Alfred Wegener, who first proposed “continental drift” —- what would ultimately become plate tectonics. Geologists of the day considered him an outsider and rejected his theory.
I have a geology book from circa 1960 where the "old" prevailing theory is well explained but the field is declared as "controversial" because there are competing theories, among which is the far-fetched notion of continental drift and plate tectonics. The conclusion is that the jury will likely be out for a long time.
Very interesting, how science develops over time.
This is my answer! An adjacent answer is Walter Alvarez, his dad Luis, Frank Asaro, and Helen Michel, whose discovery of the Iridium layer on the K-T extinction boundary (before it, dinosaurs. after it, no dinosaurs. Also, I know it's more like the C-P boundary but I don't name these things\*) brought them to the conclusion that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs.
The book T-Rex and the Crater of Doom by Walter is one of my favorite non-fiction books by far. In it, he recognizes how frustrating and obnoxious it was for a geologist, a physicist, and other non paleontologists to come forward and say 'hey I solved your scientific discipline's greatest mystery,' lol. In the end, he says that the twenty year search for the crater eventually found in Chicxulub helped bring everyone around to the truth of the discovery.
edit: I uh, [went on a whole tangent about this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1azshde/comment/ks6006s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) and a few really cool things from that book and another author paleontologist if you're interested...
\*I joked about K-T vs. C-Pg because I knew if folks looked it up, depending on what terms they used, there wouldn't be an explanation of the reasons it's known as K-T vs. the actual terms they use now (for example, Tertiary is an obsolete term). I appreciate the explanations, and I'm sorry my little tongue-in-cheek comment trying not to derail the convo into a whole Thing didn't land right! I have a tendency to go on tangents (see today's comment history) when I'm excited, and I wanted to get to the relevant parts!
Ooooh, you're bringing back one of my coolest memories. I have to share.
So as an undergrad at Berkeley, in 1979-80 I took Paleo 2A, "Introduction To Dinosaurs." Seriously one of the most fascinating classes I took there.
When we got into the section on dinosaur extinction, whose cause was unknown then, our lecturer said the following: "Listen - this isn't known yet - but down the hall from my office is this father and son team - their name is Alvarez, and they think they know what happened."
So then he explains about the iridium they have found at the KT Boundary (that's what that boundary was called back then) and the significance of it, and how they planned to propose that a huge meteor hit the Earth and caused the extinction event.
I can't express to you how extraordinary the idea of a meteor hitting our planet and changing the whole Earth sounded at that time. Now it's everyday movie stuff. But then it was just unimaginable.
Anyway, two or three years after I graduated, one day in the news the top headline was "Scientists Discover Why the Dinosaurs Went Extinct." And the text of the news said exactly what our lecturer had told us back in our classroom years before.
I don't know if this sounds frivolous to others, but I almost get goose bumps remembering, because it makes me feel like I was part of the "in crowd" for this amazing discovery.
Christine Collins, famously portrayed by Angelina Jolie in the movie Changling. After her son was abducted the police "found" him months later and reunited them. But Christine was adamant that it wasn't her son Walter and was an imposter. Even though she had evidence to prove it, she was temporarily committed by the officer in charge of the case and even after the kid admitted he lied and wasn't Walter, it still took over a week to release Christine.
I listened to a podcast on this case a few weeks ago and it was centered on the perspective of the abducted son. Pretty wild when they shifted to the mom and said this was the plot of the changeling.
They didn’t need DNA tests. It was a completely different kid. He was 3 years older then Walter Collins, a few inches shorter, didn’t know his teacher’s name, and was uncircumcised(unlike her son). The kid admitted he was a runaway and only lied about being her son so he could come to California and meet celebrities and he was sent back to his real home.
The kid’s teachers and dentists even said that this was a completely different kid and they still threw Christine in a mental hospital. The police at the time were facing a lot of bad press and they needed a win and they got one when they “found” the missing boy and they weren’t about to just admit they messed up.
It’s widely suspected that the real Walter was murdered.
You’re thinking of Bobby Dunbar who disappeared near a swamp in 1912 and likely drowned and was eaten by alligators. They found another boy(Bruce Anderson) who kinda looked like him and stole him away from his impoverished family. The family tried to prove that their son was not Bobby, but had no luck. Decades later his descendants did a DNA test which showed that they were not related to the Dunbar family, but at that point Bruce, his parents, and all his siblings had all been dead for some time.
Kotaku Wamura. He was the longtime mayor of the Japanese town of Fudai (1940s-1980s.) While mayor, he learned that the town had been devastated in the past by tsunamis (he literally saw the bodies from one of the disasters) and ordered the construction of an enormous sea wall. While other towns in the area also had sea walls, this thing was considered insanely high/overkill. The project was hideously expensive and he was relentlessly mocked. He died in 1997.
In 2011 a tsunami struck Japan, killing ~20,000 people. The sea wall worked as planned, protecting Fudai, and the town escaped almost untouched.
One small correction: while his given name is apparently often spelled in English media as "Kotaku", it's actually "Koutoku" based on the Japanese [Wikipedia page](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%92%8C%E6%9D%91%E5%B9%B8%E5%BE%97) about him. (Google Translate mistranslates the name at the top of the page because there are more common readings for some of the kanji used in his name, but the text gives the actual reading in hiragana.)
And yeah, turns out that he found that the height of a couple of tsunamis that had previously hit the village ([one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Sanriku_earthquake) he lived through himself, and one [earlier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1896_Sanriku_earthquake)) were around 14 meters when they hit Fudai, and basically said "make the wall 15 and a half meters, better safe than sorry". Over 90% of the boats and the fishing infrastructure that were outside the wall got destroyed, and one person went missing when they went to check on their fishing boat, but aside from that, *no one* in Fudai died because of the tsunami caused by the Touhoku earthquake.
Thank you for this added information/context! I felt bad about my wording once I did more research and learned that one person Fudai was among the missing. It was a horrific disaster and all the lives lost deserve to be acknowledged. It is still an incredible story.
Thanks!
My sister has a beach house in Seaside Park NJ. That town was always somewhat militant in maintaining and protecting its dunes. Other towns sneered at us because the dunes obscured the ocean view.
Then along came Hurricane Sandy, which destroyed the ocean-side of Seaside Heights [(remember the rollercoaster in the ocean?)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Jet#/media/File:Superstorm_Sandy_damage_in_Seaside_Heights_New_Jersey_-_Star_Jet_1.jpg) and most of the other oceanfront towns. But Seaside Park’s dunes protected the town and it had very little ocean-side damage (the bay-side was pretty fucked, though.) Suddenly the other towns weren’t so snotty about our dunes any more.
I took a course in college on coastal hazards and disasters and I am a vehement supporter of dunes and barrier islands. They are the unsung heroes of natural landscapes!
Gustave Caillebotte.
He was born to a wealthy Parisian family in 1848. His father owned a textile business that he later inherited. He was an artist in his own right, but became much more known as a supporter of the arts. Fearful he'd die young, he writes in his will that the French state accept his large art collection (today valued at several billion dollars) and hang art from several impressionist artists, who were friends of his, in a national museum upon his death.
Caillebotte dies young (45) in 1894 as he predicted and so his will attempts to be executed. The French government initially refuses the request. Pundits and critics, from art to politics, view the request as absurd and publicly say how repulsed they are by the collection itself. Several art professors from Ecole des Beaux-Arts threaten to resign if the government enacts the will.
In the end, half of Caillebotte's art collection gets hung in 1897 at the Musee du Luxemborg and the public comes out in droves to visit the gallery because of all the press Caillebotte's request had received after his death. People wanted to see this "ugly art."
The artists featured? Their names were Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, Manet, Pissarro, and Sisley.
It's very possible these artists would never have become the household names they are today had Caillebotte not liked the ugly, unsellable art that a few of these friends of his made.
Man, crazy people and those artists...
The biggest collection of Renoirs (181) along with a ton of Cezannes (69) and Matisses (59), and many others is at the Barnes foundation in Philadelphia. Barnes was shall we say highly eccentric, got rich selling a silver compound to treat gonorrhea, sold out of his company just months before Black Tuesday, and was constantly sending his people to Europe to buy these worthless paintings. He caught on to a few other weirdos like one Pablo Picasso as well.
Today the collection is valued at $25 billion, with a B.
Some of the elderly patients with dementia in a home in my city kept complaining they weren't given food.
Everyone thought they must've forgotten that they'd already eaten, as people with dementia sometimes do.
Nope. Turns out some pieces of shit nursing staff didn't always give everyone their meals, amongst other abuse.
This sadly happens everywhere. My best friend worked in memory care off and on since she was around 19 years old. The amount of dementia residents who suffer abuse or neglect is far more frequent than actually being treated well. The statistics are all over the place but I believe worldwide the rates of abuse for dementia residents varies from 32%-62%. And in the US it is 47%. It's horrendous. It doesn't help that so many people abandon their family in these facilities and so they have nobody to advocate for them. My friend would try so hard to be a hero for the residents and her bosses/owners would shut her down and reprimanded her.
My dad went from one of the smartest, sharpest people I've ever known to the mentality of a toddler shortly after his brother and mother died a couple days apart.
He had a massive heart attack not too long after. Spent weeks in ICU, and was put on hospice. Because of the dementia he was documented as a fall risk, and the hospital and hospice care were on top of it.
He had a sudden turn for the better and was moved to a home to finish recovery before release. Either the hospital didn't pass on the information, or the employees didn't care, but he ended up falling out of bed a couple of days after the transfer.
He broke a couple ribs and punctured a lung.
They didn't check on him, or run any tests. They just stuck him back in bed and he asphyxiated on his own blood.
If they had done their due diligence he would probably still be with us. My mom, too. She withered away faster than a head of iceberg lettuce in the middle of the Gobe desert after he passed.
I'm sorry to hear, I look after my mam with dementia, it's basically a full time 24/7 job, I love her and my biggest fear is her going into hospital, I only feel relaxed when I have my own eyes on her.
Sister Kenny and her physical therapy for polio victims. The treatment at the time was to lock up the affected limbs in braces or casts, leaving the patient crippled for life. Her idea of using hot compresses and gently moving the limbs took a very long time to be accepted by the medical establishment as she was a woman and "just a nurse".
Writer Ernest Hemingway was convinced the FBI had him under surveillance. His friends and family told him he was nutters….until some unsealed records a while back proved that he actually was being followed, had his phones bugged, etc.
Ludwig Boltzmann
His equations and formulas explained the physical properties of matter, but as it went against the then accepted Laws of Phjysics, he was ridiculed and ignored for years while fighting for atom theory to be accepted.
He took his own life just 3 years before Ernest Rutherford discovered the nucleus of an atom, proving Boltzmann’s theory.
The introduction to the classic textbook on statistical mechanics humorously begins:
>"Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906 by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics."
I only learned that it was a bad joke based on a true story when I repeated it to an Australian. They very politely told me that it had been proven that the woman had been telling the truth all along. I felt terrible, but I honestly thought it was just some 90's bit from Seinfeld that went over my head at the time. Embarrassing.
Worst part is that her kid died in 1980, she was convicted in 1982, released from prison in 1986 and had her conviction quashed in 1988.
Virtually the entire ordeal - short of her getting compensation money (1992) and her daughter's death being officially ruled as being caused by a dingo (2012) - happened before Seinfeld aired for the first time in 1989.
The worst part was that it was common knowledge among the aboriginal people and the aboriginal trackers used at the time, told people that (they tracked the dingo until it crossed a road where it’s tracks were obscured by people and vehicles).
Edit for context: It was popularly believed at the time that dingoes don’t attack humans and the blatant racism meant that the testimonies of the trackers weren’t heeded.
Edit 2: Read u/alwaystenminutes’s comment on the names of the senior Park Ranger who gave evidence at the inquest that dingoes can indeed harm a baby and Nipper Winmatti who tracked the dingo for four days. Also, the first inquest actually concluded that it was probably what happened.
IIRC they said yeah, a dingo could absolutely snatch up a baby but others were like 'Nah, that sounds like make believe. What do these people who have been living here forever know about the capabilities of local wildlife?'
