Barney & Clod
McArthur Wheeler and his pal Clifton Earl Johnson never did well in Science class. Like many of their contemporaries, they shrugged off the value of a subject they’d never need in real life. Au contraire, mes amis!
One fine afternoon, with nothing better to do, the deadly duo decided to rob the Swissvale branch of the Mellon Bank near Pittsburgh. One of them waited in line while the other stuck up a teller with a semi-automatic handgun. They left together, $5200 richer. It was so easy they decided to double their pleasure, double their fun by robbing the Fidelity Savings bank in Brighton Heights. So far, so good.
Trouble was, the pair’s pitiful science background caused Johnson to think putting lemon juice on his face would make him invisible to the banks’ security cameras, akin to how it functions as invisible ink. Wheeler didn’t believe him at first so he covered himself in lemon juice and took a Polaroid shot. Sure enough, he didn’t appear on the subsequent image.
Johnson was arrested three days later. It took until April to find Wheeler, who was outed an hour after a surveillance photograph was broadcast on the evening news. Stunned after looking at the photograph, he asked police for an explanation. The cops attributed his absence in the Polaroid to bad film, a maladjusted camera or Wheeler having unintentionally pointed the camera in the wrong direction.
The robberies inspired research into the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which describes people with little ability in a given field erroneously believing they are experts in it. “Kind of like the President of the United States,” said one of the cops, officiously.
Which brings us to one of Marion County’s own bank robbers, Robby Snead. Growing up, Robbie was not the brightest bulb in the lamp shop. His energetic mother Ruth tried to raise him better, but her pleading he denied, that leaves only him to blame ‘cause mama tried. In and out of jail enough to be called Turnstyle Snead, Robbie decided one day to push all of his chips to the center of the table and rob a bank. Not just any bank, mind you, but the one in his own neighborhood where his mother had her accounts. While this might at first seem unwise to the casual observer, you have to remember that Robbie had lost his license due to some earlier shenanigans and wasn’t allowed to drive.
The day of the robbery broke sunny and clear, a good day for a larceny. Robbie walked the few blocks from his house to the bank, pulled a neckerchief over his face and walked up to the familiar teller’s window. “Give me all your money!” he barked to the matronly lady on the other side of the counter, who recognized him right away, wily disguise or not.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Robbie?” she kindly inquired, because that’s what concerned neighbors do in Anthony, Florida. “Yes, ma’am,” said Robbie, politely, so the teller sighed, gave him a few dollars and sent him on his way. Satisfied he had enough for a jolly weekend, Robbie marched back to his house to have some lunch, but was soon interrupted by a polite knock on his door.
“Dang!” cussed the bank robber, flabbergasted at the crime-solving abilities of the local police. “How do they DO that?”
The Human Condition
We humans are preposterous creatures. Our history books will bear this out with stories of wars sparked by a stolen bucket, farmers taking snails to court and emperors fleeing from an army of rabbits. Whoever thought American voters would elect Mr. Magoo president of the United States? Further evidence of man’s silliness is below. Read it and giggle.
1. Liechtenstein’s army of 80 soldiers went to war in 1866. Shortly, they came back with 81 after making a friend on the enemy side.
2. In World War II, those clever Germans built a fake airfield, replete with faux wooden planes, as a decoy in Holland. When they finished, the British dropped a wooden bomb on it.
3. In 1945, the American army was rolling through Germany under the auspices of feisty General George Patton. General Dwight Eisenhower sent Patton a message instructing him to avoid the city of Trier since it would require 4 divisions to take the town. Patton sent a return message reading “have taken Trier with two divisions…do you want me to give it back?”
4. There was a time when the snobbish French dismissed potatoes as a food fit only for animals. A farmer named Parmentier, however, knew potatoes were very good food and decided to promote them to the working class. He bought a two-acre farm, started growing spuds and placed armed guards around the field. The public took this to mean something very valuable was growing there, and they started eating potatoes, which quickly became popular throughout France. If it weren’t for Mssr. Parmentier, there’d be no French fries.
