Fun Side is now weezdumb

This blog's name and address have been changed to:

weezdumb

New posts are being made there now, but no longer here.. look for a new template and more stupidity and all sorts of dumb stuff..

Porn Interrupts Arizona Super Bowl Broadcast

from Arizona Daily Star

A short clip of a pornographic movie cut into a Comcast broadcast of the Super Bowl in homes in and around Tucson.

Officials at Comcast confirmed that its signal was interrupted during the Super Bowl, but the company is still working to figure out how porn broke into its cable feed.

Engineers at Comcast will be working throughout the night to determine what happened, said Kelle Maslyn, a Comcast spokeswoman.

The Star newsroom erupted with calls from irate viewers shortly after 7:30 p.m. who said that the porn cut into the broadcast just after Cardinals player Larry Fitzgerald scored a touchdown on a pass from Kurt Warner to give the Cardinals the lead with less than two minutes in the game.

Callers said that a clip showing a woman unzipping a man's pants broke into the standard definition feed reaching analog TV sets. Comcast's high definition feed was not affected, and Maslyn did not know how many homes were affected.

[Apparently there was even more scoring than we realized]

The Super Bowl in Six Minutes

Before the 2009 Super Bowl, the pre-game show is five hours. The game telecast is four and a half hours, normally they allot three hours.

Someone at ESPN timed the actual plays of a game, while players were in motion, running around: the game’s actual EXCERCISED length with people in action = five minutes, forty seconds!!

Yep – our priorities are in order, 9.5 hrs of broadcast time in a row for six actual minutes of sports action! I don't have the heart to calc the minutes of commercials for all this, that's usually 20 min per hour, likely more tomorrow!

TIVO this sucker, watch it in 15 minutes, taking time to slow-mo the cheerleaders bouncing up and down (the "Man Show" on Spike used to end with slo-mo's of teenage girls on trampolines!)

-- and who said "advertising was dead"?
Well, some guy on CNBC said they give away a lot of time now! NO WAY they're gonna lengthen the shows back again though - better to give the time to the army, a local vocational school, or even the guy from the Ron Howard short film on Lettermen, his brother Clint who was a wino that collected dead rats! he ends up on tv commercials promising "a free dead rat with every tv purchase!"

Time = Money, so this sucker is costing the nation nine hrs x 200 million people, that's 1.8 BILLION hours total. Enough to CURE freakin' cancer!

...I remain The Jman....

Gaseous Clouds in Space

This is the most awe-inspiring photo of space I've seen, the Orion Nebula photographed from the Hubbell space telescope. The different colors are elements, blue is zinc, so there's a cloud of zinc so large that it encompasses fifty or more stars!

This image is my desktop wallpaper off and on, I rotate this with one of the moon above some mission bells out west, perhaps San Xavier du Bac near Tucson.

The San Francisco Astronomical Society had a bumper sticker, which read "Are there clouds of gas around Uranus?"

Lancelot Encore, the Cloned Dog

[Typical waste of money by americans with too much? or a worthy use of your life savings? - lol.. the Jman]

A Florida couple had their dog (golden retreiver) Lancelot's DNA frozen, then cloned after he died. They now have the 10 wk old clone, named Lancelot Encore -- cost: $150,000! Guy Adami on Fast Money said, "they could've bought 200 dogs for 750 each, kept the one that looked like Lancelot and given away all the others"

Better yet- find one that looked like that and give the other 149k to a local soup kitchen or food relief service for FLA HURRICANE victims.. oh well, my bias is showing... I like th idea of cloning, esp if we find an animal IMMUNE to something like the plague, or a human that can't get AIDS..

Here's the story on MSNBC: Florida Couple Clones Dog

It IS an awfully CUTE dog! who wouldn't want one?

Other good names: Lancelot Redux (like a movie), Lancelot II (like a horse or king), Lanc-a-clone, Looksalot Like Lancelot

ps2 - Geron (GERN)owns the rights to cloning, someone had to pay them royalties I hope - they cloned Dolly the Sheep or their technology did, the first cloned 'famous' animal (they had cloned mice in tests).. not much different than procreation really, since any animal has different memories and experience regardless of their DNA --- but it makes a good PR story -- grab yer kids DNA now in case something happens to one!

