Unsettling May Have Occurred: Occasionally Uncomfortable Obscure True Stories from Human History

by Damn Interesting Editors, The

  One very common problem to befall people recovering from the sleepy sickness was Postencephalitic Parkinson's disease. This caused life-long symptoms such as slowness, tremors, speech problems, and abnormal muscle movement. In some cases, individuals retained their hearing, intelligence, and reasoning, but were left in a catatonic state, unable to respond to stimuli. This parkinsonism sometimes took up to a year to appear in recovered patients.

  In 1928, as suddenly as it had appeared, the encephalitis lethargica epidemic was gone. Although new cases stopped being reported, thousands of those affected were housed in institutions for decades, alive but trapped within useless bodies. In 1969, over forty years after the strange disease disappeared, some catatonic victims were treated with a newly developed antiparkinson drug called Levodopa. A number of patients improved dramatically upon treatment-- they stood up from their wheelchairs and became conscious, responsive, and aware of the world around them-- but it was soon evident that their miraculous recovery was tragically short-lived. Most patients slipped back into a catatonic state within days or weeks, and repeated dosages were useless. The 1990 movie Awakenings is based on such experiences described in the memoirs of Dr. Oliver Sacks.

  Cases of encephalitis lethargica since the original epidemic have been scarce, but in 1993 a twenty-three year old woman was hospitalized after suffering fever, tremors, hallucinations, and strange arm movements. Her brain was dangerously inflamed, and to the doctors' surprise, the cause was ultimately determined to be the sleepy sickness. The cause of the original 1916-1928 outbreak had never been determined in the intervening years, so a virologist named Professor John Oxford re-examined brains samples taken from victims of the original epidemic. Despite his advanced molecular probes, he found no evidence of viruses in the tissue.

  As the young woman slowly recovered, Doctors Russell Dale and Andrew Church set to investigating the disease, and through the medical community they found twenty other patients with symptoms of encephalitis lethargica. After they analyzed the patients, they discovered a common thread which was also present in the historical cases: most patients complained of a sore throat before the disease struck. The men narrowed the common thread down to a particular strain of bacteria called diplococcus, known to cause sore throats. Though the evidence is insufficient to be certain, the findings of these researchers strongly suggests that the sleepy sickness epidemic was caused by the body's massive over-reaction to these bacteria. It seems that this excessive immune response caused the immune system to attack the nerve cells of the brain, resulting in significant damage. Further research has detected anti-brain antibodies present in those with the condition, further supporting the auto-immune theory.

  Given the new evidence, some experts suggest that encephalitis lethargica may be much more common than we realize. It is likely that most cases are minor, and go undiagnosed. Oxford, Dale, and Church may very well have solved one of medicine's greatest mysteries, though some researchers still suspect that a virus is responsible for the disease. Research continues.

  Originally published 23 July 2006

  http://dam.mn/the-sleepy-sickness/

  The Tragic Birth of FM Radio (1933 AD)

  In 1934, much of the world was in the grip of the Great Depression. Unemployment was an epidemic, and many businesses struggled desperately to survive. One notable exception to these economic troubles, however, was the radio industry. Broadcasters in the US were making upwards of two billion dollars a year, and they owed much of their success to the innovations of a brilliant man named Edwin Armstrong. Twenty years earlier he had significantly improved the sensitivity and quality of radio receivers with his invention of the regenerative circuit in his junior year of college, and he went on to further improve them with his Super Regenerative circuit and Super Heterodyne receiver. These laid the foundation for the success of radio broadcasting-- in fact, almost any radio you buy today will still incorporate these innovations. But in 1933, Armstrong brought about an even more revolutionary change in the broadcasting business: FM radio.

  In spite of these brilliant technical achievements, Armstrong saw little financial benefit from his inventions. Many of his ideas were plundered by unscrupulous people, a trend which ultimately led to Armstrong's tragic and premature death.

