A video shows Tampa Bay infielder Evan Longoria making an amazing bare-handed catch during an interview.
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A video clip from 2011 seemingly showed the Tampa Bay Rays’ third baseman Evan Longoria making an amazing, impromptu bare-handed catch of a batting practice ball while being interviewed on the field:
https://youtu.be/tMujgAAyH-I
In fact, this video was a staged/manufactured one created for Gillette (whose logo is displayed on either side of Longoria’s head), as described in contemporaneous news accounts:
You may have seen the video by now — Tampa Bay Rays star Evan Longoria making a too-good-to-be-true, bare-handed catch to save a reporter from getting clocked in the head.
Longoria spent several hours in Bradenton one night in the middle of spring training filming a Gillette commercial with ESPN’s Kenny Mayne, then shot the viral video in just a few minutes, said Trevor Gooby, the Pirates’ director of Florida operations. Pirates employees had no idea what the commercial would be like.
Evan Longoria was talking with a female TV reporter to the foul side of first base during batting practice when he reached up at the last second and snared a slicing line drive before it struck the reporter’s head.
“Unbelievable, huh?” Longoria said. “It’s funny when you talk about things going viral; it really does once it gets on things like Twitter and YouTube. It goes from a small snowball to an avalanche quickly.”
The commercial for Gillette was shot at McKechnie Field in Bradenton one night near the end of spring training.
Longoria had played that afternoon for the Rays. Gillette supplied a car that drove him to Bradenton. He reached McKechnie at 3:30 p.m., and shooting for a Gillette Fusion commercial began at 4 p.m.
Longoria said they asked him if he would do that clip at the end, and he agreed to if there was time.
It was near 10 p.m. when the shooting stopped for the commercial. He was told it would only take a minute or two. It was filmed using nothing but the stadium’s lights.
The Rays are taking batting practice in the clip, though there is no batting cage at home plate, no coaches hitting fungos, no music blaring over the stadium’s PA system, and the reporter is way too close to the field.
Longoria spots the ball out of the corner of his eye and grabs it with his right hand before it strikes the reporter. He shakes his right hand and flips the ball on the field and says, “Keep it on the field.”
Longoria said he’s amazed at the attention it has received.
“I shot the actual Gillette commercial for like six or seven hours that day and I’ve heard a few things about that. But that footage of me catching the ball there literally took two minutes to shoot on a handheld camera,” he said. “It’s crazy. That’s how people become famous on YouTube. You put up a video that goes viral and before you know it, over a million people have seen it.”
If you look closely you’ll see “Gillette” signs across the roof’s facade — those were computer graphics, Gooby said.
Longoria has since left the Rays and is now with the San Francisco Giants.
Plastic soda bottles left in unsuspecting residents’ yards may be Drano bottle bombs.
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“Bottle bombs” (also commonly known as “Drano bombs” or “works bombs”) are not a new phenomenon; they’ve been a favorite of youthful pranksters for decades, as their construction requires only a few ordinary, commonly available components: plastic soda bottles, aluminum foil, and Drano (or other brand of household drain or toilet cleaner):
Good morning to you all. I want to make you aware of a recent incident that occurred this morning in York Twp. This type of incident directly affects your safety as well as your children’s safety. This morning, at approximately 8:00 am, I was dispatched to an address, on Bemis Rd near the Saline City Limits, for an unexploded pop bottle bomb. When I arrived, I noticed a 20 ounce pop bottle, on the ground, in the callers front yard. After I inspected it closer, I determined that it was in fact a “Works” Bomb. I was able to clear the device away from the house and once I moved it, it detonated itself within 30 seconds. After leaving that house, I checked other yards in the area during my patrols. I located a second one, just a few doors down from the first one. As I took care of the disposal/detonation, the homeowner came out and asked me what it was. When I showed her what it was, she immediately told me that she saw the bottle and that she had planned on picking it up when she got her morning paper. Like the first one, once I moved it, it detonated in short order. There was a high probability that this would have detonated in her hand/face while she carried it to the trash.
A “Works” Bomb is Drain-o and Tin Foil, mixed together inside of a bottle. The chemical reaction between the Drain-o and the Tin Foil makes a volatile build up of gases and subsequently detonates the bottle with a great amount of force. Once the detonation occurs, the chemical substance that is in the bottle is actually boiling liquid.
The amount of force that is generated at the time of the explosion is enough to severe fingers and also deliver 2nd and 3rd degree chemical burns to the victim. The chemicals can possibly cause blindness and the toxic fumes can be harmful.
**SAFETY**SAFETY**SAFETY***……….When you are out and about in your yards, please be mindful of these devices. If your picking up your morning paper, or mowing your grass, or if you let your children out to play; whatever your activities are, please use the following precautions.
1) If you find a soda bottle or any other bottles, examine it carefully before you touch it or get near it. If it shows signs of swelling, or melting in any way, DO NOT TOUCH IT! Call 911 and let us respond to take care of it.
2) If you find a soda bottle that has any liquid in it, DO NOT TOUCH IT! Call 911 and let us respond to check it / dispose of it.
Both bombs this morning appeared to be slightly swollen, with a dark colored liquid, inside of it. This liquid could have easily been mistaken for left over soda.
I know that calling 911 for a soda bottle may sound silly or like a misuse of your Police protection but trust me, it is not. You do not want one of these devices detonating in your hand or your children’s hands or in your pets face. We are here to incur the danger for you so that you are and your loved ones are not harmed. So please check your yard thoroughly before letting your children out to play and be mindful before you just deem that soda bottle as garbage and pick it up.
In closing, please educate your children on the dangers and consequences of making these devices. It has become popular with the youth in the past few years, to do this as a prank, but there have been some changes to the law. Not only could it be deadly to the maker or the victim, but making one these devices is called, “Possession of a Substance with Explosive Capabilities”. If it causes no damage, its a 15 year Felony. If it causes damage, its a 20 year Felony. If it causes physical injury, its a 25 year Felony. If it causes serious injury, the penalty can be “Up to life”, and if it causes death, its Mandatory Life without the possibility of Parole. These are statutory guidelines only. These penalties are what could be imposed but it does not necessarily mean that these penalties would be imposed.
In general, one need simply push some aluminum foil balls into a plastic bottle, add some Drano, and screw the cap tightly onto the bottle to create a Drano bottle bomb. The combination of the hydrogen chloride or sodium hydroxide in the fluid and the aluminum foil creates a strong chemical reaction which releases hydrogen gas; when that gas builds up to sufficient pressure, it ruptures the side of the plastic bottle, releasing the contents in an explosive burst:
https://youtu.be/PRQpXMq46XA
Although the force of pressure-based bottle bombs may seem small when compared to other types of explosives (such as gunpowder-based ones), any form of explosive has the potential to cause serious injury, and since bottle bombs have no conventional fuse they can be dangerously unpredictable, exploding earlier or later than their wielders expect. (Aluminum foil is typically coated with a layer of wax, so it can take up to ten minutes or so for the fluid to strip away the wax and react with the aluminum foil, enhancing the chances that a soon-to-explode bottle bomb may be picked up by an unwary passer-by.) Additionally, the caustic cleaning agents used in bottle bombs can cause severe burns when they come into contact with skin (either through spillage in the construction of the bombs or through being sprayed widely in the resulting explosions) and produce toxic fumes.
The above-quoted e-mail warning about neighborhood residents discovering undetonated bottle bombs in their yards was sent out by Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Deputy Keith Mansell in April 2010 after he discovered two Drano bombs left in the yards of residents of York Township, Michigan. For the most part, those who concoct bottle bombs mix the ingredients, immediately set their work aside, and stand back to watch it explode within a minute or two. However, there are ways of delaying the mixture and/or reaction of the ingredients so as to cause a delayed detonation, so those who discover objects that appear to be bottle bombs should refrain from handling them and contact authorities for removal.
At about the same time as Deputy Mansell’s warning hit the Internet, the town of Methuen, Massachusetts, experienced a rash of similar plastic-bottle bomb placements, including two that blew apart mailboxes:
A rash of homemade plastic-bottle bombs used to blow up mailboxes has prompted arson investigators and the state police fire marshal’s office to offer up to a $5,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of anyone responsible for making and setting off the incendiary devices.
[Methuen police arson investigator Matt] Bistany said [a plastic bottle a resident discovered sticking out the front of her mailbox] is at least the third device of its kind found in the neighborhood in the last few weeks, although in the two other cases, the bombs actually succeeded in blowing apart the mailboxes.
Barry said the bombs, made up of typical household chemicals poured into plastic bottles and then sealed shut with the cap, can be very powerful.
“We take these very seriously,” he said. “Kids have lost their fingers and had their faces injured from these things. It’s very serious.”
Some more cases of bottle bomb discoveries include one such item found on an Oregon elementary school playground on 18 February 2013:
A chemical-based bottle bomb, mixed inside a Gatorade container, was discovered on the playground of Periwinkle Elementary School, and the Oregon State Police responded to destroy the device, according to Albany Police Department reports.
A caller reported the Drano bottle bomb, which was under the covered play structure, to 911.
The OSP bomb squad arrived, detonated the bottle and seized it as evidence. The bottle has been sent to the Oregon State Police Crime Lab for testing.
A woman residing in Wichita, Kansas, called police on 16 February 2013 after someone detonated bottle bombs nearby:
A 24-year-old woman called police after hearing several explosions [outside]. She also reported seeing three teenage males wearing dark clothing fleeing from her house.
When officers arrived on the scene, they found the remnants of chemical bombs in melted two-liter pop bottles. The bomb squad was then called, according to Wichita police Sgt. Bart Brunscheen, to dispose of the contents.
“This is a serious crime and anybody near it could be injured,” he said.
Also in February 2013, police in Beavercreek, Ohio, warned residents about a recent rash of Drano bottle bomb incidents in the community:
Beavercreek Police are investigating their 7th pop bottle bomb incident and now they’re asking for your help. Police warn that these devices are extremely dangerous. So far, no one has been hurt but they say it’s only a matter of time.
The incidents have taken place in the Hunter’s Ridge, Christalee Acres and Oakbrook Chase Estates neighborhoods. The most recent incident happened at the intersection of Oakbrook Boulevard and Adams Way. Police found two pop bottle bombs and disposed of them safely. They say there are no witnesses.
This investigation began on December 13th of last year. Since then, police have found several of these devices and the Dayton Bomb Squad has been called to detonate some of them. If you find a similar device, you’re asked to call 9-1-1 immediately, and do not try to pick it up or move it.
