A few weeks ago I leaked a sneak peek at the cover art for CHUCK NORRIS CANNOT BE STOPPED and I’m excited to officially announce that it is now on sale!

Buy: Amazon – B&N – Borders

By the time you finish reading the book, you will be able to answer the following important questions:

• Who owns all of the No. 1 pencils?
• Who won the 1993 International Jump Rope Championship while standing completely still?
• Who was Tiger Woods’ 3rd, 8th, and 16th mistresses?
• Whose TiVo only records John Wayne movies, old Ronald Reagan speeches, and Walker, Texas Ranger?
• Whose lungs are made from burlap sacks full of Beefaroni?

As always, there will be some incredible illustrated facts as well, like this one:

There are also a lot of changes coming to the website that are currently in the works and should be finished in the next few weeks. First, I’ll be moving all “Facts” related material from it’s current home at 4Q.cc, a domain name that is truly awful for anything but shortlinking these days, to a new home right here at WhatIsAwesome.com/Chuck. You’ll also be able to access “Facts” via webapp on your mobile phone browser (sorry, I can’t do iPhone/iPad apps, a certain 80s action star wouldn’t like it) as well as via Facebook. I’ll be sure to keep you all posted on those happenings.

Be sure to join the Facebook page as well to stay up-to-date with the latest happenings!

oh my god yes tell me more

Long before the days of the Frigidaire, the icebox or even a reliable means to make ice, people had to either a.) eat their food on the spot or b.) find ways to keep it from turning into a bacteria-fungus casserole at room temperature while they stored it for days, weeks or even months. Enter: curing.

Humans learned long ago that covering things in salt keeps the rot away, but it wasn’t until late in the Iron Age that we began mass-producing salt. The increase in available supply made it much more practical to use for everyday preparations like curing foods. I feel sorry for the first few generations that just covered their meats in granulated salt and left it there (dry curing) – must have been a bitter reunion when it was finally served. However, at some point in the Middle Ages we learned the technique of “brining.” Brining is submerging a cut of meat for a few weeks in a salt-water mixture (ideally you should be able to float an egg in the brine) along with some choice seasonings like pepper, garlic, coriander or whatever the local flavor may be. It is quite common to add sugar during the brining as well for an extra sweet kick in the mouth.

salt! smoke! history!

The oncologists, gun nuts and pee enthusiasts reading this may be interested to know: It used to be much more common to use potassium nitrate or “saltpeter” for brining. Saltpeter is a common ingredient for oxidizing gunpowder, can be obtained from decomposed urine and could very well give you cancer. It also has the effect of giving cured meats their distinctive reddish coloring.

Brining a cut of beef or pork brisket (or even turkey), giving it a rinse in fresh water and simmering it for several hours is called “corning” the meat. You can see where this is going, but you might be asking “Where is the corn?” Given the European roots of brining, it’s no surprise those cheeky Anglo-Saxons put a word to it – “corn” to them meant “small granule or pellet.” So in the case of cured meats, “corn” referred to the granules of salt used in the process Even up until colonial times the word “corn” meant any common grain. Thus, the maize that Native Americans introduced to settlers was called “Indian Corn” and the rest, as all the famed Etymologists of the world say, is history.

Oh, and from corned beef, the jump to pastrami isn’t a big one. Once you have a cured and rinsed chunk of meat, all you have to do is smoke it and cover it with crushed peppercorns and various other seasonings and there you have it – what the Yiddish called “pastrame,” the Turks called “pastrima,” and what most Americans affectionately call: “Holy shit that’s $3 a pound cheaper than ham!”

hello please make me a sandwich it’s important

 - Mike Beech lives in the Cleveland area and really just wanted to find out what the heck corned beef was all about.

With this in mind, I would like to tell you the story of perhaps one of the worst scientists to have ever lived. Thomas Midgley Jr. was an ivy league graduate (thanks, Cornell) and mechanical engineer who, despite his training in that specific area, chose to focus in commercial applications of chemistry.

Photo credit: chemcases.com

Five years after graduating from school in 1911, Midgley began work at Dayton Metal Laboratories (sometimes referred to as Dayton Research Laboratories), which was absorbed by General Motors and turned into one of its primary research facilities. Along with his mentor, he had discovered that a combination of lead and sodium when added to chloroethane like so…

4 NaPb + 4 CH₃CH₂Cl –> (CH₃CH₂)₄Pb + 4 NaCl + 3 Pb

…when added to standard gasoline would reduce a phenomenon known as engine knock which was apparently plaguing early motorists.

(My apologies for the chemistry.)

