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From the Red Mercury wiki article:

Red mercury is a mythical substance of uncertain composition purportedly used in the creation of nuclear bombs, as well as a variety of unrelated weapons systems. Samples obtained from arrested would-be terrorists invariably consisted of nothing more than various red dyes or powders of little value, which some suspect was being sold as part of a campaign intended to flush out potential nuclear smugglers.

History

References to red mercury began to appear in major Russian and western media sources in the late 1980s. The articles were never specific as to what exactly red mercury was, but nevertheless claimed it was of great importance in nuclear bombs, or that it was used in the building of boosted fission weapons. Almost as soon as the stories appeared, people started attempting to buy it. At that point the exact nature of the substance started to change, and eventually turned into anything the buyer happened to be interested in. As New Scientist reported in 1996, an Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory report outlined that:

When red mercury first appeared on the international black market 15 years ago, the supposedly top secret nuclear material was ‘red’ because it came from Russia. When it resurfaced last year in the formerly communist states of Eastern Europe it had unaccountably acquired a red colour. But then, as a report from the US Department of Energy reveals, mysterious transformations are red mercury’s stock in trade.

The report, compiled by researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, shows that in the hands of hoaxers and conmen, red mercury can do almost anything the aspiring Third World demagogue wants it to. You want a short cut to making an atom bomb? You want the key to Soviet ballistic missile guidance systems? Or perhaps you want the Russian alternative to the anti-radar paint on the stealth bomber? What you need is red mercury.

Red mercury was offered for sale throughout Europe and the Middle East by Russian businessmen, who found many buyers who would pay almost anything for the substance even though they had no idea what it was.

A study for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1997 has perhaps the best summary of the topic:

The asking price for red mercury ranged from $100,000 to $300,000 per kilogram. Sometimes the material would be irradiated or shipped in containers with radioactive symbols, perhaps to convince potential buyers of its strategic value. But samples seized by police contained only mercury oxide, mercury(II) iodide, or mercury mixed with red dye – hardly materials of interest to weapons-makers.

Nuclear “sting” operations

One televised report indicated that the Soviet Union, which had a vested interest in nuclear non-proliferation, encouraged the KGB and GRU to arrange sting operations for the detection of those seeking to deal in nuclear materials. The Soviet intelligence services created a myth of the necessity of “red mercury” for the sorts of nuclear devices that terrorists and rogue governments might seek. This would provide a neat explanation for the sudden “appearance” of red mercury in the press, but it also seems difficult to understand why they would then publicly discount red mercury in what would appear to be a successful programme.

Following the arrest of several men in Great Britain in September 2004, on suspicion that they were trying to buy a kilo of red mercury for £300,000, the International Atomic Energy Agency made a statement dismissing claims that the substance is real. “Red mercury doesn’t exist,” said the spokesman. “The whole thing is a bunch of malarkey.”^[3] When the case came to trial at the Old Bailey in April 2006, it became apparent that News of the World‘s “fake sheikh” Mazher Mahmood had worked with the police to catch the three men, Dominic Martins, Roque Fernandes and Abdurahman Kanyare. They were tried for “trying to set up funding or property for terrorism” and “having an article (a highly dangerous mercury based substance) for terrorism”. According to the prosecutor, red mercury was believed to be a material which could cause a large explosion, possibly even a nuclear reaction, but whether or not red mercury actually existed was irrelevant to the prosecution.^[4] All three men were acquitted in July 2006.^[5]

Saudi Arabia

In April 2009 it was reported from Saudi Arabia that rumors that Singer sewing machines contained “red mercury” had caused the prices of such machines to massively increase in the Kingdom, with some paying up to SR 200,000 for a single machine which could previously have been bought for SR 200. Believers in the rumor claimed that the presence of red mercury in the sewing machines’ needles could be detected using a mobile telephone; if the line cut off when the telephone was placed near to the needle, this supposedly proved that the substance was present.

In Medina there was a busy trade in the sewing machines, with buyers seen using mobile phones to check the machines for red mercury content, while it was reported that others had resorted to theft, with two tailors’ shops in Dhulum broken into and their sewing machines stolen. At other locales, there were rumors that a Kuwait-based multinational had been buying up the Singer machines, while in Al-Jouf, the residents were led to believe that a local museum was buying up any such machines that it could find, and numerous women appeared at the museum offering to sell their Singer machines.

