Dream a little dream with us.
Gypsy's Witch Dream Book of Numbers is a lucky number book published in 1972 and based on the principle of dream interpretation. Basically, you have a dream, look up its elements, and find the associated numbers. For example, take an average dream—say you're in an all nude, alcohol licensed strip club on the Turks and Caicos with about 10K in your pockets and the dancers include Anjelique Pettyjohn, Kimiko Nakayama, and Joey Heatherton, along with assorted Miss Universe contestants, and on a small stage in the corner the music is being played live by Shakira, but she's performing Curtis Mayfield's “Give Me Your Love” and the rest of the Superfly soundtrack. You can't decide who to buy a lap dance from, so in order to convince you Anjelique, Kimiko, and Joey begin demonstrating progressively more amazing and shocking contortionist maneuvers, even going so far as to ask you to help them achieve certain positions, at which point your waitress Elke Sommer brings a raspberry Rickey and tells you she's off work now, but go ahead and have a lap dance first, because she'll wait. We'll stop there. So then you go into the dream book and look up “naked,” “island,” “dancer,” and maybe, just to cover your bases, “summer,” “Star Trek,” and “pretzel.” You find the three-digit numbers associated with those items, which you take to the nearest 7-Eleven, buy several Powerball tickets containing those numbers, and win diddly squat. That's basically how the dream book works. Oh, and the cover was painted by mid-century paperback artist Gene Bilbrew. Almost forgot to mention him.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1933—The Gestapo Is Formed
The Geheime Staatspolizei, aka Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established. It begins under the administration of SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police, but by 1939 is administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or Reich Main Security Office, and is a feared entity in every corner of Germany and beyond. 1937—Guernica Is Bombed
In Spain during the Spanish Civil War, the Basque town of Guernica is bombed by the German Luftwaffe, resulting in widespread destruction and casualties. The Basque government reports 1,654 people killed, while later research suggests far fewer deaths, but regardless, Guernica is viewed as an example of terror bombing and other countries learn that Nazi Germany is committed to that tactic. The bombing also becomes inspiration for Pablo Picasso, resulting in a protest painting that is not only his most famous work, but one the most important pieces of art ever produced. 1939—Batman Debuts
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale. 1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves. 1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission.
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