Two of History's Worst Mistakes

If you're one of my ex-girlfriends then you already have a very biased selection for this week's Top 3. However, I was only a mistake to my parents, so this post with discuss history's worst fuck ups.

Let's face it, History, in a sense, is a written account of all the mistakes we've ever made. Hence the quote, "Those who don't learn history (or read related blogs about it) are condemned to repeat it. So read the following mistakes and please, don't try to repeat these at home.

The Mars Metric Mistake

In 1999, NASA, which stood for "Not Actually Safe Anymore" back then apparently, made one of the biggest mistakes in it's history. The team that built the Mars Orbiter (pictured above) did half the calculations in the metric system and the other half in the English measurement system. This caused the 125 million dollar project to go careening off into the abyss of space like a metaphor for humanity.

A written statement by NASA following the event definitely cleared things up.

"People sometimes make errors," said Edward Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science in a written statement. 

Yes, this is true. Go on...

"The problem here was not the error, it was the failure of NASA's systems engineering, and the checks and balances in our processes to detect the error. That's why we lost the spacecraft."

I may be the layman over here but uh, the error seemed like a huge part of the problem to me. You can't blame the "checks and balances" for not working when they shouldn't have to be there in the first place. These are scientists at the highest level and they shouldn't be messing up on something as simple as unit conversion.

The Most Wrong Turn in All of History

Franz Ferdinand: A Suave Mario 

It's very important that people understand this story, and this blog does a great job of setting the scene.

"On the morning of 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were shot dead in Sarajevo by 19-year-old assassin Gavrilo Princip. This launched a series of events that led to World War I, in which more than 16 million people died. This war led to economic calamity and helped bring about the Great Depression, a period that was especially bad in Germany, a nation which had the additional burden of paying war reparations to the winning powers.

"The financial hardship, coupled with the “humiliation of Versailles” (the treaty that Germany signed to end the war), led to the rise in German nationalism that helped a former lieutenant named Adolf Hitler come to power. Once again, war raged in Europe and around the world, this time with the death of 60 million people. This second world war ushered in the age of nuclear weapons and its end led directly to the Cold War, which consumed inconceivable amounts of money and almost pushed the world to the brink of nuclear devastation."

The Archduke's driver, Leopold Loyka, was driving the Duke and Duchess one day when he made a wrong turn. To correct this error, he slammed on the brakes causing the vehicle to stall out. With the engine smoking like a bad mother, Franz and his wife were sitting ducks.

Coincidently, Gavrilo Princip, the assassin, had given up on his assassination plan and was at a deli eating a sandwich, taking it out on himself that he had failed. He scanned the street ahead of him and tried to take his mind off of his failure. Until, a very familiar looking car turned the corner and broke down right in front of the deli.

Princip wiped the mustard from his handlebar mustache and shot three times at the car from five feet away. The first shot hit the Duke in the neck, causing his Duchess to cover him with her body which took the next bullet. The third one was supposed to kill the driver but it made a wrong turn.


Till next time!

Thomas Edison: Enlighten Yourselves

Thomas Alva Edison was an inventor and businessman who is credited with the most important inventions of our lives. One of those, of course, is the light bulb which lately has come across major controversy.

Edison was less of an inventor and more of a "Invention Prophet". Meaning that other inventors created innovative and world changing devices but didn't have the vision for them like Thomas did. And by "vision" I meant money. (Get it? Invention "Profit")

A list from List verse intros the critique on Edison very well by stating:

Back in 1875, two men named Woodward and Evans designed a primitive lightbulb which they patented, but they were never able to make the money to experiment with it properly and come up with a good, working prototype. Around the same time period, another man named Joseph Swan was also working on a lightbulb. That was when Edison entered the story...

While multiple people were working on something similar, and he bought the rights to the idea, Edison and his researchers still spent years in the laboratory in order to make the lightbulb into something worth using. Edison did not invent the lightbulb, but for all practical purposes he was the first to make one that lasted long enough to be used.

