WTF • Fun • Fact    ( /dʌb(ə)lˌju/  /ti/   /ef/ • /fʌn/ • /fækt/ )

     1. noun  A random, interesting, and overall fun fact that makes you scratch your head and think what the...

WTF Fun Fact 12574 – John Hinckley Jr. Stalked Jimmy Carter

If the police had just looked at the journal sitting next to the guns would-be assassin John Hinckley, Jr. was trying to transport through the Nashville International Airport in 1980, they would have foiled his entire plot.

Of course, at the time, they had no idea Hinckley had plans to kill a U.S. president.

For those who don’t know the details, it didn’t matter much to Hinckley which president he shot. His only goal was to get the attention of actress Jodie Foster, who he had become obsessed with after seeing her in the 1976 Martin Scorsese film Taxi Driver. The film also starred Robert DiNero as Travis Bickle, a Vietnam vet and taxi driver with plans to assassinate a senator.

Creepily, Foster (who starred as child prostitute Iris in the film) was only 12 years old during filming. But in 1980, she was a freshman at Yale, and Hinckley was sending her letters that went unanswered.

Not content to be ignored, Hinckley made plans to emulate Travis Bickle but made his target even bigger – the president.

In 1980, Jimmy Carter was president, but on the campaign trail for reelection and running against Ronald Reagan. It appears that Hinckley’s first plan was to assassinate Carter, and he got pretty close at least twice – once in Dayton, OH, and once in Nashville, TN. Both times he got close to the president, but it appeared to be more of a trial run to ensure his plan would work. However, he was certainly capable of carrying out the plan in Tennessee because he was armed.

Despite deciding against shooting President Carter in Nashville, Hinckley would regroup. A scare at the airport in which security found multiple weapons in his luggage didn’t deter him. Neither did getting hauled into the Metro Nashville Jail, but that’s likely because he was quickly released on a small bond and paid $62.50 in total for his transgression (at least, the one people knew about).

Today we know that Hinckley’s plans were laid out in a journal he also kept in his luggage right next to those guns the police found. But no one opened it.

Of course, the very next year he would go on to shoot President Reagan in Washington, right across from the Secret Service headquarters. Reagan lived, and Hinckley was captured, but he was eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1982 and handed over to a mental health institution. He was granted unconditional release in 2021. – WTF fun facts

Source: “Investigators Think Hinckley Stalked Carter” — The New York Times

WTF Fun Fact 12573 – The Men Who Helped Make America’s Parks

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was established in 1933 by Franklin Roosevelt as part of his New Deal. It took millions of young men, many of whom had been living on public assistance due to the Great Depression, and employed them to do manual labor around the country.

The CCC had many accomplishments during its 9-year tenure, such as building roads and bridges. But perhaps most memorable are the 3 billion trees they planted, the paths they created in state and national parks, and how they transformed the country’s entire park system.

Putting hundreds of thousands of struggling men to work on environmental conservation projects turned out to be one of Roosevelt’s big successes. It combated the unemployment rate and gave young men a sense of purpose.

Many of the workers came from the east, and the biggest challenge was getting them to work out west, where a lot of infrastructure work was needed. The U.S. Army stepped in to solve the logistical problems associated with transportation.

As of July 1, 1933, there were around 300,000 enrollees in work camps around the country, nearly all aged 18-25, and 1,433 total working camps had been established. The U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture hired CCC employees to fight forest fires, plant trees, clear and maintain access roads, re-seed grazing lands, implement soil-erosion controls, build wildlife refuges, fish-rearing facilities, water storage basins, and even animal shelters. Enlisted lasted 6 months, and men got on-the-job vocational training.

Workers got $30 per month as well as room and board, though they were required to send home $22 to 25 of their monthly earnings to support their families. Some corpsmen received vocational education while they served.

It’s estimated that some 57,000 illiterate men learned to read and write in CCC camps and their ranks included WWI veterans, skilled foresters, and even 88,000 Native Americans living on Indian reservations.

At its peak in August 1935, over 500,000 men were working throughout 2,900 camps. All told, historians estimate that nearly three million men (5% percent of the U.S. male population) took part in the CCC at some point. No women were allowed to serve, and Black Americans were forced to work on other projects, despite efforts to prevent discrimination.

The CCC program ended at the start of World War II as funds for the program were diverted to the war effort. But in the end, the CCC was responsible for over half the reforestation in the nation’s history.

