Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

"In 1958, Natalie Wood passed Frank Sinatra’s table at Romanoff’s in Beverly Hills when he made a loud, crude comment aimed at her. Without a moment’s hesitation, she turned, walked straight to his table, and slapped him across the face in full view of the restaurant’s elite crowd. The sharp sound of her palm against his cheek cut through conversations and froze forks midair. Sinatra’s grin disappeared. Natalie didn’t say a word. She stared at him, then walked away like nothing had happened.

That moment didn’t make headlines in newspapers, but it became a story that everyone in Hollywood knew. Romanoff’s wasn’t an ordinary restaurant. It was a power playground for actors, producers, and studio bosses. Sinatra, by then, was untouchable. With a Grammy under his belt and a reputation that blended charm with danger, he commanded every room he walked into. His word could make or break people’s careers. Yet in one swift gesture, Natalie Wood had drawn a line no one expected her to draw.

She had grown up inside the studio system. By the age of ten, she had already worked with Orson Welles and starred in "Miracle on 34th Street." Hollywood had treated her like a porcelain doll with a camera-ready face and compliant attitude. By the late 1950s, Natalie had worked with James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause," played complex emotional roles, and had begun to push back against the way the industry molded young women.

People around her noticed a shift. Natalie had grown more assertive, more selective with her roles, and far more vocal about the way women were treated behind the scenes. The slap wasn’t some outburst. It was the physical expression of a woman done tolerating disrespect, no matter who was delivering it.

Those close to Sinatra expected a backlash. He was known for holding grudges and for using his influence to quietly shut doors on people who crossed him. But something unusual happened. Sinatra reportedly leaned back in his seat after the initial shock and muttered, “She’s got guts. That kid’s going to last.” He never brought up the incident again and never showed public resentment toward Natalie. In fact, some said he carried a quiet respect for her afterward.

Within days, the story made its way through the town. It was repeated by makeup artists, whispered on backlots, and casually referenced during contract negotiations. Natalie Wood’s name suddenly carried a different weight. She was still a beauty, still a marquee star, but now she was also seen as someone who wouldn’t play along with Hollywood’s unspoken rules.

In private, some actresses praised her. They’d all endured similar situations, many in silence, worried that speaking up would cost them their careers. Natalie had done what most dreamed of doing. She had turned and said no, not with words, but with a strike that left a room full of men speechless.

She never once mentioned the event publicly. There was no quote, no talk show anecdote, no magazine interview. She didn’t need to explain. That was Natalie’s style. Quiet steel behind soft features. The kind of strength that didn’t require spotlight.

Sinatra, surrounded by power and fame, had been challenged by someone younger, smaller, and socially lower in the industry’s pecking order. And he didn’t forget it. Nor did anyone else who was present that night.

That slap wasn’t about revenge. It was about reclaiming control in an industry that often demanded obedience from its stars, especially its women.

She didn’t yell. She didn’t argue. She walked away with every eye in the room watching her, and no one dared to follow. That one act echoed longer than any speech she could have made."

"On April 2, at the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, a naked man ran across the stage as David Niven was reading an introduction. Niven was shaken but recovered his customary urbanity fast enough to quip, “Just think, the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off his clothes and showing his shortcomings.” The incident marked the high point—or low, if you prefer—of a practice that vied with Pet Rocks for the coveted title of Dumbest Fad of the 1970s: streaking.

Streaking, or running naked through a public place, began on college campuses in the late fall and winter of 1973. Unsurprisingly, it was most popular at warm-weather schools. At the University of Georgia the phenomenon grew and grew until more than fifteen hundred people participated in a mass streak. Students finally had to parachute naked onto the Georgia campus to attract any attention. (Seventy miles west, in Atlanta, after a few people had streaked a city bus, the driver was asked if they were male or female. He replied, “I couldn’t tell—they were wearing masks.”) Even in the North a few hardy souls challenged the elements, including groups in Calgary, Alberta (four degrees below zero), and Anchorage, Alaska (eight below). A different sort of bravery was shown by several dozen cadets who dared to streak West Point (and reportedly escaped without punishment).

