blogawiki

From the Law Enforcement Jargon wiki article:

Law enforcement jargon refers to a large body of acronyms, abbreviations, codes and slang used by law enforcement personnel to provide quick concise descriptions of people, places, property and situations, in both spoken and written communication. These vary between countries and to a lesser extent regionally.

• WOOD SHAMPOO: Using less than lethal force to gain voluntary compliance

From the Out-of-place artifact wiki article:

An out-of-place artifact (OOPArt) is a term coined by American zoologist and cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson for an object of historical, archaeological or paleontological interest found in a very unusual or seemingly impossible context. ^[1][2]

The term “out-of-place artifact” is rarely used by mainstream historians or scientists; rather, its use is largely confined to cryptozoologists, proponents of ancient astronaut theories, and paranormal enthusiasts. The term is used to describe a wide variety of objects, from anomalies studied by mainstream science to pseudoarchaeology that is far outside the mainstream to objects that have been shown to be hoaxes or to have mundane explanations.

Critics argue that most purported OOPArts which are not hoaxes are the result of mistaken interpretation, wishful thinking, or a mistaken belief that a particular culture couldn’t have created an artifact or technology due to a lack of knowledge or materials.

Supporters^[3] regard OOParts as evidence that mainstream science is overlooking huge areas of knowledge, either willfully or through ignorance.

Alleged OOP Artifacts

Objects alleged to come from recognized cultures, recovered in unexpected places

• The Maine penny, found in Blue Hill, Maine. An 11th century Norse coin found in an American Indian shell midden. Over 20,000 objects were found over a 15-year period at the Goddard site in Blue Hill. The sole non-Native artifact was the coin.^[4]

From the Baghdad Battery wiki article:

The Baghdad Battery, sometimes referred to as the Parthian Battery, is the common name for a number of artifacts created in Mesopotamia, possibly during the Parthian or Sassanid period (the early centuries AD). These jars were probably discovered in 1936 in the village of Khuyut Rabbou’a, near Baghdad, Iraq. These artifacts came to wider attention in 1938 when Wilhelm König, the German director of the National Museum of Iraq, found the objects in the museum’s collections. In 1940, König published a paper speculating that they may have been galvanic cells, perhaps used for electroplating gold onto silver objects.^[2] This interpretation continues to be considered as at least a hypothetical possibility. If correct, the artifacts would predate Alessandro Volta’s 1800 invention of the electrochemical cell by more than a millennium.

Description and dating

The artifacts consist of terracotta jars approximately 130 mm (5 in) tall (with a one and a half inch mouth) containing a copper cylinder made of a rolled-up copper sheet, which houses a single iron rod. At the top, the iron rod is isolated from the copper by bitumen plugs or stoppers, and both rod and cylinder fit snugly inside the opening of the jar, which bulges outward towards the middle. The copper cylinder is not watertight, so when the jar was filled with a liquid containing citric acid^{[citation needed]}, this would surround the iron rod as well. The artifact had been exposed to the weather and had suffered corrosion, although mild given the presence of an electrochemical couple. This has led some scholars^[who?] to believe lemon juice, grape juice, or vinegar was used^{[citation needed]} as an acidic electrolyte solution to generate an electric current from the difference between the electrochemical potentials of the copper and iron electrodes.

Speculations on function

Electrical

Copper and iron form an electrochemical couple, so that in the presence of any electrolyte, an electric potential (voltage) will be produced. König had observed a number of very fine silver objects from ancient Iraq which were plated with very thin layers of gold, and speculated that they were electroplated using batteries with these being the cells. After the Second World War, Willard Gray demonstrated current production by a reconstruction of the inferred battery design when filled with grape juice. W. Jansen experimented with benzoquinone (some beetles produce quinones) and vinegar in a cell and got satisfactory performance.

From the Rex 84 wiki article:

Rex 84, short for Readiness Exercise 1984, is a plan by the United States federal government to test their ability to detain large numbers of refugees or American citizens in case of civil unrest or national emergency.

