Milk is one of the most popular and consumed beverages on the planet. Most of us drink it in our everyday life. We have it in our coffee and tea. We have it in our cereal. The list goes on and on.
Here are ten stories that take the phrase “Got Milk?” (and American advertising campaign slogan to encourage the consumption of cow's milk) to the extreme.
1The lactating bandit that sprayed breast milk as a distraction for stealing
I've heard of “Stick ‘em up,” but, in this case, would it be, “Squirt ‘em up?”
In October 2014, a woman in Darmstadt, Germany entered a pharmacy and asked to buy a breast pump. After handing over a €200 note to pay for her €20 purchase, she suddenly uncovered one breast and used her fingers to squirt milk from it at the person behind the register who was giving her €180 in change.
The “Milk Sprayer” (as authorities dubbed her) “sent a stream of milk into the face of the employee,” according to police spokesman Ferdinand Derigs.
The woman then moved on to a second cashier and shot a stream of mother's milk into that person's face as well. Police say after the breast-attack the woman fumbled around the store looking like she was confused. It wasn't until after she was forced out the door with her breasts still on show, that employees discovered €100 missing from a cash register.
So far, there has been no word on if the boob-spraying bandit has been, ahem, busted.
2The bodybuilders who believe breast milk will help them bulk up
Gym-lovers are always looking for new ways to bulk up, and the latest supplement they believe will do the trick is that of human breast milk. Bodybuilders have been buying breast milk supplements on websites like Only the Breast in hopes of it helps them increase in muscle mass.
Sure, “liquid gold,” as breast milk is often referred to, is packed with vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and special proteins, but is it healthy for adults? Fitness and nutrition trainer Troy Martin from TM Fitness is aware that trainers believe breast milk helps them add bulk more effectively than cow's milk, and that the growth hormones found in breast milk were also beneficial in strength training, but he says there is no research to back up these claims.
Although there is some evidence that a component of breast milk, known as HAMLET might be useful for treating cancer, a spokesperson for the British Nutrition Foundation isn't so sure that it's beneficial for anything else. The spokesperson explained: “Breast milk is designed specifically to match a baby's requirements and has all the nutrients, vitamins and minerals they need to grow. It is not designed to support adult health.”
3The girl who almost died from drinking milk
In March 2015, young Jessica Bamford of Plymouth, England was innocently drinking some milk from an Iceland market when a “white hardened substance” started to form around the six-year-old's mouth. Her parents, Dwayne and Samantha Bamford, immediately took their daughter to the emergency room at a nearby hospital.It was discovered that Jessica had most likely consumed false nail glue.
It looks like the Bamford's love of milk – along with the two four-pint cartons of whole milk Mr. Bamford bought from the market – has gone down the drain.
“The last thing you're expecting is hardened adhesive in a food product,” said Mrs. Bamford. "It's just disgusting.” The angry mother has since contacted the market that sold the tainted milk and the dairy that supplied it. The store has apologized and has vowed to investigate the incident.
4The man who landed a Guinness World Record by squirting milk from his eyes
Who thought you could squirt milk out of your eye to land yourself a Guinness World Record? Ilker Yilmaz of Turkey did; that's who!
In 2004, the Turkish construction worker poured milk into his hand, snorted it up his nose and squirted it 9.2 feet out of his left eye into a coffee cup, setting a new world's record.
The Turkish squirter can squirt milk out of his eye thanks to an anomaly in his tear gland. Yilmaz beat out Mike Moraal of Vancouver, British Columbia. He set the existing record of 8.745 feet in France in 2001. Who knew there was such a record to break?
5The cows that make milk more efficiently by listening to Lou Reed
In 2001, a pair of psychologists from the University of Leicester found that slow music played on a large dairy farm increased cows' milk production by 3% as compared to fast music, which had no effect. Scientists think these slow jams helped relax the animals, and let them produce milk in higher quantities.
Slow tunes that seemed to work are “Perfect Day” by Lou Reed, “Bridge over Troubled Water” by Simon and Garfunkel, “What a Difference a Day Makes” by Aretha Franklin, and “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M. According to NPR, a theatrical reading of “The Merry Wives of Windsor” also proved popular for increased milk production.
Folks at Canada's Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food are a little more skeptical. According to the Canadians, no one has repeated these experiments since 2001. They gather that if the music has an effect, it probably has nothing to do with the songs themselves. Instead, the music likely drowns out all the disconcerting sounds coming from those dreaded milking machines.
Since cows dig R.E.M. so much, maybe farmers can add their song, “Man On the Moooon” or music by the Moooody Blues to the cow milking playlist that includes the old classic, “Moooon River.”
6The music legends that broke up over spilt milk
As with any band with a history as rich and long as Aerosmith's, there are bound to be high points and low points. By the mid-1970s, Aerosmith was the possibly the most popular band in America. The quintet from Boston had huge, multi-platinum selling albums like Toys In the Attic and Rocks and played hits like “Walk This Way and “Dream On” to sold-out stadiums of adoring fans.