Heed All Warning Signs

Always avoid these signs....

The Theory of Women

Has the Earth's Axis Tilt Changed?

You can read all these links to NASA and other organizations and judge for yourself.

Could this is what's really happening to the weather? Not a sudden looming Apocalypse but a major change in the earth's tilt angle, and in the evolution of life on earth:
Earth's Axis Tilt

How much of this related to the increased attention given the Mayan calendar ending time in 2012, one never knows. There's apparently a lot of money to be made off of the Apocalypse scenario, so it continues to recycle and repeat itself.

Wacky U.S. Town Names

Source: USPS Zipcode database, so these have zip codes, imagine those that don't

Alabama: Stretch Ankle, Arab, Burnt Corn, and Seed Tick
Arkansas-Texas: Texarkana (state line runs down main street)
Arizona: Why (see Mississippi)
California: Zzyzx Springs (there’s also Yreka in the Trinity Alps, with a bakery, and the “Yreka Bakery” is a palindrome, the same backwards as forwards)
Delaware: Camden Wyoming (this town is lost!)
Florida: Kissimee
Georgia: Social Circle, Santa Claus, Box Springs. (and there's a Hard Labor Creek State Park)
Hawaii: Captain Cook
Idaho: Hog Heaven
Illinois: Bone Gap, Cave In Rock (named by Neanderthals)
Iowa: What Cheer [in Georgia, if it’s not over there, it’s rat cheer]
Kentucky: Bear Wallow, Mud Lick, Minnie Mousie, Bug, Eighty-Eight
(Note: in 1948, 88 people in Eighty-eight voted for Dewey, and 88 voted for Truman; in 1988, a couple came from Caspar Wyoming to be married on the 8th day of the 8th month at 8:08 p.m. – you have to wonder if they only stayed married for 88 days or 8 days, 8 minutes!)
Louisiana: Sweet Gum Head
Maryland: Potato Neck
Michigan: Climax
Minnesota: Fertile, Blackduck
Mississippi: Whynot (see Arizona)
Missouri: Braggadoccio
Nevada: Cal Nev Ari
New Hampshire: Center Sandwich (what, no East or West Sandwich?)
New York: Breakabeen
North Carolina: Coldass Creek, Stiffknee Knob, Rabbit Shuffle (and of course, the Beverly Hillbillies had kin in “Bug Tussle”)
North Dakota: Cannon Ball
Oklahoma: Broken Arrow, Broken Bow (but no Broken Hearts?)
Oregon: Bridal Veil
Pennsylvania: Intercourse, Burnt Cabins
South Carolina: Ninety-Six
Texas: Chocolate Box, Ding Dong, Lick Skillet
Tennessee: Dull, Only, Peeled Chestnut, Defeated, Nameless
Utah: Mexican Hat
Virginia: Bland
Washington: Humptulips
Wisconsin: Cozy Corners
Wyoming: Dead Bastard Peak, Crazy Woman Creek, Maggie’s Nipples (mountains no doubt? Or just a “flashy” local denizen?) Let’s not forget The Grand Tetons (French for...) right next to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
California is a town in four states: Missouri, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Kentucky
Carolina is a town in West Virginia and Rhode Island

Name Changes for Good Causes
In 1950, the town of Hot Springs, New Mexico, changed its name to Truth or Consequences on a dare from a radio game show of that name; the prize: the 10th anniversary show was broadcast from there.
In 1954, Maunch Chunk, Pennsylvania, changed its name to Jim Thorpe, so his widow would bury his body nearby.
In the 90’s, a town in Montana changed it’s name to Joe, as the first one to do so got a visit from and a day's celebration with Joe Montana! (He actually hails from western Pennsylvania).
Cody, Wyoming, changed its name for Buffalo Bill Cody.

The Real JFK Story from the CIA Itself

Source: Plausible Denial by Mark Lane

We all remember the day in 1963 and the scamful Warren Commission later with bogus evidence and suspicous witnesses (two of whom could barely see 10 feet but made ID's of Oswald in a distant window), but no one even noticed when the CIA admitted contracting the Mafia for the hit during an 80’s trial, “Howard Hunt vs. Liberty Magazine”. Liberty-owned Spy magazine implicated Nixon "plumber" Howard Hunt in the assassination using photos of him in the crowd there; Hunt's own family suspected him and said he was not in Washington at all that week. They were goading Hunt into a libel suit so they could, as defendant, subpoena CIA witnesses.

