Tag: Life

December 23, 2009: Kids Say the Darnedest Things

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Reality television reached new heights in October of 2009, as viewers around the world were tethered to their sets by the saga of the “Balloon Boy.” It started shortly before noon when Richard Heene, a Fort Collins, Colorado, handyman, dabbling scientist and father of three boys, called the Federal Aviation Administration to report that a large balloon that had been tied in his family’s backyard  had gotten loose and taken flight. Heene was certain his six-year-old son Falcon had crawled aboard the craft before its takeoff. Heene also phoned a local TV station, requesting a helicopter to track the balloon, and his wife Mayumi called 911.

The homemade dirigible was soon being pursued by two Colorado National Guard helicopters and by search-and-rescue personnel, as well as reporters, on the ground. A runway at Denver International Airport was shut down as the balloon traveled into its flight path. The runaway blimp finally touched down in a Colorado field after a joyride of some 50 miles. Rescue officials quickly discovered the balloon was empty, prompting fears that poor little Falcon Heene had plummeted from on high during the flight. A ground search was initiated. But later that afternoon, Richard Heene made an oops! statement that the boy had been found safe at home, where he supposedly had been hiding.

Conspiracy theorists came out of the woodwork all afternoon and into the evening, voicing their suspicions that the entire incident had hoax written all over it. Then dear little blabbermouth Falcon Heene told his parents during a live interview on CNN: “You guys said we did this for the show.”

In November, Richard Heene pleaded guilty to a felony charge of attempting to influence a public official to initiate a search-and-rescue mission which in turn would attract media attention, frowned on in Colorado; Mayumi Heene pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of making a false report. Falcon Heene pleaded guilty to being a sniveling six-year-old dupe (permissible under Colorado law). They confessed that they staged the incident in an attempt to get their own reality TV show, having gotten the entertainment bug when previously appearing on a program, called “Wife Swap.”

On December 23, 2009, the Heenes were sentenced to perform community service not involving flying objects, and ordered to pay $36,000 in restitution for the search effort. Falcon, it is rumored, will have his own reality TV show, “Throw Your Parents Under the Bus.”

 

 

December 4, 1872: Took a Trip on a Sailing Ship

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Was the Mary Celeste a cursed ship? Three owners of the brigantine built in Nova Scotia in 1861 didn’t fare so well; they all died during voyages. The ship also suffered a damaging fire and a collision in the English Channel. But it was the voyage from New York harbor headed for Genoa, Italy in November 1872 that is the stuff of legends.

On December 4, 1872, the Dei Gratia, a small British brig spotted the Mary Celeste, sailing marycerratically but at full sail near the Azores Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. The captain and crew of the Dei Gratia boarded the ship. The ship was seaworthy although its sails were slightly damaged and there was some water in the hold. Its cargo of 1,700 barrels of crude alcohol was mostly untouched.  Six months’ worth of food and water remained on board, and the crew’s personal belongings were still in place, including valuables. But the ten persons who had been aboard the Mary Celeste had vanished.

The Mary Celeste had sailed into nautical history as one of its most tantalizing mysteries, a classic ghost ship.

Through the years, a dearth of hard facts has created endless speculation and a host of theories as to what might have taken place. Mutiny? Piracy? Killer waterspouts? Just a few of the least bizarre explanations. In an 1884 short story, Arthur Conan Doyle suggested a capture by a vengeful ex-slave. A 1935 movie featured the irrepressible Bela Lugosi as a homicidal sailor killing off the other passengers.

 

The more logical speculators agree that for unknown reasons, the ten passengers (the captain, his wife and daughter, and seven crew members) abandoned the ship in the ship’s lifeboat (which was missing) and disappeared at sea. Hardcore conspiracy theorists are having none of that; they’re sticking with the Bermuda Triangle, sea monsters, and the ever-popular alien abductions.

The Mary Celeste, lived to sail another day, but presumably the curse remained. Her last owner intentionally wrecked her off the coast of Haiti in 1885 in an unsuccessful attempt at insurance fraud.

