did. Life situations suggest the same thing. Dentists learn to work via a mirror in the patient's mouth until the action is automatic. In the early days of television, cameramen had to "pan" their cameras with a reversed view. Later the image in the camera was corrected to correspond with the scene being panned. The changeover caused considerable confusion to cameramen until they learned appropriate visual-motor coordinations. Fred Snyder, the subject of our upside-down experiment, found himself in a similar predicament, at least for a time.


Images from Life - Sep 18, 1950:







"Graduate student Fred Snyder falling down after removing special eyeglasses that reverse and invert everything he sees. Immediately before removing glasses he rode a bicycle with perfect control along sidewalk in Central Park."

Posted By: Alex - Mon Mar 25, 2024 - Comments (2)
Category: Experiments | 1950s | Eyes and Vision

March 24, 2024

Defecation relief unit for aeroplane personnel

How do fighter pilots poop while in the air? I think the answer is that they try very hard not to, because if they have to go, they're going in their flight suit. Back in the 1950s Constantin Paul Lent, et al., tried to come up with an alternative. From their patent (No. 2,749,558):

This device relates to feces and urine elimination cabinets and more particularly to defecation relief devices used by aircraft pilots and other key flying personnel. More particularly it relates to feces and urine elimination cabinets which may find utilization in single pilot driven aircraft.

Comparatively speaking it is an easy matter to provide adequate latrines for the men in the forces on land and sea. When the time comes to eliminate, one just walks to the nearest comfort station. But in the Air Force the problem of elimination can not be always solved that easily especially by aviation pilots...

The applicants are cognizant that there are relief tubes provided on most all jet planes for urinating, but no single seat aircraft is equipped with a safe and sure means for defecation. When the pilot of the jet, due to accident or enemy action needs to eliminate, the problem of defecation becomes acute. The pilot must wait until he lands his craft; and quite often he must remain aloft for a considerable length of time before he has a chance to visit a comfort station on the ground. In many cases due to the physiological and psychological effects produced on the pilot by enemy action, he is forced to eliminate even before he has a chance to land his plane.


Posted By: Alex - Sun Mar 24, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Flight | Patents | Excrement | Air Travel and Airlines | 1950s

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