July 5, 2002

4:32 AM

Nuking Lincoln (via www.dailygrail.com). Thaddeus McMullen, 1864. "I showed McMullen’s writings to physicists familiar with nuclear fission and they were stunned," Remarsh states. "His bomb was crude, with maybe a tenth of the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, but it would have worked. Maybe. I suspect this is a hoax, but it's interesting enough to post it anyway. Now whether the Confederates could have refined the uranium to make the bomb out of is another question. Any physicists care to express an opinion?
posted by aeschenkarnos (28 comments total)

In the same issue:
- WORLD EXCLUSICE PHOTO OF YASSER ARAFAT' S LOVE NEST!
- CONFEDERACY WAS BUILIDING AN ATOMIC BOMB 80 YEARS BEFORE WWII!
- SCIENTIST BUILDS NEW 'ARK OF THE COVENANT'
- SHOCKING SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY: PIGS CAN FLY!
- AMAZING CAR THAT RUNS ON URINE!
- Plus, Ed Anger, Dear Dotti, Serena, The Page 5 Girl and More!


My bad. I apologise. How does one delete a post?
posted by aeschenkarnos at 4:33 AM on July 5, 2002

heh. hold on a sec, here. you mean to tell me that BatBoy is not dating both of the Bush girls? Lousy media.
posted by ColdChef at 4:45 AM on July 5, 2002

hahahahahahahahaha.
posted by donkeyschlong at 4:50 AM on July 5, 2002

aeschenkarnos: okay, now I gotta ask...(and I'm not being a smartass here, so please don't take this the wrong way):

What--exactly--was it about this article that made you think, "Holy Shit! There's no way that this is bullshit. I gotta tell MetaFilter!"

Is it that you didn't know that The Weekly World News was a joke? And how did you find this article?

It's funny stuff.
posted by ColdChef at 4:54 AM on July 5, 2002

nevermind. duh. says right there in the post where it's from. (of course, I don't think they got the joke either)
posted by ColdChef at 5:01 AM on July 5, 2002

BatBoy will save us all. He is the Light, the Truth, the Way.
posted by davidmsc at 5:04 AM on July 5, 2002

My favorite past story of Weekly World News was about the that had been circling the globe for some odd number of years. The crew and passengers were skeletons!
posted by Dick Paris at 5:56 AM on July 5, 2002

Doh! Something not working with my bloody link tag. That should read about the airliner that had, with the tag applied to airliner -- I had the same problem in preview but I thought maybe it would correct itself (after I had tried correcting it three times).
posted by Dick Paris at 5:59 AM on July 5, 2002

Would make for a cool alt-history sci-fi tale, though I am guessing that somebody's already been there and done that.
posted by grabbingsand at 6:33 AM on July 5, 2002

Trouble is, that The Daily Grail site now seems hopelessly compromised by posting a link to WWN. Why would I want to give any credence to any story on there now? They've shot themselves in the foot.
posted by dash_slot- at 6:42 AM on July 5, 2002

Alas, any possibility of definitively researching this has been dashed by the destruction of the bulk of Joel Remarsh's scientific papers during Sherman's fiery march to the sea. In any case, while Einstein personally may not have been a required precursor, some theory of mass/energy interrrelationship probably was to conceive of the thing in the first place, and radiation itself wasn't discovered until 1895. The history of atomic energy is that of most important scientific advances -- incremental breakthroughs by people all over the world, rather than one person cooking the whole thing up in his garage. In the end, it took a government project with thousands of the smartest people in the country, practically unlimited funding, and early mathematical computers to construct a working model of the bomb.
posted by dhartung at 7:09 AM on July 5, 2002

AMAZING CAR THAT RUNS ON URINE!

Hee hee.
posted by schlaager at 7:15 AM on July 5, 2002

AMAZING CAR THAT RUNS ON URINE!

