Page 61 - Best of the Month

The first in-flight radio transmission was about a cat!

In 1910, Walter Wellman, five companions, and a cat named Kiddo tried to cross the Atlantic ocean in airship America. What seemed to be a historic adventure, turned out to be something of a nuisance because the cat was terrified of flying and was acting like a "squirrel in a cage".

Coincidentally, the airship was the first to carry radio equipment, which eventually helped Melvin Vaniman to broadcast the first in-flight message. He was annoyed by Kiddo the Cat, and as a result, he decided to broadcast "Roy, come and get this goddamn cat."

A plan was launched to lower the cat into the water using the ONLY lifeboat - but because of the bad weather the plan was scratched and the cat was hoisted back into the airship. The cat settled down after this, but the weather became so bad that the task of flying across the Atlantic was abandoned and the crew huddled together into the lifeboat - that they almost threw away with a cat in it.

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Donald Trump cashed a check for 13 cents!

Spy magazine, decided to hold a little competition to see who exactly the cheapest, American, 'zillionaires' are. The competition consisted of Spy created a fake, but totally legal, company called the National Refund Clearinghouse.

At first, the company sent out checks of $1.11 to 58 well known millionaires. Of the 58 people that were sent checks, 26 people, including Donald Trump, Cher, Kurt Vonnegut, cashed the checks. Some of the people that DIDN'T cash the checks include Billy Joel, Woody Allen, and Dustin Hoffman.

In the second round, the millionaires received a second check for $0.64 in order to cover a 'computer error'. Only 13 people cashed this check, including Donald Trump and Adnan Khashoggi. - both well known billionaires.

In the final round, the last 13 competitors were sent a check of $0.13 and only two people cashed this tiny, insignificant check. One was Donald Trump, and the other was Adnan Khashoggi.

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Blanket octopuses rip Portuguese man o’ war poisonous tentacles to use as defensive weapons!

The Tremoctopus, also known as the blanket octopus, is a species of cephalopods that inhabits the surface and mid-water of subtropical and tropical oceans. They are best known for the long transparent webs that connect the dorsal and dorsolateral arms of adult females.

They exhibit an extreme degree of sexual dimorphism. Females can reach 2m in length, while males are at most a few centimeters long. Because of this smaller size, males (and also young females) have to resort to interesting defensive techniques.

Particularly, they are immune to the poison of the Portuguese man o’ war. They rip off it's tentacles and use it as a deadly defensive weapon. By contrast, the females are able to spread out their membranes and appear much larger than it actually is.

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Sapphires and rubies are the same stone. They only look different due to slight impurities!

Sapphires and rubies look quite different. While both precious stones, sapphires are known to be deep blue and rubies are red. However, they are actually the same stone. Corundum is a crystalline form of aluminum oxide. It is naturally clear but can be different colors when it has impurities.

If corundum is red, it is known as ruby. If it is pink-orange, it’s called padparadscha. All other colors are referred to as sapphire. So sapphires can actually be other colors besides blue. For example, there are green sapphires.

Apart from its beauty, corundum is known for it's hardness (it can scratch almost every other mineral) and it's high density. It is mined in Russia, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and India.

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President Eisenhower predicted Holocaust Deniers, so he ordered pictures be taken of concentration camps!

The Holocaust during WWII was one of the very low points in human history. Millions of Jews were systematically exterminated in concentration camps. These are the fats, and yet some still try to deny that the Holocaust ever happened. Whatever their reasoning, they maintain the stories are Nazi propaganda.

Showing great foresight, Dwight Eisenhower made an effort to stop any such attempts. In 1945, he visited one of the concentration camps near Gotha, and was shocked and horrified at what he saw. Though some of the sights made him physically ill, he inspected every part of the camps. He felt that it was his duty to see it all and be able to testify to the truth of the Nazi brutality.

In order to document these horrors and make sure that cynics and doubters would not brush off the evidence as mere Nazi propaganda, he ordered many photographs taken and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps. He also contacted both London and Washington and urged both governments to send a random group of newspaper editors and legislative groups to the camps to document them.

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