 

 

 

November 28, 1922: Ghost Writers in the Sky

Posted on by Richard Daybell

It didn’t take long after the advent of flying for crafty marketing types to come up with a way to use it for advertising.   Skywriting was the way showing the most promise: a small airplane spits out magic smoke during a flight, creating text able to be read by someone on the ground.sky Messages naturally run the gamut from the inane to the weighty. Advertisers had a field day.

The first use of skywriting for advertising came on November 28, 1922, when Captain Cyril Turner of the Royal Air Force flew over New York City, spelling out, “Hello USA. Call Vanderbilt 7200.” Within just a few hours, 47,000 people had done just that. And of course operators were standing by at Vanderbilt 7200 to take their orders although no one had any idea what was being sold.

Pepsi-Cola became the first major brand to use skywriting as a medium to reach a mass market with thousands of flights through the 1930s into the mid-1940s. During the following years, skywriting became more sophisticated with the use of coordinated flights by fleets of planes that could deliver longer and more clearly written text messages.

At one point, rumor has it, an ambitious skywriter produced Pride and Prejudice in its entirety, but most observers fell asleep during the first three paragraphs.

November 6, 1982: Antifreeze and Old Lace

Posted on by Richard Daybell

In Arsenic and Old Lace, a delightfully dark stage play adapted into a movie by Frank Capra, Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) has an eccentric family that includes two brothers – one of whom thinks he’s Theodore Roosevelt digging the Panama Canal in the basement, the other a killer who’s had plastic surgery to make him look like Boris Karloff – and two spinster aunts who have taken to murdering lonely old men by poisoning them with home-made elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine, and “just a pinch” of cyanide. Generally, poisoners aren’t as sweet as these two old ladies.

Take the case of Shirley Allen, arrested on November 6, 1982, charged with murdering her sixth husband Lloyd. Shirley certainly wasn’t as sweet as the two old ladies, nor nearly as successful. Her first attempt at poisoning was believed to be an early husband, Joe Sinclair, back in 1968. When his coffee began to taste odd, he didn’t buy the idea that it was the newest flavor of the month, reasoning that Juan Valdez Free Trade Almond Praline Decaf should not give him internal injuries.  Joe went to the police, but no charges were filed. He filed for divorce, however.

Another husband, John Gregg, was not so lucky. He died a year after he married Shirley. He must have sensed that something was amiss because he changed the beneficiary of his insurance policy shortly before he died. Shirley got nothing. As you might guess, she was miffed. A pink-haired, large-bosomed barfly was rather happy, however.

Lloyd Allen was Shirley’s sixth husband. He began to complain of a strange taste in his beer. When Shirley said that it was an iron supplement that would put a tiger in his tank, Lloyd believed her and promptly died. This time she was named as beneficiary of a $25,000 life insurance, but alas her daughter told police about the doctored beers. Toxicology reports confirmed that Lloyd’s body tissue contained a lethal amount of ethyl glycol – antifreeze. Shirley went to prison for life. She was never allowed to work in the prison cafeteria.

 

OCTOBER 31, LONG AGO: THE DEVIL MADE HIM DO IT

Posted on by Richard Daybell

One might assume that the carving of jack-o’-lanterns was a clever promotion by the Association of Pumpkin Growers because there just weren’t enough pumpkin pies being eaten in this world. But as it turns out, folks have been making jack-o’-lanterns at Halloween for centuries. And there’s a proper legend to explain the practice.

It all started with an Irish fellow called Stingy Jack. In addition to being cheap, Jack was a drunkard and a ne’er-do-well. During one of Jack’s benders, the Devil came calling on him with every intention of claiming his miserable soul. As a last request, Jack asked the Devil to have a  drink with him. (It’s a relief to learn the Devil drinks; Hell might not be so bad after all.)

Naturally, Stingy Jack being Stingy Jack had no intention of paying for the drinks, so he convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin that Jack could use to buy their drinks, and the Devil agreed. (It would appear that the Devil is not the brightest candle in Hell.) Once the Devil had changed himself into a coin, Jack stuffed him into his pocket next to a crucifix, which prevented the Devil from changing back into his original form. Jack, now having all the chips in this game, agreed to free the Devil, on the condition that he would not bother Jack for ten years and that, should Jack die during this time, he would not claim his soul. (Jack wasn’t all that shrewd either.)