By March streaking had become a nationwide craze. Time and Newsweek jumped all over the story, grateful (like National Geographic ) for any chance to print photographs of bare-breasted women. Academics and experts contributed their opinions as well. The Christian Century called streaking “an expression of praxis. … It is Kierkegaard’s leap of faith; Tillich’s courage to be.” A more likely explanation is that too much Kierkegaard and Tillich were what had made bored college students run around naked in the first place.

In Davie, Florida, residents of a local nudist colony turned the tables by running through town with clothes on. At Columbia University a group of forty naked men invaded all-female Barnard College in an attempt to recruit volunteers but, as usual, attracted no interest from the students there. The next day’s events showed the reason for Barnard’s standoffishness: When one bold woman disrobed and mounted the campus’s statue of Alma Mater, hordes of overeager Columbia men started pinching her until she had to be removed under protection.

Dozens of pop songs were rushed out to capitalize on the fad. Most successful was “The Streak,” by Ray Stevens, which stayed on top of Billboard’s sales chart for an improbable three weeks. Stevens was best known as a novelty artist, although his previous number one hit had been a serious-minded plea for love and tolerance titled “Everything Is Beautiful.” After countless newspaper photos of overweight streakers proved the falsehood of that title, Stevens went back to comedy, and while he never had another chart topper, he did achieve some success with a 1977 remake of “In the Mood” performed by clucking chickens.

Even a beleaguered President Nixon got in on the act. When asked about the gray hairs on his temple, the President replied, “They call that streaking”—generally conceded to be his best one-liner since “I am not a crook.” Comedians and cartoonists across the nation picked up on the theme of presidential streaking, with the phrase cover-up figuring prominently in most cases. Literary scholars recalled Bob Dylan’s prescient line from “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”: “Even the President of the United States must some times have to stand naked.”

And then it was all over. A month and a half after the Academy Awards incident, Dr. Joyce Brothers explained streaking’s sudden demise by saying, “The challenge of finding new and unusual ways to streak was no longer there.” Or maybe it was just finals. Whatever the explanation, streaking vanished from America’s college campuses, to be reborn in the 1980s and 1990s in the guise of “Coed Naked” sports and “Nude Olympics.” The revival demonstrated once again the truth of Karl Marx’s famous dictum as applied to American popular culture: History repeats itself—the first time as travesty, the second as farce."

https://www.americanheritage.com/streaking-fad

"In a medical museum in Lyon there is a strange tub-like object constructed of oak and decorated with lengths of ornately woven rope. About six inches in from the rim, eight evenly spaced iron rods sprout up from a highly polished lid. In the eighteenth century, a group of patients would sit or stand around this device in such a way as to press the afflicted areas of their bodies against these moveable metal wishbones and, bound to the instrument by the ropes, would link fingers to complete an “electric” circuit. The atmosphere in which these sessions took place was heavy with incense and séance-like; the music of a glass harmonica (invented by Benjamin Franklin) provided a haunting soundtrack, and thick drapes, mirrors, and astrological symbols decorated the opulent, half-lit room.

Franz Anton Mesmer, the legendary Viennese healer, hypnotist, and showman, would enter this baroque salon of his own invention wearing flamboyant gold slippers and a lilac silk robe. He would prowl around the expectant, highly charged circle, sending clients into trances with his enthralling brown-eyed stare. By slowly passing his hands over patients’ bodies, or with a simple flick of his magnetized wand, Mesmer would provoke screams, fits of contagious hysterical laughter, vomiting, and dramatic convulsions. These effects were considered cathartic and curative. When a patient’s seizures became so exaggerated as to be dangerous or disruptive, Mesmer’s valet, Antoine, would carry him or her to the sanctuary of a mattress-lined “crisis room” where the screams would be muffled.

