(a) Abraham Lincoln
(b) William McKinley
(c) James Madison
(d) Jimmy Carter
Did you see it? A 1966 movie was called Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter.
THE BIRTH OF
THE COMIC BOOK
A story for people who read comics in the bathroom.
The modern comic book was born at the Eastern Color Printing Company in Waterbury, Connecticut.
In the late 1920s, Eastern printed the Sunday comic sections for a number of East Coast newspapers. Eastern’s sales manager, Harry Wildenberg, was looking for ways to increase the company’s profits and keep the printing presses busy. He came up with a clever idea: bind some of the comics into a “tabloid-sized book,” and sell them as a premium.
He convinced the Gulf Oil Company to give it a shot. They bought the books, gave them to customers...and were pleased with the results. Eastern had a new product to sell.
Meanwhile, Wildenberg was trying to make the package more practical. He noticed that if he shrank the comic strips to half-size, he could fit two complete strips on each tabloid-sized page. He played with the idea, and figured out how to produce a 64-page book of comics on Eastern’s presses.
A NEW PRODUCT
This new creation was a big hit with companies whose products were geared to kids. Procter & Gamble, Kinney Shoes, Canada Dry, and other businesses gave away anywhere from 100,000 to 250,000 copies at a time.
Then it occurred to people at Eastern that if the product was so popular as a premium, maybe it could be sold directly to kids. So in 1934, they printed 200,000 copies of a “comic book” called Famous Funnies, put a price on them (10¢), and got them onto newsstands around the country.
Famous Funnies was an instant hit. Eastern sold 180,000 copies—90% of the first print run. And by the 12th issue, they were making as much as $30,000 a month from it.
The comic book was established as a profitable part of American pop culture.
Three most profitable sections in a supermarket: meat, fresh produce, pet food.
GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE
Think you’re in a bad relationship? Take a look at these folks.
In Loving, New Mexico, a woman divorced her husband because he made her salute him and address him as “Major” whenever he walked by.
One Tarittville, Connecticut, man filed for divorce after his wife left him a note on the refrigerator. It read, “I won’t be home when you return from work. Have gone to the bridge club. There’ll be a recipe for your dinner at 7 o’clock on Channel 2.”
In Lynch Heights, Delaware, a woman filed for divorce because her husband “regularly put itching powder in her underwear when she wasn’t looking.”
In Honolulu, Hawaii, a man filed for divorce from his wife, because she “served pea soup for breakfast and dinner...and packed his lunch with pea sandwiches.”
In Hazard, Kentucky, a man divorced his wife because she “beat him whenever he removed onions from his hamburger without first asking for permission.”
In Frackville, Pennsylvania, a woman filed for divorce because her husband insisted on “shooting tin cans off of her head with a slingshot.”
One Winthrop, Maine, man divorced his wife because she “wore earplugs whenever his mother came to visit.”
A Smelterville, Idaho, man won divorce from his wife on similar grounds. “His wife dressed up as a ghost and tried to scare his elderly mother out of the house.”
In Canon City, Colorado, a woman divorced her husband because he made her “duck under the dashboard whenever they drove past his girlfriend’s house.”
No escape: In Bennettsville, South Carolina, a deaf man filed for divorce from his wife because “she was always nagging him in sign language.”
The Last Straw: In Hardwick, Georgia, a woman actually divorced her husband because he “stayed home too much and was much too affectionate.”
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had a weakness for cologne.
OOPS!
Everyone’s amused by tales of outrageous blunders—probably because it’s comforting to know that someone’s screwing up even worse than we are. So here’s an ego-building page from BRI. Go ahead and feel superior for a few minutes.
STAMP OF DISAPPROVAL
In January 1994, the Postal Service unveiled a new set of commemorative stamps called Legends of the West. One of them honored rodeo star Bill Pickett, “the nation’s foremost black cowboy.” The portrait on the stamp was copied from a photo that Pickett’s biographer had pulled from a folder marked “B. Pickett” years earlier. However, the face on the stamp wasn’t Bill Pickett’s. It was that of Bill’s brother, Ben. The Postal Service had to recall the 100 million stamps they’d sent out. The cost: $1 million.
