Category: Bazaar News

Have you heard the expression “It’s the best invention since sliced bread”? Well, that only goes back to the 20th century. The invention of sliced bread occurred in 1828.

Inventing sliced bread in Missouri

Humans have been baking bread for millennia (around 30,000 years, we estimate). But pre-slicing it is another matter. And we have to admit that while bread baking has reinvented itself to make bread slices seem passé, it’s convenient to have!

According to History.com (cited below), “The first automatically sliced commercial loaves were produced on July 6, 1928, in Chillicothe, Missouri, using the machine invented by Otto Rohwedder, an Iowa-born, Missouri-based jeweler.”

Rohwedder had long tried to make a machine to slice bread but was thwarted for over a decade when a 1917 fire destroyed his factory, blueprints, and prototype.

But he persevered, and “in 1928, Rohwedder’s rebuilt “power-driven, multi-bladed” bread slicer was put into service at his friend Frank Bench’s Chillicothe Baking Company.”

The reaction to slicing

People seemed to know immediately what pre-sliced bread meant for convenience in the home. As the website recalls, “an enthusiastic report in the July 6, 1928, edition of the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune…noted that while some people might find sliced bread ‘startling,’ the typical housewife could expect ‘a thrill of pleasure when she first sees a loaf of this bread with each slice the exact counterpart of its fellows. So neat and precise are the slices, and so definitely better than anyone could possibly slice by hand with a bread knife that one realizes instantly that here is a refinement that will receive a hearty and permanent welcome.’”

We’re only surprised that “some people” may have found sliced bread “startling.” But we know there will always be folks startled by new technology – in fact, we’ve been there. It’s hard when things change, but the convenience of sliced bread remains (as do beautiful artisan loaves without a knick in them). — WTF fun facts

Source: “Who Invented Sliced Bread?” — History.com

In August 1977, scientists at Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope detected a 72-second signal from space that was extremely difficult to explain.

On a summer night in 1977, Ohio State University Professor Jerry Ehman flipped through a stack of computer printouts. What he found would dramatically impact mankind’s search for extraterrestrial life.

The printouts, an unintelligible list of numbers and letters to the untrained eye, translated sounds picked up in deep space into code. Ehman was a volunteer with SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. His job was to flip through the printouts looking for proof of aliens.

And on that summer night, Ehman found something.

Ehman spotted a sequence that blew his mind. He picked up a red pen, circled a series of six numbers and letters, and wrote “Wow!” in the margin.

“I mean, without thinking, I wrote ‘Wow!’” Ehman remembers. “It was the most significant thing we had seen.”

But what was the Wow! signal, and why is it still important more than 40 years later?

Listening To Space With The Big Ear

The story of the Wow! signal starts with SETI. In the 1960s, scientists curious about alien life wondered how a distant civilization might make contact with Earth. They settled on radio signals.

The same radio waves that carry Top 40 music to people’s cars also travel through space. It would be relatively easy, scientists speculated, for aliens to send an interstellar radio transmission. And all people needed to do to hear it was to tune the radio to the right frequency.

SETI got to work, using the “Big Ear,” a massive radio telescope located in rural Ohio, to scan the sky looking for radio transmissions.

And then, on Aug. 15, 1977, the telescope picked up something surprising.

“I had never seen any signal that strong before,” Ehman told NPR.

The printout read “6EQUJ5” on a mostly-blank sheet surrounded by 1s, 2s, and other low numbers.

What did the code mean? SETI measured the strength of transmissions using the numbers 1-9 for quiet sounds and letters A-Z as the sounds grew louder. The letter “A” was 10, “B” was 11, and so on.

A “U” showing up on the printout meant a sound more than 30 times louder than the normal background noise of space.

“That’s the nice thing about the word ‘wow,’” Ehman said. “I was astonished.”

But the Wow! signal only appeared once. Was it proof of alien life? Or a fluke?

