The actual prison record from Sing Sing prison for Tony Marino, showing that he was legally executed for the murder of Michael Malloy on June 7, 1934, at 11:13 P.m. (New York State Archives)
The details of this story came out at the trial of the killers. In addition to all that has been described above, two other interesting details were brought to light. First, it seems that Malloy had suffered an incredible blow to the head. If he had survived the gas poisoning, he would have been blind in his left eye. Second, it was revealed that the Murder Trust had arranged for Malloy to be shot with a machine gun, but, in typical Malloy fashion, he somehow eluded the trap that the gang had set up.
In the end the sentences were handed down. Harry Green, the taxi driver, turned state’s evidence and went to jail on a lesser charge. Dr. Frank Manzella served prison time for being an accessory after the fact. Frank Pasqua, Anthony Marino, and Daniel Kreisberg got zapped in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison on June 7, 1934. Joseph Murphy (Murphy, Marino, Malloy, Mallory, Murray-there are a lot of M’s in this story) also went to the chair on July 5, 1934.
So what happened to Tough Tony Bastone? Apparently, there was a bit of a squabble over the division of the insurance money and he was shot dead about a month after Michael Malloy’s death in the same speakeasy. Of course, all of the defendants claimed at trial that Bastone was the one who coerced them into killing Malloy. (It’s very easy to blame the guy who can’t be there to defend himself.)
And the insurance money? The Trust collected the $800 from Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. However, they held off putting in the claims for the two Prudential policies. It seems that the main beneficiary, Murphy, was in jail as a material witness to Tough Tony’s murder, and his partners in crime did not want to bring attention to their scheme.
Sounds like the script for a good Hollywood comedy. On the other hand, nobody would ever believe it …
Useless? Useful? I’ll leave that for you to decide.
the rooster booster
the feathers will be flying!
Imagine sitting down one day and reading an absurd story on the Internet about how the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires all new airplane engine designs to undergo an oddball test where chickens are shot from a cannon toward the engines.
You do a bit of searching, but authenticating such a crazy story seems impossible. It’s apparent that this story has been floating around the Net for quite some time. You give up in frustration and decide that this tale must not be true.
Then, you are flipping through the TV channels the next night and, amazingly, there they are shooting chickens at an airplane engine in a totally unrelated story. Actual video to prove that such a thing is done.
Well, life is full of such strange coincidences. This actually happened to me. Just what are the chances that 1 could come across this obscure topic two days in a row?
Now that I’ve given you the background about how 1 got to this point, 1 am sure that you are wondering about the Rooster Booster.
So here goes …
Have you ever been driving down the road in your car and witnessed a head-on collision between your windshield and some unfortunate bird?
Splat!
But cars go at a relatively slow speed when compared to that of an aircraft. Imagine hitting a bird while going at Mach 1 (that’s the speed of sound). You’ll experience more than just splat. Chances are, if your plane is poorly designed, that severe damage could occur.
This is no minor situation we are talking about here. The U.S. Air Force estimates that there are between 2,500 and 3,000 bird strikes to their planes alone each year. This produces a large amount of damage, estimated to cost the service between $50 and $80 million annually. Occasionally, these incidents can also result in human death. (1 will spare you from viewing some of the bloody photographs several readers have sent me on this story!)
Clearly, something needed to be done to reduce this damage.
Although the exact origins of the Rooster Booster are difficult to trace, it appears that the device first became popular during the Vietnam War in the early 1970s. The military’s F-111 aircraft was equipped with terrain-following radar, which allowed the plane to cruise at only several hundred feet in the air. 1 think that you can see the problem here. If you’re zipping along at a low altitude, you are going to smash into a large number of birds and cause a lot of damage.
As a result of this damage during the Vietnam conflict, as well as normal nonmilitary flights worldwide, aircraft builders started to test their designs for resistance to bird strikes.
Well, what better way is there to test for bird impact damage than to shoot a real bird at high speed at real aircraft?