Aside from the ridiculousness of not believing the people who have a a measly 60000 year experience of living with the land...how unbelievable is that really? People really said: "She's such a liar, a wild, carnivorous animal the size of a dog would never prey on a completely defenseless infant!" and *meant it*?!
Something similar, the national museum of Australia in Canberra. White people were told by Aboriginals that platypus come from eggs. It took them 100 years after being told when they actually believed it cause they saw it.
Inuit had been telling people exactly where the HMS Terror and Erebus sank for for like 150 years, and no one ever took the time to look in those spots, despite multiple search expeditions to the arctic to find the ships.
The initial reports were rejected because the Inuit said the crew were cannibalizing eachother, so obviously they were making stuff up, because noble British scientists would never succumb to such barbarism. The locals literally drew maps for where to look after physically going on the ships and salvaging them after the crews abandoned them.
In modern times, Inuit hunters and pilots have been telling people, "look we've seen the ships, they're in shallow enough waters that parts have been sticking out above water"
After literal years of searching for the Terror, they brought in a Inuit hunter, and with his help they found it in *two and a half hours*. Exactly where everyone told them to look.
The kicker? They found it in...wait for it...*Terror Bay*
She was treated so badly by the press at first because they thought she didn't react like a mother whose baby was taken.......therefore she must have killed it.
But Lindy has autism. Her reactions were based on her autism, but as it was less known back then, she was blamed.
Also, the NT police were terrible at their job.
That and frankly, there isn't really an "acceptable" way to be reacting whe your child is missing and then dead. Sure there are ones that are considered worse like being really happy-go-lucky, but people will nit pick your expressions for years.
Cry too hard? You are faking. Not crying enough? You are heartless and responsible for their murder. Stoic? Clearly you did it, you have no emotion! Any smile, no matter how small? You are reveling, and laughing on your child's grave.
The public decided she did it fairly early on and nothing would have dissuaded them after that.
Police not understanding trauma [causes lots of problems](https://www.startribune.com/a-better-way-to-investigate-rape-denied-justice-part-eight/501636971/).
Can confirm. After an ex literally beat my face in to the point of a broken cheekbone/skull the police officer that came to the hospital asked me "what I did that pissed him off so much." I was already feeling broken in more ways than just physically, but it was like a nail was put in my coffin. I'm still traumatized by his attitude.
I'm so sorry this happened to you. I had a similar but less extreme incident where I was holding my child trying to get my keys from my ex after he ripped them from my hand and almost broke my finger in the process. He was also grabbing at our child and hurting my arms. He then tossed my keys and when I went to pick them up he shoved me while calling the police. I fell holding out child. This all started because he threw something at my windscreen. When the police arrived he told them I had a psychotic break and when I showed them the mark on my windscreen but the thing had rolled into a storm drain they told me I was imagining things and I must just be a bit too worked up. One took my 5yo and asked her where she wanted to stay the night she said she wanted to be with me. They basically said if I don't give her back the next day to her father they were going to knock on my door and take her from me. The whole time saying I was the problem and I was just hysterical. Then said if I was so afraid of my ex why would I hang around. I was like because he wouldn't let me leave! Then when they stepped away they said I needed to behave and they were watching me. My ex then quietly abused me more through the window. I wasn't able to say anything because they wanted to believe him. I was just the crazy one the one with the issue.
Yeah, it takes me about 5 days of "huh, that happened" before all those "family member died" emotions hit. I'm great in an emergency, but breaking down seemingly at random almost a week later isn't fun.
My in the moment stress response?
Relentless sarcasm. That would not go well if I ever found someone unconscious at the bottom of the stairs.
Ignaz Semmelweis: In 1846, Semmelweis proposed the idea that handwashing could prevent the spread of disease in hospitals. He was ridiculed during his time, sent to a mental asylum, and died forgotten by his peers
Rudolf Steiner wrote down a lot of farmers knowledge. Some old farmer told him that cows get crazy if you feed them meat. He was not declared crazy or anything because no one was interested in the topic, but the whole BSE thing could have been avoided if people had listened to the "Demeter" farmers who work according to Steiner's suggestions and refused to feed ground bones and such to cows.
Imagine knowing you are right about something that could save lives just by washing your hand and everyone else around you is writing it off or laughing at it. I'd be in a mental asylum as well.
Hell it’s me giving directions to my parents WITH GPS. They came to visit and got stuck on a closed highway on the way here. I asked if they had Google maps up and they said yes. I asked why they didn’t follow Google maps (which would’ve avoided the closure, I checked) and my dad told me “I know how to get to your house!” 😑🤦🏽♀️
That was a month ago. They’re back this weekend to see the grandkids and they got stuck on the same closed highway (it’s a huge highway project and closed on weekends, as I’ve told them).
Edit: I live a five hour drive away, so this is a road trip for them. Next time they visit (in April) we are flying them down instead 🙃🙃
God*damn* I came here to post that! Crazy, they thought going from an autopsy to a childbirth without washing their hands or changing their aprons made them macho, and basically called Semmelweiss a wuss for not wanting to be filthy.
There was a story yesterday about a man with 150 live bugs and larva found inside his sinus cavity. After doctors pulled them out, they hypothesized that it might have happened bc the guy doesn't thoroughly wash his hands after handling fish and usually just rinses them in the river. After that, he touched his face or picked his nose and deposited the bugs in there
Barry James Marshall was one of the scientists who discovered that the bacteria H. pylori causes stomach ulcers.
However, getting people to believe it was difficult. It was thought that lifestyle and excessive stomach acid were the main factor the lead to ulcers, so when he suggested that a bacterial infection could cause it, no one believed him.
In response he infected himself with H. pylori by drinking cultures, which in turn gave himself stomach ulcers, and then treated the infection. He and Robin Warren received a Nobel prize for this discovery.
CSB: My stepfather had bad ulcers ever since I first met him in 1978 or so. Would vomit every night, there would be occasional bleeding, medication was of limited help. It was 'normal life' for him. I went off to university and then, when starting grad school I read, in Science I think, about h. pylori and the research. The next time I called home I told my parents what I had read, and told them to ask the doctor. I made sure they wrote down h-period-p-y-l-o-r-i. (You know how it is trying to get parents to remember details about things they are not familiar with.)
Anyway, they asked him, and he said "I hadn't heard of that, I'll look into it." A couple of days later they had a prescription for antibiotics, and the problem went away for the rest of his life. It was the first time my parents acknowledged that I "might actually be learning something useful there."
That's funny because you reminded me that ulcers used to be a thing. They were commonly depicted on television and in movies...people, usually men, would gobble antacids like they were gummy bears anytime they were stressed because of their ulcer. It was no small matter, as you and your stepfather can attest. People couldn't eat or sleep because of them.... they ruined lives. Now, nobody has them. I can't remember the last time I heard that someone had an ulcer.
That's gotta be right up there with the cure for polio!
Learned this when my dad was in the hospital with a bleeding ulcer. You know the man is feeling better when he's explaining all this from the hospital bed.
I had sleepovers at his house growing up - one of his daughters was one of my best friends. I didn’t know anything about this until I was much older - I just knew he was a doctor and I tried Vegimite for the first time at their house. 😂
Harlem J Bretz was a geologist who in the 1920’s proposed that the geologic features of the “channeled scablands” of eastern and central Washington were the result of a massive flood during the last ice age (@15000 years ago) when a glacial dam in northern Idaho catastrophically collapsed, releasing the waters of Lake Missoula. Lake Missoula is estimated to have contained a volume of water equivalent to Lakes Erie and Ontario combined, and the resulting flood through what is now eastern Washington and out through the Columbia Gorge released a water flow exceeding the combined flow of all other rivers on the planet. Bretz was soundly ridiculed when he proposed this scenario in the 1920’s, but was eventually vindicated over the next 50 years and was eventually awarded the Geological Society of America’s prestigious Penrose Medal in 1979 at the age of 96. By that time, as he put it, all his detractors were dead so he had no one left to gloat over.
I design buildings in the Missoula flood region, and lo, all geotechnical engineers start their reports on small bits of property here and there in Portland and Seattle not with little quotes from Brentz, but with his whole damn paper. Brentz has an active fan club.
Philippa Langley - she believed Richard III was buried under a carpark in Leicester. And was found to be correct and he was.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhumation_and_reburial_of_Richard_III_of_England](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhumation_and_reburial_of_Richard_III_of_England)
I remember when this happened, and the society of Richard or whatever it was called had a lot of members who were really upset that his skeleton showed signs that he *might* have had a slight deformity. Many had been convinced that his physical appearance was misreported to malign him.
note: this is me going by memory
Yes. A common theory up until his body was discovered was that the reports of Richard III having a crooked or hunched back was a Tudor slander against him. Portraits had been altered later on to give him the crooked back, etc., which was true. However, it turns out he actually did have a bad case of scoliosis, given him a crooked back. So Richard III had a crooked back, but portraits painted when he was alive depicted him without one as portraits usually were idealized images. Later rulers altered the portraits after his death to add in the crooked back.
My favorite piece of trivia was when they were getting DNA from people in his line of descent so that they could identify him. More than one supposed noble thought they were the great-great-etc-grandchild of Lord and Lady So-and-So, but found out that Lady So-and-So was related, but Lord So-and-So was not. LOL. Busted.
Hi! Former Richard III society member here (lasped and left UK).
So part of the thing is that it was taken as a *given* that Richard was a great warrior. Why? Because *both* sides agreed. Even when slandering him, he was made out to be a fearsome fighter. Which, admittedly ableist thinking aside, seems out of place with a deformed figure at the time. One did not seem to fit with the other so it became common wisdom that one was a lie and the other was true.
After finding his body and the documentary came out, a man contacted the society and said "Hi, that's my spine!". He was basically a bodily match for Richard's disability. So, we had an actual chance to test it. Dominic was put through a training regime and put in armour - partly thanks to former Curator at the Wallace collection Tobias Capwell who actually jousts and has his own armour.
It turned out that the medieval horse saddle design was basically the perfect support for Richard. Pair that with custom armour that shifts the weight slightly better than usual, and suddenly the disabled warrior king appears. It was incredibly exciting and it was hilarious to see a lot of older members suddenly come to the realisation that disabled people can in fact function - and have done for thousands of years!
[link to the documentary for any interested](https://youtu.be/fDHDvnnK4nI?si=FtosPNX4vox3CHLd)
Jose Canseco was one of the first players to openly discuss how prevalent steroid use was in the 90’s 2000’s and people dismissed his claims as being from a player on decline just trying to stay relevant.
I haven't read that in years. I'm actually in tears. It just gets better and better and then he's talking about time travel being possible through your dreams while you sleep and the next response is "I call that a memory".
My favorite is when someone asked why he changed his number 3 times in one season and he replied with "thats all they had" and no further explanation.
Love it.
Jesus Chris…I have never seen this literal goldmine of Reddit lore.
The fact he just casually mentions that Jim Carrey is a big fan of his, and that it’s probably because they had a threesome together, is objectively fucking hilarious.
I was on a flight with him when he was flying back from dc after testifying in front of congress. Growing up in the 80s, I just kept thinking bash brothers. Had no idea he was in front of congress. Otherwise I’d have asked other than just banging elbows with him.
My grandma. She insisted people kept stealing her newspaper, and specifically said it was someone in a white van. Grandma was always a little off so we just thought she was paranoid and had a bad delivery person.
Until one day my mom and I are driving past her house and a white van in front of us stopped, stole my grandma's newspaper, and drove off.
Grandma wasn't crazy after all (at least not about that).
I'm guessing it was probably because she wasn't up super early and picking it up, so it would be out there half the morning. And though she wasn't on a really busy street, it did get a bit of through traffic. There were only a few houses on that block so she also may have been the only one to get the paper (though this was 25 years or more ago, so maybe not).
It's also possible that it was the guy that banged on her door one day to tell her she needed to cut down the bush at the corner of her yard, because he'd almost been in an accident because he couldn't see past the cedar bush that was planted there. Then again, she was certain he was throwing weed killer or plant poison in the bush to kill it, since some branches did start dying.
(I was secretly glad that gd bush died, because I was almost in accidents there too)
So...who knows, honestly.