Security camera footage captured a ghost in the elevator of a Singapore office building called Raffles Place.
Fact Check
Example:[Collected via e-mail, May 2008]
I have to know… Is the footage of the “Elevator Ghost” taken from a Singapore office building’s security footage real or a fake?
Origins: The above-displayed video clip purports to be security camera footage from an office building in Singapore’s Raffles Place financial district. As depicted in the video, two businessmen enter the building about a half hour after midnight on 21 February 2008, get onto an elevator, ride it a few floors, then exit the lift — revealing a hunched, corpse-like female figure who slowly shuffles off the elevator after the men have exited the frame.
Not only is the video obviously faked, but it was deliberately created for viral purposes — a promotional stunt promulgated by the Singapore branch of the McCann Worldgroup advertising agency on behalf of the GMP Group, a business recruitment and staffing firm with offices in Singapore and other Asian cities:
The infamous ‘Raffles Place Ghost’ campaign, which began as an online video and eventually snowballed into free coverage on various media outlets, cost recruitment and HR consultancy group GMP just $100,000.
Created by McCann Worldgroup Singapore, the video first appeared online on 21 April, showing what appeared to be CCTV footage of two men being followed out of an office lift by the ghost of an old woman, has accumulated more than 250,000 views on YouTube.
The video directed viewers to a blog, supposedly started by three amateur ‘ghostbusters’, and in the next few days it was posted on Stomp. It was then picked up by the daily press and made the front page of Shin Min Wanbao while Lianhe Wanbao featured an article on the ‘ghost sighting’ in its main news section.
Farrokh Madon, ECD for McCann Worldgroup Singapore said that the Raffles Place Ghost is a “defining piece of Singapore advertising” and a “fantastic example of how a big idea can magnify a small advertising budget”.
GMP’s Corporate Services manager, Josh Goh, subsequently appeared in a “No One Should Work Late” video to explain the purpose behind the Raffles Place Ghost video: “We created the online hoax now known as the ‘Raffles Place Ghost.’ At GMP, we want to highlight the dangers of working late. Stress, fatigue, ill health are just a few. And … if you’re really, really unlucky, you might see a ghost.”
An illustration from a withdrawn Yellow Pages ad reveals a risqué image when a portion of it is viewed upside-down.
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This is an advertisement from the yellow pages, until they realised that if you turned it upside down and covered the lady’s head and the hand holding the glass, all was not as it seemed.
The telephone company has now taken this ad out because of the content.
Take a look at the first picture, and then the second picture (which is an inverted version of the first), watch as her face and the glass are covered — and see what you get.
P.S. Where do people find the time to read the Yellow Pages UPSIDE DOWN??
Some critics have long maintained that companies and their advertising agencies often employ subliminal advertising to increase sales by concealing words and images (usually of a sexually suggestive nature) in their advertisements. The nature of “subliminal,” of course, means that these alleged hidden persuaders are not obvious to the ordinary viewer and may require intense scrutiny or an unusual approach (such as viewing an image backwards, upside-down, or with a magnifying glass) to discern.
Such is the nature of the putative advertisement from the Yellow Pages (a pre-Internet printed phone directory of business services) for a flooring company displayed above, which is accompanied by an illustration of a woman holding a champagne glass that, when flipped upside-down and cropped in half horizontally, resembles an image of a woman with no lower undergarments touching herself in a strategically sensitive area.
Several clues might suggest that this image was something put together as a joke rather than a genuine Yellow Pages ad:
The subject matter — a woman holding a champagne glass — seemingly has nothing to do with the product or service being advertised, which is flooring. (As the graphic displayed at the bottom of this page indicates, the illustration may have originated with items commonly distributed in bars and restaurants, such as matchbooks or cocktail napkins.)
The headline of the ad (“LAID BY THE BEST”) is an obvious sexual double entendre.
The phone number(s) listed appears odd — 21 digits long or two numbers of differing lengths. (This can actually be explained rationally, because in some parts of the world the different systems used for landline and mobile phones produced phone numbers with different numbers of digits.)
The ad includes no address or other location information.
However, there is indeed a business by the name of D.J. Flooring in Brighton, East Sussex, with one of the phone numbers shown. A call to them elicited the response that the ad was indeed genuine and had been run in the mid-1990s, and the illustration was also used on the company’s vans until people started making a fuss about it. The business had to change their phone number due to the notoriety created by the ad; the previous number is now the company’s fax line. D.J. Flooring’s later Yellow Pages ad was rather sedate by comparison:
These types of images have a history of being circulated as copylore/faxlore as well, as demonstrated by a similar example from The Ultimate Book of Rude and Politically Incorrect Jokes:
The same image incorporated into the Yellow Pages ad displayed at the head of this page has also been used in other contexts, as exemplified by a reader-supplied scan of a matchbook obtained in a Geneva, Switzerland, bar circa 1990:
Another reader passed along an example of a genuine Yellow Pages ad (from Kitchener, Ontario, Canada) for a bar that made use of this illustration:
An essay outlines the fates of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
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In the waning years of their lengthy lives, former presidents (and Founding Fathers) John Adams and Thomas Jefferson reconciled the political differences that had separated them for many years and carried on a voluminous correspondence. One of the purposes behind their exchange of letters was to set the record straight regarding the events of the American Revolution, for as author Joseph J. Ellis noted, they (particularly Adams, whom history would not treat nearly as kindly as Jefferson) were keenly aware of the “distinction between history as experienced and history as remembered”:
Adams realized that the act of transforming the American Revolution into history placed a premium on selecting events and heroes that fit neatly into a dramatic formula, thereby distorting the more tangled and incoherent experience that participants actually making the history felt at the time. Jefferson’s drafting of the Declaration of Independence was a perfect example of such dramatic distortions. The Revolution in this romantic rendering became one magical moment of inspiration, leading inexorably to the foregone conclusion of American independence.
Evidently Adams was right: So great is our need for simplified, dramatic events and heroes that even the real-life biographies of the fifty-six men who risked their lives to publicly declare American independence are no longer compelling enough. Through multiple versions of pieces like the one quoted below, their lives have been repeatedly embellished with layers of fanciful fiction to make for a better story:
THE PRICE THEY PAID
Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence? What fates befell them for daring to put their names to that document?
Five signers were captured by the British as traitors and tortured before they died.
Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.
Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army, another had two sons captured.
Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War.
They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
What kind of men were they?
Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.
Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.
Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.
At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.
Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.
John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year, he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished. A few weeks later, he died from exhaustion and a broken heart.
Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates.
Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution. These were not wild-eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were soft-spoken men of means and education. They had security, but they valued liberty more.
Standing talk straight, and unwavering, they pledged: “For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
They gave you and me a free and independent America. The history books never told you a lot about what happened in the Revolutionary War. We didn’t fight just the British. We were British subjects at that time and we fought our own government!
Some of us take these liberties so much for granted, but we shouldn’t.
So, take a few minutes while enjoying your 4th of July Holiday and silently thank these patriots. It’s not much to ask for the price they paid. Remember: Freedom is never free!
I hope you will show your support by please sending this to as many people as you can. It’s time we get the word out that patriotism is NOT a sin, and the Fourth of July has more to it than beer, picnics, and baseball games.
As we often do, we’ll try here to strip away those accumulated layers of fiction and get down to whatever kernel of truth may lie underneath:
Five signers were captured by the British as traitors and tortured before they died.
It is true that five signers of the Declaration of Independence were captured by the British during the course of the Revolutionary War. However, none of them died while a prisoner, and four of them were taken into custody not because they were considered “traitors” due to their status as signatories to that document, but because they were captured as prisoners of war while actively engaged in military operations against the British.
George Walton was captured after being wounded while commanding militia at the Battle of Savannah in December 1778, and Thomas Heyward, Jr., Arthur Middleton, and Edward Rutledge (three of the four Declaration of Independence signers from South Carolina) were taken prisoner at the Siege of Charleston in May in 1780. Although they endured the ill treatment typically afforded to prisoners of war during their captivity (prison conditions were quite deplorable at the time), they were not tortured, nor is there evidence that they were treated more harshly than other wartime prisoners who were not also signatories to the Declaration. Moreover, all four men were eventually exchanged or released; had they been considered traitors by the British, they would have been hanged.
Richard Stockton of New Jersey was the only signer taken prisoner specifically because of his status as a signatory to the Declaration, “dragged from his bed by night” by local Tories after he had evacuated his family from New Jersey, and imprisoned in New York City’s infamous Provost Jail like a common criminal.
Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.
It is true that a number of signers saw their homes and property occupied, ransacked, looted, and vandalized by the British (and even in some cases by the Americans). However, as we discuss in more detail below, this activity was a common part of warfare. Signers’ homes were not specifically targeted for destruction — like many other Americans, their property was subject to seizure when it fell along the path of a war being waged on the North American continent.
Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army, another had two sons captured.
Abraham Clark of New Jersey saw two of his sons captured by the British and incarcerated on the prison ship Jersey. John Witherspoon, also of New Jersey, saw his eldest son, James, killed in the Battle of Germantown in October 1777. If there was a second signer of the Declaration whose son was killed while serving in the Continental Army, we have yet to identify him.
Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War.
This statement is quite misleading as phrased. Nine signers died during the course of the Revolutionary War, but none of them died from wounds or hardships inflicted on them by the British. (Indeed, several of the nine didn’t even take part in the war.) Only one signer, Button Gwinnett of Georgia, died from wounds, and those were received not at the hands of the British, but from a fellow officer with whom he dueled in May 1777.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.
Before the American Revolution, Carter Braxton was possessed of a considerable fortune through inheritance and favorable marriages. While still in his teens he inherited the family estate, which included a flourishing Virginia tobacco plantation, upon the death of his father. He married a wealthy heiress who died when he was just 21, and within a few years he had remarried, this time to the daughter of the Receiver of Customs in Virginia for the King. As a delegate representing Virginia in the Continental Congress in 1776, he was one of the minority of delegates reluctant to support an American declaration of independence, a move which he viewed at the time as too dangerous:
[Independence] is in truth a delusive Bait which men inconsiderably catch at, without knowing the hook to which it is affixed … America is too defenceless a State for the declaration, having no alliance with a naval Power nor as yet any Fleet of consequence of her own to protect that trade which is so essential to the prosecution of the War, without which I know we cannot go on much longer.