This brings us to an interesting crossroads when it comes to inventions. Who's the true owner of an invention if one person originated the idea, and another made it practical? Well,  Edison very much so wanted to keep the light bulb in the family. Edison did, however, make light bulbs home ready and safe. If light bulbs were a gun, Thomas invented the safety catch and blank ammunition so that it wouldn't kill people.

Speaking of killing people, Thomas may have done that, too. However, he also stole that idea from someone else. It's seriously a fascinating story that I will summarize for y'all.

This article by Times is where I found this.

In the late 1800's when being progressive was valuing your wife over your favorite horse, the battle for the invention of the motion picture camera was ensuing. A French inventor formally known as Le Prince (pictured below)

This is Le Prince, but if it wasn't could you even tell? Everyone pre-1930 looked like this. Including women. 

Is "credited" with being the lost inventor of the film industry. After a couple failed partnerships he moved to New York and acquired his first patent for a motion picture camera. In fact, he's the first person to film anything in human history which was a horse and carriage going down a busy street. Now that Sarah Jessica Parker and her family where immortalized in film,  Le Prince has a breakthrough so big the Kool Aid man killed himself in shame. (You guessed it, he poured one out for the dead homies and then poured himself out) We can only speculate at this discovery because this is where shit gets weird.

Le Prince told his friends in Paris to expect him and great news in a couple months, as he was traveling back to his homeland.  He boarded a train and was never seen again.

Now the inventor formally known as alive was gone and his inventions along with him, he hadn't gone public with his findings yet. He was assumed missing because, and get this, at the time, a missing person was only considered "dead" after seven years. Seven years? Well, by that logic my Dad has died 3 times. This is important because patents legally get tricky when someone dies, but if someone is "missing" that allows another party to piggyback on their invention until the person is "found". Guess who steps in? Thomas Alva Call Me the Space Cowboy or Maurice Edison swoops in again with his money.

This time his money took the shape of lawyers who won the first years of cases easily. Until a Le Prince family attorney named Adlophe (with a "ph" because he is cool like that) dug deeply into the case and his work would build the foundation for the decision being reversed years later.

Sadly, all that digging was his own grave and before he even saw the fruits of his labor he was found dead in his house. Ruled a suicide by hunting rifle to side of head. Except the scene was more staged than a Mel Gibson apology with a few less holes in it.

There's no historical evidence that Thomas Edison orchestrated this murders but he seemed to benefit very nicely from their occurrence.

His most attributed quote comes to mind, "I didn't fail 2,000 times, I found out that if I kill the people that have the inventions I want credit for and if I have enough money, then years from now people's children will be lied to about how cool I was in 3rd grade History."

Decades later and that quote still resonates with me.

Till next time!

History's Honorable Mentions: Part 1- Wilmer Mclean

It has been said before that History only remembers the victorious, well today, we are giving out the first historical equivalent of a participation ribbon. Remember those? Coaches gave those ribbons to the kid that always dug holes with a stick in center field so that he wouldn't grow up to put anthrax in people's mail.

Anyway, the first recipient of this "award" goes to Wilmer Mclean, a wholesale grocer during the Civil War. He married a woman from a wealthy family so naturally he inherited all of her family's property. You might of heard about this on Jeopardy as "What is the worst pre-nup in history?" This 1,200 acre patch of God given Southern land was located in Bull Run, Virginia and he lived there at the start of the Civil War.

On July 17th of 1861, Mclean accepted Confederate troops into his home for them to use it as a command center. The next day, as the officers were gathered for dinner, a cannonball tore through the kitchen and exploded out through the fireplace. A battle ensued and Wilmer thought it might be a good idea to move.

However, U-Haul back then was just Ol' Patch-Eyed Jimmy and his trustee fleet of oxen. It took so long for Wilmer to be able to move that he was still there by the time the 2nd Battle of Bull Run proved that sequels don't have to be worse than the original. After this battle, Wilmer finally had enough.

Mclean landed a real estate agent back when you could actually buy a real estate and left the war zone with his family.

To move to a town called Appomattox, Virginia and have the war come to an end in his parlor room.

