the3rdrock.com

On this date in Feb­ru­ary 16th, 1959, Fidel Castro became the Prime Min­is­ter of Cuba. Since then, accord­ing to the man who was charged with pro­tect­ing him for most of his regime, he’s sur­vived over 600 assas­sin­a­tion attempts. Fabian Escal­ante, the former head of the Cuban Secret Ser­vice, claims that the assas­sin­a­tion endeavors break down like this: the Eis­en­hower admin­is­tra­tion tried to kill Castro 38 times; Kennedy, 42; John­son, 72; Nixon, 184; Carter, 64; Reagan, 197; Bush Sr., 16; Clin­ton, 21. (The accur­acy of Escalante’s stat­ist­ics, espe­cially attempts since the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion, is in dis­pute.) There are only so many dif­fer­ent ways you can ambush someone with a sharp­shooter, so some of the ways the CIA plot­ted to kill Castro were pretty wild. Here are just a few of the unortho­dox meth­ods con­sidered to oust the Beard.

1. Femme fatale. Mar­ita Lorenz, just one of many women Castro coun­ted as a mis­tress, allegedly accep­ted a deal from the CIA in which she would feed him cap­sules filled with poison. She man­aged to get as far as smug­gling the pills into his bed­room in her jar of cold cream, but the pills dis­solved in the cream and she doubted her abil­ity to force-feed Castro face lotion, and she also just chickened out. Accord­ing to Lorenz, Castro some­how figured out her plan and offered her his gun. “I can’t do it, Fidel,” she told him.

2. Poisoned wet­suit. While there’s noth­ing sus­pi­cious about receiv­ing ran­dom diving gear from your enemy right in the middle of the Bay of Pigs Inva­sion, the CIA gave it a shot. In 1975, the Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee claimed it had “con­crete evid­ence” of a plan to offer Castro a wet­suit lined with spores and bac­teria that would give him a skin dis­ease (and maybe worse). The plan sup­posedly involved Amer­ican law­yer James B. Donovan, who would present Castro with the suit when he went to nego­ti­ate the release of the Bay of Pigs pris­on­ers. A 1975 AP report said the plan was aban­doned “because Donovan gave Castro a dif­fer­ent diving suit on his own initiative.”

3. Ball­point hypo­dermic syr­inge. An ordinary-looking pen would be rigged with a hypo­dermic needle so fine that Castro wouldn’t notice when someone bumped into him with the pen and injec­ted him with an extremely potent poison.

4. Explod­ing cigar. But this was no par­lor trick – this cigar would have been packed with enough real explos­ives to take Fidel’s head off. In 1967, the Sat­urday Even­ing Post repor­ted that a New York City police officer had been pro­posi­tioned with the idea and hoped to carry it out dur­ing Castro’s United Nations visit in Septem­ber 1960.

5. Con­tam­in­ated cigar. They may have given up on the TNT sto­gie, but the idea of spik­ing his smokes was still being floated around. The CIA even went as far as to recruit a double agent who would slip Castro a cigar filled with botulin, a toxin that would kill the leader in short order. The double agent was allegedly given the cigars in Feb­ru­ary of 1961, but he appar­ently got cold feet.

6. Explod­ing conch shell. Know­ing that Castro liked to scuba dive, the CIA made plans to plant an explos­ive device in a conch shell at his favor­ite spot. They plot­ted to make the shell brightly colored and unusual look­ing so it would be sure to attract Castro’s atten­tion, draw­ing him close enough to kill him when the bomb inside went off.

7. Nair. Well, maybe not that brand spe­cific­ally, but accord­ing to that 1975 Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee report, the U.S. believed that mess­ing with Castro’s beard was mess­ing with the man’s power. The CIA figured that the loss of the beard would show Cubans that Castro was weak and fal­lible. A half-baked scheme was hatched to use thal­lium salt, the chem­ical in depil­at­ory products such as Nair, in Castro’s shoes or in his cigar. The chem­ical would be absorbed or inhaled and cause the fam­ous facial hair to fall out. (Wait, wasn’t this an epis­ode of Get Smart?)

