Who Knew? Some Fun Facts

OK, so I did a little sleuthing. The person the meme alludes to is murderer Ted Bundy. Full story below, but the highlights are that it wasn't TB but some other creep who likely had nefarious intents.

In 1972, when hitchhiking didn’t always lead to certain death, Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry climbed into a stranger’s car on New York’s Avenue C in the East Village after failing to hail a cab. Behind the wheel was a well-dressed man with gorgeous, curly dark hair.

Her original account of the potentially fatal event was detailed in a newspaper published in 1989. “This was back in the early ’70s,” she said. “I wasn’t even in a band then … I was trying to get across town to an after-hours club. A little white car pulls up, and the guy offers me a ride. So I just continued to try to flag a cab down. But he was very persistent, and he asked where I was going. It was only a couple of blocks away, and he said, ‘Well I’ll give you a ride.’”

“I got in the car, and it was summertime and the windows were all rolled up except about an inch and a half at the top. So I was sitting there and he wasn’t really talking to me. Automatically, I sort of reached to roll down the window and I realized there was no door handle, no window crank, no nothing. The inside of the car was totally stripped out.”

She also noticed there was a hole where the radio and glove compartment should be. She felt unsafe and decided she had to get out—and fast. To escape, she thrust her arm out of the window and opened it up from the outside. “As soon as he saw that, he tried to turn the corner really fast, and I spun out of the car and landed in the middle of the street.”

Harry had only reached Avenue A—two avenues over. Later, she realized that she had been in the back seat of serial killer Ted Bundy’s car—or so she thought.

“It was right after his execution that I read about him,” she said. “I hadn’t thought about that incident in years. The whole description of how he operated and what he looked like and the kind of car he drove and the time frame he was doing that in that area of the country fit exactly. I said, ‘My God, it was him.’”

In the time since, the rumor that she took a late night joyride with Bundy has been debunked. Bundy was never known to be in New York, and wasn’t abducting or killing women until at least 1974. Harry herself even admits that the car she was picked up in didn’t match Bundy’s Volkswagen, which later went on display at the Alcatraz East Crime Museum.

“I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t [Bundy’s Volkswagen]. It didn’t have the same dashboard. It was squarer,” she told RuPaul on an episode of his podcast RuPaul: What’s The Tee?.

Harry only wanted a ride because after a night out, her shoes made it difficult to walk. “I had on max platforms … max!” Harry recalled. “I was way over by Avenue C and Houston. In those days, there was broken glass everywhere. I couldn’t take my shoes off to walk. I tried, that was impossible. So I kept trying to get a cab.”

Her near escape may have ended up nightmarishly different, but it’s almost certain the infamous killer wasn’t chauffeuring Blondie to a late night afterparty.

https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/obvious-history-debbie-harry-near-fatal-brush-ted-bundy
 
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StarSong said:
OK, so I did a little sleuthing. The person the meme alludes to is murderer Ted Bundy. Full story below, but the highlights are that it wasn't TB but some other creep who likely had nefarious intents.

In 1972, when hitchhiking didn’t always lead to certain death, Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry climbed into a stranger’s car on New York’s Avenue C in the East Village after failing to hail a cab. Behind the wheel was a well-dressed man with gorgeous, curly dark hair.

Her original account of the potentially fatal event was detailed in a newspaper published in 1989. “This was back in the early ’70s,” she said. “I wasn’t even in a band then … I was trying to get across town to an after-hours club. A little white car pulls up, and the guy offers me a ride. So I just continued to try to flag a cab down. But he was very persistent, and he asked where I was going. It was only a couple of blocks away, and he said, ‘Well I’ll give you a ride.’”

“I got in the car, and it was summertime and the windows were all rolled up except about an inch and a half at the top. So I was sitting there and he wasn’t really talking to me. Automatically, I sort of reached to roll down the window and I realized there was no door handle, no window crank, no nothing. The inside of the car was totally stripped out.”

She also noticed there was a hole where the radio and glove compartment should be. She felt unsafe and decided she had to get out—and fast. To escape, she thrust her arm out of the window and opened it up from the outside. “As soon as he saw that, he tried to turn the corner really fast, and I spun out of the car and landed in the middle of the street.”

Harry had only reached Avenue A—two avenues over. Later, she realized that she had been in the back seat of serial killer Ted Bundy’s car—or so she thought.

https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/obvious-history-debbie-harry-near-fatal-brush-ted-bundy
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Good digging,@StarSong . How terrifying!
 

