Weird News: The Wolf Files

Aug. 9 —, 2001 -- Imagine this: You're the world's greatest super-genius. You've won the Nobel Prize. You probably have better things to do than design refrigerators. But that's exactly what Albert Einstein was doing in the late 1920s.

"Einstein was already the most famous scientist in the world," says Steve Silverman, author of Einstein's Refrigerator and Other Stories From the Flip Side of History (Andrews McMeel). "And yet he gave a lot of thought to the fridge."

Einstein caught the world's imagination when he theorized that time slows down as one approaches the speed of light. But does the light really go off when you shut the refrigerator door? I'd like to see his theory on that. Maybe it explains why he never combed his hair.

Silverman tells his students at Chatham High School, near Albany, N.Y., that the refrigerator was actually once a fairly dangerous appliance.

"Einstein was moved when he read an account of an entire family killed in their sleep by the poisonous coolant that leaked out of their fridge," he says. "It was a fairly dangerous thing."

So Einstein and another scientist who changed the course of history — Leo Szilard — began designing refrigerators with fewer moving parts. Szilard is the man who envisioned a nuclear chain reaction that could be used to build weapons of mass destruction. Thank God they were designing kitchen appliances for our side.

The Electric Pickle

At Chatham, Silverman has the reputation as the science teacher with 1,000 different stories to excite young minds. Take his class and you will see how a pickle, properly hooked up, can shine like a light bulb, thanks to the magic of electricity.

"Kosher pickles work best," he says. "They have the most salt and salt has conductivity."

Maybe it's a small lesson, just a brief distraction from the typical text book slop. "I teach 80-minute classes, 180 days a year," he says. "You've got to hold these kids' attention."

Internet users who hunt for the bizarre know Silverman as the ringmaster of the Useless Information Home Page. It's the place to go to find the guy who used 14,000 matchsticks to create a working violin, complete with bow.

Now, Einstein's Refrigerator culls together 30 true-life stories from Silverman's Web site and lesson plans.

There's an account of how Niagara Falls went dry one cool day in 1848. High winds and an ice blockage on the Niagara River stemmed the flow of water, and residents got to see all the junk that had been dumped there.

You'll also find out how female penguins turn to prostitution. Apparently, the guys think they've got mates for life. But an Antarctic gal will do what she must when she has a nest to build. Apparently, for the price of a few stones — home-building material in the bird world — a little guy in a tuxedo can buy a few thrills. Silverman says, "It's the coldest profession in the world."

When you cover weird news and still get surprised by weird marginalia, you just have to doff your cap and salute a master. Einstein's Refrigerator is a great read. Here are a few of my favorites:

Headless Mike

We all know a chicken without a head will run around just like that sniveling, middle-echelon manager in your office. But not that many people remember Miracle Mike of Fruita, Colo., the rooster who lived for years without his head.

Poor Mike was only 5 ½ months on Sept. 10, 1945, when farmers Lloyd and Clara Olsen set him on the chopping block. After the ax fell, this bird ran around. They all do. Mike's head was dead. But his bottom just kept on flapping.

With an eye-dropper, the Olsens fed him through the opening of his throat. Mike choked a bit. But days turned into weeks and months. Thus, a legend was born.

Early in the morning, he'd greet the Olsens with a gurgling cock-a-doodle-do. Folks came from miles around to see him. Life magazine did an article about him. He soon joined the sideshow circuit, touring alongside a jar carrying his head. He pulled down a reported $4,500 a month. That's a lot of chicken feed.

Some said Mike's little head was eaten by a cat, and a fake was substituted. But it hardly mattered.

When Mike gave up the ghost, a necropsy revealed that Mr. Olsen had achieved the chop of a lifetime, leaving just enough of the bird's brainstem to keep him alive. A clot prevented him from bleeding to death.

Others tried to repeat the Miracle Mike phenomenon. It couldn't be done. One chicken, named Lucky, lived 11 days. Guess he wasn't so lucky after all.

The folks of Fruita held the first "Mike the Headless Chicken Day" two years ago. They have chicken races, hold egg tosses and Pin-the-Head on Mike games. And, of course, they eat lots of chicken.

The Bat Bomb

Silverman's look at history soars to strange heights with other flying creatures.Before atomic weapons brought the Japanese to their knees, the Americans were working on another secret weapon — the bat bomb.

Pennsylvania dentist and inventor Lytle Adams was driving home, listening to the tragic reports of the Pearl Harbor bombing on his car radio. He thought of the ultimate counterattack: There were millions of bats in local caves. If small incendiary devices were tied to these creepy creatures, and if we could set them upon Japan at dawn, Tokyo would be crippled.

OK, there are a lot of kooks out there with crazy ideas. But Adams was a high-flying executive. He and a partner formed the airline that eventually became US Airways. He had the ear of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and other officials. "This man is not a nut," President Roosevelt wrote in a memo, according to Silverman.

Adams had it all worked out. The bats would be cooled down, to force them into a state of semi-hibernation. Fighter planes would release them over targets. The bomb-carrying bats would warm up, instinctively head for the nooks and crannies in local buildings — and then BOOM. No more enemy.

With FDR's endorsement, the National Defense Research Committee and the Army air force began to look for the best kamikaze bats. Millions of dollars would be spent before researchers found that even the largest bats couldn't carry the smallest 2-pound bomb.

When the government turned to the A-bomb, Adams was outraged. "We got a sure thing like the bat bomb going, something that could really win the war," Adams is quoted as saying. "And they're jerking [around] with tiny little atoms. It makes me want to cry."

Adams eventually tried to conduct some testing himself. He experimented with bats carrying a new sort of explosive called "napalm." The Navy eventually took over the Adams Plan, renamed Project X-Ray, but after conducting $2 million worth of experiments over a 27-month period, they apparently deemed the project positively batty.

The Great Baby Race

Then there was eccentric Canadian lawyer Charles Vance Millar. When he died in 1926, he turned his will into an elaborate joke. He gave lucrative shares in the Ontario Jockey Club to a preacher and a judge who reviled gambling. Of course, they both accepted the gifts.

Millar gave shares in a local brewing company to every preacher in Toronto. But the big prize in his will — $100,000 — went to the woman who gave birth to the most children over the next 10 years. Like race horses, scads of women competed.

Newspapers ran box scores showing which contestants were in the lead, highlighting the lucky mothers of twins and triplets. Controversies arose over whether stillborn births and illegitimate children counted. One woman was disqualified because not all of her 10 children had the same father. (She eventually got a $12,500 consolation prize.) Four women with nine children each eventually shared the prize.

Buck Wolf is entertainment producerat ABCNEWS.com. The Wolf Files ispublished Tuesdays and Thursdays. If you want to receive weekly notice whena new column is published, join the e-maillist.