Fallout

Actors who appeared in The Conqueror (1956) and subsequently died of cancer:

  • John Wayne
  • Susan Hayward
  • Agnes Moorehead
  • Pedro Armendáriz
  • John Hoyt

Director Dick Powell died of cancer in 1963. The movie, in which Wayne played Genghis Khan, was shot in St. George, Utah, downwind of Nevada open-air nuclear testing, and producer Howard Hughes had 60 tons of dirt shipped back to Hollywood for use in reshoots.

By 1981, 91 of the 220 cast and crew had developed some form of cancer, and more than half of them were already dead.

“With these numbers, this case could qualify as an epidemic,” said University of Utah biologist Robert Pendleton. “In a group this size you’d expect only 30-some cancers to develop. … I think the tie-in to their exposure on the set of The Conqueror would hold up in a court of law.”

| Death · Entertainment · Oddities · Trivia

Serenade in Blue

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Lancaster_I_NG128_Dropping_Load_-_Duisburg_-_Oct_14_-_1944.jpg

Bandleader Glenn Miller vanished over the English Channel in 1944 while flying from England to France to play for soldiers who had recently liberated Paris. His disappearance has never been explained, but here’s one possibility: In foggy conditions, Miller’s plane may have been bombed out of the air by the Canadian Air Force, which was disposing of unused bombs after an aborted attack on German positions.

“There is no rest, there must be no rest for a fellow when he is successful,” Miller once said. “He has got to keep right on going.”

| Entertainment · Oddities

The Campden Wonder

In August 1660, an Englishman named William Harrison disappeared while walking from his home in Campden to Charingworth, about two miles away.

His manservant and son set out to find him, but Harrison’s bloodstained hat, shirt, and collar were soon discovered on the main road between Chipping Campden and Ebrington. There was no body.

In the furor that followed, the manservant accused his own mother and brother of killing Harrison for his money. He convinced the jury by acknowledging that the idea had been his own, and thus he was putting himself in jeopardy by admitting it. Why would he lie about such a thing?

All three were hanged in 1661. The following year, the missing man reappeared. He said he’d been abducted by pirates, sold into slavery, and escaped.

Why did the manservant lie, bringing a death sentence on himself and his family, if all were innocent? His confession has never been explained.

| History · Oddities

Graduated Rulers

Stretch out this image by Erhard Schön …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:OpticalIllusion.JPG

… and you’ll see images of Charles V, Ferdinand I, Pope Paul III, and Francis I:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:OpticalIllusion.JPG

Big deal, you say, anyone with a computer can make a compressed image.

Well, Schön made this one 1535, as a wood carving. Beat that.

| Art · Oddities · Technology

Let the Eagle Soar

Larry Walters had always dreamed of flying, but bad eyesight kept him out of the Air Force. So in July 1982 he bought 45 weather balloons, filled them with helium and tied them to a lawn chair, hoping to float 100 feet above his backyard.

It didn’t work out that way. When his friends severed him from his Jeep, Walters rose to 16,000 feet and began to float toward Long Beach airport. Desperate to get down, he began shooting the balloons with a pellet gun, eventually descending into a power line and causing a local blackout. The FAA fined him $1,500.

After the flight, a reporter asked Walters why he’d done it. “A man can’t just sit around,” he said.

| Oddities

No Dipping

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prag_ginger_u_fred_gehry.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Prague’s “Dancing House” is nicknamed “Fred and Ginger,” for obvious reasons.

Such a controversial design would normally be denied, but former president Václav Havel is a strong supporter of avant-garde architecture … and he owns the building next door.

| Art · Oddities · Society

Stonehenge South

If you love megaliths but live south of the equator, check out Stonehenge Aotearoa, located in New Zealand about an hour’s drive from Wellington.

It’s a replica of Stonehenge adapted for the Southern Hemisphere, with 24 pillars about 4 meters high.

| Oddities

Better Safe …

In the 1920s, the U.S. military devised a contingency plan for attacking Canada. After a first strike with poison gas, we’d occupy Halifax, invade Montreal and Quebec from New England, strike at the Great Lakes from Detroit and Buffalo, and impose a naval blockade on British Columbia.

At the same time, Canada’s Col. James Sutherland Brown developed a counter-invasion strategy where flying air columns would occupy Seattle, Portland, Oregon, Minneapolis, and St. Paul. Gen. George Pearkes called it a “fantastic desperate plan [that] just might have worked,” but it was withdrawn in 1931.

| History · Oddities

Evermore

Every year since 1949, a mysterious figure has visited the grave of Edgar Allan Poe on the author’s birthday, Jan. 19.

Early in the morning, a black-clad figure with a silver-tipped cane enters the Westminster Hall and Burying Ground in Baltimore, goes to Poe’s grave, raises a toast of cognac, and leaves behind three red roses.

He wears a black coat and hat and obscures his face, so his identity is unknown, but in 1993 he left a note saying “The torch will be passed.” In 1999, a second note said that the toaster had died … but since then a younger person has apparently taken his place.

“All that we see or seem,” Poe wrote, “is but a dream within a dream.”

| Literature · Oddities