Anyone familiar with Carl Barks’ classic 1953 The Master Rainmaker will remember how Donald Duck skillfully shaped clouds and sprinkled them with rain seed to provide farmers with just the right amount of rain in the right place. In 1983, Barks commented that the inspiration for his story “grew out of the news events of the period. Rainmaking by seeding clouds was getting a lot of publicity, and who could perfect the technique better than Donald Duck - and overdo it more disastrously?”

Cloud seeding was actually invented by atmospheric scientist Bernard Vonnegut, who in 1946 discovered the potential of silver iodide for the process. The first attempt at cloud seeding was in upstate New York during 1946 when a chemist caused snow to fall after he dumped six pounds of dry ice into a cloud from a plane.

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I wish everyone around the world a very merry Christmas — Arthur.

The house where Walt Disney was born, 2156 N. Tripp in Chicago, is up for auction on eBay starting at US$ 250,000. The four-bedroom, frame house was built in 1893 by Disney’s father, Elias, and it is was where Walt Disney was born 105 years ago this week. The house was posted by owners Radoje and Barbara Popovic. (more…)

A spectacular collection of over 11,000 Golden Age comic books from a wide variety of genres has been discovered in the garage of a 19th century house just outside New York City. The original-owner comics collection has the greatest range and depth of any such collection to have been discovered during the past three decades. Now the entire collection is headed to the auction block, to be offered to the comic collecting public with no reserves. (more…)