Lobster: From Rags to Riches

               Here the story of a boy named Billy.

Billy

              Billy lives in the year 1801, and tonight he's taking a gal named Mindy out for a fancy dinner!

Mindy

              Billy decides to take Mindy to his favorite sea-side restaurant. Once there, Billy spends all the money he's earned inhaling asbestos as a carpenters assistant on a fresh, luscious, lobster. Mindy slaps Billy, and walks away. Never to be seen again.

              What did Billy do wrong?

              He ordered lobster! Duh! 

              

              You see, lobster used to be considered a horrendous thing to eat. It was next to grasshopper on the stuff you want to enter your mouth list. It's like half spider, half insect, all disgustingness. British POWs during the Revolutionary war complained because they were being fed too much lobster. 

Who would pay to eat this?

               So what changed? 

               Well, with the invention of railroads, rich people in the middle of the country (who didn't know what lobsters were) were tricked into buying massive amounts of them. These rich people promptly found that lobster is very good at soaking up lots of butter. 

                And thus began the dawn of the $800 lobster dish.           

The Confederate Flag, A Tale of Undecidedness

               Quick, what does the confederate flag look like? Chances are, you thought of this:

If you didn't, well then good for you. 

                  But it totally isn't the Confederate flag.  Well, at least not the first. 

Yup, it turns out all those proud American citizens sporting their Confederate tattoos are totally wrong. Who would have guessed such generally intelligent people would be mislead? 

Beats me.

                  Anyway, incase you were wondering, the first Confederate flag was the "Stars and Bars" flag. The reason it was eventually abolished in 1863, was that it showed 13 stars (originally 7), and there was only 11 states in the Confederacy. The other two represented Missouri and Kentucky, states that the South really wanted to have join up with them, but never did. 

"We'll just keep these stars here, just incase you want 'em later
or something."

                  The problem with this flag was that it looked too much like the already existing American flag. So in 1862, the South released their new "Stainless Banner," which was pretty much solid white. (Typical South am I right?). Unfortunately, it looked very similar to a flag of surrender (Civil War foreshadowing?) and was scraped shortly after it's release onto the battlefield. 

                 On March 4, 1865, with the war nearing an end, the Confederate Congress decided to adopt yet another flag. Nick named "the Blood Stained Banner," it turned out to be the final flag for the Confederacy. 

"I don't know guys... Lets just put "Not Union" on there somewhere."

              "But what is the Confederate Flag the we know and love?" You are probably thinking. Well, that particular flag was used by some self proclaimed "Rebel Companies" in the Pacific during World War II.

                So there you go, everything you know is a lie.

             

Charles Bedaux's Exploration

            Can you guess what Edmund Hillary (one of the first men to climb and explore mount Everest), Neil Armstrong (first man to set foot on and explore the moon), and Captain James Cook (first captain to cross and explore the Arctic Circle) have in common? If you guessed that none of them were pimps, you would be correct! This is because pimps, generally speaking, have no credentials for exploring uncharted places. However, this did not stop one monsieur Charles Bedaux from attempting to explore a trail for an Alaskan-Canadian highway back in 1934.

At least he'd be warm.

          Bedaux's expedition brought only the most essential items to their survival, to insure quick travel and survival. And by most essential, I mean his expedition consisted of: two limousines, five Citroen half-tracks (which were newly invented and supplied by a close friend), 130 horses loaded with caviar and champagne, a film crew, a few lucky scientific surveyors, his wife, a butler, a valet, a maid, and last but definitely not least, his mistress. Because pimp.

"Damn, my favorite chalice! I knew I forgot something!"

           Needless to say, the expedition went horribly. His vehicles were being slowed down by mud, so Bedaux threw out the surveying equipment to lighten the load. He then proceeded to filmed his team dumping a few of the half-tracks over a cliff to see if they would explode. They eventually turned around due to heavy snow 15 days away from their destination, because one can only be entertained for so long by caviar, demolition, mistresses, and exploration.

 

Needs more explosions. And champagne. 

