Creationist Ken Ham Is Building A $101M Noah’s Ark In Kentucky, And He Wants You To Pay For It

$101 million Noah’s Ark rises in Kentucky — jesus-riding dinosaurs and all

When it came to the $18.25 million it was seeking in tax rebates, perhaps dog came up a bit short of expectations.
Creationist Ken Ham Is Building A $101M Noah’s Ark In Kentucky, And He Wants You To Pay For It

Australian-born Creationist Ken Ham and his fundamentalist 'christian' coven no-answers in genesis (AiG) are looking to build a $101m Ark Adventure in...

Loser charged with arson after setting fire to rug to prove he isn't 'loser'

A man from Austin, Texas, has been charged with arson after he set fire to a rug in an apartment on Thursday to make a political statement and prove he wasn't a "loser." Austin Fire crews responded to a call at the Whisper Hollow Apartments at around 7:30pm after a request from the Austin Police Department, who had received a call for a disturbance between a mother and her son.
The report says police arrived at the apartment, the officer heard a voice from inside the apartment yell "He won't let me answer the door!" and "He won't let me go!" Officers then forced entry into the apartment. According to an affidavit, Police found evidence of a small fire inside the apartment and detained Scout Anthony Thomas Hodge, 20, while waiting for the fire crews. Police say Hodge's mother was being held in a bear hug by Hodge because he said that if police were allowed inside, he would be committed to a psychiatric facility.
When the fire department arrived, they found fire debris outside the apartment. According to police, the fire was set inside and moved to the exterior by Hodge. The fire department found a hole burned in the rug, and made sure the fire was extinguished. Damage was estimated at $100. Upon questioning, police say Hodge waived his Miranda rights and told investigators he was in his room and began to get in a bad mood because of a program he was watching about politics.
Hodge said he then burned a Syria hat with a lighter and placed it on the rug, all of which was recorded on Instagram. Police say Hodge was trying to make a political statement and let people know he is not a "loser." The fire spread to the rug and caused fire damage to a larger rug underneath. When his mother began to yell at him, Hodge picked up the burning rug and placed it outside, causing fire damage to the side of the building. Hodge is charged with arson, a state jail felony, as well as unlawful restraint.

Man fought off home intruder with his favorite frying pan

When an intruder broke into Glenn Tew’s house in Fayetteville, North Carolina, he fought back with his favorite frying pan. “The fact that he would come in and invade my our home and just do the damage he had done, I said no one should have to put up with that kind of mess,” Tex said

It was just before midnight on Thursday when Tew went to check on a noise in his den, and confronted 21-year-old Sheldon Dix as he broke through a glass door. “I hollered at him and he proceeded to come charging at me trying to knock me out, and we kinda locked horns and fell on the floor,” said Tew. Tew’s wife ran to help her husband, and tossed him the frying pan. “I think she hit him with a metal trash can a couple of times, and then once I got the frying pan I proceeded to given him a good dose of that!,” said Tew.
Police say just minutes before the break-in, Dix savagely attacked a mother who was waiting in her car at a nearby church parking lot. They said when another man saw the attack and tried to intervene, Dix starting beating on the man. The woman in the car then pulled out a handgun and shot at the attacker. "The victim in the car happened to be a concealed-permit holder. She had a legal right. She retrieved her firearm and fired off two rounds," said Fayetteville Police Lt. Tim Tew.
Lt. Tew is not related to the victims. He said the suspect fled across a parking lot and ran down the street. When he broke into the Tew home, he got a lot more than he bargained for. Glenn Tew hopes he can salvage his favorite frying pan. “The bottom is a little messed up, but I expect I can hammer it back down,” said Tew. Authorities say Dix is in police custody and under evaluation. He’s facing numerous charges.

Ocean warming has doubled in recent decades

Scientists: Ocean warming has doubled in recent decades

Ocean temperatures increased as much in the last two decades as they had in more than a century before, according to a new study. “Since the 1990s, the total amount of heat content change in the oceans is twice that of what we’d seen up until that point in the past...

Our Atmosphere Is Leaking

Our Atmosphere Is Leaking into Space

Yep, you read the headline right. Our atmosphere is leaking. That's the bad news. The good news is it's going to take a really, REALLY long time before it gets scary.

Stars out of focus show their true colors

This photo posted by NASA at APOD reminds us that stars have colors.

Captured in June from the north rim of the Grand Canyon of planet Earth, the shallow, close focus image has rendered pine needles on the tree branch sharp, but blurred the distant stars, their light smeared into remarkably colorful disks. Of course, temperature determines the color of a star. Most of the out-of-focus bright stars of Scorpius show a predominately blue hue, their surface temperatures much hotter than the Sun's. Cooler and larger than the Sun, and noticeably redder on the scene, is giant star Antares at the heart of the scorpion. In focused, telescopic views the whitish disk at the upper right would be immediately recognizable though, reflecting the Sun's light as ringed gas giant Saturn.

This Is the First Flower Grown in Space

There's a flower garden on the International Space Station. Oh, it's meant for scientific research. But the newborn results are pretty!
The project examines how different plants grow in microgravity. This orange zinnia that just bloomed is a challenge to grow in space. The experience of cultivating it will help scientists learn how to grow more challenging--and edible--plants in microgravity. UPI reports:

"The zinnia plant is very different from lettuce," Veggie project manager Trent Smith said. "It is more sensitive to environmental parameters and light characteristics. It has a longer growth duration between 60 and 80 days. Thus, it is a more difficult plant to grow, and allowing it to flower, along with the longer growth duration, makes it a good precursor to a tomato plant."

