FAMOUS LASTS
All good (and bad) things come to an end someday.
THE LAST MARRIED POPE. Adrian II was already married when he became pope in 867. He refused to give up his wife and adopt a life of celibacy.
SPRECHEN SIE ENGLISCH? The last king of England who couldn’t speak English (there were several) was George I, prince of Hanover, Germany. During his 13-year reign (1714–1727), he never learned to speak or write English.
THE LAST PRESIDENTIAL SLAVE OWNER. When he married Julia Dent in 1848, Ulysses S. Grant inherited a slave from her family. He freed the man, William Jones, on March 29, 1859.
ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD. The last year Olympic gold medals were actually made of gold: 1912.
GOOD-BYE, MODEL T. The last Model T Ford rolled off the production line in Detroit, Michigan, on May 27, 1927. More than 15 million Model Ts had been built, more than any other type of car of its time.
THE LAST SILENT MOVIE. The last full-length silent movie released in the United States was The Poor Millionaire, starring Richard Talmadge and Constance Howard, which hit theaters on April 7, 1930.
THE LAST MAN ON THE MOON. U.S. astronaut Capt. Eugene A. Cernan of Apollo 17 was the last person to set foot on the Moon, on December 14, 1972. His last words while on the lunar surface: “Let’s get this mother out of here.”
THE KING’S LAST LP. The last studio album recorded and released by Elvis Presley was Moody Blue. Released July 28, 1977, it went to #3 on the charts. Elvis died less than a month later on August 16. He was 42.
Smooooooooooooooooooooooch! Snails “kiss” before mating.
THE LEADED GAS CONSPIRACY
It happens all the time. A product comes out and is found to be harmful, but they keep making it anyway. Here’s the story of one of the most harmful products of all.
KNOCK KNOCK
In the early days of the automobile industry, gasoline motors were highly prone to engine knock, caused by low-octane fuel igniting too early in the engine’s cylinders. It sounded like a sharp tapping or rattling, and that wasn’t far off—the motor was rattling itself apart. At the same time, horsepower was lost because the fuel wasn’t being burned efficiently, all of which made for a lot of very noisy and very sluggish automobiles. With thousands of new cars entering the road each year, something had to be done.
Luckily, there was an easy solution: grain alcohol. Internal combustion engines ran great on it, but it was too expensive to be the standard motor fuel by itself. Testing conducted for General Motors by Charles Kettering’s Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (DELCO) showed that alcohol raised the octane of gasoline—allowing for higher engine compression and eliminating knock. By 1921 a blend of 30 percent alcohol to 70 percent gasoline was the fuel of choice among most automotive engineers.
But later that year an engineer named Thomas Midgley, the DELCO engineer assigned to solve the problem, found a cheaper way to eliminate engine knock. While working under contract for General Motors, he added a small amount of tetraethyl lead to gasoline and discovered that it also did the trick. Even better, lead was much less expensive than grain alcohol. But Midgely’s cost-cutting solution would come at a very high price.
HAZARDOUS MATERIAL
Lead is a neurotoxin that collects in the blood and bones of humans and damages the central nervous system. Overexposure can cause convulsions, blindness, hallucinations, and cancer—as well as coma and death. Its dangers have been known since at least 100 B.C., when Greek physicians described lead poisoning and noted the danger posed to workers by fumes from lead smelting operations. In Midgley’s time, health risks associated with lead-based paint were so well documented that in 1920 the League of Nations proposed banning its use. But despite all the risks associated with lead, and ignoring the proven effectiveness of cleaner-burning alcohol/gasoline blends, in 1923 General Motors, DuPont, and Standard Oil formed the Ethyl Gasoline Company to produce and sell gas with a tetraethyl lead additive.
Natural gas has no odor. The bad smell is added to alert you if there’s a leak.
LET THE BATTLE BEGIN
Almost immediately, workers in leaded gasoline plants started showing signs of lead poisoning. By 1924 at least 15 workers had died from exposure before better ventilation was added to factories. The scientific community called for the banning of lead, labor unions called for safer working conditions, and the New York Board of Health banned sales of leaded gas in 1924. The Ethyl Company found itself at the center of a public health debate—and it was ready to fight.