Ruling Out Explanations For The ‘Wow! Signal’

Could the Wow! signal have come from a satellite, or an airplane crossing the sky? A military signal or a broadcast from Earth? Could it have been a natural sound from a distant pulsar?

Scientists quickly ruled out these alternate explanations. That’s because of the unique characteristics of the Wow! signal.

At Ohio State, the radio receiver tracked 50 different channels – the equivalent of tuning 50 radios to different frequencies. But the Wow! signal only came across on one channel.

Natural radio sources like pulsars and quasars – both massive astronomical objects that emit radio waves – create noise across the spectrum. So they wouldn’t have produced noise on a single frequency as the Wow! signal did.

Plus, the Wow! signal came on one specific frequency – the one at which interstellar hydrogen glows.

Hydrogen, the first element, makes up about 75 percent of all matter in the universe. Because it’s so abundant, scientists had guessed that an intelligent civilization would be likely to broadcast a beacon signal at hydrogen’s frequency. And that’s exactly where Ohio State picked up the Wow! signal.

Finally, the pattern of the signal’s intensity matched that of a deep-space transmission. It could not have come from Earth, because such an object, like the Big Ear, would be fixed to the ground. Any signals the Big Ear picked up from that object would not have the variations in intensity that comes from an object in relative motion.

“Since all of the possibilities of a terrestrial origin have been either ruled out or seem improbable, and since the possibility of an extraterrestrial origin has not been able to be ruled out, I must conclude that an ETI (ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) might have sent the signal,” Ehman wrote in 2007.

Investigating The Mysterious Signal

For over 40 years, scientists have been trying to explain the mysterious transmission.

The duration of the transmission – 72 seconds – seems to point to an intelligent, extraterrestrial source. The stationary Big Ear relied on Earth’s rotation to sweep the sky. A transmission from deep space would slowly grow in strength, reach a peak, and fade as Earth rotated. That process would take 72 seconds – the exact length of the Wow! signal.

One of the biggest mysteries is why the Wow! signal hasn’t been heard since 1977. Why would aliens send a burst of noise once and never again?

Scientists have several theories. What if the aliens were also sweeping the night sky with their beams? The Wow! signal would appear once, and then not again until the transmitter swept across the Milky Way again and intersected with beams, like the Big Ear’s, on Earth.

This “lighthouse” theory could explain the mysterious one-time transmission.

If aliens were sweeping the sky, would the beam return hourly? Annually? Or every decade? So far, over 40 years have passed without another transmission.

But scientists have new tools to search space in the 21st century. The Very Large Array, a radio telescope in New Mexico, can pick up even more transmissions than the Big Ear. And the James Webb Space Telescope promises to capture more detailed images of deep space than ever before using infrared radiation.

The Wow! Signal In The 21st Century

In 1977, scientists did not have the technology to pinpoint exactly where the Wow! signal originated. At the time, the Big Ear was pointed at a patch of sky near the constellation Sagittarius. But millions of stars share that section of space.

Today, SETI has new tools to search space. In addition to listening for radio signals, SETI also searches for flashes of light using “optical SETI.” The idea is to look out for any sudden, brief, and unusually bright flashes, which could mean extraterrestrials are trying to communicate by pointing a space laser at the Milky Way.

Still, optical SETI has some of the same limitations as radio searches. The institute scans deep space, spending around a minute on each fraction of sky. The method risks missing signals from anyone using the lighthouse method, because their transmissions might only point our way intermittently. If we only look at each spot for a short time, we may miss the moment when their beam sweeps that spot.

Will we hear the Wow! signal again? Or will another method bring our next clue of extraterrestrial life?

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The Wow! signal continues to amaze and puzzle scientists. Next, read about the government research projects that investigate aliens, and then check out deleted Chinese evidence of a 2022 alien transmission.

