THE MACDUFF AEROPINION/ PNEUMOSLITO (1904)
Impressed by early aeroplanes, the folks at MacDuff designed a propeller-driven car. (The prop was placed in back, like a giant fan.) In heavy snow, you could slap small wooden skis onto each tire and—viola! The Aeropinion became the Pneumoslito, a propeller-driven sled that flew over frozen turf.
Fatal Flaw: First and foremost, it was tough to handle. But it was a menace, too. In summer, the propeller kicked up enough dust on dirt roads to blind everyone behind it for about a block and a half—a big problem when nearly all roads were unpaved. And the whirling blades were also potential disasters: they could make sausage out of any pedestrian who walked into them, or easily fly off in a car accident. The car was produced for just one year.
Watches get their name because they were originally worn by night watchmen.
THE ARTHUR SELDEN CAR (1908)
The Arthur Selden Car was a front-wheel-drive car with an unusual feature: the front wheels didn’t turn…and neither did the rear wheels. Instead, the car itself was hinged in the middle, with the steering connected to the hinge instead of the wheels.
Fatal Flaw: The car jackknifed easily, and the hinges wore out quickly. Besides, the car was so goofy-looking that nobody would have bought it even if it was easy to steer. Selden made a couple of prototypes, then quickly went out of business.
THE LE ZEBRE (1916-1920)
The Le Zebre was a cheap, stylish two-seat convertible that appealed to drivers who wanted expensive sports cars but couldn’t afford them. It had a four-cylinder engine, slender lines, a fancy horn, and a spare wheel that sat on the running board. Ooh-la-la!
Fatal Flaw: Quality control at the factory was so bad that the car was like a prop in a slapstick comedy—it fell apart, piece by piece. For example, the axles shattered like clockwork every 200 miles, and the wheel nuts—frequently followed by the wheels themselves—popped off even at low speeds. People bought them anyway, because they were low-priced. The model lasted for four years.
THE DAVIS (1947-1949)
Produced by the Davis Motor Car Company of Van Nuys, California, the Davis was a three-wheeled car, shaped like a gumdrop, that looked like something out of “The Jetsons.” Power was provided via the two rear wheels; the driver steered the single front wheel. The company also made a special military version. (No word on whether the Pentagon actually bought any.)
Fatal Flaw: Bizarre looks and unconventional design would surely have killed the Davis, but they didn’t have the chance. Misleading claims made by the company’s founder, G. G. “Gary” Davis, beat them to it. Davis swore the car got 116 mph on the highway, and that it could make sudden, sharp turns at speeds as high as 55 mph. Actual fuel economy turned out to be 65 mpg (not bad, but not as advertised). And in high-speed turns, one of the rear wheels lifted off the ground and spun freely, causing the speedometer to register artificially high speeds. The company was shut down following a financial scandal in 1949.
About three-quarters of American adults wear some kind of fragrance.
THE WRITING ON THE WALL
At some time, all bathroom readers have found themselves in a public stall with nothing to read. Your eye starts to wander…and then you spot—graffiti! Here’s a tribute to that emergency reading material.
You might be surprised to learn that graffiti aren’t new…or even recent. The term comes from the Italian word for “scribbling”…and it was coined by archeologists to describe wall-writing found in ancient ruins. It has been discovered in the catacombs of Rome, the Tower of London, medieval English alehouses, and even Mayan pyramids.
Some of the earliest examples of graffiti were preserved on the walls of Pompeii when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. As you can see from the following examples, it hasn’t changed much in nearly 2,000 years:
Appolinaris, doctor to the Emperor Titus, had a crap here
NO ONE’S A HANDSOME FELLOW UNLESS HE HAS LOVED
Whoever loves, goes to hell. I want to break Venus’ ribs with blows and deform her hips. If she can break my tender heart, why can’t I hit her over the head?
