Today is the day to find strange and interesting stuff on the Internet.

Completely Random

Dr. Ruth was a sniper.

Julia Child worked for the OSS.

There Really Are No Snakes in Ireland

There are no snakes in Ireland, Newfoundland, New Zealand or many South Sea islands.

Crab Recipes from the Baltimore Sun

The Gentlemen’s C Presidency

When you go to a lot of trouble to gather those who are supposedly the best and the brightest, how do you accommodate those who are the richest and best-connected but not otherwise qualified?

In George W. Bush’s day, the accommodation was called the “Gentleman’s C.” Those who received it acquired the “gentleman” designation not by virtue of behavior but by birth, and the “C” on their transcripts should never be interpreted as “average” for it usually indicated frequent absences from class, papers from the frat file that had been used two or three times, and blue books that revealed a stunning lack of contact with the course material.

I have no idea as to the veracity of this, but the website where I found it is generally full of thoughtful and truthful posts.

Soprano Deborah Voigt was sacked after being told she was too large to wear her Royal Opera House stage costume

Soprano Deborah Voigt, 43, said she received many letters of support after her Royal Opera House dismissal, as she prepared for her Carnegie Hall recital debut and the release of her first solo album.

It’s hard to beleive that opera, of all things, would discriminate against someone who was heavy. I mean, when most people think of opera, they typically think of big women dressed in Wagnerian Ring Cycle garb.

Japanese actor a specialist in playing corpses

Fukumoto reckons he’s been killed more than 20,000 times — fans say it’s at least twice that — in thousands of TV appearances and nearly 100 movies over his 45-year career. But he can’t say for sure. Scripts often crammed in several killing scenes, which meant Fukumoto would die as one character and reappear later as another to get slain again.
…
In his 2001 autobiography, which has sold 80,000 copies, Fukumoto said he learned by studying stuntmen. But his hero was Charlie Chaplin, whose over-the-top antics were a useful model because Japanese death scenes are stylized, featuring actors who shudder violently and flop to the ground when killed.

Sicilian village spooked by seemingly spontaneous combustion

Spontaneous fires started in mid-January in the town of Canneto di Caronia, in about 20 houses. After a brief respite last month, the almost daily fires have flared up again — even though electricity to the village was cut off.

(via Neil Gaiman)