I’ve been inside an electric power plant and stuck my head in the boiler. It was shut down at the time, of course!
Also related to electricity: I was hit by lightning while sitting in my living room last April. Turns out that getting hit by lightning is not as rare as I thought, however, and now I’m a bit jumpy about thunderstorms. Fortunately, it was a very mild hit, and I didn’t even bother to see a doctor.
Oh, and a fun one…Madeline L’Engle came over to my house for lunch once when I was a kid.
For a few years, I had an “in” in Russian emigre society in New York. Roma at Russian Samovar (remember? from Sex And The City? With Mikhail Baryshnikov?) knows me by sight, and we have exchanged drunken compliments several times.
I dunno how esoteric that is really, though. Roma exchanges drunken compliments with lots of people.
I once gave actor Robert Forster advice about the river-tubing trip he was planning for New Braunfels, TX. Halfway through the conversation, the lights went out and we chatted in the pitch-darkness for several minutes. Nice guy.
I played a Theramin. I went to a (very pretentious) show where a couple of guys who apparently were Theramin experts put on a performance. Afterwards, a few members of the audience went to chat with the guys and check out the instruments. I asked to try playing one of them, and the (very pretentious) performer said, “Well, you can try, but it’s almost impossible for an inexperienced person to make anything resembling music.” So I stepped up and played a couple of up-and-down scales immediately. The guy acted all flustered and kind of irritated, but he had acted like such a twit that it was hard to tell whether he was greatly exaggerating the level of skill needed to play the Theramin, or if I am in fact some kind of Theramin prodigy.
On several occasions I’ve carried/held in my (gloved) hands:
[ul]
[li] Drafts of the Declaration of Independence, in Thomas Jefferson’s own hand.[/li][li] Final printed copies of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, dating from 1776 and 1787, respectively.[/li][li] A hand copy of the Magna Carta, dated 1215.[/li][li] The silver inkstand used to sign the original copies of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution now in the National Archives.[/li][/ul]
I’ve stood within six feet of Old Faithful Geyser seconds before an eruption on summer’s day in front of several thousand park visitors. (We were taking water samples. Yes, we got wet.)
I almost knocked Mikhail Baryshnikov flat on his ass because he wasn’t watching where he was walking.
I once told then PM of Australia Paul Keating to his face he was a liar in the speech he just gave seconds earlier. He was not amused.
I own several pounds of very fine volcanic ash from the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
I was once actress Mary Martin’s escort for 30 minutes. What gem of a person she was!
I shook hands (ungloved) and conversed with the Japanese Crown Prince, after being instructed do not approach him, do not touch him (even with gloved hands), and politely bow to him. I was also told he spoke no English. He came up to me, shook my hand and we talked about things, all in English. My superiors failed to read his bio that he spoke English.
I once had the honor of being pushed aside by Crown Prince Hitachi’s bodyguard at the American Museum of Natural History. They didn’t explain who they were or why they did this. My immediate thought was that they were a crowd of exceptionally well-dressed bullies.
I was once in charge of delivering a check for $32 million and change. So I had it in my possession for about two hours. It was made out to the Internal Revenue Service.
[QUOTE=Duckster]
[li] Drafts of the Declaration of Independence, in Thomas Jefferson’s own hand.[/li][li] Final printed copies of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, dating from 1776 and 1787, respectively.[/li][li] A hand copy of the Magna Carta, dated 1215.[/li][li] The silver inkstand used to sign the original copies of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution now in the National Archives.[/li][/QUOTE]
That reminds of the time my brother, a librarian, took me behind the stacks to the rare book collection, which had far too many 1600’s-era books to make them even seem special elsewhere, and several late (or maybe even early!) 1500’s printing books.
I got to view declassified CIA documents on Operation Condor and the U.S. involvement with the assassination of Salvador Allende, the first democratically elected socialist president of Chile.
I frequently pretend to be an amoeba. Does that count? That’s pretty unusual.
I have had a live 50 yr old hand grenade tossed onto my desk. I was Curator of a Military Museum, and the “old fart” (victoria cross) dropped a grenade on my desk and said…“So… what are you gonna do with that, huh!?” I smiled, put it in my desk drawer and called the bomb squad- I had them on speed dial… I guess having the bomb squad on speed dial is pretty esoteric in itself…
we got lots of unexploded ordinance as “donations”
FML
I’ve had beers with Bill Johnson, the bad boy American skier who won the gold medal in the downhill at the 1984 Olympics. This was way after he won the medal but before his terrible accident.
I used to work in the building which supposedly was the site of the first two-way long distance telephone call between Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson, but I can’t find much verification for that claim. The same building also apparently once housed the development lab of photography pioneer Edwin Land.
Along with some members of my immediate family and my Boy Scout troop I was apparently one of the last people to ever ride the Mount Beacon Incline Railway in Beacon NY (several sites indicate it stopped running in early 1978, we rode it in what must have been late 1977. It was practically derelict even then).
I once took shelter from the rain under an F-16 Fighting Falcon.
I went to a relaxed, non-pretentious show about Theremins. They also allowed audience members try their hand at playing the instrument afterwards. While most folks made random noises, I did some sci-fi trills and glissandos. Guy said I was a natural.
When I worked for the New Zealand Wildlife Service in the early 1980s, I handled about 10% of the world population (then thought to be about 50) of the severely endangered Kakapo, or Owl Parrot, as part of and island transfer program. I’ve also worked with or handled many other rare and endangered species.
I used to have an office in the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building on the National Mall. My office was in the turret in the middle of the right side of the building as seen in the photo, reached by a spiral metal staircase.
I’ve gone net-hunting with 20 pygmies in the middle of the Ituri forest in the Congo.
I excavated a 2000 year old well in France. Found a woman’s skull in it. Don’t know what happened to the rest of her.
I also excavated a one day old traditional iron smelting furnace in Tanzania. That was some hot work, I tells ya!
I got to job shadow a Paleontologist at the Alberta Museum (his specialty was the Pleistocene iirc though I was always slightly more fascinated with the Jurassic and Cretaceous but the Dinos are all in Drumheller, not Edmonton). So I got to see behind the scenes there, and I got to hold a mammoth tooth that had been found in a quarry. It was oddly worn, off to the side not top down like they usually are.
It’s on the Alberta Museum website in the virtual tour.
