Fastest growing nasal hair

The fastest growing human nasal hair belonged to Venezuelan Paco Nibrez. His hair grew at a rate of 1cm every 17hours, for a period of 5 weeks in 1974. Nibrez could find no medical explanation for his condition, and eventually came to blame it upon a curse, which he believed had been placed on him by a witchdoctor for running over a farmer’s prize goat.

Paco Nibrez, pictured after the nose hair had been trimmed, and had returned to a normal rate of growth. Nibrez commented, "They cannot tell me why it happened, or why it has stopped. I do not need their answers. I know why it was, and if I could bring that goat back, I would. I am just grateful that my prayers have been answered, and that my nostrils are no longer home to evil." Photo provided by ruurmo.

©2010 James Mathurin

The shortest ever guitar solo

The world’s shortest guitar solo is the Third track of Guitarist Dale Alpine’s 1974 Prog-Rock album Look at the Mess You’ve Made on the Carpet. The track, Ta-Da!, lasts 3 seconds, and consists of one note, played twice. Alpine’s fans had assumed that Ta-Da! was simply him tuning up when he performed it live on his Emaciated Puppet tour the previous year.

Dale Alpine, pictured at a 2009 gig, where he performed 17 encores of Ta-Da! This added 19 minutes to the show, 14 of which were taken up by standing ovations. Picture by Jeff Hardcastle.

©2010 James Mathurin

The greatest number of assault charges relating to literary criticism

The 35 members of the 'literary criticism group' Punching Dishonest Writers (PDW) were banned from meeting, 8 months after they were first established, and once 27 authors had been physically assaulted at their home addresses by the group. The group's leader Tennison Pentwick explained at a court hearing,

"The way we see it, you wouldn't lie to someone's face, 'cause if you lied to me and  I found out, obviously I'd smash your face in. Problem is, when you're writing a book, you don't expect someone to punch you, 'cause it's all just words, so you can put as many lies in as you want. So what, we do, we read books each, work out if they look like they're lying, and we find out where they live, go round and punch them."

 Tennison Pentwick attempts to leave court during his trial, having tripped up his barrister, stolen his wig, and run out of the courtroom. He was soon apprehended, and a charge of contempt was added to those he was already facing. Photo taken by Steve Punter

 Pentwick accepted that the bulk of the assaults were the result of a 'balls up' in the group's initial approach, and they had then come to realise that they should only apply their 'criticism' to authors whose writing were non-fiction.

 ©2010 James Mathurin

Prehistoric citrus art

An archaeological expedition in Southern Greece was surprised to find evidence of a prehistoric tribe who used citrus fruit to record images. It is believed that this was intended as a means of leaving secret messages to shy gods, as, much as children often use lemon juice to write 'disappearing ink' messages, these cave paintings only became visible when exposed to a heat source. This tribe was believed to worship a deity known as Schmoonktis, which was easily startled, and would answer any prayers that were left in a suitably peaceful way. According to depictions on the cave walls, Schmoonktis appeared as some kind of animal, similar to a squirrel, or perhaps a stoat.

Images of the paintings, which only became visible when one of their discoverers set up his portable stove to make some grilled Tuna sandwiches in the cave. The ambient heat was sufficient to cause a chemical reaction, which made the paintings visible again. Photograph provided by  Klearchos Kapoutsis.

 ©2010 James Mathurin

The inventions of Dimitri Dutruv Pt. 2

Continuing the collection of inventions developed by Dimitri Dutruv, we now move onto the APG (Automatic Platitude Generator). In 2003, Dutruv was charged with developing a machine for automatically writing messages in greeting cards. Creating a series of stamps on rotating gears, with words like "best", "mum", "sweetest", "forever", "teacher", "pearly-lipped", "mechanic", "sorry", "niece", "this year", "tender", which could be printed into any card. It also featured a pulping chamber where cards, paper and leaflets could be fed in and mashed up to make new colours.

Although Dutruv believed that it could have been developed into a perfectly effective working model, his prototype cards were not to the satisfaction of the investor, due to what Dutruv described as "a currently unmanageable platitude randomisation factorisation."

One of the prototype cards produced by the APG. Unfortunately, it was supposed to be a 'commiseration card for the death of a grandparent', but appeared with this design, and the message, "Sweet tender Yom Kippurs, Auntie!" Image supplied by Boby Dimitrov.

©2010 James Mathurin

The Great Sydney Nick-name war

In Australia, in 1920, Sean McGrady, a renowned knife-fighter was so in demand by rival gangs that their assurances of money, power and women became so evenly matched that the only way of settling it was for each gang to use the local newspaper under their control to run a competition asking readers to send in nicknames that McGrady could have.

In a move that stunned both the readership, and the gangs in question, McGrady  was, according to friends, so impressed by the entries on either side that he decided to start his own gang, instead of joining the others, so that he could hand out the nicknames to members of his new gang. This instigated a period of violent conflict between the gangs, which came to be known as the Great Sydney Nick-name war.

McGrady's new gang came to include members like Eyebrows McGhee, the Doyle brothers, Patches and Six-Toes, Seamus The Hat, Mike "Bollock-Punching" Thomas, Trousers McGoldrick, Patrick Three-Hats, Sausages Hoolihan, 3-Card Monty O'Hanlon, Devilled Eggs O'Connor, and his sister Devilled Ham, Toe Caps Pritchard, Meat Hook O'Shaughnessy, Pickles McGuinness, Five-Beers Burlington and Terrence 'Stinky' Calhoon.

 McGrady (fourth from the right, seated on the car), pictured in 1921, with several of his lieutenants. Photo from the SMA archive.

©2010 James Mathurin

Laboratory taken over by Capuchins

In September of 2004, a group of scientists working in Honduras were evicted from their research station in the forest outside of Tegucigalpa by a troop of Capuchin monkeys. Kristophe Frinks, a laboratory assistant who lost a finger in the attack, commented in an interview with the Telegraph Food magazine a year later,

 "Capuchins are actually very intelligent. They use tools and even show signs of self-awareness. In retrospect, we needed to work with more stupid monkeys."

Henley, one of the beta males of the troop, is pictured here guarding the complex from the assembled press. Shortly after this photograph was taken, phtotgraphers were driven back by a shower of large seeds, broken laboratory equipment and monkey faeces. From the photographic archive of  kansasphoto.

©2010 James Mathurin