Braxton invested his wealth in commercial enterprises, particularly shipping, and he endured severe financial reversals during the Revolutionary War when many of the ships in which he held interest were either appropriated by the British government (because they were British-flagged) or were sunk or captured by the British. He was not personally targeted for ruin because he had signed the Declaration of Independence, however; he suffered grievous financial losses because most of his wealth was tied up in shipping, “that trade which is so essential to the prosecution of the War” and which was therefore a prime military target for the British. Even if he hadn’t signed the Declaration of Independence, Braxton’s ships would have been casualties of the war just the same.
Although Braxton did lose property during the war and had to sell off assets (primarily landholdings) to cover the debts incurred by the loss of his ships, he recouped much of that money after the war but subsequently lost it again through his own ill-advised business dealings. His fortune was considerably diminished in his later years, but he did not by any stretch of the imagination “die in rags.”
Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.
As one biography describes Thomas McKean (not “McKeam”):
Thomas McKean might just represent an ideal study of how far political engagement can be carried by one man. One can scarcely believe the number of concurrent offices and duties this man performed during the course of his long career. He served three states and many more cities and county governments, often performing duties in two or more jurisdictions, even while engaged in federal office.
Among his many offices, McKean was a delegate to the Continental Congress (of which he later served as president), President of Delaware, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, and Governor of Pennsylvania. The above-quoted statement regarding his being “hounded” by the British during the Revolutionary War is probably based upon a letter he wrote to his friend John Adams in 1777, in which he described how he had been “hunted like a fox by the enemy, compelled to remove my family five times in three months, and at last fixed them in a little log-house on the banks of the Susquehanna, but they were soon obliged to move again on account of the incursions of the Indians.”
However, it is problematic to assert that McKean’s treatment was due to his being a signer of the Declaration of Independence. (His name does not appear on printed copies of that document authenticated in January 1777, so it is likely he did not affix his name to it until later.) If he was targeted by the British, it was quite possibly because he also served in a military capacity as a volunteer leader of militia. In any case, McKean did not end up in “poverty,” as the estate he left behind when he died in 1817 was described as consisting of “stocks, bonds, and huge land tracts in Pennsylvania.”
Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.
First of all, this passage has a couple of misspellings: the signers referred to are William Ellery (not “Dillery”) and Edward Rutledge (not “Ruttledge”). Secondly, this sentence is misleading in that it implies a motive that was most likely not present (i.e., these men’s homes were looted because they had been signers of the Declaration of Independence).
The need to forage for supplies in enemy territory has long been a part of warfare, and so it was far from uncommon for British soldiers in the field to appropriate such material from private residences during the American Revolution. (Not only were homes used as sources of food, livestock, and other necessary supplies, but larger houses were also taken over and used to quarter soldiers or to serve as headquarters for officers.) In some cases, even American forces took advantage of the local citizenry to provision themselves. Given that many more prominent American revolutionaries who were also signers of the Declaration of Independence (e.g., Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, James Wilson, Benjamin Rush, Robert Morris) had homes in areas that were occupied by the British during the war, yet those homes were not looted or vandalized, it’s hard to make the case that the men named above were specifically targeted for vengeance by the British rather than unfortunate victims whose property fell in the path of an armed conflict being waged on American soil.
At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.
The tale about Thomas Nelson’s urging or suggesting the bombardment of his own house is one of several Revolutionary War legends whose truth may never be known. Several versions of this story exist, one of which (as referenced above) holds that Nelson encouraged George Washington to shell his Yorktown home after British Major General Charles Cornwallis had taken it over to use as his headquarters in 1781:
Cornwallis had turned the home of Thomas Nelson, who had succeeded Jefferson as governor of Virginia, into his headquarters. Nelson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, had led three Virginia brigades, or 3,000 men, to Yorktown and, when the shelling of the town was about to begin, urged Washington to bombard his own house. And that is where Washington, with his experienced surveyor’s eye, reputedly pointed the gun for the first (and singularly fatal) allied shot. Legend has it that the shell went right through a window and landed at the dinner table where some British officers, including the British commissary general, had just sat down to dine. The general was killed and several others wounded as it burst among their plates.
Other versions of the story have Nelson directing the Marquis de Lafayette to train French artillery on his home:
The story goes that the new Virginia Governor Thomas Nelson (who’d been held at Yorktown but released under a flag of truce) was with American forces that day. Lafayette invited Nelson to be present when Captain Thomas Machin’s battery first opened fire, as both a compliment and knowing Nelson lived in Yorktown and would know the localities in the riverport area. “To what particular spot,” Lafayette reportedly asked Nelson, “would your Excellency direct that we should point the cannon.” Nelson replied, “There, to that house. It is mine, and … it is the best one in the town. There you will be almost certain to find Lord Cornwallis and the British headquarters.”
“A simultaneous discharge of all the guns in the line,” Joseph Martin wrote, was “followed [by] French troops accompanying it with ‘Huzza for the Americans.’” Sounding much like the Nelson legend, Martin’s account added that “the first shell sent from our batteries entered an elegant house formerly owned or occupied by the Secretary of State under the British, and burned directly over a table surrounded by a large party of British officers at dinner, killing and wounding a number of them.”
Still other accounts maintain this legend is a conflation of two separate events: Thomas Nelson, acting as commander in chief of the Virginia militia, ordered a battery to open fire on his uncle’s home, where Cornwallis was then ensconced. Later, Nelson supposedly made a friendly bet with French artillerists in which he challenged them to hit his home, one of the more prominent landmarks in Yorktown.
Whatever the truth, the Nelson home was certainly not “destroyed” as claimed. The house stands to this day as part of Colonial National Historical Park, and the National Park Service’s description of it notes only that “the southeast face of the residence does show evidence of damage from cannon fire.”
Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.
Francis Lewis represented New York in the Continental Congress, and shortly after he signed the Declaration of Independence his Long Island estate was raided by the British, possibily as retaliation for his having been a signatory to that document. While Lewis was in Philadelphia attending to congressional matters, his wife was taken prisoner by the British after disregarding an order for citizens to evacuate Long Island. Mrs. Lewis was held for several months before being exchanged for the wives of British officials captured by the Americans. Although her captivity was undoubtedly a hardship, she had already been in poor health for some time and died a few years (not months) later.
John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year, he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished. A few weeks later, he died from exhaustion and a broken heart.
John Hart’s New Jersey farm was looted in the course of the Revolutionary War (possibly due his status as Speaker of the Assembly), and he did have to remain in hiding in nearby mountains for a short time, but the rest of the above passage is gross exaggeration. When the British overran the area of New Jersey where Hart resided in late November of 1776, he was not “driven from his [dying] wife’s bedside,” as his wife had already died several weeks earlier (and most of his thirteen children were adults by then). He certainly didn’t spend “more than a year” on the run living “in forests and caves,” as the Continental Army recaptured the area within a month (through General George Washington’s famous crossing of the Delaware River on Christmas night). Hart also did not die “from exhaustion and a broken heart” a mere “few weeks” after emerging from hiding — in 1778 he was re-elected to the New Jersey assembly, and he invited the American army to encamp on his New Jersey farmland in June 1778 before succumbing to kidney stones in May 1779.
Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates.
Lewis Morris (not Norris) indeed saw his Westchester County, New York, home taken over in 1776 and used as a barracks for soldiers, and the horses and livestock from his farm commandeered by military personnel, but he suffered those initial deprivations at the hands of the Continental Army, not the British. Shortly afterwards his property was appropriated, looted, and burned by the British when they occupied New York. (Morris and his wife were eventually able to reclaim their property and restore their home after the war.)
Philip Livingston lost several properties to the British occupation of New York and sold off others to support the war effort, and he did not recover them because he died suddenly in 1778, before the end of the war.
Photograph shows a tourist who died of fright after being photobombed by a ghost in the Sundarbans.
Fact Check
Example:[Collected via email, December 2003]
The guy in the photo went to the Sundarbans with his friends and he asked 1 of his friends to take his picture in that very place. While his friend was taking the picture he screamed and fainted, 2 days later he died in the medical college. Doctors said he died because of heart attack. When the photos were exposed, in the last photo there was a lady standing right beside him though friends claim that he was standing alone. Many people said it is a rumor and the picture is the result of the blessings of latest technology. However, the photo itself is very scary and I’m sure you’ll also feel the same way I’ve felt. Here you go with the photo!!!
A navy officer sent this letter to 13 people and he was promoted.. A business man received this letter and threw it away.. not believing in it.. and he lost everything he had within 13 days.. It reached a labourer and he distributed it to 13 people.. he was promoted and all his problems were solved within 13 days.. So you must send this e mail to 13 people for something good to happen to you so people..get sending !! 🙂 don’t be lazy..
P/S : Do not send back to the person who send this to you!!!
Origins: First off, for those puzzling over the reference to “Sundarbans,” it’s the name of a 10,000 sq. km Bengalian rainforest nature preserve in India and Bangladesh that encompasses Sundarbans National Park.
There isn’t much else to say about this item other than to note that nobody really screamed and died while his picture was being taken in the Sundarbans, leaving behind a mysterious picture with a ghostly image. This item is simply a combination of two bits of supernatural bunkum first popularized well over a century ago: spirit photography and luck chain letters. The same “ghost photo” was circulated back in September 2003 with a different backstory:
Police in an Indian city say children have stopped going to school after a local newspaper was duped into publishing a photograph of a ‘ghost’.
Officers say the picture, in the Thanthi newspaper in the southern city of Tiruchi, was a computer-generated fake.
The photograph shows a youngster with a legless ‘ghost’ with long loose hair and empty eye-sockets standing behind him.
The newspaper story claimed the boy was among a group of students from Bangalore who were visiting a picnic spot in the hills and says he went into coma after seeing the image.
In April of 2008 the photo began circulating with yet another location and story attached:
The young man in this photo visited a historic site in Georgia called Fort Mountain with his friends and he asked them to take his photo while hiking. While his friend took the photo, he screamed and fainted. Then 2 days later he died from a heart attack.
When the photos where developed, in the last photo there was a woman standing next to the young man, even though his friends said there was no one with him when the photo was taken. Many people know of this rumor and the last photo is the result of the blessings of technology. People say its the ghost of Cherokee Chief Ross’s wife Madam Firecrochet.
The term ‘420’ entered drug parlance as a term signifying the time to light up a joint.