His house was where the retreating Confederate army fled to and where the final armistice was signed. This man just couldn't get away from the Civil War. For years after the Civil War showed up in more places of his life. When he was intimate with his wife, sources say that instead of pulling out he would just "Secede" from their Union. The rest of his life he took his eggs Southern Side Up. He even called his socks "Articles of Confederacy". Poor guy couldn't even jerk off without thinking about a Southern uprising. (I'm so sorry.  I have a problem.)

Till next time!

Weekly Top 3: Failed Assassination Attempts

Take into consideration the level of commitment, planning, and determination it must take to execute a public figure. Imagine the preparation it takes. Everything from learning your target's schedule to growing a mustache. And even after all of that planning, it can still go horribly wrong.

Number One: King Louis XV

Apart from looking like a passive aggressive Thomas Jefferson, King Louis had a lot of people that wanted to kill him. One of those was Robert Francois, who approached the King and his guards one snowy night requesting an audience.  Louis probably muttered some clash trash under his breath

Louis sighed and let out an "Uh, seriously?" Probably because the blade was only a small ice pick which was far too short to get through the winter garb Louis was dressed in. The tip of the blade was all that touched Louis, however that didn't stop him from confessing about all the proletariat poon-tang he had been taxing without representation to his nearby wife. 

Louis obviously survived, but I'm certain his wife was never the same. After you've seen your husband, the king, cry from getting penetrated with just the tip you kinda just want to tell him to take it like a man and be grateful that it was cold outside. This was, in fact, a successful character assassination.

Number Two: Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson left a government funeral in 1835 trying not to look like Jane Fonda when his almost-assassin, Richard Lawrence (or as he liked to be called in private, Dick Law) ran up to him with two pistols aimed at close range. He was an unemployed house painter who was apparently furious that The White House turned down his idea to repaint. 

A gambling man would of bet that William Defoe's death was a sure thing. The first pistol misfired and at this point I like to think that's when Richard thought, "That's why I brought a spare!" except that's when the second pistol gave into the hype.

Standing there with two jammed pistols looking dead center into the wrinkled, angry face of what Joan Rivers would of looked like without surgery, Lawrence probably said, "Mondays, right?" and did a little soft shoe.

What really happened was that 67 year old cadaver of Phyllis Diller on the 20 dollar bill beat the unemployment out of Lawrence with his cane until Jackson's own security pulled Lawrence away. Yep, you didn't misread that last sentence. How bad ass of an individual do you have to be to have your own assassin get protected from you by your own security?

Number 3: Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro: fearless leader of Communist Cuba or Morgan Freeman if he looked into the Ark of the Covenant? Either way, this man most likely holds the record for most survived assassination attempts.

Somewhere around 600. Six. Zero. Zero. If you failed 600 times at anything would you ever do it again?  By this logic I should stop asking women out on dates. 

The CIA failed attempts:

[CIA] considered taking advantage of Castro’s love of scuba-diving by planting mollusk shells that contained explosives in the ocean when he was underwater, and painting them bright colors so that he would be attracted to them. Then, when he got close enough—boom. Another idea was reportedly planting a diving suit for him that was infected with fungus that would cause a lethal skin disease. They even recruited a former lover of his to murder him, but that didn’t work out because once they were alone, Castro figured out that she intended on shooting him and prompted her to do just that, even offering her his gun. She told him she couldn’t go through with it. Other attempts including poisonous pens, exploding cigars, and bacterial poisons designed to be dissolved in his coffee or tea.

I'm no Poli-Sci major but at which number of failed assassination attempts do you just give up out of embarrassment?  The U.S Government has the same success rate as Michael J. Fox with a Capri Sun.

Till next time!

Michelangelo: The Big Picture

Michelangelo isn't just the name of the largest size on Starbucks' secret menu, he is one of the most well known artists in the entire span of human history. He was a sculptor, painter, engineer, and poet with a shady lawyer's full name.

I have personally seen the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and I gotta say, for someone whose hand was supposedly guided by God himself, it's aight. But for a sculptor who was tricked into the project? Pretty fuckin' impressive.

Michelangelo was a sculptor and at heart, this was his true artistic calling. Before the age of 30 he had already crafted his two most lasting works, David, and Pieta which thousands of years later still astonish crowds. He was assigned to sculpt a few statues for the Sistine Chapel and later discovered it was a trick, and he had agreed to paint the ceiling.