When the U.S. Public Health Service held hearings on the matter the following year, Midgley testified: “So far as science knows at the present time, tetraethyl lead is the only material available that can bring about these [anti-knock] results.”
Midgely was lying: science knew about alcohol blends. Midgley himself owned several patents on alcohol blends, and three years earlier he’d claimed that “alcohol is unquestionably the fuel of the future.” Now he was saying lead was perfectly safe—pouring leaded gas over his hands and sniffing its fumes to prove his point. But Midgely left out another fact: he was suffering from lead poisoning and had been forced to take time off to recuperate in 1923.
INCONCLUSIVE
In the end, the Public Health Service recommended that a committee be formed to study the effects of leaded gas. Their report: “Owing to the incompleteness of the data, it is impossible to say definitely whether exposure to lead dust increases in garages where tetraethyl lead is used.”
The Ethyl Company declared itself vindicated, and leaded gas was back on sale in 1926.
Exxon spent over $100 million on market research before changing its name from Esso.
IT’S A CONSPIRACY!
If Midgely and Ethyl knew that lead was so harmful compared to the alternatives, why did they try to cover it up? Money. Because adding lead to gasoline was cheaper than adding alcohol, as long as Ethyl had control over the lead additive business, Ethyl controlled the entire gas industry…and would fight tooth and nail to keep it that way.
Car dealers warned their customers about lead’s dangers until 1927—when GM ordered their dealers to promote it.
The following year the Lead Industries Association was formed to counter the negative publicity. The Ethyl Company—along with its parent companies, GM, DuPont, and Standard Oil—hired scientists willing to claim that lead couldn’t be conclusively tied to illness.
The Ethyl Company refused to sell to distributors who also carried alcohol blends.
Because it was a national company, Ethyl was able to undercut the price of any independent filling station that tried to buck the system. During the Great Depression, people sought out the cheapest gas they could find—Ethyl made sure it was theirs.
Henry Ford called alcohol the “fuel of the future” (as had Midgely years before) and continued to make carburetors that would run on either gas or gas/alcohol blends until 1929. But by 1936 it no longer mattered: leaded gasoline accounted for 90 percent of the fuel sold in the United States, most of that produced by Ethyl.
CLEANING UP
In the 1950s, a geochemist from the California Institute of Technology named Clair Patterson (who was not on the Ethyl Company’s payroll) hypothesized that atmospheric lead levels had increased drastically since leaded gas was introduced in 1923. His proof came from ice core samples taken from glaciers in Greenland. In areas where more snow falls than melts every year, ice builds up in layers that can be counted and studied (much like a tree’s growth rings). By counting back through 40 years of annual snowfall and measuring the amount of lead in each layer, Patterson was able to show in a 1965 study that the high levels of atmospheric lead found in industrialized countries were a result of leaded gasoline use. Patterson’s findings led to the Clean Air Act of 1970. A provision in the act required automakers to install catalytic converters in all new cars. Catalytic converters, it just so happened, are fouled and rendered useless by lead deposits.
Exactly 342 chests
of tea were dumped at the Boston Tea Party. Some survive to this day.
The oil industry still continued to resist. With the infrastructure still in place to make—and profit from—leaded gas, they tried to sell as much of it as they could before it was phased out. For years industry “experts” insisted that precatalytic converter motors would be harmed by unleaded gas—which has since proven not to be the case.
Finally, in 1986, leaded gasoline was removed from American gas pumps for good, though it continues to be sold throughout the developing world, and was common in Eastern Europe until the European Union banned it in 2000. Today, alcohol blends are increasingly being used to boost octane and to meet improved emissions standards. Lead is being replaced by the very additive it replaced in the 1920s—alcohol.
THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS MAN?
