A monkey, food coloring, and some Nair caused a UFO panic in 1953 onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com A monkey, food coloring, and some Nair caused a UFO panic in 1953

In 1953, people began calling into the police station in Atlanta, Georgia to report UFO sightings. All it took to get everyone seeing flying saucers was three guys, a dead monkey, and a few basic household ingredients.

So it was a balmy night in July in 1953 and three guys (two barbers and a butcher) found themselves in possession of a dead rhesus monkey. What were they to do? They could have carefully skinned and stuffed it. They could have held a small ceremony and buried it. They could even have roasted it. Instead, they decided to make the whole town of Atlanta lose its mind.

A trip to a drugstore got them green food coloring and hair remover. Presumably the barbers went to work with the hair remover while the butcher removed the monkey's tail. After a dip in the green food coloring, they took the corpse on a road trip. At a certain deserted section of the highway, they used a torch to burn some scorch marks into the pavement, and set the mutilated monkey down near the marks. When a highway patrol car came along, they said that they had plowed through a gang of creatures, hit one with their car, and watched the rest pile into a flying saucer that rose up into the sky.

Then all hell broke loose. The patrolman filed a report that included the claims the trio had made. The press called. The Air Force called. Hundreds of citizens called, saying they'd seen colored objects in the sky. A local veterinarian said the corpse looked "out of this world" and the calls increased. Within hours, Atlanta was being invaded by aliens.

In another couple of hours, the panic died down. A local anatomy professor was pressed into service and immediately identified the corpse as a hairless monkey. The word got out, and the three, perhaps a little flustered by the success of the prank, admitted to what they'd done. It seems that "making people believe in UFOs" isn't a crime (which is a shame, because what a trial that would be), and so one of the barbers was fined $40 for obstructing a highway.

[Via Fox News, Creative Loafing Atlanta.]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com A monkey, food coloring, and some Nair caused a UFO panic in 1953

When people lived in abandoned streetcars on San Francisco's beach onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com When people lived in abandoned streetcars on San Francisco's beach

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The idea of sustainable living off the grid isn't new. In fact, people in San Francisco were doing it in the late 19th century, when they started moving into abandoned street cars along Ocean Beach. They modified the cars, created sidewalks, and eventually the area was dubbed "Carville."

Writing in The Bold Italic, Tom Kubik takes us back to an era when San Francisco's Ocean Beach seafront area — known today as the Outer Sunset — was a bunch of empty sand dunes. As the city modernized, the Market Street railway abandoned all its old, horse-drawn streetcars in this windy, foggy wasteland. But to some impoverished city residents, these cars became home. They would push the cars together, pile them on top of each other, and even build rooms around them.

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Eventually, there was a kind of promenade through Carville, complete with a boardwalk and almost 50 of the modified streetcar homes. It became, according to Kubik, a rather hip part of town.

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It helped that eccentric millionaire (and mayor) Adolph Sutro was intent on developing the area, building a gorgeous public bathhouse and garden on Ocean Beach next to his mansion overlooking the water. Sutro also helped make the area more accessible by building a streetcar line that ran from downtown, along Clement Street, straight to the beach.

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According to Kubik:

Now, the only known remains of Carville-by-the-Sea are near 47th Avenue and the Great Highway. The unsuspecting, wood-sided, quaint house is made of three cars. Two cable cars adjoined make the second floor, while one equine car is the guest bedroom.

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San Francisco is famous for creating homes and whole communities out of reused buildings. After the 1906 earthquake, the city provided hundreds of homeless families with temporary "earthquake shacks," intended to give shelter for a few years while people got back on their feet. But in true San Fran style, residents didn't want to give up their beloved shacks, and many had them moved to different regions of the city so they could keep living in them. A few of those shacks are still around today.

One could trace this civic spirit all the way back to the 1849 Gold Rush years, when most of the city was made up of tents and corrugated iron shacks. Sure, the entire tent city burned down three or four times, but it was easy to rebuild when all you needed was some canvas and rope.

Read more about the Carville community on the Bold Italic; photos by Tom Kubik

Historical images from San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com When people lived in abandoned streetcars on San Francisco's beach