Alfred Hitchcock-

"The master of suspense, who terrified audiences with movies like Psycho and The Birds, considered himself an ovophobe—someone frightened of eggs. Alfred Hitchcock explained to an interviewer in 1963: "I'm frightened of eggs, worse than frightened; they revolt me. That white round thing without any holes, and when you break it, inside there's that yellow thing, round, without any holes…Blood is jolly, red. But egg yolk is yellow, revolting. I've never tasted it." "

https://bestlifeonline.com/weird-amazing-facts/
 
Most caterpillars make sounds to scare off birds that prey on them. About 1/3 of these caterpillars make sounds with their mouths by clicking their teeth together, or rapidly repeating a spitting sound, which, from a bird's perspective sounds a bit like a tiny machine gun, or by belching. The other 2/3 make sounds with their anuses. Basically, they save their own asses by farting.

I, myself, have startled a few birds by farting (unplanned), but only small ones...birds, that is. I doubt I could discourage some huge bird of prey from attacking me by farting, butt hoo but who knows? It'd be worth trying.
 
The Sahara Desert, is bigger that the United Sates of America,
without Alaska or Hawaii.

Below is an image, with the outline of the USA on top of a map
of North Africa, the white on the African map is the Sahara, to the
right of the map at the Red Sea, you see that the white carries on
to the East, that is still desert and it goes to Afghanistan and Pakistan,
plus many other places, it is frightening to think of such a desolate
and deadly place.

Mike.

USA v Sahara Desert surface Area.jpg
 

A “jiffy” is a real unit of time​


GettyImages-1184427745-scaled.jpg

Ever told someone you’d be back in a “jiffy”? You were definitely lying. Though the English language has adopted it to mean “a short amount of time,” it actually is a scientific term.

In the physics world, a “jiffy” is the time it takes light to travel a centimeter in a vacuum or around 33.4 picoseconds. (A “picosecond,” meanwhile, is a trillionth of a second.)
 
I don't know if this has been mentioned.

U.S. Timeline for electric cars.

electriccar.jpg
Photo below is of a Victoria Phaeton

After receiving a patent for a lead-acid battery in 1903, Oliver Parker Fritchle established the Fritchle Electric Storage Battery Company in Denver, Colorado. The company produced its first electric car in 1905. In 1908, Fritchle embarked on a cross-country journey to promote the car's speed and its ability to travel 100 miles or more in one day.

victoriaphaeton.jpg
 
Dustbunny said:
I don't know if this has been mentioned.

U.S. Timeline for electric cars.

View attachment 285614
Photo below is of a Victoria Phaeton

After receiving a patent for a lead-acid battery in 1903, Oliver Parker Fritchle established the Fritchle Electric Storage Battery Company in Denver, Colorado. The company produced its first electric car in 1905. In 1908, Fritchle embarked on a cross-country journey to promote the car's speed and its ability to travel 100 miles or more in one day.

View attachment 285615
Click to expand...
$2,000 in 1905 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $68,946.14 today.

I wonder how different things would be if the electric car "won" over the gas-guzzlers.
 
RadishRose said:
$2,000 in 1905 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $68,946.14 today.

I wonder how different things would be if the electric car "won" over the gas-guzzlers.
Click to expand...
They were expensive and lost out to the mass produced at a cheaper price. Might have gotten into mass produced cheaper versions. I am like you, wondering the "what if" for a variety of reasons. You bring up a very good point.
 
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Did you know that the first vacuum cleaner was drawn by horses?

https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/everyday-wonders/invention-vacuum-cleaner

SSPL_10314577_HighRes.jpg

Booth's vacuum cleaner at work, 1903.
Science Museum Group Collection

the distinctive horse-drawn vacuum cleaner and its liveried operators arrived at your house, immediately advertising to the neighbourhood that you were holding a 'vacuum tea party'. A visit wasn’t cheap—the cost was the same as the annual wages of a 'tweeny', a junior domestic maid.

To conduct the miraculous cleaning, long hoses were fed through windows, the petrol-powered motor (and later electric engine) was started and air was drawn by suction from the hose and nozzles through a filter.

10250669-vacuum-advert.jpg
Poster promoting Booth's British Vacuum Cleaning Company Ltd, 1906.
 

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