Leaded gas wasn’t Midgley’s only contribution to the modern world. After curing engine knock with tetraethyl lead, he turned his attention toward the development of a non-toxic, non-flammable refrigerant gas for use in refrigerator and air conditioner compressors. In 1928 he came up with chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs—the chemical whose use is credited with creating the hole in the ozone layer. These two technological advances have led some to note that Thomas Midgley may have had a bigger impact on the environment than any other single organism in the history of the Earth.
What goes around…Midgley contracted polio in middle age and suffered partial paralysis. He died in 1944 when he was accidentally strangled by a contraption he had built to help himself in and out of bed.
* * *
“Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.”
—Abba Eban
Oberammergaueralpenkräuterdelikatessenfrühstückskäse is a type of cheese.
YOU CALL THAT ART?
Ever been in a gallery or museum and seen something that made you wonder, “Is this really art?” So have we. Is it art just because someone says it is? You be the judge.
ARTIST: Mark McGowan
THIS IS ART? This London-based artist has a reputation for odd endeavors, such as pushing a nut with his nose to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office as a protest against the high cost of school tuition, and rolling on the ground for seven kilometers while singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” to highlight the work of office cleaners. McGowan’s latest project, however, has grabbed the most attention: in early 2005, he went to Scotland and took pictures of himself using keys to scratch the paint off other people’s cars. So far, the 39-year-old artist has admitted to vandalizing 47 cars in the greater Glasgow area. He plans to display the photos in local Glasgow galleries. Surprisingly, police have received no complaints…yet.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: “I do feel guilty, but if I don’t do it, someone else will. They should feel glad that they’ve been involved in the creative process.”
ARTIST: James Robert Ford
THIS IS ART? Ford’s piece, entitled Bogey Ball, was two years in the making. He displayed it in four different London galleries, but was unable to attract a buyer. It now rests on a shelf in his apartment, waiting for someone willing to shell out the asking price of £10,000 (about $18,000). What is it? A golf ball—sized ball of Ford’s dried snot. (He’s been collecting it since 2003.)
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: “It’s a physical record of all the different places I have been and people I’ve met. And it will be hard to let go, but at the same time, it’s hard not to have any money.”
ARTIST: Damien Hirst
THIS IS ART? Critics call Hirst, a conceptual artist from Leeds, England, “Mr. Death.” Why? He sliced two dead cows in half and placed the pieces in four large clear plastic vats filled with formaldehyde. The “artwork”—Mother and Child, Divided—earned him the 1995 Turner Prize, one of the art world’s most prestigious awards.
When a sumo wrestler retires, his “topknot” (his hair) is removed in a special ceremony.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: “I want to make people feel like burgers. I chose a cow because it’s banal. Nothing. Doesn’t mean anything. What is the difference between a cow and a burger? Not a lot. I want people to look at cows and feel ‘Oh my god,’ so then in turn, it makes them feel like burgers.”
THE ARTIST: Lee Mingwei
THIS IS ART? The Taiwanese artist cooked a meal and then picked a stranger at random to eat it with.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: “When people ask me, Is it art? I ask them, What is an apple? Usually they give a descriptive answer—it’s a fruit, it’s red, etc. Then I ask, when do you really know it’s an apple? And most people say, when I eat it. That’s when you know it’s art, when you experience it with your senses, with your memory, when you own the work. That would be a better way to decide it’s art—or maybe you don’t have to decide at all.”
THE ARTIST: Carlos Capelán
THE WORK: “Only You”
THIS IS ART? This Uruguayan artist attempted to recreate fractal patterns…using his toenail clippings. The pieces were displayed at a London gallery in 2004.
ARTIST STATEMENT: My work “playfully explores issues of self, ego and identity.”
* * *
IM TLKing
Shorthand expressions for Internet chat rooms and text-messaging:
GAL: Get a life
J2LUK: Just to let you know
IMHO: In my humble opinion
RUOK: Are you okay?
H&K: Hugs and kisses
OTOH: On the other hand
BCNU: Be seeing you
BFN: Bye for now
It’s human nature that when two people greet, their eyes widen and their eyebrows lift.