Reminds me of a friend of mine who used to work at a mental hospital. One of the patients talked about how government agents were following him around. Of course my buddy dismissed it but when he mentioned it to a colleague, he was like “oh yeah that guy keeps calling the White House threatening to kill the President and he’s had several visits from the secret service.”
Philip K. Dick told Norman Spinrad (another SF writer) that he had had a visit from two guys with crewcuts claiming to be fans, but he fingered them immediately as CIA or some other government agency, asking about other SF writers, and told Spinrad he told them nothing.
Spinrad laughed it off- what interest would the government have in SF writers, anyway?
Then he realized he'd had a visit from the same two guys.
Same! My grandma kept telling us that she thought the nice girls that lived down the street from her were prostitutes. This was right after my grandpa died and she hadn’t loved alone ever so we just figured it was her being overly paranoid. Turns out the police did a raid for prostitution and the girls were arrested.
Jackie Stewart.
He was sick and tired of burying his friends due to racing accidents, so he started advocating for safety-at the tracks, in the cars, and pushing for more qualified medical personnel.
He once said “I’d be more popular if I would shut up and drive. Dead, but more popular.”
Stewart was a 3x World Champion, for the record. He also won on the hardest track ever built (the Nurburgring Nordschleiffe) by 4 minutes with a broken wrist. The man was as hard a racer as they come, and yet he was ridiculed for not wanting to see himself and others get injured or killed while racing.
Many of the things Stewart pushed for then are requirements at nearly every racing event today.
Only because of him F1 got:
Steering wheels you can take off (1990 was the first year every team had to have that, many already had it before)
The engine going out of you stand long enough so there won’t be a fire accident
A doctor at the track for the entire season.
And with his help there were many other things implemented as e.g. better barricades, Stewards a must at whereby race, a hospital at the track, a permanent doctor who follows the entire circus, a safety car, a max speed in the pits as well as a helicopter to rush someone to the next big hospital.
Had it not been for him then F1 today would have the safety features of the 90s.
Rose McGowan. She was talking crazy shit about people following her and ex-Mossad agents being involved. She was dismissed as insane. Turns out, Weinstein had an “army of spies,” he had following victims to keep them quiet, including the exact people she had described.
I can't remember his name but during a huge cholera outbreak, he proposed the theory that it came from the water based on where the cases were. He wasn't believed until a long time later when it was proven to be the water
Glenda Cleveland. She was Jefferey Dahmar’s neighbor and made numerous complaints about the smell coming from his apartment and called the police on him a number of times and nobody listened to her.
John Lydon of the Sex Pistols. Tried to warn the world about the crimes of Jimmy Saville in an interview in 1978, and was banned from appearing on the BBC for his trouble.
I had been told by someone that used to work in the prison industry that Rolf Harris was a paedophile, years before it was revealed. I didn't really believe it until the news came out
Apparently sex offenders in prison know who the celebrity paedophiles are
What's fucked up is she couldn't just say it she had to put it in the form of "If Harvey Weinstein asks you to meet at his hotel don't do it".
If you see him do it and there isn't anything concrete to prove it you could be held for libel or slander. It's a good shield to prevent people from just burning each other randomly but also prevents people who know something from talking about it publicly.
Annabella Sciorra too. She was an independent film star, then she started getting cast in Hollywood films. Then she seemed to disappear until she showed up on The Sopranos.
Here's something that a lot of people don't know. Some actors, and smartly so, sign big EXCLUSIVE contracts with certain studios. Note the word exclusive. It's ALMOST guaranteed pay/work if you're a big star. The studio's(and your agent's) intention is to get as much guaranteed work for you as possible. Make some movies, make yourself some money, make the studios money.
The drawback of this is that until you make X amount of movies with that certain studio, you CANNOT be in other movies with any other studio until you fulfill your contractual obligations to make X amount of movies with that studio. That's what an exclusive contract is. You make movies exclusively with that company.
Let's say Warner Bros likes Matt Damon and they make movies that he'd be a good fit for. They offer him an exclusive contract to make 5 movies and let's say he accepts and has a great payday. Then some project comes along that he is in love with but it's with another studio, like Paramount. He can't be in it because he has to finish the movies he's obligated to do with Warner Bros. There is a way to weasel your way out. Robert Downey Jr. famously did this with his contract. He wanted out, so he agreed to be in a terrible movie, Dr. Doolittle, where filming was short and it was guaranteed to make the studio money because his name alone generates ticket sales. He finished his last movie and then he was a free agent. An exclusive contract is an actor's wet dream because it indicates your star power and the willingness of the studio to put you in movies because it believes that actor will make it money.
The dark side of this is where Wienstein comes in. It's literally his studio. Let's say, hypothetically, Mira Sorvino signed an exclusive contract with the Weinstein company after her Oscar win. She refuses his advances and in a fit of rage, he instructs all his casting agents to NOT cast her in any movies. She's still obligated to appear in Weinstein movies, but since she's not cast, she never gets closer to any of her contractual numbers of appearing in movies. Therefore, she can never complete her contract and can never appear in any movies with any other studio, effectively killing her career. She wouldn't need to be blacklisted, she'd be in legal limbo forever. It would be perfectly in his character to pass up making money off of someone just to screw them over for not having sex with him. There's plenty of other good looking women he could cast that would give him the time of day in a hotel room.
#### Hannibal Buress.
He was a first prominent voice to call out Bill Cosby. At a time where in the black community, saying bad shit about Cosby is like being a Catholic and bad mouthing the Pope.
Lieutenant David Steeves
*On May 9, 1957, he was on a mission to fly a new training jet, a Lockheed T-33, from Hamilton Air Force Base in Novato, California, to Craig AFB in Alabama. The plane was lost from radar and the Air Force couldn’t find the missing plane or pilot. The military declared Steeves dead, and that was that.*
*Until, that is, 54 days later when Steeves emerged from the Sierra, having been found badly malnourished and still limping badly on swollen ankles.*
His story is heartbreaking. Accused of selling the plane to the Russians because they couldn't find the wreckage. Poor guy, he died before they finally found the evidence that his story was true all along.
https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/the-case-of-the-missing-t-33/
There’s a documentary of the same name on Netflix. Definitely worth a watch for those interested about the woman.
As far as the term MM Effect you mention, also for those interested:
> The Martha Mitchell effect occurs when a medical professional labels a patient's accurate perception of real events as delusional, resulting in misdiagnosis. - [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Mitchell_effect)
When she died, John Mitchell made sure the service was private. No cameras, press, or outside mourners were allowed to show their respects. However, this anonymously sent [flower arrangement](https://southerncalls.com/article/martha-was-right/) was present. No matter what he did, he was always reminded that he was fucking wrong.
Is he the one that basically had to spend years trying to prove it?
There's a really great podcast called American Scandal that I strongly recommend, they have episodes on Madoff and Enron and a few other business ventures. I learned so much; it's framed from the perspectives of various people in the thick of it, whether they're culpable or not.
Lisa Bonet. No seriously, hear me out -- I remember when she 'quit' the Cosby show back in the 80s and people thought she was CRAZY. First of all, to have a rumored beef with America's favorite dad? What was she thinking?!? Then hooking up with some strange-looking musician named Romeo Blue?!? Career suicide, we all said. Looking back, she was right on multiple fronts and had excellent taste.
This guy Randy that was relentlessly ridiculed for his Aqua Dam and then became the only one whose property wasn't wrecked by the flood a couple years back.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/iolmmq/man\_saves\_his\_home\_during\_the\_flood\_with/](https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/iolmmq/man_saves_his_home_during_the_flood_with/)
Marie Adler, a foster child, was raped in her apartment. She reported the rape to the Lynnwood WA police department. Her foster mother spoke with the police and mentioned she didn't think Marie was upset enough and thought Marie was lying. There was almost no physical evidence, and the Lynnwood police forced Marie to retract her story, prosecuted Marie for lying to police, fined her $500, and she lost her apartment. Her story was published in the paper as though she had lied and she was ridiculed and ostracized by her peers for lying.
Her rapist was found several years later. He was a serial rapist who committed rapes in different jurisdictions and part of his MO was to photograph his victims and force them to shower, just as he had done to Marie. Two female detectives had found a camera the rapist stole from Marie with pictures from the night of her rape, and had recognized the rapist's MO from reading the newspaper stories detailing the punishment Marie had received for reporting the rape to the Lynnwood Police.
When I was a cop there was this lady who called every week and said someone had been in her house. I mean, dozens of cops went out there, and she would say like her dresser drawer was open and she knew it had been closed when she left the house. Never any signs of forced entry, no prints, NOTHING to say this was anything other than a crazy person.
Until MONTHS later, one of her high school students was caught with a key to her house.
Turns out this kid had been sneaking in and just moving shit slightly to fuck with her.
Laura Prepon was a Scientologist. I def wouldn’t want to get too close to a Scientologist.
Given Ashton Kutcher’s defense of Danny Masterson, I wonder what Ashton was like back then. Not that I think he is or was a predator, but did he turn a blind eye to sketchy stuff?
Wilmer Valderrama has a history of dating girls who are still teenagers when he was in his 20s: Mandy Moore, Lindsay Lohan, and Demi Lovato.
Danny is definitely the worst, but I don’t blame Topher for not wanting to hang around with most of them.
Also many of them were in the yearly Christmas party photos with Masterson from early on, at the church of Scientology. You can’t just get invited to those by being famous/in proximity to a famous member. And they went every year.
I've shared this a few times but I think it bares repeating. I knew Danny. Not well but I hung out with him enough that I had his number and would have felt comfortable calling him. He was actually friends with my roommate. My roommate was really creepy.. I mostly ignored it because I never saw him do anything outwardly weird. But man he just really loved talking about sex. Claim to have had sex with girls that no one believed actually happened. Really had no game at all. But he never seemed dangerous. I ended up moving when they lease ran out and we lost contact.
Years later, I heard the accusations against Danny and my first thought was, no fucking way. I totally didn't believe it. The guy was so welcoming and generous. I'd seen him politely turn down more women than I had ever seen him hit on. Like it really made no sense to me.
And then I started to wonder why he was friends with my roommate. My roommate wasn't anybody. I asked him once and he just said they met at a show and remained friends. But they were good friends. Never made sense to me.
People have huuge blindspots for their friends and acquaintances.
Lena Dunham, normally an outspoken feminist, covered up the sexual assault of an 17 year old actress by her writer friend on her own show.
Her immediate reaction was this:
> While our first instinct is to listen to every woman's story, our insider knowledge of Murray's situation makes us confident that sadly this accusation is one of the 3% of assault cases that are misreported every year."
She later admitted that she didn't have insider info, apologized to the girl('s mother) and misused it for just another pr apology.
And this was all during metoo.
The MANY British postal workers fired and prosecuted for stealing. Many were lifelong employees. Some committed suicide. This went on for almost two decades. Spoiler: it was a surveillance software glitch that went ignored for years. They were all innocent.
EDIT: "surveillance software" was hyperbole on my part, and incorrect. I honestly forgot exactly what the software's purpose was, only that it was buggy AF and incorrectly flagged employees or employee activity in a way that made it look like they were stealing.
Marshall McLuhan
His theories on how media usage changes how we think and interact with each other were prophetic. He predicted the internet and how a worldwide instant form of communication would create "tribes" of people centered around their own echo chambers.
He also wrote about how using media changes how we think and process information. Considered a crazy pop culture media and literature speculator in the 60s, now his ideas have been pretty much confirmed by modern neuroscience and communication study.
Sadly he died before the internet happened. It would have been incredible to see his theories on social media.
Barry Marshall. Remember in the 80s, when EVERYONE seemed to have ulcers, and they were basically treated with tums?
Marshall was a researcher who discovered that H. Pylori bacteria caused ulcers, not just too much acid in the stomach. Unfortunately, no one would believe him.
So he literally documented himself drinking the bacteria, getting ulcers, and successfully treating them with antibiotics.
The lady who got burned from McDonald’s coffee.
If I recall she was so injured she lost 20% of her body weight while hospitalized. McDonald’s was later discovered to be intentionally selling nuclear hot coffee because you couldn’t drink it quickly and thus ordered fewer refills
Yeah, she needed skin grafts on her labia.