HULLO, WE’RE WINESKINS
Artimetus got me pregnant
In Nuceria, near Porta Romana, is the district of Venus. Ask for Novellia Primigenia
He who sits here, read this before anything else: If you want to make love ask for Attice. The price is 16 asses.
LOVERS, LIKE BEES, ENJOY A LIFE OF HONEY
Wishful thinking
O Chius, I hope your ulcerous pustules reopen and burn even more than they did before
IN NUCERIA VOTE FOR LUCIUS MUNATIUS CAESARNINUS: HE IS AN HONEST MAN
Romula tarried here with Staphylus
The most common word spoken by a dying person is “Mother” or “Mommy.”
A RECORD OF HISTORY
People have been studying and collecting graffiti for centuries. Hurlo Thrumbo, an English publisher, put out the first printed collection in the 1700s. In the early 1900s, German sociologists collected scrawls from public toilets and turned them into the first academic study of graffiti. In America, the Kinsey researchers collected bathroom messages as part of their study of men’s and women’s sex habits. But it wasn’t until the 1960s, when graffiti became an outlet for the counterculture and anti-Vietnam protest movement, that academics really started to pay attention.
Now these “scribblings” are regarded as important adjuncts to the “official” history of a culture. They provide a look at what the average person was thinking and give evidence of the social unrest, political trends, and inner psychology of a society.
COLLECTING INFO
After decades of study, experts have decided that graffiti fit into four major categories.
• Identity graffitists: Want to immortalize themselves or a part of their lives (a romance, an accomplishment)
• Opinion or message graffitists: Want to let the world know what they think: “UFOs are real—the Air Force doesn’t exist.”
• Dialogue graffitists: Talk back to other graffitists. “I’ve got what every woman wants”…(underneath:) “You must be in the fur coat business.”
• “Art” graffitists: The most recent trend, with spray cans of paint used to create intricate designs signed with pseudonyms. Either vandalism or modern design, depending on your point of view.
THE GRAFFITI HERO
The most famous graffitist in history was Kilroy. Beginning in World War II, the line “Kilroy was here” started showing up in outrageous places. Kilroy left his signature on the top of the torch of the Statue of Liberty, on the Marco Polo Bridge in China, and even on a Bikini atoll where an atomic bomb was to be tested. The original Kilroy was an infantry soldier who was sick of hearing the Air Force brag about always being first on the spot. But the phrase has appeared for so many years in so many places that “Kilroy was here” has become synonymous with graffiti.
About 4% of Americans are vegetarians.
MORE WRITING ON THE WALL
A sampling of contemporary graffiti, collected since the 1960s.
Q: How do you tell the sex of a chromosome? A: Pull down its genes.
If Love is blind, and God is love, and Ray Charles is blind, then God plays the piano.
Mafia: Organized Crime
Government: Disorganized Crime
Flush twice, it’s a long way to Washington.
Death is just nature’s way of telling you to slow down.
How come nobody ever writes on the toilet seats?
Things are more like they are now than they have ever been before.
I can’t stand labels, after all, I’m a liberal.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it’s farther away.
Free Chile!
…Free tacos!
…Free burritos!
Only Jackie knows what her Onassis worth.
Did you ever feel like the whole world was a white wedding gown, and you were a pair of muddy hiking boots?
St
anding room only.
[written on top of a men’s urinal]
The chicken is an egg’s way of producing another egg.
If you think you have someone eating out of your hands, it’s a good idea to count your fingers.
The typical Stanford undergrad is like a milkshake: thick and rich.
Blessed is he who sits on a bee, for he shall rise again.
Please remain seated during the entire program.—The Management
There are those who shun elitism. Why?
…Because it is there.
…It’s the elitist thing to do.
Please do not throw cigarette butts in the toilet, as they become hard to light.
You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.
Abraham Lincoln hated being called “Abe.”
FAMOUS PUBLISHING HOAXES
They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover—and sometimes, as these hoaxes reveal, you can’t even judge them by what’s inside.
