Pigeon Missiles, Dog Mines and Clever Hans

Before the birth of his second child, influential psychologist B. F. Skinner wanted to minimise the stress a newborn baby would cause for his wife. To alleviate the problem, he invented an improved crib that he called the air-crib. The easily cleaned, climate controlled box was a success with his daughter and commercial production began. However, public perception of the device was terrible, in part because of images like the one above of a child seemingly trapped inside a cupboard.

The air-crib was also confused with Skinner’s more famous invention used in animal psychology studies, the operant conditioning chamber, or Skinner Box, which modified its subjects’ behaviour through rewards and punishments, such as a jolt from the electrified floor. The myth that Skinner raised his daughter in a Skinner box was parodied on The Simpsons with Dr Marvin Monroe’s plan to buy a baby and raise it in his ‘Monroe Box,’ his theory being that the child “will be socially maladjusted and will harbor a deep resentment towards me.”

The Pigeon-Guided Missile

One of Skinner’s lesser known inventions was a missile guidance system operated by pigeons. During the Second World War, radio-controlled guidance systems were vulnerable to jamming. Operation Pigeon aimed develop an unjammable system. Pigeons were first trained to peck at an image of a target, such as a German battleship. Three pigeons housed in the nose cone of a missile, each in its own compartment, could direct the missile by pecking at a reflected image of its target. A feedback system caused the missile to change direction based on the frequency of pecks. Despite interest from the military, the project was abandoned when electronic guidance systems became feasible.

The Anti-Tank Dog

The Russians conceived the idea of using dogs to carry explosives into battle. Dogs were trained for this purpose from 1930 until 1996, but were only deployed during World War II against Germans on the Eastern Front.

During testing, the dogs performed well, diving underneath tanks to retrieve food. In the field, however, numerous problems arose. Many of the dogs would not approach moving tanks and were shot while waiting for them to stop. Others, frightened by the noise of gunfire, returned to the trenches where their bombs detonated, killing Soviet troops. Furthermore, the dogs had been trained with diesel-powered Soviet tanks and were less inclined to approach the strange-smelling gasoline-powered German tanks.The Nazi Superdog

While the Germans ridiculed the debacle of the anti-tank dogs, the Nazis were themselves pursuing a far more ridiculous canine program. Believing that dogs were almost as intelligent as humans, they attempted to train dogs to speak with the aim of utilising talking dogs in the war. Despite some tantalising results, the project never came fully to fruition.

Some of the early successes, such as a dog who could write poetry by tapping its paw to indicate letters, are thought to be due to the ‘Clever Hans’ effect. Hans was a German horse with apparently high intelligence. His owner, Wilhelm van Osten, gave demonstrations throughout Germany in which Hans was asked a question and would tap his hoof to indicate the answer. Hans was able to read the time, perform arithmetic and answer other simple questions.

Upon investigation, it was found that Hans was remarkably good at reading subtle, unconscious cues from his audience. When Hans was unable to see anyone who knew the answer, his accuracy dropped from 89% to 6%. Dubbed the Clever Hans effect, the phenomenon has been observed in other companion animals and humans. Apart from complicating animal psychology studies, the Clever Hans effect also has repercussions on police interrogation of suspects and witnesses, the operation of juries and the interpretation of polling data.

The 27 Club and 9 Curzon Place

By dint of her age at the time of her death, Amy Winehouse joins an unusual group. The 27 Club refers to the large number of recent famous musicians who have died at the age of twenty-seven. The core group, all dying in a precise two year period from July 3, 1969, are Brian Jones, Jimmi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison.

After his suicide in 1994, Kurt Cobain was added, then the club was expanded retrospectively to include dozens of other musicians, many of lesser fame but often with a substantial influence on rock music. Cobain had apparently mentioned the possibility of joining the club and there is some speculation it may have contributed to his death. Unsurprisingly given her obvious troubles, Amy Winehouse was repeatedly predicted to become a member, most recently by Danny Bonaduce, only days before her death.

The more exclusive 9 Curzon Place Club, has just two members: Keith Moon, drummer for The Who; and Mama Cass of The Mamas & The Papas. Both died at the age of thirty-two in the same London flat, 9/12 Curzon Place, Mayfair, four years apart.

Presidents, Curses and Resurrectionists

William Henry Harrison’s inaugural presidential address was, at nearly two hours, the longest in US history. March 4, 1861 was a cold, wet day but Harrison chose not to wear a coat or hat during the speech, perhaps to demonstrate that, at 68, he still possessed the vigour of his military days.

In fact, Harrison owed his victory in large part to his successful campaigns against the great Shawnee leader, Tecumseh, thirty years earlier. Harrison led US forces against Tecumseh in two conflicts: the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, and the Battle of the Thames in 1813. The latter resulted in Tecumseh’s death and gave rise to the legend of Tecumseh’s curse, dooming every US president elected in a year ending in zero to death before completion of their term (until Reagan):

Abraham Lincoln, elected in 1860, assassinated.

James Garfield, elected in 1880, assassinated.

William McKinley, elected in 1900, assassinated.

Warren Harding, elected in 1920, heart attack.

Franklin Roosevelt, elected in 1940, cerebral hemorrhage.

John Kennedy, elected in 1960, assassinated.

Tecumseh and William Harrison have a disagreement, 1810. (By W. Ridgway).

