Normally, writing about celebrities is a complete waste of time. They get enough attention as it is. Too much for too little to be perfectly honest. The other side of the coin is that certain facts about them rarely elicit more than a bemused
nodding of the head followed by a statement like, "I am not surprised by that." For instance, most people just bob their head smiling when told Bill Murray got arrested in 1970 for trying to smuggle ten pounds of marijuana through O'Hare airport. However, there are occasionally others which catch people off guard. Like the fact Hitler's two favorite actresses were Shirley Temple and Greta Garbo. (To her credit Greta Garbo once said, "Mr. Hitler was big on me. He kept writing and inviting me to come to Germany, and if the war hadn't started when it did, I would have gone and I would have taken a gun out of my purse and shot him, because I am the only person who would not have been searched." Being a little bitch, Shirley Temple never admitted plotting to kill Hitler.) Let's try landing the coin on the more bizarre side, but we'll start light.
1. Dr. Ruth is a trained sniper.
Yes, that sweet old lady, who knows more about sex than a porn star, is capable of putting a bullet right between your eyes. Orphaned by the Holocaust, a young Dr. Ruth (who at the time would have just been Ruth) moved to Israel where she joined Haganah, an underground military organization. In her own words, "When I was in my routine training... they discovered completely by chance that I was a lethal sniper. I could hit the target smack in the center further away than anyone could believe... even today I can load a Sten automatic rifle in a single minute, blindfolded." In addition she could pitch a meanly accurate grenade.
However, unfortunately, Ruth never got the chance to kill anyone. Her military career ended abruptly on her 20th birthday after a cannonball from Jordan smashed through the window of her residence. The cannonball almost ripped off her legs. Three others died, but Ruth didn't get any blood on her new shoes. And I'm not saying that, she is, "All I could think about was whether there might be some blood on the brand-new shoes I had just gotten for my birthday, and amazingly there wasn't even a drop on them." Silver lining!
2. Alexander Graham Bell: Asshole.
Most people don't know that Graham Bell stole the patent for the telephone. Two men beat him to the invention of the talking telegraph, Elisha Gray and Antonio Meucci. Bell straight up dry fucked Meucci in the ass, and continuing the metaphor, whipped the shit off his dick on the Italian's beard.
In 1860 Meucci rigged up a means so that his paralyzed wife could call for him while he was away in his workshop. This led to him designing what he called the teletrofono. Basically, it's a telephone. However, Meucci couldn't afford a long term patent and had to set a renewable patent that expired each year. After three years he couldn't afford the $10 to renew. He sent a model and technical details of the teletrofono to Western Union Telegraph. However, executives refused to meet with him. When Meucci asked for his materials back he was informed they had been lost. Shortly thereafter Bell claimed to have invented the telephone while at the same securing a lucrative deal with Western Union. Meucci sued. He might have won if his death hadn't prompted a judge to dismiss the case.
Gray went down even harder. His course is roughly the same as Meucci. The crucial difference is that when he sued he had the foresight not to die of old age. During the trial Gray's attorney focused on testimony from a patent clerk named Zenas Fisk Wilber. Besides having the best name ever, Wilber confessed that Bell bribed him with $100 to delay any patents regarding a telephone like device as well as provide him with any information regarding said devices. Following this damning testimony along with other evidence, a judge ruled in favor of Bell. I'll repeat that. It was proven Alexander Graham Bell committed fraud to get his patent in first, but none of that apparently matters in a court of law. One can only imagine how epically Gray's head must have exploded.
In addition, Graham Bell was a vocal advocate for eugenics. He feared the contamination of the human race by genetically inferior people, mostly immigrants and the deaf. He actively dissuaded deaf people from marrying other deaf people because they might have deaf children, who would then have deaf children themselves, and before long the nation would be drowning in deaf people. Graham Bell publicly declared his fear of a deaf multitude in 1884 by publishing a paper he wrote entitled "Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race". His solution to this impending "great calamity" involved identifying what led deaf people to intermarry with one another then removing those factors from society. Many of these sinister contributing elements turned out to be terrifying things like sign language and deaf teachers.
It would be interesting to find out what Bell's deaf wife thought of all this.
