Via the Smithsonian —  This toy “Cape Canaveral Satellite Monitor” bus is a tin toy produced in Japan for export to an American market. In post-WWII Japan, producing space-themed “tin toys” originated as a way to tap into an international market for “penny toys” or cheap playthings. By the late 1950s, however, this home-crafted industry had become a successful international business manufacturing creatively-designed, complex toys with moving parts and/lights that competed successfully with Western toymakers. This toy’s maker, Yonezawa Toys, Co., Ltd., was one of the biggest manufacturers in Japan of tin toys, many of which carried space themes. The design of this toy, which features lithography created to appeal to an American market, tapped into the American fascination with the new NASA human spaceflight program while also showcasing the toy’s battery-powered features.

Who doesn’t love a delightfully cheesy pulp fiction book cover? I know I do, so here’s a bunch of good ones, curated for maximum enjoyment by yours truly. Some of these were selected for the artwork, some for the titles or description, and some for both. As you can probably guess, some of these may not be safe for work so I’ll put the racier ones after the jump.

And lest you think pulp novels were all about sex, there was also murder and space. But yeah, mostly sex.

The Three Coffins, John Dickson Carr (1949)

D for Delinquent, Bud Clifton (1958)

Passion’s Harvest, Peggy Gaddis (1953)

Halo for Satan, John Evans (1948)

Hot Dames on Cold Slabs, Michael Storme (1950)

Marijuana Girl, N.R. DeMexico (1951)

Sin in Space, Cyril Judd (1961)

Gutter Star, Dorine B. Clark (1954)

Good Luck to the Corpse, Max Murray (1952)

Pikes Peek or Bust, Earl Wilson (1950)

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When most Americans think of Yugoslavia technology, this is probably the first thing that comes to mind (at least for those of us who remember the ’80s):

But if the trailer to the upcoming documentary Houston, We Have a Problem! is to be believed, the former Yugoslavia has a pretty rad space program back in the day. So rad, in fact, that the United States bought the whole thing from Marshal Josip Broz Tito in March of 1961.

Then, just two months later, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech before Congress announcing America’s ambitious plan to land a man on the moon. In September 1961 he gave a speech at Rice University that included the now-famous quote, “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…”

Herman Potočnik

It’s certainly an interesting proposition, and one which the team of researcher/writer Boštjan Virc and co-writer/director Žiga Virc claim will contain other evidence showing that Yugoslavia’s space program was at one time the most advanced in the world.

The film credits Herman Potočnik and his 1928 book Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums – der Raketen-Motor (The Problem of Space Travel – The Rocket Motor) with inspiring, among others, Wernher von Braun, one of the fathers of both German rocketry and the American space program.

I certainly have no idea how accurate any of these claims are but it sure looks like a fascinating documentary. Houston, We Have a Problem! is set for a Spring 2013 release, and here’s that trailer I mentioned. God I miss the Cold War.

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Words.  Who has time for them, right?  I know I don’t, and you probably don’t either.  So, inspired by Jason Huff’s AutoSummarize project of the 100 most-downloaded copyright-free books, I decided to gather a broader sampling of humanity’s greatest achievements in the form of books, speeches, songs and other works, and run them through Microsoft Word’s ever-handy AutoSummarize feature.  Prepare to expand your mind in 10-sentence fragments.

Moby Dick

by Herman Melville

white whale, shirr! The White Whale, the White Whale!”

“WHAT whale?”

White Whale—no.”

Ship, old ship! The Dying Whale.

The Whale Watch.

Man, man! “The whale! “The whale, the whale!

The Book of Genesis

19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

16 Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons’ wives with thee.

1 Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee:

9 Then Abimelech called Abraham, and said unto him, What hast thou done unto us? 3 Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father;

come, and I will send thee unto them. 9 Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt: come down unto me, tarry not:

10 And thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy children’s children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that thou hast:

19 The sons of Rachel Jacob’s wife; Joseph, and Benjamin.

2 Gather yourselves together, and hear, ye sons of Jacob; and hearken unto Israel your father.

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The General Mills Corporation started producing a little-known, citrus-flavored drink mix called Tang in 1959.  It sold pretty poorly for more than half a decade, until the company noticed that it was being used by NASA’s Gemini space program.  They latched onto that as a marketing angle, and fifty years later Tang is still synonymous with outer space and astronauts.  So much so that many people mistakenly believe that Tang was developed for the space program.

It didn’t take long for General Mills to cash in on the 1969 moon landing, as this ad demonstrates:

Notice the little blurb at the bottom that says “Chosen for Apollo astronauts in outer space”?  Makes for a great sales pitch, except it’s not entirely true.  According to both Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, Tang was not on board during the Apollo 11 mission (which, let’s face it, is the only one people care about besides Apollo 13).  But hey, why let facts get in the way of good marketing?

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