Drunkenness tends to make time fly, and before Jack knew it, ten years had passed.   And the Devil, ever prompt, came calling for Jack’s soul once again. And no last drink this time, the Devil said. Then perhaps just one small apple before I go, Jack begged. The Devil acquiesced. Jack lamented that he was in no condition to climb the apple tree, and would the Devil be so kind as to fetch the apple for him? (The Devil is a lot like Charlie Brown and his football. You’d think, being the Evil One, he wouldn’t be so trusting.) So the Devil climbed the tree, and while he was up in the tree, Jack carved a sign of the cross into the tree’s bark. To earn his release this time, the Devil agreed never to take Jack’s soul.

Wouldn’t you know, little time passed before Jack turned up his toes. Jack’s soul foolishly made it’s way toward Heaven where everyone had a good laugh before telling him to get lost. Then Jack journeyed to the Gates of Hell where the Devil, finally wise to Jack’s tricks,  also sent him packing —  to roam the world between good and evil, with only a burning ember inside a hollowed out turnip to light his way.  Jack of the Lantern. Obviously, the Association of Turnip Growers botched this one. Had they been on their toes, we’d all be celebrating Halloween with carved-out rutabagas.

 

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OCTOBER 30, 1938: JUST ME AND MY RADIO

Posted on by Richard Daybell

It’s easy from the comfort of our 21st century recliners to dismiss the mass hysteria of an earlier generation as so many Chicken Littles or Turkey Lurkeys, afraid of their own shadows. We’ve seen it all, any horror one can imagine, right there on the screen in front of us, and should it become too squirmy, well we can always just hit a button. The remote is there to protect us.

But what if you were at home, alone perhaps, on that October night back in 1938. It’s dark out; Halloween and all its spookiness is just a day away. But there’s the radio to keep you company. Like millions of other Americans, you’ll tune in to Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. That should lighten up a dark night. They finish their comedy routine at ten after eight. A singer you’ve never heard of follows so, like millions of Americans, you surf the radio stations (Wasn’t there supposed to be a dramatic program on?) pausing to hear an unenthusiastic announcer: “. . . the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra.” You listen for a minute; it’s not that great. You’re all set to surf again when the announcer interrupts, reporting that a Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory has detected explosions on the planet Mars. The music returns, but only for a minute. The announcer is back with the news that a large meteor has crashed into a farmer’s field in Grovers Mills, New Jersey.

Now your ears are glued to the radio, as announcement after announcement confirms the impossible – a Martian invasion. “Good heavens, something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now here’s another and another one and another one. They look like tentacles to me … I can see the thing’s body now. It’s large, large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But that face, it… it … ladies and gentlemen, it’s indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it’s so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate.”

Now’s the time to surf the radio. If you do, you’ll quickly realize that everything is normal on other radio stations, that you’ve been listening to a realistic but fictional radio drama. But if you don’t, chances are you’ll join the thousands of people jamming highways, trying to flee the alien invasion.

Orson Welles was just 23 years old when his Mercury Theater company broadcast its update of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds with no idea of the uproar it would cause. He employed sophisticated sound effects and top notch acting to make the story believable.

And believed it was. In Indianapolis, a woman ran into a church where evening services were being held, yelling: “New York has been destroyed! It’s the end of the world! Go home and prepare to die!”

When the actors got wind of the panic, Welles went on the air as himself to remind listeners that it was just fiction. Afterward, he feared that the incident would ruin his career, but three years later he was in Hollywood working on Citizen Kane.

OCTOBER 24, 1901: WE’LL HAVE A BARREL OF FUN

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Annie Edson Taylor was born on, October 24, 1838, in Auburn, New York. One of eight children, she led a typical if uneventful life. She became a schoolteacher, married, became widowed, spent her working years in a variety of jobs and locales from Bay City, Michigan to Mexico City.