8. LSD. In what was mostly an effort to dis­credit Fidel, not kill him, a radio sta­tion where Castro was giv­ing a live broad­cast would be bom­barded with an aer­o­sol spray con­tain­ing a sub­stance sim­ilar to LSD. When Fidel had the requis­ite freak out live on the air, Cubans would think he had lost his mind and stop trust­ing him.

9. Handker­chief teem­ing with deadly bac­teria. The CIA was seem­ingly obsessed with cov­er­ing Fidel in harm­ful bac­teria and tox­ins, because they also con­sidered giv­ing him a germ-covered hankie that would make him very ill.

10. Poisoned milk­shake. Accord­ing to Escal­ante, the closest the CIA ever came to killing Castro was a deadly dessert drink in 1963. The attempt went awry when the pill stuck to the freezer where the waiter-assassin at the Havana Hilton was sup­posed to retrieve it. When he tried to unstick it, the cap­sule ripped open.

Source: mentalfloss.com

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/117438

One of the most fam­ous auto­mobile icons turns 100 this year.

…but it’s not a car. It’s Eleanor Velasco Thornton — or more spe­cific­ally, her mas­cot, the Spirit of Ecstacy.

Still con­fused?

The mas­cot atop almost each and every Rolls-Royce since 1911.

Only two have not been graced by her way­ward metal­lic flesh — the first Rolls-Royce State car, the Queens ori­ginal Phantom IVwas designed to carry the unique mas­cot of St George slay­ing the dragon. This mas­cot could be transfered to any one of the mixed fleet of state cars in the Royal Mews.

The other is Her Majesty Queen Eliza­beth the Queen Mother’s mas­cot, Brit­an­nia atop the globe, which was ori­gin­ally made for King George V’s Royal Daimlers.

An exhib­i­tion at Palace House, in the UK to mark this ocas­sion opened yes­ter­day — May 5th, 2011. It plans to exhibit numer­ous art­works, eph­em­era and the story of John Scott Montagu, early sup­porter of the brand, his friend Brit­ish artist and sculptor Charles Sykes and Montagu’s London-based sec­ret­ary and mis­tress, Eleanor Velasco Thornton.

“In 1910 Claude John­son, then MD of Rolls-Royce, com­mis­sioned Sykes to design a mas­cot “that belonged to the (Rolls-Royce) car as much as a carved wooden fig­ure­head belonged to a sail­ing ves­sel”. The Spirit of Ecstasy mas­cot has adorned the radi­ator of every Rolls-Royce since 1911.”

“Thornton, widely believed to have been the inspir­a­tion for Sykes’ iconic statuette, didn’t live to wit­ness the global suc­cess of the emblem made in her image. She was aboard the P&O liner SS Per­sia with Lord Montagu in 1915 when the ship was tor­pedoed by a Ger­man sub­mar­ine. Montagu sur­vived, his lover did not.”

“Her secret love affair with the mar­ried John, Lord Montagu was immor­tal­ised in another mas­cot Sykes designed for Montagu. It was The Whisperer, which pre-dates the Spirit of Ecstasy but is believed to be its inspir­a­tion, and depicts a young woman, widely believed to be based on Thornton, in flut­ter­ing robes with a secret­ive fore­finger pressed to her lips.”

The exhib­i­tion will be open until Octo­ber 2011 and can be seen as part of a visit to the whole Beau­lieu attraction.

Ori­ginal source: News24

Fur­ther read­ing: The Royal Fleet / Agony & Ecstacy

Septem­ber 10th, 1945 finds a strap­ping (but tender) five and a half month old Wyan­dotte rooster peck­ing through the dust of Fruita, Col­or­ado. The unsus­pect­ing bird had never looked so deli­cious as he did that, now fam­ous, day. Clara Olsen was plan­ning on fea­tur­ing the plump chicken in the even­ing meal. Hus­band Lloyd Olsen was sent out, on a very routine mis­sion, to pre­pare the des­ig­nated fryer for the pan. Noth­ing about this task turned out to be routine. Lloyd knew his Mother in Law would be din­ing with them and would savor the neck. He posi­tioned his ax pre­cisely, estim­at­ing just the right tol­er­ances, to leave a gen­er­ous neck bone. “It was as import­ant to Suck-Up to your Mother in Law in the 40’s as it is today.” A skill­ful blow was executed and the chicken staggered around like most freshly ter­min­ated poultry.