NAKED CAME THE STRANGER
The Book: In 1966 Mike McGrady, editor of the Long Island newspaper Newsday, interviewed “sex-novelist” Harold Robbins and was shocked to learn that Robbins had received a $2 million advance for a book he hadn’t even written yet. McGrady decided to see if he could repeat Robbins’s success: he deliberately set out to write a bad book, just to see how it would be received by publishers and the public. He came up with a title: Naked Came the Stranger, and a pen name: Penelope Asche.
Next, McGrady wrote up a story outline about a suburban house wife who gets even against her philandering husband by seducing married men. He recruited twenty-four Newsday reporters to write one chapter apiece, complete with two sexual encounters per chapter, one of which had to be bizarre. “There will be an unremitting emphasis on sex,” he explained. “Also, true excellence in writing will be blue-pencilled into oblivion.”
When the book was finished, McGrady gave it to his sister-in-law, who, posing as Penelope Asche, shopped it around to several New York publishing houses. Dell Publishing paid $37,500 for it, and published it in 1970.
What Happened: Naked Came the Stranger became a bestseller—it sold 20,000 copies in the first month alone, thanks in part to McGrady’s sister-in-law, who made TV and radio appearances promoting the book. McGrady eventually revealed the hoax, but sales remained strong, eventually topping well over 100,000 copies. McGrady, et al. were offered $500,000 to write a sequel; instead, he wrote a book called Stranger Than Naked, or How to Write Dirty Books for Fun and Profit.
THE MAN WHO WOULDN’T TALK
The Book: At the end of World War II, George DuPre, a Canadian, returned from Europe and began telling neighbors of his exploits in the secret service. DuPre said he was part of the anti-Nazi French underground until he was captured by the Germans, who tortured him to get him to talk. At one point, DuPre said, they even gave him a sulphuric acid enema—but somehow he managed to keep silent, and later escaped.
The farthest planet from the sun? Due to Pluto’s erratic orbit, until 1999, it’s Neptune.
As word of DuPre’s exploits spread, he became a Canadian national hero. Reader’s Digest printed an interview with him, which inspired Random House to publish The Man Who Wouldn’t Talk, the story of his experiences, in 1953.
What Happened: Not long after his book was published, DuPre broke down during an interview with the Calgary Herald and admitted he’d made up the entire story. He’d actually spent the entire war in Canada and England. Random House realized it had been fooled and pulled The Man Who Wouldn’t Talk from its nonfiction list. But rather than destroy the books, the publisher changed the title to The Man Who Talked Too Much and began selling it as fiction. Sales went up 500%.
THE MEMOIRS OF LEE HUNG CHANG
The Book: In 1913 Houghton Mifflin posthumously published The Memoirs of Li Hung Chang, the autobiography of one of the most famous Chinese statesmen of the era. The book was praised by many China experts—including John W. Foster, Secretary of State under Benjamin Harrison, who had worked with Li Hung Chang during an 1897 peace conference. Chapters of the work were serialized in the London Observer and The New York Sun.
What Happened: American Chinese experts praised the book. But Chinese experts immediately denounced it as a fake. They pointed out so many inaccuracies and discrepancies that Houghton Mifflin finally had to admit a problem and “look into the matter.” They discovered that the book’s “editor,” a man named William Mannix, was actually its author. Using books on China sent to him by friends, and a typewriter sent to him by the Governor of Hawaii, Mannix had written the book in 1912—while serving time for forgery in a Honolulu prison.
Strangely enough, the book can still be found in many university and public libraries today.
Bears don’t hibernate in caves. They like hollow stumps or logs.
LAUNCHING AIR JORDAN
If you had to name just one person associated with an athletic shoe, it would be Michael Jordan, right? Here’s how he became Air Jordan, from the BRI’s long-time pop historian, Jack Mingo.
WALKING ON AIR
The air-filled shoe wasn’t Nike’s idea. The first air sole was patented in 1882, and over 70 more were registered with the U.S. Patent Office before 1969. They all failed because of technical problems.