5. Never discount the ability of a mid-level bureaucrat to influence history. One Gunther Schabowski was tasked with informing the world media of plans to open the border between East and West Berlin. Neglecting to read the full briefing carefully explaining that this would be a slow and gradual process, Gunther said the order would take immediate effect. Berliners instantly rushed the wall and border guards were overwhelmed and couldn’t stop them. Schabowski got no Christmas bonus that year.
6. The winner of the 1904 Olympic Marathon in St. Louis was later disqualified when officials discovered he traveled part of the distance in the back seat of a car. Only 14 participants finished the race on an extremely dusty road that left several entrants unable to breathe. One of the finishers took a nap. The official winner glugged down a concoction containing strychnine, raw eggs and brandy. The designer of the course wanted to test his theory of “purposeful dehydration” so the course lacked any water for the runners. One of the contestants collapsed and threw up blood due to dehydration and had to have surgery for a dust-lined esophagus. The fourth-place finisher got chased off the course by a dog.
7. During the Battle of San Gabriel in the Mexican-American War, both sides had an array of cannons and gunpowder, but due to some vague faux pas, they had only one cannonball between them. The two sides spent the whole battle firing the one cannonball back and forth at each other.
Making Waves
For the past 35 years, dozens of students have walked across Florida International University’s campus lake during November’s Walk on Water contest, the largest and longest-running competition of its kind in the United States and probably anywhere. Architecture professor Jaime Canaves dreamed this up as a fun design challenge for the students, who build their own floatable shoes, then race each other across the lake. The winning team gets bragging rights and $1000. Last year’s champs, Juan Goya and David Mora secured the win with a finish time of 50.90 seconds. Impressive, perhaps, but a mere sideshow compared to the efforts of Charles W. Oldrieve, a former tightrope walker from Boston.
In November of 1888 at 20 years of age, Oldrieve used his oversized, wooden, canoe-shaped shoes to walk more than 150 miles down the Hudson River from Albany to Manhattan. The journey lasted six days and involved water temperatures so cold that one night when Oldrieve came ashore to sleep, his shoes were covered in ice. Unperturbed, he announced plans to walk across the English Channel a year later. Charles never made it to Europe but he accomplished many other feats like walking across waterfalls and through the ocean to islands off the Massachusetts coast.
Oldrieve’s tightrope skills likely gave him an advantage, but his assured steady gait helped him the most. “Usually, floating is easy,” says Professor Canaves, “the biggest problem is to go forward. “If you don’t do something to create traction, you’re moving back and forth but staying in place.”
Oldrieve’s shoes had fins, or flappers on the bottom. According to the Boston Globe, “When the foot is brought forward and the shoe forced through water, the fins lay flat against the bottom of the shoe until the step is taken, then they drop down and present a surface to press against the water. That way, the walker is able to move forward. Without the flappers, he’d make no headway.” Although Charles’ shoes were similar to those of other water walkers, he continued to experiment with different designs and worked on his technique. By the early 1900s, he could not only walk forward and backward, but also turn around in a circle, a maneuver that took him five years to master.
In 1907, Oldrieve embarked on his most ambitious journey yet, walking down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers from Cincinnati to New Orleans. He began the nearly 1600-mile trip on New Year’s Day with a goal of reaching the Crescent City in 40 days, traveling up to five miles an hour. Slowed down by the need to dump water out of his shoes despite wearing thigh-high rubber boots to keep them as dry as possible, his average speed slowed to roughly two mph. At Cairo, Illinois, he complained of rheumatism in his back and came down with chills and a high fever but he made it to Baton Rouge by February 6, several hours ahead of schedule. Approaching New Orleans, Oldrieve was nearly swept under a barge, but he was rescued by several men on board. He made it to his final destination with an hour to spare on his 40-day deadline. “I wouldn’t walk that river again for five times the money I won today,” he said. “I’m lucky to still be in one piece.”
