#destroytheday

Victor Noir part 3 A life-sized bronze statue was sculpted by Jules Dalou to mark his grave, portrayed in a realistic style as though he had just fallen on the street, dropping his hat which is depicted beside him. The sculpture has a very noticeable protuberance in Noir’s trousers. This has made it one of the most popular memorials for women to visit in the famous cemetery. Myth says that placing a flower in the upturned top hat after kissing the statue on the lips and rubbing its genital area will enhance fertility, bring a blissful sex life, or, in some versions, a husband within the year. As a result of the legend, those particular components of the otherwise verdigris (grey-green oxidized bronze) statue are rather well-worn and shiny. In 2004 a fence was erected around the statue of Noir, to deter superstitious people from touching the statue. However, due to supposed protests from the “female population of Paris,” in fact led by French TV anchor Péri Cochin, it was torn down again. #destroytheday https://www.instagram.com/p/CFU2_d4h6Mj/?igshid=486g22p9475e

Maxfield Parrish (1870 – 1966) was an American painter and illustrator active in the first half of the 20th century. He is known for his distinctive saturated hues and idealized neo-classical imagery. Parrish's artistic career lasted for more than half a century, and helped shape the Golden Age of illustration and American visual arts. During his career, he produced almost 900 pieces of art including calendars, greeting cards, and magazine covers. Parrish took many commissions for commercial art until the 1920s, and was earning over $100,000 per year by 1910, at a time when homes could be bought for $2,000. John Jacob Astor was an American businessman, real estate developer, investor, inventor, and writer. He was thought to be among the richest people in the world at that time with a net worth of roughly $87 million (equivalent to $2.3 billion in 2019). In 1906, Astor built the Knickerbocker Hotel, located at the southeast corner of Broadway and 42nd Street in Times Square, Manhattan, New York City. The Knickerbocker was a showcase of luxury and quickly became a part of the New York social scene. The $3.3 million hotel contained 556 rooms and luxurious restaurants and bars on the first three floors. Astor had approached Maxfield Parrish and commissioned him to paint a 30-foot-long mural of Old King Cole (from the nursery rhyme) for the bar. Parrish was paid $5,000 to create the massive artwork, comprised of three joined canvas panels. Astor requested that his own likeness be used as the model for King Cole in the painting, as he felt he was basically the King of New York at the time. Whether it was on a dare from Parrish's art world friends, or his own private dig towards Astor, Parrish decided to paint the King passing a royal fart. The attendants in the painting, his guards, servants, and fiddlers three, can all be seen smirking with some almost holding their noses. The bar became so popular that it was nicknamed "The 42nd Street Country Club." New York's wealthy and elite enjoyed many cocktails there throughout the years, overlooked by Parrish's subtlety painted fart joke. #destroytheday https://www.instagram.com/p/CEcEJxWBGN3/?igshid=1m43k8w14vasy

The Cardiff Giant was one of the most famous hoaxes in United States history. It was a 10-foot tall purported “petrified man” uncovered on October 16, 1869, by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. “Stub” Newell in Cardiff, New York. Both it, and an unauthorized copy, made by P.T. Barnum are still on display. The giant was the creation of a New York tobacconist named George Hull. Hull, an atheist, decided to create the giant after an argument at a Methodist revival meeting about Genesis 6:4 stating that there were giants who once lived on Earth. The idea of a petrified man did not originate with Hull, however. In 1858 the newspaper Alta California had published a bogus letter claiming that a prospector had been petrified when he had drunk a liquid within a geode. Some other newspapers also had published stories of supposedly petrified people. Hull hired men to carve out a 10-foot-4.5-inch-long block of gypsum in Fort Dodge, Iowa, telling them it was intended for a monument to Abraham Lincoln in New York. He shipped the block to Chicago, where he hired Edward Burghardt, a German stonecutter, to carve it into the likeness of a man and swore him to secrecy. Various stains and acids were used to make the giant appear to be old and weathered, and the giant’s surface was beaten with steel knitting needles embedded in a board to simulate pores. In November 1868, Hull transported the giant by rail to the farm of William Newell, his cousin. By then, he had spent $2,600 on the hoax (Nearly $45,000 in 2013 dollars adjusted for inflation). Nearly a year later, Newell hired Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols, ostensibly to dig a well, and on October 16, 1869 they found the giant. One of the men reportedly exclaimed, “I declare, some old Indian has been buried here!” #destroytheday https://www.instagram.com/p/CE63JAXhHWw/?igshid=1fxqdxeu6j8t1

The Michigan Dogman part 2 In 2007, a digital copy of an 8mm film surfaced on the internet. Dubbed “The Gable Film” because of a small paper tag attached to the box containing the film reel, it quickly attained viral status among cryptozoological enthusiasts. Many people believed it was the long-awaited conclusive evidence of the existence of the Michigan dogman. The entire film is 3.5 minutes long, and appears to have been shot in the mid to late 1970s, due to the clothing and hair styles by the persons in the film, which were most prominent during that time. Early scenes are typical home movie fare: children riding snowmobiles, a German shepherd, a person chopping wood, etc. Toward the end of the film, the photographer is shooting from inside a moving vehicle traveling along a dirt road, when he spots what appears to be a gorilla-like animal moving in a field on the passenger side of the vehicle. The photographer exits the vehicle and seems to pursue the creature for several seconds. Then it appears again, facing the photographer from a ridge about 150 feet away. After a few seconds the creature charges. Rapid movement of the camera suggests the photographer is fleeing the attack. In the last five seconds of the film, there is a flash of teeth and muzzle, and the camera drops to the ground, lying on its left side. A second film titled “The Gable Film Part 2” surfaced later on which seemingly shows a police investigation of the incident recorded in the first reel during which the officers investigating the scene examine a bifurcated corpse (presumably the body of the person recording the previous reel). After years of analysis and debate, the film was finally revealed as a hoax in the finale episode of MonsterQuest on March 24, 2010. #destroytheday https://www.instagram.com/p/CE9d5gnhN6z/?igshid=1u0wvdwdajef7