WHAT A DOLL
For every Barbie or G.I. Joe that’s created, there are hundreds of toy ideas that die a quick death. Here are a few of them.
EMERALD THE ENCHANTING WITCH (1972)
Amsco Toys made this doll to capitalize on two popular fads: Barbie dolls and witches (but cute ones, like Samantha on TV’s Bewitched or Sabrina the Teenage Witch in comic books). Like Barbie, Emerald was posable and came with lots of outfits. But unlike Barbie (or Samantha or Sabrina), Emerald had lavender skin, lime green hair, and hollow black eye cavities with flashing green lights in them. Little girls apparently didn’t like the doll. According to reports, it was “too scary.”
LEGGY (1971)
With the advent of the miniskirt in the late 1960s, showing a lot of leg suddenly became a fashion trend. That was the idea behind Hasbro’s aptly named Leggy. The doll was 10 inches tall—and seven of the ten inches were Leggy’s legs. Result: huge legs, a tiny torso, and a mutant-looking doll that quickly bombed.
THE LOVE BOAT (1981)
After Mego Toys turned down the chance to make Star Wars toys (they missed out on $1 billion in sales that went to rival Kenner Toys), the company started snapping up the rights to characters from every TV series and movie they were offered. Result: dolls and action figures that probably weren’t very good ideas. The Love Boat, for example, was a very popular television show, but it aired at 10 p.m., wasn’t action-oriented, and had mostly love- and sex-related plotlines that didn’t interest children. Nevertheless, Mego released four-inch figures of Captain Stubing, Doc, Gopher, Isaac the bartender, Julie, and Vicki, and a two-foot-long replica of the cruise ship. They sold so poorly that Mego decided not to release another line of toys, even though they were already manufactured: action figures based on the TV show Dallas.
M*A*S*H (1982)
Another Mego Toys release of a show kids didn’t watch. Over its long run, M*A*S*H evolved from a broad comedy with elements of drama into a drama with traces of comedy. Had Mego released these dolls in the early 1970s when M*A*S*H was more appealing to kids, they might have sold. But they waited until 1982 to unveil their versions of the gang from the 4077th (including two different Klinger dolls—one in military uniform and one in drag). The dolls bombed, although the 8-inch Hot Lips Houlihan doll (modeled after actress Loretta Swit) reportedly sold well among teenage boys, and, acc
ording to Toymania magazine, the Father Mulcahy figure was the first action figure to depict a member of the clergy.
Shooting stars: There are asteroids named for Eric Clapton and each of the Beatles.
DOZZZY (1986)
In the 1980s, toy shelves were crowded with dolls that talked, walked, drank, and peed. And then there was Dozzzy. Dozzzy slept…and that was all it did. Its eyes were permanently closed and it came dressed in pajamas.
GROWING UP SKIPPER (1975)
In the late 1960s, Mattel introduced a series of friends and family for Barbie, including Barbie’s teenage sister, Skipper. But could Skipper stay a teenager forever? Apparently not. In 1975 Mattel released Growing Up Skipper, a doll that could instantly change from adolescent to adult and back again. With the pull of an arm, Skipper grew an inch taller, her waist got smaller, and her bustline expanded. Another arm pump returned Skipper to her more modest, less curvy dimensions. Mattel discontinued the doll in 1976, giving in to protests from feminist groups and concerned parents who didn’t think little girls should be playing with such an overtly sexual doll.
* * *
GOOD FOR HER…BUT FOR US?
Sue Mcllwraith, a supermarket worker from West Bromwich, England, passed her driving test on the 20th attempt. From 1996 to 2003, she took more than 300 lessons, which cost her £7,000 (about $12,000). “To be honest,” said Mrs Mcllwraith, “when it comes to driving I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
Now ewe know: Sheep refuse to drink from running water.
JUST PLANE WEIRD
These days, no one makes jokes on a plane, least of all the pilot. Here’s the harrowing tale of a practical joke that almost went horribly wrong.
Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader Page 27