Adam Purple is an activist and urban Edenist or "Guerrilla Garderner" famous in New York City from the seventies to the present day. His name at birth was David Wilkie, though he's gone by many others, including the Rev. Les Ego. He is often considered the godfather of the urban gardening movement, and his "Garden of Eden" was a well-known garden on the Lower East Side of Manhattan until it was demolished after considerable controversy, extending from the Koch Administration through the Dinkins Administration by then mayor Rudolph Giuliani...
The image of Adam Purple familiar to New Yorkers in the seventies and eighties was of a man wearing at least one article of purple clothing, and with a thick graying beard, riding a bicycle through Manhattan streets and scooping up manure left by hansom cab horses, which he used to fertilize his urban garden.
Although he was hardly as famous as Stradivarius, Gustav Fassauer-Ferron created some violins that still have their fans today. As one site says, "Pupil of Oswald Schaller of Frankfort (Germany), with whom he underwent a thorough training, proof of which is found in his work. Well made instruments after the Guarneri I. H. S. model, adorned with an orange oil varnish. His violins are esteemed by both artists and amateurs." You can hear one of his instruments in the video.
But when he wasn't busy making full-size ones, he turned out the occasional miniature. Don't you wish you had this for those times when you wanted to mock someone's self-indulgent hard-luck story?
Back in 1973, Shirley Haycock declared her intention to cross the Atlantic in a 16-foot canoe. Some news reports initially stated that she was 86 years old, which would have made her plan really unusual. She was actually only 40. But she was the Director of Activities at a senior citizens center, and she called her canoe the "Senior Citizens Ark," which was probably the source of the confusion. Her plan was to use the publicity from the trip to raise funds for the center she worked at. [Deseret News - Feb 15, 1973]
The Coast Guard tried to stop her from going, but realized that it didn't have any legal means to do so. But they needn't have worried. She set off twice, but never got very far. It wasn't until 2012 that someone actually did cross the Atlantic in a canoe.
After failing to cross the Atlantic, Haycock decided to become a coal miner, and was Utah's first female coal miner. Seems like she was a bit of a character.
Conducted under the auspices of the famous and fabulous United House of Prayer for All People, whose founder was "Sweet Daddy Grace," as depicted below.
I heartily endorse any institution whose leaders inherit the title of "Sweet Daddy."
On July 4, 1935, Dr. Walter G. Kendall, 81, drank a glass of water. It was the first glass of water he had drunk in 25 years. He reportedly "suffered no ill effects," and followed it by several cocktails.
In addition to being famous for abstaining from water, Kendall was also a well-known dentist, bicyclist, and horticulturalist. That's him in the pictures below. [image source: here and 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.