If you’ve got a hot date tonight, you’ll definitely want to read the following tidbits from our book Forbidden Knowledge: A Wickedly Smart Guide to History’s Naughtiest Bits — and then get yourself to an exotic foods market:

World’s Strangest Aphrodisiacs

Frog Legs: Sometimes you can have too much of a wood — er, good — thing. In the case of an unfortunate group of French Foreign Legion soldiers in North Africa, frog legs proved to be such an effective enhancer of “erectile function” that priapism — a prolonged, painful erection that will not go away — ensued. Subsequently, researchers from American universities found that the frog legs contained enormous amounts of cantharidin, better known as Spanish fly. It turned out the frogs had been eating meloid beetles, one of the main sources of the legendary aphrodisiac, eventually making things hard for the soldiers.

Two more love potions after the hump — er, jump.

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It’s well established on this blog that I’m fascinated by bank robberies. (Not that I’d ever steal anything except copyrighted images and the occasional MP3 myself, no sir.) Thus, for your second installment of Forbidden Friday, I present to you:

Great Bank Robberies

The Great Northfield, Minnesota, Raid: OK, in terms of actual success, this 1876 robbery was a bust. But it had a heck of a cast: legendary bandits Frank and Jesse James; Cole, Jim and Bob Younger; and three lesser-known outlaws. Their target was Northfield’s First National Bank, which the gang settled on after casing a half-dozen other towns. Clearly, not enough casing, as the robbery couldn’t have gone worse. The bank’s cashier refused to open the safe, an alert passerby sounded the alarm, and townspeople killed two of the robbers as the rest escaped. A week later, a posse killed or captured all of the other outlaws except the James brothers, who escaped home to Missouri. It was the beginning of the end for 19th-century America’s most notorious bandits. Worse still? The take from the Northfield bank was a mere $26.70.

Two more dastardly heist-meisters after the jump.

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AJ was having computer problems earlier, so I was more than happy to relay this message from him (and take credit for it):

I may be way late to this party, but I loved the Onion’s parody of Wikipedia.

As someone who uses Wikipedia too much (sorry, Britannica) I thought it was a nice reminder that backup sources are probably a good idea. Especially since Wikipedia once said a friend of mine is gay, when, last time I checked (which was yesterday) he has a wife and two kids. And no, my friend is not the star of MI-III.

We’d like to second those sentiments, and to congratulate our countrymen on 750 years of liberty and justice for all.

Today I’m in New York, my favorite city of sin (sorry, Vegas), so to honor my surroundings I thought I’d parcel out some goodies from our book Forbidden Knowledge: A Wickedly Smart Guide to History’s Naughtiest Bits. First up, under the deadly sin of Pride, something Manhattanites know absolutely nothing about:

World Leaders Obsessed with Their Own Images

Mausolus: For 24 years, Mausolus ruled over the city-state of Halicarnassus in what is now Turkey, and he spent a lot of time building up the city. So, maybe it was only fitting that in his final years Mausolus built a monument to himself. Mausolus’ self-styled memorial wasn’t finished until a few years after his death – with his wife, Artemisia I, carrying on the work. But when it was done, it was one of the fanciest tombs the world has ever seen: 140 feet high, 12,000 square feet, and tastefully adorned with tons of giant statues. The tomb stood for 16 centuries before it was toppled by earthquakes. But Mausolus’ wish to be remembered did come true. His name is at the root of the word for “grand tomb:” mausoleum.

Two more egomaniacs after the jump…

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In a development that should please AJ to no end, scientists have found a link between the pharoah Tutankhamun and the Tunguska Event (aside from their both starting with T and being impossible to spell):

In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun’s necklaces. The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it is older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation.