According to scholar Diana Reynolds:

The Rex-84 Alpha Explan (Readiness Exercise 1984, Exercise Plan; otherwise known as a continuity of government plan), indicates that FEMA in association with 34 other federal civil departments and agencies, along with other NATO nations, conducted a civil readiness exercise during April 5-13, 1984.  In the combined exercise, Rex-84 Bravo, FEMA and DOD led the other federal agencies and departments, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Secret Service, the Treasury, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Veterans Administration through a gaming exercise to test military assistance in civil defense.The exercise anticipated civil disturbances, major demonstrations and strikes that would affect continuity of government and/or resource mobilization. To fight subversive activities, there was authorization for the military to implement government ordered movements of civilian populations at state and regional levels, the arrest of certain unidentified segments of the population, and the imposition of martial law. ^[1]

Existence of a master military contingency plan, “Garden Plot” and a similar earlier exercise, “Lantern Spike” were originally revealed by journalist Ron Ridenhour, who summarized his findings in “Garden Plot and the New Action Army.”^[2]

The basic facts about Rex 84 and other contingency planning readiness exercises—and the potential threat they pose to civil liberties if fully implemented in a real operation—are taken seriously by scholars and civil libertarians.^[5]

Exercises similar to Rex 84 happen regularly.^[6] Plans for roundups of large numbers of persons in the United States in times of crisis are constructed during periods of increased political repression such as the Palmer Raids and the McCarthy Era.

For example, from 1967 to 1971 the FBI kept a list of over 100,000 persons to be rounded up as subversive, dubbed the “ADEX” list.^[7] This list contained many labor leaders, scholars, and public figures of the time.

From the Dock Ellis wiki article:

Dock Phillip Ellis, Jr. (March 11, 1945 – December 19, 2008) was a Major League Baseball player who pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates, among other teams. His best season was 1971, when he won 19 games for the World Series champion Pirates and was the starting pitcher for the National League in the All-Star Game. However, he is perhaps best remembered for the claim that he threw a no-hitter in 1970 while under the influence of LSD.

Playing career

Ellis is best-known for several incidents during his career:

Beaning Reggie Jackson

Beaning Reggie Jackson in the face in apparent retaliation for Reggie’s monstrous home run off Ellis in the 1971 All-Star Game in Detroit.

June 12, 1970 no-hitter

Ellis pitched a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres on June 12, 1970 despite being, as he would claim in 1984, under the influence of LSD throughout the course of the game.^[1] Ellis had been visiting friends in Los Angeles under the impression he had the day off and was still high when his friend’s girlfriend told him he had to pitch a game against the Padres that night. Ellis boarded a shuttle flight to the ballpark and threw a no-hitter despite not being able to feel the ball or clearly see the batter or catcher. Ellis claims catcher Jerry May wore reflective tape on his fingers which helped Ellis to see his target. Ellis walked eight, struck out six, and was aided by excellent fielding plays by second baseman Bill Mazeroski and center fielder Matty Alou.^[2] Because the no-hitter was the first game of a double header, Ellis was forced to keep track of the pitch count for the night game.^[3]

As Ellis recounted it:

“I can only remember bits and pieces of the game. I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria. I was zeroed in on the (catcher’s) glove, but I didn’t hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. I started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire, and once I thought I was pitching a baseball to Jimi Hendrix, who to me was holding a guitar and swinging it over the plate. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn’t hit hard and never reached me.“^[4]

The incident inspired the songs “Dock Ellis” by indie rock singer Barbara Manning, “America’s Favorite Pastime” by folk singer Todd Snider, “Dock Ellis No-No” by Chuck Brodsky, and “LSD (The Ballad of Doc Ellis)” by Boston rock band Random Road Mother.

May 5, 1972 macing incident in Cincinnati

Arguing with and being maced by a Riverfront Stadium security guard on May 5, 1972. The guard claimed Ellis did not identify himself and “made threatening gestures with a closed fist”; Ellis countered that he was showing his World Series ring as evidence of his affiliation with the Pirates.^[5]

May 1, 1974 game against Cincinnati

Ellis attempted to hit every batter in the Cincinnati Reds lineup on May 1, 1974, in an effort to prove a point to teammates. Ellis hit Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, and Dan Driessen in the top of the first. The clean-up batter Tony Perez avoided Ellis’s attempts, instead drawing a walk, and after two pitches aimed at the head of Johnny Bench, Ellis was removed from the game by manager Danny Murtaugh.