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Odd terms sneak into our language every now and then, and this is one of the oddest. Everyone who considers himself in the know about the drug subculture has heard that ‘420’ has something to do with illegal drug use, but when you press them, they never seem to know why, or even what the term supposedly signifies.
It’s both more and less than people make it out to be. The term ‘420’ began its sub-rosa linguistic career in 1971 as a bit of slang casually used by a group of high school kids (known as “Waldos”) at San Rafael High School in California. The term ‘420’ (always pronounced “four-twenty,” never “four hundred and twenty”) came to be an accepted part of the argot within that group of about a dozen pot smokers, beginning as a reminder of the time they planned to meet to light up, 4:20 p.m.:
[The 420] origins appear to lie in the escapades of a group of friends from San Rafael high school, northern California, in 1971. That autumn, the five teenagers came into possession of a hand-drawn map supposedly locating a marijuana crop at Point Reyes, north-west of San Francisco.
The friends — who called themselves the Waldos because they used to hang out by a wall — met after school, at 4:20 pm, and drove off on their treasure hunt. They never found the plot. “We were smoking a lot of weed at the time,” says Dave Reddix or Waldo Dave, now a filmmaker. “Half the fun was just going looking for it.” The group began using the term 420. So did friends and acquaintances, who included — at a couple of steps removed — members of the Grateful Dead rock band. The term spread among the band’s fans, known as Deadheads.
Then in 1990 Steve Bloom, an editor at High Times, saw 420 explained on a Grateful Dead concert flyer. Staff on the magazine, long the leading publication on marijuana, started using it.
Keep in mind this wasn’t a general call to all dope smokers everywhere to toke up at twenty past four every day; it was twelve kids who’d made a date to meet after school near a certain statue. It’s thus incorrect to deem that ‘420’ originated as the designation of a national or international dope-smoking time, even though the term began as a reference to a particular time of day, as the originators of that term explained:
The Waldos met at 4:20 for exactly all of the reasons we have discussed in the past:
The time we got out of school was approximately 3 p.m., but some of us had after school sports activities that lasted until after 4 p.m.
There was just enough time to get back to the statue of Louis Pasteur to smoke and look for the pot fields drawn in a treasure map.
These days ‘420’ is used as a generic way of declaring one likes to use marijuana or just as a term for the substance itself. Its earliest connotation of having to do with the time a certain group of students congregated to smoke wacky tobaccy is unknown to many of those who now employ the term. Indeed, most instead believe one or more of the many spurious explanations that have since grown up about this much abused short form:
420 is the penal code section for marijuana use in California. Nope. Section 420 of the California penal code refers to obstructing entry on public land. The penal codes of other states list different entries for 420, but none of them matches anything having to do with marijuana.
However, on 1 January 2004 the Governor of California signed that state’s Senate Bill 420, which regulates marijuana used for medical purposes. This bill comes years after the term ‘420’ was associated with marijuana and indeed its number likely was chosen because of the existing pop culture connection. This is the tail wagging the dog, not the other way around.
It’s the Los Angeles or New York police radio code for marijuana smoking in progress.It’s not the police radio code for anything, let alone that.
It’s the number of chemical compounds in marijuana.The number of chemical compounds in marijuana is 315, according to the folks at High Times magazine.
April 20 is the date that Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, or Janis Joplin died.Though these performers were strongly identified with drug use during their brief lifetimes and the emerging drug culture after their demises, none of them kicked the bucket on April 20. Morrison died on July 3, Hendrix on September 18, and Joplin on October 4.
The 20th of April is the best time to plant marijuana.There’s no one “best time” — that answer would change from one part of the country to another, or even one country to another.
Albert Hofmann took the first deliberate LSD trip at 4:20 on 19 April 1943.This was indeed the case — his lab notes back this up. But this wasn’t the source of “420,” just an oddball coincidence. (For the pedants out there, Hofmann’s first LSD trip, which was accidental, took place on 16 April 1943.)
It’s the code you send to your drug dealer’s pager.Yeah, right. All drug dealers recognize a ‘420’ page as “Please be waiting on the corner with my baggie of wildwood weed.”
When the Grateful Dead toured, they always stayed in Room 420.Untrue, says Grateful Dead Productions spokesman Dennis McNally.
Spurious etymologies and uncertain definition aside, ‘420’ has slipped into a position of semi-respectability within the English lexicon. Various free-wheeling cities annually celebrate “hemp fests” on April 20. There’s a 4:20 record label in California, and a band called 4:20. Atlanta’s Sweetwater Brewing Co. sells its 420 Pale Ale in supermarkets and opens its doors to the public at 4:20 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. New York’s 420 Tours sells low-cost travel packages to the Netherlands and Jamaica. Highway 420 Radio broadcasts “music for the chemically enhanced.” And in 2001, the forReal.org web site of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Substance Abuse Prevention put out a public service document titled, “It’s 4:20 — Do You Know Where Your Teen Is?”
420s are routinely slipped into popular movies and television shows. In Fast Times at Ridgemont High the score of the football game was 42-0. Most of the clocks in Pulp Fiction are set to 4:20 (but not all: when the kid receives the watch it’s set at 9:00). And there are many other instances, so keep your eyes peeled.
However, as amusing as it is to tie 420 to pot smoking and hunt for it in popular movies, the number has its dark side. Hitler was born on 20 April 1889, and the massacre of 13 victims at Columbine High School in Colorado took place on 20 April 1999.
From: Hahaha [hahaha@sexyfun.net] Subject: Snowhite and the Seven Dwarfs – The REAL story!
Today, Snowhite was turning 18. The 7 Dwarfs always where very educated and polite with Snowhite. When they go out work at mornign, they promissed a *huge* surprise. Snowhite was anxious. Suddlently, the door open, and the Seven Dwarfs enter…
(This message is accompanied by an attachment with a .SCR or .EXE file extension .)
Origins: Snow White (also known as W95.Hybris.gen) is a worm activated when a victim receives a message like the one quoted above and executes its attachment. The worm modifies (or replaces) the recipient’s wsock32.dll file, then replicates by sending the same message (with a forged return address of hahaha@sexyfun.net to addresses found in the recipient’s e-mail (both inbound and outbound messages) or addresses found in web pages browsed by the recipient.
See the links below for more information on how to detect and remove Snow White.
Additional Information:
W95.Hybris.gen (Symantec Security Response)
W32/Hybris.gen@MM (McAfee Virus Information Library)
One of the downsides of the burgeoning Internet in the early 2000s was that it fostered the delirious spread of misinformation as revealed fact in the blink of an eye. That was the case in 2001, when widely-circulated photos which showed a large Asian man eating what appeared to be a cooked baby served at a restaurant were taken by many at face value. The pictures were later teamed with the breathless news that roast fetus was now the hottest dining craze in Taiwan, with outraged e-mails offering the offensive pictures as proof recipients could view for themselves:
Oh !! Oh !! How cruel can humans be??? Please finish your meal before open the files…. What u are going to witness here is a fact, don’t get scared !” It’s Taiwan’s hottest food…” In Taiwan, dead babies or fetuses could be bought at $50 to $70 from hospitals to meet the high demand for grilled and barbecued babies … What a sad state of affairs!! Please forward this msg to as many people as u can so it can be seen by the world and someone takes action on the same
The photographs shown above were taken seriously by a number of law enforcement agencies who viewed them, and both Scotland Yard and the FBI investigated the matter, trying to determine when and where the pictures were taken and the identities of those appearing in them.
The origins of the images were quickly uncovered: The man in the photographs was not a restaurant patron enjoying a common Taiwanese dish, but Chinese performance artist Zhu Yu, who staged a conceptual shock piece called “Eating People” at a Shanghai arts festival in 2000.
Maintaining that “No religion forbids cannibalism, nor can I find any law which prevents us from eating people,” Zhu Yu acted out a performance in which he appeared to eat a stillborn or aborted child and said that he “took advantage of the space between morality and the law and based my work on it.” (Whether Yu actually obtained and ate a fetus for his performance or employed a prop such as a doll’s head placed atop duck’s carcass is still a subject of debate.)
The controversial photographs have since been part of a number of art exhibits and caused another stir in 2003 when they were aired on television in the UK as part of the Beijing Swings documentary:
Channel Four has screened a controversial television programme which showed photographs of a man eating a baby. The photographs had been doing the rounds on the internet for some time. but it was the first time they had been aired on terrestrial television in the UK.
Beijing Swings showed colour pictures of Chinese artist Zhu Yu washing a dead stillborn baby in a sink and putting its dismembered parts in his mouth.
Yu, 32, said he had no need to defend himself because “an artist does not give answers”. But he conceded he was right “to be scolded” adding that it was his “responsibility” to spark debate about art and morality. He calls the piece “Eating People”.
Whatever Yu may have intended or done in the course of his performance art, it is certainly not the case that dead babies are “Taiwan’s hottest food.”
We do note that (unverified) reports going back at least as far as the mid-1990s have maintained that aborted fetuses have been bought and consumed as folk medicine in some parts of China:
Aborted human foetuses intended for human consumption are being sold for as little as 1 pound in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, according to reports in Hong Kong yesterday.
The Eastern Express newspaper said journalists from its sister publication, Eastweek, had gone to Shenzhen, across the border from Hong Kong, to see if foetuses were being sold. Shenzhen hospitals carried out 7,000 terminations last year, including a number on Hong Kong women seeking cheap abortions.
At the state-run Shenzhen Health Centre for Women and Children, a female doctor was asked for a foetus. The next day, she handed the reporter a “fist-sized glass bottle stuffed with thumb-sized foetuses”.
The doctor was quoted as saying: “There are 10 foetuses here, all aborted this morning. You can take them. We are a state hospital and don’t charge. Normally we doctors take them home to eat – all free. Since you don’t look well, you can take them.”
Zou Qin, a doctor working at the Luo Hu Clinic in Shenzhen, said the foetuses were “nutritious” and claimed to have eaten 100 herself in the past six months.
She said the “best” were first-born males from young women. “We don’t carry out abortions just to eat the foetuses,” she said, but added that the foetuses would be “wasted if not eaten”. The newspaper said the foetuses were eaten as a soup, together with pork and ginger.
A woman doctor, referred to only as Wang, from the Sin Hua Clinic, Shenzhen, was quoted as saying the foetuses were “even better than placentae” in nutritional value. “They can make your skin smoother, your body stronger and are good for kidneys,” she said.