Eight former CIA heads testified, including one George Bush (and the one who signed for and collected the physical evidence for the CIA in Dallas, later censored and funneled in part to the Warren Commission), who admitted “the CIA has a policy to take out tyrannical leaders worldwide, including here”. Robert Kennedy had laid off 90% of the CIA personnel, vowing to "crush the power of the secret intelligence community." The CIA, fearful of losing the cold war, decided if JFK went, so would Robert, and contracted the Mafia for the job, who hired hitmen from Europe in case they were caught.

There were three shooters as everyone suspected, and none was Oswald; he was eating lunch during the entire incident, as many co-workers testified. The shooters were all from Marseilles, France. According to A&E's documentary "The Men Who Murdered JFK": one is now dead, another in prison, the third is unknown. The one in prison would testify if the third would also, be he remains anonymous and free.

Even more interesting to me is that Oliver Stone's film "JFK" came out after this trial, yet none of it was included in his film, as if that film was a diversionary cover-up of the real trial involving Hunt and the CIA. Did Stone perhaps put out disinformation for the CIA?

The First Female Candidate for President

No, it's not Hillary, she's over a century too late.

The first female candidate for president was Victoria Woodhull (Mrs. John Biddulph Martin), who ran in 1872. This free love, women's rights, and labor union advocate, born in a shack in Homer, Ohio, was both the first American woman to run for President and the first woman to run a stock brokerage. Before that she was a famous “spiritualist” and healer who counted Cornelius Vanderbilt among her famous lovers.

She used information from her lovers, many being powerful businessmen, to start her own successful brokerage (1870) with her sister Tennessee, backed by Vanderbilt. They also started their own newspaper to champion their causes.

She ran for President in 1872, a candidate for the Equal Rights Party, and former slave Frederick Douglass was nominated as VP, but never acknowledged it. She was denounced from the pulpit as immoral and an adulteress, while no one mentioned that she was actually under the legal age to serve of 35. Some even argued that women were not citizens, and only legal citizens could serve.

Two days before the election, she and her sister were arrested for sending obscene materials through the mail, and although later acquitted, they were held over a month and prevented from voting, amid public outcries of censorship. She tried to run again in 1884 and 1892.

She thought she could “cheat death” by not sleeping in a bed, so for the last 4 years of her life slept in an armchair in her living room in England (where she retired with her last husband), where she was eventually found, having passed away in her sleep.

Here's a tribute site for her: www.victoria-woodhull.com

Ten or 12 Months, It's Still a Year to Me

The Roman calendar was based on the moon, so every year it came up ten days short and also had ten months, beginning on March 1. An Egyptian astronomer that Caesar met through Cleopatra showed him a calendar based on the sun, which gave us the twelve month year. I always wondered why October (oct meaning eight) was the 10th month, November (novem meaning nine) the 11th, and December (dec meaning ten) was the twelfth. There used to be eight through ten but when Caesar added two months he stuck them in front of these, and started the new year on January 1 rather than March.

Wait a minute – isn’t 52 weeks divisible by 4 weeks per month = 13 months? So why don’t we have 13 months, each with four weeks? We can still add back the stupid leap day. Oh yeah, the “wheels of capitalism” pretend that they need quarters or four equal 13-week periods… Well, they still could have four quarters, they just wouldn’t end perfectly at month’s end. The year that Caesar changed the calendar, he caused a 455-day year, called “the year of confusion”. [That was also the year they invented annual salaries!]

Interestingly, 1642 yrs later, the slightly incorrect calculations had led to the date actually being about ten days off, and Pope Julian, after listening to advisors, simply “lopped off ten days”, by having people go to bed on October 4th and wake up on October 15th. Some cities rioted, thinking he’d stolen ten days from them (likely employers paying annual salaries!), but peasants in the country hardly noticed and life continued as before.

We now lose a day only once every three thousand years. I favor the even earlier calendar, Phoenicians I believe, of 12 months, 30 day each with FIVE days left over at the end for celebrating, called "Holy Days", our source for the word holidays.

