Pop Culture

First Panda Lady Has Died

Joined by her husband, Jack (left), and brother-in-law Quentin Young is Adelaide “Su-Lin” Young. Photo courtesy of her family. Forget about the fictional “Indiana Jones,” or even the real “Zoology Jones,” for a minute. Recall, please, that women were part of the early exploration adventures too! Ruth Harkness is often remembered as the first woman to have found the giant panda. But why was that first cub named Su-Lin? Here is the rest of the story. After Ruth Harkness’ husband William died as he set out to find the first live giant pandas, she turned to a man only identified [...]

The Mummy’s Yeti

From the new (third) Mummy movie, a first glimpse of their version of the Yeti. It’s white, needless to say. Thanks for the screen capture to Jason Pritchett.

John Phillip Law, Played Sinbad, Dead at 70

John Phillip Law, a tall, blond actor who cut a striking figure as the blind angel opposite Jane Fonda in 1968′s Barbarella (below), as Sinbad in 1974′s The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (above), and as Harry Holt with Bo Derek in 1981′s Tarzan the Ape Man, has died. He was 70. Law died Tuesday, May 13, 2008, at his Los Angeles home, his ex-wife, Shawn Ryan, said. The cause of death was not announced (although privately, on various celebrity obit forums, a fast-moving cancer is being blamed). Born in Los Angeles on September 7, 1937, to L.A. County Deputy Sheriff [...]

Mothman Deaths: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good For several months, there have been no new Mothman news, as it relates to the Mothman Death List. That’s great. Not since 26 January 2007, when a member of the cast of the Mark Pellington-Richard Gere movie, The Mothman Prophecies, died five years after the national release of the film, has there been a well-documented, well-publicized passing of anyone on the cast. (For more details on that 2007 death, click on “Cyrus Bills”.) The void in deaths has been welcome. Or is the absence of information perhaps only a lack of knowledge of such deaths, as the movie [...]

Wiki Weirdness & WV’s Winged Wonder

Okay, the news organizations’ election primary attention shifts to West Virginia today, Tuesday, May 13th, so let’s talk Mothman. Actually, I’m going to use this opportunity to note the sinister editing that regularly takes place at the Wikipedia entry for “Mothman.” I’ve been watching the site because some incredible “political” inputs have occurred with the “Mothman” entry, apparently by skeptics and debunkers inserting words like “claims” and deleting large sections of information. I did not write any of the section, but have dipped in to correct citations, edit slanted words out, and to try to remove mistakes. But what I [...]

1948 “Birdmen” Cases Revisited

You have probably read about the case before. Soon after the sightings and interest in other strange things in the sky, perhaps even thunderbirds and flying men in Washington State, the Zaikowskis were quoted as saying they had seen a “flying humanoid.” The cases have been background to other discussions, as for example, when they were discussed in “The Black Flash of Cape Cod” by Theo Paijmans, about the phantomlike creature that plagued Provincetown in the 1930s, published in Intermediate States Anomalist 13. In 1948, reports of “flying humans” were coming out of two towns, Longview and Chehalis, Washington. On [...]

Celebrity Naming of Cryptids

His name is Bond, Jason Bond. Names are important, and Eastern Carolina University professor of biology Jason Bond has decided to name a new spider he discovered after his favorite musician. You may have already heard the story. It made me wonder after whom various Cryptomundians would name cryptids found to be new species? Heuvelmans? Sanderson? Meldrum? And tied to what cryptids? Bond’s newly discovered trapdoor spider has officially been name Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi. Above is a male specimen of Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi living in Santa Rosa Co., Florida. (Credit: American Museum of Natural History) “There are rather strict rules about how [...]