The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician "In June 2000, the philosopher Dean Zimmerman moved from the University of Notre Dame to Syracuse University with his wife and three kids, only to see their new house catch fire the day they moved in." Months later, he received the second hopeful fortune cookie since the fire, which told him "A way out of a financial mess is discovered as if by magic!"; the next day, magic arrived in a letter offering Zimmerman a generous sum of money, which he later learned was $12,000, to review a sixty-page work of metaphysics titled "Coming to Understanding."
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posted by MCMikeNamara
on Feb 12, 2012 -
11 comments
In 1969,
Sesame Street put together an unaired pilot to test in front of children. The pilot contained the appearance of an actor playing Gordon different from the
other three actors who subsequently played that character. Sesame Workshop has no idea who this actor was and has exhausted all leads.
Do you know who the mystery Gordon is?
posted by mightygodking
on Nov 10, 2011 -
91 comments
[Arthur Penn's
Night Moves]
does belong to a traditional, indeed obsolescent genre, but the distance it keeps from it (not an ironic or critical distance, just a distance) is such that genre-related expectations become irrelevant. Most of the time, the story line seems to meander aimlessly, taking in extraneous material, doubling back, going round in circles (the aimless is deceptive, a smoke screen obfuscating the complex, rigorous organization of an exceptionally well-structured script). The "mystery" aspect of the plot is dealt with in the most peculiar, topsy-turvy manner, withholding not the solution of the problem but the problem itself until the very end, when, in a dazzling visual tour de force, both are conjured up almost simultaneously. - Jean Pierre Coursodon
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posted by Trurl
on Oct 1, 2011 -
19 comments
It started with a little girl who had polio, who later became a seamstress and made clothing and little things, like
little pin cushion elephants. They were popular, not as sewing accessories, but as children's toys. The elephants would be joined by a menagerie of stuffed animals,
including tigers and pigs. Some
animals were set on iron wheels,
including bears. But it wasn't until
US political cartoon featuring President Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot a small black bear in November 1902 that "teddy" bears became popular, first in 1902 in the United States,
made and sold by Jewish Russian immigrants, Rose and Morris Michtom (who would ride the success of Teddy's Bear to form the
Ideal Toy Company). Back in Germany, Margarete Steiff's array of toy animals expanded to include a jointed, plush bear, 55 cm tall:
55 PB (German Wikipedia page). Margarete's nephew, who came up with the design, took some samples to a German toy fair in the Spring of 1903, where there was no interest in the bears until a representative from a
New York toy company saw the mobile bears and ordered 3,000. A new factory had to be built, and bears were made, most likely shipped across the ocean, but
their fate is a mystery.
posted by filthy light thief
on Jul 28, 2011 -
25 comments
After over seven years, Stephen R. Donaldson, has stopped taking questions for his monumental and amazing
Gradual Interview.
"After May 21, 2011, the Gradual Interview will no longer accept new questions or messages. I will continue to work my way through the questions which have already been accepted, but I can't do more. I'm too far behind on too many things, and the strain is affecting my concentration. Discontinuing the Gradual Interview is one of several things that I'm doing to simplify my life."
The Gradual Interview is a fully-searchable question and answer session with his readers that currently contains over 2600 exchanges on topics including minutiae about his novels, his writing process, and many other interesting subjects.
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posted by hippybear
on May 29, 2011 -
12 comments
The Lazarus File. "In 1986, a young nurse named Sherri Rasmussen was murdered in Los Angeles. Police pinned down no suspects, and the case gradually went cold. It took 23 years—and revolutionary breakthroughs in forensic science—before LAPD detectives could finally assemble the pieces of the puzzle. When they did, they found themselves facing one of the unlikeliest murder suspects in the city’s history." [more inside]
posted by zarq
on May 14, 2011 -
60 comments
Where is the Puck? The Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup last season for the first time in 50 years. But what happened to the puck that was used to score what some are calling the "most famous goal in Chicago sports history?"
posted by zarq
on Apr 27, 2011 -
133 comments
WANTED: Known as 'La Bête' but kills under three aliases. Reddish brown with dark ridged stripe down the back. Resembles wolf/hyena but big as a donkey. Long gaping jaw, 6 claws, pointy upright ears and supple furry tail - mobile like a cat's and can knock you over. Cry: more like horse neighing than wolf howling. Last seen by people mostly now dead.
Wolf, werewolf, hyena, baboon or mesonychid: In many respects the beast of Gévaudan was like other creatures in the annals of cryptozoology - but for one: historical records indicate that, over a 4 year span, it (or 'they')
killed around 100 people - eating most of them.
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posted by rongorongo
on Apr 5, 2011 -
42 comments
In 1933,
a mysterious benefactor posted an ad in the local Canton, Ohio paper, offering some Christmas funds to people who might otherwise shy away from asking for aid, even in those tough times. That Anonymous Giver went by the pseudonym "Mr. B. Virdot," and ended up giving some money to 150 families and people in town who wrote in with their personal stories. The unknown person's identity was never revealed, and
his true identity was not even known to his grandson, until the mysterious benefactor's daughter gave her son, Ted Gup, a battered suitcase full of letters and checks signed by "Mr. B. Virdot". The mysterious man was Samuel J. Stone, a Jewish man whose family had fled Romania when he was young. Stone had done well in the United States, and owned a small chain of clothing stores in 1933. The story of the mysterious gifts
hasn't faded from Canton, and on November 5 of this year,
Stone's grandson, Gup, gave a public talk to the community and decedents of the original recipients of Virdot's gifts. And now,
Canton residents are bringing back the spirit of Virdot.