Dr Warren Lee, president of the Hong Kong Nutrition Association, said: “Eating foetuses is a traditional Chinese medicine deeply founded in folklore.” However, he considered the alleged properties of foetuses little more than old-wives’ tales. Others said the practice was abhorrent.
Bill Clinton has quietly done away with several dozen people who possessed incriminating evidence about him.
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Multiple versions of lengthy lists of deaths associated with Bill Clinton have been circulating online for about twenty years now (including the latest iteration, titled “The List of Clinton Associates Who Allegedly Died Mysteriously. Check It Out”). According to those lists, close to fifty colleagues, advisors, and citizens who were about to testify against the Clintons died in suspect circumstances, with the unstated implication being that Bill Clinton or his henchmen were behind each untimely demise.
We shouldn’t have to tell anyone not to believe this claptrap, but we will anyway. In a frenzied media climate where the Chief Executive couldn’t boff a White House intern without the whole world finding out every niggling detail of each encounter and demanding his removal from office, are we seriously to believe the same man had been having double handfuls of detractors and former friends murdered with impunity?
Don’t be swayed by the number of names listed on screeds like this. Any public figure is bound to have a much wider circle of acquaintance than an ordinary citizen would. Moreover, the acquaintanceship is often one-sided: though many of the people enumerated on this list might properly claim to have “known” Clinton, he wouldn’t know or remember having met a great number of them.
“Body count” lists are not a new phenomenon. Lists documenting all the allegedly “suspicious” deaths of persons connected with the assassination of John F. Kennedy have been circulating for decades, and the same techniques used to create and spread the JFK lists have been employed in the Clinton version:
List every dead person with even the most tenuous of connections to your subject. It doesn’t matter how these people died, or how tangential they were to your subject’s life. The longer the list, the more impressive it looks and the less likely anyone will be to challenge it. By the time readers get to the bottom of the list, they’ll be too weary to wonder what could possibly be relevant about the death of people such as Bill Clinton’s mother’s chiropractor.
Play word games. Make sure every death is presented as “mysterious.” All accidental deaths are to be labelled “suspicious,” even though by definition accidents occur when something unexpected goes wrong. Every self-inflicted death discussed must include the phrase “ruled a suicide” to imply just the opposite. When an autopsy contradicts a “mysterious death” theory, dispute it; when none was performed because none was needed, claim that “no autopsy was allowed.” Make liberal use of words such as ‘allegedly’ and ‘supposedly’ to dismiss facts you can’t support or contradict with hard evidence.
Make sure every inconsistency or unexplained detail you can dredge up is offered as evidence of a conspiracy, no matter how insignificant or pointless it may be. If an obvious suicide is discovered wearing only one shoe, ignore the physical evidence of self-inflicted death and dwell on the missing shoe. You don’t have to establish an alternate theory of the death; just keep harping that the missing shoe “can’t be explained.”
If the data doesn’t fit your conclusion, ignore it. You don’t have to explain why the people who claimed to have the most damaging goods on Bill Clinton (e.g., Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky, Kenneth Starr), walked around unscathed while dozens of bit players were supposedly bumped off. It’s inconvenient for you, so don’t mention it.
Most important, don’t let facts and details stand in your way! If you can pass off a death by pneumonia as a “suicide,” do it! If a cause of death contradicts your conspiracy theory, claim it was “never determined.” If your chronology of events is impossible, who cares? It’s not like anybody is going to check up on this stuff …
Multiple versions of this “body count” list have been circulating online for two decades now. New victim names are routinely added and old ones taken off, forming an endless variety of permutations. At this point, there is no one “official” list.
But where did all this craziness start? In a 1994 letter to congressional leaders, former Rep. William Dannemeyer listed 24 people with some connection to Clinton who had died “under other than natural circumstances” and called for hearings on the matter.
Dannemeyer’s list of “suspicious deaths” was largely taken from one compiled by Linda Thompson, an Indianapolis lawyer who in 1993 quit her year-old general practice to run her American Justice Federation, a for-profit group that promotes pro-gun causes and various conspiracy theories through a shortwave radio program, a computer bulletin board, and sales of its newsletter and videos.
Her list, called “The Clinton Body Count: Coincidence or the Kiss of Death?” then contained the names of 34 people she believed had died suspiciously and who had ties to the Clinton family. Thompson admitted she had “no direct evidence” of Clinton’s killing anyone. Indeed, she said the deaths were probably caused by “people trying to control the President” but refused to say who they were. Thompson said her allegations of murder “seem groundless only because the mainstream media haven’t done enough digging.”
Ah, but they had. If not before she put her list together, at least afterwards. Anyone who continues to state the mainstream media has given these claims short shrift is being disingenuous.
Since 1994, various respected news outlets have been confronted with versions of the “Clinton Body Count” list, run their own investigations of a few of the claims, and found nothing to substantiate what they looked into. Those investigations would culminate in yet another story about an oddball conspiracy rumor.
But conspiracy theories don’t die that easily. These “body count” lists and the many specious claims contained therein continue to circulate in cyberspace and beyond: yesterday’s newspaper articles are forgotten with the next day’s delivery, but e-mail lives forever.
A 2007 version of the “Clinton Body Count” list was headed with this entry:
James McDougal — Clinton’s convicted Whitewater partner died of an apparent heart attack, while in solitary confinement. He was a key witness in Ken Starr’s investigation.
James McDougal, a key witness for Whitewater prosecutors when the investigation centered on an Arkansas land deal in which the president and McDougal were involved, had a pre-existing heart condition and died of a heart attack on 8 March 1998 while in solitary confinement at the Federal Medical Center prison in Fort Worth. The ailing McDougal had been placed in solitary as punishment for failing to provide a urine sample for a drug test. On the day before his death and while still in his regular cell (where he had access to his heart medications), he had complained of dizziness, and while being processed for isolation he threw up. However, once in isolation, he did not ask for his medicines and appeared to guards “alert, well-oriented and absent any visible signs of distress” right up until his death. An investigation into the circumstances of his demise did not find evidence of foul play.
(The McDougal entry was not part of the “Clinton Body Count” list as it circulated in 1998.)
1. Mary Mohane — former White House intern gunned down in a coffee shop. Nothing was taken. It was suspected that she was about to testify about sexual harassment at the White House.
Former White House intern Mary Caitrin Mahoney, 25, manager of a Georgetown Starbucks, was killed along with two co-workers (Emory Allen Evans, 25, and Aaron David Goodrich, 18) on 6 July 1997 during a robbery of the shop. In March 1999, Carl Derek Havord Cooper (29) of Washington was arrested and charged with these murders.
Yes, it is unusual that three employees were killed in the course of a robbery during which nothing was taken. According to Cooper’s 26 April 2000 guilty plea (he received life with no hope of parole), he went to the Starbucks to rob the place, figuring the receipts from the July 4 weekend would make for a fat take. He came in after closing, waved a .38, and ordered all three Starbucks employees into the back room. Once there, Mahoney made a run for it after Cooper fired a warning shot into the ceiling. She was ordered back to the room, but then went for the gun. Cooper shot her, then afterwards shot the other two employees. He left empty-handed, afraid the shots had attracted police attention. As regrettable as these three deaths were, this was nothing but a case of a robbery gone wrong.
And, right away, we have come to the first big lie of the “Clinton Body Count” list: Any unexplained death can automatically be attributed to President Clinton by inventing a connection between him and the victim. Mary Mahoney did once work as an intern at the White House, but so have hundreds of other people who are all still alive. There is no credible reason why, of all the interns who have served in the Clinton White House, Mahoney alone would be the target of a Clinton-directed killing. (Contrary to public perception, very few interns work in the West Wing of the White House or have any contact with the President. The closest most interns get to the chief executive is a single brief handshake or group photo.)
The putative reason offered for Mahoney’s slaying, that she was about to testify about sexual harrassment in the White House, was a lie. This absurd justification apparently sprang from a hint dropped by Mike Isikoff of Newsweek just before the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke that a “former White House staffer” with the initial “M” was about to talk about her affair with Clinton. We all know now, of course, that the “staffer” referred to was Monica Lewinsky, not Mary Mahoney. The conspiracy buffs maintained that White House hit men rushed out, willy-nilly, and gunned down the first female ex-intern they could find whose name began with “M.”
2. Vincent Foster — former White House Counsel, found dead of a gunshot wound to the head and ruled a suicide. He had significant knowledge of the Clintons’ financial affairs and was a business partner with Hillary. If the Clintons are guilty of the crimes they are accused of by Larry, Vincent Foster would have detailed knowledge of those crimes.
This laundry list of deaths always refers to someone taking his life as “ruled a suicide,” thus implying another conclusion of equal likelihood was capriciously dismissed by someone who had the power to do so. From here on, read “ruled a suicide” as “an investigation was carried out and arrived at this ruling as the only reasonable conclusion.”
White House deputy counsel Vince Foster committed suicide on the night of 20 July 1993 by shooting himself once in the head, a day after he contacted his doctor about his depression. A note in the form of a draft resignation letter was found in the bottom of his briefcase a week after his death. (Note that this letter was not, as is often claimed, a “suicide note”; it was Foster’s outline for a letter of resignation.) Foster cited negative Wall Street Journal editorials about him, as well as the much-criticized role of the counsel’s office in the controversial firing of seven White House travel office workers.
On 10 October 1997, special prosecutor Kenneth Starr released his report on the investigation into Foster’s death, the third such investigation (after ones conducted by the coroner and Starr’s predecessor, Robert B. Fiske) of the matter. The 114-page summary of a three-year investigation concluded that Foster shot himself with the pistol discovered in his right hand. There was no sign of a struggle, nor any evidence he’d been drugged or intoxicated or that his body had been moved.
If Foster had been murdered or if unanswered questions about his death remained, Starr would have been the last person to want to conclude the investigation prematurely. Or are we to believe Kenneth Starr is part of the cover-up, too? And if we buy into this conspiracy theory, what are we expected to believe? That a group of professional killers capable of furtively carrying out dozens of murders all over the world shot Vince Foster, then clumsily dumped him in a park (after he had bled out), planted a gun he didn’t own in his hand (without bothering to press his fingerprints onto it), amateurishly forged a suicide note (in several different handwritings), then expected the nation would believe his death was a suicide?
3. C. Victor Raiser, II – former National Finance Co-Chairman of Clinton for President, and Montgomery Raiser, his son. Both died in a suspicious private plane crash in Alaska. No cause determined. Raiser was considered to be a major player on the Clinton team.