  The first of Armstrong's technology troubles began in 1922 when he lost a patent lawsuit for the rights to the regenerative circuit. A man named Lee De Forest had patented the same invention in 1916-- two years after Armstrong's patent was granted-- and sold the rights to AT&T. A long and bitter legal dispute followed, which progressed all the way to the US Supreme Court. Utterly failing to grasp the technical facts in question, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of De Forest, and stripped Armstrong of his patent. Despite the scientific community's certainty that Armstrong was the inventor of the regenerative circuit, Armstrong lost the patent battle which spanned twenty-one years, thirteen court rulings, and thirty judges.

  In the meantime, between court appearances and legal meetings, Armstrong continued to innovate. He started to work on the "static problem" which plagued early radios, despite some colleague's assertion that static could never be eliminated. At the time, radio was transmitted via Amplitude Modulation (AM), which varied the amplitude of the radio waves. This gave the signal a much wider reach, but resulted in poor-quality sound. Armstrong sought to improve the signal quality by instead varying the radio waves' frequency, creating Frequency Modulation radio (FM). He won a patent for FM radio in 1933, and the following year he did his first field test when he broadcast an organ recital in AM and FM signals from the top of the Empire State Building. The AM broadcast was static-filled and the FM broadcast was clean and rich. Listeners were shocked by the difference. Later, in experiment after experiment he proved the on-air differences and improvements in sound.

  Just before World War 2, Armstrong successfully lobbied the FCC to create an FM broadcast spectrum between 42 and 50 MHz. He built an experimental station and 410-foot tower at a cost of $300,000 in Alpine, New Jersey. He started a small network of high-powered FM stations in New England called the Yankee Network, and began manufacturing receivers to pick up the broadcasts. To all who heard the fledgling network, its quality was astounding. The broadcasts could deliver the entire range of human hearing between 50 and 15,000 cycles while AM delivered only 5,000 cycles. A club for FM radio enthusiasts started in pre-war New York, and launched its own magazine called FM. Armstrong was trying as hard as he could to prove the superiority of FM broadcasts... all people had to do was listen.

  Armstrong went on to prove that FM was capable of dual-channel transmissions, allowing for stereo sound. This capability of FM could also be used to send two separate non-stereo programs, or a facsimile and telegraph message simultaneously in a process called multiplexing. He even successfully bounced a FM signal off the moon, something not possible with AM signals.

  Of course AM radio was big business in the pre-television days, and there were powerful people who wanted things to stay as they were. Innovation only meant smaller profits for them. At that time there was no more influential man in radio media than the founder of RCA, David Sarnoff. Known as "The General," Sarnoff controlled all the technical aspects of radio; he also created the NBC and ABC television networks. He was also an important early supporter of television and developed the current NTSC standard for TV that we have used for over 60 years.

  Seeking to kill FM radio before it could threaten his profits, Sarnoff's company successfully lobbied the FCC to have the FM spectrum moved from Armstrong's frequencies to the ones we use today: 88 to 108 MHz. That move immediately rendered Armstrong's Yankee Network obsolete, along with all of the FM radio sets which had been produced. The cost to re-equip the stations for the new frequencies would be enormous. The FCC ruling said that the 40 MHz band was to be used for the new television broadcasts, in which RCA had a heavy stake. RCA also had an ally in AT&T, which actively supported the frequency move because the loss of FM relay
ing stations forced the Yankee Network stations to buy wired links from AT&T. The deck was stacked against the future of FM broadcasting.

  Matters became worse when Armstrong became entangled in a new patent suit with RCA and NBC, who were using FM technology without paying royalties. The cost of the new legal battle compounded the financial burden that the problems with the Yankee Network had caused. His health and temperament deteriorated as the FM lawsuit dominated his life. His wife of thirty-one years, unable to cope with his worsening personality and financial strain, left him in November of 1953. RCA's greater financial resources crushed Armstrong's legal defences, and he was left penniless, alone, and distraught.