Retirement and death

Dock Ellis retired to Victorville, California and a career as a drug counselor.^[6]

From the Coercive Sex section of the Animal Sexual Behaviour wiki article:

In 2007, research suggested that in the Acilius genus of water beetles (also known as “diving beetles”), an “evolutionary arms race” between the genders means that there is no courtship system for these beetles. “It’s a system of rape. But the females don’t take things quietly. They evolve counter-weapons.” Cited mating behaviours include males suffocating females underwater till exhausted, and allowing only occasional access to the surface to breathe for up to six hours (to prevent them breeding with other males), and females which have a variety of body shapings (to prevent males from gaining a grip). Foreplay is “limited to the female desperately trying to dislodge the male by swimming frantically around.”^[55]

Charles Siebert reports in his New York Times article Elephant Crackup? that:
Since the early 1990’s, for example, young male elephants in Pilanesberg National Park and the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa have been raping and killing rhinoceroses; this abnormal behaviour, according to a 2001 study in the journal Pachyderm, has been reported in ‘‘a number of reserves’’ in the region.

From the Transformers: Kiss Players section of the Transformers (toy line) wiki article:

The Transformers: Kiss Players was a Japan-only line of Transformers toys, manga, and audio dramas released in 2006. Kiss Players is set in an alternate Transformers universe where the Transformers are powered by the kisses of young girls. The toys themselves come packaged with small, scale figurines of the girls who power them. The toyline was openly admitted to be aimed at a specific part of the market— adults, rather than children. The comic that accompanied the Kiss Players was an unashamed reflection of this, with several images which were considered by some to be very sexually themed.

Kiss Players continued the theme of the metaphysical power potential of human beings empowering Transformers. Previous examples were the Japanese series programs Masterforce and Car Robots.

From the Cisgendered wiki article:

Cisgender (pronounced /ˈsɪsdʒɛndər/) is an adjective used in the context of gender issues and counselling to refer to a class of gender identities formed by a match between an individual’s gender identity and the behavior or role considered appropriate for one’s sex.^[1] Cisgender is a neologism that means “someone who is comfortable in the gender they were assigned at birth.”^[2] “Cisgender” is used to contrast “transgender” on the gender spectrum.^{[citation needed]}

Internet use

The word cisgender has been used on the internet since at least 1994, when it appeared in the alt.transgendered usenet group in a post by Dana Leland Defosse.^[3] Defosse does not define the term and seems to assume that readers are already familiar with it. It may also have been independently coined a year later. According to Donna Lynn Matthews, the charter maintainer of the alt.support.crossdressing usenet group, the word was coined in 1995 by Carl Buijs, a transsexual man from the Netherlands.^[4] In April 1996, Buijs said in a usenet posting, “As for the origin, I just made it up. I just kept running into the problem of what to call non-trans people in various discussions, and one day it just hit me: non-trans equals cis. Therefore, cisgendered.”^[5]

Academic use

The term has more recently been used in scholarly publications, such as a 2006 article in the Journal of Lesbian Studies^[6] and Julia Serano’s 2007 book Whipping Girl.^[7] Serano also uses the related terms cissexual, which she defines as “people who are not transsexual and who have only ever experienced their subconscious and physical sexes as being aligned” (p. 12), and cissexism, “which is the belief that transsexuals’ identified genders are inferior to, or less authentic than, those of cissexuals.”^[8]

From the Fairy chess piece wiki article:

A fairy chess piece or unorthodox chess piece is a chess piece not used in conventional chess, but used in certain chess variants and some chess problems. These pieces vary in movement abilities and possible additional properties.

Because of the distributed and uncoordinated nature of unorthodox chess development, often the same piece is referred to by different names or the same name is used for different pieces in various contexts (chess problems, various chess variants).