Gregarious Chimps Harbor Richer Gut Microbiomes

Gregarious Chimps Harbor Richer Gut Microbiomes

Spending time in close contact with others often means risking catching germs and getting sick. But being sociable may also help transmit “good” microbes, finds a multi-institutional study of gut microbiomes in chimpanzees. Researchers monitored changes in the gut...

Dogs really can tell how their owners are feeling

Dogs really can tell how their owners are feeling, new study shows

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of Carolina Naturally.

Everybody likes hugs ...!

 

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Today in History

1189		Philip Augustus, Henry II of England and Frederick Barbarossa assemble the troops for the Third Crusade.
1648		In Maryland, the first woman lawyer in the colonies, Margaret Brent, is denied a vote in the Maryland Assembly.
1785		Chippewa, Delaware, Ottawa and Wyandot Indians sign the treaty of Fort McIntosh, ceding present-day Ohio to the United States.
1790		Joseph Guillotine proposes a new, more humane method of execution: a machine designed to cut off the condemned person’s head as painlessly as possible.
1793		The French King Louis XVI is guillotined for treason.
1910		Japan rejects the American proposal to neutralize ownership of the Manchurian Railway.
1919		The German Krupp plant begins producing guns under the U.S. armistice terms.
1921		J.D. Rockefeller pledges $1 million for the relief of Europe’s destitute.
1930		An international arms control meeting opens in London.
1933		The League of Nations rejects Japanese terms for settlement with China.
1941		The United States lifts the ban on arms to the Soviet Union.
1942		In North Africa, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel launches a drive to push the British eastward. While the British benefited from radio-intercept-derived Ultra information, the Germans enjoyed an even speedier intelligence source.
1943		A Nazi daylight air raid kills 34 in a London school. When the anticipated invasion of Britain failed to materialize in 1940, Londoners relaxed, but soon they faced a frightening new threat.
1951		Communist troops force the UN army out of Inchon, Korea after a 12-hour attack.
1958		The Soviet Union calls for a ban on nuclear arms in Baghdad Pact countries.
1964		Carl T. Rowan is named the director of the United States Information Agency (USIA).
1968		In Vietnam, the Siege of Khe Sanh begins as North Vietnamese units surround U.S. Marines based on the hilltop headquarters.
1974		The U.S. Supreme Court decides that pregnant teachers can no longer be forced to take long leaves of absence.
1976		Leonid Brezhnev and Henry Kissinger meet to discuss Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT).
1977		President Carter urges 65 degrees as the maximum heat in homes to ease the energy crisis.
1993		Congressman Mike Espy of Mississippi is confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Agriculture.

Saudi accuses Iran of sowing 'sedition, unrest, chaos'

Saudi accuses Iran of sowing 'sedition, unrest, chaos'

Taiwan elects Tsai Ing-wen as first female president

Taiwan elects Tsai Ing-wen as first female president

Chipotle Is Closing All Its Restaurants February 8th

The embattled burrito chain announced earlier this week that it will close nearly 2,000 of its restaurants for a day to train employees on food safety, but will it be enough to earn back public trust?

Campbell's and GMO Labeling

Campbell's Decision to Label GMOs Destroys Monsanto's Main Argument Against Labeling

 

New Jacket Design Lets You Inflate Insulation

The winter apparel company NuDown has developed a new way to stay warm during the winter while permitting variable temperatures. After all, you may want to wear a parka while walking through -10°F temperatures outside. But once you're indoors, the parka becomes way too hot to wear.
NuDown's jackets are inflatable with a hand pump that stores in a side pocket. Just pump in air to increase the insulation inside the jacket. Then release it for warmer environments. Fast Co Design reports:
The jackets are each fitted with a pump that you inflate when you need to—instead of throwing on more bulky layers, just add air. NuDown says 20 pumps will add enough insulation to keep out the chill on chilly days, 30 pumps will give wearers more warmth on blustery days, and 40 or more is supposedly enough for the harshest conditions (the company gives the example of waiting on a windy ski lift). If the coat gets too toasty, deflate it to cool down.
Each pump supposedly adds one degree Fahrenheit of comfort, but for temps dipping below 20 degrees Fahrenheit, NuDown recommends using its Argon Gas Upgrade kit. The add-on will inject your coat with argon, the same gas that's used in double-pane windows and dry suits, since argon is better at insulating than air

Week End Sleep In

Why do we sleep in on weekends?