– WTF Fun Fact

Source: “Civilian Conservation Corps” — History.com

WTF Fun Fact 12572 – Einstein Never Failed Math

It’s incredible how pervasive myths about Albert Einstein are. In fact, very few of the quotes attributed to him are even accurate. It turns out if you just say something about the man and it gains traction, it becomes fact in some people’s minds.

And we’ve always loved the story that even though he was a genius, Einstein failed math as a schoolboy. Algebra, to be specific.

Apologies to anyone who has used their own math grades to portend their future genius, but Einstein failing any class is just flat-out wrong. He was a genius as a child, too, especially in math.

His school records were retrieved from his Swiss school by the New York Times, showing excellent grades in every subject. They state:

“The records, contained in a collection of the great theorist’s papers now being prepared for publication at Princeton, confirm that Einstein was a child prodigy, conversant in college physics before he was 11 years old, a ”brilliant” violin player who got high marks in Latin and Greek. But his inability to master French was the bane of his school days, and may have been chiefly responsible for his failing college entrance examinations.”

So, where did we get this idea? Well, it wasn’t invented out of thin air. Instead, it was the result of a misunderstanding.

The first biographers who saw Einstein’s records were likely confused by the grading system used by his school in Switzerland. At age 16, he received a 1 out of 6 in arithmetic and algebra. But what the scholars didn’t realize is that 1 was the highest, and 6 was the lowest.

Now, there’s a further explanation that makes us realize it was an honest mistake. The following year, Einstein’s grades in math were 6 on a scale of 1 to 6. However, the school reversed the grading system that year, making 6 the highest grade. – WTF Fun Fact

Source: “Einstein Revealed as Brilliant in Youth” — The New York Times

WTF Fun Fact 12571 – The Myth of Early Alien Panic

The story goes that when H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds was turned into a radio play and broadcast by Orson Welles in 1938, millions of people around the country heard the altered opening line “Martians have invaded New Jersey!” and freaked out. In fact, we’ve long been told that it started “a panic” that night because many people had never heard a radio play and believed it was the news and that the alien invasion was true. It has even been reported that people ran from their homes in fear, caused stampedes, and even committed suicide!

Say what you want about New Jersey, but there was no great panic over it being invaded by extraterrestrials nearly 85 years ago.

We’ll grant you that it’s a believable story. In the radio era, with no way to see what was happening, some people were very likely freaked out. But did they panic, run from their homes, and cause a national hysteria?

Well, there’s no evidence of it if they did.

Numbers are thrown around with abandon when it comes to listeners, and there are some estimates that around 12 million people were listening to Welles’ broadcast that night. And even if 1 in every 12 people believed it, 1 million people freaking out would be a big deal, right? The newspapers reported it, but it’s quite likely that it belongs in that (increasingly overused) category of “fake news.”

Yet even Smithsonian Magazine, which can often be trusted to research the accuracy of historical events, propagated the myth of the panic, saying of Welles:

“He’d heard reports of mass stampedes, of suicides, and of angered listeners threatening to shoot him on sight. ‘If I’d planned to wreck my career,’ he told several people at the time, ‘I couldn’t have gone about it better.’ With his livelihood (and possibly even his freedom) on the line, Welles went before dozens of reporters, photographers, and newsreel cameramen at a hastily arranged press conference in the CBS building. Each journalist asked him some variation of the same basic question: Had he intended, or did he at all anticipate, that War of the Worlds would throw its audience into panic?”

The only proof offered up is some old script drafts from the days when Welles and his colleagues were trying to turn the novel into a play. There are links to newspapers, but no interrogation of the reporting and whether it could be trusted or backed up. And while the magazine does have a fascinating story on how the play came to be, Slate has poked holes in the rest of the story.

Most important is the lack of a large enough audience to cause anything but a slight kerfuffle. Slate says:

“There’s only one problem: The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast. Despite repeated assertions to the contrary in the PBS and NPR programs, almost nobody was fooled by Welles’ broadcast.“

It turns out that a poll taken that night showed that 98% of 5000 surveyed households were listening to something else, or nothing at all, on Oct. 30, 1938. “Welles’ program was scheduled against one of the most popular national programs at the time—ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s Chase and Sanborn Hour, a comedy-variety show,” Slate notes. And to top it off “several important CBS affiliates (including Boston’s WEEI) pre-empted Welles’ broadcast in favor of local commercial programming.”

Even if people were turning the dial during musical interludes, as some have claimed, we have no way of reliably extrapolating that to 12 million people. No death has even been attributed to listening to the play and reports of people being treated for panic remain unsubstantiated.