But with great success comes great excess. The band recorded the album Draw the Line in a drug-induced haze with animosity between band members rapidly growing. By the time the boys from Boston recorded their next album, they had reached a breaking point. The album was delayed due to escalating arguing, drug use and lack of songs. In addition to all of this, guitarist Joe Perry owed the band $80,000 in room service bills from the last tour. Their manager suggested he write a solo album and pay off the bill from the record company advance.
The breaking point came when Joe Perry's wife, Elissa, poured milk over bassist Tom Hamilton's wife, Terry, during an argument after a show in Cleveland. Joe Perry quit the band shortly after.
The band soldiered on with middling success until Perry re-joined in 1984. 1987's quintuple platinum Permanent Vacation solidified Aerosmith as “America's favorite rock and roll band” once again and they haven't looked back since.
Singer Steven Tyler best summed up the 1979 split with his fellow “Toxic Twin” when he told the press, “We split up over a glass of spilt milk – can you believe it?”
7The Japanese bars that serve breast milk shots
As we mentioned, breast milk supplements have become a “thing” among weightlifters and bodybuilders, but if you're more of a non-athletic type or you just feel the need for some mother's milk, head on down to Tokyo's Kabukicho district which is home to several lactation bars.
If you go to the Bonyu Bar in the district and plonk down 2,000 yen, young mothers are more than willing to fill up a shot glass of their very own breast milk for you. For 5,000 yen, you can suck the milk straight from the teet of one of three mothers all under the age of 30.
Whatever happened to the good ol' days of sake and shochu?
8The toy dairy cow that made milk
There was no shortage of toys kids could play with in the 1970s. Slinkys, Tonka Trucks, Barbie Dolls, G.I. Joes…the list is endless.
One toy that debuted in that wacky decade has been all but forgotten and perhaps for good reason. Does anybody remember Milky the Marvelous Milking Cow? Yeah, I didn't think so.
Milky was a plastic toy cow that “drank” when kids would dunk its head in water, squeeze its tail, and thanks to special tablets in the cow's stomach, kids could coax some kind of “milky” substance out of the plastic cow's udders. Since it wasn't real milk, it probably wasn't wise for the young, would-be farmers to drink it. Udderly disgusting.
Milky the Marvelous Milking Cow came out in 1978 by Kenner Toys. That same year, Kenner also made the original Star Wars line of figures and toys which sold about 40 million units, and poor Milky was quickly sent out to pasture for good.
9The Walmart “cow” that became a criminal
It seems like weird stuff frequently happens at Walmart. So much so, there are a whole slew of websites dedicated to strange clientele and occurrences at the retail mega-chain.
In April 2011, an 18-year-old man entered a Virginia Walmart at around 10:35 pm dressed in a cow suit. He swiped 26 gallons of milk and according to police reports, proceeded to crawl – not walk – out of the store. (We think he was trying to emulate the movement of cattle.)
Witnesses told police that the criminal cow gave out the stolen milk to people passing by the superstore.
Police rounded up the milk burglar at a local McDonald's. Apparently, the cow costume he sported didn't have a mask, and the suspect just happened to have a cow costume in the back seat of his car.
10The president who died after drinking milk
Some U.S. presidents met their fate by assassination, like Lincoln and Kennedy. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day, July 4th, 1826. Other presidents died of natural causes after their terms in office. And then there's poor President Zachary Taylor, who died after eating iced milk and cherries.
Zachary Taylor, the 12th U.S. president, died after eating cherries and drinking iced milk on a hot 4th of July in 1850 while attending festivities at the newly dedicated grounds upon which the Washington Monument would be erected. Later, Taylor drank a lot of water to wash down the cherries and ice milk. He died on the evening of July 9, after four days of suffering from symptoms that included severe cramping, diarrhea, nausea, and dehydration.
Rumors quickly spread that he had been poisoned. Taylor was a Southern plantation owner and conspiracy theorists believed that he was killed by Southerners who considered him a traitor for opposing the expansion of slavery into the territories.
Outbreaks of cholera, a deadly disease caused by bacteria, frequently occurred during the summer months in hot, humid Washington during the 1800s. Taylor could have contracted cholera from the water or iced milk that he drank that hot afternoon. Others believe that Taylor died of gastroenteritis caused by the highly acidic cherries combined with fresh milk.
In 1991, in an effort to put the controversy to rest, Taylor's body was exhumed and tested for arsenic. The tests concluded that he had not been poisoned, but that didn't satisfy some who argued that the tests were flawed.
That event didn't stop future presidents from drinking milk, however. Cows lived on the grounds of the White House until Pauline the cow was the last bovine to live there. She made milk for President Taft's consumption.