You may know part of the the story of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google. They met on a tour of Stanford, when Brin was showing prospective grad student Page around. While they didn’t agree on anything at first, they eventually became friends and business partners and invented Google. Except there was a step before Google – Backrub.

From Backrub to Google

According to Google’s own page on their history, the men wanted to build “a search engine that used links to determine the importance of individual pages on the World Wide Web. They called this search engine Backrub.”

So…eww. Can you imagine saying, “I don’t know, I’ll need to backrub that information?”

We don’t know the precise details about why they changed the name. But we know how the word Google came to be.

“The name was a play on the mathematical expression for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros and aptly reflected Larry and Sergey’s mission ‘to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’”

Google was a big deal in the academic community at first. Then it caught the eye of Silicon Valley investors in the late 90s.

“In August 1998, Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote Larry and Sergey a check for $100,000, and Google Inc. was officially born. With this investment, the newly incorporated team made the upgrade from the dorms to their first office: a garage in suburban Menlo Park, California, owned by Susan Wojcicki (employee #16 and now CEO of YouTube). Clunky desktop computers, a ping pong table, and bright blue carpet set the scene for those early days and late nights.”

Google grows

Keeping things useful but unconventional was the duos brand style. Do you remember the first Google Doodle in 1998? It was a stick figure inside the logo telling everyone the staff was off-site attending Burning Man.

How about their motto? “Don’t be evil.”

In any case, things are now a far cry from the days of Backrub. — WTF fun facts

Source: “From the garage to the Googleplex” — Google

Viking treasure found in Norway, Maya masks unearthed in Mexico, animal bones discovered beneath the Roman Colosseum.

1,200-Year-Old Viking Treasure Hoard Uncovered By An Amateur Metal Detectorist In Norway

Throughout the early Middle Ages, much of Europe was still using what’s known as the weight economy, a system in which the actual heft of a bartering object was directly correlated with its value. It was only during the Viking era in the ninth century C.E. that the continent truly began pivoting to a more modern, coin-based system in which currency’s value was largely irrespective of its weight. Now, an exciting find in Norway has illustrated this crucial moment in Western history like few discoveries before.

An amateur archaeologist equipped with a metal detector on Norway’s Kongshaug Plateau unearthed an enormous hoard of Viking silver, including rings, necklaces, coins, and dozens of other objects. And while some of these relics belong to the era of the weight economy, others represent proto-modern currency not unlike that which much of the world uses to this day. Experts aren’t sure exactly when each of these artifacts was first forged, but the entire find dates to 700-950 C.E., putting it right in the heart of this critical transition period in Western economies.

Learn the full story behind this astounding discovery here.

Archaeologists Unearth An “Exceptional Collection” Of 1,300-Year-Old Stucco Maya Masks In Mexico

The Toniná archaeological site in southern Mexico is proving to be a treasure trove of pre-Columbian Maya relics, as a team of archaeologists working in the region recently unveiled a large number of carved stone masks worn by the ancient population.

Many of these stucco pieces, they say, were found in and around a structure known as the House of the Recreation of the Universe, near the Sunken Plaza of the Palacio de los Caracoles, both of which date back to around 650 C.E.

Dig deeper in this report.

Archaeologists Uncover Animal Bones And Ancient Roman Snack Foods Beneath The Colosseum

For the past year, archaeologists have been conducting a study of the drainage systems beneath the Colosseum in Rome — which has led to the discovery of bone fragments of bears, big cats, and even small dogs.

Archaeologists also found more than 50 bronze coins from the late Roman period, silver coins commemorating the 10-year anniversary of Marcus Aurelius becoming emperor, various seeds from figs, grapes, and melons, and traces of olives and nuts.

Read on here.

Elom Agbegninou claims she became “very anxious” during the flight and “normally would not have done those things.”

A woman was arrested following an incident on a Southwest Airlines flight that forced the plane to make an emergency landing after she attempted to open the aircraft’s side door at 37,000 feet — and claimed that Jesus had told her to do it.