The baquet, as Mesmer named his vessel, parodied the contemporary craze for medical electricity. Pharmacists and apothecaries frequently prescribed shock treatment, especially in attempts to cure paralysis, and often exposed the sick to a more general “electrical aura” as a healing agent. Benjamin Franklin, then American ambassador to France, was fond of demonstrating the power that could be harnessed in a Leyden jar, the prototype of the modern battery, by using one to send a bolt of electricity through a chain of people. (One medical electrician claimed not only to have shot a charge through 150 guardsmen, but to have made a kilometer-long line of monks simultaneously jump into the air.) Some animals were electrocuted in public displays of electricity’s magical and invisible power; others were drowned and immediately revived with galvanic current. One poor boy was repeatedly thrown into a vat containing a large electric eel until he was cured of an irregular use of his limbs. In comparison to these torture treatments, Mesmerism—or “animal magnetism”—seemed to offer a less violent, and no less miraculous, form of therapy..."---- https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/21/turner.php

"The Rise Of The Gay Mafia: A Powerful Cabal That Never Existed"

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/th...zcXh1AkQlQ


"The idea of a “gay mafia” may seem like a bad oxymoron.

But there was a time in American history when there was a real fear that a gay mafia—known collectively as “hominterns”—existed, wielding control across Hollywood and throughout the arts and entertainment industries.

In his new book Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World, English academic Gregory Woods chronicles the rise of the “homintern,” exploring how the longstanding fear of homosexual men spurred a century-long paranoia about an alleged gay mafia controlling areas of government, the arts and academia."

History is a nightmare we are trying to wake up from..

The American Eugenics Movement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WOlv5nik3w

"When Mark Twain married Olivia Langdon, he told a friend, “If I had known how happy married life could be, I would have wed 30 years ago instead of wasting time growing teeth.” He was 32. Twain—born Samuel Clemens—grew up in a modest family, working from a young age. He started as a printer’s apprentice, became a riverboat pilot, tried his luck at silver mining (and failed spectacularly), before finally finding his true calling as a writer. His sharp wit and storytelling brilliance made him famous across America.

It was around this time that he fell in love—not with Olivia at first, but with her portrait. A friend showed Twain a locket with her image and later invited him to meet her in person. Within two weeks, Twain proposed. Olivia liked him, but she was hesitant. He was ten years older, rough around the edges, lacked the refinement of her wealthy, cultured circle, and had not a penny to his name. She admired his talent but turned him down. Twain, ever persistent, proposed again. Another refusal—this time, she cited his lack of religious devotion. He responded with his signature humor and sincerity: “If that’s what it takes, I’ll become a good Christian.” Despite her refusals, Olivia was already in love with him. But Twain, convinced he had no chance, left.

On his way to the train station, his carriage overturned. Seizing the moment, Twain played up his injuries and was brought back to Olivia’s home. As she cared for him, he made one final proposal. This time, she said yes.

Twain made every effort to please his deeply religious wife. He read the Bible to her every evening and said grace before meals. Knowing she disapproved of some of his stories, he never submitted them for publication, accumulating over 15,000 unpublished pages. Olivia became his first editor and toughest critic—so much so that when she came across the phrase “Damn it!” in *Huckleberry Finn*, she made him remove it. Their daughter, Susy, once summed them up perfectly: “Mama loves morality. Papa loves cats.”

Twain adored Olivia. He once wrote, “If she told me wearing socks was immoral, I would stop wearing them immediately.” She called him her “gray-haired boy” and watched over him like a child. He, in turn, credited her with preserving his energy, optimism, and youthful spirit. Olivia, for her part, loved his humor. One day, Twain was laughing so loudly that she asked what book had amused him so much. Still chuckling, he handed it to her. She glanced at the cover—it was one of his own books.

