Tag: magnetic boy

Move over, Magnetic Boy: there’s a new hero in town

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Ah-CHOO!

Magnetic Boy, the subject of a few earlier articles of mine (see “Practical Uses for Magnetic Boy in the metal industry” and “An Update on Magnetic Boy“), as well as the subject of international attention for his supposedly magnetic properties, has in recent weeks been given a run for his money. Money is something he should have plenty of, since he could just go beach-combing for buried treasure whenever he’s short on cash, and return home with a bounty of gold doubloons stuck to his chest – but I digress. As if it’s not bad enough that insinuations of fraud and “fake” continue to circulate, including accusations of our wonder-boy being just “plump and sticky” rather than being a true prophet of a new age, he has also had to put up with other relatively plump and sticky copycats trying to steal his spotlight by claiming – and demonstrating — their own magnetic powers. Maybe it’s something in the water, but all of these Magnetic Boys seem to hail from somewhere in the Eastern European area. Or maybe it’s simply a geographic hotbed of X-boys, spawned from the high ratio of radioactive exposure this geographical area has seen in the last generation.

Be that as it may, there are two individuals whose own talents frankly surpass those of Magnetic Boy. The first is a 20 year-old Chinese man by the name of Wu Zhilong, who can make bowl-like objects suction to his belly so firmly that he can actually pull a car –loaded with 12 people – from them. Unlike Magnetic Boy and his copycats, this guy doesn’t claim to have any magical properties at all, other than incredibly strong stomach muscles. Apparently, he “accidentally” discovered this power back in 2008, but he didn’t start using it to drag vehicles down the street until this year. I do wonder how he “accidentally discovered” that he could drag incredibly heavy objects by attaching them to a bowl suctioned to his stomach. I mean, what? – “There I was one day, kicking back and minding my own business, when a large metal bowl which just so happened to be attached to an anvil fell onto my stomach…” Zhilong’s dream is to be in the Guinness Book of World Records. If I had his power, my dream would be to have my own tow truck business. You can see his amazing feat for yourself in this video right here.

But in my opinion, this next gentleman really does take the cake: he can sneeze bullets. Darco Sangermano is an Italian from Turin– so we already know he’s either a total mama’s boy or a super macho man, or a combination of the above. (And yes, I am allowed to say this because I am very happily married to a wonderful Italian man from Modena). In any case, our friend Darco happened to be taking a stroll in downtown Naples with his girlfriend during a rowdy New Year’s celebration, when he was hit in the temple by a .22 caliber stray bullet. The bullet went through the right side of his head, behind his eye socket and then lodged somewhere in his nasal passage.

Bleeding heavily but not dead, Darco was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. While waiting to be seen by doctors (excuse me? He was SHOT in the HEAD and he had to wait to see a doctor? What kind of medical emergencies do they HAVE in Naples anyways?), he suddenly sneezed – and the bullet shot out of his right nostril. Darco went on to make a full recovery. The fact that he has a pretty big nose may have helped. I’m not sure a .22 caliber bullet would even fit through my right nostril. Which doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be trying right now, if I happened to have a .22 caliber bullet handy.

A man who thwarts death after getting shot in the head, and then casually sneezes out the bullet in the waiting room of the hospital. WOW. Now that’s a MAN. That’s Italy’s answer to Chuck Norris. That’s the “je-ne-sais-quoi” X-factor that just makes a woman swoon and another man nervous. That’s right up there with the goose who lays the golden egg, except the male version.

Move over, Magnetic Boy. I, for one, have a new hero.

-Anja Wulf

An update on Magnetic Boy

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It must be something in the cyberspace ether, but two weeks after I wrote my last blog article on “Magnetic Boy”, our not-so-little friend from Croatia seems to be creating a new internet sensation. Thanks perhaps to the fact the he’s now a few years older and his body mass has increased as well, to disproportionately high levels in fact, “Magnetic Boy”is now said to be able to get up to 25 kilos of metal to stick to him at any given time. Do a quick Google search and in short order you will find an epic recent photo of him wearing a household iron on his bare chest, which I can only hope wasn’t on at the time. I bet he’s really good at finding the car keys as well.

There are also sites and medical experts stepping up to the plate to dismiss him as a fake. What is interesting is they aren’t disputing the claim that metal objects can stick to this kid. They aren’t saying that any of the photos or videos circulating of him are doctored or photo-shopped. Nevertheless, they are claiming that for the past three years, his parents have been part of a long-term scheme to sell him out as a circus freak. (On this note, I’m including a photo in this article of him with his family. They look like real city slickers, don’t they? The kind that would definitely have it in them to create a long-term hoax that is sweeping the cyberworld by storm. Real snake-oil salesmen, the lot of them).

