#tweetanuberfact When King Kong scaled the Empire State Building, Frank Hamer climbed up after him and shot him off the spire with a BAR.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 14, 2014
#tweetanuberfact The walls of the Kremlin are actually a masonry veneer over a core of carefully-stacked potato slices.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 14, 2014
#tweetanuberfact The Swiss Alps were built by Roman slaves to serve as the tomb of mad emperor Caligula.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 14, 2014
If either of the latter gets cited in a middle school history paper, my life will be complete.
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Careful. One of my posts is cited as a reference on the Wikipedia page for the Schönberger-Laumann pistol. That sort of sums up the weakness of La Wik.
ReplyDeleteYour third tweet is so wrong!
ReplyDeleteIt was the Italian Alps that were the work of the Romans under Malcolm McDowell.
Gerry
B.A.R.? No, his.25 Model 8!
ReplyDeleteHell, if you take it Wikipedia it'll probably end up in a PhD dissertation or the State of the Union.
ReplyDeleteAt the very least, the New York Times will call it fact, provided you kink to the appropriate emotional and/or privilege claim.
Yep, two out of three appear to be mostly correct, Hamer did use a BAR and he almost shot the short curls off of Fay Wray, and the Kremlin is made out of potato peels left over from making vodka one year. However the Swiss Alps are made of Swiss Cheese compressed under the high pressure of Swiss guys blowing big horns.
ReplyDeleteTam, yours might be the best internet blog around right now and for sure it is a must read everyday, thank you. Now some of the goofy old men (like me) who send me emails with new information every day will be sending this information, on the same day from half the USA away.
Having snuck a reference to Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy about using a towel into my M.S., and having paid a royalty fee to the Wall Street Journal for use of one of their cartoons on a business car, I strongly urge you to forward this post to multiple academic sources, with a request for royalties when use is made of them.
ReplyDeleteNothing beats the sweet, sweet sight of royalty money envelopes in the mailbox.
If either of the latter gets cited in a middle school history paper, my life will be complete.
ReplyDeleteWell, considering that my oldest son's 5th grade Social Studies* 'teacher' claimed that Copernicus was burned at the stake, and that the Germans crashed suicide zepplins into London in the Great War, you might not have to wait that long.
*Social Studies replacing History - downfall of Western Civilization, right there.
Noah D,
ReplyDelete"*Social Studies replacing History - downfall of Western Civilization, right there."
When I was in school, "Social Studies" was elementary & middle school; "History" was high school.
I pulled through alright; I'm sure your kid will, too! :)
I call bogus an number two:
ReplyDeleteAfter cutting oversized peels off the potatoes for vodka production, the remaining potato cubes aren't big enough for wall filler.
Noah D:
ReplyDeleteBut Kaiser Wilhelm's suicide zeppelin raid is so cool it has to be true.
Or at least a chapter in a Larry Corriea novel.
It's as if you are channeling your inner Cliff Clavin!
ReplyDeletegfa
True spread of this lovely knowledge won't be complete until someone else puts it in print, attributed to Maj. Caudill, USMC (Ret).
ReplyDeletesnuck a reference to Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy about using a towel
ReplyDeleteSomewhere in my parents' house is a towel signed by Douglas Adams. He did a book signing in my home town when I was high school. Being both impecunious and smart-assed, my best friend and I showed up with towels for him to sign instead of freshly purchased hardback books. Adams burst out laughing and halted the signing until the bookstore staff came up with a big permanent marker for him to use on the towels instead of the ordinary ink pen he had been using.
*Social Studies replacing History - downfall of Western Civilization, right there.
Yep. Except I think you meant to say "patriarchal, fundamentally oppressive dead white guy culture," because who are we to decide what is "civilized." /sniff
Mike_C, that's an awesome DNA story.
ReplyDeleteWait a moment... I thought the Kremlin was built entirely from onions, which explains the domes.
ReplyDeleteTam,
ReplyDeletewhen you next refer to the "short bus", this photo is what will come to mind:
http://shnargen.tumblr.com/post/1303754266
Wouldn't that tidbit about the Kremlin be a tuberfact, not an uberfact?
ReplyDeleteWhat Captain Hamer bagged on opening day of Kong season will show up in your middle-schooler's paper before your other whimsies.
ReplyDeleteInstead of a BAR, how about a sawed-off punt gun?
Mike James
Yup. Should be a Remington Model 8 for Hamer - it'll still be a John Moses Browning design, so no problem.
ReplyDeleteHamer used a BAR on Bonnie and Clyde, although some of his associates were armed with Model 8's. He'd studied a previous unsuccessful attempt to ambush the Barrow gang, where the cops' submachine gun bullets just bounced off the V8 Ford sheet metal, while Barrow hosed them with a BAR. So he got a BAR to match Barrow's firepower in all respects. The Model 8 is a good rifle, but it's not a machine gun.
ReplyDeleteActually, I'm fairly certain that Hamer was not in Manhattan during the "Kong Affair". Rather, he was over in Jersey, stopping the Martian invasion with his .35 Remington M8 -- with extended magazine, natch.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/03/17/make-college-students-take-real-history/
ReplyDelete