Museum Full Of Spiders...?

Normally I enjoy roaming around the museum,seeing all the interesting bits of history and learning about other parts of the world. This is one museum that I think I will gladly pass on visiting, even if I had occasion to visit.

The Finnish Museum Infested With Gigantic Spiders

Photo credit: Skorpion87/Wikimedia

A grand old building in the heart of Helsinki, Finland’s Natural History Museum is one of the capital’s premier tourist attractions. It’s also a place where no arachnophobe should ever set foot. The building is home to a gigantic colony of extremely venomous, near-immortal super-spiders.

Known as the Chilean recluse spider, the creatures are normally only found in South America. Unfortunately for Finland, some eggs made their way into a shipment of wood chips the museum ordered in the 1960s. They hatched, and the spiders escaped into the museum. By 1970, the place was overrun with them. In 2016, they’re not only still there—there are more of them than ever.

The trouble is that the Chilean recluse spider is almost indestructible. Females have been known to survive without food or water for 755 days. They can deal with extreme temperature changes and can lay up to 2,250 eggs in a lifetime. As an added bit of freaky detail, they can grow to up to 10 centimeters (4 in), and their bite will leave you howling in agony (if it doesn’t kill you outright).

On the plus side, the recluse spider gets its name by hiding away from humans. In the 50-plus years the museum has been infested, only one bite has ever been recorded. This is extremely good news, as the museum is built above a series of tunnels linking many buildings in Helsinki. The BBC has speculated that it’s only a matter of time before the colony expands outward into other parts of the city center . . . if it hasn’t done so already.

Never mind...just cancel any trips I had pending in Finland. I'll just avoid it all together, I think.

Coffee on the patio this morning. Temps going up to the mid 70s, or so they say

Lewis Latimer, Unknown Genius...!

Sometimes I think that we forget about the help that all famous folks had at their disposal. Very few ever got credit for the assistance or any extra money. Regardless, their involvement certainly helped things along.

Lewis Latimer

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Lewis Latimer, the son of runaway slaves, was the draftsman who helped Alexander Graham Bell file his patent for the telephone.

That’s kind of impressive, but that’s not all. Latimer also patented a carbon filament for the incandescent light bulb in 1881. Though Thomas Edison is generally credited as the inventor of the light bulb, he had, until that time, only been able to make the bulbs light up for a few minutes at a time.

Latimer patented his method for making carbon filaments, which allowed light bulbs to burn for hours before burning out. Much more useful. Not only that, but Latimer was a pioneer of the electric lighting industry and one of the charter members of the Edison Pioneers, who worked closely with Edison in the further development of electric light. Of the original 100 Pioneers, Lewis Latimer was the only black man.

He went on to invent a number of other useful gadgets, including a flushing train toilet and a device which cooled and disinfected patients’ rooms in hospitals, thus reducing the rate of hospital-acquired infections.

Ever notice how often Thomas Edison shows up in one of these articles? I wonder why that is...

Coffee out on the patio this morning. Almost like Spring weather here.

Grand Ole Opry Begins...!

I know that usually have some cowboys and Indian stuff here on Western Wednesday, but this is more or less along those lines.

1925

The Grand Ole Opry begins broadcasting

The Grand Ole Opry, one of the longest-lived and most popular showcases for western music, begins broadcasting live from Nashville, Tennessee. The showcase was originally named the Barn Dance, after a Chicago radio program called the National Barn Dance that had begun broadcasting the previous year.

Impressed by the popularity of the Chicago-based National Barn Dance, producers at WSM radio in Nashville decided to create their own version of the show to cater to southern audiences who could not receive the Chicago signal. Both the Grand Ole Opry and the National Barn Dance aired on Saturday nights and featured folk music, fiddling, and the relatively new genre of country-western music. Both shows created a growing audience for a uniquely American style of music and were launching grounds for many of America’s most-loved musicians–the singing cowboy Gene Autry got his first big break on the National Barn Dance. The WSM producers recognized that Americans were growing nostalgic for the rural past, so all live performers at the Grand Ole Opry were required to dress in hillbilly costumes and adopt old-time names.

The four-and-a-half-hour Grand Ole Opry program became one of the most popular broadcasts in the South, and like its Chicago cousin, helped make country-western an enduring part of the popular American musical landscape.

Guess you could say that this was the show that started it all, as far as the country music craze. I know my folks used to love to listen to it.

Coffee out on the patio this morning. Going to be a tad warmer, I think.

Smell Like Snow...?

I know that many folks think that they can smell the snow in the air, but according to this study that is not the case. I hate to pop the bubble, but not really...because I don't care for the snow.

