Page 5 - Best of the Week

The US Postal Service sent a cease and desist letter to the band The Postal Service for trademark infringement!

The Postal Service is an American electronic music band. They got their name because of the way they first started creating songs. Producer Jimmy Tamborello would write and perform instrumental tracks and then send them to vocalist Ben Gibbard. Ben would add his vocals and edit the tracks and then send them back to Tamborello via the US Postal Service.

Apparently, the USPS was not flattered by this nod to their service. In August 2003, they sent the band a cease and desist letter, citing their trademark on the phrase “postal service.” The USPS entered into negotiations with the band and decided they could use the trademark in exchange for promotional efforts and a performance at the USPS’s National Executive Conference. At one point, the USPS even sold the band’s CDs on their website.

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The man who tackled the 2011 Tucson shooter was a 74yo war veteran who had been shot himself!

On January 8, 2011, 6 innocent people were shot dead while having a meeting held in a parking lot, and another 13 people were injured in the gunfire. The gunman appeared out of nowhere during the 'Congress at your Corner' open forum, and appeared to shoot randomly at people in the crowd with a semi automatic pistol featuring a 33 round magazine.

When the gunman stopped to reload, he dropped his magazine, where the bystander Patricia Maisch grabbed it. Distracted by Patricia, the gunman failed to notice another bystander running at him with a folding chair, and was hit on the top of the head which further dazed him.

Then, a 74 y ear old retired war veteran named Bill Badger, who had already been shot, ran at the gunman who was later identified as Jared Lee Loughner, and tackled him to the ground until police officials arrived on the scene.

It was because of the efforts of these three individuals, that Loughner was brought to justice and is now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

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Tripping on LSD has helped at least 2 Nobel Prize winners with their scientific discoveries!

Lysergic acid diethylamide, simply known as LSD because its name is somewhat of a tongue twister, is an extremely controversial yet powerful hallucinogen. The reason for LSD's controversy is because many of the users of the drug insist that the drug has aided them in becoming a better person, and that they've been able to do things that they couldn't do while sober.

Two examples of this are Nobel Prize Winners Kary Mullis, who discovered how to amplify certain DNA sequences so that we can view them. The second example is the case of Francis Crick, the man who discovered the double helix structure that DNA is formed in. That's right - the guy who came up with the double helix shape you studied in grade school, was tripping on acid.

However, the drug is such a strong hallucinogen, and many feel that the drug is unsafe because many people have died after believing their hallucinations to be real. For example, the classic 'I'm flying' hallucination found in cartoons where the user thinks they've gained the ability to fly, and they jump off something very high...only to find that they can't actually fly.

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The Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center is so large that rain clouds form inside it.

VAB, for short, was used from 1968 to 2011 to build and store American space vehicles. By volume it is one of the largest buildings in the world, at 3,664,883 cubic meters. Additionally, it is the largest single story building in the world, and until 1974 was the tallest building in Florida.

Today, it is the tallest building in the US outside of urbanized cities like New York and Cincinnati. The VAB completed it's construction in 1966 and was first used to build the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo program.

After that it was used for housing Space Shuttle fuel tanks and other flight hardware, and served as a place where Space Shuttle orbiters were attached to rocket boosters. At 526 feet tall, 716 feet long, and 518 feet wide, it covers 8 acres of land. At such a size, on very humid days the building has it's own weather, with rain clouds forming below the ceiling.

The building has a moisture reduction system to mitigate this problem, though. What’s odd is that the building is made to withstand hurricanes and tropical storms, but weather still appears inside it.

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The harsh punishments found in Alfred Hitchcock films stem from his childhood!

Alfred Hitchcock is admired by movie buffs around the world because of his ability to create early techniques of suspense and is seen as the man who paved the way for psychological thrillers. Hitchcock also introduced 'first person' shooting to movies, an effect which makes the film seem more realistic by shooting part of the movie as if from one of the character's eyes.

Hitchcock had no fear when it came to movie making, and often put his characters in extreme forms of punishment to make the audience cringe and feel as if the movie was authentic. In fact, many scholars have argued that the punishments in Hitchcock films actually stems from several incidents throughout his childhood in which he was punished by his father.

One example of such cruel punishment, is when Hitchcock's father sent him to the police station with a note asking to put him in jail for five minutes because of bad behavior. His dad hoped this would teach Alfred a lesson, little did he know it would help shape elements in 50 Alfred Hitchcock films.

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