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posted by filthy light thief
on Dec 21, 2010 -
16 comments
Did you know that there's an art museum on the moon? A tiny, tiny one. The
Moon Museum features works by
Forrest "Frosty" Myers (the instigator),
Robert Rauschenberg,
Claes Oldenburg,
Andy Warhol,
David Novros, and
John Chamberlain, inscribed on a little chip of silicon and
surreptitiously transported to the moon's surface on the Apollo 12 mission. But of course there's a mystery, in this big of a secret:
who is John F., the engineer at least partially responsible for smuggling the chip onboard the lunar lander?
Related:
other stuff people have left on the Moon (!)
posted by fiercecupcake
on Nov 22, 2010 -
19 comments
History and mystery wonderfully blended. Although doubtless well-known to UK Mefites, I was only recently directed to this marvelous and engaging TV series featuring Michael Kitchen as Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle. It's a refreshing change from American fare, entirely adult, with crisp dialogue and meticulous attention to detail and historic accuracy. Speaking as a Yank weary of plasticity, it's also wonderful to see actors with real faces. The series can be seen on Youtube in pieces that can be viewed fairly seamlessly: Series One:
The German Woman,
The White Feather,
Lesson in Murder,
Eagle Day. Series Two:
Fifty Ships,
Among the Few,
War Games,
The Funk Hole. Series Three:
The French Drop,
Enemy Fire,
They Fought in the Fields,
War of Nerves. Series Four:
Invasion,
Bad Blood. Series Five:
Bleak Midwinter,
Casualties of War. Series Six:
Plan of Attack,
Broken Souls,
All Clear.
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posted by kinnakeet
on Sep 19, 2010 -
25 comments
The 12th-century English chronicler
Ralph of Coggeshall relates a
strange story: two lost and distressed children appeared in a local village, speaking a language no-one could understand, and, most strikingly, with strangely green-coloured skin.
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posted by Catseye
on May 16, 2010 -
41 comments
After the fiasco of their premier episode - a lavish live production of Raymond Chandler's
The Long Goodbye during which a corpse unwittingly got up and walked off stage on camera - CBS's
Climax! Mystery Theater was looking to adapt something less high-profile. Say, the debut spy thriller by a struggling British journalist willing to let the rights go for $1000. The result: 1954's "
Casino Royale",
starring Barry Nelson as Jimmy "Card Sense" Bond of American intelligence, Michael Pate as his British counterpart Clarence Leiter, and
Peter Lorre as the first-ever Bond villain. Now on
Youtube 2 3 4 5 6
posted by ormondsacker
on Apr 20, 2010 -
19 comments
Read all about it! Discover all the news! Read all about it! Track down all the clues!
With interesting people there's a mystery to be solved! An adventure is unfolding, so why not get involved? Come on and
READ ALL ABOUT IT.
Young Chris is left an old coach house by his missing uncle. As he and his two friends fuddle with the lock, a strange figure watches. The kids do not yet know the building is the entrance to a mystery that spans time and space! Aided by Otto the
IBM Selectric robot typewriter and Theta the
spooky as hell talking viewscreen, they will find that the concerns of an alien tyrant reach into the government of their own town. (24 of 40 15-minute episodes, including the entire first season, of this early-80s TV Ontario-produced "educational" show
are on YouTube.)
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posted by JHarris
on Apr 5, 2009 -
20 comments
The Musical Mystery of Connie Converse "To survive at all, I expect I must drift back down through the other half of the twentieth twentieth, which I already know pretty well, the hundredth hundredth, which I have only read and heard about. I might survive there quite a few years - who knows?"
This was the cryptic note Connie Converse left her family in 1974, and no one heard from her again. She had spent the
1950's in New York City, trying to promote
her music- haunting, melancholy folk tunes, but never made a go of it. Her songs very nearly disappeared into the ether, but thanks to
Lau derrete Records, her first album is now available to the public, fifty years after the songs were recorded. (via
Spinning On Air)
posted by kimdog
on Mar 15, 2009 -
13 comments
Mongo the Magnificent. "Out of nowhere, believing that it is good for the soul to have one insane idea a day, whether you need it or not, the notion of a dwarf private detective came to me [...] I considered such a character bizarre and absurd, unworkable and unpublishable, and thus a waste of time to spend and length of time trying to develop it. I kept searching, but the damn dwarf just wouldn't go away. [...] It was to be a satire. Halfway through, I discovered a key to the man's character was a simple quest to be taken seriously, for dignity. That touched me, and I started over again, this time doing it "straight" (or as straight as I'm able). I gave
Mongo dignity, and in return he gave me a career. The diverse background was, I thought, necessary in order to properly equip him in a "world of giants"."
George C.
Chesbro, RIP
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posted by lupus_yonderboy
on Nov 21, 2008 -
18 comments
The realistic style is easy to abuse: from haste, from lack of awareness, from inability to bridge the chasm that lies between what a writer would like to be able to say and what he actually knows how to say. It is easy to fake; brutality is not strength, flipness is not wit, edge-of-the-chair writing can be as boring as flat writing; dalliance with promiscuous blondes can be very dull stuff when described by goaty young men with no other purpose in mind than to describe dalliance with promiscuous blondes. There has been so much of this sort of thing that if a character in a detective story says, "Yeah," the author is automatically a Hammett imitator.
Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder" (1950)
posted by Navelgazer
on Sep 24, 2008 -
8 comments
