Sparky the dog in Wes Westrum’s catching gear March 12, 1956 photo; United Press
Baseball catchers wear the so-called tools of ignorance. They get hit by wild pitches, foul balls and errant bats, constantly taking a beating behind the plate. So who wants to be a catcher? Continue reading
Today we conclude the story of one of New York City’s greatest unsolved missing person cases. At the end of part one of the story, on December 12, 1910, Dorothy Arnold said goodbye to Gladys King, an acquaintance she had bumped into on Fifth Avenue. Gladys was the last person to see Dorothy Arnold alive.
From They Never Came Back by Allen Churchill (Crime Club, 1960) is part two of The Girl Who Never Came Back.
Return now to the Arnold home. Never had the well-brought-up Dorothy skipped a meal without warning the family ahead of time. Now when she failed to return for dinner an increasingly worried group ate without her, then began making discreet phone calls to Dorothy’s close friends asking if the girl had dropped in on them. Told she had not, the Arnolds begged that no mention ever be made of the phone call. Later they asked the same girls not to discuss the case with reporters, and it is indicative of the vast difference between society girls then and now that none of the girls ever did. Continue reading
In the annals of missing person cases few are as baffling as Dorothy Arnold.
Time has erased the Dorothy Arnold case from the public’s memory. But for decades, Dorothy Arnold’s disappearance ranked among the most speculated of mysteries in New York’s history.
Dorothy Arnold disappeared on December 12, 1910 after leaving her house to go for a walk and do some shopping in midtown Manhattan. To make finding her whereabouts more complicated a report that she was missing was not filed with police until weeks after her disappearance. Continue reading
This vintage photograph is not photoshopped.
However upon closer examination, the dog is obviously not driving the car. As the original news slug caption explains: Continue reading
While recently highlighting one of the silliest movies ever made, The Thing With Two Heads, we came across stories of other human anomalies.
Co-joined twins Millie and Christine (or Christina) McKoy were famous in the 19th century, sometimes billed as “The Wonderful Two Headed Girl,” “The Two-Headed Nightingale,” or “The Eighth Wonder of the World.”
The truth about this “two headed girl” was quite different than what was advertised. Continue reading
Why is it that when we see an old postcard people remark that the handwriting is so beautiful? The graceful penmanship all looks similar because millions of people in the mid-nineteenth and up to the early twentieth century were taught a single method of handwriting.
This calligraphy type of writing was invented by Platt Rogers Spencer and called the Spencerian style and method of penmanship.
Spencer’s unique tombstone at Evergreen cemetery in Geneva, OH is the first grave marker to display the cursive handwriting that he developed and popularized.
Platt Rogers Spencer
Platt Rogers Spencer was the youngest of a family of ten children. He was born November 7, 1800, in East Fishkill, New York. He lived there and in Windham, N. Y., until he was nine years old, when he moved with his widowed mother and family to Jefferson, Ohio, which was then wilderness country.
There, Spencer developed his love of writing and devoted his life to the art of penmanship. Continue reading
There is subliminal advertising. Then there is the advertising trying to be subliminal, yet it’s not. It’s a step above subliminal, painfully obvious and the equivalent of blunt force trauma.
It hits so hard that if you turn the page without stopping, you will stop and say “wait a second, what did I just see?” And then turn back a page to double-check.
No, this product shown above is not from the Adam and Eve sex catalog.
I’m not quite sure which magazine this ad appeared in possibly Vogue or an in-flight magazine. It ran sometime in the early to mid-2000s.
When I saw it, I tore it out, saying to myself this has to be a joke no one would believe this.
Donna Karan Phallic Perfume bottle ad text (click to enlarge – no pun intended.)
But it’s real. I folded it up showed it to a few friends. Then I saved it in my shoebox full of oddities with the funny poem, the wooden nickel and a mood ring. Continue reading
Sir John Barrow Memorial Hoad Hill Ulverston Cumbria, UK
The “lighthouse” is in the town of Ulverston, a bucolic seaside town which hosts various festivals throughout the year. There’s an annual Dickens Festival each November in which many of the citizens dress in Victorian attire. Then there’s “Another Fine Fest” held in June. The title is a takeoff on the admonishing words “Well… that’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into!” Oliver Hardy says these words in countless films to his comedic partner Stan Laurel. Ulverston’s modern claim to fame is as the birthplace of comedian Stan Laurel, who lived here until he was six-years-old.
Levity aside, viewed from afar, the 100 tower off the northern English coast of Cumbria sure looks like a lighthouse. Continue reading
Incredibly, around 60 years ago, well before the age of cell phones, it was known that in the future people would be attached to their phones.
So, here is the proof
Below are five inventions that were filed with the U.S. Patent Office between 1899 – 1904.
As we noted in our other story regarding bra patents, Americans are innovative and resourceful. When opportunity knocks they will be there to answer. All of these people thought their inventions would take off. None of them did.
Originally the patent office required you to build a model of your invention. Eventually they dropped that requirement. When you see the words no model, it means a prototype was not presented. After you discover what the invention is you will understand why some of these never had a model built.
So what are they?
#1 patented by Frank May 1904 US793004
#2 patented by Monroe Griffith 1900
#3 patented by Samuel McHatton 1899
#4 patented by Henry Ullrich 1900
#5 patented by Joseph Karwowski 1903
Here are the answers with the patent inventor’s edited description:
This innocuous looking machine was electrified and quite honestly sounds extremely dangerous if used as intended.
#1 patent Frank May 1904 US793004
#1 EYE-MASSAGE MACHINE
Be it known that I, Frank Howard May a citizen of the United States, residing at Birmingham, in the county of Jefferson and State of Alabama, have invented a new and useful Improvement in eye massage machines, of which the following a specification.
My invention is in the nature. of an eye massage machine in which mechanical vibrations are imparted to the eye through an electrically-operated vibrator and which is so constructed also as to permit the direct application of either primary or Faradaic currents to the eye. Continue reading