There was little agreement among believers in the story as to the exact nature or even color of the red mercury, while the supposed uses for it ranged from it being an essential component of nuclear power, to having the ability to summon jinn, extract gold, or locate buried treasure and perform other forms of magic. The official spokesman for the Riyadh police said that the rumors had been started by gangs attempting to swindle people out of their money, and denied the existence of red mercury in sewing machines.^[11]

From the Boong-Ga Boong-Ga wiki article:

Boong-Ga Boong-Ga (Japanese: 浣腸ゲームkanchō geemu), also known as Spank ‘em, is an arcade game developed by South Korean company Taff System. It is the first arcade game to simulate kancho, a children’s prank popular in Japan where the victim is poked with two fingers in the anal region whilst distracted.
Overview

The object of Boong-Ga Boong-Ga is to score points by spanking or performing kancho on a model of a human posterior embedded in the game’s cabinet. A plastic finger is attached to the machine for players to perform the latter.

The game features eight characters players can punish: “ex-girlfriend”, “ex-boyfriend”, “gangster”, “mother-in-law”, “Gold-digger”, “Prostitute”, “child molester” and “Con-artist”. During gameplay, the facial expression of the chosen character is displayed on a monitor.

The game also dispenses cards that rates players on their “sexual behavior”, and for players who perform exceptionally well the machine will dispense a small plastic trophy in the shape of a pile of feces.

From the Demon Core wiki article:

The Demon core was the nickname given to a 6.2-kilogram (14 lb) spherical subcritical mass of plutonium that accidentally went critical on two separate instances at the Los Alamos laboratory, in 1945 and 1946. Each incident resulted in the acute radiation poisoning and subsequent death of a scientist. After these incidents, the core was referred to as the Demon core.

First incident

On August 21, 1945, the plutonium core produced a burst of neutron radiation that irradiated Harry Daghlian, a physicist who made a mistake while working alone doing neutron reflection experiments on the core. The core was placed within a stack of neutron-reflective bricks, the addition of each brick moved the assembly closer to criticality. Daghlian, while attempting to stack another brick around the assembly, accidentally dropped one of the bricks onto the core, therefore making it critical. Despite moving the brick off the assembly quickly, Daghlian received a fatal dose of radiation. He died 25 days later.

Second incident

On May 21, 1946, physicist Louis Slotin and other scientists were in a Los Alamos laboratory conducting an experiment that involved creating a fission reaction by placing two half-spheres of beryllium (a neutron reflector) around the same plutonium core. Slotin’s hand holding a screwdriver separating the hemispheres slipped, the beryllium neutron reflector hemispheres closed, and the core went supercritical, releasing a very high dose of radiation. He quickly pulled the two halves apart, stopping the chain reaction and hence saving the lives of the seven other men in the laboratory. Louis Slotin himself, however, died 9 days later from acute radiation poisoning. The scientist assisting received sufficient radiation dosage to cause serious injuries and some permanent partial disability, while the others in the room suffered no permanent injuries from the accident.^[1]

The core in use

The Demon core was put to use for the ABLE detonation test of the Crossroads series on July 1, 1946, demonstrating that the criticality experiments of Daghlian and Slotin increased the efficiency of the weapon.^[2]

From the Liver-Eating Johnson wiki article:

John “Liver-Eating” Johnson (c.1824 – January 21, 1900) was a mountain man of the American West.

Rumors, legends, and campfire tales abound about Johnson. Perhaps chief among them is this one: In 1847, his American Indian wife was killed by Crow Indians, which prompted Johnson to embark on a 20-year vendetta against the tribe. The legend says that he would cut out and eat the liver of each man killed, but it’s quite possible that this only happened once and that he just pretended to eat the liver. In any case, he eventually became known as “Liver-Eating Johnson”. Since eating the liver of a victim is a symbolic way of completing a revenge slaying, or assuming some qualities of the vanquished, credence might be given to this activity. The story of how he got his name was written down by a diarist at the time. There were three Johnsons, nicknames were commonplace, and with Johnson’s show of eating the liver, he received his name.

Another story is when Johnson was ambushed by a group of Blackfoot warriors in the dead of winter on a foray to visit his Flathead kin, a trip that would have been over five hundred miles. The Blackfoot planned to sell him to the Crow, his mortal enemies, for a handsome price. He was stripped to the waist, tied with leather thongs and put in a teepee with an inexperienced guard outside. Johnson managed to chew through the straps, then knocked out his young guard with a punch to the face, took his knife and scalped him, then quickly cut off one of his legs. He made his escape into the woods, and survived on the Blackfoot’s leg until he reached the cabin of Del Que, his trapping partner, more dead than alive, a journey of about two hundred miles. However, this story was true, but the protagonist was Boone Helm, another raucous frontiersman.

Eventually, Johnson made peace with the Crow, who became “his brothers”, and his personal vendetta against them finally ended after twenty-five years and scores of Crow warriors had fallen. The West, however, was still a very violent and territorial place, particularly during the Plains Indian Wars of the mid 1800s. Many more Indians of different tribes, especially but not limited to, the Sioux and Blackfoot, would know the wrath of “Dapiek Absaroka” Crow killer and his fellow mountain men.

