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From The Greenbrier wiki article:

The Greenbrier is a Mobil four star and AAA Five Diamond Award winning luxury resort located in the town of White Sulphur Springs in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, United States.

Every U.S. president from Dwight Eisenhower through George W. Bush has stayed at the resort’s presidential suite,^{[citation needed]} although not necessarily while in office.

The Greenbrier is also the site of a massive underground bunker that was meant to serve as an emergency shelter for the United States Congress during the Cold War.

The Bunker

In the late 1950s, the U.S. government approached The Greenbrier for assistance in creating a secret emergency relocation center to house Congress in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. The classified, underground facility, dubbed “Project Greek Island”,^[8] was built at the same time as the West Virginia Wing (an above-ground addition to the hotel), from 1959 to 1962. For thirty years, The Greenbrier owners maintained an agreement with the federal government that, in the event of an international crisis, the entire resort property would be conveyed to government use, specifically as the emergency location for the legislative branch.

The underground facility contained a dormitory, kitchen, hospital, and a broadcast center for members of Congress. The latter had changeable seasonal backdrops to appear as if members of Congress were broadcasting from Washington, D.C.^{[citation needed]} A 100-foot radio tower was installed 4.5 miles away for these broadcasts. The convention center, used by The Greenbrier guests for business meetings, was actually a disguised workstation area for members of Congress complete with hidden, 30-ton blast doors. The walls of the bunker were made of reinforced concrete designed to withstand a nuclear blast in Washington, D.C.

The center was maintained by government workers posing as hotel audiovisual employees, and operated under a dummy company named Forsythe Associates. Many of these same workers are now employed by the hotel and, for a time, gave guided tours. The complex is still maintained by The Greenbrier, and the facility remains much as it was in 1992, when the secret was revealed in the national press. While almost all of the furnishings were removed following the decommissioning of the bunker, the facility now has similar period furnishings to approximate what the bunker looked like while it was still in operation. Two of the original bunks in the dormitories remain.

The bunker was designed to be incorporated into the public spaces of the hotel as to not draw suspicion. Much of the bunker space was visible to the public during for years undetected including The Exhibition Hall in the West Virginia Wing which differs from other public spaces in the hotel due to large concrete columns present for reinforcing. Adjacent to the entrance of The Exhibition Hall is one of the original blast doors which can now be seen openly, the original screen which used to hide its presence removed.

AT&T provided phone service for both The Greenbrier Hotel and the bunker. All calls placed from the bunker were routed through the hotel’s switchboard to make it appear as if they originated from the hotel itself. The communications center in the bunker today contains representatives of three generations of telephone technology used.

Although the bunker was kept stocked with supplies for 30 years, it was never actually used as an emergency location, even during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The bunker’s existence was not acknowledged until The Washington Post revealed it in a 1992 story; immediately after the Post story, the government decommissioned the bunker.

The facility has since been renovated and is also used as a data storage facility for the private sector. It is once again featured as an attraction in which visitors can tour the now declassified facilities, now known as The Bunker.

From the Sniffex wiki article:

Sniffex is a now debunked, portable explosives detection system produced by Homeland Safety International.^[1]

An article in the Dallas Morning News in April 2007 suggested that Sniffex is a divining rod and states that “In a test by the U.S. Navy, Sniffex didn’t register when two trucks passed within 20 feet, hauling a half ton of explosives.“^[2] The Navy’s counterterrorism technology task force tested Sniffex and concluded “The Sniffex handheld explosives detector does not work.”^[2] Despite this, the military bought eight for $50,000.^[2]

Although high performance is claimed in advertising for Sniffex, such claims have not been verified by objective double blind testing.^[3] Although the tests were conducted at a public meeting ^[4] by the president of the company, Sniffex did not detect test explosives when the user did not know in advance where they were located. Additionally, James Randi publicly called into question the validity of Sniffex and exchanged correspondence with the CEO offering one million dollars if Sniffex can do what the press releases claim.^[5]

The Sniffex device must not be confused with SniffEx, a prize-winning sensor developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL).^[6] That sensor was originally called “Sniffex” until Homeland Safety International enforced its trademark and asked ORNL to stop using the name.^[3]