          Though the exploration was most probably just a publicity stunt, there has been some speculation that it was actually part of a Nazi plan to provide easier access to America from up north. This theory was wide spread by a movie later released about Bedaux's expedition entitled "The Champagne Safari."

I expected him to be wearing at least one comically large hat
with a feather sticking out of it. 

         

Where Did I Put That Amber Room?

           At one point or another, it is pretty safe to assume that everyone has misplaced something in their lives. It happens. Maybe you assumed you had your keys in your pocket, but in actuality you left them at the restaurant you hurriedly evacuated after leaving a bad tip. Maybe you placed your fresh cup of coffee on the roof of your car, then subsequently forgot it was there. Maybe you just plain forgot where you put 18 minutes of the Watergate Tapes.

I know I had them when I left Richard's place...

            However, no matter what you lose, at least you are not responsible for losing the Amber Room. 

Also known as "the eighth wonder of the world," the Amber room was one of Russia's greatest treasures. Constructed in 1701, it was build out of amber, gold leaf, and mirrors. 

This is pretty much what Kanye West's house looks like.

         The room was moved around Russia several times until it settled in a St. Petersburg Palace. Skip ahead to 1941, as Nazis invaded St. Petersburg, evacuating Russians quickly wallpapered over the treasure in order to hide it from looters. Their attempts amounted to naught, as the Nazis quickly discovered the room and shipped the whole thing back to Germany.

          Once it safely arrived in Konigseberg, the room was proudly set on display. That is until 1945, as the Russians started advancing, Hitler gave the order that it should be packed up and sent to a more secure location. Honoring the big man's orders, soldiers had the room packed up and taken to a railway station for transportation. It was then promptly lost, never to be seen again.

The suspected culprit.

           Many theories exist as to how the room went missing. It could have been hidden away in some secret bunker, put on a ship that was sunk by the Allies, sold to "Cash4Gold" for like $53, who knows. Over the last few decades, massive searches have gone underway and all of them have been fruitless. The only piece of the room that was recovered was a small mosaic that a German soldier pocketed when he helped transport the room from Russia. It has since been reconstructed in St. Petersburg, although with significantly less real gold. 

ROMAN ACID LUNGS

                 Sorry folks, but this is the last post on here for at least two and a half months. I know, I know. Try to hold back the tears. It's all right. No really stop, you're making this awkward.

I could maybe be convinced to continue, if someone made a charitable
donation upwards of $100 dollars. 

                 Since I started this think with Mummies, I thought I should ended it with some Screaming Mummies. But come on, there has got to be a way more brutal topic than screaming undead pansies. Like say maybe, 2,000 YEAR OLD ANCIENT ROMAN SOLDIERS THAT VIOLENTLY DIED IN A SMALL TUNNEL FROM HAVING SULFURIC ACID IN THIER LUNGS.

Roman's were metal as shit.

                   Alright, sounds good. So back in 1933, when archeology mainly consisted of molesting historic artifacts, a French archeologist named Robert du Mesnil du Buisson was looking for ancient Roman armor in the Syrian city of Dura. His motives being that he is French, and as previously stated, the French have been known to do some crazy stuff. Buisson hit the dead Roman people jackpot when, exploring a tunnel, found 19 dead Roman soldiers stacked in a haphazard pile. He also found a Persian soldier in a tunnel that connected to that tunnel. The strange thing was that all the bodies appeared to be running away from something.

Look, the skeleton of a dead Persian warrior is waving at you. You
should probably wave back. Don't want to offend the undead.  

                     Buisson imagined bloody melee combat killing the men, but there simply wasn't enough room in the tunnel. Also the remains suggested no such fight. The mystery may have been solved by Simon James, who recreated the scene and told this story:

"The Persians attempted to dig a tunnel under the Roman-held cities wall. the Romans heard the Persians working beneath the ground and steered their tunnel to intercept their enemies. The Roman tunnel was shallower than the Persian one, so the Romans planned to break in on the Persians from above. But there was no element of surprise for either side: The Persians could also hear the Romans coming.