3. Sammy Davis Jr. and Satanism.
In 1974 Sammy Davis Jr. released an album entitled Satan Swings Baby! It featured songs such as "Witchcraft" and "Sympathy for the Devil". Granted, that doesn't prove a goddamn thing. Only a complete religious fanatic would think singing about the devil implies any kind of satanic connection. Anyone making such an insinuation should have their genitals mutilated with stone knives. That said, there is the fact Sammy Davis Jr. joined the Church of Satan in 1973. He mentions as much in his memoirWhy Me?. The Candy man refers to being a swinging member of the church for a few years before a break occurred which he never really explains. At least he stayed in long enough to give the world the pilot for Poor Devil.
nodding of the head followed by a statement like, "I am not surprised by that." For instance, most people just bob their head smiling when told Bill Murray got arrested in 1970 for trying to smuggle ten pounds of marijuana through O'Hare airport. However, there are occasionally others which catch people off guard. Like the fact Hitler's two favorite actresses were Shirley Temple and Greta Garbo. (To her credit Greta Garbo once said, "Mr. Hitler was big on me. He kept writing and inviting me to come to Germany, and if the war hadn't started when it did, I would have gone and I would have taken a gun out of my purse and shot him, because I am the only person who would not have been searched." Being a little bitch, Shirley Temple never admitted plotting to kill Hitler.) Let's try landing the coin on the more bizarre side, but we'll start light.
1. Dr. Ruth is a trained sniper.
Yes, that sweet old lady, who knows more about sex than a porn star, is capable of putting a bullet right between your eyes. Orphaned by the Holocaust, a young Dr. Ruth (who at the time would have just been Ruth) moved to Israel where she joined Haganah, an underground military organization. In her own words, "When I was in my routine training... they discovered completely by chance that I was a lethal sniper. I could hit the target smack in the center further away than anyone could believe... even today I can load a Sten automatic rifle in a single minute, blindfolded." In addition she could pitch a meanly accurate grenade.
However, unfortunately, Ruth never got the chance to kill anyone. Her military career ended abruptly on her 20th birthday after a cannonball from Jordan smashed through the window of her residence. The cannonball almost ripped off her legs. Three others died, but Ruth didn't get any blood on her new shoes. And I'm not saying that, she is, "All I could think about was whether there might be some blood on the brand-new shoes I had just gotten for my birthday, and amazingly there wasn't even a drop on them." Silver lining!
2. Alexander Graham Bell: Asshole.
Most people don't know that Graham Bell stole the patent for the telephone. Two men beat him to the invention of the talking telegraph, Elisha Gray and Antonio Meucci. Bell straight up dry fucked Meucci in the ass, and continuing the metaphor, whipped the shit off his dick on the Italian's beard.
In 1860 Meucci rigged up a means so that his paralyzed wife could call for him while he was away in his workshop. This led to him designing what he called the teletrofono. Basically, it's a telephone. However, Meucci couldn't afford a long term patent and had to set a renewable patent that expired each year. After three years he couldn't afford the $10 to renew. He sent a model and technical details of the teletrofono to Western Union Telegraph. However, executives refused to meet with him. When Meucci asked for his materials back he was informed they had been lost. Shortly thereafter Bell claimed to have invented the telephone while at the same securing a lucrative deal with Western Union. Meucci sued. He might have won if his death hadn't prompted a judge to dismiss the case.
Gray went down even harder. His course is roughly the same as Meucci. The crucial difference is that when he sued he had the foresight not to die of old age. During the trial Gray's attorney focused on testimony from a patent clerk named Zenas Fisk Wilber. Besides having the best name ever, Wilber confessed that Bell bribed him with $100 to delay any patents regarding a telephone like device as well as provide him with any information regarding said devices. Following this damning testimony along with other evidence, a judge ruled in favor of Bell. I'll repeat that. It was proven Alexander Graham Bell committed fraud to get his patent in first, but none of that apparently matters in a court of law. One can only imagine how epically Gray's head must have exploded.