Then the determ­ined bird shook off the trau­matic event and never looked back. Mike (it is unclear when the fam­ous rooster took on the name) returned to his job of being a chicken. He pecked for food and preened his feath­ers just like the rest of his barn­yard buddies.

When Olsen found Mike the next morn­ing, sleep­ing with his “head” under his wing, he decided that if Mike had that much will to live, he would fig­ure out a way to feed and water him. With an eye­d­rop­per Mike was given grain and water. It was becom­ing obvi­ous that Mike was spe­cial. A week into Mike’s new life Olsen packed him up and took him 250 miles to the Uni­ver­sity of Utah in Salt Lake City . The skep­tical sci­ent­ists were eager to answer all the ques­tions regard­ing Mike’s amaz­ing abil­ity to sur­vive with no head. It was determ­ined that ax blade had missed the jug­u­lar vein and a clot had pre­ven­ted Mike from bleed­ing to death. Although most of his head was in a jar, most of his brain stem and one ear was left on his body. Since most of a chicken’s reflex actions are con­trolled by the brain stem Mike was able to remain quite healthy.

In the 18 MONTHS that Mike lived as “The Head­less Won­der Chicken” he grew from a mere 2 1/2 lbs. to nearly 8 lbs. In a Gayle Meyer inter­view Olsen said Mike was a “robust chicken — a fine spe­ci­men of a chicken except for not hav­ing a head.” Some long­time Fruita res­id­ents, gathered at the Monu­ment Cafe for cof­fee, also remem­ber Mike — “he was a big fat chicken who didn’t know he didn’t have a head” — “he seemed as happy as any other chicken.” Mike’s excel­lent state of health made it dif­fi­cult for animal-rights act­iv­ists to garner much of a fol­low­ing. Even now the town of Fruita cel­eb­rates Mike’s impress­ive will to live, not the nature of his han­di­cap. Mir­acle Mike took on a man­ager, and with the Olsens in tow, set out on a national tour. Curi­ous sideshow pat­rons in New York , Atlantic City , Los Angeles , and San Diego lined up to pay 25 cents to see Mike. The “Won­der Chicken” was val­ued at $10,000.00 and insured for the same. His fame and for­tune would earn him recog­ni­tion in Life and Time Magazines. It goes without say­ing there was a Guin­ness World Record in all this. While return­ing from one of these road trips the Olsens stopped at a motel in the Ari­zona desert. In the middle of the night Mike began to choke. Unable to find the eye­d­rop­per used to clear Mike’s open eso­phagus Mir­acle Mike passed on.

Now, Mike’s spirit is cel­eb­rated the third week­end in May.

www.miketheheadlesschicken.org

Do you have a need to move huge amounts of cargo across artic plains? You do? Fant­astic. I have just the vehicles for you…

Wiki­Pe­dia states that “In the 1950s the Le Tourneau com­pany developed sev­eral over­land trains, essen­tially over­sized semi-trailer trucks that could travel over almost any terrain.”

Designed ini­tially to aid in log­ging and later to con­quer the artic, unres­trained from rail and road links, these metal mam­moths with wheels 10 Ft. high were shunted along by elec­tric motors at the wheels which were in turn powered by one or more diesel engines — usu­ally of the Cum­mins preference.

Sadly, these seem­ingly unreal vehicu­lar icons are a minor­ity won­der for­got­ten by the major­ity. Most now sit silently in scrapyards, wait­ing for either Mother Nature or an angle grinder to put them out of their misery.

One train donated four of its wheels to Big­foot #5, which now holds the titles of the First mon­ster truck solely designed to use 10′ tall tires (1986) and the “Guin­ness Book of Records — World’s biggest pickup truck” (2002).

I’m not sure there were ‘over­land train review­ers’ in ’62, but all reports seem to lean towards the trains being pretty easy to drive, surprisingly.

Focus­ing on the MII model, they are said to have lumbered along at a steady 20 Mph thanks to four 873 kW gas tur­bine gen­er­ator sets.

No men­tion of the brak­ing dis­tance though — I’d move the car though, just to be safe.