All plane crashes are “suspicious,” because airplanes are supposed to stay in the air, and when they don’t it’s because something went terribly wrong. Pilot error and mechanical failure are by far the most common causes underlying any crash. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigates every downed plane in the U.S., and though they might not always pin down the exact cause of a crash, they’re generally pretty good about ruling out the use of explosives or mechanical tampering. If the NTSB doesn’t find evidence of tampering or explosives, then that’s not what downed the plane, and we’re left with pilot error and mechanical failure as our choices.
Raiser, his son, and three others died in a plane crash in Alaska on 30 July 1992 during a fishing trip. The pilot and another passenger survived and were hospitalized with severe burns. While the “body count” list claims “no cause determined,” the NTSB reported otherwise: pilot error in a small plane flying in mountainous terrain during low visibility conditions led to the crash.
4. Paul Tully — DNC Political Director, was found dead in a Little Rock hotel room. No cause was ever determined and no autopsy was allowed. Tully was a key member of the damage control squad and came up with some of the Clinton strategies.
Paul Tully died on 24 September 1992. Problem is, there wasn’t anything the least bit unusual about his death, so whoever cooked up this list had to lie and claim that “no cause was ever determined” and “no autopsy was allowed.” However, an autopsy was performed, and Tully’s cause of death was determined: a massive heart attack. (Not a surprising demise, given that Tully was extremely overweight, a heavy drinker, and a chain smoker.) According to Steve Nawojczyk, the Pulaski County coroner, “An autopsy by the Arkansas medical examiner’s office discovered advanced coronary artery disease.” He added that investigators found no evidence of external trauma to the body.
Note again that the conspiracy buffs offer no putative reason for Tully’s “killing” and would have us believe that Clinton ordered his chief strategist rubbed out while the most important election of his career was a little over a month away.
5. Ed Willey — Clinton fund raiser. Found in the woods in Virginia with a gunshot wound to the head. Ruled a suicide.
Ed Willey was a former Virginia state senator and a lawyer; his wife Kathleen was active in Democratic state politics, worked as a volunteer (including some fund-raising efforts) on behalf of the Clinton campaign in Virginia in 1992, and later served as a volunteer in the White House Social Office. Ed Willey’s death was as clear cut a case of suicide as one is likely to find: he was a desperate, unstable man who (along with his wife) spent money lavishly, stole $275,000 of a client’s money, and was about half a million dollars in debt to the IRS. He took his own life on 29 November 1993, leaving behind a suicide note found by his wife reading: “Saying I’m sorry doesn’t begin to explain. I hope one day you will forgive me.”
At the same time as Willey was killing himself, his wife was allegedly being groped by Bill Clinton. She said she’d gone to the Chief Executive looking for a job to help her family out of its financial crisis and found herself fending off his advances. Clinton admitted to the meeting but denied her version of what took place. Kathleen Willey testified in Paula Jones’ sexual harrassment suit against Clinton, but she never claimed that Clinton had her husband killed.
6. Hershell Friday — Clinton fund-raiser. His plane exploded.
Herschel Friday, an Arkansas lawyer who had been on the Clinton presidential campaign finance committee, died in a airplane accident on 1 March 1994. His plane did not “explode”; this accident was another case of pilot error that occurred when the 73-year-old Friday, at the plane’s controls, crashed it during an attempted landing on a poorly-lighted private airfield at dusk on a dark and drizzly day.
7. Jerry Parks — former security team member for Governor Clinton. Prior to his death he had compiled an extensive file on Clinton’s activities. His family had reported being followed and his home broken into just before being gunned down at a deserted intersection.
On 26 September 1993, Luther (Jerry) Parks was hit with ten bullets from a 9-mm semiautomatic handgun as he left a Mexican restaurant at the edge of Little Rock. His murder remains unsolved.
Parks’ security company guarded Clinton’s campaign headquarters in 1992. Parks’ son, Gary, asserted in Circle of Power and The Clinton Chronicles (both video products of Linda Thompson’s American Justice Federation) that his father collected a secret file of Clinton’s indiscretions, and that his father was using the file to try to blackmail the Clinton campaign. (He also claimed that Vince Foster knew of the file’s existence.) Despite these allegations, the younger Parks never produced the mysterious file, and Clyde Steelman, a homicide sergeant with the Little Rock police force, dismissed Gary Parks’ theories of his father’s death as “unsubstantiated, nothing to grasp.” A far more likely suspect in the murder was Jerry Parks’ former partner, with whom Parks had quarreled bitterly.
8. John Wilson — former Washington D.C. council member. Had ties to Whitewater. Died of a very suspicious hanging suicide.
John Wilson was the chairman of the District of Columbia Council, and his suicide was far from “very suspicious”: Wilson had a long history of depression, was wrestling with marital problems, and had tried to kill himself on at least four other occasions. He finally succeeded on 19 May 1993. Upon his death, Wilson’s wife said, “[His] depression was an inherited problem; that he was able to contribute so much over the years in the face of his disability was a miracle.” Police said that he did not leave a note and that there were no signs of foul play.
Wilson had absolutely nothing in common with Clinton other than that they worked in the same city (i.e., Washington, D.C.). The claim that Wilson had anything to do with the Whitewater real estate controversy is laughable.
9. Kathy Ferguson — former wife of Arkansas State Trooper Danny Ferguson, the co-defendant with Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones lawsuit. Found dead in her living room of a gunshot wound to the head. Ruled a suicide. Interestingly, her packed suitcases seemed to indicate she was about to go somewhere.
Kathy Ferguson killed herself with a gunshot to the right temple on 11 May 1994 at the home of her boyfriend, Bill Shelton. Their relationship had fallen on hard times, with each accusing the other of having been unfaithful. Ferguson left behind a suicide note that read: “I can’t stay here any longer. Things will never be the same for us. I can’t take that.” Close by was another note from Shelton questioning her relationship with another man, which Ferguson’s daughter said her mother had been upset over.
We found no mention of packed suitcases in any of the reports about Ferguson’s death, but even if there were, it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising. Is it so unusual that a woman might be thinking of moving out of the house of a boyfriend who had quarreled with her and challenged her fidelity?
10. Bill Shelton — Arkansas state trooper and fiance of Kathy Ferguson. Allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself at her grave.
Shelton killed himself over Kathy Ferguson’s grave on 12 June 1994, leaving a suicide note that was found beside his body. Just a month earlier he had quarreled with his girlfriend, accused her of cheating on him, and driven her to suicide. There was nothing mysterious about his death or his reasons for taking his life. And if the idea that the ex-wife of an Arkansas state trooper constitutes a Clinton “connection” weren’t absurd enough, we’re now offered the boyfriend of an ex-wife of an Arkansas state trooper.
11. Gandy Baugh — attorney for Dan Lasater in a financial misconduct case. Supposedly jumped out the window of a tall building to commit suicide.
News accounts stated that Gandy Baugh died “at home” on 8 January 1994 without specifying the causes. “Died at home” is a euphemism often employed in news articles and obituaries to avoid a direct mention of suicide, but we haven’t found any definitive information about how Baugh died.
12. Dr. Donald Rogers — dentist. Killed in a suspicious plane crash on his way to an interview with reporter Ambrose Evans-Pritchard to reveal information about Clinton.
On 3 March 1994, the Cessna plane carrying a pilot, dentist, Donald Rogers, and two other passengers crashed. The pilot had earlier radioed in that he was experiencing electrical trouble and then lost radio contact. The NTSB’s investigation of the crash found nothing “mysterious” about it: the plane’s left generator had severely overheated and shut down, leaving the plane without electrical systems; the plane went down far off its planned route, and the pilot was good and lost at the time of the crash.
No amount of digging has disclosed why a dentist would have such revelatory information about the President of the United States that a plane crash had to be arranged to bump him off.
13. Stanley Huggins — lawyer investigating Madison Guaranty. Suicide. His extensive report has never been released.
How anyone can confuse dying of pneumonia with suicide is beyond us. Huggins died on 23 June 1994, and according Dr. Richard Callery, Delaware’s top medical examiner, viral myocarditis and bronchial pneumonia killed Huggins. Lt. Joel Ivory of the University of Delaware police said his exhaustive investigation of Huggins’s death turned up “no sign at all of foul play.”
14. Florence Martin — Accountant for the CIA and had information on the Barry Seal case. Three gunshot wounds to the head.
On 23 October 1994, 69-year-old Florence Martin of Mabelle, Texas (40 miles from Wichita Falls), was murdered in her home by three gunshots to the head through a pillow. She wasn’t an accountant for the CIA, though: She worked the graveyard shift at a convenience store in nearby Seymour and had lived in that area for decades.
In 2012, Jack Wesley Melton was charged with Martin’s murder. DNA found at the scene was matched to him, leading to his arrest.
15. Suzane Coleman — reportedly had an affair with Clinton. Was seven months pregnant at the time she was found dead of a gun shot wound to the back of the head, ruled suicide.
At the time of Susan Coleman’s suicide, Bill Clinton was her law professor. In 1992 an overzealous supporter of George Bush hired investigators to probe this girl’s 1977 suicide, and they found no evidence that she and Clinton had an affair. It was an old rumor and a baseless one, and even a determined attempt at muckraking turned up nothing to substantiate it.
16. Paula Grober — Clinton’s interpreter for the deaf. Traveled with Clinton from 1978 until her death in 1992 in a one-car accident. There were no witnesses.
The accident that killed Paula Gober took place during the afternoon of 7 December 1992. Her car overturned at a curve in the highway, throwing her 33 feet from the vehicle. No one witnessed the accident. And again, no one has provided any explanation for what secrets about Clinton an interpreter might possess that would merit her murder.
17. Paul Wilcher — attorney investigating corruption. He had investigated federal elections, drug and gun smuggling through Mena, the Waco incident, and had just delivered a lengthy report to Janet Reno. He died in his home of unknown causes.
Wilcher’s partially decomposed body was found seated on the toilet in his Washington, D.C., home on 22 June 1993, and his death was attributed to natural causes. According to the Washington Times, Wilcher “was investigating the theory of an ‘October Surprise’ conspiracy during the 1980 federal election campaign. He had been interviewing an inmate who claimed to have piloted George Bush to Paris so he could secretly seek to delay the release of 52 American hostages in Iran.” President Clinton, just a year into his first term, would hardly be likely to give up a key political advantage by bumping off someone who was supposedly about to dig up some major dirt on the opposition party
18. Jon Parnell Walker — RTC investigator who mysteriously fell to his death from an apartment balcony.
We have turned up no information about this man, not a report of his death nor of his being an Resolution Trust Corporation investigator. Various versions of this list state that his death took place on 15 August 1993 at the Lincoln Towers in Arlington, Virginia, but we’ve found no documentation of that.