The century turned, and she found herself in her early 60s with a less than secure financial future. How she reached the decision that would make the next stage of her life far from typical is anyone’s guess. But by 1901, she had become determined to be the first person to ride over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

barrelTaylor had a barrel custom made for her trip; it was fashioned out of oak and iron, and padded with a mattress. There was a curious lack of enthusiasm for her project among other folks – no one wanted to take part in what they viewed as certain suicide. The domestic cat that became her assistant probably shared those concerns, but lacked the means to express its doubts. So two days before the day designated for Taylor’s own attempt, kitty went over Horseshoe Falls to test the barrel’s strength. Kitty lived through the ordeal and posed with Taylor in photographs to prove it, though she wasn’t purring.

On October 24, 1901, Taylor’s 63rd birthday, the barrel was put over the side of a rowboat, and Taylor climbed in, taking with her a lucky pillow. The lid of the barrel was secured, and Taylor was set adrift, bobbing along near the American shoreline. The cooperative Niagara River carried the barrel and its passenger toward the Canadian Horseshoe Falls, and over she went.

Rescuers reached her barrel shortly after the plunge. Taylor emerged from the barrel, bruised but alive, although she wasn’t purring. The trip had taken a mere twenty minutes.  After the journey, Annie Taylor told the press: “I would sooner walk up to the mouth of a cannon, knowing it was going to blow me to pieces than make another trip over the Fall.”

Although she earned money from speaking engagements, she was never able to accumulate much wealth.  And to add insult, her manager made off with her barrel. She spent her final years posing for photographs with tourists, planning another plunge, dabbling with a novel, attempting to reconstruct her 1901 plunge on film, and working as a clairvoyant.

Annie Taylor died on April 29, 1921, at the age of 82.

Niagara Falls is very nice. I’m very glad I saw it, because from now on if I am asked whether I have seen Niagara Falls I can say yes, and be telling the truth for once. ~ John Steinbeck

OCTOBER 11, 1944: All the Presidents’ Dogs

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Republicans were on the political attack and the President was angry. At a campaign dinner with the Teamsters union, on this day in 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt struck back. It was one thing for the Republicans to spread “malicious falsehoods” about him and Eleanor, but they had stepped over the line, making libelous statements about Fala, his small, black Scottish terrier.

After addressing weighty labor and war issues, Roosevelt blasted Republican critics for circulating a claim that he had accidentally left Fala behind while visiting the Aleutian Islands earlier that year and had, at a taxpayer cost of $20 million, sent a Navy destroyer to pick up the dog. Although Fala slept at the foot of President’s bed and received a bone every morning with Roosevelt’s breakfast tray, Roosevelt accused his critics of attempting to tarnish a defenseless dog’s reputation just to distract Americans from more pressing issues facing the country.

Did Richard Nixon, eight years later to the day, take a page out of the Roosevelt playbook to defend his own honor when critics accused him of accepting improper gifts and making funny with campaign funds? The story broke two months after Nixon’s selection as Dwight D. Eisenhower’s running mate, threatening Nixon’s place on the ticket. Nixon interrupted a whistle-stop tour of the West Coast to fly to Los Angeles for a television and radio broadcast to the nation in which he vowed he would not return one gift: a black-and-white dog who had been named Checkers by his children. But unlike Roosevelt, who took Fala to meetings with heads of state such as Winston Churchill, there is no evidence that Nixon even touched Checkers, let alone fed him.

Just Put Your Lips Together

Harry “Steve” Morgan and his alcoholic sidekick, Eddie, are a couple of ne’er-do-wells crewing a boat for hire on the island of Martinique. to_have_and_have_not_1944_film_posterLife is okay, but World War II is happening all around them, doing a number on the tourist trade and thus their livelihood. Howard Hawks’ film To Have and Have Not which premiered in New York on October 11, 1944, was notable for bringing together what would become one of Hollywood’s hottest couples, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

The film takes the title from the book by Ernest Hemingway but not much else. Hawks was a Hemingway fan but thought this particular book was a “bunch of junk.” Even so, Hemingway worked with Hawks on the screenplay, in which Bogart once again gives up his professed neutrality in the war to thwart the Nazis. The plot is well thickened by the stormy relationship between Bogart and Bacall who plays Slim, a saucy singer in the club where Morgan drinks away his days.