The last hur­rah for LeTourneau, the six-wheel TC-497, Mk 2, was powered by four gas-turbine engines with put­ting out a com­bined 4,680 Hp.

That was then shared by 54 indi­vidual elec­tric motors — one per wheel.

Two of the twelve trail­ers were pro­vi­sioned solely for the car­riage of tur­bines and generators.

Horse and car­riages com­bined, any­thing in your rear view mir­ror was a good 572 Ft. away.

Ed Bur­rows, whom I assume was a former driver — based on a quote from roadtransport.com — has this to say: “The track­ing was so per­fect that when driven over sand, even around a curve, the whole 54-wheel out­fit left the tread impres­sions of only two tyre tracks.”

The over­land trains were short-lived though, due –prob­ably solely — to the arrival of the Sikor­sky S-60, which made the move­ment of heavy freight easier, cheaper and faster.

Addi­tional sources: LIFE, via Google;
aviastar.org; Hem­mings

…will Rob­ocop look over you.

Phil­adelphia already has a Rocky statue, so why can’t Detroit get a cool movie action hero of its own? Thanks to the $50,000 raised by a Kick­Starter fund raiser, the Motor City will be get­ting its very own Rob­oCop statue, even if its mayor doesn’t like it.

The whole Rob­oCop statue pro­ject star­ted when Detroit’s Mayor Dave Bing made head­lines last week after shoot­ing down a sug­ges­tion to erect a Rob­oCop statue to improve the city’s image. While the ori­ginal Tweet sug­ges­tion was con­sidered a joke by its sender, the Inter­net went crazy and decided to raise the neces­sary funds through KickStarter.

Six days later, with over 1,500 dona­tions and more than $50,000 raised, it looks like Detroit will indeed be get­ting a Rob­oCop statue. The organ­izers for the Rob­oCop pro­ject are cur­rently work­ing with the Mayor’s Office to find a suit­able loc­a­tion to build the fic­tional defender of justice.

Dona­tions to the Rob­oCop statue fund will con­tinue until March 29 to ensure that the statue is “as big and good as possible.”

As much as we love Rob­oCop and his finely shaped lips, we have to won­der, would you plan a visit to Detroit just to see a gigantic statue of RoboCop?

In a nation as blindly pat­ri­otic as the USA, it’s quite com­ical that they choose to erect statues of film ‘her­oes’, be they real or fictional.

George, Ben­jamin and the rest of the lads must be turn­ing in their graves.

How­ever, per­haps the [ques­tion­ably] changed gen­er­a­tion we’re deal­ing with reacts bet­ter to Rob­ocop than actual per­sons of his­tor­ical significance?

To, iron­ic­ally, quote Murphy, “Role mod­els are import­ant.” Which ones though, I wonder.

Source: dvice.com

Meet Mr. Allen Swift…

Mr. Swift is cred­ited with being per­son with the longest con­tinu­ous own­er­ship of a car from new — a whop­ping 82 (that’s EIGHTY-TWO) years!

Mr. Allen Swift ( Spring­field , MA.) received this 1928 Rolls-Royce Pica­dilly P1 Road­ster from his father, new, as a gradu­ation gift in 1928 — and sub­sequently drove it until his passing at the age of 102!

The car was posthum­ously donated it to a Spring­field (U. S. A.) museum after his death.

It has 170,000-odd miles on it, is still in per­fect run­ning order, com­fort­ably quiet at any speed and is in per­fect
ORIGINAL cos­metic condition.

That mileage, spread out, is approx­im­ately 2,000 miles per year.

Inter­est­ing stats…

• One of only 30 examples of the Pic­ca­dilly designed by Rolls-Royce Cus­tom Coach­works and built by Mer­rimac body company.
• Although fit­ted with a then-powerful 7.7 litre (468 c.i.) inline 6, the car’s out­put was a now-paltry 40 or 50 Bhp. The dif­fer­ent engine out­puts con­trib­ut­ing to the nametags 40 or 50 Phantom.
• Curb weight: 4,050 lbs (chassis only) / 3,650 lbs (body only) / 7,700 lbs (approx. — with Barker & Co. 4-door body)