FUN FACT #6

The song we now know as "Mah Na Mah Na" from the Muppets has a less wholesome history than most people are aware. It was written by Piero Umiliani and originally featured in an Italian softcore faux-documentary called Svezia, inferno e paradiso (Sweden: Heaven and Hell).





Now it will be stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

POSTER DUMP

Roy G. Biv

Roy G. Biv

Firehouse

Clara-iris Ramos

Dead Meat Design

unknown

Have a seat. Have a sandwich

Hi boys and girls, my name is Ryan the Truck and I do a comics blog called Big Loose Comics. Ms. Stonehenge has kindly asked me to contribute to this one as well, so now my greasy tentacles are all over the blog-o-sphere. An alternate title for this 'specially-for-this-site strip could be "The Dangers of Drinking and Drawing."

THE OCCULT ORIGINS OF NASA

Jack Parsons was born in October of 1914. He never had any formal education past high school but his work in the field of rocket science led to the spaceflight technology we have today. In his early twenties he joined a group of Caltech student who called themselves the Suicide Squad. Using equipment scrapped together from junkyards, the group performed many experiments in the Arroyo Seco canyon as they tested different rocket fuels. Eventually the military got wind of these experiments and asked the group to help them build the first jet propelled plane. The Suicide Squad evolved into Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) and eventually created a jet airplane, making way for the coming space age.

What made Parsons such an interesting character was his interest in magick and the occult arts. For years he studied the writings of Aleister Crowley. It is said that he would invoke Crowley's Hymn to Pan before every rocket test launch. He joined the Agape Lodge of Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis and quickly made his way up the ranks of the organization. He was made head of the Pasadena lodge and selected to be Crowley's successor.

In 1945, Parson was introduced to L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard moved in with Parsons and his girlfriend and started collaborating on a sex-magick ritual in an attempt to contact inter-dimensional entities. A few months later Hubbard conned Parsons into investing in a phoney business venture and split with Parsons' money and his girlfriend. (The church of Scientology claims that Hubbard was sent in by naval intelligence to "break up black magic in America.") Around this time, Parsons was asked to leave JPL because he had a habit of leaking classified information. Parsons and Crowley also began to drift apart and Parsons buried himself in occult studies. He died in 1952 by blowing himself up during a home-lab experiment involving explosive substances (so they say).

Flash forward to 1957. The Cold War was heating up and the USSR was ahead of the US in the space race after launching Sputnik. The army hired JPL to build and launch the first American artificial satellite. The following year, JPL was taken over by NASA and became the agency’s primary planetary spacecraft center. The JPL is still part of NASA today. Jack Parsons is often regarded as the father of the American space program and even has a crater on the moon's dark side named after him.

These are all facts. But if you want to dig deeper, there's a lot of interesting speculation. Some conspiracy theorists believe that occultism is still guiding NASA to this day. There does seem to be a lot of sacred geometry utilized when NASA decides when and where their landings should take place and many high ranking astronauts (including Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong) are Masons. If you want to travel further down that rabbit hole I recommend you start with the works of Richard Hoagland.

BONUS FEATURE: Check out what Robert Anton Wilson has to say about it!

POSTER DUMP

Roy G. Biv

C. M. Ruiz

Brian David Downs

Erin Klauk

Gorgon

Gorgon

THE MONEY PIT OF OAK ISLAND

In 1795, 18-year-old Daniel McGinnis noticed strange lights coming from Oak Island, just off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. When he went to investigate, he didn't find the source of the lights but he did discover a strange circular depression in a clearing in the woods with a block and tackle hanging from a tree overhead. He a few friends returned soon afterwards with tools in hand and started digging. The first thing they found was a layer of flagstones. They hacked their way through and soon found a layer of oak logs. Ten feet further down, they found another layer of logs. Ten feet after that...another layer of logs. After about 30 feet, they gave up but were determined to return and solve the mystery.

Eight years later, they returned to the pit with the help of a group called The Onslow Company and started digging. They dug and dug and still kept coming across wooden platforms (sometimes oak, sometimes birch) every ten feet. At sixty feet, they found a layer of coconut fiber. At ninety feet, they dug up a stone tablet inscribed with mysterious symbols. Some people claimed that the writing indicated that there was buried treasure 40 feet below. Others claimed is was religious writing. Whatever the case, the stone was lost so we may never know. Shortly after discovering the stone, the tunnel began to flood and excavators were unable to pump the water out. They tried digging another pit parallel to the first one and tunneling over but that one flooded as well.

It was later discovered that flooding was caused by a long underground tunnel that stretched all the way from a cave on the beach to the pit. When excavators poured red dye into the pit, the dye surfaced at least three different places around the island. It is debated wether these waterways are naturally occurring or part of some elaborate booby trap built to protect whatever is at the bottom of the pit.

In 1849, a group called the Truro Company began taking core samples. They discovered more layers of wood and what they described as "metal in pieces" but not much else. Many different groups tried to dig further and failed, sometimes resulting in death. Six people have died in excavations of the pit.

Over the years, excavators were able to dig deeper and deeper into what is now called "the money pit." Core samples turned up a piece of sheepskins parchment with writing on it, a cement chamber sealed in clay, and a stone fragment with inscriptions similar to the tablet found before.

To this day, no one has been able to dig or sample past 170 feet. Some scientist claim that the whole thing is just a naturally occurring sinkhole. Others think that there must be treasure at the bottom, hidden by Captain Kidd or Blackbeard. Many theorize that the pit was dug by errant Knights Templar to hide the Ark of the Covenant. We just might never know.