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2009-04-22

60s classroom experiment on race changed lives


Elliott, an Iowa teacher, created a now-famous exercise for her classroom of white third-graders. It was the day after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and she was struggling to explain the concept of racism.

She hit upon an idea: For an entire day, she conducted her class as if the brown-eyed children were superior to those with blue eyes. Elliott eventually made headlines, appeared on "The Tonight Show" and became the subject of multiple documentaries.

For those who have wished they had a third arm!

Although noone else can see it, a 64-year-old woman has reported to doctors at Geneva University Hospital the presence of a pale, milky-white and translucent third arm.

After examining the case, the woman's neurologist, Asaid Khateb of the hospital's experimental neurophysiology laboratory, called the rare phenomenon credible.

The arm appeared to the woman a few days after suffering a stroke, doctors said.

But this case of what is known as a supernumerary phantom limb (SPL) is a genuine head-scratcher.

The upshot is that the woman can use the apparitional extremity to relieve very real itches on the cheek. It cannot penetrate solid objects. She does not always perceive the arm but "retrieves" it when needed, doctors told the Swiss news agency.

Khateb said the exact cause of the imaginary arm remains a mystery. Supernumerary limbs are rare. There are only nine known cases of a patient both feeling and seeing an arm.