10 on Illusion

by Leah Baltus and Jeremy Topping
  1. For much of his life, Federico Fellini was known in Italy as Il Mago—the Magician—for his unparalleled blending of illusion with reality in his films. Though he is lauded for his mastery of surrealism, Fellini was a hard-nosed crime reporter (and a caricaturist) long before he was a filmmaker.
  2. Steganography, which literally means covered writing, was invented by the ancient Greeks and used (in the form of invisible ink) during both the Revolutionary War and WWII. Today high-tech forms of steganography involve hiding secret messages in images or sound files on the Internet, as Osama et al showed in their preparations for 9/11.
  3. In 1930, a banjo player turned engineer named Richard Drew invented Scotch MagicTape for 3M. Bette Nesmith Graham, a secretary and mother of Monkee guitarist Michael Nesmith, developed Liquid Paper in 1951 and sold her invention to Gillette in 1979 for $47.5 million.
  4. At least 28 sea vessels and 21 aircraft have gone missing in the Bermuda Triangle, which stretches from the east coast of Florida to Bermuda and back to Puerto Rico. First documented by Christopher Columbus (and later dominated by pirates), the triangle is said to be an area of strange magnetic conditions, unusually little wind or, occasionally, hellfire.
  5. The Itza people sanctified human sacrifices with a particular cacao beverage, which they fed to the sacrificed humans believing their hearts and blood would turn to chocolate. Alfred Hitchcock used Bosco Chocolate Syrup to simulate blood running down the drain in the 1960s Psycho shower scene.
  6. In 1902 a French magician named George Méliès released his 14-minute epic, A Trip to the Moon, one of the first films to use special effects and camera tricks. The Matrix: Reloaded, a modern-day special effects bonanza, spent approximately $100 million on special effects, and its freeway scene alone lasted 18 minutes.
  7. Planets move west-to-east across the sky. But every 26 months, Mars appears to start moving backward—goes retrograde—for two months when the faster-moving Earth passes it. On Aug. 27, 2003, Mars will enter perihelic opposition and be closer to Earth than ever in human history.
  8. Guns N’ Roses’ 1991 double-album, Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, debuted at Billboard’s No. 1 and No. 2 spots. Axl allegedly named the albums after a painting by the same name. The painting, by 1980s East Village neo-Expressionist bigwig Mark Kostabi, became the cover art for Use Your Illusion I.
  9. Every month two primary measures are used to gauge U.S. consumer confidence: the University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment and the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index. Both rely on five questions about business conditions, employment and family income.
  10. Because rainbows are refractions and reflections of sunlight in reference to the eyes of its observers, no two eyes can see the same rainbow simultaneously. Similarly, each human iris is as unique as a fingerprint, unique as the Greek goddess of the rainbow—Iris.

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