The Much Too Modern Olympics

The Olympics were halted in 394 a.d. by the Christian emperor Theodosius, who said they were a “pagan celebration” (Zeus favored the hammer throw). They were revived in 1892 by a Frenchman who wanted the French to become more fit in case they had another war with Germany – gee, what were the odds of that?

Judging from history, I don’t think being able to win a fencing medal helped much in either world war, and they didn’t have an Olympic “grenade toss” or “dodge the bullets” event, although the biathlon made sense: ski your butt off then shoot holes through the enemy!

In 1904, they removed the human targets from the javelin toss, and in 1912, after several accidents, they dropped the “shoot the apple off the judge’s head” event in archery.

The Russians tried to get the “Molotov Cocktail Toss” into the 1908 Olympics in Moscow but no one saw the value before the invention of tanks. In 1984, the Afghanis tried to implement the “Stinger Missile Skeet Shoot” to no avail. In 1994, the Olympic Committee rejected the US entry: "Drive-by Roller Derby".

Do NOT Touch That Ball

Soccer evidently got started when the victors of the Battle of Hastings (1066) lopped off the head of the deposed army leader and kicked it around the battlefield. It’s clear to see where the no hands rule came from, “yar cap’in – it’s a bloody mess!”.

By 1314, soccer, along with golf, was so popular that King Edward II had to ban both because the warrior nation needed more skillful archers trained in case of war, and soccer and golf added few battle skills to aid in the country’s defense. “Mess with us we’ll bean you with our niblicks” might have scared the French into avoiding golf entirely, but the Huns merely laughed and met golf clubs with mace and double-edged broadswords and world-class pillaging.

He Wished He Was In Dixie

The famous battle song of the confederacy, "Dixie", was written in a New York city hotel room in 1859 by Daniel Decatur Emmett, from Ohio! When it was played for Jefferson Davis’ inauguration, the song quickly caught on throughout the south, much to the consternation of “damned Yankee” Emmett, who said “if I’d known what they were gonna do to my song, I’d have never written it!” Then we’d have been stuck with “Dueling Banjos” - so thank you, D.D.!

Ironically, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, sung by Union troops, was composed by a Southerner.

Plymouth Rock was a Beer Stop

The pilgrims sailing to America on the Mayflower were blown off course, and rather than turn and head south for Virginia as originally intended, they put ashore in Massachusetts because they were running low on beer. Water was considered suspect, due to contamination and disease, and one of the first things the pilgrims built up after landing was a brew house.

One pilgrim, named Samuel Adams, used triple hops in his brew, and it's still tasty today. A German brewer named Augustus "Augie" Busch, used twice as much water and was smart enough to buy the advertising rights to all sporting events, including witch hunts, tar-and-featherings, tea parties, pig races, mule pulls, and Sadie Hawkins day, when women who caught men could force them into marriage (still popular in the South).

Washington's Less-Known Quote

When George Washington was boarding the rowboat to cross the Delaware, he had to nudge 300-lb Colonel Henry Knox aside to make room, with these immortal words, “Shift that fat ass, Harry, but slowly or you’ll swamp the damn boat!” To me, these are much more inspiring fighting words than “full speed ahead” or “I regret that I have but one life to give.”

By the way, Washington was not the first President. John Hanson of Maryland was elected unanimously in 1781 by Congress after adopting the Articles of Confederation. He served one year, as did six others, before Washington became the eighth president, but the first under the new Constitution.

Venice Was a Watery Fortress

Venice grew up from mainlanders escaping Attila’s Huns. It started as a swampy refuge, then grew over time until it covered 118 islands and had as many canals as most cities have streets. Apparently the Huns were such landlubbers that they had never heard of boats, nor could they swim!

Attila himself died from a chronic nosebleed on his wedding night. His battlefield enemies had obviously been aiming too low. His burial party was killed so no one could ever find his grave, and the eventual sacking of Rome was left to the Vandals, who said, “we gotta do it, it’s in our name.” (we know it was them because they left graffiti!)

Acceptable Food Contamination

U.S.D.A. (or is it FDA when its approaching medicine?)- Acceptable “defect levels” of foods – “You are what you eat”. You just can't make this up!

