You know, I’m a big fan of those cheesy 1950’s science fiction movies.  Stuff like Forbidden Planet, The Day The Earth Stood Still, This Island Earth… Something about all that big, clunky technical equipment running off vacuum tubes, even to this day, is so much cooler than some unimpressive digital computer deal.  When I saw this Wired article about The Black Hole,  a military surplus store in Los Alamos, New Mexico, I immediately ran to their official website to poke around.

This is probably my favorite thing:  an authentic S-site badge from the Manhattan Project.  For those not abreast on their science fiction or science fact, that’s the project that spawned the first of the atomic bombs. 

Of course, when I saw it, I sent the link around to pretty much everyone with some appreciation of geeky stuff.  And the response was uniformly uninspiring.  Sigh.  Maybe it’s just me, but I think this badge is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen for sale, and I’ve been an eBay user for years.  It’s a piece of American history, and more importantly, the A-bomb ended a war, lead directly to the creation of Godzilla, and spawned hundreds of thousands of science fiction and alternate history movies!

If you don’t think owning a piece of Godzilla history is cool, then, well… you have my pity, because obviously you’re a Gamera fan.