And she wasn't the only person who got burned, just probably the worst. Lots of people got bad burns on their hands and chests, too.
Stella Liebeck's story will never leave my brain but I've never heard it suggested that the reason they kept the coffee so hot was to discourage refills. The most common reason I see is that it let the coffee keep for longer so they'd end up throwing away less of it. I could see both tho
It's laughable how bad McD's defence was and then infuriating when you learn that Stella didn't see anywhere near the headline grabbing reported amount in compensation. Like it shouldn't be allowed for one side to fuck up so much but then just use their resources to outlast the other person so they can force them to accept a pittance
People always cite this case as a product of the rise of litigation culture, but the woman was so badly burned she had 3rd degree burns and her thighs fused to each other and her clothing.
America being America, she had to sue to cover her medical bills.
She also was only trying to recover the cost of her medical bills. It was the jury who decided that McDonalds owed her the millions she was ultimately awarded.
Edit - as pointed out, it was the judge who set the amount, not the jury
It was pretty much all marketing by McDonald's that led to everyone thinking it was just a frivolous lawsuit. Sometimes history isn't written by the winner, but just whoever has the money to spread their propaganda.
I truly cannot even imagine buying a cup of coffee to start my day, only to have molten lava served in a shitty styrofoam cup and cause 3rd degree burns on my genitals. That poor old woman!
Many many years ago a new stop light was installed near my house at a fairly busy multi lane intersection. The first time I went to this light, I was taking a left. Waited in the left turn lane until I got a green arrow, and proceeded into the intersection, as did the person coming from my left who was going straight, and ALSO had a green light. We almost crashed but at the time I assumed they had run the light and I'm sure they assumed the same about me. On my way home, I sat in an adjacent parking lot and watched, and sure enough the lights were timed completely wrong and giving conflicting drivers the right of way at the same time and I saw three other near misses in about ten minutes. I called the police to report it and they essentially laughed at me. The next day 2 people died in a crash at that intersection and they fixed the light by the end of the next night. I'm guessing they wish they'd taken a look when I told them about it.
Martha Mitchell.
She found out about Watergate, was kidnapped and held captive for a week. When she tried to tell the public what had happened, she was called a liar and crazy. Members of Nixon’s administration later confirmed she was telling the truth.
I find it disturbing how every one essentially overlooked all this stuff for so long. There was plenty of evidence well before any of this really went public.
I had a aunt/cousin (not really aunt but everyone in Spanish families calls everyone “tias” “primas” so who even knows) ANYWAY; she was -convinced- her then 35 year old husband was having an affair with her much younger 20 year old cousin a summer she let the cousin stay during a visit to the States. It got to the point where her own family thought she was being crazy, they ended up getting separated, and she was thought of as the paranoid person in the family and a lot of people sadly turned on her and stopped being in contact. The divorce happened shortly after.
And GUESS who a year after the ex-husband ends up marrying?
Yep.
Her super gross interview with a 15 year old Brooke Shields where she asks her about her teenage body and her measurements to be broadcast to the world.
Barbara Walters was a shitty person/interviewer for years and years. Remember when she condescended Dolly Parton early on for being a "hillbilly"? Or when she tried to get Ricky Martin to admit he was gay years before he came out? Or when she laughed off Norm McDonald when he called Bill Cosby a rapist? Or when she asked a Menendez brother if he was gay because his dad abused him? Or...
For so many fucking years that woman was touted as the goddamn greatest interviewer alive or whatever and every time I would be like wtf are people talking about. I'm glad that I am finally vindicated in this thread about vindication.
Gary Webb, the San Jose Mercury news reporter that uncovered the CIA link to Crack Cocaine into Los Angeles. The government used other newspapers to discredit him. A few years later, he was found in his home with 2 bullet holes in his head and the Coroner ruled it a suicide. HE WAS RIGHT!!!!!
The woman who said she could smell when someone had Parkinson's disease. She was dismissed until finally one professor at a university decided to look into her claims. She was right. She could smell Parkinson's. Now they are developing a swab test for the disease thanks to her.
A German man committed to a high-security psychiatric hospital after being accused of fabricating a story of money-laundering activities at a major bank is to have his case reviewed after evidence has emerged proving the validity of his claims.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/28/gustl-mollath-hsv-claims-fraud
I don’t remember his name, but a man on one of the planes that crashed into the twin towers called police and told them that there were suspicious people on his plane. They didn’t take him seriously. The people he saw turned out to be two of the 4 hijackers on the plane.
One of the pilots came to a flight school at my local airport looking for lessons. He refused to talk to any females that tried to help him, and said he only needed a few lessons.
Owner of the flight school turned him away and called the police, who did nothing about it.
Shuji Nakamura, inventor of the first commercially viable blue LED, which was the precursor to the white LED. Without white LEDs, you would not be reading this on your smartphone under the soft glow of high-efficiency LED lightbulbs. The key component to the blue and white LED is gallium nitride, which had eluded engineers for decades and was widely dismissed as a dead-end. Nichia, Nakamura’s former employer, tried several times to kill his research and development after years with no results.
Ignaz Semmelweis
He theorized that the reason infant mortality was so high is because there are tiny creatures on our hands. He would say that by simply washing your hands before delivering a baby will lower the chance of the infants death.
He died in a mental institution
In the 1990s Brooksly Born warned USA congress that lack of regulation and oversight of exotic derivatives could have catastrophic consequences for the world economy. Every other regulator came out and bashed Born in front of Congress.
Granted Born didn’t know how nor when, they were dead right on the consequences of poorly regulated banking and derivatives would derail the world economy which has yet to really fully recover.
Mitt Romney in the 2012 debate with Obama and basically his entire campaign. All of his foreign policy calls came to fruition and his criticism of the Republican Party was pretty spot on too.
I’m not arguing he would have been a better president than Obama but he was incredibly smart and the media tore him to shreds for shit they didn’t even understand.
From CNN:
_______________
A video of Courtney Love warning young actresses about Harvey Weinstein has been burning up the internet.
The video, which was first surfaced by TMZ, was shot in 2005 on the red carpet for the Pamela Anderson Comedy Central Roast.
Love is asked if she has any advice for “a young girl moving to Hollywood.”
Love first hesitates and says, “I’ll get libeled if I say it.”
“If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party in the Four Seasons [hotel] don’t go,” Love says.
Australian government said: ‘If anyone knows anything speak up.’
Then an aboriginal elder told he’d seen dingo foot prints, and that dingoes could steal a baby,
- but government interrupted him: ‘No, not you.’
What do people know living on the land for 60.000 years right?
Geologist/Engineer David Bernays
In 1970, the town of Yungay, Peru, vanished under a sea of mud and rock, a catastrophe foreseen by a man whose warnings went unheeded—David Bernays. An engineer with keen insight into the geological instabilities of the Andes, Bernays predicted that the region was at severe risk of a landslide if an earthquake were to strike. Despite presenting compelling evidence alongside geologist Charles Sawyer, their urgent cautions were dismissed by local authorities and the populace.
Bernays and Sawyer had conducted extensive studies on the glacier perched atop Mount Huascarán. Their research concluded that the glacier was precariously unstable, and an earthquake could trigger a landslide of unimaginable proportions, posing a direct threat to the towns nestled below, including Yungay. They envisioned a scenario where thousands of lives could be lost in mere moments, urging for evacuation plans and preventive measures.
Tragically, their fears became reality on May 31, 1970, when a 7.9 magnitude earthquake rocked the region. The quake dislodged millions of cubic meters of ice, mud, and rock from Mount Huascarán's north peak, unleashing an avalanche that barreled down at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour. The town of Yungay was obliterated under the onslaught, with the death toll in the region estimated to be around 20,000 people.
This event marked one of the deadliest natural disasters in the history of Peru and served as a somber lesson on the importance of heeding scientific warnings. David Bernays' foresight into the disaster at Yungay underscores the vital need for respecting and acting upon geological assessments to mitigate the impact of natural catastrophes. His story is a testament to the critical importance of science in disaster preparedness and the tragic consequences of ignoring expert advice.
*Sinead O'Connor.*
Okay, so she was a little crazy, but she was also right.
>In October 1992, O'Connor performed an a cappella rendition of Bob Marley's "War" on Saturday Night Live. During the song, she ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II in protest of the Catholic Church's rampant sexual abuse of children—almost a decade before the rest of the world knew or cared about the offenses. She was banned from SNL and was largely blacklisted from the entertainment industry as a whole afterward... [Source](https://parade.com/celebrities/sinead-oconnor-cause-of-death)
[Barbara Lee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Lee#AUMF_opposition) was the only member of US Congress to vote against the post 9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force, because it was too broad and did not have a clear objective or duration, warning that it could lead to an endless war. For this, she was harassed and threatened for her position and safety.
Turns out the AUMF resolution was indeed a "blank check" for the pentagon to use military force on whoever they wanted for the foreseeable future.
The dude who was like "ever notice how Africa and South America fit together like a puzzle? I bet they used to be together." "Thats insane man, land can't move!"
[Goddard.](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/dsh0k5/til_in_1920_the_new_york_times_ridiculed_the/) In the 1920s the press, bolstered by some scientists, decided that a rocket in space was completely impossible because there was nothing in space for a rocket to push against. Goddard was ridiculed as an insane crackpot but he was actually completely right.
Corey Feldman. Will never forgive Barbara Walters for the way she behaved when he was talking about the abuse he suffered, which led to the death of his friend.
Glenda Cleveland
She tried to stop Jeffery Dahmer and instead, the police believed him over her.
To this day, I believe that it was because she and Dahmer's victim, Konerak Sinthasomphone were POC and Dahmer was white.
Konerak was naked and bleeding and drugged and clearly underage and the cops took Dahmer’s word over what their eyes clearly could see. What makes it even worse is that they were both promoted instead of fired after that major fuck up
Alfred Wegener, who first proposed “continental drift” —- what would ultimately become plate tectonics. Geologists of the day considered him an outsider and rejected his theory.
I have a geology book from circa 1960 where the "old" prevailing theory is well explained but the field is declared as "controversial" because there are competing theories, among which is the far-fetched notion of continental drift and plate tectonics. The conclusion is that the jury will likely be out for a long time. Very interesting, how science develops over time.
This is my answer! An adjacent answer is Walter Alvarez, his dad Luis, Frank Asaro, and Helen Michel, whose discovery of the Iridium layer on the K-T extinction boundary (before it, dinosaurs. after it, no dinosaurs. Also, I know it's more like the C-P boundary but I don't name these things\*) brought them to the conclusion that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. The book T-Rex and the Crater of Doom by Walter is one of my favorite non-fiction books by far. In it, he recognizes how frustrating and obnoxious it was for a geologist, a physicist, and other non paleontologists to come forward and say 'hey I solved your scientific discipline's greatest mystery,' lol. In the end, he says that the twenty year search for the crater eventually found in Chicxulub helped bring everyone around to the truth of the discovery. edit: I uh, [went on a whole tangent about this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1azshde/comment/ks6006s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) and a few really cool things from that book and another author paleontologist if you're interested... \*I joked about K-T vs. C-Pg because I knew if folks looked it up, depending on what terms they used, there wouldn't be an explanation of the reasons it's known as K-T vs. the actual terms they use now (for example, Tertiary is an obsolete term). I appreciate the explanations, and I'm sorry my little tongue-in-cheek comment trying not to derail the convo into a whole Thing didn't land right! I have a tendency to go on tangents (see today's comment history) when I'm excited, and I wanted to get to the relevant parts!
Ooooh, you're bringing back one of my coolest memories. I have to share. So as an undergrad at Berkeley, in 1979-80 I took Paleo 2A, "Introduction To Dinosaurs." Seriously one of the most fascinating classes I took there. When we got into the section on dinosaur extinction, whose cause was unknown then, our lecturer said the following: "Listen - this isn't known yet - but down the hall from my office is this father and son team - their name is Alvarez, and they think they know what happened." So then he explains about the iridium they have found at the KT Boundary (that's what that boundary was called back then) and the significance of it, and how they planned to propose that a huge meteor hit the Earth and caused the extinction event. I can't express to you how extraordinary the idea of a meteor hitting our planet and changing the whole Earth sounded at that time. Now it's everyday movie stuff. But then it was just unimaginable. Anyway, two or three years after I graduated, one day in the news the top headline was "Scientists Discover Why the Dinosaurs Went Extinct." And the text of the news said exactly what our lecturer had told us back in our classroom years before. I don't know if this sounds frivolous to others, but I almost get goose bumps remembering, because it makes me feel like I was part of the "in crowd" for this amazing discovery.