19. Ron Brown — former DNS Chairman, Commerce Secretary. Reported to have died in a plane crash, but new evidence reveals he may have been shot in the head. He was being investigated by a special investigator and was about to be indicted with 54 others. He spoke publicly of his willingness to “make a deal” with the prosecutors to save himself a few days before the fatal trip. He was not supposed to be on the flight but was asked to go at the last minute. (This count does not include the other business leaders and other passengers who died on this government-sponsored trade mission.)
What “new evidence”? Ron Brown and 34 others were killed in a plane crash in Croatia on 3 April 1996. The plane slammed into a mountain while on landing approach. There were no survivors.
Much has been made of an x-ray of Brown’s skull showing what supposedly looks like a round entry wound. Closer examination of Brown’s skull by military officials revealed no bullet, no bone fragments, no metal fragments and, even more telling, no exit wound.
Simply imagining a scenario under which Ron Brown could have been shot takes one into the realm of the absurd. Was he shot in the head during the flight, in full view of thirty-four other witnesses? (If so, how did the shooters get off the plane?) Did the killers shoot him before the flight, then bundle his body into a seat (just like Weekend at Bernie’s) and hope nobody noticed the gaping hole in his head? Or did Croatian commandos fortuitously appear on the scene to scale a mountain and pump a bullet into the head of an already-dead plane crash victim?
An exhaustive Air Force investigation of the crash found that pilot error was to blame:
The aircrew made errors while planning and executing the mishap flight, which, when combined, were a cause of the mishap. During mission planning, the crew’s review of the Dubrovnik approach failed to determine that it required two automatic direction finders, or ADFs, and that it could not be flown with the single ADF onboard their aircraft. Additionally, the crew improperly flight planned their route which added 15 minutes to their flight time. The pilots rushed their approach and did not properly configure the aircraft for landing prior to commencing the final segment of the approach. They crossed the final approach fix flying at 80 knots above final approach speed, and without clearance from the tower.
As a result of the rushed approach, the late configuration, and a radio call from a pilot on the ground, the crew was distracted from adequately monitoring the final approach. The pilots flew a course 9 degrees left of the correct course. They also failed to identify the missed approach point and to execute a timely missed approach.
20. Barbara Wise — Commerce Department secretary. Worked with Ron Brown and John Huang and had extensive knowledge of their activities. Found dead in her locked office the day after Thanksgiving. It was ruled a suicide. Interestingly, she was found partially clothed, bruised, and in a pool of blood.
There was no pool of blood, and Barbara Wise’s death was never ruled a suicide by anyone. She was discovered in her Commerce Department office on 29 November 1996 after having last been seen alive on 27 November 1996, the day before Thanksgiving. A thorough investigation uncovered no evidence of foul play or suicide. Wise had a history of frequent and severe health problems, including liver ailments, and her death was attributed to natural causes.
21. Charles Meissner — Assistant Secretary of Commerce. John Huang was given a special security clearance by Meissner. Shortly thereafter, he died in the crash of a small plane.
Charles Meissner died in the same plane crash that took the life of Ron Brown, the one in Croatia on 3 April 1996. Fourteen Commerce Department staffers died in that crash, Meissner and Brown among them.
We’re now entering an long segment of the list wherein a number of deaths are tied to those of Don Henry and Kevin Ives, who were supposedly linked to Bill Clinton. All of this linkage is one big canard: Henry and Ives had nothing to do with Clinton; they were two young men who foolishly ripped off drugs from a dealer and were beaten to death in revenge. With no link between Clinton and Henry or Ives, the following eight entries collapse like a house of cards.
22 & 23. Kevin Ives and Don Henry — seventeen-year-old boys who apparently saw something related to drugs in Mena by accident late at night. Officially ruled an accidental death on the train tracks, but evidence shows they died before being placed on the tracks — one of a crushed skull and the other of a knife wound in the back.
Henry and Ives were run over by a train on 23 Aug 1987. Dr. Fahmy Malak, Arkansas’ former state medical examiner, ruled the deaths accidental, saying the teens fell asleep on the tracks after smoking marijuana. A 1988 Saline County grand jury determined the boys were murdered and their bodies afterwards laid on the tracks, but no other conclusions were reached and no indictments were returned.
A number of Malak’s determinations had been challenged and overturned during his career. He certainly wasn’t always a conscientious medical examiner, and his Ives and Henry rulings were only two of many such he botched.
Getting back to the real meat of who killed the boys, we find nothing that ties Ives and Henry to Clinton. Though various of these lists will claim the boys accidentally stumbled onto a “protected” drug drop and were killed for it, there’s no reason to believe even that. In a 25 May 1990 hearing before U.S. Magistrate Henry Jones Jr., Katherine Brightop said her ex-boyfriend Paul William Criswell told her that he and three other men were involved in the teenagers’ deaths. Brightop said Criswell told her the boys tried to steal cocaine from Callaway’s home and they were caught and beaten to death before their bodies were placed on the tracks.
24. Keith Koney — had information on the Ives and Henry deaths. Died in a motorcycle accident with reports of a high-speed car chased involved.
19-year-old Keith Coney died on 17 May 1988 when the motorcycle he was driving struck the back of a tractor-trailer. He was riding a motorcycle he’d stolen the day before. There were no reports of a high-speed car chase involved in his fatal traffic accident.
25. Keith McKaskle — had information on the Ives and Henry deaths. Stabbed to death.
In August 1989, Ronald Shane Smith was sentenced to ten years for the 10 November 1988 murder of Keith McKaskle. McKaskle had earlier expressed fears for his life, linking them to his knowing something about “the railroad track thing”. Smith may have been paid to kill McKaskle, as a prison inmate said he had been approached and offered $4,000 to kill McKaskle himself.
26. Gregory Collins — had information on the Ives and Henry deaths. Gunshot wound to the head.
Greg Collins (25) of Bryant, Arkansas, was found shot in woods near Rosston on 2 December 1989. If he truly knew something about drug-related murders, that’s reason enough for him to have been killed without any connection to Bill Clinton.
27. Jeff Rhodes — had information on the Ives and Henry and McKaskle deaths. Tortured, mutilated, shot, body burned in a dumpster.
In July 1989 Frank Pilcher was arrested for the April 1989 murder of Jeffrey Rhodes. Rhodes had earlier told his father he feared for his life because he’d witnessed a narcotics transaction.
Rhodes was last seen alive on April 3. His body was discovered in a dumpster on April 19. He’d been shot twice in the head and his body was badly burned. The body was likely burned in an effort to destroy forensic evidence that would led investigators to the murderer.
28. James Milam — had information on the Ives and Henry deaths. He was decapitated. The coroner ruled death due to natural causes.
This is my favorite entry. Remember that Arkansas medical examiner, the one I said wasn’t always the most conscientious investigator on God’s green earth? Yep, we’re about to see him again. Fahmy Malak listed James Milam’s cause of death as a perforated ulcer, adding that Milam’s small dog afterwards ate the dead man’s head, accounting for Milam’s headless condition.
Milam’s daughter-in-law insisted Milam was murdered. She claimed Malak showed her photographs of the headless corpse, and the neck was cut clean. The Milam family has not attempted to legally challenge the ruling because of the expense, so we’ll never know which way the cat jumps, ulcer or murder.
Whatever killed him, Milam died three months before the Ives and Henry murders. What are we supposed to believe here, that Clinton conspirators knocked off someone who “had information on the Ives and Henry deaths” three months before Ives and Henry actually died? Wow, talk about a preemptive strike!
29. Jordan Kettleson — had information on the Ives and Henry deaths. Found shot in the front seat of his pick up truck.
21-year-old Jordan Ketelsen died on 25 June 1990.
30. Dr. Stanley Heard — Chair, National Chiropractic Health Care Advisory Committee. He personally treated Clinton’s mother, stepfather, and brother. His personal small plane developed problems so he rented another. Fire broke out in flight and he crashed.
Stanley Heard and Stephen Dickson died on 10 September 1993, when their Piper Turbo Lance II caught fire shortly after takeoff from Dulles airport and crashed. They’d attended a briefing that morning on the Clinton administration’s health care plan. Dickson’s plane had developed mechanical problems on the way to Washington the week before, so Dickson and Heard rented the Cherokee in St. Louis to make the trip. They rented a badly maintained plane, and it cost them their lives.
Here is what the NTSB had to say about this crash.
I’ve found nothing on the National Chiropractic Health Care Advisory that Heard supposedly chaired.
31. Steve Dickson — attorney for Heard. Died in same plane crash.
Dickson attended the same briefing Heard did. We do not know if he was there as Heard’s lawyer or for independent reasons.
32. John Hillier — video journalist and investigator. He helped to produce the documentaries “Circle of Power,” and “The Clinton Chronicles.” He mysteriously died in a dentist’s chair for no apparent reason.
Again, we could find no record of this man’s death or of his work. There have been a few dental chair deaths, but we turned up nothing on this one.
33. Maj. Gen. William Robertson 34. Col. William Densberger 35. Col. Robert Kelly 36. Spec. Gary Rhodes 37. Steve Willis 38. Robert Williams 39. Conway LeBleu 40. Todd McKeehan 41. Sgt. Brian Haney 42. Sgt. Tim Sabel 43. Maj.William Barkley 44. Capt. Scott Reynolds * all former Clinton bodyguards who are dead.
Steve Willis, Robert Williams, Todd McKeehan, and Conway LeBleu were Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents killed during the Waco confrontation on 28 February 1993.
Brian Haney, Timothy Sabel, William Barkley, and Scott Reynolds died in a helicopter crash on 19 May 1993. These four were members of Marine Helicopter Squadron One, the unit responsible for transporting the President. They died when the Blackhawk helicopter they had taken out for a maintenance-evaluation flight crashed. There was no evidence of sabotage. Clinton had set foot in the aircraft on only one occasion, two months earlier, when he traveled from the White House to the USS Theodore Roosevelt.
