Stuff You Should Know

And you know, it's not like he wrote a book called Garter Snakes.

Oh, wait a minute. He did. He did.

I feel bad if this gets back to him. I'm sure it's a great book, Doug.

Yeah. And well done.

Yeah, you can get it. It's published by Power Kids back in 2001 and it's probably basically evergreen. Plus it's not like he's just a slouch too. He's with the Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University in Philly.

Something came out called the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was this sort of a history book. It was a collection of records about English history.

And in that book, we do find a notation for the Great Heathen Army or the Great Army, which were these Scandinavian invaders and this big Viking army basically that hit the British Isles in 865 CE.

And apparently this Great Heathen Army, which again, they call it the Great Army too, but I'm not going to call it anything but the Great Heathen Army because it just sounds so much cooler.

This was a number of different armies from different Scandinavian lands that kind of all worked together.

It wasn't just one single solitary mass of the same people over 13 years who invaded England.

And I think this is what the deal is. I saw this referenced a lot online, and there is a coffee table book about Bertrand Island amusement park. And I bet you dollars to donuts there is a picture of this Rydham Cowboy Ride in that book because they all reference this book.

But I didn't have time nor the inclination to buy this book to prove it to myself.

By modern day, of course, I mean the 1630s. Yeah, the first mention of palindromes in English is in Camden's Remains by John Philippot from 1636.

His record Stoneflower is just a masterpiece from beginning to end.

Yeah, that's good party music.

We talked about this a little bit recently with the movie coming out about Man on Wire, the tightrope walker between the twin towers.

If you're talking about a printed book in the understanding of printing that we have here in the modern world, well then that's easy to settle. The Gutenberg Bible or the book printed right before the Gutenberg Bible.

William Blake lived over a century later but wrote a lot of poetry on Biblical themes as well. Confusingly Blake also wrote his own epic poem called Milton which was inspired by the story of Milton's writing Paradise Lost.

Yeah. And there's like a whole book called the light list where it has pictures of them and it has...

There's a dude, I love this guy. His name is Carl Bantz. Ugh.

He wrote an article in a legitimate journal, the journal Limnology and Oceanography. And they published it. And it is an entirely tongue-in-cheek but totally played straight account of the extinct species mermaid.

He goes so far as to say that they most likely only produced one or two offspring at a time because the females of the species had two breasts and that was it.

Like this is the thought that this guy put into this article and the fact that he writes it totally straight and like really gives it its due attention, like it wasn't that like this is going to be a great idea and just the idea itself is hilarious so I don't really have to put any effort into actual execution.

It's worth reading, go check it out. It's called Mermaids, Their Biology, Culture, and Demise. You can find the full PDF online.

The Slash one is good.

There was a man, there's a man named Gene Starzynski, Pittsburgh native and former paramedic who directed a documentary about 10 or 11 years ago called Freedom House, colon, Street Saviors.

And this is just sort of a setup of these books and a very kind of neat little factoid that lies within.

Yeah, like these two books right here were like Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton all rolled together.

Like they were huge.

In the book, La Serga Este Esplendiente, that they mentioned that Queen Califia is from California.

Because in Lasergas de Esplandien, a lot of the action is the sacking of the town of Constantinople held then by the Turks, by a bunch of different countries and nations and armies sacking the city together as allies.

There's a book called The Feud by Dean King. Din-king? Dean King. Din-king.

And he said where was their next meal going to come from and how could they feed the children in the winter? They were lucky enough to have one pig or razorback for sell or trade.

And it ended up being that 70,000 word dictionary, the American dictionary, I'm sorry, an American dictionary of the English languages, the full title.

And he said, you know, the word color, it doesn't need that U. You don't hear it. It's useless. We're wasting ink. Drop it.

Plow. You want to plow a field? Just go out and plow that field. Don't plow that field because that's a waste of time.

One of the greatest, one of the other great conceptions of the afterlife, not necessarily hell, but hellish, is found in this, I think I've mentioned it before, Joyce Carol Oates short story called Nightside, where there's this seance and like the spirits that are contacted are like all freaked out because there's no, it's all just chaos.

I highly recommend everybody reading it.

From ankle to thigh, the translucent flesh radiated a vibrant, sensual, luminous orange-yellow pinkish nimbus of pagan fire.

One of the greatest ones I've ever read was called The Hanging Man of Oz.

It's like it's only just a few years old, but it's a good little short story.

Really? Yeah, I recommend that one.

It's good.

Good horror fiction.