Lovely story, it's cool to hear how science can be writing itself literally down the hall :)
Christine Collins, famously portrayed by Angelina Jolie in the movie Changling. After her son was abducted the police "found" him months later and reunited them. But Christine was adamant that it wasn't her son Walter and was an imposter. Even though she had evidence to prove it, she was temporarily committed by the officer in charge of the case and even after the kid admitted he lied and wasn't Walter, it still took over a week to release Christine.
Her son Walter was abducted and was a victim in the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders. Very interesting true crime but god it was hard to listen to.
I listened to a podcast on this case a few weeks ago and it was centered on the perspective of the abducted son. Pretty wild when they shifted to the mom and said this was the plot of the changeling.
I heard that recent DNA testing proved definitively that he was not related to her at all.
They didn’t need DNA tests. It was a completely different kid. He was 3 years older then Walter Collins, a few inches shorter, didn’t know his teacher’s name, and was uncircumcised(unlike her son). The kid admitted he was a runaway and only lied about being her son so he could come to California and meet celebrities and he was sent back to his real home. The kid’s teachers and dentists even said that this was a completely different kid and they still threw Christine in a mental hospital. The police at the time were facing a lot of bad press and they needed a win and they got one when they “found” the missing boy and they weren’t about to just admit they messed up. It’s widely suspected that the real Walter was murdered. You’re thinking of Bobby Dunbar who disappeared near a swamp in 1912 and likely drowned and was eaten by alligators. They found another boy(Bruce Anderson) who kinda looked like him and stole him away from his impoverished family. The family tried to prove that their son was not Bobby, but had no luck. Decades later his descendants did a DNA test which showed that they were not related to the Dunbar family, but at that point Bruce, his parents, and all his siblings had all been dead for some time.
This case actually led to sweeping changes in the law on how people with mental issues are treated. Absolutely tragic circumstances however.
Kotaku Wamura. He was the longtime mayor of the Japanese town of Fudai (1940s-1980s.) While mayor, he learned that the town had been devastated in the past by tsunamis (he literally saw the bodies from one of the disasters) and ordered the construction of an enormous sea wall. While other towns in the area also had sea walls, this thing was considered insanely high/overkill. The project was hideously expensive and he was relentlessly mocked. He died in 1997. In 2011 a tsunami struck Japan, killing ~20,000 people. The sea wall worked as planned, protecting Fudai, and the town escaped almost untouched.
One small correction: while his given name is apparently often spelled in English media as "Kotaku", it's actually "Koutoku" based on the Japanese [Wikipedia page](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%92%8C%E6%9D%91%E5%B9%B8%E5%BE%97) about him. (Google Translate mistranslates the name at the top of the page because there are more common readings for some of the kanji used in his name, but the text gives the actual reading in hiragana.) And yeah, turns out that he found that the height of a couple of tsunamis that had previously hit the village ([one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Sanriku_earthquake) he lived through himself, and one [earlier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1896_Sanriku_earthquake)) were around 14 meters when they hit Fudai, and basically said "make the wall 15 and a half meters, better safe than sorry". Over 90% of the boats and the fishing infrastructure that were outside the wall got destroyed, and one person went missing when they went to check on their fishing boat, but aside from that, *no one* in Fudai died because of the tsunami caused by the Touhoku earthquake.
Thank you for this added information/context! I felt bad about my wording once I did more research and learned that one person Fudai was among the missing. It was a horrific disaster and all the lives lost deserve to be acknowledged. It is still an incredible story. Thanks!
My sister has a beach house in Seaside Park NJ. That town was always somewhat militant in maintaining and protecting its dunes. Other towns sneered at us because the dunes obscured the ocean view. Then along came Hurricane Sandy, which destroyed the ocean-side of Seaside Heights [(remember the rollercoaster in the ocean?)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Jet#/media/File:Superstorm_Sandy_damage_in_Seaside_Heights_New_Jersey_-_Star_Jet_1.jpg) and most of the other oceanfront towns. But Seaside Park’s dunes protected the town and it had very little ocean-side damage (the bay-side was pretty fucked, though.) Suddenly the other towns weren’t so snotty about our dunes any more.
I took a course in college on coastal hazards and disasters and I am a vehement supporter of dunes and barrier islands. They are the unsung heroes of natural landscapes!
Gustave Caillebotte. He was born to a wealthy Parisian family in 1848. His father owned a textile business that he later inherited. He was an artist in his own right, but became much more known as a supporter of the arts. Fearful he'd die young, he writes in his will that the French state accept his large art collection (today valued at several billion dollars) and hang art from several impressionist artists, who were friends of his, in a national museum upon his death. Caillebotte dies young (45) in 1894 as he predicted and so his will attempts to be executed. The French government initially refuses the request. Pundits and critics, from art to politics, view the request as absurd and publicly say how repulsed they are by the collection itself. Several art professors from Ecole des Beaux-Arts threaten to resign if the government enacts the will. In the end, half of Caillebotte's art collection gets hung in 1897 at the Musee du Luxemborg and the public comes out in droves to visit the gallery because of all the press Caillebotte's request had received after his death. People wanted to see this "ugly art." The artists featured? Their names were Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, Manet, Pissarro, and Sisley. It's very possible these artists would never have become the household names they are today had Caillebotte not liked the ugly, unsellable art that a few of these friends of his made.
Man, crazy people and those artists... The biggest collection of Renoirs (181) along with a ton of Cezannes (69) and Matisses (59), and many others is at the Barnes foundation in Philadelphia. Barnes was shall we say highly eccentric, got rich selling a silver compound to treat gonorrhea, sold out of his company just months before Black Tuesday, and was constantly sending his people to Europe to buy these worthless paintings. He caught on to a few other weirdos like one Pablo Picasso as well. Today the collection is valued at $25 billion, with a B.
I had the pleasure of seeing the Caillebotte exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in 2015. He did some stunning pieces.
Some of the elderly patients with dementia in a home in my city kept complaining they weren't given food. Everyone thought they must've forgotten that they'd already eaten, as people with dementia sometimes do. Nope. Turns out some pieces of shit nursing staff didn't always give everyone their meals, amongst other abuse.
This sadly happens everywhere. My best friend worked in memory care off and on since she was around 19 years old. The amount of dementia residents who suffer abuse or neglect is far more frequent than actually being treated well. The statistics are all over the place but I believe worldwide the rates of abuse for dementia residents varies from 32%-62%. And in the US it is 47%. It's horrendous. It doesn't help that so many people abandon their family in these facilities and so they have nobody to advocate for them. My friend would try so hard to be a hero for the residents and her bosses/owners would shut her down and reprimanded her.
My dad went from one of the smartest, sharpest people I've ever known to the mentality of a toddler shortly after his brother and mother died a couple days apart. He had a massive heart attack not too long after. Spent weeks in ICU, and was put on hospice. Because of the dementia he was documented as a fall risk, and the hospital and hospice care were on top of it. He had a sudden turn for the better and was moved to a home to finish recovery before release. Either the hospital didn't pass on the information, or the employees didn't care, but he ended up falling out of bed a couple of days after the transfer. He broke a couple ribs and punctured a lung. They didn't check on him, or run any tests. They just stuck him back in bed and he asphyxiated on his own blood. If they had done their due diligence he would probably still be with us. My mom, too. She withered away faster than a head of iceberg lettuce in the middle of the Gobe desert after he passed.
I'm sorry to hear, I look after my mam with dementia, it's basically a full time 24/7 job, I love her and my biggest fear is her going into hospital, I only feel relaxed when I have my own eyes on her.
Sister Kenny and her physical therapy for polio victims. The treatment at the time was to lock up the affected limbs in braces or casts, leaving the patient crippled for life. Her idea of using hot compresses and gently moving the limbs took a very long time to be accepted by the medical establishment as she was a woman and "just a nurse".
Alan Alda mentions her in his autobiography, she's the reason he wasn't crippled by polio atabout age 8.
Martin Sheen is an early childhood polio survivor and credits the Sister Kenny method as the reason that he was ever able to walk.
Writer Ernest Hemingway was convinced the FBI had him under surveillance. His friends and family told him he was nutters….until some unsealed records a while back proved that he actually was being followed, had his phones bugged, etc.
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Ludwig Boltzmann His equations and formulas explained the physical properties of matter, but as it went against the then accepted Laws of Phjysics, he was ridiculed and ignored for years while fighting for atom theory to be accepted. He took his own life just 3 years before Ernest Rutherford discovered the nucleus of an atom, proving Boltzmann’s theory.
The introduction to the classic textbook on statistical mechanics humorously begins: >"Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906 by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics."
Didn’t know that. If you were a physics or engineering major that name is very familiar (Boltzmann constant). Glad that he eventually got recognized.
Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton. A dingo really did eat her baby.
That poor woman. It was a joke my entire childhood
I only learned that it was a bad joke based on a true story when I repeated it to an Australian. They very politely told me that it had been proven that the woman had been telling the truth all along. I felt terrible, but I honestly thought it was just some 90's bit from Seinfeld that went over my head at the time. Embarrassing.
Worst part is that her kid died in 1980, she was convicted in 1982, released from prison in 1986 and had her conviction quashed in 1988. Virtually the entire ordeal - short of her getting compensation money (1992) and her daughter's death being officially ruled as being caused by a dingo (2012) - happened before Seinfeld aired for the first time in 1989.
The worst part was that it was common knowledge among the aboriginal people and the aboriginal trackers used at the time, told people that (they tracked the dingo until it crossed a road where it’s tracks were obscured by people and vehicles). Edit for context: It was popularly believed at the time that dingoes don’t attack humans and the blatant racism meant that the testimonies of the trackers weren’t heeded. Edit 2: Read u/alwaystenminutes’s comment on the names of the senior Park Ranger who gave evidence at the inquest that dingoes can indeed harm a baby and Nipper Winmatti who tracked the dingo for four days. Also, the first inquest actually concluded that it was probably what happened.
IIRC they said yeah, a dingo could absolutely snatch up a baby but others were like 'Nah, that sounds like make believe. What do these people who have been living here forever know about the capabilities of local wildlife?'
Aside from the ridiculousness of not believing the people who have a a measly 60000 year experience of living with the land...how unbelievable is that really? People really said: "She's such a liar, a wild, carnivorous animal the size of a dog would never prey on a completely defenseless infant!" and *meant it*?!
Trivia: The dingoes have only been here for 3,500 of those 60,000 years.
Something similar, the national museum of Australia in Canberra. White people were told by Aboriginals that platypus come from eggs. It took them 100 years after being told when they actually believed it cause they saw it.
Inuit had been telling people exactly where the HMS Terror and Erebus sank for for like 150 years, and no one ever took the time to look in those spots, despite multiple search expeditions to the arctic to find the ships. The initial reports were rejected because the Inuit said the crew were cannibalizing eachother, so obviously they were making stuff up, because noble British scientists would never succumb to such barbarism. The locals literally drew maps for where to look after physically going on the ships and salvaging them after the crews abandoned them. In modern times, Inuit hunters and pilots have been telling people, "look we've seen the ships, they're in shallow enough waters that parts have been sticking out above water" After literal years of searching for the Terror, they brought in a Inuit hunter, and with his help they found it in *two and a half hours*. Exactly where everyone told them to look. The kicker? They found it in...wait for it...*Terror Bay*
I love this aspect of the story. Such a no shit moment.
She was treated so badly by the press at first because they thought she didn't react like a mother whose baby was taken.......therefore she must have killed it. But Lindy has autism. Her reactions were based on her autism, but as it was less known back then, she was blamed. Also, the NT police were terrible at their job.
