This series will be a rather random array of odd stuff that caught my attention. Again, I vouch for the authenticity of nothing, so caveate emptor.

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Josef Schulz was just an ordinary German soldier drafted in the Wehrmacht during WWII and stationed in the Balkans. One day he was ordered to serve on a firing squad to shoot 16 Ukrainian civilians. He considered this order immoral. He took off his helmet and joined the poor men about to be killed.

Josef was shot along with the others for disobeying an order.

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Edward Everett Hale was a prodigy who was admitted to Harvard at age 13 and became a minister and historian in life. In 1903, he became the minister to the U.S. Senate. One day he was asked if he ever prayed for the Senators. He responded as follows:

“I look at the Senators and I pray for the country.”

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Donald Trump, as we know, is a pathological narcissist, perhaps patterning himself after Josef Stalin. Everyone knew it was easy to get on Uncle Joe’s bad side which was a quick way to the Gulag or to one’s heavenly reward (I pity us if the Donald is reelected).

One story about Joe involves a talk he have at a mill factory. When he finished, the assembled crowd clapped for 5 minutes, then 10. At the 12 minute mark, the foreman of the mill stopped which the others took as their cue that they were also permitted to stop.

Bad move! The foreman was arrested and sent to a gulag for not being enthusiastic enough.

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Charles King is an ex-President of Liberia. He holds a dubious record for election fraud. In the 1927 election, he received 234,000 votes. Nothing shocking there except …

there were only 15,000 registered voters in the country.

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When Albert Einstein met Charlie Chaplin in 1931, they allegedly had this historic exchange.

Einstein to Chaplin: “I admire you because you do not say a word yet the world undertands you.”

Chaplin back to Albert: “And I you since the world so admires you though no one understands a thing you say.”

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A really drunk guy approached author Truman Capote in a Key West bar once. The man was irate since his wife had asked Truman for his autograph. Upon confronting the author, the drunk pulled out his manhood and barked, “You like to autograph things, autograph this.”

Capote’s response was priceless. “I doubt there is room there for my autograph but perhaps I can initial it.”

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Over a century ago, many females were diagnosed by male doctors as having an affliction known as ‘female hysteria.’ This was a condition associated with such symptoms as anxiety, depression, mood swings, and the like. One treatment for this affliction involved stimulating the patient’s private parts (clitoris) until what was termed a ‘pelvic paroxysm’ had been achieved. We know this outcome as an orgasm. Sometimes special intruments were employed (precursors to vibrators) or manual stimulation (no comment).

It never occured to anyone that the female patient simply was horny since women were not supposed to have such a weakness.

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Astronaut and U.S. Senator John Glenn actually flew missions in Korea with baseball great Ted Williams, the last Major League player to hit over .400 in a season. The so-called ‘splendid splinter’ (Williams was very skinny in his youth) lost some 4 or 5 seasons while serving as a fighter pilot in WWII and Korea. Glenn once told the story of Ted’s plane being hit and making it back with flames coming out of his engine, no radio, and disabled landing gear. He skidded down the run way and jumped from his plane before it could explode. Glenn oft said that he thought more of Williams as a pilot than a ballplayer, and he considered Ted one hell of a ballplayer.

And Ted’s impression of John Glenn. “Oh… could he fly a plane … absolutely fearless. The best I ever saw. It was an honor to fly with him.”

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There you have it … all the nonsense fit to print on the 1st of July, 2023.