The additive is known as tetra-ethyl lead, sometimes referred to as TEL. It’s what years ago made gasoline “leaded.” Most people know that leaded fuel is bad, but not exactly to what degree. Midgley himeslf in 1923 had to stop all work in his lab and spend some time in Miami for some R&R due to severe lung issues associated with the dangers of working with lead. FYI, here are the effects of lead poisoning according to Wikipedia:

• Excess lethargy, abdominal pain, ^[11] headache.
• Gastrointestinal problems, such as constipation, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, poor appetite, or weight loss, which are common in acute poisoning.
• Neuropathy, such as muscle pain, weakness, tremors, twitches, spasms, or cramps.
• Encephalopathy, which, in extreme circumstances, is characterised by raised intracranial pressure, seizures, comas, or even death.
• Nephropathy, which occurs because the kidneys are the main route of removal of lead from the body. Acute lead poisoning may lead to development of Fanconi syndrome. Chronic lead exposure can lead to a slowly progressive interstitial nephritis. Chronic interstitial nephritis can also develop following an earlier acute lead exposure. Long-term exposure at levels lower than those that cause lead nephropathy have also been reported as nephrotoxic in patients from developed countries that had chronic kidney disease or were at-risk because of hypertension or diabetes mellitus. ^[16]
• Behavioural changes, such as inability to concentrate, hyperactivity, irritability, aggressiveness, mood swings, or insomnia.
• Cognitive problems, such as memory loss.
• Other associated effects, such as metal taste in the mouth, chest pain, anemia, impotence, and other reproductive problems.

An advertisement for Ethyl which appeared in the March, 1932 issue of Better Homes and Gardens. Click to enlarge.

The dangers of working with lead made the entire manufacturing process outrageously hazardous. By 1924, General Motors, Standard Oil (which today is more or less ExxonMobil), and DuPont had created the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation to sell leaded gasoline. Ten factory employees would die of lead poisoning between 1923 and 1924.

Ethyl Corporation headquarters in Virginia (via Flickr)

The company built a new factory in New Jersey (surprise!), but within two months five more employees suffered terrible lead-related brain injuries and eventually death. Remarkably, the company responded to this by stating things along the lines of, “These men went insane because they worked too hard.”

All of these deaths were not great PR for the company or for Midgley, so in a press conference, he poured the straight stuff, TEL, over his hands and then breathed it in for one minute, claiming he could do it every day without harm.

The State of New Jersey shut down the factory several days later and banned the production of TEL without permission by the state.

Midgley required one year of recovery from the publicity stunt.

Leaded gasoline is one of the most significant contributors to atmospheric lead and today, Americans have over 600 times more lead in their blood than those who lived prior to TEL’s introduction. It was banned in the US in 1986, though somehow is still used overseas even today.

Remarkably, Midgley had been made vice president of the Ethyl Corporation since its formation. He was relieved of this position, but remained a GM employee.

His story does not end here though.

In the 1930s, refrigeration technologies were not that great. In fact, refrigerators often used a toxic and combustible combination of gases that had an unfortunate tendency of killing or otherwise severely injuring unsuspecting users. From 1919 to 1980, General Motors also owned Frigidaire, the appliance brand. After the TEL debacle, GM charged Midgley with discovering a safe chemical for use in Frigidaire refrigerators and freezers.

Along with his mentor from Dayton Research who worked with him on TEL, Charles Kettering (the same Kettering of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York), the two set to work on what was to become dichlorodifluoromethane. I’ll space that out for you so you can actually read that: di chloro di fluoro methane. Because chemistry is just full of really long naming protocols, the duo gave the compound the name … Freon, the first chlorinated fluorocarbon, or CFC.

That’s right, the same guy who came up with leaded gasoline also created CFCs, you know, those things that are supposed to be destroying the ozone layer and all that. Talk about the sequel being better than the original. CFCs were banned in the US 64 years after they were developed, in 1994, but given their chemical properties will likely still remain in the atmosphere for quite a number of decades.

For having improved the quality of life so much, Midgley was the recipient of a number of prestigious accolades, including the Priestly Medal, the highest honor from the American Chemical Society, two honorary degrees, induction into the National Academy of Sciences. In 1944, he was named president of the American Chemical Society.

While Midglely was probably not completely aware of the destruction that his creations would wreak upon the earth, his life would end in a glorious amount of karmic irony.

He contracted highly disabling polio at the age of 51 in 1940. Being an inventive sort, Midgley built a rigging of pulleys and ropes which would raise and turn him over in his bed. On November 2, 1944 while trying to use the contraption, he had become entangled in the ropes and was strangled to death.