From the Juliane Köpcke wiki article:

Juliane Diller (born 1954 in Lima as Juliane Margaret Köpcke) was the sole survivor of 93 passengers and crew in the December 24, 1971 crash of LANSA Flight 508 (a LANSA Lockheed Electra OB-R-941 commercial airliner) in the Peruvian rainforest.

Juliane Köpcke was a high school senior studying in Lima, intending to become a zoologist, like her father. She and her mother, famed ornithologist Maria Köpcke, were traveling to meet with her father, biologist Hans-Wilhelm Köpcke^[1], who was working in Pucallpa.

The airplane was struck by lightning during a severe thunderstorm and exploded in mid air, disintegrating two miles up. Köpcke, who was 17 years old at the time, fell to earth still strapped into her seat. She survived the fall with only a broken collarbone, a gash to her right arm, and her right eye swollen shut.^[2]

Her first priority was to find her mother, who had been seated next to her on the plane, but her search was unsuccessful. She later found out her mother had died in the crash.

Köpcke was soon able to locate a small stream. She then waded through knee-high water downstream from her landing site, relying on the survival principle her father had taught her that tracking downstream should eventually lead to civilization.^[2] The stream also provided clean water and a natural path through the dense rainforest vegetation. After nine days, she found a canoe, and a nearby shelter, where she waited.^[2] Hours later, the lumbermen who resided in the shelter arrived and tended to her injuries and extensive bug infestations. The next morning they took her via a seven-hour canoe ride down the river to a lumber station in Tournavista, from where she was airlifted with the help of a local pilot to her father and a hospital in Pucallpa.

Köpcke returned to Germany, where she fully recovered from her injuries and continued her studies, eventually earning a PhD degree in zoology, like her parents, in 1987. Now known as Dr. Juliane Diller, she specializes in mammalogy, studying bats in Munich, Germany^[3] and working at the Munich Zoological Center, where she is a librarian.^[2]

From the Russian Jokes wiki article:

Chernobyl humour

• An old woman stands in the market with a “Chernobyl mushrooms for sale” sign. A man goes up to her and asks, “Hey, what are you doing? Who’s going to buy Chernobyl mushrooms?” And she tells him, “Why, lots of people. Some for their boss, others for their mother-in-law…”

• A grandson asks his grandfather: “Grandpa, is it true that in 1986 there was an accident at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant?” “Yes, there was.” – answered the Grandpa and patted the grandson’s head. “Grandpa, is it true that it had absolutely no consequences?” “Yes, absolutely” – answered the Grandpa and patted the grandson’s second head. (Often added “And they strolled off together, wagging their tails”).

• A Soviet newspaper reports: “Last night the N. Nuclear Powerstation fulfilled the Five Year Plan of heat energy generation in 4 microseconds.”

From the Phantom Practice wiki article:

Phantom Practice is the purported phenomenon in which a person’s abilities continue to improve, even without practicing at all. It is mostly associated with practicing a musical instrument. After habitual practicing, a person may believe that they have continued to experience improvement even after they stop practicing. Whether these individuals have actually improved or whether it is simply a subjective perception on their part has not been ascertained by researchers.

Kinesthetic Memory

The phenomenon of retaining a physical skill that has not been used in a long time is well understood. The physical skills of holding and playing an instrument are held in a reflex-level long-term memory called “kinesthetic memory”, “motor memory”, or “muscle memory.” Kinesthetic memory is very durable, and as such, a person may retain the ability to perform on an instrument that they previously played regularly, even if they have not practiced the instrument for weeks or months.

Rhythmic skill

During the interval of not practicing, a person purporting to have experienced “phantom practicing” may have developed other factors besides instrument practicing which contribute to the quality of musical performance, such as rhythmic skill. For example, a drummer who abandons music in their teens, and then studies dancing in their 30s may find, if they return to drumming in their 40s, that their sense of rhythm has improved. While this person might attribute their improved drumming skills to “phantom practice”, a more likely explanation is that they improved their rhythmic skills and “time feel” confidence in the intervening decades.

Knowledge of musical styles and idioms

Another possibility is that a person may improve their knowledge of musical styles and idioms during a period of non-practicing. For example, if a person learns all of the core jazz piano techniques in their teens, and then abandons the instrument, followed by a 20-year interval of listening to jazz and going to jazz concerts, this person may feel that they have benefitted from “phantom practicing” if they return to jazz piano playing in their 40s. Instead, it is more likely that the improvement in this person’s jazz playing is due to decades of experience of listening to authentic jazz playing “comping” and “blowing”.