In A Snail’s Eye
At first glance, snails and humans don’t seem to have much in common, unless it’s the pace at which they tend to their income tax forms. But, surprise—our eyes are structurally akin to those of the freshwater golden apple snail, a species native to South America. And get this, these snails have a unique and spectacular superpower---after an eye is amputated, they can regrow a new, functional replacement within about a month. Yeah, we know. Why the hell would anybody amputate a snail’s eye? There’s no explaining the idiosyncratic inclinations of scientists.
Anyway, the same scientists have now uncovered a gene related to eye development in these snails. Further work with this eye-generating species might one day help with human eye diseases and injuries. Alice Accorsi, a biologist at the University of California, Davis decided a study of the snails to discover the basis of their resiliency was in order, The results of that study were recently published in the journal Nature Communications.
Accorsi and her colleagues used dissections, microscopy and genetic analysis to study the snails’ eyes and their similarity to human eyes. The gastropods, like us, have camera-type eyes with a cornea, a lens and a retina with cells to capture light. The team found that the apple snails and humans share several genes related to gene development. They also determined the different stages of the snails’ eye regeneration process. In the first 24 hours, after an eye is amputated, the wound begins to heal. The body sends unspecialized cells to the affected area, then in just over a week those cells specialize by beginning to form eye structures. Within two weeks of the amputation, the eyes’ structures are all present, though they still need a few weeks to mature.
The researchers also found that the same gene (called pax6) is used to form eyes in both the snails and in humans. “With the advent of CRISPR technology, we can now manipulate genes in this species,” says study co-author Alejandro Sanchez Alvarado, a developmental biologist at the Stowers Institute for Medical Science. “This includes targeted disruption of the pax6 gene, an essential regulator in eye development and regeneration.”
Humans, alas, won’t be growing new eyes just yet. To investigate further, the researchers will have to mutate or turn off pax6 in adult snails, then access their ability to regenerate their eyes. If they find a set of snail genes that are important to eye regeneration and vertebrates also have those genes, scientists might be able to one day activate them in humans. Henry Klassen, an ophthalmologist and stem cell researcher at Cal-Irvine tells Science News that knowing eye regeneration is possible is “a beacon of light. You can at least start asking questions like, ‘Where’s the hang-up. How far along the similar path do things go in humans,’ and what genes, for instance, intervene or have been added to suppress regeneration or fail to respond? Nature carries out many experiments through evolution, and by exploring how different species solve similar biological challenges, we often find there is more than one way to achieve the same outcome.”
Exit, eye of the tiger. Enter, orbs of the mollusk. Oh, to be a brown-eyed handsome man. Twice.
Hold It, Mister!
Nobody died last year in Longyearbyen, Norway, and for good reason. It’s against the law. If you’re feeling a little mortal, better skitter across the town line and do your business there. There’s nothing worse than being dead and in jail in Longyearbyen. It’s not that the locals have anything against corpses, they just can’t bury them in the permafrost and you don’t want them piling up too high in the hospital dumpster.
This edict against death is not a new thing for Europeans. In ancient Greece, the city of Delos was considered too sacred for the messy realities of life…and death. Around the 6th century BCE, authorities ordered all graves removed and banned both childbirth and dying on the island. Anyone in a precarious situation was promptly ferried to neighboring Rhenea, which became the ancient version of a designated troublemaker zone.
In 2007, after cemetery plans were blocked by regional authorities, the mayor of Cugnaux, France banned death within the city limits. The decree worked, as news coverage spread across the country and forced the city leaders to find alternative space. The same thing happened in the French city of Sarpourenx and the Spanish town of Lanjaron. In Biritiba Mirim, Brazil, the town cemetery ran out of space in 2005 and environmental rules forbade expansion. In response, the city’s mayor pushed through a law banning residents from dying. The move forced state officials to reconsider restrictions and new land was approved for a future cemetery. Until it was finished, everyone was kindly asked to stay alive. Brazilians being very polite people, did just that.
That’s all, folks….