  Edwin Armstrong (1890-1954)

  On February 1, 1954, Armstrong's body was discovered on the roof of a three-story wing of his apartment building. In despair, he had thrown himself out the window of his thirteenth-floor New York City apartment sometime during the night. He died believing he was a failure, and that FM radio would never become accepted. Through the years Armstrong's widow would bring twenty-one patent infringement suits against many companies, including RCA. She eventually won a little over $10 million in damages. But it would take further decades for FM radio to reach its potential.

  Following Armstrong's death, television's emerging popularity ended radio's golden years. Slowly, listeners learned that FM radio was clearly better for musical high fidelity than AM broadcasts. Radios started to have an FM band included with the AM band in the late 1950s and 1960s. By the 1970s, FM audience size surpassed that of AM, and the gap has been growing ever since. Today over 2,000 FM stations broadcast in the United States, and FM signals are commonly used for microwave relay links and space communications. Edwin Armstrong's innovations clearly changed the world; had he not taken his own life, it is likely he would have lived long enough to watch his dream come to fruition.

  Originally published 10 August 2006

  http://dam.mn/the-tragic-birth-of-fm-radio/

  Monster Rogue Waves (1933 AD)

  For centuries sailors have been telling stories of encountering monstrous ocean waves which tower over one hundred feet in the air and toss ships about like corks. Historically oceanographers have discounted these reports as tall tales-- the embellished stories of mariners with too much time at sea. But in the last eleven years scientists have discovered strong evidence indicating that such massive rogue waves do exist. The phenomenon has become the subject of recent scientific study, but their origin remains a mystery of the deep.

  About one ship is lost every week in the world's oceans, mostly due to poor seamanship or severe weather. But it now seems likely that at least a small percentage of sea disappearances are due to encounters with these destructive waves. Over the years experienced captains have made very credible reports of meeting behemoth waves which appear spontaneously, cause extensive damage to their ships, and shrug back into the sea just as mysteriously as they had appeared. One account describes the appearance of a giant wave trough which onlookers likened to a "hole in the sea", followed by a twelve-story-tall "wall of water." To further compound the mystery, some such waves have been said to appear mid-ocean, and often in calm weather.

  On the open sea, waves can commonly reach seven meters in height; or even up to fifteen in extreme weather. In contrast, some reported rogue waves have exceeded thirty meters in height. Curiously, rogue waves are often seen traveling against the prevailing current and wave directions; and unlike a tsunami, rogue waves are localized and very short-lived. Most modern merchant vessels are designed to withstand about fifteen tons of pressure per square meter, but these unusual waves exert a pressure of about one hundred tons per square meter. Needless to say, a rogue wave means big trouble for any ship it meets.

  Encounters with rogue waves have been rare but memorable. In 1933 in the North Pacific, the US Navy transport USS Ramapo triangulated a rogue wave at thirty-four meters in height. In 1942, the RMS Queen Mary was transporting 15,000 US troops to Europe when it was hit by a twenty-three meter wave and nearly capsized. The giant vessel listed by about 52 degrees due to the impact, after which it slowly righted itself.

  In 1978, the 37,000-ton MS Munchen radioed a garbled distress call from the mid-Atlantic. When rescuers arrived, they found only "a few bits of wreckage," including an unlaunched lifeboat with one of its attachment pins "twisted as though hit by an extreme force." It is now believed that a rogue wave hit the ship, causing it to capsize and sink. No survivors were ever found.

  In 1996, the Queen Elizabeth 2 encountered a rogue wave of twenty-nine meters, which the Captain said "came out of the darkness" and "looked like the White Cliffs of Dover." London newspapers said that the captain situated the vessel to "surf" the wave to avoid being sunk.

  Despite these and other encounters with rogue waves, scientists long rejected such claims as unlikely. Anecdotal evidence is often unreliable, so researchers used computer modelling to predict the likelihood of such massive waves. Oceanographers' findings indicated that waves higher than fifteen meters were probably very rare events, occurring perhaps once in 10,000 years. That all changed in 1995 when a freak wave hit the Draupner North Sea oil platform. The oil rig swayed a little, suffering minor damage, but its onboard measuring equipment successfully recorded the wave height at nineteen meters.