100 Years Ago, American Women Held Serious Venus de Milo Lookalike Contests

In 1820, a farmer dug up a mysterious Greek statue on the island of Melos. He found a remarkably well-preserved statue of what is probably Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of beauty—or Venus, as the Romans called her. This amazing find became known as the Venus de Milo.
She arrived at just the right time. The Academic art movement venerated the majesty of the human body, as well as gave men a good excuse to look at pictures of naked women. The Venus de Milo came to epitomize a neoclassical vision of female beauty.
In the United States, the idealization of this beauty standard led to contests in which men searched for women who had Venus’s precise measurements. Thousands of women were measured in this effort, particularly college students, such as this young lady at Wellesley College. Atlas Obscura traces the history of this movement. One leader was Dr. Dudley Allen Sargent, the gym director at Harvard University:

These measurement cards did not require just height, weight, bust, waist, and hips. There were 60 required measurements per person, including instep, wrist, forearm, armspan, and “ninth rib.” And all this data was being put toward new and novel applications. In 1893, Sargent used composite figures from female students' measurements to sculpt a statue and exhibit it at that year's Chicago World's Fair. This figure came to be known as the "Harvard Venus." Visitors to the fair were invited to examine it, reflect on how their own bodies compared, and submit themselves to be measured for Sargent's data collection project. [...]
By this time, Sargent had collected the measurements of over 10,000 female students, yet he claimed he had still not encountered the ideal woman. “Among the many thousands who have been measured at the gymnasium, not one has fulfilled every requirement,” he told the Times. The closest was Annette Kellerman, an Australian swimmer and vaudeville star who stood five-foot-four-and-a-half and sported a 35.2-inch bust, 26.2-inch waist, and 37.8-inch hips. Sargent called her the "perfect woman" for publicity purposes, but he was rounding up.

The movement petered out during the 1920s as new beauty standards took hold of American popular culture. It never did find its truly perfect example of the female form, which is reasonable, as my wife would not be born for a few more decades.

Poor James Smithson’s Restless Corpse

The picture is of William Henry Bishop, US Consul in Genoa Italy in 1904, holding the skull of James Smithson. Smithson was the English scientist whose fortune was beaqueathed to the US to found the Smithsonian Institution. We posted about that bequest last year. But Smithson's story didn’t end with the Institution; even his body couldn’t rest in peace. Smithson was buried in Genoa, Italy, in 1829. Around the turn of the 20th century, the cemetery was slated to be demolished. Alexander Graham Bell lobbied to have Smithson’s body brought to the US, and he went to Italy to fetch him in 1904. Smithson’s remains were interred at the Institution. But strange sightings were attributed to Smithson’s ghost in the many years since, and in 1973, a museum curator decided to open up the coffin and check on the corpse. As if Smithson’s tale wasn’t strange enough, that’s when things got weird. The blog BizarreVictoria has the rest of the story.

Okay, right, are you guys ready for this to get worse?
So, we have Smithson’s monument all mangled to shit, his casket broken open, his 150-year old skeleton exposed to all and sundry, and now everything is ON FIRE.
Then, “He didn’t want them to ruin the silk by using an extinguisher so he told them to fill their mouths with water and come back to spray it down. So they did it.”
The silk is already ruined. It’s on fire. And if you, A CURATOR, were so concerned with preservation, why did you have random workmen bust open a sealed relic with improper tools, without any authorization to do so?
And now, to cap things off, a whole group of people are just spitting on James Smithson. Congratulations. This might be the worst thing I’ve ever written about on this blog.

You can read the whole account at BizarreVictoria. Oh, it’s all true. I checked around.

Police investigate theft of 'priceless' stone ball

A unique prehistoric carved stone ball, said to be so rare it is priceless, has been stolen from a Scottish museum. The ball, which is about 6cm across, was taken from its display cabinet at the volunteer-run Dunblane Museum while curators' backs were turned. Museum curator Marjorie Davies said the theft was "shocking" as the ball was irreplaceable. Known as a petrosphere, the ball was originally found near Dunblane about 100 years ago. The museum said the ball had been taken in November, and initially staff tried to trace it by circulating details to other museums.
Police have only just been called in. Mrs Davies said: "It's big enough to hold in your hand, but you wouldn't be able to close your hand round it. These things are unique to Scotland. They tend to be found in the north of Scotland." She said that scholars could not decide what they were used for or why they were made.
"They are very, very rare, and anybody who tried to sell it would immediately have to furnish the provenance of it," she added. "You certainly couldn't put a price on it." Police in Dunblane are investigating the theft and have appealed for information. A spokesman said: "If you have any knowledge of who may be responsible or know the whereabouts of the stone ball, please contact officers."

Pastafarian told he will lose his license if caught driving without a colander on his head

A man’s insistence that it is his religious right to wear a colander on his head has strained his relationship with the Russian government.

Andrei Filin is the latest ‘Pastafarian’ to win the right to wear a colander for his official driver’s license photos.
However, the deputy chief of Moscow’s State Traffic inspectorate, Vladimir Kuzin, has said that Mr Filin’s victory for the Cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster comes with a catch.
“The next time he is stopped by the traffic police, if he doesn’t have a pasta strainer on his head, his license will be taken from him,” Mr Kuzin said.

Man who cut off hand in insurance scam jailed

A farmer in Castellón, Spain, cut off his right hand and staged a car accident to claim insurance money. Castellón's provincial court sentenced the man to four years in prison as well as a fine of €3,000 (£2,275, $3,275), on top of the €335,000 (£254,500, $365,500) in insurance money that he will be forced to repay.

