Leonso Canales of Kingsville, Texas began his campaign to replace the greeting "Hello" with the less satanic "Heaveno" in 1988, but he got really serious about it in 1997 when he placed ads in the local paper showing the word "Hello" scratched out and replaced with "Heaveno." That same year, his campaign received official support when the commissioners of Kleberg County voted unanimously to designate "Heaveno" as the county's official greeting.
Canales died in Sep 2014, and with his departure the wind seems to have been taken out of the sails of the Heaveno movement. The website heaveno.com has been abandoned (although the old site is preserved in the Wayback Machine).
The Encyclopedia of American Loons includes a brief entry about Canales, and his son posted a memorial to him on YouTube (embedded below).
Standard-Speaker (Hazleton, Pennsylvania) - Jan 17, 1997
In the mid-1990s, Montblanc began selling a limited-edition pen engraved with the signature of Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers — at a price of $750 for a fountain pen or $375 for the ballpoint version. But in 1996 the company admitted it had made a mistake and recalled all the pens. The engraved signature was from the wrong Alexandre Dumas. Not the author of The Three Musketeers, but rather his not-quite-as-famous son, author of "The Lady With the Camellias.'"
The mistake was first noticed by the owner of a pen store in Toronto who was displaying a manuscript in his store that included the signature of the senior Dumas and noticed it didn't match the one on the pen. [More info: Eugene Register-Guard - Oct 6, 1996]
At the time, there was a lot of speculation that the wrong-signature pen would quickly rise in value. But no. Checking on eBay, it seems that both versions of the pen go for about the same price (anywhere from $800 to $2000). Probably because too many of the wrong-signature pens were made to make it a rare item.
In 1990, the Viskase Corp. debuted a breakthrough in hot-dog technology. It had developed an edible ink that allowed messages to be printed onto hot dogs during the manufacturing process.
As far as I can tell, this technology failed to find a market. The NY Times reported that "the Viskase Corporation found no takers for its offer to print edible-ink ads on hot dogs."
Perhaps this was because a) what kind of message is best delivered via hot dog?, and b) hot dogs are usually covered with condiments, which would hide the message.
Back in 1992, Emanuelle Del Vecchio had an idea for a great new business — a drive-through condom store. She called it "Condom Hut" and set up shop in a former Fotomat booth.
Unfortunately the booth was located in an area of Cranston, Rhode Island populated by very Catholic Italian-Americans, many of whom took great offense at the idea of people being able to buy birth control from the comfort of their motor vehicle.
Local residents began protesting the store. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence condemned it for "promoting sexual activity, not abstinence." A rock was thrown through its window. Graffiti was spray-painted on its front. And eventually the business folded.
America was just not ready for a drive-through condom store.
The front cover of the 1997 Thomas Guide road atlas for Los Angeles and Orange Counties boasted that the guide that year included "666 new streets."
This prompted concerned Christians to start calling the publisher of the guide, fearing that the use of the number 666 was some kind of satanic signal.
Eventually the publisher recalled the Guide and issued a new one, with a revised cover boasting only "665" new streets. A Thomas Guide spokesman said it wanted buyers to "feel confident with the use of our product."
I've found a few of the satanic Thomas Guides for sale on eBay. However, I've been unable to find any of the revised ones.
Update: I spoke too soon. Using some slightly different search terms, I was able to track down one of the revised (non-satanic) Thomas Guides for sale on eBay.
Of course, the revised cover was a bit of a hoax. There actually were 666 new streets, but they were telling people there were only 665. Unless they actually deleted one of the streets from the guide. An appropriate street to delete would have been Devilwood Circle, in Westminster, CA (Orange County).
Several sources claim that in 1999 one of the top-selling CDs in Europe was titled "Bats." It consisted entirely of the sound of bats flying around.
However, one of those sources is the Weekly World News (May 4, 1999). So not very reliable. And since I can't find any trace of this CDs existence elsewhere (I thought a copy would likely have surfaced on eBay -- but no; or on YouTube -- no again), I'm wondering if the CD was real, or one of WWN's jokes.
The other source that mentioned the CD was the Glasgow Sunday Mail, May 2, 1999. But maybe they got their info from the WWN?
Do any WUvians have the answer to this bat mystery? Was Bats really a European top-seller?
Flashbak.com has posted an interesting collection of photos (titled "Love Boat Rejects") taken by official photographers aboard American, Norwegian, and Italian cruiseships during the 1990s. Check out the full gallery here.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.