In 1969, a designer named Frank Rudy gave it a shot. He left a job at Rockwell International during a downturn in the aerospace industry, and invested his time and money in an effort to develop a running shoe with air soles. After many attempts, he finally succeeded by using a thin polyurethane bag for an air cushion. Then he convinced the Bata shoe company to try it out.
The first prototypes worked great. Unfortunately, it was the middle of the oil embargo of 1974, and Bata’s supplier quietly changed its polyurethane formula to use less oil. The new formula wasn’t as strong as the old one; when the soles warmed up and air pressure increased, they would explode like a rifle shot. Bata suddenly lost interest.
LAST ATTEMPT
Nearly broke and desperate, Rudy flew to France to show Adidas what he had. He didn’t get anywhere with them, but while he was hanging around the Adidas offices, he heard an employee mention a little U.S. company named Nike that was selling running shoes on the West Coast. Rudy made some calls, found out there was a running shoe trade show that weekend in Anaheim, and caught the next flight to Southern California.
He stopped by the Nike booth in Anaheim just as it was closing and got the name of the company’s president, Phil Knight. Rudy immediately found a pay phone and called Knight at Nike’s head-quarters in Beaverton, Oregon. Knight listened to Rudy’s story, then invited him for a visit.
Out of this world: 12% of Americans think they’ve seen UFOs.
NIKE JUMPS IN
Knight, an amateur runner, personally took Rudy’s air-filled shoes for a run. They slowly deflated as he ran, but he saw their potential. “It was a great ride while it lasted,” he told Rudy. Then he put Rudy on retainer for six months, to see if he could make the idea work.
After much trial and error, Nike finally came up with something they liked—an inflated midsole that went between the regular sole of a shoe and the runner’s foot. Nike called their new creation the Tailiwind and rushed it into production at $50 retail—the highest price anyone had ever charged for a mass-produced running shoe. But runners bought them anyway. Unfortunately, a last-minute fabric switch resulted in a shoe that fell apart after a short time, infuriating customers. About half of the shoes were returned as defective.
Nike eventually got the bugs out. This time they decided not to release the shoe directly into the marketplace. They were going to wait and try something special.
LUCKY CHOICE
Meanwhile, Nike was reevaluating its marketing strategy. The company had been paying professional athletes anywhere from $8,000 to $100,000 apiece to wear and endorse their shoes. One day in 1983, Nike execs did an analysis and found they “owned” about half of the players in the NBA�
�at a cost of millions of dollars a year. In fact, they had 2,000 athletes on their endorsement roster. It was getting more expensive all the time and it wasn’t necessarily winning them any any more business.
So they decided to switch tactics and find one promising rookie…then sign him to a long-term contract before he got too expensive. They considered Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing, but finally settled on 20-year-old college junior Michael Jordan. Their plan was to design a brand-new shoe for him, push it hard, and tie the product to the man (and vice versa), so when consumers saw the player, they’d think “shoes!”
Smokers need to ingest 40% more vitamin C than non-smokers just to stay even.
LAUNCHING AIR JORDAN
They had just the right product—the air-cushioned shoe. Nike offered Jordan $2.5 million for a five-year contract, plus royalties on every Air Jordan shoe sold. But Jordan turned them down. He didn’t particularly like Nike shoes. In fact, he loved Adidas and was willing to make concessions to sign with them. He told their representatives, “You don’t even have to match Nike’s deal—just come close.” But Adidas wasn’t interested. They offered only $100,000 a year, with no special shoe and no royalties. So, in August 1984, Jordan signed with Nike.
Nike came up with the distinctive black and red design for the Jordan shoe. In fact, it was so distinctive that the NBA commissioner threatened to fine him $1,000 if he wore Air Jordan shoes during games, because they violated the NBA “uniformity of uniform” clause. Jordan wore them anyway, creating an uproar in the stands and in the press…and Nike gladly paid the fine.
Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader Page 21