For 4 years he essentially lived on scaffolding like an artistic Catwoman, hating every second of what he was doing. Therefore, he painted a few messages into the vast mural that I think are noteworthy.

The first, was the way he chose to get back at a certain someone. In Dante's myths of Heaven and Hell there is Minos, the king of Hell. He's described as expected, long ears, sharp teeth and green skin. Kinda like James Carville as the Hulk. And as a fellow history blog states:

It’s well documented that Michelangelo faced opposition surrounding his artistic interpretation of the scene and the many nudes, which were all completely nude at the time with the loincloths painted years later (the fresco was restored in 1993, with some of the loincloths removed and others left- just look back at St. Bartholomew to see the convenient piece of cloth). One of Michelangelo’s most vocal enemies was the Pope’s master of ceremonies Biagio da Cesena, who was constantly on Michelangelo about the nudes. Michelangelo responded by painting his likeness as that of Minos, with large donkey’s ears and a snake wrapped around and biting him in a precarious spot. Better yet, it is right above the side door, the most visible spot from ground level. Cesena complained directly to the Pope, who supposedly joked that he had no power over Hell so it would have to remain.

 "Minos" aka Biago da Cesena

Yeah, that's right. Fuck with Michelangelo and a snake eats your metaphorical and allegorical dick for the rest of time. (Side note: Who was Pope back then? Don Rickles IV?) Also, a testament to the power of artists. If you are good enough, you can insult someone with the blessing of the Pope. That's gotta be a burn for all eternity, right? 

The Huffington Post ran an article highlighting a few more hidden gems: 

In two places in the masterpiece, Michelangelo left self portraits -- both of them depicting himself in torture. He gave his own face to Saint Bartholomew's body martyred by being skinned alive:

 and to the severed head of Holofernes, who was seduced and beheaded by Judith.

My takeaway from all this is that there are a lot of young artists out there that complain about how they company they work for "Doesn't understand my vision." or "They don't know, I'm a great poet why am I doing this bullshit?" 

Do what Michelangelo did, suck it up and be such a good artist they only remember the names of the people who hated you because they're now famous for having wrongly hated you. Revenge is a dish best served as "the immortalization of the dickishness of your haters in timeless art." 

Till next time! 

PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW: PART 4- YOSHIRO NAKAMATSU

This will probably be the last "People You Should Know" post for a while because this man is (in my opinion) the best human being alive at the moment.

Let me introduce you to Yoshiro Nakamatsu, or as he is known in Japan, Dr. NakaMats. This man holds the record for most patents ever held by a single person. 3,000 plus and counting and the man is still inventing today in his late 80's.  His first credited invention was an archaic device called the Floppy Disk, or as my generation calls it, "The save button" in which he worked with IBM to develop and distribute it. An article by The Smithsonian listed his inventions:

"Among his other creations (he will earnestly tell you) are the CD, the DVD, the fax machine, the taxi meter, the digital watch, the karaoke machine, CinemaScope, spring-loaded shoes, fuel-cell-powered boots, an invisible “B-bust bra,” a water-powered engine, the world’s tiniest air conditioner, a self-defense wig that can be swung at an attacker, a pillow that prevents drivers from nodding off behind the wheel, an automated version of the popular Japanese game pachinko, a musical golf putter that pings when the ball is struck properly, a perpetual motion machine that runs on heat and cosmic energy."

This man's mind changed the world multiple times over. The first 5 inventions alone changed the way millions of people live their lives. Whenever a great mind like this comes across in human history it is imperative that we study their habits, perhaps even apply them to other situations.

However, Dr. NakaMats had some very strange habits. The first is that he takes a picture of every meal he eats but the doctor isn't your typical young white girl, partly because he is 84 and Japanese, but also because he only eats one meal a day. That meal consists of various spices and low carb substances that he believes will allow him to live to 144.

Yep, 144. He wants to die at that exact age. No more, no less.