When you think you can smell snow, you aren’t actually smelling anything. It’s a sensory experience caused by colder weather, humidity, and the feeling of cold air. The cold slows down air molecules, humidity boosts your olfactory nerves, freezing air hits the nerve that transmits sensations from your face to your brain, and this creates the crisp ‘scent’ of snow. Source

See? There is always a reasonable explanation, but it may not be what you want to hear.

Coffee in the kitchen again today.

William Cantalo On Monday Mystery...!

Sometimes a mystery is caused when a family member just wants to disappear. Now I'm not saying that's what happened in this case from Listverse, but it does seem very likely to me.

William Cantelo

Photo credit: Barry Cantelo

William Cantelo (possibly pictured above) was the inventor of an early form of machine gun. Cantelo kept a laboratory in the basement of the pub he ran in Southampton, England, and neighbors would often hear sounds like rapid gunfire coming from below. Sometime in the 1880s, Cantelo told his sons he was going on a business trip to try to sell his new invention and was never seen again.

It was first assumed that Cantelo had met with an accident on his travels, until his sons saw a newspaper photograph of another inventor named Hiram Maxim. Maxim is credited with creating the Maxim Gun, a type of machine gun. And he bore an uncanny resemblance to William Cantelo.

Cantelo’s sons certainly believed that Maxim was their father and hired a private investigator to establish the truth, without success. There is also some evidence that Maxim visited Southampton and may have met Cantelo, if, indeed, he wasn’t Cantelo. Whatever the truth, Hiram Maxim died an extremely rich man, while William Cantelo’s sons inherited a pub with bullet holes all over the basement.

Like I said, I believe the man just may have wanted to get away from family for a while...like forever!

Coffee in the kitchen this morning. Key Lime pie anyone?

Once This Song Was Banned...!

Once in a great while, the folks in charge of what is good for all the rest of us deem that we shouldn't hear certain songs...and so, in their infinite wisdom (?) they banned them from being played on the radio. What makes this so strange in this case is that the song in question has no words! Not a single word at all! It was banned strictly because of the title! Here is the song and the story behind the reason for this madness!

Link Wray

‘Rumble’

Link Wray’s 1958 classic “Rumble” was originally banned from many US radio stations, notably in Boston and New York, for fear of the song inciting gang violence. Although it did not take much for a song to be banned back in the 1950s, even by the sensibilities of the time, banning “Rumble” is a stretch for the imagination because the song contains no vocals. That is zero words.

It was not the raucous rock ‘n’ roll sound of the song that caused the widespread boycott from radio stations but rather the song’s title that caused the ban. The use of the word “rumble” as the title proved just too much for several radio DJs, and therefore, the song was banned.

Surprisingly, the banning of Link Wray’s song didn’t have much negative impact on the tune’s commercial success. “Rumble” remained in the charts for ten weeks after its release, and even today, it is revered as iconic.

I have to say, I can remember this song and always liked it, but not one single time that I heard it did I ever think of fighting someone...NEVER!!

Coffee out on the patio this morning. Pretty nice weather!

Bad Breath As A Weapon...!

Now here is an interesting story from my research on the web that you might find interesting. It involves the weaponizing bad breath as a defense mechanism.

Around the world, cigarettes and tobacco-related products are covered in dire health warnings. Some are pretty straightforward like, “Cigarettes can cause cancer.” Others are a little gorier, displaying horrifying pictures of tracheotomies and rotting teeth. But if the hornworm caterpillar could read, he’d just shake his head and laugh. These little larvae can handle more nicotine than Don Draper and the Cigarette Smoking Man combined. In fact, the hornworm caterpillar has a nicotine tolerance that’s 750 times greater than any measly human’s, and that comes in handy when he’s attacked by eight-legged predators.

Wolf spiders love munching on juicy little caterpillars, but the hornworm is more of a challenge than most insects thanks to its unique diet and genetic makeup. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Chemical Ecology in Germany discovered these little guys occasionally chow down on tobacco plants. It’s not that they’re particularly fond of the taste, and in fact, detoxifying all that nicotine takes a really long time and really slows the caterpillar down. But as researchers found out, the hornworm has an amazing way of turning the poison into a toxic weapon, a kind of “defense halitosis.”

Hornworms use a sci-fi sounding gene called “CYP6B46” to mix the nicotine with the caterpillar’s hemolymph (essentially insect blood). When the wolf spider shows up looking for a snack, the caterpillar excretes its hemolymph through little holes known as spiracles. The spider gets a whiff of all that nicotine and decides the hornworm is way too toxic to eat. The eight-eyed arachnid takes off, and the hornworm lives to see another day. Talk about smoker’s breath.

Since I'm a smoker I guess I won't have to be worried about being bitten by the Wolf spider any time soon. Hey, just protecting myself, ya know?

Coffee out on the patio this morning. Cool but dry...at least so far.