Working with Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat, they traced its origins to unexplained chunks of glass found scattered in the sand in a remote region of the Sahara Desert. But the glass is itself a scientific enigma. How did it get to be there and who or what made it? …

In 1908, a massive explosion flattened 80 million trees in Tunguska, Siberia. Although there was no sign of a meteorite impact, scientists now think an extraterrestrial object of some kind must have exploded above Tunguska. [One geophysicist] wondered if a similar aerial burst could have produced enough heat to turn the ground to glass in the Egyptian desert.

Read on for the next clue in the mystery…

From the New Scientist Short Sharp Science blog:

A California conceptual artist claims he has “painstakingly decoded” alien artwork broadcast from deep space. Yes, you read that right.

“Concluding centuries of speculation about extraterrestrial intelligence, conceptual artist Jonathon Keats recently discovered that a radio signal detected by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico contains artwork broadcast from deep space,” says the press release. …

Keats’ other pseudo-science works include customising the metric system and attempting to genetically engineer God in a Petri dish.

Also, don’t miss his attempt to sell his own brain.

I know I joked a couple weeks ago about Amazon.com opening a church, but seems I wasn’t too far off!

According to today’s Variety, “Amazon.com is going from peddler to producer. In its first feature-film venture, Amazon has optioned screen rights to Keith Donohue’s novel ‘The Stolen Child.’ Amazon will move to secure a filmmaker and then a studio partner to turn the fantasy into a live-action feature.”

Congrats to Keith! Another small victory for us writers. But honestly now: what’s next for Amazon? Hmmm. How about a game show like Hollywood Squares, but with kids? Gary Coleman could host.

Speaking of films, who can name the one I just quoted?

mental_floss’ favorite inventor Nikola Tesla, who famously dreamed up AC current amongst a million other things, and inspired the names for the rock bands Tesla and AC/DC (or at least the first-half of the name AC/DC), now has a ridiculously cool electric car named for him.

Tesla Motors, dubbed the Silicon Valley’s first real car company, is debuting a sexy new sports car codenamed DarkStar. Apparently, the vehicle can run for 250 miles without needing a charge, fueling costs run about $.01 per mile, it handles silently, goes 0 to 60 in under 4 seconds and is powered by lithium ion laptop batteries. Insane! Even crazier, “the Tesla Roadster engine has no moving parts save a copper-and-steel rotor that spins through the force of a magnetic field.” Of course, the new car does have it’s down sides: it takes about 3.5 hours to recharge after your 250 mile jaunt, and runs about $80,000 right now. Still, CEO Martin Eberhard expects prices to go down and efficiency to go up the same way it has for computers. He’s rustled up investments from a wide variety of head honchos (ex-eBay guru Jeff Skoll, PayPal’s Elon Musk, and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin), praise from Gov. Schwarzenegger, hired engineers from the British car company Lotus, and even plans on releasing a family sedan by 2008, all in the name of Tesla. Our grins couldn’t be wider.

Link via NewEnergyReport and SciFiTech

In one of the happier stories that I’ve read today, Reuters is reporting that a Polish man unintentionally saved a 110 lb. Saint Bernard who had been thrown out of a two-story window when he walked underneath it. The man, who was definitely caught off-guard (it’s hard to prepare for that sort of thing), suffered some bruises, and a little psychological shock from the incident. As for the dog, who’d been defenestrated from said window by a drunken owner, he seems to have escaped with nary a scratch (human cushioning will do that for you)! Thankfully, he’s been placed in a shelter and is destined for a happier existence.

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alwayswelcome

justas wewelcomeproper pun ctua tion,

But if you’re thinking professor Kosko is the first author to do away with commas, apparantly there was also some guy in Dublin named James Joyce, who wrote many long passages in Ulysses without them. (Of course, Samuel Beckett, E. M. Forster and Somerset Maugham made up for the dearth by using commas instead of periods!)

I think the best book on the subject is Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves, which not only makes the proper use of punctuation fun (honestly!), but also explores the history of punctuation and reminds us of other Joycian quirks like George Orwell shunning the semicolon. Of course, he had no idea what he was missing “;-)”