Asparagus – 10% infested with beetle eggs; 40 thrips or 5 insects in 100-gram samples
Chocolate – up to 60 insect fragments in 100-gram sample
Coffee beans – up to 10% insect infested, damaged, or molded
Fish – 5% of fillets or fish with “definite decomposition” over 25% of the area, or 20% with “slight decomposition” over 25% of area (“awww…it’s all just slight”)
Hops – average of 2,500 aphids per 100 grams (free protein in the beer)
Pepper – 1% insect infested; 1 mil. of excreta per pound
Popcorn – one rodent pellet or hair per 6 10-oz samples, 20 gnawed grains per lb. or 5% by weight
Spinach – 50 aphids, thrips, mites or 8 leaf miners in 100-gram sample
Strawberries – mold count of 55% in half the samples
Tomato paste (added to pizza & sauces) – in 100 gram samples: 30 fly eggs, or 15 eggs and one larvae (that’s a maggot!), or two larvae, or mold count averaging 40% (only 30% in pizza sauce) “Make that pepperoni, sweet peppers, and two maggots”

Food in name only: mushrooms - contain nothing but phosphorous which eats six times its weight in calcium - so take calcium tablets with mushrooms or just avoid: they’re grown in vats of cow manure in the dark, that can’t be too healthy - plus it’s a fungus, like Athlete’s foot or Jungle rot! Forget wild mushrooms, many have died painfully who gathered “edible wild mushrooms” – why take the chance? Fungus is not a food group!

Toxic food: nutmeg, anything burnt (carbon monoxide) – both are non-biodegradable, cause liver damage, and accumulate in the body. Charred hot dogs or marshmallows on a stick are not advised, and many have died who used green Oleander branches, which leeches poisonous juices into the meat, and into desert water! Know your plants, or get planted yourself! Oleander and foxglove, or digitalis, are two common poisonous plants in many yards.

Man-Made Laws of the Universe

These are all un-proven un-scientific laws that seem to apply to modern civilized man. This will never be complete as we create more every day. We all know "If things can go wrong, they will." (Murphy's Law). Here are some you probably didn't know.

Parkinson’s Law – Tasks will take at least the amount of time allotted.

The 80/20 Rule – Twenty percent of the participants are responsible for eighty percent of the action (ie, stock market, sexual promiscuity, spending, wealth accumulation).

The Law of Diminishing Returns – The first 90% of a project takes 10% of the time, the other 10% takes the remaining 90% of the time (aka the Ninety percent rule).

Nonreciprocal Law of Expectations – Negative expectations yield negative results, positive expectations yield positive results (aka, “self-fulfilling prophecy”).

The Unspeakable Law – As soon as you mention something, if it’s good, it goes away; if it’s bad, it happens.

Hanlon’s Razor – Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.

Howe’s Law – Every man has a scheme that will not work.

The Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences - Whoever has the gold makes the rules.

Zymurgy’s First Law of Evolving System Dynamics – Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is with a larger can.

Etorre’s Observation – The other line always moves faster.

Law of Selective Gravity – An object will fall so as to do the most damage.

Maier’s Law – If facts do not fit the theory, they must be disposed of.

Boren’s First Law – When in doubt, mumble.

Barth’s Distinction – There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types, and those who don’t.

Andy Warhol’s Law of Fame – In the future, each person will be famous for an average of fifteen minutes.

Jane Austen’s Rule of Romance – 90% of all women better show more affection than they really feel. (from Pride and Prejudice)

The Intelligence Policy of Disinformation – If a government says it’s not doing something bad, it probably is; if it says it IS doing something good, it probably isn’t (aka, “speaking with a forked tongue”, “talking out of both sides of your mouth”).

Everett Dirksen’s Law of National Debt - “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money” [the late Illinois (R) Senator].

The Mythical Man Month – The more people you add to a project, the more time will be spent on communication and less on actual work.

The Law of Middle Management – a middle manager is someone who comes to work late if you come early, and who comes to work early if you come late. [Note: middle means “caught in the middle”, employees on one side, executives on the other].

Roger Ebert’s (movie critic) Law of the Infallible Tree – In movies, whenever the hero climbs a tree [“Rambo”, “Robin Hood”], a bad guy will eventually stand underneath that same tree. He also has the Fruit Cart Law: If you see a fruit cart in a movie, someone's gonna run over it.

Solomon’s Rule of Domestic Bliss – Let a woman change her mind often because she’s going to anyway. (and with 800 wives, who cares anyway?)