As KPRC reports, the plane made its emergency landing in Little Rock, Arkansas en route from Houston to Columbus on November 26.

Prior to the emergency landing, according to court documents from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, the 34-year-old woman identified as Elom Agbegninou stood from her seat and walked to the back of the plane, where she stood “staring” at the side door.

A flight attendant told Agbegninou that if she wasn’t going to use the restroom, she needed to return to her seat.

Agbegninou then reportedly asked if she could look out the window, and, when she was told no, pushed past the flight attendant and started pulling on the handle of the emergency exit door.

Other passengers started to notice the disturbance, and someone was heard saying, “She’s trying to open the door,” prompting another passenger to get up and rush to the rear of the plane to help detain Agbegninou.

They managed to wrestle her to the ground, but during the scuffle, Agbegninou bit the other passenger on their thigh — and refused to let go until the victim “worked their fingers up to [her] jawline in an attempt to have [her] release the bite, which she eventually did.”

Documents say Agbegninou then began bashing her head against the floor of the plane, adding, “Jesus told her to fly to Ohio and Jesus told her to open the plane door.”

The biting victim was taken to a local hospital to receive antibiotic treatment and a hepatitis injection, and has been suffering from PTSD and anxiety since the incident.

Per The Independent, Agbegninou was said to have been traveling alone. She carried no luggage with her, and reportedly did not tell her husband that she would be flying.

Agbegninou told authorities that she was on her way to Maryland, intending to stay with a family friend who was working as a pastor. She also said that it had been a long time since she’d last flown, but sometime during the flight, she struggled to breathe and stood up from her seat.

According to legal documents, Agegninou claims she “became very anxious and normally would not have done those things.”

She now faces federal charges of assault within maritime and territorial jurisdiction, and interference with flight crew members and attendants.

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Believe it or not, this is not the strangest emergency landing in recent memory. Read about the time a plane was forced to land because a stowaway cat attacked the pilot. Then, read the story of the woman who bit off a Chinese restaurant owner’s ear because she was unhappy with her order.

Though we’re separated from it by only a handful of generations, the turn of the 20th century can feel like ancient history. This is exacerbated by choppy, black-and-white footage from the era that makes the people who lived through it feel like characters in an old movie. To make the early 1900s come alive, a film editor used AI to enhance and colorize a clip of Edwardian-era women working.

In the video below, a stream of women sporting floor-length skirts and perfectly-coiffed hair clock into their jobs at the the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company in Pittsburgh. The original 1904 film from the Library of Congress archives is black and white, and the quality has degraded over the years. YouTuber glamourdaze used deep learning and neural networks to colorize the footage, upscale it to 4K resolution, and reconstruct the women’s facial expressions. An ambient soundtrack was also added to heighten the realism of the scene.

These workers will look familiar to anyone familiar with the Gibson Girl. Popularized by the illustrations of artist Charles Dana Gibson, the look was characterized by the trumpet skirts, cinched waists, and lofty pompadours sported by these women. While Charles Gibson’s drawings often showed these style icons in leisurely settings, this footage shows that the look was just as popular on the factory floor.

Motion pictures were still in their infancy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but pioneering filmmakers of the period managed to capture everything from a solar eclipse to boxing cats (you have Thomas Edison to thank for the latter example). You can find more historic videos enchanted with AI on glamourdaze’s YouTube channel.

Researchers say these owl carvings are simple enough to have been made by children and could have been used as toys, dolls, or amulets.

Over the years, thousands of small owl carvings have been unearthed across the Iberian Peninsula. Though archaeologists have long assumed that these curious artifacts held some kind of religious significance for ancient people, a new study suggests that they may have been toys carved by children during the Copper Age.

According to a study led by Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) biologist Juan J. Negro and recently published in Scientific Reports, researchers examined 100 of the more than 4,000 owl carvings that have been discovered in tombs and pits across the Iberian Peninsula.