Sigh. Is there anyone left who hasn't already tried this.
posted by luser at 7:20 AM on July 5, 2002

Sweet Jumping Jawbreakers! Check out the WWN message board. Society is doomed. If you want me, I'll be back in the trees flinging feces.
posted by ColdChef at 7:27 AM on July 5, 2002

Sigh. Is there anyone left who hasn't already tried this.

Hey! My car does run on urine. All you need is a high enough alcohol content.
posted by Neale at 7:44 AM on July 5, 2002

Batman's a scientist?
posted by Frasermoo at 8:13 AM on July 5, 2002

Now whether the Confederates could have refined the uranium to make the bomb out of is another question

And there's the other small problem that their bomb used dynamite, which wasn't even invented until a year after the war ended. Looks like that crack research staff at the Weekly World News may have made an error.

AMAZING CAR THAT RUNS ON URINE!

Ha. Everybody knows that urine is for the radiator, not the gas tank.
posted by ljromanoff at 8:14 AM on July 5, 2002

I like bacon.
posted by adampsyche at 8:19 AM on July 5, 2002

O/T, but then the whole thread is, so what the hell.

Ah, Red Dawn. Quality filmmaking.

I just found out that an Amazon review (titled Left Wing Wackos Won't Like This Movie which seems to ally critical good taste with left-wing values, which I have no problem with) begins with the sentence: "The right to bare arms is as American an ideal as the freedom of speech". So if your boss says you can't wear a singlet to work you can hit him with that.
posted by Grangousier at 8:26 AM on July 5, 2002

If Thaddeus McMullen was such a great scientist, on the order of Einstein according to the article, why does Google yield only a single link?

Oooh! Googlewhack!
posted by warhol at 8:37 AM on July 5, 2002

Okay, let's just say that the Rebs had acquired everything they needed except fissionable material to build their bomb. Acquiring fissionable material is so energy intensive it would have used more electricity than was being used in the entire world at the ti-- hey, wait a minute...

I really just wanted to post something with "reb" in it
posted by Dick Paris at 9:06 AM on July 5, 2002

My all-time favorite Weekly World News headlines and stories:

- SIAMESE TWINS TO FACE FIRING SQUAD!
One of the Paraguayan conjoined twins committed a murder and was sentenced to death. His brother was pissed off.

- COUPLE CHASED FROM YELLOWSTONE BY TALKING BEAR!
He uprooted trees, threw them at the couple and shouted in a guttural voice, "Get out of my park!"

Plus, of course, anything dealing with Batboy and the Space Alien shaking hands with Bill Clinton.
posted by chuq at 9:18 AM on July 5, 2002

This is straight out of the TV show "Wild Wild West", there were at least two episodes where Dr. Miguelito Loveless' devices made mushroom clouds. I think Joel Remarsh needs to watch a little less Nick at Night and lay off that historically accurate southern mash.
posted by m@ at 9:31 AM on July 5, 2002

I will give the Confederates this: Their military technology was such that they brought off the first successful submarine warfare mission in history.
posted by alumshubby at 10:17 AM on July 5, 2002

(through mega phone tube aboard steam powered submarine)

"paging Mr. West, Mr. West to the ward room please"
posted by clavdivs at 10:45 AM on July 5, 2002

I will give the Confederates this: Their military technology was such that they brought off the first successful submarine warfare mission in history.

David Bushnell's Turtle wasn't a complete failure. It did manage to scare off the British several times even if it never was able to drill through their hulls as it was intended.
posted by ljromanoff at 2:06 PM on July 5, 2002

"- COUPLE CHASED FROM YELLOWSTONE BY TALKING BEAR!
He uprooted trees, threw them at the couple and shouted in a guttural voice, "Get out of my park!""

...and then he stole their pick-a-nick baskets.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 2:13 PM on July 5, 2002

By the way, it's not called the “Civil War,” it's the “War of Northern Aggression.”
posted by jpburns at 9:10 AM on July 7, 2002