In addition, Graham Bell was a vocal advocate for eugenics. He feared the contamination of the human race by genetically inferior people, mostly immigrants and the deaf. He actively dissuaded deaf people from marrying other deaf people because they might have deaf children, who would then have deaf children themselves, and before long the nation would be drowning in deaf people. Graham Bell publicly declared his fear of a deaf multitude in 1884 by publishing a paper he wrote entitled "Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race". His solution to this impending "great calamity" involved identifying what led deaf people to intermarry with one another then removing those factors from society. Many of these sinister contributing elements turned out to be terrifying things like sign language and deaf teachers.
It would be interesting to find out what Bell's deaf wife thought of all this.
3. Sammy Davis Jr. and Satanism.
In 1974 Sammy Davis Jr. released an album entitled Satan Swings Baby! It featured songs such as "Witchcraft" and "Sympathy for the Devil". Granted, that doesn't prove a goddamn thing. Only a complete religious fanatic would think singing about the devil implies any kind of satanic connection. Anyone making such an insinuation should have their genitals mutilated with stone knives. That said, there is the fact Sammy Davis Jr. joined the Church of Satan in 1973. He mentions as much in his memoirWhy Me?. The Candy man refers to being a swinging member of the church for a few years before a break occurred which he never really explains. At least he stayed in long enough to give the world the pilot for Poor Devil.
4. Gandhi's Nonviolent Holocaust.
Gandhi once said, "I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed." Now, in all fairness Gandhi said this in May 1940. By then all Hitler had done was invade Poland, Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.
I'll let it slide, blame it on his starvation diet. But on a subsequent occasion Gandhi said this:
"Suffering voluntarily undergone will bring {Jews} an inner strength and joy... the calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews... but if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the God-fearing, death has no terror."
It's possible the magnitude of the Holocaust went beyond Gandhi's imagination. However, advising a people as a whole to quietly accept death instead of shooting a Nazi in the face to escape certain murder seems kind of -- and I'm putting this mildly out of respect -- fucking stupid. Essentially, this implies that shooting the guards to escape Auschwitz is the wrong thing to do because there's never a good time for violence.
5. Mark Wahlberg will blind you... for being Asian
Before starting Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, Mr. Wahlberg was on a very different career path. At the age of fourteen he dropped out of school to join a gang. This wasn't any Westside Story dancing rumble gang either. Over the next several years Wahlberg found himself in trouble with the law 20-25 times, mostly for dealing drugs. That said, winners don't wait for opportunities, they go looking for them.
On April 8, 1988 Thahn Lam arrived at home. He got out of his car carrying two cases of beer. Wahlberg ran up on Thahn calling him a "fucking Vietnamese shit" then broke a two to three inch thick stick over Thahn's head. Lam was knocked unconscious and spent the night in the hospital. When the police arrived Wahlberg ran down the street. Apparently, he just hung out in the same general area while Thahn lay unconscious on the sidewalk. Fleeing the police, Wahlberg grabbed hold of another man named Hoa Trinh, who had no idea what was going on. Mark asked Hoa to hide him from the cops. Hoa did. Then, once the cops were gone, Wahlberg punched Hoa in the eye, a blow that would leave him blind for the rest of his life. The police eventually arrested Wahlberg who confessed to assaulting both men. Regarding Thahn Lam, he said, "You don't have to let him identify me, I'll tell you now that's the motherfucker whose head I split open." Afterwards, although no asked him to, he continued to make statements about "gooks" and "slant-eyed gooks."
Authorities initially charged Wahlberg with attempted murder, but the charges were reduced to criminal contempt. This alone carried a maximum sentence of ten years. Mark pled guilty and received two years in Boston's Deer Island House of Correction. He served 45 days before being released.
Why? Because the justice system probably realized this boy was destined to do great things.