In reality, they could shoot any bird at the test designs. They could use ducks or turkeys (and they do). One would guess that swans and pink flamingos could also be used, but this would anger many people. Let’s face it, when it comes to choosing a bird, the lowly chicken becomes the prime candidate. Chickens are cheap and common, so they are ideal for the bird test.
Now before you start screaming about cruelty to animals, 1 should point out that the testers use dead birds. You know, carcasses. The birds were on their way to someone’s dinner table, but instead they took a detour to become a projectile in the Rooster Booster.
Yes, these are heroic chickens. They didn’t just become someone’s meal-they helped to save a life (unfortunately it was not their own).
Apparently, the majority of these chicken cannons work off compressed air. Unfortunately, birds don’t make tight seals with the wall of the cannon, so the bird is placed in a container called a sabot, a French term meaning “shoe.” When the gun is fired, the sabot (which is typically made from balsa wood, foam, or fiberglass) is mechanically stripped away by blades and the bird becomes a dangerous projectile.
Duck! Incoming!
There are strict guidelines when it comes to using the Rooster Booster. First, the bird must weigh either four pounds (military testing) or eight pounds (FAA testing). Second, the bird must be thawed (fresh or thawed, not frozen as some strange stories floating the Net seem to report). Third, the bird must be unplucked-it must be as realistic as possible.
The chickens are loaded into their sabot and fired from the gun (actually anything big enough to shoot a chicken should be called a cannon) at a very high velocity. Different guns are capable of shooting at different speeds, but they all seem to be around 125 to 180 miles per hour. There are reports of higher speeds of 500 miles per hour or more, but it’s hard to ascertain whether they are realistic numbers or not.
The chickens are shot at various components of the aircraft. Generally, these targets tend to be windshields, fragile wing components, and engines.
The testing of the engines is one that needs to be seen to believe. All new engine designs must pass this “chicken ingestion test” (and other tests) in order to receive FAA approval. When the chick hits the fan, so to speak, it disintegrates almost immediately. Shredded feathers and body parts seem to fly in all directions. Certainly sounds disgusting, but it’s better than the turbine blade doing the same and bringing an end to many human lives.
So the next time that you are flying in a plane while on your way to some nice tropical paradise, be sure to give thanks for that chicken that gave up his or her life for the sake of human safety.
Useless? Useful? I’ll leave that for you to decide.
hallooning
up, up, and away in my beautiful lawn chair
Did you ever have one of those nights where you have one hundred channels and there is still nothing on? It was on one of these nights that 1 stumbled across a show called Junkyard Wars: Flying Machines. The hosts had a team of washing machine repairmen take on a team of psychologists to see who could create a better flying machine. The rules were fairly simple. Each team had ten hours to construct a flying machine out of anything in the junkyard. The team that could keep a man in the air the longest was the winner.
&nbs
p; So, this got me thinking. Let’s suppose that 1 could build an aircraft in ten hours. Would 1 really want to risk my life by getting into such a thing? 1 think not. Then 1 started thinking about a man named Larry Walters, who built his own flying machine years ago and took a most unusual ride in the sky.
Larry, unlike the junkyard teams, had spent an entire lifetime planning his flight. It all started when Larry was eight or nine years old and his parents took him to Disneyland. Larry was captivated by a large bundle of Mickey Mouse balloons that a Disney employee was carrying. At that moment, Larry knew that he wanted to someday attach himself to balloons and fly high up into the sky.
During his teen years, Larry experimented with small balloons by filling them with hydrogen gas. (If you recall, the Hindenburg exploded because it was filled with hydrogen. This was not a safe thing for a teenager to do.) Later, as Larry was completing his stint as an Army cook in Vietnam his actual plan fell into place.