I think that story wraps itself up quite nicely. It was condensed in a video made for the Live Earth concert events in 2007 in this video:

If you’re from out of town, you’ll in all likelihood get to Gibraltar by plane, landing at Gibraltar Airport. From the air, it looks quite standard:

A view of the other half of the runway shows something else:

At first glance, it doesn’t look like there is anything particularly remarkable. Let’s take another look at the airport at another time of day though:

“Is…. is that traffic?” you might ask yourself. And you’d be right! Gibraltar Airport is a drive-through airport, literally. The airport is actually right in the city center of Gibraltar and the street which runs across the runway, Winston Churchill Avenue, is closed every time a plane lands or takes off. Check it out:

Relieving stress in the office

A series of stupid stunts

Andrew Zimmern. Enough said. (Possibly NSFW)

And a general round-up of stupid to last at least a week

Gaurab Chakrabarti is rational.

I’ve picked up a very peculiar habit of late. That is, I find myself spending an hour a day searching for patents on Google Patent Search. A little weird, yes. But not nearly as strange as some of the ideas people actually patent. As such, I’ve decided to devote a weekly post on strange patents that make you ask why (or why not . . .). Today’s patent is the non-lethal cock fighting system. A combination of the humane treatment of animals and a shroom trip, this patent is sure to be big in Cuba.

The main claim of the patent is the creation of sparring gloves for chicken feet. Yes. Sparring gloves for chickens. But the inventor takes it one step further by adding a blow counter that measures the number of blows each chicken cocks out and the force with which they cock it out . I think this could really revolutionize they way we conduct our cock fights, adding a level of technological grace to our blood thirsty urges.  Happy Fourth of July America.

Gaurab Chakrabarti does not get into cock fights.

• 1054 – The Chinese, the Arabs and possibly Amerindians (the who?) observe a supernova near the star Tauri. It was bright enough to be seen during the day for several months.
  

• 1634 – The city of Trois-Rivières is founded in New France. It would later become Quebec.
  

  Coat of arms of Trois-Rivières

• 1636 – Roger Williams establishes the city of Providence, Rhode Island

• 1776 – The second continental congress adopts the United States Declaration of Independence
  

  Yeah, America!

• 1778 – Kaskaskia is captured by George Clark and his men during the Illinois campaign of the American Revolutionary War. The population of Kaskaskia as determined by the 2000 census was 9.
• 1802 – The United States Military Academy opens at West Point, New York
• 1803 – The Louisiana Purchase is announced.
  
• 1817 – Construction begins on the Erie Canal at Rome, New York. It would take 15 years to complete the 360+ mile canal.
• 1827 – New York State abolishes slavery.
• 1837 – The world’s first long-distance railway, Grand Junction Railway between Birmingham and Liverpool is opened. Today it is part of the West Coast Main Line, a railway system between London and Scotland.
• 1840 – The first transatlantic crossing with a scheduled end (as opposed to simply “whenever you get there”) takes place aboard the Cunard Line’s RMS Britannia, a 700 ton wooden paddle steamer.
• 1845 – Henry David Thoreau embarks on his two year experiment in simple and solitary living at Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts.

Walden Pond

• Walt Whitman’s seminal work, Leaves of Grass, is published in Brooklyn.
  

  Walt Whitman in 1887. Check out that beard.

• 1862 – 10-year-old Alice Liddell is told a story by Lewis Carroll. The story would eventually become Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland when it would be published in November, 1865.
  

  Cover of the 1898 printing of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

• 1863 – After 47 days of fighting, the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi during the American Civil War ends. The town would not recognize Independence Day for almost eighty years following the battle.
• 1881 – The Tuskegee Institute opens in Tuskegee, Alabama
  

  The Tuskegee Institute in 1916

• 1886 – France offers the Statue of Liberty to the United States.
  

  As a lighthouse, the flames inside the statue's torch were the cause of death for hundreds of birds each night.

• 1892 - Western Samoa changes the location of the International Date Line such that the country recognizes 367 days per year.
• 1894 – Sanford B. Dole, relative of the pineapple magnate, proclaims the Republic of Hawaii.
• 1934 – The nuclear chain-reaction design for the atomic bomb is patented by Hungarian physicist, Leo Szilard, who would go on to later work on the Manhattan Project.
• 1939 – After being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig announces his retirement from baseball at Yankee Stadium. After a presentation by Babe Ruth, Gehrig addressed the crowd: –

“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

–

“Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I’m lucky.

–

“When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift — that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies — that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter — that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body — it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed — that’s the finest I know.

–

“So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.”

