This is really a fascinating article by David Wong.  He came up with 14 photos of famous people that aren’t in general circulation, and published them.  My fans are Martin Luther King, Steven Hawkings before ALS claimed him,  a very  young, bearded Bill Clinton with Hillary, and a young Joseph Stalin that shows movie-star good looks for the guy.

Here is the beginning of the article:

When you step out the door, you’re playing a role. Whether you’re a hippie, stock broker, police officer or biker, you dress the way the world expects you to dress, you act the way the world expects you to act. So you can imagine how much more intense this is for celebrities, whose very careers depend on managing a public image down to the molecule.

But even they can’t keep the occasional image-shattering photo from leaking out to the public …

#14. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Pool Hustler

Via Biography.com

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who, when seeing this photo, immediately hear “Werewolves of London” in their heads, and those who do not. That is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Chicago, showboating in a pool match with local civil rights leader Al Raby.

And no, this isn’t one of those photo ops where a public figure poses with a prop to look like regular folk. King was a hell of a pool player — he took up the game in college almost 20 years earlier, and in the early days of the civil rights movement allegedly won the respect of local gang members by playing (and presumably beating) them at it.

Which is amazing, considering that a man who would attempt a shot like that in the middle of a match is probably something of a sore winner. “Looks like you lose again, Johnny Switchblade! Now pardon me while I do a victory lap around your pool hall while riding my cue like a horse.”

#13. A Young, Cool Stephen Hawking, Standing With His Bride

Via Hawking.org.uk

On one hand, none of us probably thought that Stephen Hawking was born in a wheelchair. But as a pop culture figure, his wheelchair and electronic voice are his thing, and against all logic you find it hard to think of him any other way, like how you can’t think of Hulk Hogan without the tan and mustache.

That photo up there is from 1965, when a 23-year-old Hawking married Jane Wilde. That was after his diagnosis with ALS, the disease that would put him in the wheelchair (note the cane). But just a couple of years before that, he had no idea he had a degenerative disease — he was a healthy, active, drinking college student at Oxford:

Via Stephen Hawking: Master of the Universe

Via Stephen Hawking: Master of the Universe
Seconds after this picture was snapped, his pants hit the floor.

Then, one day he noticed he was having trouble keeping his hands steady, and once fell down a flight of stairs. Hey, best to go get it checked out, right? Could be, like, an ear infection or something throwing off his balance. That’s when the 21-year-old (now studying for his Ph.D. at Cambridge) was told he’d be bedridden soon, and dead within a few years, a prognosis that is true for almost every ALS patient. Hawking, somehow, is still alive 50 years after his diagnosis.

#12. Young Bill Clinton Wants to Crash on Your Sofa for a While

Click on the following link to see Bill Clinton and the rest: 14 Photographs That Shatter Your Image of Famous People | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/14-photographs-that-shatter-your-image-famous-people/#ixzz1uJMknZ4m

Floyd Mayweather has caused a stir lately by claiming, yet again, that Manny Pacquiao could not possibly have risen through as many weight classes as he has without chemical help. And yet — a simple analysis of the two fighter’s rise in weight over the course of their respective careers shows that Mayweather himself has risen just as much as Pacquiao has–the main different being simply that Pacquiao started earlier in life as a professional.

The following chart correlates the two fighters.

Two things astonish me:

1. That Mayweather is so stupid that he doesn’t know that a simple analysis like this refutes his entire argument.

2. That there aren’t hundreds of charts like this floating around the boxing blogs and sports outlets.

How can the world just let Mayweather get away with this kind of garbage without calling him out on it. In the past, I’ve not ranted — it’s not my style. But this time, it deserve a rant.

Wake up, people. It’s simple math.

The info that went into the charts came from a nice bit of analysis done by Jake Eman at ProBoxing, and I think him for doing to research to come up with the numbers. All I’ve done is put everything onto a graph so that you can see Manny’s history superimposed over Mayweather’s. I love what it shows.

(Click on it to enlarge and see full-sized version of the chart).

The reason Mayweather gets away with making claims about Manny is generally that he started his own professional career at 130 lbs — but then he was 19, going to 20, when he did that. He fought at 108 when he was 16, just like Pacquiao did — only Mayweather was an amateur at 16 while Pacquiao was already a pro.

It’s interesting to also consider what’s happened to Manny at the highest weight classes in terms of his punching power. The last time he landed a devastating knockout was at 140 against Ricky Hatton. At 147 against De La Hoya he was devastating but didn’t even knock ODH down — he just cut him to shreds with jabs up the middle until Oscar said “no mas” and quit on his stool. Then it was Cotto — a great fight, but a 12th round TKO that came about as the result of the accumulation of Manny’s punches. Then the Clottey Turtle Show which didn’t prove anything but definitely didn’t result in a knockout, and finally Margarito. All of that is consistent with Manny being a natural 140 pounder, and fighting one to two classes above it he’s not a devastating power puncher but rather has to wear down the opponent.

I hesitate to post this, because apparently I’m only about a year late in discovering this incredible music. But what the hell…never said I was cool. Better late than never. This is completely mesmerizing, and is intriguing on so many levels. Wow. My apologies for not discovering it sooner. And to my Pinoy friends….if you’re fans of Freddie Aguilar like I am , give this a listen! I worked with Freddie on one album, and I remember his test of whether something was working or not was — did it make your hair tingle and stand up. This does that.