Dusty Springfield

Did you know …

That ancient Egypt wasn’t the only place that made mummies? It’s true!

In the 1960s, Springfield, Missouri, also had a thriving mummy industry! I don’t know if it was a cult thing or some kind of tourism ploy, but Springfield was cranking out mummies like you wouldn’t believe! Normal mummies! Dog mummies! Grandpa mummies! If you had a body that you kinda wanted, but weren’t sure what to do with it, you’d get it mummified in Springfield.

So why don’t we see any “Come to Springfield for the Weather, Stay for the Mummies!” highway signs anymore? Because there was a series of strangling deaths in 1968, and pretty much everyone blamed the mummies. Of course, it would later turn out that the chief of police was a sociopath, but the mummy industry never got back on its feet (as it were).

Dummy Down

What does Old Scratch have for us today? Pull a fact from your carpet bag, Scratch, and tell us what we’ll learn …

Did you know …

That mummies used to be so abundant that paint manufacturers would grind them up to make “mummy brown” paint? It’s true!

First produced in Europe in the 16th century, mummy brown was largely composed of pitch, myrrh, and the ground-up flesh of Egyptian mummies. By the early 20th century, however, demand for mummy brown oustripped the supply of mummies, and the eponymous ingredient became too scarce for production to continue. Mummies were not reproducing fast enough, or even, it seems, at all.

The widely accepted explanation for this, among archaeo-biologists, is that mummy sex is just so gross that not even mummies want to see it, much less participate in it. It’s like two filthy branches fighting each other, and one of them has an erection. Yuck!