• 1946 – The Philippines attains full independence from the United States after 381 years of colonial rule.
• 1947 – The Indian Independence Bill is passed by the British House of Commons, leading to British India being split into today’s India and Pakistan.
• 1959 – The 49-star-flag is debuted in Philadelphia after Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state.
  

  Congressmen celebrate Alaska's new statehood

• 1960 – Ten months after its admission as the 50th U.S. state on August 21st, 1959, the 50-star flag is debuted once again in Philadelphia.
• 1966 – The Freedom of Information Act is signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
• 1969 – The Zodiac Killer attacks his first two victims in Blue Rock Springs, California. One survives.
• 1976 – In 53 minutes, Israeli commandos rescue 102 hostages from a hijacked Air France flight from Israel to Paris who were being held in Entebbe Airport in Uganda.
• 1976 – On the other side of the globe, America celebrates its bicentennial.
  • Among other things, New Jersey offers a Bicentennial Lottery where the winner would receive $1,776 a week for 20 years ($1,847,040, all before taxes)
  • NASA paints an American flag and the official bicentennial logo on the side of its massive vehicle assembly building. Each star on the flag is six feet across, the blue background behind the stars is the size of a regulation basketball court, and each stripe is as wide as a road lane
    

    NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building in 1976. The bicentennial logo (the star on the right) wasn't replaced with the NASA logo until 1998.

• 1987 – World War II Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie is convicted of crimes against humanity.
• 1997 - NASA’s Pathfinder lands on Mars
  

  The surface of Mars upon Pathfinder's landing in 1997

• 2004 – The cornerstone is laid on the former World Trade Center site in New York City for One World Trade Center (no longer “Freedom Tower” — it’s official!)
  
• 2006 – North Korea fires six test missiles — four short-range, one medium-range, and one long-range, which is rumored to have failed mid-air above the Sea of Japan.
• 2009 – After 8 years of closure, the crown of the Statue of LIberty re-opens for guests.
  

“We won’t be signing off until the world ends. We’ll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event… and when the end of the world comes, we’ll play ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’ before we sign off.”

• Launched a short-lived competitor to MTV in 1984, the Cable Music Channel, which lasted 33 days. The story behind CMC is actually pretty interesting and almost warrants its own post.

• Attempted to buy CBS, instead bought the MGM/United Artists for $1.5 billion just to sell parts of it back to others in an effort to reduce debt. Turner retained ownership of a gigantic film and television library, which now includes

  The Wizard of Oz
  A Christmas Story
  Gone With the Wind
  Tom & Jerry
  North by Northwest
  Gilligan’s Island
  2001: A Space Odyssey
  Looney Tunes

  … along with a significant chunk of the pre-1986 MGM/UA TV and film library, the RKO Radio Pictures Library, and the pre-1950 Warner Bros. film library.

• Used to own theatrical and television rights to Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
• Had to start an entire company (Turner Entertainment) to manage all of his film assets in 1986.
• Bought World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in 1988, later sold it to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF).
• Launched the philanthropic Turner Foundation in 1990 which distributes grants for environmental and population-relatd work. As part of this, he created Captain Planet. That’s right. Ted Turner made Captain Planet.
• Created the United Nations Foundation in 1998 to manage his $1 billion donation to the UN’s causes. The one billionth dollar was donated by 2006.
• Served in the Coast Guard, receiving the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal for Humanitarianism (not to be confused with the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism).
• Is the recipient of 42 honorary degrees.
• Bought Hanna-Barbera Productions and acquired Castle Rock Entertainment (distributors of Seinfeld, among other things) and New Line Cinema in the early 1990s.
• In 2001, launched the Nuclear Threat Initiative to “close the growing and increasingly dangerous gap between the threat from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the global response.”
• Was Time’s Man of the Year in 1991 and Broadcasting & Cable (Magazine)’s Man of the Century in 1999. How an industry which has not existed for more than a century can have an industry publication that awards such a designation remains a mystery.

And now, the complete listing of his media properties (thanks, Wikipedia!)

