Wiki Wormhole enters the dog days of summer with bark mitzvahs and math pants

Bark Mitzvah: If you’re Jewish, and a dog wedding isn’t quite cutesy and pretentious enough for you, consider throwing a bark mitzvah. While the ceremony—which is generally held for a dog turning either 13 years or 13 months old—feels like a recent hipster affectation, people have been kvelling over their mutts since at least 1958, when a Beverly Hills couple threw a bash for their cocker spaniel.

Pep (dog): Not every dog gets a big party; some get thrown into the slammer. Such was the case for Pep, a year-old black lab who, in 1924, was sent to the Eastern State Penitentiary for murdering a cat. (Click through for the only dog mugshot you’re likely to ever see). After widespread public outrage, prison officials admitted that Pep was in fact a very good boy, and he was simply there to boost inmate morale. Governor Gifford Pinchot had received multiple puppies as gifts and felt “over-dogged,” prompting him to re-home Pep. He was a success as a therapy dog. As the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, “No despairing man brooding in his cell can feel that he is forgotten by God and man, who will feel Pep’s loving tongue caressing his languid hand.”

Shrimp Fishing On Horseback In Oostduinkerke: Riding horses to catch shrimp is tradition in this coastal Belgium town. Running the horses through shallow water upsets the seabed, startling shrimp enough that they jump out of the water, right into the horsemen’s nets. The technique used to be widespread in Belgium; now it’s only practiced by 13 households in Oostduinkerke, but it’s still a beloved cultural institution, with an annual shrimp festival attracting 10,000 tourists each year.

The Beatles In Film, #Unmade Films: We assume readers are well familiar with the likes of A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, and various documentary films about the Fab Four. So we’re going to focus on the movies the Beatles didn’t make. The Western A Talent For Loving was pitched to the Beatles as a follow-up to Help!; they rejected it, and it was eventually released in 1969 with Richard Widmark, Chaim Topol, and Cesar Romero in the lead roles. Wikipedia mentions the title Shades Of A Personality but offers no information. (Outside sources suggest Lennon would have starred as a man with multiple personalities, with the other Beatles playing the voices in his head.) 

The Beatles themselves were interested in a film version of The Lord Of The Rings, which was nixed by J.R.R. Tolkien himself. Off-Wikipedia sources suggested that John, Paul, George, and Ringo would have played Gollum, Frodo, Gandalf, and Sam, respectively, which is pretty spot-on casting; Tolkien hated rock music because his neighbors had a noise garage band and he held the Beatles personally responsible, so he turned them down.

There was also interest in the Fab Four playing the Three Musketeers, but that never materialized. Richard Lester, who directed the group’s first two films, would eventually adapt Musketeers himself in 1973, with Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, Richard Chamberlain, and Michael York as Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and d’Artagnan, and Raquel Welch, Faye Dunaway, Christopher Lee, and Charlton Heston rounding out the cast.

Food Lion: We’re really only interested in one detail from the regional supermarket’s page. The chain was originally called Food Town, but there were other competing Food Towns, so owner Ralph Ketner changed the name to Lion because he’d only need to buy two new letters for the signs on the front of each store.

Further down the Wormhole: Food Lion started to run into naming issues when it expanded from its home base in North Carolina into Virginia, home of several unaffiliated Food Towns. The state, which is for lovers, per the state slogan, is losing its many barrier islands to sea level rise. Threatened coastal areas may not be the literal end of the world, but that doesn’t stop Wikipedia from including it in a “Global catastrophic risks” tab alongside various world-ending scenarios. We’ll look at the list of dates predicted for apocalyptic events next month.