FACT! #67

Courtesy of jimscoins.
I don't recall ever seeing Washington with a copper visage. Probably just a spray tan or something.

No, what you're seeing isn't Photoshopped. That is indeed a US quarter minted on a penny planchet. This kind of error is one of the more jarring and unique ones out of the dozens of errors out there. The error is happened when the wrong kind of planchet is fed into the wrong coin stamping press. In this case, the planchet for pennies was fed into a stamper meant for quarters.

Courtesy of coinquest.
"In your face FDR! My coin is bigger than your coin!"

There are numerous cases of this error out there; different denominations, different combinations of material and sometimes... The same denomination with different composition. That's the case with the insanely rare (and very, very valuable) 1943 Copper Cent and 1944 Steel Cent.

Courtesy of Wikipedia.
In 1943, the US Mint switched to steel for pennies that year due to copper being used for the war effort.

Courtesy of coinsdig.
In 1944, the US Mint switched back to copper planchets for pennies.

All of these coins go for premium prices, with the 1943/1944 composition swapped coins going for insane prices. The 1943 Copper Penny fetches in the tens of thousands, with some examples going for around $100,000 in mint condition. The 1944 Steel Penny tends to fetch a slightly higher average price, with only 25 - 30 known examples; they tend to fetch between $75,000 and $110,000.

Courtesy of jimscoins.
Penny stamped on a stamped Dime. "I am an abomination!"

Slightly related to the wrong planchet strikes would be double denomination coins. When a coin has already been stamped, it sometimes ends up getting stamped again with another die. The last die to stamp the coin is usually the strongest (in the case above, the penny die was the last to stamp), but details of both are visible (such as the "ONE DIME" to the top right of the above coin.)

FACT! #66

Courtesy of Wikipedia. The original prototype burned the retinas of artists using it.

Perhaps best known for his creation Betty Boop and his work on the Popeye and Superman cartoons; Max Fleischer (b. 1883 - d. 1972) also pioneered a number of techniques used in animation and was quite the innovator. Today, we'll be focusing on one of the more elaborate techniques he created, along with the machine named after it; Rotoscoping and the Rotoscope.

Rotoscoping is the process of tracing the outline of live action footage and was first used in his "Out of the Inkwell" series in 1915 when he filmed his brother, David, in a clown suit as he performed... Which led to the creation of his first major character, Koko the Clown. Max designed and patented the Rotoscope and went on to use it quite extensively at his animation studio. The Superman cartoons from the 1940s used rotoscoping heavily. Though a personal favorite use of it would have to be in 1932's Betty Boop cartoon "Minnie the Moocher" where he used the technique to animate Cab Calloway's dance moves.

Courtesy of moviefest2012. Why Cab Calloway was rotoscoped into a walrus ghost is beyond me. Then again, pot wasn't exactly illegal until 1937. Mystery solved?

Though Fleischer Studios used it extensively, they weren't the only animation studio to use it. Disney used it in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Ralph Bakshi used it quite a bit in the 1970s, most famously in 1978's "Lord of the Rings." Later uses could be found in a-Ha's "Take on Me" music video, "He-Man and The Masters of The Universe" cartoon, both in the 1980s, and Don Bluth's "Titan A.E." released in 2000. Even Star Wars got into the game using the technique to add the glow to the lightsabers.

The prominence of rotoscoping has waned quite a bit, but it has lasted the test of time. It's still being used and is fondly remembered as a unique technique. There were other innovations made by Max Fleischer (which I'll get around to eventually), but this was perhaps the most inventive.

FACT! #65

Courtesy of Wikipedia. They didn't even believe in truth in marketing, the soda wasn't even OK.

OK Soda is what happens when you try to can the alleged essence of Generations X/Y and their anti-corporate, apathetic, angst-filled and disillusionment. Conceived by Coca-Cola in 1993 and test marketed in a number of "hip" cities that summer, OK Soda had a limited life span on grocer's shelves.

The marketing campaign was created by Portland, Oregon based Wieden & Kennedy and centered around a sense of irony that only the teens and 20-somethings in the 1990's seemed to grasp. Unfortunately for Coca-Cola, it turns out that they were the victims of irony when their campaign was met with apathy and a general anti-corporate attitude.

There were a number of different cans styles that were released, above is just four of them. The artwork was done by Daniel Clowes and Charles Burns. There was also an "OK Soda Manifesto" that was released with the soft drink:

1. What's the point of OK? Well, what's the point of anything?
2. OK Soda emphatically rejects anything that is not OK, and fully supports anything that is.
3. The better you understand something, the more OK it turns out to be.
4. OK Soda says, "Don't be fooled into thinking there has to be a reason for everything."
5. OK Soda reveals the surprising truth about people and situations.
6. OK Soda does not subscribe to any religion, or endorse any political party, or do anything other than feel OK.
7. There is no real secret to feeling OK.
8. OK Soda may be the preferred drink of other people such as yourself.
9. Never overestimate the remarkable abilities of "OK" brand soda.
10. Please wake up every morning knowing that things are going to be OK.

Don't worry, that feeling of your brain melting out of your ears is really just blood. Okay, maybe you should go to the hospital. It's definitely a natural reaction to reading something like. For the kids of today, imagine that in hipster speak... It's essentially the same thing. This is precisely why you don't try to corner the market exclusively on the counter-culture, you really just end up lampooning yourself.

Since it left the shelves in 1995, it has attained a bit of a cult status. The flavor is, apparently, more like Diet Coke than the supposed, marketed taste of "fruity." Though I haven't been able to find anyone or any reviews of the taste back from 1993... Then again, I didn't exactly do much research into this one.