The carvings were made during the Copper Age, some 4,750 to 5,500 years ago, and researchers say that the designs were simple enough that Negro suspected that they’d been made by children. Though most have assumed that the palm-sized stone carvings “served ritual purposes,” Negro hypothesized that they were actually toys, dolls, or amulets carved by children who played with them.

“My first impression when looking at the engravings was that they were simple to make,” Negro told Live Science. “[The carvers] didn’t invest a lot of time or skills into making them, and they could be finished in a few hours.”

Following that hunch, Negro and his team compared the owl carvings with drawings of owls made by modern-day children. As phys.org reports, he and his team rated the stone owls on a scale of one to six based on how many owl “traits” they depicted, like eyes and a beak, then compared them with drawings made by children between the ages of four and 13.

“[The] owl engravings could have been executed by youngsters, as they resemble owls painted today by elementary school students,” the researchers determined after examining the two depictions.

So, why did Copper Age children choose to depict owls? Negro and his team speculated that humans have had a long and enduring fascination with owls.

“[O]ur hypothesis… is based on the transcultural fascination of humans by owls since time immemorial, in turn due to their peculiar anthropomorphism that predispose us to pay attention to them,” the researchers explained.

Negro also speculated that Copper Age children would have frequently seen owls like the little owl (Athene noctua) and the long-eared owl (Asio otus), who likely nested near human settlements that they drew prey like rats.

“Most likely these youngsters lived in settlements and would see owls regularly, since they’re known to get rid of rats and mice,” Negro explained to Live Science, adding: “Owls are different from other birds due to their large heads and frontally placed eyes, which people find striking.”

He added: “Because of this, if you were to ask children to draw an owl, they wouldn’t need a model, since everyone has an image of an owl in their brains. They’re iconic animals just like horses, dogs, and elephants.”

He and his team hypothesized that the owls may have also served an educational purpose for Copper Age children. The carvings are made with slate, a soft material composed of quartz, illite, and chlorite, according to Live Science. It’s easy to mold with simple tools and may have helped the children develop carving skills.

“Competent engravers, perhaps adults or adolescents, may have initiated novice children,” the researchers wrote. “Whether this learning process took place in the household or in other production contexts is unknown.”

In their study, the researchers also raised larger questions about the history of toys and play among ancient people.

“Children’s object play, and the objects themselves, has been disregarded in the archaeological literature until recently even though object play is ubiquitous in both tribal and modern societies,” they wrote.

As such, there’s still a lot for modern-day researchers to learn. But if one thing seems clear, it’s that ancient and modern-day children have a lot in common. When asked to draw an owl, they produced a similar design.

To the researchers, this similarity in owl depictions “suggests that schematic drawings are universal and timeless.”

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After reading about these Copper Age owl carvings, discover the story of Ötzi, the man murdered during the Copper Age whose body was preserved for thousands of years in the frozen Alps. Or, take a look at these surprisingly dangerous toys from the 20th century.

Jeremy Skibicki’s online presence was allegedly rife with antisemitic, misogynistic, and white supremacist vitriol.

A Winnipeg man who was charged in the death of an Indigenous woman earlier this year now faces charges relating to three additional deaths.

The alleged serial killer, 35-year-old Jeremy Anthony Michael Skibicki, is in police custody and has been since May 18th, CNN reports, following a homicide investigation into the death of 24-year-old Rebecca Contois of the O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi, or Crane River, First Nation.

The investigation began on May 16th when Contois’ partial remains were discovered in a garbage can near an apartment building in Winnipeg. Just two days later, Skibicki, who had reportedly known Contois beforehand, was taken into custody.

As the investigation continued, police searched the nearby Brady Road landfill and discovered additional remains belonging to Contois, Global News reports.

Now, Skibicki is being charged with three more counts of first-degree murder, all occurring between March and May, before Contois’ death.

