Weekend Open Thread

… you can easily tell if you’re looking into a two-way mirror? To tell, just put the edge of your fingernail on the surface of the glass. If you can detect a space between the tip of your fingernail and the reflection, it’s a normal mirror. If the fingernail tip meets its reflection directly … well, don’t do anything silly, because whoever is behind the mirror can see you. (And you never know who’s watching.)

… bubble wrap was originally wallpaper? Invented in 1957 by Alfred Fielding (1917-1994) and Marc Chavannes (1896-1994), the ubiquitous protective wrapping stuff was intended to be a form of three-dimensional wallpaper. Needless to say, it didn’t sell, but the two engineers were not discouraged. They tried to market it next as a greenhouse insulation, but that fell flat as well. Finally, hearing that IBM was shipping a new computer model in 1961, the men offered their twice-rejected air-filled wrapping idea as a packaging material. It worked, and sales through the roof were quick to follow. (Glad it failed as wallpaper; popping those bubbles would mean re-papering the room over and over again.)

… a video game is on the market that makes you play it twice before you see the ending? Ghosts ‘n Goblins is a very difficult game to play all by itself, but when you get to the end, you get a message saying that it was all just an illusion, and you have to start all over again. Once you get to the end a second time – which is much more difficult than the first – you get to see the real ending of the video game. (One can only hope the real ending is worth what you have to go through to get to it!)

… the writer of Alice in Wonderland created a word game? Author Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) came up with a word game called Doublets. In this game, players transform one word into an entirely different one – one letter at a time. The catch is, each step in the chain must be a legitimate word as well. (Sounds like a great game show idea!)

… the last Old West-style train robbery in the United States was in 1937? Henry Loftus (1915-1993) and Harry Donaldson (1910-1986) were passengers on a Southern Pacific railroad train out of El Paso, Texas, on November 24, 1937. About an hour into the trip, Loftus pulled a gun on the conductor, and Donaldson began collecting valuables from the passengers. Then things began to go south – one passenger tried to intervene, a nervous Donaldson shot that passenger in the hip, and Loftus was tackled by a brakeman. During the ensuing struggle, the gun went off and the brakeman was killed, at which time some twenty passengers descended on the two would-be desperados, gave them a rather thorough beating, and tied them to their seats. When the train stopped in Deming, New Mexico, Loftus and Donaldson were transferred to the authorities. They were each found guilty of murder and train robbery and sentenced to 50 to 75 years in prison. Additional trivia note: Loftus and Donaldson later said they attempted the robbery because they were out of money, and never intended to harm anyone. (Didn’t quite turn out the way they expected it would, did it?)

For quite some time, Hack Stone was wondering about the qualifications to be a blimp pilot. He finally got around to looking it up on Al Gore’s Amazing Internet, and if Blimp Pilot is in your future, the easiest path is through a commercial pilots license. There are other training requirements, but that is the big one. Hack also learned that a Master Blimp Pilot earns about $70,000 a year, more than the average WNBA salary and more than 140 times what Psul of The Ballsack earned in 2024.

Kindergarten in ’75 here:

That’s like saying water is wet, fire is hot and shit stinks!