Benjamin Franklin’s Rule of Riding – When riding a horse, sit heavy and tight; when riding a man, sit loose and light [from Poor Richard’s Almanack, a bestseller found in nearly every home in colonial America].

Conway’s Law – In every corporation, there’s one person who knows exactly what’s going on; that person must be fired.

Green’s Law of Debate – Anything is possible if you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Stewart’s Law of Retroaction – It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.

First Rule of History – History doesn’t repeat itself but historians repeat each other.

Oliver’s Law of Location – No matter where you go, there you are.

Glyme’s Formula for Success – The only rule for success is sincerity; once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

Harrison’s Postulate – For each and every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

Memorable Deaths

We'll never get off this world alive - Jim Morrison

Agathocles (Syrian tyrant, 300 b.c.) – choked on a toothpick (they had toothpicks back then? I didn’t know they even had teeth as adults!).

Alexander the Great (Macedonian emperor) – caught a fever during two days of drinking and carousing, died at 33. (Never really recovered from an arrow wound suffered in India).

Alexander (king of Greece, 1920) – bitten by his pet monkey, died from blood poisoning.

Allman, Duane (U.S. rock guitarist) – died while riding his motorcycle in Macon, GA, when a truck pulled out in front of him on a downhill slope; Allman couldn’t stop and slid underneath the truck, hitting his unprotected head several times. (Allman died only 2 blocks from where Macon heavyweight contender William L. Stribling died in a motorcycle accident in 1935 just wks after losing to Dempsey on a 15th round knockout and before a rematch). Ironically, fellow band member Berry Oakley also died from a motorcycle accident a year later, at home in bed from a brain hemmorrage following the accident.

Archimedes (Greek mathmetician, discovered water displacement by weight, “Eureka!”, the value of pi, calculus, and the lever) – was so absorbed while writing geometrical problems in some dirt that he did not hear an invading Roman soldier demanding that he stand, who then “ran him through” with his sword.

Attila, the Hun - died of a chronic nosebleed on his wedding night; makes you wonder if she punched him in the nose.

Bacon, Francis (English philosopher, writer) – stopped in the snow to perform a freezing experiment on a chicken (by stuffing it with snow), caught a “chill” and died later. Bacon was the real author of Shakespeare's plays, see my Word Humor blog.

Bennett, Arnold (English writer) – drank a glass of water in Paris to demonstrate its safety and died from the typhoid it contained (“I love Paris in the springtime” – Cole Porter).

Bentham, Jeremy – famous English moralist and law-reformer; believed that every famous man should be mummified and “each can become his own statue”. His effigy, dressed in his favorite suit and hat, sits in a glass case at University College, London, with his mummified head on the floor between his feet, where he’s been “his own statue” since 1832.

Bonaparte, Jerome Napoleon (last American Bonaparte) – tripped over his wife’s dog’s leash, died from the injuries. (they were living in New York City)

Claudius I (Roman emperor) – choked on a feather; his physician was trying to induce vomiting after being poisoned by his wife.

Clementine V, Pope – autopsies of the Pope are forbidden by law (“what happens in the Vatican stays in the Vatican”), but recently scientists were allowed to x-ray the sarcophagus of Pope Clementine, and found a ten-inch nail driven into his skull. Perhaps he fell onto this nail while sleepwalking, perhaps it fell from above and embedded itself full-length into his brain as a “divine act”; we’ll never know the instigator, only the cause. (Autopsies are forbidden because so many Popes have been murdered, and “it gives the church a bad name” if revealed publicly)

Crassus, Marcus (Roman politician) – Parthian soldiers poured molten gold down his throat. Now that’s a waste of precious metal, when molten iron would have sufficed.

Duncan, Isadora (U.S. dancer) – her long scarf became tangled in the rear wheel of her car and broke her neck. Try duplicating that, amateurs!

Fierro, Rodolfo (Mexican general) – riding with Pancho Villa, Rodolfo took a shortcut, his horse fell into quicksand, and the gold Rodolfo was carrying sank him to his grave (another waste of precious metal – do you suppose they dug it out?).

George, Duke of Clarence (English nobleman) – Richard III had him drowned in a barrel of wine.

