Tuesday, May 18th

“Hold My Beer”

Stories of daring feats and bad ideas, extravagant stunts, escalating ingenuity, and wild one-upmanship

Curated by Odd Salon Fellow Alexander Razo-Myers

Odd Salon SHORTS is our new online series of speed round history: Five, five-minute stories from the odd corners of history, science, art, and adventure. Grab a cocktail and join us online for bitesized stories and our interactive community chat.

FEATURING:

Eva Galperin ~ Hold My Beer, I've Got to Go Punch This Leopard to Death

The "father of modern taxidermy" was not a man who did things by half-measures. It's not enough to stuff and mount a leopard in the New York Museum of Natural History: he had to go on safari and personally wrestle the beast. Fortunately, this is one of the most meticulously-documented battles of all time. Are there first hand accounts? Yes. Are there maps and diagrams? Yes. Is there a photograph of the taxidermist with his dead leopard? Also yes. Raise a glass to a man who would absolutely tell you to hold his beer.

Betsy Golden Kellem ~ Tommy Fitzpatrick: Taking "Beer Flight" Too Literally

Planes land in non-airport locations more often than you’d think – just last week, for example, a plane in Phoenix ran out of gas and landed by a local road. For the most part, though, these are rare cases where pilots made the best of a bad situation. Back in 1950s New York City, though, there was one flyer who not only enjoyed unconventional landings - he very purposely drunk-landed a Cessna on a New York City street. Twice. 

Frederic Lightning Leist ~ Anything You Can Dome, I Can Dome Better

In 1086-87, Nizam al-Molk, vizier of the Seljuk Sultan Malek Shah, built a dome in the main mosque of Isfahan, capital of an empire that stretched from the Mediterranean to the borders of China. It was larger than any dome known at the time. In 1088, Nizam's rival, and later successor, Taj al-Molk, built another dome for the same mosque, far surpassing Nizam's dome in the intricacy of its design. Both domes still stand, preserving a rivalry of nearly a thousand years ago.

Priscilla Mollard ~ Mauricia de Tiers & the Dip of Death

At the turn of the twentieth century, just as the automobile was just beginning to displace horses and carts, one daring woman saw an opportunity for an extraordinary feat: to launch herself in an death defying leap of faith, looping-the-loop, upside-down, sixty feet in the air in a 1200 pound first generation automobile. 

Kurth Reynolds ~ Cold Fusion & Ten Inch Guns: Misadventures in Physics

Scientific experiments have come with various levels of apprehension throughout history: from Marie Curie's lack of awareness of the health effects of radium, to Oppenheimer's concerns about the effects of the atomic bomb. Meanwhile, amidst the fever of enthusiasm for cold fusion, a proposal was given to detonate palladium (aka "heavy water") in a light gas gun, with the possible result of a kiloton explosion on a Southern California university campus. What could possibly go wrong? 

Streaming with live community chat on YouTube via private invite

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