  More recently, satellite photos and radar imagery have documented the existence of numerous rogue waves, and it turns out that they are far more common than previously thought. During a three-week study in 2001, radar scanning detected ten monster waves in a 1.5 million square kilometer area. Satellites and direct observations have also established that rogue waves can happen anywhere, but they are most numerous in the North Atlantic and off the western shore of South Africa. In spite of their frequency, monster waves rarely meet with sea vessels because they are so short-lived.

  The cause of rogue waves is still an area of active research. One theory under investigation cites "constructive interference," which is a result of several smaller waves overlapping in phase, combining to produce one massive wave. Another working hypothesis is based on the "non-linear Schrödinger effect," in which energy is "soaked up" from neighboring waves to create a monster wave. Still other researchers are looking into the possibility that wave energy is being focused by the surrounding environments, or that wind action on the surface is amplifying existing effects.

  Science is necessarily skeptical of things which are beyond our observation, but now that rogue waves are a measurable phenomenon they have been officially upgraded from legend to reality. This recent finding is very telling about how little we really know about our world's oceans, and how many secrets the sea must still hold.

  Originally published 28 October 2006

  http://dam.mn/monster-rogue-waves/

  History's Youngest Mother (1939 AD)

  In 1939, a man from a small village in the Andes mountains carried his five-year-old daughter Lina into a hospital in the town of Pisco, Peru. He indicated to the doctors there that the shamans in his village had been unable to cure the large tumor that was developing in her abdomen. Upon examination, the doctors learned that the swelling was not, in fact, a tumor.

  Dr. Gérado Lozada was told by Lina's father that she had been having regular periods since age three, but they had stopped about 7 1/2 months prior to the visit. He listened to the young girl's abdomen with a stethoscope, and heard a tiny second heartbeat. An X-Ray was also performed, after which there could be no doubt... to the doctors' astonishment, five-year-old Lina Medina was about seven months pregnant.

  Soon she was transferred to a hospital in the city of Lima, where specialists confirmed the pregnancy. Lina's father was arrested on suspicion of incest, but due to lack of evidence, he was released. On Mother's Day in 1939, when Lina was just under 5 years and 8 months old, her baby was delivered by cesarean section. It was a healthy 6 pound baby boy, and was named Gerardo after the doctor who originally diagnosed Lina's pregnancy, Dr. Gérado
Lozada.

  Further research into the case was done by Dr. Edmundo Escomel, one of Peru's preeminent physician-researchers at the time. He discovered that Lina's menstruations had actually begun when she was only eight months old, much sooner than her father had originally reported. Escomel also documented the results of a test which indicated that Lina had the ovaries of a fully mature woman. He concluded that the reason for the early development of her reproductive system must must have been from a pituitary hormonal disorder. But the identity of Gerardo's father was never determined.

  For a long time, Gerardo was raised in the Medina household as though he were Lina's baby brother. Two years after Gerardo was born, American child psychologist Mrs. Paul Kosak was permitted to speak with Lina at some length. As quoted in the New York Times in 1941, Mrs. Kosak said, "Lina is above normal in intelligence and the baby, a boy, is perfectly normal and is physically better developed than the average Mestiza (Spanish Indian) child. She thinks of the child as a baby brother and so does the rest of the family."

  The case of Lina Medina has often been alleged to be a hoax, but the story has been confirmed many times over the years by physicians in Peru and in the U.S.. Sufficient evidence was gathered that there is little room for doubt, including photos, X-Rays, biopsies, and thorough documentation by a number of doctors.

  Gerardo grew up believing that Lina was his sister until he was aged ten years, when taunting by schoolmates led him to discover the truth. In 1972, when he was 33 years old, his younger brother was born... his mother Lina had married, and had a child with her new husband.