In 1971, Fred E. Stuart patented a “firearm mounted in a shoe heel.” He envisions military personnel and police using it when “regular weapons have been lost or become jammed.”

The shoes can fire regular bullets, frangible projectiles, or even tear gas, and can be fitted with multiple barrels that fire independently.

Combine this with a reversible sole and you have the makings of a perfect murder — a concealed weapon that confuses the crime scene.

In 1994, inventor Albert Cohen saw a peculiar opportunity:

During a televised sporting event, a ‘high five’ is commonly shared between fans to express the joy and excitement of a touchdown, home run, game-winning basket, birdie or other positive occurrence. Unfortunately, as known in the art, a ‘high five’ requires the mutual hand slapping of two participants, wherein a first participant slaps an upraised hand against the elevated hand of a second participant. As such, a solitary fan is unable to perform a ‘high five’ to express excitement during a televised sporting event.

His “apparatus for simulating a high five” can be mounted on a table, wall, or floor — and it even promotes physical fitness: “When the hand-arm configuration is mounted at a sufficient height above the normal reach of a user, the user must jump upwards to strike the simulated hand, thereby simulating many of the jumping drills commonly practiced by basketball players. As such, the leg strength and coordination of a user may be improved through the practice of the present invention.”

In 1783, Benjamin Franklin watched a balloon carry a man into the sky over Paris.

“What good is a balloon?” scoffed a man in the crowd.

Franklin responded, “What good is a newborn baby?”

‘Overhead’ is a familiar technical term in newspaper work. It describes a report flashed to a newspaper directly by commercial telegraph instead of through the regular channels of a wire service. For instance: on Decoration Day in the town of Walsenburg, Colo., 50 mi. south of Pueblo, Editor John B. Kirkpatrick of the World & Independent wired Associated Press in Denver that he wanted coverage of the Indianapolis automobile races. Presently AP wired its reply: WILL OVERHEAD WINNER OF INDIANAPOLIS RACES. Editor Kirkpatrick jumped with excitement. An hour later the World & Independent’s 1,750 readers puzzled over an 8-column streamer:

OVERHEAD WINS INDIANAPOLIS RACE

The story, as edited by Editor Kirkpatrick, began:

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (AP) — Will Overhead won the Indianapolis Memorial Day race today. At the 250 mile post Babe Stapp was leading the string of roaring cars, but gave way to Overhead on the last half of the 500 mile grind.

— Time, June 12, 1933

In 1916, inventor Hugh Huffman offered “a more efficient form of scarecrow,” a faux cat mounted on a wind vane and fitted with bells. “The action of the wind will give various motions to the figure which will simulate the lifelike movements of the animal.”

If it worked then, it ought to work now.

“What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly?” So wrote the English cleric William Law in 1728, and in the late 19th century inventors were still struggling to reach the heavens.

Watson Quinby’s 1872 “flying apparatus,” above, was designed to permit the user to grope through the air with actions “resembling those of swimming in water.”

In 1889, Jasper Spalding was emulating a bird rather than a bat with a feathered flying machine designed to be suspended from a balloon (below).

Neither got off the ground … but within one lifetime we had reached the moon.

In the 19th century manuals such as Gunn’s Domestic Medicine promised that “any man, unless he be an idiot or an absolute fool,” could perform an amputation. But Pennsylvania surgeon George Griswold had found that “persons unskilful in the use of the saw, and even the most experienced, will find it difficult to hold the bone firmly,” increasing both the patient’s pain and length of the operation. He invented this “amputator’s assistant” to hold a limb steady while a surgeon saws through it.

He patented it in 1854, only seven years before the Civil War. I haven’t been able to learn how widely it was used.

In The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain describes a remarkable automaton that he encountered at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867:

I watched a silver swan, which had a living grace about his movements, and a living intelligence in his eyes–watched him swimming about as comfortably and as unconcernedly as if he had been born in a morass instead of a jeweler’s shop–watched him seize a silver fish from under the water and hold up his head and go through all the customary and elaborate motions of swallowing it.

The swan still exists, now on display at England’s Barnard Castle. As a music box plays, the life-size creature preens, searches a flowing “stream” of rotating glass rods, spies a fish, and catches and swallows it. No one knows who designed it, but it’s certainly more than two centuries old — it’s described in a 1773 Act of Parliament.

See Watch Your Step and Daddy!

In 1900, evidently tired of initiating pledges by hand, Edmund and Ulysses de Moulin decided to automate the process.

With their “initiating device,” the applicant is blindfolded, placed in position, and told to pull the handles to test his strength. When he does so, the paddle spanks him and an electric shock passes through his arms, “making the sensation rather unique.”

You could turn this into a regular assembly line — or, using multiple machines, humiliate an entire freshman class at once.