According to the court sentence announced on Wednesday, the farmer was having financial troubles in 2007, struggling to pay off his mortgage so he came up with an elaborate plan to cash in on insurance policies. In the early hours of December 10th of that year, he took a sharp blade and hacked off his own right hand, entirely with the intent "to collect the insurance" the court wrote, adding that it was unclear whether he had had assistance in the amputation or had managed it alone.
According to court papers, the man from the rural region of Castellón in eastern Spain then applied a tourniquet to stem the bleeding, got in his car and drove to a point where there was a curve in the road. He swerved off, landing the car ""practically perpendicular" in an orange grove, and then carefully staged an accident by placing his severed hand in the footwell and torching the car with some petrol he had brought with him.
The man, identified only as Miguel B.P., 42, of Nules, then called emergency services and when police and firefighters arrived at the scene was found calmly "smoking a cigar". The farmer went to eight different insurance companies to collect compensation. "Yes, it's unusual - a bit unusual," a spokeswoman from the Spanish General Council of the Judiciary said. "You do see cases like this sometimes, but not regularly."

Naked lady in excited state of delirium allegedly broke woman's nose and Waffle House window

A Georgia woman is accused of stripping naked outside a Waffle House and attacking several diners while in a state of excited delirium.

After allegedly punching a woman in the face and breaking her nose, she also threw multiple platters at people inside the diner on Friday night.
Jennifer Mary Nicholson, 38, of Marietta, damaged a window when she hit it with a platter and also threw one at a Cobb police officer. Nicholson was not wearing any clothes during the tirade. “The accused stripped off all of her clothes off in front of Waffle House staff and patrons during a suspected excited delirium state,” the warrant states.
Nicholson resisted being arrested, scratching a police officer across the chin and drawing blood, according to police. Once she was arrested, she was charged with aggravated battery and criminal damage to property, both felonies, and simple assault, obstruction, simple battery and public indecency. Nicholson is being held without bond in the Cobb jail.

Attempts to smuggle drugs inside fake carrots and on a sledge foiled by authorities

US Customs and Border Protection agents found half a million dollars' worth of marijuana disguised as carrots earlier this week. On Sunday, they stopped a tractor-trailer at the Pharr International Bridge along the Texas-Mexico border near the Gulf of Mexico.

Mixed in with real carrots, they found more than 2,800 orange, carrot-shaped packages. Inside those packages there were nearly 2,500 pounds of marijuana with a street value of $499,000, officials said. The case is under investigation by agents of Homeland Security Investigations.
Meanwhile, a Canadian man was arrested while pulling a sledge carrying more than 180 pounds of prescription pills across the border into the US. 21-year-old Cedrik Bourgault-Morin was apprehended early on Wednesday after he crossed the border from Quebec along a railroad line into North Troy, Vermont.
Prosecutors say Bourgault-Morin was wearing white camouflage and border patrol agents were alerted to his presence when he triggered a sensor. Prosecutors say agents found 300 vacuum-sealed bags of anti-anxiety Xanax pills in a duffel bag on the sled. They say the pills had a street value of $1.6m. Bourgault-Morin is being held in a Vermont prison.

Black hole 'missing link' may have been found in the Milky Way

Black hole 'missing link' may have been found in the Milky Way

Cat's Best Friend Is This Particular Koi

Timo the cat is an internet celebrity, what with his cat hammock, masterful Christmas tree decorating style, and adorable yawning.
But he hasn't forgotten the people who loved him before he was famous. For 3 years, his best friend has been a koi. Oh, he's polite to all of the koi in the pond. But the grey one always gets special attention.

(Video Link)

Woman handcuffed by her pet python rescued after advice over the phone from snake catcher

A woman in Australia's Sunshine Coast was bitten and "handcuffed" by her pet python at 3am, prompting an unusual over-the-phone rescue bid by a local snake catcher and her housemate. The woman was handling the black-headed python in her Sippy Downs home when it bit her on the thumb and constricted her hands together. The woman's housemate was woken by her screams and contacted snake catcher Stuart McKenzie to assist.

After a few failed attempts at talking him through loosening the grip of the pet, the concerned housemate sent him a picture of the bind. This was the first time Mr McKenzie had helped someone remove a python from themselves over the phone. "After the snake had stopped biting her, it continued to constrict her hands together like you can see in the photo," he said in a Facebook post. "The guy was very relaxed and kept her calm while he tried to uncoil the snake, but with no luck.
"I then told him that he would have to head-grab the python in order to be a bit more forceful with uncoiling it, I got him to send me a picture of the situation so that I could give them the appropriate advice. After about 20 mins on the phone they were finally able to get the snake off her hands safely and back into the enclosure. Thank goodness for that! At one stage I thought I was going to have to get in my car and drive over and give them a hand," he said.
The snake catcher said it was normal for a python to wrap around something that it bites. "Most of the time they just bite and let go as a defensive thing but sometimes they will bite and hold on, that's when they coil up," he said. He said black-headed pythons were normally found in North Queensland, not on the Sunshine Coast. "If it was one of our native carpet pythons, I would have been more inclined to come out," he said.

Getting In Tune

Singing Animals Get in Tune

These creatures won't win any Grammy awards for their vocals, but the fact that some of them sing, or sort of do, at all might surprise you.

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of Carolina Naturally.

Never wear a tie - but if you have to, tie it don't clip it ...!

 

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Jamming ... !