Jarrett Robertson, William Densberger, Robert Kelly, and Gary Rhodes all died on 23 February 1993 when their Army UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter crashed on landing in Weisbaden, Germany. A jury later found that the pilots were not at fault, but that the helicopter “entered into an uncontrollable right turn caused by a design defect.”
45. Gary Johnson — former attorney for Larry Nichols, severely beaten and left for dead.
Again, we could find nothing on this incident or even this man’s life.
46. Dennis Patrick — had millions of dollars laundered through his account at Lasater & Co. without his knowledge. There have been several attempts on his life, all unsuccessful.
It’s hard to know what to say about this one. Though we found credible reference to Patrick’s life having been in danger a few times, we were unable to trace back to news reports on the original incidents. Without seeing them, we’re not confident in stating an opinion on whether or not those attempts took place.
Patrick was a client of Lasater, albeit a reluctant one. He was asked to open an account there, he refused, one was opened for him anyway, and he was handed “profits” from one transaction for his part in allowing whatever was going on to take place. Again, someone who got involved with drug dealers ended up in trouble. In this case, an otherwise upstanding man took money he knew to be dirty to keep quiet about what his account was being used for. If was subsequently chased by drug dealers who didn’t want the details of the transactions to come to light, was that all that surprising?
47. L.J. Davis — reporter. While investigating the Clinton scandals he was attacked in his hotel room and his notes were taken. He survived.
Davis said he had awakened in his hotel room with a big bump on his head. He soon admitted having drunk at least four martinis that night. No pages were missing from his notebook, and he had no idea how he ended up on the floor. “I certainly wasn’t about to conclude that somebody cracked me on the head,” Davis said at the time.
48. Larry Nichols — former marketing director of ADFA. Responsible for bringing forth more evidence and witnesses on Clinton corruption than any other source. Very public about his claims against Clinton. He has suffered six beatings, arrest on trumped up charges, and a near arrest.
In 1988 Larry Nichols, then a marketing director for the Arkansas Development Finance Authority, was fired from his job for making hundreds of calls to the Nicaraguan contras from his office. In 1990 he filed a lawsuit against Clinton claiming the then-Governor of Arkansas and others made him the scapegoat in a misappropriation-of-funds charge that cost him his job. In that suit he also tossed in claims of extramarital affairs, naming five women Clinton was supposed to have chased across the sheets. Nichols withdrew his lawsuit in 1992 and issued a round of apologies to everyone involved. He admitted what he’d said had been an attempt to destroy the Governor by innuendo.
Nichols has since changed his tune yet again, and has returned to making allegations against Clinton, always being careful to stop just short of asserting Clinton is involved in various murders and other crimes Nichols points to as “suspicious.”
Since his dismissal from the AFDA, Nichols has made a career of peddling anti-Clinton books and tapes to the lunatic fringe. Take anything claimed about or by this man with a huge grain of salt.
Now, ask yourself: how many people with whom you were acquainted have died mysteriously or violently in the past 10 years.
The bottom line on this piece of e-lore? It’s a badly worked laundry list dressed up to appear significant. The promised damning connections to the Chief Executive are missing, with innuendo misinformation offered up in their place. Nothing ties Clinton to any of these deaths, something this list (and others of its ilk) conveniently glosses over. What evidence is offered that would compel a rational person to believe there was Clinton involvement in any of these deaths?
Clinton was acquainted with some people who died — that’s about all one can make of this list. Indeed, that’s far more than can be made of a number of the entries, specifically, that of Ives and Henry and all those supposedly tied to theirs.
Though it’s clear from digging through numerous newspaper articles there was a thriving and dangerous drug culture in Little Rock, how or why this should be connected to Bill Clinton is left unanswered. Regrettably, Little Rock is akin to numerous other large cities: it has its share of drug dealers, murders, and violence. It also has one very famous citizen. And that’s about as much of a connection as anyone can make.
Whereas a typical private citizen has a much smaller circle of acquaintance, those in public office come into contact with a great many people over the course of their careers. It is therefore not unusual to find at least a few accidental deaths, homicides, and suicides among any politician’s list of contacts. (For example, a “body count” list exists for George Bush.)
A number of suicides are enumerated in this list. Suicide is far from an unusual mode of demise. It claims 32,000 lives in the U.S. every year, and it’s the 9th leading cause of death. It is indeed a rare person who does not know someone who died by his own hand.
Deaths by airplane crash account for a number of entries on the list. Again, this is not all that surprising. Every year many small planes crash in the United States, and some of those crashes result in fatalities. As mentioned above, the National Transportation Safety Board investigates every one of them, to determine both the cause of the accident as well as to gather data that will help prevent future tragedies. The agency does a thorough job of looking into the circumstances surrounding each downed plane. To describe any of the plane crash deaths on this list as “suspicious” is to suggest the NTSB was part of a coverup.
There have been a couple of unsolved murders (Jerry Parks, Kevin Ives, and Don Henry), but there have also been deaths by natural causes that have been tossed into the mix willy-nilly simply to boost the body count. (As we said earlier, how can anyone claim a death by pneumonia was a suicide?) All the best lies make sure to mix a bit of truth in with them, and the few genuinely unsolved murders work to cloak the many less credible claims in an aura of plausibility. Don’t be overly bemused by them — study each entry on its own merits.
One final question to ask yourself before falling for any Clinton Body Count list: If the Chief Executive was having people bumped off left, right, and center, why aren’t Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp on this list? At the time of Mary Mahoney’s death — a death this list hints was ordered by Clinton — neither Tripp nor Lewinsky were the high-profile household names they now are; they were complete unknowns. It would be another six months before information about them would explode into the news. If the President were in the habit of having those dangerous to his presidency put in the ground, why didn’t he order these deaths?
The August 2019 in-custody death by suicide of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein triggered a new round of attempts to connect the Clintons with a murder plot conspiracy.
A lucky bargain hunter became a millionaire after finding an original print of the Declaration of Independence in the frame of an old painting.
Rating:
Urban legendry includes numerous “windfall” tales involving fortuitous discoveries of seemingly ordinary objects that proved to be extraordinarily valuable. (See our King of the Rode article for one example.)
Every now and then one of these windfall things turns out to be for real, however.
In 1989, a Philadelphia financial analyst bought an old painting (a depiction of a country scene) for $4 at a flea market in Adamstown, Pennsylvania, mostly because he liked the frame. He liked it even more once he found that the painting housed a rare and valuable document.
The buyer was investigating a tear in the canvas, and the frame fell apart in his hands when he attempted to detach it from the painting, leading him to discover a folded document that appeared to be an old copy of the Declaration of Independence stored between the canvas and its wood backing. After a friend who collected Civil War memorabilia advised him to have it appraised, he learned that the document was in fact a rare original Dunlap broadside, one of 500 official copies from the first printing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Only 23 similar copies were known to exist before this find, of which a mere two were privately owned:
This rare document was offered for sale by Sotheby’s on 4 June 1991, and the lucky find fetched even more than had been anticipated: the $800,000 to $1.2 million estimate turned into a $2.42 million sale by the sound of the gavel:
“This was a record for any printed Americana,” said David Redden, the auctioneer, who is a senior vice president at Sotheby’s in Manhattan. “It was far and away the highest price for historical Americana ever.”
The copy sold [by Sotheby’s] is a crisp, clean broadside, creased along lines where it had been folded. It was printed by John Dunlap on July 4, 1776, to carry news of America’s independence to the citizens of the 13 colonies. It is one of 24 known copies of the Declaration, and one of only three remaining in private hands.
The previous owner, who was not identified, had told Sotheby’s he bought a torn painting for $4 in a flea market in Adamstown, Pa., because he was interested in its frame. When he got home, he said, he removed the painting — a dismal country scene — and concluded the frame could not be salvaged, but found the Declaration, folded and hidden in the backing. He showed it to Sotheby’s experts earlier this year.
Mr. Redden said he thought the man would be “rather stunned” to learn the price it had brought.
This charming story was later turned to a commercial purpose: In the autumn of 1997, SunAmerica ran television commercials based on the original finder’s tale, utilizing the theme that you could either hope to get lucky like he did, or you could work out an investment plan with SunAmerica.
This document was put up for sale again in June 2000, fetching an $8.14 million bid from television producer Norman Lear in an online auction. It then became the centerpiece of the Norman Lear Center’s Declaration of Independence Road Trip, which took it on a three-and-a-half year cross-country tour:
The goal of the project was to bring the “People’s Document” directly to all Americans — especially young people — to inspire them to see citizenship as an opportunity; to participate in civic life; to exercise their rights; and above all, to vote. As the Road Trip traveled to cities and towns across the United States, it creatively combined elements of education, entertainment, and community outreach.
When TV producer and philanthropist Norman Lear learned that the Dunlap broadside would be auctioned, he saw it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring it to the American people. Lear purchased it and development of the project now known as the Declaration of Independence Road Trip began.
March 2006 saw a smaller-scale repetition of this experience when Michael Sparks was browsing a thrift shop in Nashville, Tennessee, and happened upon a yellowed, shellacked, rolled-up document. Learning from a clerk that the item could be had for a mere $2.48, Sparks purchased it, took it home, and after doing some online research eventually learned that he had bought one of 200 “official copies” of the Declaration of Independence commissioned by John Quincy Adams in 1820. He spent nearly a year authenticating and conserving the document before selling it at auction in March 2007, where it fetched $477,650.
After Michael Sparks’ lucky find made the news in February 2007, Stan Caffy contacted reporter Mary Hance of the Tennessean and claimed that he was the one who had (unwittingly) donated the valuable document to the Music City Thrift store in March 2006:
“I bought it at a yard sale in Donelson about 10 years, ago, in Donelson Hills, I think,” said Stan Caffy, a pipe fitter.
For years, the document hung in Stan Caffy’s garage, where he works on bicycles as a hobby.
He married his wife, Linda, a little more than a year ago. As part of the ritual of combining households, she pushed him to clean out the garage, which had filled up with all sorts of extraneous things.
“I used to be a packrat but now I am trying to get rid of things. The best I can recall, we had a little debate about whether to keep it (the Declaration) or donate it and she won.”
And so it was that Linda took the Declaration along with a pile of other stuff — an antique table, a shower massage head, and a faucet — to donate to the Music City Thrift store last March.
“I’m happy for the Sparks guy,” Stan said. “If I still had it, it would still be hanging here in the garage and I still wouldn’t know it was worth all that. It is just life. So I’m not really upset. But you can’t help but feel not very smart for doing it.”