The additional victims are 39-year-old Morgan Beatrice Harris and 26-year-old Marcedes Myran. The fourth victim has yet to be identified, but police believe her to be an Indigenous woman as well.

Investigators believe Harris was killed on May 1st and Myran on May 4th. The unidentified victim was likely murdered around March 15th. So far, none of their bodies have been found.

“It’s always unsettling whenever there is any kind of a serial killing,” said Winnipeg Police Chief Danny Smyth. “It does involve Indigenous women. We’re very sensitive to the whole Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women investigation and inquiry and the recommendations that came out of that.”

Police have yet to say if the women were murdered because they were Indigenous, and Skibicki’s guilt has not yet been assessed in a court of law. Investigators did say, however, that they believe he acted alone.

“He was arrested as soon as we were aware of what was going on,” said Inspector Shawn Pike. “He has been housed in a correctional facility since that time, and he has not, to my knowledge, been released at any given moment.”

As CBC reports, the murders have also prompted action on the part of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Persons Implementation Project (MMIWP), which is calling for hate to be factored into the police investigation.

“Successive governments said, no, we’re not implementing the recommendations of the [Aboriginal Justice Inquiry],” said Sandra DeLaronde, the project lead for the MMIWP in Manitoba. The Aboriginal Justice Inquiry (AJI) was commissioned in 1988 and presented in 1991 as a means of examining “the relationship between the Aboriginal peoples of Manitoba and the justice system.”

In 1999, the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry Commission was established to develop a plan to act on the inquiry’s recommendations after finding that there was continued race-based genocide of Indigenous peoples, specifically targeting girls, women, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

“This is not something that happened; it’s something that continues to happen. And unless we are making systemic change to laws and policies, then it will continue to happen,” DeLaronde said.

And according to Helmut-Harry Loewen, a former criminology and sociology professor at the University of Winnipeg, Skibicki’s online presence is grounds for further investigation. If Skibicki is found guilty of his charges, his crimes being fueled by hate could result in harsher punishment.

“I strongly urge that this first-degree homicide also be looked at very closely, not just in terms of the social media posts, but how these posts may have formed this mindset,” Loewen said.

On Facebook, Skibicki had described himself as an “official member of Holy Europe,” a far-right group. His page is also allegedly full of antisemitic, misogynistic, and white supremacist content.

Police involved in the case, however, were not able to comment on whether hate would be considered as a factor in Skibicki’s trial.

Evan Balgord, the executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, lamented that even though hate-filled motivation can impact the accused’s sentence, it is rarely pursued as a factor, in part because it is difficult to prove. Still, he believes it should be taken into consideration more often.

What’s more, a look into Skibicki’s past shows that he has a history of violence against women. On the one-year-anniversary of his marriage to his estranged wife, she filed for a protection order against him. Two years later, he was charged with threatening her, assaulting her with a weapon causing bodily harm, and disobeying court orders.

“Not often enough do we interrogate how much a person’s ideology and their hatred for women play into the act,” Balgord said. “I hope that that is something that is seriously looked at and considered in the context of this case.”

The communities which the victims belonged to, meanwhile, are looking to support one another and remain strong in these turbulent times.

“Our First Nation will need support in the days, weeks, and months ahead as many of our members will be impacted by this tragic news,” said Long Plain Chief Kyra Wilson. “There’s a lot of violence directed toward Indigenous women, and this is something we’ve had to deal with for generations.”

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Historically, Canada has not been kind to its Indigenous population. Learn about the country’s Indigenous residential schools, where Indigenous children were forcibly taken from their parents. Or, read about another alleged serial killer — who was hiding body parts in potted plants.

Every year, Americans purchase upwards of 30 million Christmas trees, enveloping their houses with the smell of pine and a surplus of shedding needles. After a few weeks, the tree is taken down and discarded. So how long did it take for the tree to reach Christmas status?