From the Morgellons wiki article:

Morgellons (also called Morgellons disease or Morgellons syndrome), is a name given in 2002 by Mary Leitao^[1] to a proposed condition referred to by the Centers for Disease Control as Unexplained Dermopathy and characterized by a range of cutaneous (skin) symptoms including crawling, biting, and stinging sensations; finding fibers on or under the skin; and persistent skin lesions (e.g., rashes or sores). Current scientific consensus holds that Morgellons is not a new disorder and is instead a new and misleading name for known illnesses. Most doctors,^[2] including dermatologists^[3] and psychiatrists,^[4] regard Morgellons as a manifestation of known medical conditions, including delusional parasitosis,^[5][6][7] although some health professionals believe that Morgellons disease is a specific condition likely to be confirmed by future research.^[8]

The main symptom of Morgellons is “a fixed belief that fibers that are embedded or extruding from the skin”^[4] The Morgellons Research Foundation says there may be additional symptoms like

• formication, the sensation of insects “crawling, stinging or biting on or under the skin”
• rashes or sores that persist
• pain, resembling fibromyalgia
• disabling fatigue
• cognitive problems^[36]

Most dermatologists, psychiatrists, and other medical professionals view Morgellons as a new name for a well established condition, delusional parasitosis,^[40] also known as “delusions of parasitosis” (DP or DOP) and Ekbom’s Syndrome: Morgellons is “a pattern of dermatologic symptoms very similar, if not identical, to those of delusions of parasitosis,”^[40] and “the vast majority”^[26] (elsewhere, 95%)^[41] of Morgellons patients are diagnosed with delusional parasitosis or another psychosomatic illness. This explanation is “unpopular among individuals identifying themselves as having Morgellons disease.”^[42]

In delusional parasitosis, patients hold a delusional belief that they are infested with parasites. They may experience formication, the sensation that insects are crawling under the skin. Individuals suffering from this condition may develop elaborate rituals of inspection and cleansing to locate and remove parasites and fibers, resulting in a form of self-mutilation; they injure themselves in attempts to be rid of the “parasites” by picking at the skin, causing lesions, and then pick at the lesions, preventing them from healing.^[4] Patients with delusional parasitosis often present at the doctor’s office with what MDs term the “matchbox sign“^[26][43] — a medical sign characterized by the patient making collections of fibers and other foreign objects supposedly retrieved from the skin^[4] — and, because of “unshakeable delusional ideation”, strongly reject diagnoses that do not involve parasites.^[26][44] A significant minority of DP cases occur in groups of two, three, or more individuals in close proximity, even families, known by the French terms folie à deux, folie à trois, and folie à famille.^[26] Delusional parasitosis, with symptoms that have “extraordinary similarities” to Morgellons, has been described in the medical literature for over 75 years.^[45] Dr. Noah Craft, a dermatologist at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Torrance, CA, has seen a handful of Morgellons patients and biopsied their skin lesions, but found only normal skin and inflammation, as one would find in a bump that has been picked at.^[14]

From the Oklo wiki article:

Oklo is a region near the town of Franceville, in the Haut-Ogooué province of the Central African state of Gabon. The discovery in September 1972 of several natural nuclear fission reactors in the uranium mines situated there has fired the imagination and aroused the curiosity of scientists.

There is strong geochemical evidence that the Oklo uranium deposit behaved as a natural nuclear fission reactor in Precambrian times: Some of the mined uranium was found to have a lower concentration of U235 than expected, as if it had already been in a reactor. Geologists found that it had been in a reactor before — two billion years ago. At that time the natural uranium had a concentration of about 3% U235, and could have gone critical with natural water as neutron moderator.

From the Macrolane wiki article:

Macrolane is a breast and body-contour filler marketed by Q-Med in the UK since early 2008.^[1] It has received attention as a less invasive alternative to surgical breast enlargement, offering an increase of one cup size through injections that only take between 30 and 90 minutes – heralding the term “30 minute boob job”.^[2]

The treatment involves injecting stabilised hyaluronic acid into the breast, buttock or other areas, and then moulding to the desired shape.^[3] The benefits are that it requires only a local anaesthetic and will leave no scarring, although bruising, swelling and discomfort for a few days are expected. The effect however only lasts for 12 months, after which further injections are required. The procedure has also drawn criticism as its long term effects are relatively unknown. The only medical trial was supported by the manufacturers, involving 1000 patients in Japan, and anybody taking the procedure will be entered into a European-wide research trial.^[3]

Initially, treatment in the UK was reasonably expensive, costing about £3000 for the initial injections, followed by £1400 for repeat injections each year in order to maintain the effect.^[3] The cost of initial injections has dropped as the treatment grows in popularity.^{[citation needed]}