Source Material
Ruth:
http://www.snopes.com/medical/doctor/drruth.asp
Greta Garbo:
http://www.iwise.com/0epeG
Bill Murary:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/one-more-reason-love-bill-murray
Hitler:
http://thehistorysquirrel.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/things-you-might-not-know-about-hitler/
Alexander graham Bell:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Zenas-fisk-wilber-affidavit.png
http://www.pbs.org/weta/throughdeafeyes/deaflife/bell_nad.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jun/17/humanities.internationaleducationnews
http://inventors.about.com/od/gstartinventors/a/Elisha_Gray.htm
Sammy Davis:
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=21092
http://books.google.com/books?id=mQrbsOWaOyUC&pg=PA58&dq=modern+satanism+sammy+davis+jr&hl=en&sa=X&ei=gkVBUYuJB8ffqAG29IDQAQ&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=modern%20satanism%20sammy%20davis%20jr&f=false
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5vRbVGHyzE
Mark Wahlberg:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/01/mark-wahlberg-was-a-drug-dealer-and-was-charged-with-attempted-murder-before-forming-marky-mark-and-the-funky-bunch/
Gandhi:
http://claremont.org/publications/precepts/id.98/precept_detail.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha
Gandhi once said, "I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed." Now, in all fairness Gandhi said this in May 1940. By then all Hitler had done was invade Poland, Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.
I'll let it slide, blame it on his starvation diet. But on a subsequent occasion Gandhi said this:
"Suffering voluntarily undergone will bring {Jews} an inner strength and joy... the calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews... but if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the God-fearing, death has no terror."
It's possible the magnitude of the Holocaust went beyond Gandhi's imagination. However, advising a people as a whole to quietly accept death instead of shooting a Nazi in the face to escape certain murder seems kind of -- and I'm putting this mildly out of respect -- fucking stupid. Essentially, this implies that shooting the guards to escape Auschwitz is the wrong thing to do because there's never a good time for violence.
5. Mark Wahlberg will blind you... for being Asian
Before starting Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, Mr. Wahlberg was on a very different career path. At the age of fourteen he dropped out of school to join a gang. This wasn't any Westside Story dancing rumble gang either. Over the next several years Wahlberg found himself in trouble with the law 20-25 times, mostly for dealing drugs. That said, winners don't wait for opportunities, they go looking for them.
On April 8, 1988 Thahn Lam arrived at home. He got out of his car carrying two cases of beer. Wahlberg ran up on Thahn calling him a "fucking Vietnamese shit" then broke a two to three inch thick stick over Thahn's head. Lam was knocked unconscious and spent the night in the hospital. When the police arrived Wahlberg ran down the street. Apparently, he just hung out in the same general area while Thahn lay unconscious on the sidewalk. Fleeing the police, Wahlberg grabbed hold of another man named Hoa Trinh, who had no idea what was going on. Mark asked Hoa to hide him from the cops. Hoa did. Then, once the cops were gone, Wahlberg punched Hoa in the eye, a blow that would leave him blind for the rest of his life. The police eventually arrested Wahlberg who confessed to assaulting both men. Regarding Thahn Lam, he said, "You don't have to let him identify me, I'll tell you now that's the motherfucker whose head I split open." Afterwards, although no asked him to, he continued to make statements about "gooks" and "slant-eyed gooks."
Authorities initially charged Wahlberg with attempted murder, but the charges were reduced to criminal contempt. This alone carried a maximum sentence of ten years. Mark pled guilty and received two years in Boston's Deer Island House of Correction. He served 45 days before being released.
Why? Because the justice system probably realized this boy was destined to do great things.
Source Material
Ruth:
http://www.snopes.com/medical/doctor/drruth.asp
Greta Garbo:
http://www.iwise.com/0epeG
Bill Murary:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/one-more-reason-love-bill-murray
Hitler:
http://thehistorysquirrel.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/things-you-might-not-know-about-hitler/
Alexander graham Bell:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Zenas-fisk-wilber-affidavit.png
http://www.pbs.org/weta/throughdeafeyes/deaflife/bell_nad.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jun/17/humanities.internationaleducationnews
http://inventors.about.com/od/gstartinventors/a/Elisha_Gray.htm
Sammy Davis:
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=21092
http://books.google.com/books?id=mQrbsOWaOyUC&pg=PA58&dq=modern+satanism+sammy+davis+jr&hl=en&sa=X&ei=gkVBUYuJB8ffqAG29IDQAQ&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=modern%20satanism%20sammy%20davis%20jr&f=false
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5vRbVGHyzE
Mark Wahlberg:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/01/mark-wahlberg-was-a-drug-dealer-and-was-charged-with-attempted-murder-before-forming-marky-mark-and-the-funky-bunch/
Gandhi:
http://claremont.org/publications/precepts/id.98/precept_detail.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha
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