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Today in History

1327		Edward II of England is deposed by his eldest son, Edward III.
1616		The French explorer Samuel de Champlain arrives to winter in a Huron Indian village after being wounded in a battle with Iroquois in New France.
1783		Britain signs a peace agreement with France and Spain, who allied against it in the American War of Independence.
1908		The Sullivan Ordinance bars women from smoking in public facilities in the United States.
1930		Charles Lindbergh arrives in New York, setting a cross country flying record of 14.75 hours.
1935		Belgium arrests some Nazi agitators who urge for a return to the Reich.
1941		Hitler meets with Mussolini and offers aid in Albania and Greece.
1942		Nazi officials meet in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to decide the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.”
1944		Allied forces in Italy begin unsuccessful operations to cross the Rapido River and seize Cassino.
1945		Franklin D. Roosevelt is inaugurated for his fourth term.
1945		The Allies sign a truce with the Hungarians.
1946		France’s Charles DeGaulle hands in his resignation.
1952		British troops occupy Ismalia, Egypt.
1954		Over 22,000 anti-Communist prisoners are turned over to UN forces in Korea.
1977		President Jimmy Carter is sworn in and then surprises the nation as he walks from the U.S. Capitol to the White House.
1981		Ronald Reagan is sworn in as pretender at the same time 52 American hostages are released from their captors in Tehran, Iran.

The Most Amazing Lie in History

How a chicken farmer, a pair of princesses, and 27 imaginary spies helped the Allies win World War II.

In the weeks leading up to D-day, Allied commanders had their best game faces on. “This operation is not being planned with any alternatives,” barked General Dwight D. Eisenhower. “This operation is planned as a victory, and that’s the way it’s going to be!” Indeed, more than 6,000 ships were ready to cruise across the English Channel to plant the first wave of two million troops on the white beaches of Normandy. Nearly 20,000 vehicles would crawl ashore as 13,000 planes dropped thousands of tons of explosives and thousands of paratroopers.
The sheer size of the invasion—it would be the largest in history—was staggering. But so were the stakes. With the first day’s casualty rate expected to reach 90 percent and the outcome of World War II hanging in the balance, the truth was that Eisenhower was riddled with doubt. He’d transformed into an anxious chimney, puffing four packs of cigarettes a day. Other Allied leaders felt equally unsure. “I see the tides running red with their blood,” Winston Churchill lamented. General George S. Patton privately complained of feeling “awfully restless.” Chief of the Imperial General Staff Alan Brooke was more blunt: “It won’t work,” he said. The day before the invasion, Eisenhower quietly penciled a note accepting blame in case he had to order retreat. When he watched the last of the 101st Airborne Division take off, the steely general started to cry.
They were worried for good reason. With so many troops and so much artillery swelling in England, it was impossible to keep the attack a secret. Hitler knew it was coming, and he’d been preparing a defense for months. Only one detail eluded him, and he was confident in a Nazi victory if he could figure it out—he needed to know where, exactly, the attack would happen. To make D-day a success, the Allies needed to keep him in the dark: They’d have to trick the Germans into thinking the real invasion was just a bluff, while making it seem like a major attack was imminent elsewhere. The task seemed impossible, but luckily, the British had a secret weapon: a short, young balding Spaniard. He was the king of con men, an amateur spy gone pro, the world’s sneakiest liar. He was also, of all things, a chicken farmer.
Juan Pujol Garcia had been working at a hotel when he decided to become a spy. Although he was born to a wealthy Barcelona family in 1912, Pujol had squandered his privileges. To the disappointment of his family, he dropped out of boarding school at 15, eventually enrolling instead at an academy for poultry farmers. At 21, he served six months of mandatory military service, but army life wasn’t for him: The pacifist ditched the cavalry and bought a movie theater. When that venture failed, he bought a smaller theater, which flopped too. Success chronically eluded him. By 24, Pujol had resigned himself to working on a sinking chicken farm and marrying a girl he wasn't sure he loved. His life was normal, if not boring.
But life in 1930s Spain was anything but boring. In 1931, King Alfonso XIII sensed his popularity crumbling and fled the country without formally abdicating, leaving Spain a political vacuum. Communist and Fascist groups violently fought for power. Bullrings became theaters for public massacres, and the corpses of politicians littered Madrid’s alleys.
When Spain plunged into civil war in July 1936, Pujol was supposed to report for duty, but he fled instead. He was soon caught and thrown in prison. Then, after unwittingly joining a jailbreak, he bolted to a safe house in Barcelona. He never saw his fiancée again. More than a year passed, and in 1938, a depressed and emaciated Pujol emerged from hiding. The escapee looked so bad, he was able to forge a document saying he was too old for the army. It would be the first of a growing snowball of lies.