His creative process isn't exactly copycat materiel either. The doctor says that to get an idea for an invention he submerges himself under water until he is seconds from death, then takes a water proof notepad and pen (guess who invented it?) and the near death state he is in is where he comes up with his greatest ideas.

Next time one of your hipster "I'm an artist, meh" friends tells you how they started eating soy and now they can feel their inner Da Vinci, fill them in on what a true creative process looks like. Yeah sure Moon-Beam over there knitted a great quilt for the Loopis 5k next weekend but did they almost die just to get another idea?

NakaMats states that the lack of oxygen is crucial to the mind being at it's most creative. He stated once,

"A lack of oxygen is very important... I get that flash just 0.5 sec before death. I remain under the surface until this trigger comes up and I write it down." 

How the hell did he figure out that process? The last idea I had while drowning was that maybe Casey Anthony isn't the best swim teacher.

The method is only insane if the result is unsatisfactory and that is certainly not the case here. This process has caused the inventions of the most innovative objects of the last century. This man gave us the foundation that the technological boom was built upon.

I salute to you, Dr. Nakamastu.  Thank you for everything that people my age complain takes too long. I hope the next time anyone takes a cab to a karaoke bar thinks of Yoshiro and his contributions to the world.

Long live Yoshiro,  but not for too long, only until 144 when he is on patent 10,000.

PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW: PART 3- TYCHO BRAHE

Every once in a while humanity creates an individual so insanely intelligent that they don't fit in in this world. (ie: Alan Turing, me) They attempt to showcase their intelligence and get called crazy for being ahead of the curve. Then, they sadly shrivel into the depths of history until some historian decades later finds the "lunatic" scientist's old work and deems it to be fact.

One of this people is Tycho Brahe, a Danish scientist born in 1546. He was born into a wealthy family which pressured him to study law which Brahe obviously disobeyed. He used his family's wealth to attend top universities and would go on to be an associate to the one and only Johannes Kepler.

Brahe was on the verge of a life changing discovery like someone coming home to their cheating spouse, as the Tycho Brahe Biography article by space.com states.

In 1572, Brahe observed a supernova in the constellation of Cassiopeia. Brighter than Venus, the new star remained visible for a year and a half.  1577, he observed a comet. Current theory taught that both were disturbances in the atmosphere. However, Brahe's precise measurements revealed differently. He proved that the supernova never changed with regard to the surrounding stars, and that the comet orbited beyond the path of the moon, contradicting the idea that the heavens never changed.

Tycho wads the first to discover that the universe was dynamic, not static. All without a telescope and Google. Then why do I only remember hearing about Kepler in school? Maybe because Tycho was the Mel Gibson of scientists.

Once when he was young, he instigated a duel over who was the better mathematician with another student which ended in him getting his nose shot off.

Could that be why Voldemort is no longer in our science books? Maybe it was because in his circle of friends was a dwarf called "Jepp" who Brahe claimed was clairvoyant. Jepp's main job was to wear a court jester's outfit and sit under the table until someone asked a question Brahe couldn't answer.

I think Tycho missed his chance. He had a dwarf that could read minds and didn't name him "Small Medium"? Some genius.

Maybe the reason that his name was somewhat lost was his hobby of getting himself and his pet moose sacrilegiously drunk and racing it down the stairs of his castle.

Kepler and Brahe worked together briefly until a dispute over the sharing of Tycho's findings sent them into a conflict. They both wanted to figure out why it seemed like Mars would move backwards according to their measurements and it stumped them both. This would later be the foundation for Copernicus discovering that plants orbited the sun in an oval instead of a circle.

At a dinner party in 1601, Brahe is rumored to have heavily sedated himself with alcohol and societal etiquette deemed that he couldn't get up from the table. He died at 54 of a burst bladder. Social contract was his death certificate.

Accept it wasn't, because a centuries later scientists discovered traces of Mercury in his bones that spell out a possible poisoning. It is rumored that Kepler had him poisoned and stole all of his findings because he would later publish what would be the evidential foundation for Copernicus the decade after.  I sent this into Cold Case files and they have not gotten back to me. They don't take 400 year old cases apparently.

Please fell free to explore the mad scientist Tycho Brahe and the Tycho-path he really was. Till next time!