To reiterate, none of the “experts” who are weighing in on Magnetic Boy are stating that any of his magnetic powers are fake. Instead, they are claiming that ANY human is capable of sticking metal objects to their body. According to the naysayers, any human can place a metal object onto a part of their body which is smooth and hairless and get it to stick there. A Facebook group called “We are all Magneto Boy” shows photos of different people doing just that. Apparently it is just as simple as taking a metal object and placing it against a smooth and hairless part of your own body.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Croatia, Magnetic Boy’s repertoire of superhuman powers has now also expanded to include the power to heal by touch, which is also being attributed to his magical magnetic properties. According to his own grandpa, Magnetic Boy cured his stomachache simply by placing his hands on his stomach. According to his grandpa, Magnetic Boy’s hands emitted a powerful heat and his stomachache was cured. I am definitely willing to concede that grandpa did not have an entirely unbiased point of view, and that his own strong belief that his grandson had the power to heal him may have been enough to do just that.

With that said, I hope that by now I have given you personally enough time to try to stick some metal onto your body.

If you haven’t already tried to do so by now, then I am frankly surprised and a little bit disappointed. I admit that as soon as I read the claim that any human can do this, I grabbed the next available metal object – in this case, a fork – and tried to glue it to my face. And just to provide a bit more context, I happened to be sitting in a very pretty little waterfront tapas restaurant at the time. Luckily for me, I was already a paying customer by then, so the proprietor didn’t ask me to leave when he saw me do so.

If you haven’t tried it yourself by now, then you must be very curious if it worked. If you have tried it yourself by now, then you already know the answer for yourself.

However, I assume that if you are reading this, you are somehow already involved in the metal industry and you make a habit of surrounding yourself with large metal objects on a regular basis.

So rather than tell you if it worked or not, I will instead leave you with a (rhetorical) question: in your daily business operations, have you noticed a propensity in yourself to bring your work home with you – literally? Do you regularly find yourself peeling large oil tanks or ship hulls or snow plows or giant steel cylinders off your chest on your drive home from work?

I didn’t think so.

Although I can’t speak for all y’all, Magnetic Boy still has my vote. And until I figure out a way to stick a fork to my face that doesn’t actually involve stabbing myself with it, he will continue to have my vote.

And, if this article inspired you to actually try sticking a metal object to your body, I would REALLY appreciate it (if only to satisfy my own curiosity) if you left a comment that informed us all of the results.

-Anja Wulf

Practical Uses for Magnetic Boy in the metal industry

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Once again this week, I threw myself wholeheartedly into a Google search for the largest metal object in the world, if only because I know that my scores of avid followers on this blog have all been holding their breath since I brought this subject up in last week’s blog entry. And once again this week, I got completely sidetracked. You would have too, after scanning the Google results for “large metal object”.

Just so you can have a better understanding of what came up on this search, here are a few samples:

“A large metal object drifts slowly through space…”

“An unusually high-velocity large metal object concealed in the nasal septum.”

“Large metal object found located under sea”

“Trapped inside a large metal object flying for ten hours.”

“Large metal object falls from sky in Roosevelt”

“A college student was killed in a freak accident when, according to police, a large metal object fell on him Friday”

“I have a large metal object caked in cement. “

“Have you ever wanted your very own custom-made metal object?

I admit that an unusually high-velocity large metal object concealed in the nasal septum REALLY grabbed my interest for a while, but I just couldn’t figure out how to turn that into something relevant to C Marshall and my thousands of devoted readers on this site. So on went my search, with many detours, until my search fingers were stopped dead in their tracks by the following Google result:

“Magnetic Boy, 7, attracts electronic and metal objects”

The first thing I did, of course, was click on the above and read the information about this Magnetic Boy. It came from a legitimate source and there was no air of “hoaxiness” in it.

Then I watched the video. You can watch it for yourself right here: Magnetic Boy

Folks, this kid is for real. He’s magnetic. Metal is attracted to him and sticks to him. In the video, he’s got forks and knives and the TV remote stuck all over his chest. No one else in his family is magnetic and of course there’s no good explanation for this, but there is no denying that this boy is a human magnet. He’s not allowed near the computer because he makes it go weird. I’m sure he’ll have a lot of trouble with credit cards, cell phones and electronic keys too. For some reason he can even get china plates to stick to him. However, because this is a blog about metal and metal machinery, we don’t really care about the china plates, do we?

Imagine having a magnetic boy of your own. You wouldn’t need a metal detector anymore: you could take him to the beach to find buried treasure, coins and jewelry. Once a huge chest of gold coins gets stuck to his chest, you can cash out and buy yourself a sturdy boat. Now you’re really in business: load up the kid on your boat and head for the high seas. Sooner than later, giant shipwrecks, plane wrecks and other metal objects of all kinds will get sucked to the ocean’s surface and you can help yourself to what you want and sell the rest as scrap metal. Now that you’re the scrap metal king of the world, you can take him to Ghana or Venezuela or Mexico or Nevada to find gold and other underground precious metals. You’ll already have the cash from your scrap metal operation to fund your mining business.

Now you can retire in style and pretty much do what you want. You might feel inclined to contribute to the betterment of humanity by renting out your kid to the military to ferret out terrorist organizations by finding their weapons stashes. Once that mission has been accomplished, you can rejoice that you have now created world peace.

I wasn’t able to find any more recent updates on the Magnetic Boy. Is it possible that he already went underground and had something to do with finding bin Laden’s location?

I wouldn’t rule it out.

-Anja Wulf