A specialized solving program, WinChloe, recognizes more than 1200 different fairy pieces. Most (but not all) usual fairy chess pieces fall into one of three classes, although it should be noted that some are hybrid pieces (see the Chinese pieces, for example, which can move without capture as riders yet can only capture as hoppers). It is easy to create a new type of piece by simply combining the movement powers of two or more different pieces.

Notable examples

Name	Parlett	Found in	Notes
Alfil	~2X	Shatranj	A (2,2)-leaper. Compare to elephant. Alternate notation: ~2/2
Alibaba	~2*	Fairy Chess Problems	Combines the powers of Alfil and Dabbaba
Amazon	n*, ~1/2		Combines the powers of the queen and the knight. Also called superqueen.
Andernach grasshopper		Andernach chess	A grasshopper that changes the colour of the hurdle it leaps over. Also known as a chopper.
Archbishop	nX, ~1/2	Capablanca chess	Combines the powers of Bishop and Knight. Also called a Princess, Cardinal or Janus.
Balloon		Four Dimensional Chess	A bishop-like piece used in four-dimensional chess, i.e. it changes all coordinates simultaneously while moving.
Berolina pawn	o1X>, c1>, io2X>		Moves one square diagonally forward (except on its first move, when it may move two), but captures by moving one square straight forward. Compare with pawn.
Bishop	nX	Orthodox Chess
Boyscout		Fairy Chess Problems	Moves like a bishop, but takes 90 degree turns after each step. Invented by J. de A. Almay in the first half of the 20th century. Rediscovered as Crooked Bishop by Ralph Betza.
Bug-Eyed Monster		Fairy Chess Problems	Can jump to any square which cannot reached by any orthodox chess piece (since the amazon is the sum of all orthodox chess pieces, the Bug-Eyed Monster is the complement of the amazon).
Camel	~1/3
Cannon			See “pao”
Cardinal			See “Archbishop”
Champion		Omega Chess	Combines the powers of the Wazir and the Alibaba.
Chancellor	n+, ~1/2	Capablanca chess	Combines the powers of the Rook and Knight. Also called an Empress or Marshal.
Checker	cn(^2X>), o1X> King: cn(^2X), o1X		Multiple captures in one turn, or without capturing can move forward one diagonal space, but cannot move backward until after it has finished a turn on the far rank of the board. (cf. Draughts, Checkers)
Chopper			See “Andernach grasshopper”
Colonel	n>, n=, 2/1> 1*		Moves as forwards and sideways rook, the forwards moves of a knight, or a king found in Chess with different armies.
Dabbaba	~2+	Tamerlane Chess	Old historic piece, also known as war machine or machine. Alternate notation: ~0/2
Dayrider	n(~2*)		Combination of Alfilrider and Dabbabarider. Also known as Alibabarider.
Dummy			A piece with no moves at all. It may be captured, gain temporarily moving ability by relay, or pushed or pulled around by other pieces if there are pushing or pulling pieces on the board. Different from zero.
Elephant	2X	Xiangqi (Chinese)	A (2,2) leaper, but it cannot jump over an intervening piece, like the ma. In Chinese Chess, the elephant is restricted to its half of the board.
Empress			See “Chancellor”
Fers	1X	Shatranj	Move one square in any direction diagonally.
Fusilier	o1+, c1X	Centennial Chess	Moves and captures like a pawn in all 4 directions. Invented by F. Marinelli in 1770. Also known as Steward or Quadrapawn.
Giraffe	~1/4
Grasshopper			A hopper which moves along the same lines as a queen and lands on the square immediately beyond that of the hurdle. One of the most popular fairy pieces. In diagrams, the grasshopper is usually represented by an inverted queen.
Graz Pawn	1*> , io2*>	Fairy Chess Problems	Combines the powers of the Berolina Pawn and the standard Pawn. Also known as the sergeant, this piece was used as early as 1943 in Arno von Wilpert’s Wolf Chess.
Janus		Janus chess	See “Archbishop”