On July 2, 1982, Larry decided, after many years of waiting, to put his plan into action. He started to assemble his craft, fittingly titled Inspiration, in the backyard of the home of his girlfriend’s mother in the suburban Long Beach area of California. Using fifty-five cylinders of helium, Larry inflated forty-two seven-foot-diameter balloons that he had obtained from a local Army-Navy surplus store. Just imagine the sight of these balloons floating at nearly 150 feet above the ground! It must have been an amazing sight to see.
Because Larry had spent so many years preparing for his flight, he was well equipped for just about any emergency. He had a compass, an altimeter, a two-way radio, a flashlight, a first aid kit, and a pocketknife. Larry was very creative and attached eight plastic jugs filled with water to the sides of his craft for ballast. In another stroke of genius, he took along a BB gun, which he intended to use to shoot out the balloons so that he could slowly glide back to the ground.
Perhaps the most unusual thing about Larry’s flying machine was the design of its basket. Actually, it was the craft’s lack of a basket that captured one’s attention. Instead, Larry opted for a lawn chair that he had purchased from Sears for $109.
Larry put on his parachute and climbed into the Inspiration. The craft was tethered to a friend’s car, which was designed to limit Larry’s height to about fifty feet. This would allow Larry to get a feel for the craft before he actually cut loose. Larry’s ascent, however, was much faster than he had ever expected and the rope snapped.
Larry was headed for the sky!
His original flight plan had been to max out at eight or nine thousand feet and then travel approximately three hundred miles to the Mohave Desert and land. Having risen much more quickly than he had anticipated, Larry scrapped these plans and decided that he just wanted to enjoy the ride. Just imagine the view from those heights without the walls of any aircraft to block your vision! It must have been incredible.
Larry’s major concern was not about landing, but to avoid going too high where the air was thin and the temperature low. At about fifteen thousand feet, Larry decided that it was time to descend a bit. As planned, he fired his BB gun at the balloons and punctured seven of them. Just at the moment that he was gazing down to check his altimeter, a gust of wind hit the chair and the gun fell out of his lap. He watched helplessly as the gun got smaller and smaller as it fell to the ground. (imagine the lawsuit if someone had actually been standing under the gun when it hit!) While Larry had prepared his craft for nearly every conceivable thing that could go wrong, he somehow overlooked the possibility of losing the gun overboard. A simple piece of string attached to the gun would have been all that was needed.
Yet, even with the loss of the gun, Larry was not worried. His craft climbed a bit higher, topping out at 16,500 feet. Do a little bit of math and you will quickly realize that Larry and his lawn chair were floating at an altitude of over three miles! At one point, Larry flew into the airspace of the Los Angeles airport and was spotted by both Delta and TWA pilots.
The Inspiration then began to slowly descend to the ground. For some reason, the Inspiration started to pick up speed during the last two thousand feet. Larry cut off all of his ballast in an effort to slow the craft down. He ended up bouncing off the roof of a home and tangling the craft’s tethers in some power lines. This placed Larry and his chair at about eight feet above ground. Power to the community was shut off for about twenty minutes while he was cut down. (He was lucky that he wasn’t zapped.) Larry then gave his chair away to some kid in the street and autographed pieces of his balloons.
Larry may have completed his flight successfully and safely, but the Federal Aviation Administration was not pleased. On December 17, they fined Larry $4,000 for violating four aviation regulations, which included flying a vehicle that was not certified as air worthy. Larry had invested his entire savings in the flight and was unable to pay. After a bit of negotiation, the FAA reduced the fine to $1,500 for operating an unsafe vehicle. (1 guess any future Wright Brothers can forget about trying out experimental aircraft designs.)
Larry became an instant celebrity as news of his flight spread around the globe. He appeared on The Tonight Show and Late Night with David Letterman. Yet, Larry was never able to profit from his flight. With the onslaught of the Internet, Larry’s story has been widely circulated. He was awarded the Web’s 1997 Darwin Award for “stupidity above and beyond the call of duty.”
Sadly, Larry committed suicide in October 1993. No suicide note was found, but his death most likely had little to do with his flight years before.