So what’s the deal? It’s likely that newspapers weren’t so happy about radio cutting into their readership base. Slate put one final nail in the coffin, noting “Radio had siphoned off advertising revenue from print during the Depression, badly damaging the newspaper industry. So the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles’ program to discredit radio as a source of news. The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted.”

Over time, the myth grew and grew and old fake news was turned into historical evidence. But that still can’t make it true. – WTF Fun Fact

Source: “75 Years Ago, “War Of The Worlds’ Started A Panic. Or Did It?” — NPR

WTF Fun Fact 12570 – The Telephone’s Real Inventor

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was one of a handful of men who were working on a machine that transmitted vocal communications telegrphically. But we only remember him because he got to the patent office first (and he was already a well-known inventor).

Historians and government officials have since reexamined the research and found that Bell wasn’t actually the first to create the world-changing technology. That honor goes to an Italian-American immigrant and mechanical genius from Florence, Antonio Meucci.

In fact, in 2002, U.S. Congress recognized an impoverished Florentine immigrant as the inventor of the telephone rather than Alexander Graham Bell. The Guardian reported, “Historians and Italian-Americans won their battle to persuade Washington to recognize a little-known mechanical genius, Antonio Meucci, as a father of modern communications, 113 years after his death.”

“It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the life and achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognized, and his work in the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged,” the resolution stated. (You can read the resolution (107th Congress, H Res 269) on Congress.gov.)

While you might think there was a mad dash to the patent office, it’s actually the case that 16 years went by between Meucci’s demonstration of his “teletrofono” in New York in 1860 and Graham’s 1876 patent.

However, it was Bell’s telephone design that ended up being used to create the first telephones, so he does deserve some pretty massive credit. It’s just that Meucci deserves some and well and never really gets it.

The title of the most annoyed competitor of Bell’s likely goes to Elisha Gray, a professor at Oberlin College. He actually sent his lawyer to the patent office on the same day. Bell’s lawyer got to the desk first on February 14, 1876. His filing was the fifth entry of the day, while Gray’s lawyer was 39th. The U.S. Patent Office awarded Bell with the first patent for a telephone (US Patent Number 174,465).

Some historians actually claim that Bell knew what was happening and may have bribed someone at the patent office to doctor documents showing his patent came in first, but we’ll probably never know. – WTF Fun Fact

Source: “Who is credited with inventing the telephone?” — Library of Congress

WTF Fun Fact 12569 – Idaho’s Cannibalism Prevention Law

An Idaho statue reads:

TITLE 18
CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS
CHAPTER 50
MAYHEM

18-5003.  CANNIBALISM DEFINED — PUNISHMENT. (1) Any person who wilfully ingests the flesh or blood of a human being is guilty of cannibalism.
(2) It shall be an affirmative defense to a violation of the provisions of this section that the action was taken under extreme life-threatening conditions as the only apparent means of survival.
(3) Cannibalism is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison not exceeding fourteen (14) years.

So, our first question is: only 14 years? That seems lenient.

But perhaps even more interesting is that because Idaho is the only state with a law so explicitly addressing cannibalism, it’s also the only state in which the act is legal in some cases. Go re-read #2.

Basically, if you ingest human flesh or blood under extreme life-threatening conditions and it is your apparent means of survival, you’re all good. We imagine this could create some interesting legal loopholes.

Source: “Did you know that these ‘odd laws’ existed in Idaho?” – Associated Press

WTF Fun Fact 12568 – Georgia’s Fried Chicken Law

Gainesville, Georgia has gone to great lengths to establish itself as the “poultry capital of the world.” They’ll even “arrest” a 91-year-old woman for eating fried chicken with a fork instead of her fingers.

Ok, so the arrest was staged by a friend. Still, an ordinance in Gainsville says everyone must eat fried chicken, “a culinary delicacy sacred to this municipality, this county, this state, the Southland and this republic,” with their hands.

A little overstated, the ordinance is, of course, tongue-in-cheek. It was devised as a publicity stunt in 1961 in the hopes of getting enough attention that people would come to think of Gainsville as the fried chicken capital of the world. We’re not sure what the competition looks like for that title.

It turns out you really can be arrested for violating the ordinance, though no city in their right mind would spend taxpayer money taking it to court.

It did, however, make for a good birthday joke back in 2009. Ginny Dietrick was visiting from her home in Louisiana for her 91st birthday. While eating lunch at Longstreet Cafe, Gainesville Police Chief Frank Hooper strolled in and told Dietrick she was under arrest for eating her fried chicken with a fork.