Another notable member of the cast is Hoagy Charmichael who appears as the club piano player, Cricket. He and Bacall perform several Charmichael songs: “How Little We Know,” “Hong Kong Blues,” and “The Rhumba Jumps.” Bacall does her own singing, even though persistent rumors would have a 14-year-old Andy Williams singing for her.

The most memorable take away from the film is one line of dialogue delivered seductively by Bacall: “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and . . . blow . . .”

October 9, 1900: Soda Sipping Ingenuity

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Joseph Friedman born on this day in 1900 was one of those inventors who might more correctly be called dabblers, thinking up ideas here and there that usually don’t amount to much (a lighted pencil, for example) although his nephew, a British MP, referred to one particular invention as “arguably the most significant technological achievement of the twentieth century.”

It came about one day in 1937 while Friedman was sitting in his younger brother Albert’s fountain parlor, the Varsity Sweet Shop in San Francisco. Friedman watched his young daughter sitting at the counter as she struggled to drink her soda through a straw that seemed to stay just beyond her reach. He took another paper straw and pushed a screw into it. Then, using dental floss, he wrapped the paper into the screw threads, creating corrugations in the straw. After he removed the screw, the straw would bend easily over the edge of the glass, allowing his daughter to conveniently sip her soda – a  eureka! moment by any standard, the creation of the bendy straw. Friedman hastened to the Patent Office and secured patent #2,094,268 for his invention under the title Drinking Tube. He later filed for two additional U.S. patents and three foreign patents.

His attempts to interest straw manufacturers in his invention were unsuccessful so he eventually produced the straw himself. The Flexible Straw Corporation was incorporated in 1939 in California. However, war intervened and he didn’t make his first sale until 1947 – to a hospital rather than kids sipping sodas.

Columbus Was No Viking

October 9 has been designated as the day to celebrate the true discoverer of America Leif Erikson, son of Erik the Red, son of Thorvald the Blue, son of Knut the Orange, son of Sven the Green and so on.  It is a day to reflect on Scandinavian heritage and, of course, Viking humor.

OCTOBER 5, 1983: BURPING IN POLITE COMPANY

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Noted American businessman and inventor, Earl Silas Tupper died on October 5, 1983. He was buried in a 100-gallon Tupperware container whose lid was “burped”to get an airtight seal before being lowered into the ground. Thousands paid their respect at a memorial Tupperware Party held earlier.

For indeed this was the man who invented and gave his name to Tupperware, a line of plastic containers in an almost infinite array of shapes and sizes that changed the way Americans stored their food. Tupper invented the plasticware back in the late 30s, but it didn’t really start worming its way into every household until the 50s when Tupper introduced his ingenious and infamous marketing strategy, the Tupperware Party. This clever gambit gave the so-called little woman the opportunity to earn an income without leaving home and to simultaneously annoy friends and relatives.

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The Art of the Robbery

The Dalton Gang terrorized the Old West from 1890 to 1892, robbing banks and trains, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. They were sometimes called the Dalton Brothers but only three of the five were actually brothers. So to be technically correct you’d have to call them the Dalton Brothers and Others. Gang is easier.

Their abrupt demise on October 5, 1892, suggests they were not the brightest brother act on the outlaw circuit. On that day, someone came up with the clever idea that since there were five of them and two banks in the town of Coffeyville, Kansas,, they could rob both of them at the same time. At one of the banks, an employee convinced them that the safe was on a time lock and couldn’t be opened by anybody for another 45 minutes. The boys bought that story and waited patiently.

When the safe was finally opened, the boys scooped up their ill-gotten gains and exited the bank, only to find themselves facing the entire Coffeyville population, armed to the teeth. In the ensuing shootout, four of the gang were killed. One, a Dalton brother, was shot 23 times, but survived. He was sentenced to life in prison. He wrote a book, When the Daltons Rode, which was pretty much an over the top fabrication. It could have been called The Art of the Robbery.

He Should have Written the Book

A hundred years later, Jim Bakker was far more successful than the Dalton Boys.  He stole $158 million from townspeople all over the country without so much as brandishing a gun.  But the televangelist got his comeuppance too.  He was convicted of fraud and conspiracy on October 5, 1989, and spent the next 4 1/2 years in prison.