So the Persians set a trap. Just as the Romans broke through, James said, they lit a fire in their own tunnel. Perhaps they had a bellows to direct the smoke, or perhaps they relied on the natural chimney effect of the shaft between the two tunnels. Either way, they threw sulfur and bitumen on the flames. One of the Persian soldiers was overcome and died, a victim of his own side's weapon. The Romans met with the choking gas, which turned to sulfuric acid in their lungs."

                     James' theory is supported by samples of burnt sulfur and bitumen that were collected off of the walls of the tunnel. 

                     So there you go, one of the first documented uses of chemical warfare. 

Man this was a pretty dark post...

                   

Fig No-Relations-to-Sir-Isaac Newton

         Here we go. The history of Fig Newtons. Because why not?                                                      And if you don't know what a Fig Newton is, it's a scrumptious cookie filled with hatred. See below

"Why not?" Being a common question when talking about
Fig Newtons. 

          Ok, so once upon a time in a magical place called "Ohio," a humble cookie maker named Charles M. Roser thought up the Fig Newton cookie. Or at least he is credited with inventing the recipe. Then, around the year of 1890, Roser sold the cookie recipe to the Kennedy Biscuit Works (which is now called Nabisco). The Kennedy Biscuit Works mass produced the cookie, and that is why you can enjoy the slightly-putred taste of figs inside of sugar-bread. The end.

The knight then force-fed the dragon a Fig Newton,
at which point the dragon turned purple and died.

            That was pretty short huh? Want to know more facts about Fig Newtons that you will undoubtedly annoy your friends with? Well then I guess it would be rude of me not to further enlighten you. So here you go:

              In 1891, James Henry Mitchell invented a machine that made mass production of the Fig Newton possible. The machine worked as a double funnel. There was one funnel on the inside of the device that supplied the jam, and a funnel outside the inner funnel that pumped out the dough. This created a long tube of Fig Newton. The machine would then cut and stamp the cookie, making it ready for packaging. 

             And, contrary to popular belief, the Fig Newton's name was not inspired by Sir Isaac Newton. Rather, it was inspired by the Massachusetts town of Newton. Kennedy Biscuits had a habit of naming their cookies after local towns. 

But this guy does look like his favorite cookie would be
a Fig Newton. Or maybe an oatmeal cookie. 

             

Kermit the Murdering Extortionist

                 Jim Henson, if you didn't know, created and originally voiced a little tv show called The Muppets.

Pretty underground, it didn't teach an entire generation basic
life skills or anything. 

               One of the main characters, or arguably the main character, is a frog named Kermit. Kermit is known for many things, chief among them are his lovable if not slightly melancholy songs...

Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor

                 ... And being one of the most recognizable puppets from the late 50's to the late 80's. Only then being rivaled by Big Bird. But before Kermit made his first appearance in 1955, Henson had a sort of proto-Kermit. And its name was Wilkins.

                Yup, thats proto-Kermit on the right. He hadn't really morphed into frog form yet. And that depressed looking thing on the left is named Wotkins. And they were both part of Henson's many, many Wilkins Coffee commercials. Each ad is only about 10 seconds, and they're all roughly the same.

So it starts off with Wilkins saying how great the coffee is, then asking Wotkins if he drinks Wilkin brand coffee. Wotkins says no, then Wilkins inflicts bodily harm/murders Wotkins and makes a joke. Wotkins method of murdering Wotkins includes running him over with a steam roller, pushing him out of a hot air balloon, throwing knives at him, shooting him out of a cannon, and full-out shanking him.

               In one commercial, after shooting Wotkins in the head with a pistol, Wilkins turns to the camera and asks if anyone else doesn't like Wilkins Coffee. The implication here being that if you didn't go buy Wilkins Coffee, Wilkins would murder you. 

It's always the one you'd least expect to kill you
because of your choice in coffee. 

              So as times changed, the Wilkins character changed too. He first became a humanoid lizard named, then later evolved into a green frog with banjo playing abilities. Hopefully one day Wilkins will return to the Muppets, possibly curb stomping Fozzie Bear out of rage that Wilkins Coffee no longer exists.