We’re not sure surprising a 91-year-old that way is the best course of action, but her friend, Gainsville resident A.C. Marshall thought it was a great way to celebrate. Of course, it was all a practical joke, and Marshall set up her official pardon on the spot by inviting Gainesville Mayor Myrtle Figueras to the Longstreet Cafe.

“You are required to come back to Gainesville often and are required to eat lots of Gainesville chicken,” Figueras told her.

Luckily, Dietrick got more out of it all than just a scare. According to the Gainsville Times, Abit Massey, president-emeritus of the Georgia Poultry Federation, ordained Dietrick an Honorary Georgia Poultry Princess. We’re not sure what other rights and honors come with the title.

This was Dietrick’s first poultry-related run-in with the law. She did recall getting some sort of parking ticket in the 1940s.

According to the Gainsville Times:

“Dietrick’s arrest citation ordered her not to get up from the table until she mastered the proper techniques for consuming this succulent delicacy, ‘down to and including the licking of the fingers upon the ingestion of the last available morsel.'”

Presumably, she had a good attitude about it. We’d like to see someone try to order us by law to eat a certain way. – WTF Fun Fact

Source: “Visitor arrested for eating chicken with fork” — Gainsville Times

WTF Fun Fact 12567 – The Origin of the Countdown

3…2…1…we have liftoff. NASA may not have stolen the words for their spaceship launches, but they did lift the idea from a sci-fi film.

Of course, countdown clocks allow everyone involved to ensure they’re on the same page at the same time, but a big part of the countdown is building suspense for those watching. And that’s why NASA decided to make the final countdown a major part of their televised launches.

But they didn’t come up with the idea on their own. Like so much technology, the concept originated in a 1929 sci-fi film titled Frau im Mond by Fritz Lang. Even more unexpected – it was a silent film!

The idea for the story came from the novel Die Frau im Mond, by Thea von Harbou (Lang’s wife at the time). According to Atlas Obscura: “The book, which follows a group of backstabbing moon prospectors, is a rollercoaster ride of love triangles, business intrigue, and lunar gunfights…” 

Lang needed the film to be a hit. The “talkie” was becoming more and more popular, so he needed a way to make his silent films just as engaging. That’s when he settled on the countdown. (Another fun fact: before Die Frau im Mond, books and movies that involved a shuttle launch usually used countUPs.)

Atlas Obscura explained further how this influenced NASA: “The film’s space advisors brought lessons they learned from the film set back with them to the Society for Space Travel, where they found that loudly timing launches to the second was not only dramatic, but helpful. When NASA launched its first successful satellite, Explorer 1, in 1958, newsreels broadcasting the event breathlessly announced, ‘the moment is at hand, the countdown reaches zero!'”

The breathless countdown worked for Lang – his was the highest-grossing film of the year in 1929. And we can’t imagine a NASA launch without the countdown (something we completely took for granted). – WTF Fun Fact

You can check out the film scene yourself (and no, that’s not the original music!):

Source: “NASA Stole the Rocket Countdown From a 1929 Fritz Lang Film” — Atlas Obscura

WTF Fun Fact 12566 – Michelangelo’s Poetic Lament

Michelangelo didn’t have a great time painting the Sistine Chapel. The work conditions were less than stellar and his boss (Pope Julius II) enjoyed carrying around a stick to smack people with when he was upset.

While the outcome is a masterpiece, most of us can imagine the pain of spending hours looking up (he did not paint lying down) and painting with such detail – and it took him 4 years!

It was an uncomfortable job, to say the least. So uncomfortable, in fact, that Michelangelo wrote a little poem to a friend to let off some steam in 1509. He sent it to his friend Giovanni da Pistoia, and it went a little something like this:

I’ve already grown a goiter from this torture,
hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy
(or anywhere else where the stagnant water’s poison).
My stomach’s squashed under my chin, my beard’s
pointing at heaven, my brain’s crushed in a casket,
my breast twists like a harpy’s. My brush,
above me all the time, dribbles paint
so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!

My haunches are grinding into my guts,
my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight,
every gesture I make is blind and aimless.
My skin hangs loose below me, my spine’s
all knotted from folding over itself.
I’m bent taut as a Syrian bow.

Because I’m stuck like this, my thoughts
are crazy, perfidious tripe:
anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe.

My painting is dead.
Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor.
I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.

So, next time you feel like work is torture, just remember it could be worse! – WTF Fun Fact

Source: “‘My Poor Ass’: Michelangelo Wrote a Poem About How Much He Hated Painting the Sistine Chapel” — Mental Floss