King	1*	Orthodox Chess	Move one square in any direction. Royal in orthodox chess. A non-royal piece which moves in this way is sometimes called a man.
Khohn	1X, 1>	Makruk	Move one square in any direction diagonally or one square straight forward. It has the same moves as the Silver General in Shogi.
Knight	~1/2	Orthodox Chess
Kraken	~n/m		Leap to any square on the board, including the one it is currently on (leaping to the current square has the effect of passing a move). Compare with universal leaper.
Leeloo		Quintessential Chess	Combines the powers of Quintessence and Rook
Leo	on*, c^&	Chinese	Combines the powers of the pao and vao; it moves like a queen when not capturing (that is, a (1,0) or (1,1) rider), but captures by leaping over an intervening piece and taking the piece on the leo’s destination square (the captured piece can be any number of squares beyond the hurdle).
Lias’ Pawn	o1>, o1=, c1X>, io2>	Lias’ proposal	An extended pawn which can also step one square sidewards. Proposed in the 1920ies by A. G. Lias to improve standard chess
Lion	~n*		A hopper which moves along the same lines as a queen and which can land on a square any distance beyond the hurdle.
Maharaja	n*, ~1/2	Maharajah and the Sepoys	A royal amazon, the only piece for white.
Mao		Chinese	Moves like a knight except that it does not leap. It first moves one square orthogonally in any direction, and then continues in the same general direction one square diagonally. The square it is on after its orthogonal move must be vacant. For example, if a white mao is on b2 and there is a white pawn on b3, the mao cannot move to a4 or c4; if the pawn is on c3, however, it can move to both those squares (because the first part of the move is orthogonal, not diagonal).
Marshal			See “Chancellor”
Moa		Chinese	as the mao, but the first step is diagonal and the second orthogonal, not the other way round.
Murray Lion	~0/2, ~2/2, c1*		Can move and capture as an Alfil or Dabbabah, and capture only as a king. This piece stems from a misinterpretation of the Lion of Chu Shogi but has become popular in fairy chess problems and chess variants. It is named after the chess historian Harold James Ruthven Murray who brought it up.
Nao		Chinese	A Chinese nightrider – moves as a normal nightrider (that is, a (2,1) rider) when not capturing, but which captures by leaping over an intervening piece and taking the piece on the nao’s destination square (the captured piece can be any number of knight-moves beyond the hurdle).
Nightrider	n(1/2) (in same direction)		A rider which moves any number of 2,1 cells (i.e., knight moves) in the same direction. A nightrider on b2 on an empty board, therefore, can move to a4, c4, d6, e8, d3, f4, h5 and d1. A pawn of the opposing colour on d6 could be captured, but the nightrider could not move any further in that direction (i.e. it couldn’t move on to e8). A pawn on b3, for example, would have no effect. On diagrams, the nightrider is usually represented by an inverted knight. One of the most popular fairy pieces. See diagram below.
Odysseus		Fairy Chess Problems	The Odysseus’ move depends on the file where it is located: It moves as a rook on files a and h, as a knight on files b and g, as a bishop on files c and f, as a queen on file d and as a king on file e. Also known as Querquisite.
Pao		Chinese	Moves like a rook when not capturing (that is, a (1,0) rider), but captures by leaping over an intervening piece and taking the piece on the pao’s destination square (the captured piece can be any number of squares beyond the hurdle). Found in xiangqi (in which context it is normally known in English as a cannon).
Pawn	o1>, c1X>, io2>	Orthodox Chess	Moves one square straight forward (except on its first move, when it may move two squares), but captures one square forward diagonally. Compare with Berolina pawn.
Pentere		Quinquereme Chess	Combines the powers of Queen and Quintessence