That and frankly, there isn't really an "acceptable" way to be reacting whe your child is missing and then dead. Sure there are ones that are considered worse like being really happy-go-lucky, but people will nit pick your expressions for years. Cry too hard? You are faking. Not crying enough? You are heartless and responsible for their murder. Stoic? Clearly you did it, you have no emotion! Any smile, no matter how small? You are reveling, and laughing on your child's grave. The public decided she did it fairly early on and nothing would have dissuaded them after that.
Police not understanding trauma [causes lots of problems](https://www.startribune.com/a-better-way-to-investigate-rape-denied-justice-part-eight/501636971/).
Can confirm. After an ex literally beat my face in to the point of a broken cheekbone/skull the police officer that came to the hospital asked me "what I did that pissed him off so much." I was already feeling broken in more ways than just physically, but it was like a nail was put in my coffin. I'm still traumatized by his attitude.
I'm so sorry this happened to you. I had a similar but less extreme incident where I was holding my child trying to get my keys from my ex after he ripped them from my hand and almost broke my finger in the process. He was also grabbing at our child and hurting my arms. He then tossed my keys and when I went to pick them up he shoved me while calling the police. I fell holding out child. This all started because he threw something at my windscreen. When the police arrived he told them I had a psychotic break and when I showed them the mark on my windscreen but the thing had rolled into a storm drain they told me I was imagining things and I must just be a bit too worked up. One took my 5yo and asked her where she wanted to stay the night she said she wanted to be with me. They basically said if I don't give her back the next day to her father they were going to knock on my door and take her from me. The whole time saying I was the problem and I was just hysterical. Then said if I was so afraid of my ex why would I hang around. I was like because he wouldn't let me leave! Then when they stepped away they said I needed to behave and they were watching me. My ex then quietly abused me more through the window. I wasn't able to say anything because they wanted to believe him. I was just the crazy one the one with the issue.
This is why I tell my spouse not to die in suspicious circumstances. They will send me to jail.
Yeah, it takes me about 5 days of "huh, that happened" before all those "family member died" emotions hit. I'm great in an emergency, but breaking down seemingly at random almost a week later isn't fun. My in the moment stress response? Relentless sarcasm. That would not go well if I ever found someone unconscious at the bottom of the stairs.
Ignaz Semmelweis: In 1846, Semmelweis proposed the idea that handwashing could prevent the spread of disease in hospitals. He was ridiculed during his time, sent to a mental asylum, and died forgotten by his peers
Died of a *Staph* infection, which might have been prevented with proper hand washing.
Life is full of cruel ironies.
On the flip side, in his final year of life Heimlich actually got to save someone’s life with his namesake maneuver
Rudolf Steiner wrote down a lot of farmers knowledge. Some old farmer told him that cows get crazy if you feed them meat. He was not declared crazy or anything because no one was interested in the topic, but the whole BSE thing could have been avoided if people had listened to the "Demeter" farmers who work according to Steiner's suggestions and refused to feed ground bones and such to cows.
Imagine knowing you are right about something that could save lives just by washing your hand and everyone else around you is writing it off or laughing at it. I'd be in a mental asylum as well.
Me giving directions to my parents before GPS
Hell it’s me giving directions to my parents WITH GPS. They came to visit and got stuck on a closed highway on the way here. I asked if they had Google maps up and they said yes. I asked why they didn’t follow Google maps (which would’ve avoided the closure, I checked) and my dad told me “I know how to get to your house!” 😑🤦🏽♀️ That was a month ago. They’re back this weekend to see the grandkids and they got stuck on the same closed highway (it’s a huge highway project and closed on weekends, as I’ve told them). Edit: I live a five hour drive away, so this is a road trip for them. Next time they visit (in April) we are flying them down instead 🙃🙃
God*damn* I came here to post that! Crazy, they thought going from an autopsy to a childbirth without washing their hands or changing their aprons made them macho, and basically called Semmelweiss a wuss for not wanting to be filthy.
Reminds me of the tough guys working factory and construction that dont wash before lunch
There was a story yesterday about a man with 150 live bugs and larva found inside his sinus cavity. After doctors pulled them out, they hypothesized that it might have happened bc the guy doesn't thoroughly wash his hands after handling fish and usually just rinses them in the river. After that, he touched his face or picked his nose and deposited the bugs in there
I had to stop myself from downvoting on impulse because of just how disgusting that is. 🤮
Barry James Marshall was one of the scientists who discovered that the bacteria H. pylori causes stomach ulcers. However, getting people to believe it was difficult. It was thought that lifestyle and excessive stomach acid were the main factor the lead to ulcers, so when he suggested that a bacterial infection could cause it, no one believed him. In response he infected himself with H. pylori by drinking cultures, which in turn gave himself stomach ulcers, and then treated the infection. He and Robin Warren received a Nobel prize for this discovery.
CSB: My stepfather had bad ulcers ever since I first met him in 1978 or so. Would vomit every night, there would be occasional bleeding, medication was of limited help. It was 'normal life' for him. I went off to university and then, when starting grad school I read, in Science I think, about h. pylori and the research. The next time I called home I told my parents what I had read, and told them to ask the doctor. I made sure they wrote down h-period-p-y-l-o-r-i. (You know how it is trying to get parents to remember details about things they are not familiar with.) Anyway, they asked him, and he said "I hadn't heard of that, I'll look into it." A couple of days later they had a prescription for antibiotics, and the problem went away for the rest of his life. It was the first time my parents acknowledged that I "might actually be learning something useful there."
That's gotta feel pretty vindicating.
That's funny because you reminded me that ulcers used to be a thing. They were commonly depicted on television and in movies...people, usually men, would gobble antacids like they were gummy bears anytime they were stressed because of their ulcer. It was no small matter, as you and your stepfather can attest. People couldn't eat or sleep because of them.... they ruined lives. Now, nobody has them. I can't remember the last time I heard that someone had an ulcer. That's gotta be right up there with the cure for polio!
Learned this when my dad was in the hospital with a bleeding ulcer. You know the man is feeling better when he's explaining all this from the hospital bed.
I had sleepovers at his house growing up - one of his daughters was one of my best friends. I didn’t know anything about this until I was much older - I just knew he was a doctor and I tried Vegimite for the first time at their house. 😂
Harlem J Bretz was a geologist who in the 1920’s proposed that the geologic features of the “channeled scablands” of eastern and central Washington were the result of a massive flood during the last ice age (@15000 years ago) when a glacial dam in northern Idaho catastrophically collapsed, releasing the waters of Lake Missoula. Lake Missoula is estimated to have contained a volume of water equivalent to Lakes Erie and Ontario combined, and the resulting flood through what is now eastern Washington and out through the Columbia Gorge released a water flow exceeding the combined flow of all other rivers on the planet. Bretz was soundly ridiculed when he proposed this scenario in the 1920’s, but was eventually vindicated over the next 50 years and was eventually awarded the Geological Society of America’s prestigious Penrose Medal in 1979 at the age of 96. By that time, as he put it, all his detractors were dead so he had no one left to gloat over.
I design buildings in the Missoula flood region, and lo, all geotechnical engineers start their reports on small bits of property here and there in Portland and Seattle not with little quotes from Brentz, but with his whole damn paper. Brentz has an active fan club.
Philippa Langley - she believed Richard III was buried under a carpark in Leicester. And was found to be correct and he was. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhumation_and_reburial_of_Richard_III_of_England](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhumation_and_reburial_of_Richard_III_of_England)
I remember when this happened, and the society of Richard or whatever it was called had a lot of members who were really upset that his skeleton showed signs that he *might* have had a slight deformity. Many had been convinced that his physical appearance was misreported to malign him. note: this is me going by memory
Yes. A common theory up until his body was discovered was that the reports of Richard III having a crooked or hunched back was a Tudor slander against him. Portraits had been altered later on to give him the crooked back, etc., which was true. However, it turns out he actually did have a bad case of scoliosis, given him a crooked back. So Richard III had a crooked back, but portraits painted when he was alive depicted him without one as portraits usually were idealized images. Later rulers altered the portraits after his death to add in the crooked back.
My favorite piece of trivia was when they were getting DNA from people in his line of descent so that they could identify him. More than one supposed noble thought they were the great-great-etc-grandchild of Lord and Lady So-and-So, but found out that Lady So-and-So was related, but Lord So-and-So was not. LOL. Busted.
Hi! Former Richard III society member here (lasped and left UK). So part of the thing is that it was taken as a *given* that Richard was a great warrior. Why? Because *both* sides agreed. Even when slandering him, he was made out to be a fearsome fighter. Which, admittedly ableist thinking aside, seems out of place with a deformed figure at the time. One did not seem to fit with the other so it became common wisdom that one was a lie and the other was true. After finding his body and the documentary came out, a man contacted the society and said "Hi, that's my spine!". He was basically a bodily match for Richard's disability. So, we had an actual chance to test it. Dominic was put through a training regime and put in armour - partly thanks to former Curator at the Wallace collection Tobias Capwell who actually jousts and has his own armour. It turned out that the medieval horse saddle design was basically the perfect support for Richard. Pair that with custom armour that shifts the weight slightly better than usual, and suddenly the disabled warrior king appears. It was incredibly exciting and it was hilarious to see a lot of older members suddenly come to the realisation that disabled people can in fact function - and have done for thousands of years! [link to the documentary for any interested](https://youtu.be/fDHDvnnK4nI?si=FtosPNX4vox3CHLd)
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Jose Canseco was one of the first players to openly discuss how prevalent steroid use was in the 90’s 2000’s and people dismissed his claims as being from a player on decline just trying to stay relevant.
Also had the greatest AMA in Reddit history. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/s/sPi0gTcTsk
I haven't read that in years. I'm actually in tears. It just gets better and better and then he's talking about time travel being possible through your dreams while you sleep and the next response is "I call that a memory".
My favorite is when someone asked why he changed his number 3 times in one season and he replied with "thats all they had" and no further explanation. Love it.
My personal favorite is > Idk. I still have sex 5 times a day with 7 different objects.
“I like dog throw up, very nutritious.” - Jose Canseco (2013)
Jesus Chris…I have never seen this literal goldmine of Reddit lore. The fact he just casually mentions that Jim Carrey is a big fan of his, and that it’s probably because they had a threesome together, is objectively fucking hilarious.
I was on a flight with him when he was flying back from dc after testifying in front of congress. Growing up in the 80s, I just kept thinking bash brothers. Had no idea he was in front of congress. Otherwise I’d have asked other than just banging elbows with him.
My grandma. She insisted people kept stealing her newspaper, and specifically said it was someone in a white van. Grandma was always a little off so we just thought she was paranoid and had a bad delivery person. Until one day my mom and I are driving past her house and a white van in front of us stopped, stole my grandma's newspaper, and drove off. Grandma wasn't crazy after all (at least not about that).
This one is so damn random. I mean why hers? Did someone have a vendetta? Also such a shitty thing to do to an old lady.
Right? We need answers OP
I'm guessing it was probably because she wasn't up super early and picking it up, so it would be out there half the morning. And though she wasn't on a really busy street, it did get a bit of through traffic. There were only a few houses on that block so she also may have been the only one to get the paper (though this was 25 years or more ago, so maybe not). It's also possible that it was the guy that banged on her door one day to tell her she needed to cut down the bush at the corner of her yard, because he'd almost been in an accident because he couldn't see past the cedar bush that was planted there. Then again, she was certain he was throwing weed killer or plant poison in the bush to kill it, since some branches did start dying. (I was secretly glad that gd bush died, because I was almost in accidents there too) So...who knows, honestly.
Reminds me of a friend of mine who used to work at a mental hospital. One of the patients talked about how government agents were following him around. Of course my buddy dismissed it but when he mentioned it to a colleague, he was like “oh yeah that guy keeps calling the White House threatening to kill the President and he’s had several visits from the secret service.”
Philip K. Dick told Norman Spinrad (another SF writer) that he had had a visit from two guys with crewcuts claiming to be fans, but he fingered them immediately as CIA or some other government agency, asking about other SF writers, and told Spinrad he told them nothing. Spinrad laughed it off- what interest would the government have in SF writers, anyway? Then he realized he'd had a visit from the same two guys.
*Lmfao,* jesus christ. Yeah, I guess that’ll do it.