TV

• CNN
• CNN HD
• HLN (CNN Headline News)
• CNN Airport Network
• CNN International
• CNN en Español
• CNN Chile
• CNN+ (Only in Spain)
• CNN IBN (Localized to India)
• n-tv (HLN Germany)
• CNN Turk (Localized to Turkey)
• truTV (formerly CourtTV)
• NBA TV
• TBS
• TBS HD
• TNT
• TNT HD
• TCM (Turner Classic Movies)
• WPCH-TV, Atlanta
• Cartoon Network
  • Cartoon Network Studios
  • Adult Swim
  • Williams Street
• Boomerang
• Boomerang UK (+ multiple localized European versions)
• Cartoonito (UK)
• Cartoon Network Too (UK)
• Fashion TV Latin America
• Infinito TV (Latin America only)
• Space (Latin America)
• Retro (Like TV Land, but for Latin America)
• China Educational Television Network (approx. 40% ownership)
• Nuts TV (UK-only, if Maxim had their own network, it would be this)
• Pogo (Cartoon Network for India)
• Boing (Cartoon Network for Italy)

Web Properties

• PGA.com & PGATour.com
• NASCAR.com
• GameTap
• CartoonNetwork.com
• AdultSwim.com
• CNNMoney.com
• CNN.com
• iReport.com
• TBS.com
• TNT.tv
• TruTV.com
• PlayON! Sports Network

It is surprising that the guy only has a net worth of about $2.3 billion.

The Tonys

Named for: Mary Antoinette Perry

Born in 1888, Perry was part of a family which embraced the theatre and spent much of her childhood aspiring to become an actor like her aunt and uncle. It is unlikely that anyone reading this is terribly familiar with her work, but in the event any of you are, her most well-known appearance was in Harvey, which started as a Broadway show and later became a film. Both also featured Jimmy Stuart. It was during the run of the Broadway show that Perry died of a heart attack in 1946.

Perry gained additional notoriety during World War II where she and fellow actor Rachel Crothers founded the American Theatre Wing in New York City. At the time, it provided stage entertainment to soldiers serving in the armed forces. After the war, the organization focused more on supporting theatre as an institution. It was in this regard that The American Theatre Wing’s Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre was first established and awarded in 1947. As this is quite a mouthful, the name has since been shortened to simply “The Tony Awards.”

The Oscars

Named For: (Unsure)

It isn’t entirely known why the Academy Awards are nicknamed The Oscars. The first of two leading theories is that prolific actress and first female president of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (“The Academy”), Bette Davis, named the award after her husband, Harmon Oscar Nelson. The alternative theory is that In 1931, it was reported that The Academy’s executive secretary, Margaret Herrick, claimed that the award statuette reminded her of her cousin, Oscar Pierce.  The article went on to claim that employees of The Academy adopted the name after learning this. Walt Disney has been quoted as thanking The Academy for his Oscar in 1932 and a 1934 article in Time Magazine is regarded as the first mentioning of “Oscar” in print.

It was not until 1939 that the AMPAS officially recognized “Oscar” as an official moniker for the statuette.

For those of you who may go on to win an Oscar, keep in mind that you can’t sell it. Since 1950, it has been stipulated by the AMPAS that neither recipients nor their heirs can sell a statuette without first offering to sell it back to the AMPAS for the low, low, price of just $1. Recipients who chose to not agree with this regulation are not permitted to keep the statuette.

The Emmys

Named For: Image Orthicon Tubes (bonus points to anyone who knows what these are without having to read about them)

As part of a campaign to improve its image, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, chose to establish an awards ceremony in the late 1940s. The name “Emmy” is an anthropomorphizing of “immy,” technical slang for an image orthicon tube – a crucial component of early television cameras.

Today there are multiple Emmy Award ceremonies. Best known are the Primetime and Daytime awards, but there are also Sports Emmys, Technology & Engineering Emmys, International Emmys, Student Emmys, and regional Emmys specific to local news and programming around the United States.

The Golden Globe Awards are also distributed for excellence in television, but its name is somewhat more straightforward since it is presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and recognizes top content from around the globe.

The Peabodys

Named For: George Foster Peabody

The Peabody Awards are somewhat of an underdog award compared to the previous three. Originated in 1940, the Peabody Awards are awarded for excellence in broadcasting – radio, television, and now internet. Films are not eligible to receive an award. Additionally, unlike the other awards which are distributed by industry organizations, The Peabodys are presented by the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. The University  had given Peabody an honorary degree for his dedication to public service and was the benefactor of substantial donations (for among other things, a fireproof building to hold the school’s library) from Peabody in reciprocation.

The Grammys

Named for: The Gramophone

Originally called the Gramophone Awards, the Grammys are the youngest major award ceremony starting in 1958. The ceremony is presented by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and up until 1971, winners had the option of receiving their award at one of two award ceremonies – one in New York, the other in Los Angeles. In 1990, the manufacturer of the Grammy statue, Billings Artworks (whose slogan is “The Best Damn Awards Money Can’t Buy”) was asked to create a newer, larger version since the original statues would often begin to break over time. According to Billings, the physical awards seen during the show are not the actual awards – they’re blank. Winners receive their own customized awards after the ceremony ends.