1970s
Malicious Enticement
Nov 1971: The mayor of Evansdale, Iowa left his wife to be with a city clerk. This prompted the mayor's wife to sue the clerk for "maliciously enticing" him away from his wife. The husband of the clerk simultaneously sued the mayor on the same grounds. Therefore the mayor and the clerk were potentially guilty of maliciously enticing each other.I hadn't been aware of 'malicious enticement' as a legal category. A search for the term mostly turns up uses in the business world, where a business could be held liable for maliciously enticing employees away from another business.
The Hollywood ad men missed an opportunity by not crowning a young woman 'Miss Maliciously Enticing'.
Davenport Quad-City Times - Nov 5, 1971
Posted By: Alex - Fri Jan 17, 2025 -
Comments (2)
Category: Lawsuits, Divorce, 1970s
How many green beans would you eat for $1.50
A question for the ages.
Detroit Free Press - May 2, 1971
This raises the question of how many green beans would someone eat just to claim the world record for eating them? According to the site MajorLeagueEating.com, Crazy Legs Conti holds the record for eating the most: 2.71 pounds of them in six minutes.
That doesn't seem like that much to me. And in the video below "tannermancan" eats 5.125 lbs of green beans in less than 5 minutes. He doesn't acknowledge setting a new record. But it seems to me like he must have.
Posted By: Alex - Wed Jan 15, 2025 -
Comments (0)
Category: World Records, Advertising, Vegetables, 1970s
The Scott Meadows Doomsday Club
The first rule of the Scott Meadows Club was that you couldn't reveal the location of the Scott Meadows Club. (But it was up in Siskiyou County, Northern California. Somewhere near to Kangaroo Lake Campground.)The club opened in 1975, with membership costing $12,800 (around $75,000 in today's money), plus $300 annual dues.
The club had none of the amenities of a typical country club. Instead, it offered a place to retreat to in case of a national emergency such as nuclear war or economic collapse. Once all the members were secure inside the retreat, the road leading to it would be dynamited, preventing anyone else from getting in.
I'm not sure if the club still exists. But then, if it does they wouldn't want us to know.
Approximate location of the Scott Meadows Club
Sacramento Bee - May 14, 1975
click to enlarge
Posted By: Alex - Wed Jan 08, 2025 -
Comments (1)
Category: Armageddon and Apocalypses, Clubs, Fraternities and Other Self-selecting Organizations, 1970s
Fracture
The Wikipedia page of the creators.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Dec 30, 2024 -
Comments (1)
Category: Surrealism, Fantasy, Cartoons, 1970s, Europe
Xmas Done Got Funky
Posted By: Paul - Mon Dec 23, 2024 -
Comments (0)
Category: Funk, Holidays, Music, 1970s
The National Bureau of Standards measures women
A great deal of effort has gone into trying to come up with standard clothing sizes for women. Organizations such as the National Bureau of Standards have, over the years, measured tens thousands of women.However, precise standards have proved elusive. Instead, according to Wikipedia, clothes makers "follow the more loosely defined standards known as U.S. catalog sizes." And catalog sizes "may vary even among different styles of the same type of garment."
Cincinnati Enquirer - Jan 17, 1971
Hartford Courant - Jan 31, 1971
Posted By: Alex - Fri Dec 20, 2024 -
Comments (5)
Category: Instruments and Measuring Devices, Clothing, 1970s, Women
Recipe for boiled microfiche
Back in the pre-desktop computer era, the Social Security Administration stored info on microfiche cards. This created a problem of how to dispose of the microfiche cards when the info on them was out of date. The shredders in the SSA district offices weren't up to the task of shredding them.The solution: district offices were instructed to purchase crockpots and boil the old microfiche cards for 75 to 105 minutes.
In my college/grad school days, I spent many hours sitting at michrofiche readers. Thanks to digitization, I think that's an experience students today won't have to endure.
Omaha World Herald - May 16, 1979
Posted By: Alex - Sun Dec 15, 2024 -
Comments (1)
Category: Garbage, Trash, Waste and Other Detritus, Government, 1970s
Double Bind
Published in 1978 by the artist Richard Olson, Double Bind consists of only six pages, but good luck reading those pages because, as the title implies, the book is bound on both ends.I could see this being an interesting addition to a library of odd books, but I don't know how many copies Olson created. I imagine not that many. One of them went up for auction in 2017 with a list price of $200-$300, but remained unsold.
Posted By: Alex - Sat Dec 14, 2024 -
Comments (4)
Category: Art, Books, 1970s
Jim’s Guide to San Francisco—an update
Back in June we posted about an oddball guide to San Francisco called Jim's Guide to San Francisco in which artist Jim Finnegan posed outside SF businesses named Jim.Finnegan published this back in 1977.
Joshua Bote, a writer for Gazetteer SF, recently came across our post, and it inspired him to seek out more info about Jim's Guide. He contacted me, but I wasn't much help. I told him I came across a reference to it in an old art journal named Umbrella. But then he was able to track down Finnegan himself, who's now 80 years old, living in the town of Woodacre in Marin County.
Bote reports:
Check out the whole article.
Posted By: Alex - Sat Dec 07, 2024 -
Comments (0)
Category: Books, Tourists and Tourism, 1970s
Weebles Tub Sub
Was there ever a line of toys more inexplicably popular than Weebles?
Posted By: Paul - Sat Dec 07, 2024 -
Comments (1)
Category: Oceans and Maritime Pursuits, Toys, Advertising, 1970s
| Who We Are |
|---|
| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. 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. Contact Us |