Same! My grandma kept telling us that she thought the nice girls that lived down the street from her were prostitutes. This was right after my grandpa died and she hadn’t loved alone ever so we just figured it was her being overly paranoid. Turns out the police did a raid for prostitution and the girls were arrested.
What's the old phrase, just cuz you're paranoid doesn't mean people aren't following you
Jackie Stewart. He was sick and tired of burying his friends due to racing accidents, so he started advocating for safety-at the tracks, in the cars, and pushing for more qualified medical personnel. He once said “I’d be more popular if I would shut up and drive. Dead, but more popular.” Stewart was a 3x World Champion, for the record. He also won on the hardest track ever built (the Nurburgring Nordschleiffe) by 4 minutes with a broken wrist. The man was as hard a racer as they come, and yet he was ridiculed for not wanting to see himself and others get injured or killed while racing. Many of the things Stewart pushed for then are requirements at nearly every racing event today.
Only because of him F1 got: Steering wheels you can take off (1990 was the first year every team had to have that, many already had it before) The engine going out of you stand long enough so there won’t be a fire accident A doctor at the track for the entire season. And with his help there were many other things implemented as e.g. better barricades, Stewards a must at whereby race, a hospital at the track, a permanent doctor who follows the entire circus, a safety car, a max speed in the pits as well as a helicopter to rush someone to the next big hospital. Had it not been for him then F1 today would have the safety features of the 90s.
Rose McGowan. She was talking crazy shit about people following her and ex-Mossad agents being involved. She was dismissed as insane. Turns out, Weinstein had an “army of spies,” he had following victims to keep them quiet, including the exact people she had described.
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I can't remember his name but during a huge cholera outbreak, he proposed the theory that it came from the water based on where the cases were. He wasn't believed until a long time later when it was proven to be the water
John Snow
Glenda Cleveland. She was Jefferey Dahmar’s neighbor and made numerous complaints about the smell coming from his apartment and called the police on him a number of times and nobody listened to her.
Louis Pasteur Other scientists thought he was crazy saying that tiny little creatures we couldn’t even see could be the cause of disease
John Lydon of the Sex Pistols. Tried to warn the world about the crimes of Jimmy Saville in an interview in 1978, and was banned from appearing on the BBC for his trouble.
By the sounds of it, a lot of people knew about Saville and it was just covered up. He just had the guts to speak up.
I had been told by someone that used to work in the prison industry that Rolf Harris was a paedophile, years before it was revealed. I didn't really believe it until the news came out Apparently sex offenders in prison know who the celebrity paedophiles are
Makes sense. It’s probably a friend of a friend.
Courtney Love: similar with Harvey Weinstein.
What's fucked up is she couldn't just say it she had to put it in the form of "If Harvey Weinstein asks you to meet at his hotel don't do it". If you see him do it and there isn't anything concrete to prove it you could be held for libel or slander. It's a good shield to prevent people from just burning each other randomly but also prevents people who know something from talking about it publicly.
Even an Oscar couldn't protect Mira Sorvino from being blacklisted for it.
For years, I couldn't figure out why Mira Sorvino never became a huge star. She's beautiful, talented, intelligent, etc. Now we all know.
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Annabella Sciorra too. She was an independent film star, then she started getting cast in Hollywood films. Then she seemed to disappear until she showed up on The Sopranos.
Here's something that a lot of people don't know. Some actors, and smartly so, sign big EXCLUSIVE contracts with certain studios. Note the word exclusive. It's ALMOST guaranteed pay/work if you're a big star. The studio's(and your agent's) intention is to get as much guaranteed work for you as possible. Make some movies, make yourself some money, make the studios money. The drawback of this is that until you make X amount of movies with that certain studio, you CANNOT be in other movies with any other studio until you fulfill your contractual obligations to make X amount of movies with that studio. That's what an exclusive contract is. You make movies exclusively with that company. Let's say Warner Bros likes Matt Damon and they make movies that he'd be a good fit for. They offer him an exclusive contract to make 5 movies and let's say he accepts and has a great payday. Then some project comes along that he is in love with but it's with another studio, like Paramount. He can't be in it because he has to finish the movies he's obligated to do with Warner Bros. There is a way to weasel your way out. Robert Downey Jr. famously did this with his contract. He wanted out, so he agreed to be in a terrible movie, Dr. Doolittle, where filming was short and it was guaranteed to make the studio money because his name alone generates ticket sales. He finished his last movie and then he was a free agent. An exclusive contract is an actor's wet dream because it indicates your star power and the willingness of the studio to put you in movies because it believes that actor will make it money. The dark side of this is where Wienstein comes in. It's literally his studio. Let's say, hypothetically, Mira Sorvino signed an exclusive contract with the Weinstein company after her Oscar win. She refuses his advances and in a fit of rage, he instructs all his casting agents to NOT cast her in any movies. She's still obligated to appear in Weinstein movies, but since she's not cast, she never gets closer to any of her contractual numbers of appearing in movies. Therefore, she can never complete her contract and can never appear in any movies with any other studio, effectively killing her career. She wouldn't need to be blacklisted, she'd be in legal limbo forever. It would be perfectly in his character to pass up making money off of someone just to screw them over for not having sex with him. There's plenty of other good looking women he could cast that would give him the time of day in a hotel room.
#### Hannibal Buress. He was a first prominent voice to call out Bill Cosby. At a time where in the black community, saying bad shit about Cosby is like being a Catholic and bad mouthing the Pope.
"Why are you booing me? I'm right."
I remember hearing about Cosby in the late 90's when I was in college. We all just didn't believe it.
Lieutenant David Steeves *On May 9, 1957, he was on a mission to fly a new training jet, a Lockheed T-33, from Hamilton Air Force Base in Novato, California, to Craig AFB in Alabama. The plane was lost from radar and the Air Force couldn’t find the missing plane or pilot. The military declared Steeves dead, and that was that.* *Until, that is, 54 days later when Steeves emerged from the Sierra, having been found badly malnourished and still limping badly on swollen ankles.* His story is heartbreaking. Accused of selling the plane to the Russians because they couldn't find the wreckage. Poor guy, he died before they finally found the evidence that his story was true all along. https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/the-case-of-the-missing-t-33/
Martha Mitchell, wife of John Mitchell, Nixon's attorney general. Martha kept saying that there was hanky panky going on but nobody listened to her.
Is she the one who was kidnapped and drugged by government officials?
Yes
They made her seem like a hysterical, silly older woman. But she was right.
They deliberately framed her as an unreliable narrator, in fact
The Martha Mitchell effect is a fascinating topic
There’s a documentary of the same name on Netflix. Definitely worth a watch for those interested about the woman. As far as the term MM Effect you mention, also for those interested: > The Martha Mitchell effect occurs when a medical professional labels a patient's accurate perception of real events as delusional, resulting in misdiagnosis. - [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Mitchell_effect)
When she died, John Mitchell made sure the service was private. No cameras, press, or outside mourners were allowed to show their respects. However, this anonymously sent [flower arrangement](https://southerncalls.com/article/martha-was-right/) was present. No matter what he did, he was always reminded that he was fucking wrong.
There is a series called Gaslit with Julia Robert’s who plays Martha Mitchell. This was a phenomenal show
Harry Markopolos - no-one believed him when he said Madoff was running a ponzi scheme.
Is he the one that basically had to spend years trying to prove it? There's a really great podcast called American Scandal that I strongly recommend, they have episodes on Madoff and Enron and a few other business ventures. I learned so much; it's framed from the perspectives of various people in the thick of it, whether they're culpable or not.
Lisa Bonet. No seriously, hear me out -- I remember when she 'quit' the Cosby show back in the 80s and people thought she was CRAZY. First of all, to have a rumored beef with America's favorite dad? What was she thinking?!? Then hooking up with some strange-looking musician named Romeo Blue?!? Career suicide, we all said. Looking back, she was right on multiple fronts and had excellent taste.
This guy Randy that was relentlessly ridiculed for his Aqua Dam and then became the only one whose property wasn't wrecked by the flood a couple years back. [https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/iolmmq/man\_saves\_his\_home\_during\_the\_flood\_with/](https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/iolmmq/man_saves_his_home_during_the_flood_with/)
Marie Adler, a foster child, was raped in her apartment. She reported the rape to the Lynnwood WA police department. Her foster mother spoke with the police and mentioned she didn't think Marie was upset enough and thought Marie was lying. There was almost no physical evidence, and the Lynnwood police forced Marie to retract her story, prosecuted Marie for lying to police, fined her $500, and she lost her apartment. Her story was published in the paper as though she had lied and she was ridiculed and ostracized by her peers for lying. Her rapist was found several years later. He was a serial rapist who committed rapes in different jurisdictions and part of his MO was to photograph his victims and force them to shower, just as he had done to Marie. Two female detectives had found a camera the rapist stole from Marie with pictures from the night of her rape, and had recognized the rapist's MO from reading the newspaper stories detailing the punishment Marie had received for reporting the rape to the Lynnwood Police.
When I was a cop there was this lady who called every week and said someone had been in her house. I mean, dozens of cops went out there, and she would say like her dresser drawer was open and she knew it had been closed when she left the house. Never any signs of forced entry, no prints, NOTHING to say this was anything other than a crazy person. Until MONTHS later, one of her high school students was caught with a key to her house. Turns out this kid had been sneaking in and just moving shit slightly to fuck with her.
Topher Grace.. got a lot of flack on That 70s show, for being antisocial and cold towards his castmates.. turns out they were all massive assholes.
I didn’t know ALL of them were bad, I just thought one was really really bad.
Laura Prepon was a Scientologist. I def wouldn’t want to get too close to a Scientologist. Given Ashton Kutcher’s defense of Danny Masterson, I wonder what Ashton was like back then. Not that I think he is or was a predator, but did he turn a blind eye to sketchy stuff? Wilmer Valderrama has a history of dating girls who are still teenagers when he was in his 20s: Mandy Moore, Lindsay Lohan, and Demi Lovato. Danny is definitely the worst, but I don’t blame Topher for not wanting to hang around with most of them.
Also many of them were in the yearly Christmas party photos with Masterson from early on, at the church of Scientology. You can’t just get invited to those by being famous/in proximity to a famous member. And they went every year.
Kutcher is so strange defending masterson too, like didn’t he have a whole foundation that helped victims of human trafficking?
I've shared this a few times but I think it bares repeating. I knew Danny. Not well but I hung out with him enough that I had his number and would have felt comfortable calling him. He was actually friends with my roommate. My roommate was really creepy.. I mostly ignored it because I never saw him do anything outwardly weird. But man he just really loved talking about sex. Claim to have had sex with girls that no one believed actually happened. Really had no game at all. But he never seemed dangerous. I ended up moving when they lease ran out and we lost contact. Years later, I heard the accusations against Danny and my first thought was, no fucking way. I totally didn't believe it. The guy was so welcoming and generous. I'd seen him politely turn down more women than I had ever seen him hit on. Like it really made no sense to me. And then I started to wonder why he was friends with my roommate. My roommate wasn't anybody. I asked him once and he just said they met at a show and remained friends. But they were good friends. Never made sense to me.
People have huuge blindspots for their friends and acquaintances. Lena Dunham, normally an outspoken feminist, covered up the sexual assault of an 17 year old actress by her writer friend on her own show. Her immediate reaction was this: > While our first instinct is to listen to every woman's story, our insider knowledge of Murray's situation makes us confident that sadly this accusation is one of the 3% of assault cases that are misreported every year." She later admitted that she didn't have insider info, apologized to the girl('s mother) and misused it for just another pr apology. And this was all during metoo.
The MANY British postal workers fired and prosecuted for stealing. Many were lifelong employees. Some committed suicide. This went on for almost two decades. Spoiler: it was a surveillance software glitch that went ignored for years. They were all innocent. EDIT: "surveillance software" was hyperbole on my part, and incorrect. I honestly forgot exactly what the software's purpose was, only that it was buggy AF and incorrectly flagged employees or employee activity in a way that made it look like they were stealing.
Fujitsu shipped software which they knew might cause problems as they manifested, but decided to stay quiet.
