Bizarre History (22 page)

Actor Reese Witherspoon claims to be a descendant of John Witherspoon, a signatory of the Declaration.

The historic flight of the
Friendship 7
was the first to put an American in orbit. The lucky American was John Glenn. Upon learning that it may take up to three days to retrieve him after landing back on earth, and that the likely landing sites were Australia, New Guinea, and the ocean, Glenn became worried about a hostile response from aborigine populations he might encounter. Think about it. You’re sitting there, minding your own business, when suddenly a metal contraption comes from the sky, lands on your hut, and from it emerges a shiny silver creature. Glenn had the following message translated into several languages:

I am a stranger. I come in peace. Take me to your leader, and there will be a massive reward for you in eternity.

It would be rare for you or me to be invited to a presidential inauguration party at the White House—we’re just regular people. Andrew Jackson, however, thought that since regular people voted for him, they should be invited to the party. So, after the swearing in, thousands followed him back to the White House. I’ll let Margaret Bayard Smith take it from here (from Smith’s
The First Forty Years of Washington Society):
“But what a scene did we witness … The President, after having been literally nearly pressed to death and almost suffocated and torn to pieces by the people in their eagerness to shake hands with Old Hickory, had retreated through the back way or south front and had escaped to his lodgings at Gadsby’s … Cut glass and china to the amount of several thousand dollars had been broken in the struggle to get the refreshments … Ladies fainted, men were seen with bloody noses, and such a scene of confusion took place as is impossible to describe—those who got in could not get out by the door again, but had to scramble out of windows.”

A few ingenious waiters decided to place giant tubs of punch on the White House lawn. Once lured outside, the rabble was locked out. The White House suffered thousands of dollars worth of damage. No one can say Jackson didn’t earn his moniker, King Mob, honestly.

When William Harrison became president in 1840, he ran on his reputation as the hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe. Seeking to prove he still had it, he took the oath of office on March 4, 1841, a cold and rainy day. Wearing neither a coat nor a hat, he proceeded to deliver the longest inaugural address in American history. It took him two hours to read it. Soon after, he caught a cold that turned into pneumonia and pleurisy. He was dead thirty days after becoming president. Today, medical professionals agree that exposure to the elements doesn’t cause respiratory illnesses; however, the common perception remains that Harrison died because he didn’t wear a coat at his inauguration.

On June 4, 1783, the Montgolfier brothers, inventors of the first hot-air balloon, demonstrated their invention to a crowd at the market square in the French village of Annonay. A bonfire fed the tethered thirty-three–foot taffeta contraption, and then one of the brothers cut the tether and set the balloon free. It traveled six thousand feet into the air before landing in a field several miles away … where it was attacked by peasants with pitchforks, who thought it was a beast from the sky come down to attack them. They tore the balloon to pieces and tied it to the tail of a horse.

“Four or five frigates will do the business without any military force.”—British Prime Minister Lord Frederick North, on dealing with those pesky rebellious American colonies, 1774

“The automobile will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle.”—
Literary Digest,
1899

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”—H. M. Warner, head of Warner Bros. Studios, 1927

“I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one.”—Charles Darwin, in
The Origin of Species,
1869

“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”—Economist Irving Fisher, 1929

“It will be gone by June.”—
Variety
magazine on rock and roll, 1955

“Displays no trace of imagination, good taste or ingenuity. I say it’s a stinkeroo.”—Film critic Russell Maloney on
The Wizard of Oz,
1939

“There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry.”—General George Custer, 1876

“If anything remains more or less unchanged, it will be the role of women.”—David Riesman, social scientist, 1967