One more unfortunate piece to this story: Larry theoretically holds the altitude record for clustered balloon flight, but this goes unrecognized since his flight was unlicensed and unsanctioned.
Useless? Useful? I’ll leave that for you to decide.
PRAT Z:
o o p s I
the areat hoston
molasses tragedu
history’s stickiest disaster
This is a story that 1 had heard when 1 was very young, but 1 cannot place its origins. It was one of those stories that 1 always assumed was pure fiction until 1 stumbled upon it once again more than twenty years later.
Clearly (since you can read the title above), 1 am talking about the Great Molasses Flood that swept through part of Boston, Massachusetts, on January 15, 1919.
At this time in history, molasses was America’s primary sweetener. It was used to make all types of cookies, cakes, breads, and especially rums. Due to its popularity at the time, there were many molasses factories, warehouses, and storage tanks lining the shores of Boston. After all, Boston was considered to be the distilling capital of the United States.
To tell this story, we are concerned only with one of these facilities-a large storage tank located in Boston’s north endnear the sites where the world-famous Faneuil Hall, Quincy Market, and the New England Aquarium stand today.
This was no small tank of molasses. The cast-iron tank had an eighty-foot-diameter base and stood over fifty feet tall. Estimates of its capacity range from 2.2 to 2.5 million gallons!
And we all know where this story is going.
A sudden thunderous cracking sound was heard. The tank exploded and all the molasses began to flow down the city streets.
The actual wall of molasses was estimated to be from fifteen to thirty feet high and moved at twentyfive to thirty-five miles per hour in the area around the tank. The depth was only (only?!!) several feet in the surrounding area. You could not outrun this thing. (This brings to my mind images of people running down the street trying to outrun Godzilla.)
There was no chance of saving anyone in its destructive path. Anyone who attempted to go near the sticky goo got stuck in it himself and became part of this sticky tsunami. 1 bet that it could have sucked the boots right off your feet.
The flood killed 21 people and injured an additional 150. Some were suffocated, some cooked, and others were swept by the wave into the harbor. I guess you could say that these unfortunate people were molassa
ssed to death. Not exactly how 1 wish to go.
The wave also destroyed millions of dollars’ worth of property. Homes and warehouses were swept off their foundations. Even part of the city’s elevated train line was destroyed when a portion of the molasses tank knocked out a few of the supporting girders.
Once the flood stopped, cleanup began. They could not remove the trapped horses from the sticky mess, so they had to shoot them. Freshwater from the fire hydrants would not wash away the molasses, so salt water from the harbor had to be sprayed on the land.
It took over six months to remove the molasses from the cobblestone streets, theaters, businesses, automobiles, and homes. The Boston Harbor was also stained brown for six months (must have made for a beautiful photo opportunity).
Believe it or not, there were reports that the molasses actually continued to creep out of the ground and cracks in the sidewalks for thirty years! Others claim that you can still smell traces of it on a very hot day in the city.
So what happened to cause this mess?
No one is really sure, but there are two theories:
First, it was believed that the tank was overfilled because of the impending threat of Prohibition. The tank was poorly engineered and cracked open because of the extra pressure exerted by the extra poop.
An alternative explanation has to do with the weather that day. On the prior day, the temperature was only two degrees Fahrenheit above zero. On the day of the accident, it had quickly shot up to an unseasonably warm forty degrees. Some believe that this caused rapid expansion of the molasses and overstressed the tank.
Whatever the cause, this mess tied up the court system for years. Over one hundred lawsuits were filed against the tank’s owners, the United States Industrial Alcohol Company. The company claimed that it was not responsible because the explosion of the tank was clearly the work of a saboteur. With no proof to support the company’s claim, the courts ruled in 1925 that the collapse was due solely to structural weakness. The distillery had to pay out nearly $1 million in fines.
Einstein's Refrigerator: And Other Stories from the Flip Side of History Page 3