HE’S GOT A GUN!
In June 1993, a security officer patrolling the parking lot at Rochester General Hospital noticed a mustachioed figure sitting in the back seat of a car, with a rifle propped between his knees. The guard yelled to the man, got no response, then called the police. First, they sealed the back entrance to the hospital. Then, sharpshooters surrounded the car and tried to negotiate with the armed man. Then they realized the figure was a mannequin.
A BAD REVIEW
“In 1987 the San Francisco Chronicle published a review of the San Francisco ballet’s performance of Bizet pas de Deux. The review, headlined ‘S.F. Ballet Misses a Step at Stern Grove,’ slammed the performance. It nicknamed the principal dancer, Ludmila Lupokhova ‘Lumpy,’ and referred to her ‘potato-drenched Russian training.’ However, it turned out that the program had been changed at the last minute to Ballet d’Isoline, performed by five male dancers; Lupokhova had not even appeared.
Critic Heuwell Tircuit blamed poor health. He said he had been so sick during the performance that he hadn’t noticed the change in program and dancers.
1994 news report: Taco Bell had 3 restaurants in downtown Mexico City.
His editors said his story was “hardly credible” and fired him.
—From If No News, Send Rumors
A DATE TO REMEMBER
On November 7, 1918, Admiral Henry B. Wilson, director of U.S. naval operations in France, received a telegram from Paris informing him that World War I was finally over. Wilson leaked the information to Roy Howard, president of the United Press wire service, and the news quickly crossed the Atlantic. It made headlines in afternoon papers all over the U.S., bringing business to a halt, causing joyous celebrations, and prompting a mammoth tickertape parade through the streets of New York City.
Later that evening, Howard discovered the message had been a fake. The war actually ended four days later.
MISSED HIM BY THAT MUCH
“In April 1993, just after Steve Morrow scored the goal that gave the Arsenal team England’s League Cup soccer championship, his teammates tossed him into the air in ritual celebration of their victory. However, they failed to catch him when he came down and Morrow was carried off the field on a stretcher and oxygen mask over his face. It was later determined he had a broken arm.”
—From News of the Weird
EATING CROW
“During the Reagan era, a mother of four wrote to the White House saying she couldn’t feed her family on the reduced-food-stamps program. Someone apparently thought it was a request for a recipe and forwarded it to the First Lady’s office...which sent the woman a copy of Mrs. Reagan’s crab and asparagus recipe, costing about $20 to prepare.
“The Reagan administration was in the midst of trying to declare ketchup a vegetable and lines of the hungry were forming to pick up surplus cheese,” writes The New York Times, and the news media had a field day with the incident. “Thereafter, when the White House was asked for a recipe, it sent out one of Ronald Reagan’s favorites: macaroni and cheese.”
—From But Not That Subject
Mark Twain tried to convince children that Santa Claus lived on the moon. He couldn’t.
THE NATURAL HISTORY
; OF THE UNICORN
Today we know that there’s no such thing as unicorns. But back in the 1500s, they were a sort of respectable version of Bigfoot. Although only a few people had ever “seen” them, it was widely believed that they existed. So when Topsell’s Historie of Four-footed Beastes, the first illustrated natural history in English, was published in 1607, unicorns were included. Here are some excerpts from the original version of the book. Remember, as you read, that these descriptions were considered science, not fantasy.
ABOUT THE HORN
• “We will now relate the true history of the horn of the unicorn. The horn grows out of the forehead between the eyelids. It is neither light nor hollow, nor yet smooth like other horns, but hard as iron, rough as a file. It is wreathed about with divers spires. It is sharper than any dart, and it is straight and not crooked, and everywhere black except at the point.”