Their life together was not without heartbreak. They lost children. Twain went bankrupt. But while his indomitable optimism kept him afloat, Olivia’s unshakable faith gave her strength. They never turned against each other—Twain never once raised his voice at Olivia, and she never once scolded him. Twain was fiercely protective of her. When a close friend made a joke at Olivia’s expense, Twain nearly ended their friendship over it. And when Twain set off on a round-the-world tour at sixty, Olivia—knowing he needed constant care—left everything behind to accompany him."

"Ludwig Boltzmann was a visionary in a world that wasn't ready for him. In the bustling intellectual climate of late 19th-century Europe, while many scientists grappled with the tangible, Boltzmann dared to explore the unseen. He introduced the groundbreaking idea that atoms—too small to be seen even with the most powerful microscopes of his time—were the fundamental building blocks of nature.

With meticulous mathematical formulas, he developed statistical mechanics, bridging the gap between the microscopic atom and the everyday phenomena of heat and pressure. His theories explained how random motions of particles could result in the predictable laws of thermodynamics.

However, Boltzmann's revolutionary ideas met stiff resistance from the scientific community. Leading figures like Ernst Mach scoffed at the notion of atoms, dismissing them as mere fantasies because they could not be observed directly. This skepticism was relentless, and it took a toll on Boltzmann. Despite his profound contributions to physics, he faced mockery and professional isolation.

Tragically, in 1906, while on a family vacation intended as a respite from his struggles, Boltzmann ended his own life. He died never seeing the vindication of his theories, which occurred just a few years later when the existence of atoms gained empirical support.

Today, Boltzmann's legacy endures in the formula S = k log W, etched on his tombstone—a testament to a man who ventured beyond the visible and changed the fabric of science forever."

Good for him!

"William James Sidis was once the most talked-about child in America. Born in 1898 to brilliant Ukrainian-Jewish parents in New York, his mind seemed to race ahead of the world around him. By two, he was reading newspapers. By six, he had written multiple books and invented a language he called “Vendergood.”

At age 11, he entered Harvard and gave lectures on four-dimensional geometry. Professors were stunned. Newspapers called him a wonder. He could speak more than 25 languages, from Latin and Hebrew to Turkish and Russian. He was expected to lead the next era of science, politics, and mathematics.

But William didn’t want any of that.

Under relentless pressure, media obsession, and a nation that treated him more as a novelty than a person, he withdrew. He left academia, declined the spotlight, and took low-paying jobs—filing papers, working as a clerk. He wrote under fake names on topics ranging from cosmology to Native American history. Even when found and written about against his will, he fought to be forgotten—suing one magazine for exposing his life.

He didn’t want fame. He wanted peace.

William James Sidis died at just 46, alone in a small Boston apartment, from a cerebral hemorrhage. No statues, no farewell. Just court records, forgotten manuscripts, and a quiet lesson that echoes louder than any headline:

Brilliance isn’t always loud. And genius needs more than applause—it needs protection."

#LostGenius #WilliamJamesSidis
~Weird Pictures and News

"Andrew Ure was a Scottish physician who earned a medical degree from the University of Glasgow and served as an army surgeon before he steered his career in a strange new direction: experimenting with reanimating human corpses. In November 1818, Ure assisted professor of anatomy James Jeffray in a twisted demonstration in Glasgow that left spectators horrified and even caused one man to faint. Ure and Jeffray believed that, under certain circumstances, applying electricity to a dead body could bring it back to life. They set out to prove this by sending currents through the body of Matthew Clydesdale, a murderer who had recently been hanged. ⁠
⁠
As Ure recorded after the experiment, "Every muscle of the body was immediately agitated with convulsive movements resembling a violent shuddering from a cold... the leg was thrown out with such violence as nearly to overturn one of the assistants, who in vain tried to prevent its extension... When the supraorbital nerve was excited, every muscle in his countenance was simultaneously thrown into fearful action; rage, horror, despair, anguish, and ghastly smiles, united their hideous expressions in the murderer's face."