According to Outdoor Happens, the growth rate of a holiday tree depends on its stage and type. On average, the tree in your living room needed roughly four to five years to grow to 5 feet tall, a common height for holiday trees.

The growth isn’t really consistent, though. For a tree to go from seed to sapling and reach 1 foot could take as long as four years. From there, growth can speed up significantly, with some trees growing 4 feet in just 12 months.

If you have vaulted or raised ceilings, you might opt for a more imposing tree that’s 7 to 8 feet tall. That tree probably spent eight to 12 years reaching that height.

Rate of growth also depends on type. Balsam firs tend to grow slowly at just 12 inches annually; a Leyland Cypress can hit 24 inches in the same period of time.

Christmas tree farms do what they can to encourage the kind of big, bushy, cone-shaped trees that people tend to favor. In addition to weeding and controlling pests, they’ll shear trees to promote an appealing shape.

If you don’t want to simply discard a tree after it took so much time getting to you, you can always opt to have it recycled. Most communities offer tree pick-up in which trees are used for mulch or compost or repurposed as natural barriers for soil retention. Just be sure to strip it of all lights and decorations. If not, it’s likely to be diverted to a landfill instead.

[h/t Outdoor Happens]

In the weeks leading up to Christmas 1983, pandemonium erupted at toy stores across America as shoppers scrambled to get their hands on the season’s hottest commodity: Cabbage Patch Kids. People camped out for hours, hoping to nab one of the chubby-cheeked dolls, but demand drastically outpaced supply. Police had to be called in to quell customer outbursts, which sometimes turned violent. A pregnant woman in New Jersey was trampled by a stampede of frantic customers. Adults grabbed dolls away from children. One store owner opted to have his stock of Cabbage Patch Kids delivered in an armored vehicle. 

Above, an archival news segment from New York station WABC captures the wacky heights of the consumer craze now known as the “Cabbage Patch Riots.” The clip includes footage of a department store manager wielding a bat to protect himself from shoppers, who scream and grasp as boxes of Cabbage Patch Kids are hurled into the crowd by the store’s staff. On the ground at a New York-area Toys “R” Us, reporter Josh Howell finds a more orderly scene—customers needed a coupon to be able to buy a Cabbage Patch Kid—but the store’s supply sold out within minutes. “I missed work, I’m late for work, to get this for my little girl,” one dad tells the channel, showing off his new Cabbage Patch Kid. “I’m not going to tell my boss.”

Why did American parents—“otherwise dignified, calm, mannerly,” as Howell puts it—go collectively bonkers for Cabbage Patch Kids? When the dolls were first mass-produced and released to toy stores in 1983, the market was rife with newfangled, electronic gadgets like the Walkman and the Atari Gaming System. Cabbage Patch Kids, with their doughy bodies and homely little faces, seemed refreshingly quaint by comparison. The dolls “promised a return to simplicity,” writes Timeline’s Stephanie Buck. “[They were] something you could just … hug.” Coleco, the company that manufactured Cabbage Patch Kids, deliberately targeted Cabbage Patch ads at adults, predicting that parents would be eager to buy the dolls as wholesome gifts for their children. 

The toys themselves may have been low-tech, but the production process that created them was rooted in advanced technologies. Using computers, Coleco was able to diversify its designs, making each Cabbage Patch Kid unique. No two dolls looked exactly alike, they each had different names, and every doll came with “adoption papers” that could be signed by the children who took them home. It was a clever marketing strategy that positioned Cabbage Patch Kids as something more than a mass-manufactured toy. Each one was distinct and special. 

And so, as the WABC footage shows, people were desperate to get the dolls for their own special little humans. “What is it, two hours to go to Pennsylvania? I think it’s worth going there,” one dejected woman, who left the Toys “R” Us without a Cabbage Patch Kid, tells the outlet. “If not, I’ll try California, I have a niece that lives in California. I’ll go all over.”