The first victim was Harrison himself. Elected in 1940, he died of pneumonia less thirty days after his two hour inauguration speech (officially the shortest US presidency, although there is an argument that David Atchison was president for a single day in 1849; he spent most of the day asleep). Many at the time blamed Harrison’s disregard for the weather for his death, so when his grandson, Benjamin Harrison attended his own inauguration during a rainstorm, he delivered a short speech from under an umbrella (held by his predecessor, Grover Cleveland.)

The fate of William Harrison’s son, John Scott Harrison, the only man to have been both the father and son of US presidents, was also unusual. On the day of his funeral, his family were disturbed to discover that another body recently buried nearby was missing. Grave robbery to supply corpses to medical colleges was an ongoing problem at the time. After the funeral, one of Harrison’s sons received information on the location of the missing body and travelled to Ohio Medical College to retrieve it.

There they found a body hanging from a rope in a shaft. It turned out to be not the body they were looking for, but that of John Scott Harrison who had been buried less than twenty-four hours before.

Souvenirs of the Dead: Edison’s Last Breath

Thomas Edison (left) with Henry Ford.

With only three months of formal education, Thomas Edison made a pretty good account of himself. He held over a thousand patents, invented or commercialised an array of world-changing devices, coined the word hello as a telephone greeting (displacing Alexander Graham Bell’s choice of ahoy) and left a technological legacy withoug which the world would be a very different place. (On the other hand, he did once electrocute an elephant as part of a feud with business rival George Westinghouse.)

In the 1890s, Edison took an interest in one of his employees, an innovative young man of similarly humble beginnings by the name of Henry Ford. Edison’s encouragement gave Ford the impetus to create the Detroit Automobile Company, forerunner to the Henry Ford Company. The two men had much in common and they became lifelong friends.

As Edison neared death, the story goes that Ford asked his son, Charles Edison, to capture his last breath. As his father exhaled for the last time, Charles held a glass test tube to his lips and sealed the air inside. The motive for the request is unknown, although it has been linked to Ford’s interest in reincarnation and the belief that the soul exits the body with the last breath.

Many years later, the tube was put on display at the Henry Ford Museum with the label ‘Edison’s last breath?‘, the question mark implying some doubt about the story’s veracity. The museum’s website states that it has since acquired a 1953 letter written by Charles Edison giving a more mundane explanation for the test tube memento.

Fire and Light

Burning mountain (Mount Wingen, near Scone) by Conrad Martens, 1874.

Mount Wingen in New South Wales, also known as Burning Mountain, contains the world’s oldest known coal seam fire. Thought by early European settlers to be a volcano due to the constant emission of smoke through fissures in the ground, it has been burning for 6,000 years. Wingen is the Wanaruah word for fire.

Arguably, the world’s oldest anthropogenic fire is the 2,500 year-old flame maintained by the zoroastrian community at the Yazd Atash Behram fire temple in Iran. A thousand year-old zoroastrian fire burns at the Iranshah Atash Behram fire temple in Udvada, India.

The world’s oldest working light bulb is the Livermore’s Centennial Light which has been burning more or less continuously at the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department in California since 1901. Its remarkable longevity is partially due to the fact that it was manufactured prior to the adoption of a business  strategy known as planned obsolescence, the intentional limiting of a product’s lifespan in order to increase sales. For fifteen years from 1924, the world’s biggest light bulb manufacturers formed the Phoebus cartel which both fixed prices and capped light bulb life span to 1000 hours.

Souvenirs of the Dead: The Dauphin’s Heart

One of the problems with being famous is that there is a much higher likelihood that your corpse will be desecrated by relic hunters. As I’ve noted before, even highly respected public figures like Albert Einstein aren’t spared. It’s not surprising, then, that a child who represented the evils of absolute monarchy to one half of the population and the possibility of a return to a glorious past to the other half would not be spared.

The Temple

The Dauphin’s Heart

On June 9th, 1795, the body of a young boy was removed from a Parisian prison known as the Temple, at one time the European headquarters of the Knights Templar. The French government claimed he was the Dauphin Louis-Charles Capet, son of the recently executed Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Doubts surrounding the identity of the body surfaced immediately, leading to hundreds of people over the following decades claiming to be the lost Dauphin.

During the autopsy, the boy’s heart was taken as a souvenir by physician Phillipe-Jean Pelletan. The organ then began a precarious journey through war and revolution before its identity was confirmed. Pelletan initially kept the heart in a jar filled with alcohol. At one point it was stolen by his assistant then returned after his death.

After the Bourbon Restoration Pelletan attempted to turn it over to the Dauphin’s uncles, Louis XVIII and Charles X, both of whom refused it. It ended in the hands of the archbishop of Paris with whom it stayed until his residence was attacked during the July Revolution of 1830.

A printer named Lescroart, attempting to remove the heart, dropped it during a struggle with revolutionaries. He returned days later and retrieved it from the archbishop’s courtyard. It remained with Lescroart’s son until his death when it was bequeathed to the Duke of Madrid, a descendent of the House of Orleans. After close scrapes with the Nazi and Russian armies during World War II, the heart was finally put to rest in Saint-Denis Basillica in Paris where it remains.

In 1999, it was briefly removed to obtain samples for DNA testing. When compared to DNA extracted from the hair of Marie-Antionette and her two sisters, the heart’s original owner was found to be a descendent of the Queen.

This should settle the matter but for one caveat. Louis-Charles’ elder brother, Louis-Joseph, died of tuberculosis in 1789. At least one report claims that the hearts of both brothers were in the possession of the archbishop of Paris at the time of the July Revolution, raising the possibility that it was this heart that Lescroart found. In that case, the DNA test would be equally as conclusive and the Dauphin would be lost again.