• “The horn of the unicorn has a wonderful power of dissolving and expelling all venom or poison. If the unicorn puts his horn into water from which any venomous beast has drunk, the horn drives away poison, so that the unicorn can drink without harm. It is said that the horn being put upon the tables of kings and set among their junkets and banquets reveals any venom if there be any such therein, by a certain sweat which comes over the horn.”
• “The horn of a unicorn being beaten and boiled in wine has a wonderful effect in making the teeth white or clear. And thus much shall suffice for the medicines and virtues arising from the unicorn.”
THE WILD CREATURE
• “Unicorns are very swift. They keep for the most part in the deserts and live solitary in the tops of mountains. There is nothing more horrible than the voice or braying of the unicorn, for his voice is strained above measure.”
• “The unicorn fights with both the mouth and his heels, with the mouth biting like a lion's and with the heels kicking like a horse’s. He is a beast of an untamable nature. He fears not iron nor any iron instrument.”
Yum yum! A pound of houseflies contains more protein than a pound of beef.
• “What is most strange of all other is that he fights with his own kind (yea, even with females unto death, except when he burns in lust for procreation), but unto stranger-beasts, with whom he has no affinity in nature, he is more sociable and familiar, delighting in their company when they come willingly unto him, never rising against them, but proud of their dependence and retinue, keeps with them all quarters of league and truce.”
• “With his female, when once his flesh is tickled with lust, he grows tame, gregarious, and loving, and so continues till she is filled and great with young, and then returns to his former hostility.”
NATURAL ENEMIES
• “The unicorn is an enemy to the lion, wherefore, as soon as ever a lion sees a unicorn, he runs to a tree for succor, so that, when the unicorn makes force at him, he may not only avoid his horn but also destroy the unicorn, for, in the swiftness of his course, the unicorn runs against the tree wherein his sharp horn sticks fast.”
• “Then, when the lion sees the unicorn fastened by his horn, he falls upon him and kills him.”
CAPTURING THE UNICORN
• “It is said that unicorns above all other creatures do reverence virgins and young maids, and that many times at the sight of them, unicorns grow tame, and come and sleep beside them, for there is in their nature a certain savor by which the unicorns are allured and delighted.”
• “The Indian and Ethiopian hunters are said to use a stratagem to take the beast. They take a goodly strong and beautiful young man, whom they dress in the apparel of a woman, besetting him with divers odoriferous flowers and spices.”
• “The man so adorned, they set him in the mountains or the woods where the unicorn hunts, so as the wind may carry the savor to the beast, and in the mean season, the other hunters hide themselves.”
As a person ages, the first sense to go is the sense of smell.
• Deceived by the outward shape of a woman and the sweet smells, the unicorn comes unto the young man without fear and so suffers his head to be covered and wrapped within his large sleeves, never stirring but lying still and asleep, as in his most acceptable repose.”
• “Then when the hunters by the sign of the young man perceive the unicorn fast and secure, they come upon him and by force cut off his horn and send him away alive.”
PROOF THAT UNICORNS EXIST
Why was Edward Topsell so sure that unicorns roamed the earth? A matter of faith. Although he’d never seen a unicorn, Topsell believed that to doubt its existence was to deny the very existence of God:
• “That there is such a beast Scripture itself witnesses, for David thus speaks in Psalm 92: ‘My horn shall be lifted up like the horn of a unicorn.’”
• “All divines that have ever written have not only concluded that there is a unicorn, but also affirm the similitude between the kingdom of David and the horn of the unicorn, for as the horn of the unicorn is wholesome to all beasts and creatures, so should the kingdom of David be in the generation of Christ.”
• “Do we think that David would compare the virtue of his kingdom and the powerful redemption of the world unto a thing that is not or is uncertain and fantastical? Likewise, in many other places of Scripture, we will have to traduce God, Himself, if there is no unicorn in the world.”