In July 2008 the Securities and Exchange Commission filed lawsuits against six company officers for driving “the share price from 80 cents to about $6 by issuing 33 news releases that contained mostly false information about the product and the company’s financial situation to earn a combined $32 million in illegal profits.”^[7] In mid-July one suit was settled.^[7] In addition, the SEC charged Homeland Safety International, promoters of Sniffex, “of being little more than the front for a $32 million stock fraud scheme that enriched insiders at the expense of unsuspecting investors“.^[8] The SEC complaint said the company “installed a figurehead CEO, named Paul B. Johnson, to hide the involvement of two Bulgarian residents who actually controlled the company” and “then issued a series of what the SEC alleges were false press releases.”^[8] One of the press releases included a claim of “‘impressive’” results from tests conducted by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. In reality, the tests were conducted by Johnson himself and the results were inconclusive”.^[8] While the stocks rose the insiders sold, and the stock was trading at one tenth of a penny as of July 17, 2008.^[8] In July Mark B. Lindberg settled with SEC and a week later pled guilty to wire fraud.^{[9] [10]}

The HEDD1,^[11] reportedly a “Sniffex with a battery stuck on it,”^[12] is marketed by Unival Group of Bonn, the same company that marketed Sniffex in Europe.

From the Skunk Ape wiki article:

The Skunk Ape is a hominid cryptid said to inhabit the Southeastern United States,^[1] from places such as Oklahoma, North Carolina and Arkansas, although reports from the Florida Everglades are particularly common. It is named for its appearance and for the unpleasant odor that is said to accompany it. According to the United States National Park Service, the skunk ape exists only as a local myth.^[2] Reports of the Skunk ape were particularly common in the 1960s and 1970s. In the fall of 1974, numerous sightings were reported in suburban neighborhoods of Dade County, Florida, of a large, foul-smelling, hairy, ape-like creature, which ran upright on two legs.

Myakka photographs

In 2000, two photographs of an alleged ape, said to be the Skunk Ape, were taken anonymously and mailed to the Sarasota Sheriff’s Department in Florida. They were accompanied by a letter^[3] from a woman claiming to have photographed it on the edge of her backyard. The photographer claimed that on three different nights the ape had entered her yard to take apples from a bushel basket on her porch. She was convinced it was an escaped orangutan. The police were dispatched to the house numerous times but when they arrived the ‘Ape’ was gone. The pictures have become known to Bigfoot enthusiasts as the “skunk ape photos”.^[4]

From the Club 33 wiki article:

Club 33 is a private club located in the heart of the New Orleans Square section of Disneyland. Officially maintained as a secret feature of the theme park, the entrance of the club is located next to the Blue Bayou Restaurant at “33 Royal Street” with the entrance recognizable by an ornate address plate with the number 33 engraved on it. Club 33 members and their guests have exclusive access to the club’s restaurant, and the premises are not open to the public at large. It is the only location within Disneyland to offer alcoholic beverages, though Disneyland has a park-wide liquor license and has set up bars throughout the park for private events.

To enter Club 33, a guest must press a buzzer on an intercom concealed by a hidden panel in the doorway. (At one time, a member needed only to insert his/her membership card in a slot near the buzzer and the door would open. However, this process no longer works.) A receptionist will ask for their name over the intercom and, if access is granted, open the door to a small, ornate lobby. Guests have the option of going to the dining level via an antique-style glass lift. The lift is an exact replica of one Disney saw and fell in love with during a vacation in Paris, but the owner of the original refused to sell. Undaunted, Disney sent a team of engineers to the Parisian hotel to take exact measurements for use in the creation of a replica; even a sample of the original finish was taken so that it could be duplicated.

Membership

There are two types of Club 33 membership: corporate and individual. As of February 2008 the current membership levels are Corporate Membership, Limited Corporate Membership, and individual Gold Membership. The Corporate and Limited Corporate Memberships allow for transfer of members, while individual memberships are non-transferable. In the late 1990s, Club 33 offered a lower tier of individual membership, the Silver Membership. However, this level of membership was discontinued. As of June 2007, the membership waiting list was 14 years, and membership interest list was closed to new inquiries as of April/May 2007.

The Corporate Membership fee is $27,500 plus $6,100 in annual fees. Up to nine associate members can be designated at an annual fee of $4,650 each. Members no longer in the employment of the corporate member’s company must surrender the membership cards to Club 33. The corporate member may then designate another member of the company.

The Limited Corporate Membership fee is $13,750 with only one member at an annual fee of $4,650. This entitles the corporation to transfer the membership to another employee whenever necessary.

The Gold Membership is for an individual with a member fee of $10,450 and an annual fee of $3,275. Additional use of a membership card is by spouse only, with reservations accepted only from the cardholder, the spouse, or the cardholder’s assistant. The Gold Membership is not transferable.