The Mimizuka (literally “Ear Mound”, often translated as “Ear Tomb”), an alteration of the original Hanazuka (literally “Nose Mound”) is a monument in Kyoto, Japan, dedicated to the sliced noses of killed Korean soldiers and civilians as well as Ming Chinese troops taken as war trophies during the Japanese invasions of Korea from 1592 to 1598. The monument enshrines the severed noses of at least 38,000 Koreans killed during Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasions. The shrine is located just to the west of Toyokuni Shrine, the Shinto shrine honoring Hideyoshi in Kyoto. Traditionally, Japanese warriors would bring back the heads of enemies slain on the battlefield as proof of their deeds, however, the process of nose collection in lieu of heads became the feature of the second Korean invasion. Remuneration was paid to soldiers by their daimyo commanders based on the number of severed heads they submitted to collection stations, where inspectors meticulously counted, recorded, salted and packed the heads bound for Japan. However, because of the number of civilians killed along with soldiers, and crowded conditions on the ships that transported troops, it was far easier to just bring back noses instead of whole heads. Japanese chroniclers on the second invading campaign do not fail to mention that the noses hacked off the faces of the massacred were also of ordinary civilians mostly in the provinces Gyeongsang, Jeolla, and Chungcheong. In the second invasion Hideyoshi’s orders were thus: “Mow down everyone universally, without discriminating between young and old, men and women, clergy and the laity—high ranking soldiers on the battlefield, that goes without saying, but also the hill folk, down to the poorest and meanest—and send the heads to Japan.“ #destroytheday https://www.instagram.com/p/CFXqi4xhF1_/?igshid=1vqh6xxbbroid

Louis Byron “Lou” Perryman (1941 – 2009), also known as Lou Perry, was an American character actor. He first became involved in the film business back in 1961 while on leave from the US Army. After getting out of the Army in 1968, Lou worked as a production manager at the Texas Pavilion at the World’s Fair in San Antonio. He then worked as a cinematographer, sound man and production manager at the Filmhouse in Austin from 1969 to 1971. In addition, Perryman worked as a sports cinematographer for both NCAA and ABC TV from 1969 to 1977. In 1974, Lou worked behind the scenes on the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre film as an assistant cameraman. Perryman acted in a number of small roles both on television and in films. He played a hostile redneck bar patron in “The Blues Brothers” (1980), a construction worker helping install the Freeling’s pool in “Poltergeist” (1982), and the sheriff in the acclaimed award-winning indie hit “Boys Don’t Cry” (1999). He was memorable as the affable radio station engineer L.G. McPeters in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2” (1986), where he was hit in the head with a hammer by Bill Moseley’s character and later has his face sliced off. Perryman also starred in Texas independent filmmaker Eagle Pennell's The Whole Shootin’ Match and Last Night at the Alamo. Among the plays Lou appeared in are “The Time of Your Life,” “Fool for Love,” “The Night Hank Williams Died,” and the especially well-received “In the West, ” which Perryman also co-wrote. Lou was tragically murdered in his home in South Austin, Texas on April 1, 2009, by a 26-year-old man named Seth Christopher Tatum. Tatum, had recently been released from prison after serving several years for aggravated robbery. He had a history of mentally illness (diagnosed as bi-polar), and drug addiction. A month earlier, Tatum had stopped taking his medication because he felt they were not helping him. The night before the murder, he asked his mother to try and admit him into the hospital, but she told him she could not afford it. #destroytheday https://www.instagram.com/p/CCd4XRNhM7q/?igshid=ykk2tkhd0rbz

Maxfield Parrish's Old King Cole mural part 2 The Knickerbocker closed down and was converted to an office building when it was sold in 1920. In 1932, the Parrish mural made its way to the St. Regis Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was installed at The King Cole Bar there in 1948, where it was restored in 2013, and is still on display. As for John Jacob Astor, it is unknown if he ever learned about Parrish's flatulant prank. Astor died in the sinking of RMS Titanic during the early hours of April 15, 1912. He was the richest passenger aboard the ship. #destroytheday https://www.instagram.com/p/CEcERdBBXvJ/?igshid=ye00bgqptx9e

The Mimizuka part 3 The Mimizuka is almost unknown to the Japanese public. A plaque, which was later removed, stood in front of the Ear Mound in the 1960s with the passage, “One cannot say that cutting off noses was so atrocious by the standard of the time.” Most guidebooks do not mention the Ear Mound, and only a few Japanese or foreign tourists visit the site. The majority of visiting tourists are Korean - Korean tour buses are often seen parked near the Ear Mound. In 1982, not a single Japanese school textbook mentioned the Ear Mound. As of 1997, the mound is referred to in about half of all high-school history textbooks according to Shigeo Shimoyama, an official of Jikkyo, a publishing company. The publisher released the first Japanese text book mentioning the Ear Mound in the mid-1980s. The Education Ministry of Japan at that time opposed the description as “too vivid” and pressured the publisher to reduce the tone and also to praise Hideyoshi for religiously dedicating the Ear Mound in order to store the spirits of the killed people. In the 1970s under the Park Chung-hee administration, some of the officials of the Korean government asked Japan to level the monument. However, most Koreans said that the mound should stay in Japan as a reminder of past savagery. #destroytheday https://www.instagram.com/p/CFXqy_hBk4v/?igshid=1xrp2hcspgo01