Princess			See “Archbishop”
Pterodactyl	~3/3, ~5/5, ~0/15	Chess mathematics	The simplest triple range amphibian. George Jelliss demonstrated a pterodactyl’s knight’s tour on a 16×16 board in 1985 [5]
Quang trung rook			Moves as rook but when capturing must move on square away from captured piece in the same direction.
Queen	n*	Orthodox Chess	Combines the powers of the bishop and rook.
Quintessence			A nightrider who takes 90-degree turns in a zig-zag manner on each step. First described in 2002 by Jörg Knappen and found in several chess variants since then.
Rao		Chinese	A Chinese rose – moves as a normal rose when not capturing, but captures by leaping over an intervening piece and taking the piece on the rao’s destination square. The captured piece can be any distance beyond the hurdle.
RennCavalier		Renniasance Chess	Moves in the same move one square diagonally and any number of squares othogonally or any number of squares orthogonally and one diagonally. It has two paths to the same target square and must make at least a blockable knight’s move. Called Cavalier in RennChess, but the name Cavalier is used for other pieces as well. Renniasance Chess was invented by 1980 by Eric V. Greenwood.
RennDuke		Renniasance Chess	Moves in the same move one square orthogonally and then any number of squares diagonally or any number of squares diagonally and then one straight. It has two paths to the same target square and must make at least a blockable knight’s move. Called Duke in RennChess, but the name Duke is used for other pieces as well.
Rook	n+	Orthodox Chess
Rose			Moves as a nightrider, except that rather than moving in a straight line, it moves along pseudo-circular ones. A rose standing on e1 on an empty board, for instance, can move to any of the squares on the large circle c2, b4, c6, e7, g6, h4 and g2; as well as c2 and a1; or d3 and b4; or d3, e5 and g6; or f3, e5, c6 and a5; or f3 and h4. As with the nightrider, an opposite-coloured piece on any one of these squares can be captured, but prevents the rose from progressing any further along that line. See diagram below.
Spy	2>, 2=, (1/1)>	Chess Empire	The spy can move two spaces forwards or sideways, or can move like a knight one forward and then one horizontally or vice versa. It can leap over pieces and can only move two spaces; thus, it is “trapped” on its own color like a bishop.
Squirrel	~0/2, ~1/2, ~2/2	Fairy Chess Problems	Jumps to any field in a distance of 2. It was discovered independently several times and is also known as Centurion or Castle.
Superpawn	on>, cnX>	Fairy Chess Problems	Moves without capture any number of fields forward, captures diagonally forwards like a bishop. Promotes on the 8th rank. Cannot capture en passant nor be captured en passant. May be placed in the first rank. Invented by Werner Speckmann in 1967.[6]
Superqueen			See “Amazon”
Universal leaper			Leap to any square on the board apart from the one it is on. Compare with kraken.
Unicorn			A name usually given to a B+N piece. In Raumschach it is a triagonal rider, moves through the vertices of the cubes. See diagram below.
Vao		Chinese	Moves like a bishop when not capturing (that is, a (1,1) rider), but captures by leaping over an intervening piece and taking the piece on the vao’s destination square (the captured piece can be any number of squares beyond the hurdle).
Wazir	1+		Moves one square orthogonally in any direction.
Wizard		Omega Chess	Combines the movement of a Fers and a Camel.
Zebra	~2/3
Zero	~0/0		A piece which can make a zero move, i. e., jump and land on its starting square without any side effects. This gives the player the option to pass a move. Sometimes used as a component to more complex pieces.
Zurafa		Tamerlane Chess	Starts with a (1,4) leap (like the modern Giraffe) and may continue moving outwards as a rook.