Tokyo Disneyland’s Club 33

A second Club 33 is located in Tokyo Disneyland. Rather than being located in New Orleans Square, it is located on Center Street off World Bazaar. Members of Disneyland’s Club 33 do not have reciprocal privileges in Tokyo Disneyland’s Club 33.

From the General Mills Monster-Themed Breakfast Cereals wiki article:

General Mills monster-themed breakfast cereals is a series of five current and formerly distributed breakfast cereal brands for the North American market during the later half of the 20th century. The series includes the currently produced Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry, and the currently discontinued Fruit Brute and Fruity Yummy Mummy.

Health concerns

Franken Berry was very popular when first introduced possibly because the initial batches of the cereal used a dye that didn’t break down in the body, causing many children’s feces to be bright pink, a symptom sometimes referred to as “Frankenberry Stool.”^[4]

From the Dédé Fortin wiki article:

André “Dédé” Fortin (17 November 1962 – 8 May 2000) was the leader and singer of the Quebec band Les Colocs.

Death and legacy

Fortin committed Hara-kiri, a Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment, in his apartment in the PlateauMontreal. neighborhood of A friend found him in a pool of blood. For days, flowers and messages were left in his memory at his apartment building on Rachel St. Some reactions, however, were more negative: one writer in Le Devoir said that he was “not a hero.”^[1]

Before his death, Colocs manager André Paquin received this poem, later published in La Presse: Condemned by doubt, immobile and timorous; I am like my people, undecisive and a dreamer; I speak to who wants to hear of my fictive country; The heart full of vertigo and consumed by fear.^[2]

Rang Saint-Henri in St-Thomas-Dydime, where Dédé Fortin was born, was renamed “Chemin Dédé-Fortin” in 2006.^[3]

A movie about his life called “Dédé à travers les brumes” was released on March 13, 2009.^[4]

From the Stephen Baldwin wiki article:

Stephen Andrew Baldwin (born May 12, 1966) is an American actor and the youngest of the Baldwin brothers.

Personal life

Baldwin has a tattoo on his left shoulder of the initials “HM” for Hannah Montana. His daughters are fans of Hannah Montana, and he got the tattoo after making a pact with Miley Cyrus that he would be allowed to cameo on the show if he had the initials tattooed on him. He revealed the tattoo to Miley at a book signing in Nashville, on November 10, 2008.^[15]

From the Brown Note wiki article:

The brown note is a theoretical infrasound frequency that would cause humans to lose control of their bowels due to resonance. There is no scientific evidence to support the claim that a “brown note” (transmitted through sound waves in air) exists.

The name is metonymy for the color of normal human feces. Frequencies supposedly involved are between 5 and 9 Hz, which is below 20 Hz, the lower frequency limit of human hearing. High power sound waves below 20 Hz are felt in the body, not heard by the ear as sound. The only other vibrations titled with colors are the colors of noise.

Television show tests

Another show, Brainiac: Science Abuse, claimed to have performed an experiment using 22.275 Hz at −30 dB (according to the show’s producers used by Japan’s police and tested by the French military). During the program, they broadcast the note over the air (and into the living rooms of viewers) in an attempt to cause bowel movements among those who had chosen to stay in the room despite repeated warnings and opportunities to leave. It should be noted, however, that sound at this frequency at a significant volume cannot be generated by television speakers, nor by most subwoofers, nor by the cassette-tape boombox used to generate the note for the test subject. They also alleged to have confirmed the myth with a subject, but this subject was out of camera shot for all of the piece except at the very beginning.

Physiological effects of low frequency vibration

Jürgen Altmann of the Dortmund University of Technology, an expert on sonic weapons, says that there is no reliable evidence for nausea and vomiting caused by infrasound.^[3]

Loud concert levels of subwoofer arrays have been cited as causing lung collapse in individuals who are very close to the subwoofer, especially for smokers who are particularly tall and thin.^[4]

Air is a very inefficient medium for transferring low frequency vibration from a transducer to the human body.^[5] Mechanical connection of the vibration source to the human body, however, provides a potentially dangerous combination. The U.S. space program, worried about the harmful effects of rocket flight on astronauts, ordered vibration tests that used cockpit seats mounted on vibration tables to transfer ‘brown note’ and other frequencies directly to the human subjects. Very high power levels of 160 dB were achieved at frequencies of 2–3 Hz. Test frequencies ranged from 0.5 Hz to 40 Hz. Test subjects suffered motor ataxia, nausea, visual disturbance, degraded task performance and difficulties in communication. These tests are assumed by researchers to be the nucleus of the current urban myth.^[6]