MISC. BATHROOM NEWS
Denver, Sept. 29, 1993—“Portable potties at the construction site at Denver International Airport stink so much that someone has been setting them on fire. Five have been burned in the last month.
“One of the two burned on Monday bore a graffiti warning: ‘If you don’t fix the toilet paper dispenser, I’ll burn down another one. Signed, The Flame Man.’
“Last week, a similar message on a charred toilet warned officials to ‘Keep the toilets clean or they’ll get burned.’”
Fifty-four percent of U.S. women say they’d rather “get run over by a truck” than gain 150 lbs.
WELCOME TO...
“THE OUTER LIMITS”
Monsters have always been hits with moviemakers and their audiences, but “The Outer Limits” (which aired from 1963 to 1965) marked the first time TV viewers got a “monster of the week.” The show was more than that, though; the lighting and cinematography gave the show an offbeat, intensely atmospheric look—and the writing was impressively literate. Despite its lukewarm ratings in its first run it remains one of TV’s most memorable shows.
HOW IT STARTED
In 1961, Leslie Stevens came up with an idea for a science-fiction show about “the awe and mystery of the universe.” He brought it up in a conversation with “packager programmer” Dan Melnick, who agreed it would make a good show—as long as it had monsters in it to make it commercial. And “The Outer Limits” was born.
Well, actually Please Stand By was born, because that was the title of the proposed pilot that Stevens sold to ABC in 1962. Filming began December 2, with Joe Stefano producing. Early on, ABC requested the addition of a Rod Serling-like host to speak directly to the audience. Stefano didn’t want one, so he compromised: he created an unseen presence called “the Control Voice” which introduced and commented on each episode. It was Stefano’s excuse to editorialize. However, 1962 was a bad time to be flashing “Please Stand By” on screen while an “ominous voice” took control of viewers’ TV sets. Only a few months earlier, the Cuban missile crisis had brought us to the brink of World War III. ABC guessed that an already frightened public might mistake the show for an official announcement and create an Orson Welles-type panic.
So the name was changed to “Beyond Control” and then to “The Outer Limits.” The series finally began shooting on May 22, 1963, and premiered 3½ months later. The show only ran until January 16, 1965.
71% of college-educated women—but only 44% of non-college-educated women—breastfeed.
SPECIAL EFFECTS
To the producers of The Outer Limits, the monsters were metaphors; it
was the contemporary themes of the stones that mattered, not the costumes and special effects. This was convenient, because their “creature budget” was only $10,000 to $40,000 per episode. They had to be very creative when it came to the scary stuff. For example:
• The Andromedan from the episode “Galaxy Being” was a guy in a brown wetsuit coated with glycerin and oil, and negative-reversed to produce a shimmering white monster.
• In one scary episode, poisonous alien plants take root on the earth and shoot deadly spores into the air. But the audience wouldn’t have been too frightened if they had known the “spores” were actually puffed wheat cereal!
• By consensus, the most ridiculous Outer Limits monster ever created was the Megasoid. It consisted of “a floppy velour gorilla suit (through which the actor’s T-shirt could frequently be seen), a dubbed-in German shepherd growl, and a “recycled bird mask” from a previous episode.
CAN YOU BEAR IT?
Although Stevens and Stefano had lofty ideas about what they were trying to accomplish in their stories, ABC only cared about the monsters, which Stefano always referred to as “the bears.” He explained: “In the old vaudeville days, when things were going wrong and the audience was getting bored, out would come a comic in a bear outfit. That’s what we do in each of our shows—‘Bring on the bear!’”
HOT PROP-ERTY
Eleven years after “The Outer Limits” last showing, Robin Williams appeared as Mork from Ork, wearing a helmet used in an “Outer Limits” episode called “The Specimen.”
CENSORED
“The Cats,” an episode in which aliens “take possession of the bodies of household pets to invade the Earth,” was never shown. ABC feared that viewers who had cats at home might become scared of them.”
Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader Page 61