Four Stories About Chicago [video]

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More Than Anyone Needs To Know About Old Pencil Sharpeners

From MadeInChicagoMuseum.com –

For many of us, the sight of an old desk-mounted, mechanical pencil sharpener brings back some high-sensory childhood memories—the thrilling turn of the crank, the low roar of rotating metal, the confusingly alluring scent of fresh cedar shavings. Maybe you were a kid in the 1930s, or, more likely, you attended a cash-strapped public school that was still using the same classroom supplies 50 years later. Either way, the odds are good that you encountered one of these durable devices made by the Automatic Pencil Sharpener Company, aka APSCO—a brand so prominent, it was like the No. 2 Pencil of pencil sharpeners.

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Is This 23 Year-Old The Next Einstein?

According to secondnexus.com –

Harvard University believes the world’s next Einstein is among us — and she’s a millennial. At age 23, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski is already one of the most well-known and accomplished physicists in the U.S. The Cuban-American Chicago native graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in just three years with a 5.0-grade point average, the highest possible, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard with full academic freedom — meaning she can pursue her own study on her own terms without staff interference.

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Woman Fights $105,000 in Parking Tickets

The ChicagoTribune reports –

Jennifer Fitzgerald has been fighting more than $100,000 in parking tickets on her junk car after she says it had been abandoned by her former boyfriend for three years in an employee parking lot at O’Hare International Airport.

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Think The US No Longer Makes Anything? Think Again – Chicago Is The Fake Vomit Maker To The World

CollectorsWeekly reports –

Have you ever stopped to contemplate the existence of rubber barf? It opens up enough philosophical quandaries to make your head spin. Who would ever think of such a thing? Why would he feel the need to manufacture it? Fortunately, Stan and Mardi Timm, the foremost experts on famed novelty company H. Fishlove & Co., have the answers to these vexing questions. The couple even got a personal tour of the factory where “Whoops,” the original fake vomit, is still churned out. Chicago gag kingpin Irving Fishlove, son of the company’s founder, loved nothing more than a good prank—particularly when the prankster gets a laugh at the expense of his unwitting target. So when presented with the first prototype of latex puke in the late 1950s, he howled with laughter and declared that he loved it.
“It is a secret recipe,” Mardi says. “But I think we know what’s in it. It’s got foam pieces cut up, and it’s got latex. But the actual recipe, nobody outside the company knows that.”

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Chicagoans Enjoy Giant Marilyn Monroe Statue

The Chicago Sun-Times is not entirely happy with the new Marilyn Monroe statue, but real Chicagoans are enjoying it.

Whatever the case, that beyond-kitschy, 26-foot sculpture recreating the moment when Marilyn Monroe’s dress flies up in “The Seven Year Itch” is threatening the Bean as the most photographed attraction in Chicago. So we’re going from taking pictures of our own reflection to taking pictures while looking up the skirt of a giant woman. This is not an upgrade. Men (and women) licking Marilyn’s leg, gawking up her skirt, pointing at her giant panties as they leer and laugh. It’s not that the sculpture is shocking or sexist or obscene — but it’s definitely bringing out the juvenile goofball in many of us.

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New Release On 8 Track – Seriously!

It’s reported that Cheap Trick is releasing their latest album on 8 track tape. Priced about $30, sales should be slooooooow.

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