Desperate for money, Pujol eventually landed a job managing a dumpy Madrid hotel ironically named the Majestic. The walls were grubby and the heating was shoddy, but in a certain sense, he had found a home. He was a passionate small-talker, and a hotel was a great place to meet people. And those people could be his ticket out of war-torn Spain.
One day, the Spanish Duke of Torre walked into the hotel and asked for a room. Pujol struck up a conversation about parties, which prompted the duke to complain that his aunts—two elderly pro-Franco princesses—were upset they couldn’t get their hands on any scotch since the civil war erupted. Pujol’s eyes lit up. He knew there was hooch across the border in Portugal. He didn’t have a passport—obtaining one was nearly impossible—but if anyone could get him one, it would be a pair of Franco-loving princesses.
So Pujol wagered the duke a deal: If he could procure Pujol a passport, then Pujol would procure some scotch. The royal agreed, and soon the Spaniard had his papers. He chauffeured the aristocrats into Portugal, bought six bottles of black market booze, and moseyed back into Spain with ease. Like that, he had a document that people killed, and were killed, for. He could escape.
The timing could not have been worse. There was nowhere safe to escape to. Weeks earlier, in September 1939, England had declared war on Germany. Hitler was beginning to gobble up Europe, and word of concentration camps had leaked past Spain’s censors. Pujol was trapped—and outraged. “My humanist convictions would not allow me to turn a blind eye to the enormous suffering that was being unleashed by this psychopath,” he wrote in Operation Garbo, a 1985 book co-authored by Nigel West. So instead of plotting his escape, Pujol began plotting schemes to help the Allies.
In January 1941, he walked into the British embassy and vaguely asked for a job as a spy. There was just one problem: He knew absolutely nothing about espionage. He floated from one embassy secretary to the next, talking in circles about “his services.” They offered their own services by showing him the door. Undeterred, Pujol returned home and fine-tuned his spiel. Then, he did the unthinkable: He called the German embassy and declared he wanted to spy for the Nazis.
The voice on the line was heavy and guttural. It told Pujol to go to the Café Lyon at 16:30 the next day—an agent in a light suit would be holding a raincoat in the back of the café waiting for him.
Pujol followed orders. He strolled into the café and introduced himself to an athletic, blue-eyed blond man sitting in the back. The agent greeted him with a cold nod. His code name was Federico, and he was specially trained to spot frauds. Pujol sat and started professing a devout—but false—love for Hitler and the New Order. The rant was cunning and bombastic. Off the top of his head, Pujol spun a rambling web of lies, rattling off names of nonexistent diplomats whom he claimed were friends. Impressed, Federico scheduled a second meeting.
Rendezvousing at a beerhouse, Federico told Pujol that the Nazi spy ring—the Abwehr—didn’t need more agents in Spain. Rather, they needed moles who could snoop abroad. Pujol beamed and told the recruiter about his passport. Federico nodded. A few days later, he told Pujol to go to Lisbon and charm the embassy into awarding him an exit visa. When Pujol got there, the embassy refused.
It looked like a dead end, but again, Pujol’s gift of gab proved handy. At his hotel in Lisbon, he befriended a portly, affable Galician man named Jaime Souza. On a night out together, Souza unveiled a document that made Pujol’s heart leap—a diplomatic visa. For the next week, Pujol accompanied Souza everywhere: amusement parks, nightclubs, cabarets, and, eventually, a casino. One afternoon, as the duo played roulette, Pujol pretended to double over with stomach cramps. He told Souza to keep playing while he ran back to the hotel. He raced to their room, opened Souza’s suitcase, pilfered the visa, and snapped a few photographs. Then, he returned to the casino floor as if nothing had happened.
Within days, Pujol had forged the document. Upon returning to Spain, he showed it to Federico: Pujol was in. The agent was so impressed, he took Pujol under his wing, stocking him with invisible ink, ciphers, $3,000 in cash, and a code name: ARABEL—Latin for “answered prayer.” His first assignment was to move to England, pose as a BBC radio producer, and crib British intelligence.
Pujol, of course, had no interest in actually spying for the Nazis. He wanted to be an Allied double agent. So instead of following orders to go to Britain, he went to Portugal. Confident the Allies would accept him now that he had access to German secrets, he dashed to the British embassy and showed them the ink, the ciphers, and the cash—he had everything a double agent needed. But the British reply was clear: “No.” Pujol was crestfallen. “Why,” he wondered, “was the enemy proving to be so helpful, while those whom I wanted to be my friends were being so implacable?”
Despite its name, Britain’s intelligence office was anything but. When the war began, the office was a factory of bad ideas. In 1941, it tried convincing the Germans that 200 man-eating sharks had been dumped in the English Channel. A year later, it seriously considered staging the second coming of christ. (The plan was simple: A jesus-like figure would magically appear across the German countryside, perform miracles, and preach peace.)
The decision to reject Pujol, however, was a matter of politics. The Allies wanted to keep Spain out of the war, so a Spanish double agent wasn’t enticing. Plus there was the minor detail that Pujol didn’t know a thing about England. He had never been there. He knew nothing about its military. He barely spoke the language. And now, in order not to blow his cover with the Abwehr, he had to convince the Nazis he was living there.
Without leaving Portugal, Pujol bought a map of England, a tourist guidebook, and a list of railway timetables—and began lying through his teeth. The Abwehr had told him to recruit subagents for help. Pujol had a better idea: He’d make them up. If something went sour, he could blame it on his imaginary employees. When something went right, he’d take the credit. With that, ARABEL started fabricating sources, spies, and stories. Using newspapers and telephone books as inspiration, Pujol wrote sprawling, baroque letters to the Abwehr that contained practically no useful information at all—they were just meant to waste the agency’s time. But Pujol knew he couldn’t keep up the ruse forever. If he wanted the Abwehr’s trust, he’d need to start sending some legitimate information. He asked for Britain’s help, but the embassy rejected him a fourth and fifth time.
Then, by chance, some of ARABEL’s reports struck too close to the truth. In one letter, he told the Germans that a convoy of five Allied ships had left Liverpool for Malta. Little did Pujol know, but the made-up report was, in reality, mostly correct. When Britain’s spy circle—the MI5—intercepted the message, agents panicked. A Nazi spy was loose in England! “The British were going crazy looking for me,” Pujol later recalled. He pulled a similar stunt weeks later, reporting that a major armada was departing Wales. This time, the convoy didn’t exist. But U-boats and Italian fighter planes scrambled to ambush it anyway, wasting tons of fuel and thousands of man-hours. Now this grabbed the Allies’ attention. In April 1942, the MI5 smuggled Pujol into London and hired him as part of its double-cross system. The Brits were so impressed with his ability to play a fervid Nazi, they code-named the amateur spy GARBO because, in their opinion, he was the best actor in the world.
As a bona fide double agent, GARBO’s network of imaginary spies ballooned. He enlisted a traveling salesman, a cave-dwelling Gibraltarian waiter, a retired Welsh seaman turned Fascist mercenary, an Indian poet nicknamed RAGS, an obsessive-compulsive code-named MOONBEAM, and even an employee at Britain’s Ministry of War. The bogus spies filed expense reports; some earned real salaries, all funded by the Nazis. By war’s end, GARBO had invented 27 personas. Working for the MI5 also meant that Pujol finally had real military information at his fingertips. So to build the Abwehr’s trust, he began giving away legitimate Allied secrets, peppering the reports with enough white lies to throw off the Nazis.