From the Humanzee wiki article:

The humanzee (also known as the Chuman or Manpanzee) is a hypothetical chimpanzee/human hybrid. Chimpanzees and humans are very closely related (95% of their DNA sequence, and 99% of coding DNA sequences are in common^[1]), leading to contested speculation that a hybrid is possible, though no specimen has ever been confirmed.

Hybrids are named according to the convention first part of sire’s name + second part of dam’s name (except where the result is unwieldy). For geneticists, “Chuman” therefore refers to a hybrid of male chimpanzee and female human, while “Humanzee” or “manpanzee” refers to a hybrid of male human and female chimpanzee.

Rumored humanzees

There have been occasional reports and rumors of humanzees throughout history. St. Peter Damian, in his 11th century De bono religiosi status et variorum animantium tropologia, tells of a Count Gulielmus whose pet ape became his wife’s lover. One day the ape became “mad with jealousy” on seeing the count lying with his wife and it fatally attacked him. Damian claims he was told about this incident by Pope Alexander II and shown a creature named “Maimo”, which was supposed to be the offspring of the countess and the ape.

Oliver

Main article: Oliver (chimpanzee)

There have been no scientifically verified specimens of a human/ape hybrid, although a performing chimp named Oliver was popularized during the 1970s as a possible Chuman/Humanzee. Genetic tests conducted at the University of Chicago concluded that, despite Oliver’s somewhat unusual appearance and behavior, he was a normal chimpanzee;^[8] he had the same number of chromosomes as normal chimpanzees. The “hybrid” claims were possibly a promotional gimmick. As a result of being humanized (habituated to humans rather than to chimps), Oliver was said to be attracted to female humans, and did not mate with chimpanzees.

An episode of Unsolved History, Humanzee, originally broadcast on the Discovery Channel on March 27, 1998, discussed the controversies over Oliver the chimp and also detailed some of the rumors and urban legends about “humanzees”. One claim was that a common chimpanzee was impregnated by human sperm in a laboratory in China, but died from neglect before giving birth during the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. A similar story, reported by University at Albany psychologist Gordon Gallup, alleged that a human-chimp hybrid was successfully engendered and born during expirements by Robert Yerkes or his staff at the Anthropoid Breeding and Experiment Station in Orange Park, Florida in the 1920s, but was destroyed by the scientists soon after. Gallup claimed he heard the story as a young graduate student, when an elderly academic confided in him that he had been part of the team behind the experiment. Gallup added that he feels the colleague telling him of this genuinely believed the story to be true but that he, Gallup, has never been able to prove it one way or another.

From the Fan Death wiki article:

Fan death is a South Korean urban legend which states that an electric fan, if left running overnight in a closed room, can cause the death of those inside (by suffocation, poisoning, or hypothermia). Fans manufactured and sold in Korea are equipped with a timer switch that turns them off after a set number of minutes, which users are frequently urged to set when going to sleep with a fan on.^[1]

Beliefs

The specifics behind belief in the myth of fan-death often offer several explanations for the precise mechanism by which the fan kills. However, as explained below, these beliefs do not stand up to logical and scientific scrutiny. Examples for possible justifications of belief in fan death are as follows:

• That the South Korean government introduced the idea as a means to reduce energy use.

• That an electric fan creates a vortex, which sucks the oxygen from the enclosed and sealed room and creates a partial vacuum inside.^{[citation needed]}

• That an electric fan chops up all the oxygen particles in the air leaving none to breathe. This explanation violates mass conservation and well-known properties of molecules and gases, particularly that known breakdown energy of oxygen molecules lies in the ultraviolet range. It also ignores the nearly universal human tendency to wake up whilst being suffocated in a moment of sleep. Moreover, the theory makes no justifications for how and why a person will not suffocate whilst awake in a room which contains an operating fan.

• That if the fan is put directly in front of the face of the sleeping person, it will suck all the air away, preventing one from breathing. This explanation ignores both the fact that a fan attracts as much air to a given spot as it is removing from it, and the fact that most people point a fan towards themselves when using one, which causes air to move past the face but does not change the amount of air present. Fan death is frequently cited when police detectives are unable to determine cause of death

South Korean government position

The Korea Consumer Protection Board (KCPB), a South Korean government-funded public agency, issued a consumer safety alert in 2006 warning that “asphyxiation from electric fans and air conditioners” was among South Korea’s five most common seasonal summer accidents or injuries, according to data they collected.^[11] Also included among the five hazards were air conditioner explosions and sanitation issues, including food poisoning and opportunistic pathogens harbored in air conditioners. The KCPB actually published the following:

If bodies are exposed to electric fans or air conditioners for too long, it causes [the] bodies to lose water and [causes] hypothermia. If directly in contact with [air current from] a fan, this could lead to death from [an] increase of carbon dioxide saturation concentration [sic] and decrease of oxygen concentration. The risks are higher for the elderly and patients with respiratory problems. From 2003 [to] 2005, a total of 20 cases were reported through the CISS involving asphyxiations caused by leaving electric fans and air conditioners on while sleeping. To prevent asphyxiation, timers should be set, wind direction should be rotated and doors should be left open.

According to The Straight Dope website, when informed that the phenomenon is virtually unheard of outside of their country, “some locals claim Koreans are uniquely vulnerable due to a peculiarity either of their own physiology or of Korean fans.“^[3]