In January 1995, Mill Valley, California, court commissioner Randolph Heubach ruled that a landlord had the legal right to keep the $825 security deposit because the former tenant left without giving thirty-days’ notice. It sounds like a no-brainer until you find out the reason the man didn’t give notice—he had died. After tenant James Pflugradt succumbed to a heart attack, his son, Rick, cleaned out the apartment and asked the landlord for his father’s security deposit back. The landlord, Fred Padula, refused on the grounds that he wasn’t given proper notice and needed the money to cover rent while he found a new tenant. “I am not unsympathetic,” said Heubach after his ruling. “But it is really a straightforward financial situation.” Rick Pflugradt, who was out $825 and a father on the deal, stated, “This sends my faith in the human race to an all-time low.” I hate to say this, but what did Pflugradt expect—he was dealing with a lawyer and a landlord.
Not the Boys in the Hood—But the Boys Under the Hood
After a lengthy court battle, the Missouri Ku Klux Klan was granted permission, in March 2000, to participate in the state’s Adopt-a-Highway program. This victory would force the state to use taxpayer money to place Adopt-a-Highway road signs on a one-mile stretch of road advertising the KKK. The Klan’s victory was crossed out the following month when their organization was removed from the program. The reason? The state legislature decided to name the Klan’s designated portion of road (I-55 south of St. Louis) after civil rights activist Rosa Parks—and the Klan never showed up to clean. I suppose the only cleansing the Klan is interested in is racial cleansing.
You Say Tomato and I Say . . . Tomato
It’s a battle that’s been fought for ages—is a tomato a vegetable or a fruit? To the smart aleck who says a tomato is a fruit because it grows on a vine, I say, you’re wrong . . . and you’re right. A tomato, according to botanists, is a fruit not because it grows on a vine but because it is considered the “ovary” of the plant (the part containing the seeds). So next time Mr. Know-It-All says a tomato is a fruit, you can tell him so are pumpkins, cucumbers, peas, and corn. A vegetable, in case you’re wondering, is any other part of the plant that is edible: the leaves, the stems, and the roots.
When the Chips Are Down
On June 3, 1980, computers alerted the U.S. Strategic Air Command (SAC) in Omaha, Nebraska, that a Soviet submarine missile attack was in progress. One hundred B-52s were scrambled and in the air within a matter of minutes, but were called off before they could launch a counterattack. Which was a good thing, because there was no Soviet missile attack, and it wasn’t a war game, either—it was a faulty computer chip. A 46¢ computer chip had malfunctioned and caused the computer to nearly start World War III. Everyone at SAC breathed a sigh of relief until three days later, when the same mistake happened again.
How Do You Know He’s a King? He Hasn’t Got Sh*t All Over Him
Life must have been simpler in the good ol’ days: They didn’t have computers and Blackberrys and traffic and the normal frantic hustle and bustle of modern times. Of course, we don’t get crap thrown on us, so that pretty much makes up the difference in my mind. It was a centuries-long practice throughout Europe, although officially banned in 1395 in Paris, to open your window or door and toss out the contents of your chamber pot into the street. Let me give you a minute to let that sink in. Of course, proper etiquette was to yell “Gardez l’eau!” (watch out for the water) to give passersby time to duck and cover. And if people were like they are today, I’ll bet not everyone gave a warning before they flung poo.
The Department of Redundancy Department
To project “a greater openness and sense of public responsibility,” the CIA commissioned a task force to study ways to help them change their cloak-and-dagger persona. On December 20, 1991, the committee presented its findings in the fifteen-page “Task Force Report on Greater Openness.” The CIA took the document, classified and stamped it SECRET, and has refused to divulge or comment on its contents.
Live from the Pasta Farms, This Has Been Al Dente
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) aired a documentary on its news show Panorama about spaghetti growers in Switzerland—on April 1, 1957. The joke broadcast showed Swiss spaghetti farmers picking fresh spaghetti from “spaghetti trees” and preparing the spaghetti for market. It also mentioned that the pasta farmers had a bumper crop partly because of the “virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil.” Soon after the broadcast, the BBC received phone calls from viewers eager to know if spaghetti really grew on trees and how they might go about growing a spaghetti tree of their own. To this last question, the BBC reportedly replied that they should “place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.”
It’s Not Just a Good Book—It’s a Great Book!
In 1631, King Charles I ordered 1,000 Bibles from an English printer named Robert Barker. Printing was not an exact science in those days, and sometimes mistakes were made and usually overlooked—but not in this case. Barker inadvertently left out a single word in the Seventh Commandment in Exodus 20:14—the word not. Readers were shocked to find out that God had commanded Moses “Thou shalt commit adultery” as opposed to “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” King Charles was not amused by this mistake and ordered all the Bibles destroyed, fined Barker 300 pounds sterling (a lifetime’s wages in those days), and revoked his printing license—Barker was out of business. Not all the Bibles were destroyed; there are eleven known to still exist. Because of the infamous mistake, this printing of the official King James Version is referred to as “The Wicked Bible.”
Because They Don’t Know the Words
Tesco, an international supermarket chain based in the United Kingdom and Britain’s largest retailer, published an advertisement in The Sun announcing their newest product—whistling carrots. The genetically modified carrot, the ad explained, was specially engineered to grow with airholes along its side that acted like little whistles. When placed in a pot to boil or in a steamer, the carrots whistled like a teakettle to let the cook know they were done. If this were true, it would be great—not as a self-cooking vegetable, but to use on a snowman to make it seem like he’s got a clogged nose.
Stupid History: Tales of Stupidity, Strangeness, and Mythconceptions Throughout the Ages Page 14