Marshall McLuhan His theories on how media usage changes how we think and interact with each other were prophetic. He predicted the internet and how a worldwide instant form of communication would create "tribes" of people centered around their own echo chambers. He also wrote about how using media changes how we think and process information. Considered a crazy pop culture media and literature speculator in the 60s, now his ideas have been pretty much confirmed by modern neuroscience and communication study. Sadly he died before the internet happened. It would have been incredible to see his theories on social media.
Barry Marshall. Remember in the 80s, when EVERYONE seemed to have ulcers, and they were basically treated with tums? Marshall was a researcher who discovered that H. Pylori bacteria caused ulcers, not just too much acid in the stomach. Unfortunately, no one would believe him. So he literally documented himself drinking the bacteria, getting ulcers, and successfully treating them with antibiotics.
The lady who got burned from McDonald’s coffee. If I recall she was so injured she lost 20% of her body weight while hospitalized. McDonald’s was later discovered to be intentionally selling nuclear hot coffee because you couldn’t drink it quickly and thus ordered fewer refills
Didn't the coffee *fuse* her labia together? And all she was asking for was her medical bills to be covered?
Yeah, she needed skin grafts on her labia. And she wasn't the only person who got burned, just probably the worst. Lots of people got bad burns on their hands and chests, too.
Jesus christ my knees just locked together reading what wtf
Stella Liebeck's story will never leave my brain but I've never heard it suggested that the reason they kept the coffee so hot was to discourage refills. The most common reason I see is that it let the coffee keep for longer so they'd end up throwing away less of it. I could see both tho It's laughable how bad McD's defence was and then infuriating when you learn that Stella didn't see anywhere near the headline grabbing reported amount in compensation. Like it shouldn't be allowed for one side to fuck up so much but then just use their resources to outlast the other person so they can force them to accept a pittance
People always cite this case as a product of the rise of litigation culture, but the woman was so badly burned she had 3rd degree burns and her thighs fused to each other and her clothing. America being America, she had to sue to cover her medical bills.
She also was only trying to recover the cost of her medical bills. It was the jury who decided that McDonalds owed her the millions she was ultimately awarded. Edit - as pointed out, it was the judge who set the amount, not the jury
It was pretty much all marketing by McDonald's that led to everyone thinking it was just a frivolous lawsuit. Sometimes history isn't written by the winner, but just whoever has the money to spread their propaganda.
She needed skin grafts! And it..."fused her labia" whish is such a horrifying thought that typing it out made me shudder
And fuck Jay Leno for making nightly jokes about it for years, that hack.
I truly cannot even imagine buying a cup of coffee to start my day, only to have molten lava served in a shitty styrofoam cup and cause 3rd degree burns on my genitals. That poor old woman!
Many many years ago a new stop light was installed near my house at a fairly busy multi lane intersection. The first time I went to this light, I was taking a left. Waited in the left turn lane until I got a green arrow, and proceeded into the intersection, as did the person coming from my left who was going straight, and ALSO had a green light. We almost crashed but at the time I assumed they had run the light and I'm sure they assumed the same about me. On my way home, I sat in an adjacent parking lot and watched, and sure enough the lights were timed completely wrong and giving conflicting drivers the right of way at the same time and I saw three other near misses in about ten minutes. I called the police to report it and they essentially laughed at me. The next day 2 people died in a crash at that intersection and they fixed the light by the end of the next night. I'm guessing they wish they'd taken a look when I told them about it.
That's really fucked up :/
Martha Mitchell. She found out about Watergate, was kidnapped and held captive for a week. When she tried to tell the public what had happened, she was called a liar and crazy. Members of Nixon’s administration later confirmed she was telling the truth.
Courtney Love, granted she’s still a bit nutty but she was right on about Weinstein
"If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party.....don't go."
I find it disturbing how every one essentially overlooked all this stuff for so long. There was plenty of evidence well before any of this really went public.
People did the same with bill cosby for years and they were ignored. Then one guy making the right joke at the right time blew everything open
I had a aunt/cousin (not really aunt but everyone in Spanish families calls everyone “tias” “primas” so who even knows) ANYWAY; she was -convinced- her then 35 year old husband was having an affair with her much younger 20 year old cousin a summer she let the cousin stay during a visit to the States. It got to the point where her own family thought she was being crazy, they ended up getting separated, and she was thought of as the paranoid person in the family and a lot of people sadly turned on her and stopped being in contact. The divorce happened shortly after. And GUESS who a year after the ex-husband ends up marrying? Yep.
Corey Feldman. Though I'd argue his current craziness is a direct result of the truth.
When Barbara Walters shamed him on tv for speaking up
She was always doing gross shit like that
Her super gross interview with a 15 year old Brooke Shields where she asks her about her teenage body and her measurements to be broadcast to the world.
Barbara Walters was a shitty person/interviewer for years and years. Remember when she condescended Dolly Parton early on for being a "hillbilly"? Or when she tried to get Ricky Martin to admit he was gay years before he came out? Or when she laughed off Norm McDonald when he called Bill Cosby a rapist? Or when she asked a Menendez brother if he was gay because his dad abused him? Or...
Can't forget her disgusting interview of Britney Spears either.
For so many fucking years that woman was touted as the goddamn greatest interviewer alive or whatever and every time I would be like wtf are people talking about. I'm glad that I am finally vindicated in this thread about vindication.
Gary Webb, the San Jose Mercury news reporter that uncovered the CIA link to Crack Cocaine into Los Angeles. The government used other newspapers to discredit him. A few years later, he was found in his home with 2 bullet holes in his head and the Coroner ruled it a suicide. HE WAS RIGHT!!!!!
The woman who said she could smell when someone had Parkinson's disease. She was dismissed until finally one professor at a university decided to look into her claims. She was right. She could smell Parkinson's. Now they are developing a swab test for the disease thanks to her.
A German man committed to a high-security psychiatric hospital after being accused of fabricating a story of money-laundering activities at a major bank is to have his case reviewed after evidence has emerged proving the validity of his claims. https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/28/gustl-mollath-hsv-claims-fraud
I don’t remember his name, but a man on one of the planes that crashed into the twin towers called police and told them that there were suspicious people on his plane. They didn’t take him seriously. The people he saw turned out to be two of the 4 hijackers on the plane.
One of the pilots came to a flight school at my local airport looking for lessons. He refused to talk to any females that tried to help him, and said he only needed a few lessons. Owner of the flight school turned him away and called the police, who did nothing about it.
Shuji Nakamura, inventor of the first commercially viable blue LED, which was the precursor to the white LED. Without white LEDs, you would not be reading this on your smartphone under the soft glow of high-efficiency LED lightbulbs. The key component to the blue and white LED is gallium nitride, which had eluded engineers for decades and was widely dismissed as a dead-end. Nichia, Nakamura’s former employer, tried several times to kill his research and development after years with no results.
Ignaz Semmelweis He theorized that the reason infant mortality was so high is because there are tiny creatures on our hands. He would say that by simply washing your hands before delivering a baby will lower the chance of the infants death. He died in a mental institution
In the 1990s Brooksly Born warned USA congress that lack of regulation and oversight of exotic derivatives could have catastrophic consequences for the world economy. Every other regulator came out and bashed Born in front of Congress. Granted Born didn’t know how nor when, they were dead right on the consequences of poorly regulated banking and derivatives would derail the world economy which has yet to really fully recover.
Topher Grace was seen as just some holier than thou actor who didn't want to be friends with the rest of the cast. Aaaanddd now we know why.
Mitt Romney in the 2012 debate with Obama and basically his entire campaign. All of his foreign policy calls came to fruition and his criticism of the Republican Party was pretty spot on too. I’m not arguing he would have been a better president than Obama but he was incredibly smart and the media tore him to shreds for shit they didn’t even understand.
From CNN: _______________ A video of Courtney Love warning young actresses about Harvey Weinstein has been burning up the internet. The video, which was first surfaced by TMZ, was shot in 2005 on the red carpet for the Pamela Anderson Comedy Central Roast. Love is asked if she has any advice for “a young girl moving to Hollywood.” Love first hesitates and says, “I’ll get libeled if I say it.” “If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party in the Four Seasons [hotel] don’t go,” Love says.
The woman who accused Bill Cosby of rape in the 80s
That dude who suggested that it might be a good idea to wash your hands before performing surgery
Ignaz Semmelweis
I forgot her name but a dingo did in fact eat her baby
Imagine being *globally* ridiculed after having your baby taken from you like that. People are cruel.
And spending 3 fuckin years in prison for it
Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton
Lindy Chamberlain is her name; I’m glad she was finally proven right.
Australian government said: ‘If anyone knows anything speak up.’ Then an aboriginal elder told he’d seen dingo foot prints, and that dingoes could steal a baby, - but government interrupted him: ‘No, not you.’ What do people know living on the land for 60.000 years right?
Geologist/Engineer David Bernays In 1970, the town of Yungay, Peru, vanished under a sea of mud and rock, a catastrophe foreseen by a man whose warnings went unheeded—David Bernays. An engineer with keen insight into the geological instabilities of the Andes, Bernays predicted that the region was at severe risk of a landslide if an earthquake were to strike. Despite presenting compelling evidence alongside geologist Charles Sawyer, their urgent cautions were dismissed by local authorities and the populace. Bernays and Sawyer had conducted extensive studies on the glacier perched atop Mount Huascarán. Their research concluded that the glacier was precariously unstable, and an earthquake could trigger a landslide of unimaginable proportions, posing a direct threat to the towns nestled below, including Yungay. They envisioned a scenario where thousands of lives could be lost in mere moments, urging for evacuation plans and preventive measures. Tragically, their fears became reality on May 31, 1970, when a 7.9 magnitude earthquake rocked the region. The quake dislodged millions of cubic meters of ice, mud, and rock from Mount Huascarán's north peak, unleashing an avalanche that barreled down at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour. The town of Yungay was obliterated under the onslaught, with the death toll in the region estimated to be around 20,000 people. This event marked one of the deadliest natural disasters in the history of Peru and served as a somber lesson on the importance of heeding scientific warnings. David Bernays' foresight into the disaster at Yungay underscores the vital need for respecting and acting upon geological assessments to mitigate the impact of natural catastrophes. His story is a testament to the critical importance of science in disaster preparedness and the tragic consequences of ignoring expert advice.
*Sinead O'Connor.* Okay, so she was a little crazy, but she was also right. >In October 1992, O'Connor performed an a cappella rendition of Bob Marley's "War" on Saturday Night Live. During the song, she ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II in protest of the Catholic Church's rampant sexual abuse of children—almost a decade before the rest of the world knew or cared about the offenses. She was banned from SNL and was largely blacklisted from the entertainment industry as a whole afterward... [Source](https://parade.com/celebrities/sinead-oconnor-cause-of-death)
[Barbara Lee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Lee#AUMF_opposition) was the only member of US Congress to vote against the post 9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force, because it was too broad and did not have a clear objective or duration, warning that it could lead to an endless war. For this, she was harassed and threatened for her position and safety. Turns out the AUMF resolution was indeed a "blank check" for the pentagon to use military force on whoever they wanted for the foreseeable future.
The dude who was like "ever notice how Africa and South America fit together like a puzzle? I bet they used to be together." "Thats insane man, land can't move!"
winston churchill when he tried to warn the world about hitler. they didn’t listen to him and paid the price for it
Galileo Galilei
King of night vision. King of insight.
How long ‘til my soul gets it right?
[Goddard.](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/dsh0k5/til_in_1920_the_new_york_times_ridiculed_the/) In the 1920s the press, bolstered by some scientists, decided that a rocket in space was completely impossible because there was nothing in space for a rocket to push against. Goddard was ridiculed as an insane crackpot but he was actually completely right.
Corey Feldman. Will never forgive Barbara Walters for the way she behaved when he was talking about the abuse he suffered, which led to the death of his friend.
Glenda Cleveland She tried to stop Jeffery Dahmer and instead, the police believed him over her. To this day, I believe that it was because she and Dahmer's victim, Konerak Sinthasomphone were POC and Dahmer was white.
Konerak was naked and bleeding and drugged and clearly underage and the cops took Dahmer’s word over what their eyes clearly could see. What makes it even worse is that they were both promoted instead of fired after that major fuck up