 

 For example, during Operation Torch—the campaign to invade North Africa—three of GARBO’s imaginary agents reported seeing troops in Scotland, prepping for an invasion. (There weren’t any there.) The phantom agents spread rumors that Norway might be attacked, while others claimed that Dakar, Senegal, was next. The news confused the Nazis and kept them ill-prepared. To save face, GARBO wrote the Abwehr a letter one week before the true African invasion, detailing exactly when and where the Allies would attack. The information could have put thousands of troops at risk, except that the MI5 intentionally delayed the letter so it arrived one day late. The stunt saved lives and made GARBO look like an oracle.
Other stunts boosted his star power. When the Nazis wanted to bomb civilian trains in England, they asked GARBO for a train timetable. He sent an outdated one. When they wanted a book containing Royal Air Force secrets, GARBO mailed it in a cake with all the up-to-date pages deviously torn out. When Germans shot down a civilian plane between Portugal and London, killing everybody aboard—including Hollywood actor Leslie Howard—GARBO lambasted the Abwehr. One of his make-believe agents, a pilot, could have been onboard! Embarrassed, the Germans never attacked another civilian aircraft on that route.
By June 1943, Pujol had become one of Germany’s most prized spies. The Abwehr sent him new ciphers and vials of invisible ink—which made it easier for the MI5 to crack enemy codes. Meanwhile, the Nazis circulated a memo comparing him to a 45,000-man army. Pujol, who’d failed at school, at military service, and at business, was a virtuoso con man. And now, he had all of the ingredients he needed to cook up his biggest lie yet.
England's country lanes were choked with troops. It was early 1943, and planes, jeeps, and tents were everywhere. Locals joked that the island would sink under all the weight. To German reconnaissance aircraft, it was obvious that something big was about to happen. GARBO’s job wasn’t to hide the impending French invasion—it was to convince the Germans that it was going to happen in Calais, 200 miles north of Normandy. If he succeeded, most of the Nazi soldiers would be waiting in the wrong place when the real invasion happened. But few people believed the ploy could actually work. Tricking Hitler, intelligence officer Ralph Ingersoll once said, was the equivalent of “putting a hooped skirt and ruffled pants on an elephant to make it look like a crinoline girl.”
To pull it off, GARBO had to convince the Nazis that a nonexistent million-man army was assembling in southeastern England. The imaginary army was given a real name: the First United States Army Group, or FUSAG. According to Stephan Talty’s book Agent Garbo, the British spared no effort or expense to make the hoax look legit. Inflatable decoys—mock tanks and boats—dotted harbors and farms. Fake hospitals were erected. Bulldozers plowed faux airstrips, and soldiers built hundreds of phony wooden aircraft. When a bogus oil plant was constructed near Dover, the Brits requisitioned wind machines from a movie studio to blow dust across the Channel to make the construction site more believable. Newspapers showed King George VI inspecting the artificial plant. Carrier pigeons were released in enemy territory with property of fusag IDs wrapped around their legs, and special machines stamped tank tracks along dusty roads. Newspapers published fake letters complaining about the ruckus all the imaginary soldiers were causing. And as the date of the real invasion neared, General Patton appeared across south-eastern England to rally the make-believe troops.
GARBO “sent” his best agents to southeast England to report on the activity. Meanwhile, other phony agents reported seeing bombers in Scotland, which made an additional attack on Norway look imminent. The reports made Hitler so nervous that he kept 250,000 much-needed troops stationed in Scandinavia. By May 1944, German High Command was utterly confused. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was convinced FUSAG was real. Just before D-day, the Allies bombed 19 railroad junctions near Calais—and none in Normandy. Accompanied with GARBO’s reports, the bombings led most Nazi bigwigs to agree: All signs pointed to Calais.
At 6:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944, the first Allied troops stormed onto the sands of Omaha Beach, Normandy. D-day had begun. Although the first boats met a stiff resistance, the Nazis were relatively clueless. The German Seventh Army stationed nearby was snoozing in its barracks. General Hans Speidel had told both his armies to reduce their states of readiness because of gloomy weather. General Friedrich Dollmann was so convinced June 6 would be a slow day that he scheduled war games. Meanwhile, Rommel had taken the day off to celebrate his wife’s birthday. (The day before, as the Allies prepared history’s biggest invasion, he was picking wildflowers.) When Berlin learned that forces were landing in Normandy, the staff refused to even wake Hitler. The ploy had worked—almost nobody took the invasion seriously. Nazi brass thought it was a scheme to distract them from the real invasion—at Calais.