Ishmaelo, Yousouf (Turkish wrestler) – carried all his gold in a money belt, was returning home on an ocean liner which collided with another vessel near Nova Scotia. Yousouf refused to discard his belt, which carried him down to his watery grave.

John I (King of England, 1216 a.d.) – died from overeating lampreys. (Got too “eel” as a result)

Maturin, Rev. Charles Robert (Irish clergyman) – finding the clergy did not make enough money to suit his needs, he wrote many romantic novels with titles like The Fatal Revenge and The Wild Irish Boy, and lurid Gothic horror novels; he pasted a wafer to his head while writing which meant “do not disturb”. He was so absent-minded that he turned up for parties on the wrong date, often wore unmatched shoes, and would forget waiting dinner guests while the food became cold. Eventually he got his medicines mixed up and this led to his death at 42.

May, Thomas (English historian) – rather obese, used to “tie up his chins”, and one day he ate too much and choked to death from the cloth around his throat.

Montagu, Edward Wortley (English son of Lady Mary Montagu) – claimed to be an Ottoman Prince, a result of an affair between his mother an “a sultan of Turkey”. Was said to be the first Caucasian to enter Constantinople turbaned and speaking Arabic. His wealthy father bestowed his fortune on his sister Mary instead of Edward, and he eventually settled in Venice. While dining on tiny birds called ortolans, a bone became lodged in his throat, could not be removed, led to an infection and his death at age 63.

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (German composer) – likely poisoned by a lover’s jealous husband (he had over twenty female piano students); one admitted as much and killed himself a week after Mozart died, saying “what have I done - I’ve allowed jealousy to kill a musical genius.” (Next time, poison the wife, dude! There’s “lots of fish in the sea”, but only one Amadeus…)

Otway, Thomas (British playwright) – reduced to begging from hunger, he got a guinea, bought a roll and choked on the first bite.

Pinkerton, Alan (founder of the famous detective agency) – bit his tongue, died of gangrene.

Rasputin (Gregori Efimovich, Russian ‘holy man’) – survived numerous poisonings (he consumed small doses regularly), two shootings, finally was bound and tossed into the Neva River.

Schumann, William (German composer) – an infected tooth led to brain poisoning.

Scriabin, Alexander (Russian composer) – self-proclaimed “second Messiah”, attempting to “save the world with music”, Scriabin got a pimple which became infected, then died from blood poisoning.

Socrates (Greek philosopher) – condemned to death for “insulting the gods” by teaching the immortality of the soul, he drank a cup of hemlock (given by a weeping jailer) after partying with all his friends and relatives. Did he sing, “one for my honey and one more for the road”?

Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilyich (Russian composer) – the depressed composer threw himself into the cholera laden Neva River, and even though rescued, died later in bed.

Valens, Richie (U.S. recording artist) – lost a coin flip to ride in a van or fly (he was afraid of flying) with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper to a wintertime concert in Iowa; the plane crashed in a cornfield, killing all three. “Aw, baby, that’s what I like” – sang the Big Bopper, in "Chantilly Lace". Later, Georgia singer Otis Redding died at 26 in Wisconsin flying to a winter concert when the plane missed the fogbound runway and landed in a nearby swamp.

Vlad, the Impaler (Transylvanian count) – the notoriously sadistic and bloodthirsty count, who preferred impaling or skinning his victims, was eventually killed by local citizens (who stormed his castle at night carrying torches, no doubt!).

Whitson, John (English adventurer) – fell off a horse and impaled his head on a nail outside of a blacksmith’s shop, at age 72. (Nice aim – try that again, 100 times)

Woodhull, Victoria (Mrs. John Biddulph Martin) – this “free love” advocate, born in a shack in Homer, Ohio, was the first American woman to run for President and the first woman to run a stock brokerage; formerly a famous “spiritualist” and healer who counted Cornelius Vanderbilt among her famous lovers. She thought she could “cheat death” by not sleeping in a bed, so for the last 4 years of her life slept in an armchair in her living room in England (where she retired with her last husband), where she was eventually found, having passed away in her sleep.

Zeuxis (Greek painter, 5th cen. b.c.) – laughed so hard at his own painting of a hag that he broke a blood vessel and died (“Laughter is the best medicine”). The more sensible artists painted classic nudes instead and there are no reported deaths as a result.