Two days went by. Tens of thousands more troops hit the beaches, and German generals still refused to send in serious reinforcements: They were still waiting for the fake army to attack. On June 9, a desperate General Gerd von Rundstedt begged Hitler to send the Panzers, the Axis’s fearsome tank squads. Hitler finally caved. This was terrible news for the Allies: The Panzers could cripple the invasion.
But early that morning, GARBO sent a message about the fake army that would change history: “I am of the opinion, in view of the strong troop concentrations in southeastern and eastern England, which are not taking part in the present operations, that these operations are a diversionary maneuver designed to draw off enemy reserves in order then to make a decisive attack in another place ... it may very probably take place in the Pas-de-Calais area.”
The message was forwarded immediately to Berlin. Hitler’s personal intelligence officer underlined the word diversionary and handed it off to a higher official, who laid it on Hitler’s desk. The Abwehr chimed in confirming the information. Later that night, Hitler read GARBO’s message; shortly after, an order beamed from High Command: “The move of the 1st SS Panzer Division will therefore be halted.” Suddenly, nine of Germany’s meanest armored divisions—all bound for Normandy—stopped dead in their tracks and turned around to defend Calais.
It was GARBO’s greatest lie, and it arguably turned the tide of the war. The fake-out saved tens of thousands of Allied lives and secured a foothold on the continent. A month later, 22 German divisions were still waiting in Pas-de-Calais for the fake army. By December, when Allies had regained France, German commanders still believed FUSAG was real. Berlin was so convinced by GARBO’s reports that it awarded him an Iron Cross—an honor usually reserved for troops on the front line. Months later, the King of England followed suit and made Pujol a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire—one of the nation’s greatest honors. The self-made spy became the first and only person decorated by both sides.
D-day was the beginning of the end. Hitler killed himself the next spring, and the Abwehr told GARBO to give up—they’d never realized they had a double agent on their hands. By then, his network of phony agents had stolen £17,554—nearly $1 million to- day—from Nazi coffers. Soon, Pujol fled to South America to be, as he put it, “forgotten, to pass unnoticed and to be untraceable.” Four years later, the MI5 reported that he had died of malaria while exploring Africa.
But this too was another brilliantly executed lie—a rumor spread to shake off any vengeful Nazi loyalists. Pujol, then 36, was alive and well in Venezuela, where his life became boring and normal again. He married, had two sons, opened a book- store, and got a job with Shell Oil as a language teacher. He even tried going back into the hotel business, where, again, he failed miserably. He lived off the radar until 1984, when the enterprising journalist Nigel West found him after a decade-plus search. That year, a 72-year-old Pujol returned to London for an emotional reunion. His former MI5 colleagues were gobsmacked. “It can’t be you,” one of them burst. “You’re dead!”
West took Pujol to Omaha Beach for D-day’s 40th anniversary. When the spy saw the cemetery—with its long, neat rows of white headstones—he dropped to his knees and burst into tears. He felt responsible for each grave. But as the day wore on, word circulated that Pujol was there. Hordes of gray-haired men flocked to him, begging to shake his hand. One man, surrounded by family and fellow veterans, took Pujol by the arm and beamed. “I have the pleasure of introducing GARBO, the man who saved our lives.” Again, tears flooded Pujol’s eyes. This time, though, he smiled.

Flyting Was Medieval England's Version of an Insult-Trading Rap Battle

Humanity has a long tradition of trading witty insults as a form of entertainment and one-upmanship, manifested in modern times as rap battles or playing the dozens. These (sometimes) good-natured competitions are found all over the world in many eras of history. One in particular survives in the literature from medieval Britain. Back then, it was called flyting.

Flyting is a stylized battle of insults and wits that was practiced most actively between the fifth and 16th centuries in England and Scotland. Participants employed the timeless tools of provocation and perversion as well as satire, rhetoric, and early bathroom humor to publicly trounce opponents. The term “flyting” comes from Old English and Old Norse words for “quarrel” and “provocation.” 'Tis a form of highly poetic abuse, or highly abusive poetry—a very early precursor to MTV’s Yo Mama and Eminem’s 8 Mile.
“Court flyting” sometimes served as entertainment for royals such as Scottish kings James IV and James V. The most famous surviving exchange is The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie, which was performed in the early 16th century by William Dunbar and Walter Kennedy for the court of James IV. A medieval rap battle between two clever men, it featured the first recorded instance of poop being used as an insult. The moment Kennedy called Dunbar a “shit without a wit,” he ushered in a whole new era of scatological humor.

See some examples of flyting from medieval records and read about how it evolved into the rap battles of today, at Atlas Obscura.

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