Plane Division

In 1996, 21-year-old John Leonard saw a Pepsi ad that jokingly offered a Harrier fighter for 7 million “Pepsi points.” Under the contest rules, that should have required drinking 16.8 million cans of Pepsi, but Leonard found a loophole — he could earn the points by simply buying them for 10 cents each.

So on March 28 he delivered 15 original Pepsi points, plus a check for $700,008.50 to cover the remainder plus shipping and handling. And when Pepsi failed to deliver the jet, he sued.

He lost in the end — the court ruled that the ad didn’t constitute an offer — but Leonard can still argue that he was in the right. He claimed that a federal judge could not hear his case fairly, and that instead he should have faced a jury of “the Pepsi generation.”

(Thanks, Brendan.)

| Society

Bereft

If this should meet the eye of Emma D—–, who absented herself last Wednesday from her father’s house, she is implored to return, when she will be received with undiminished affection by her almost heart-broken parents. If nothing can persuade her to listen to their joint appeal–should she be determined to bring their gray hairs with sorrow to the grave–should she never mean to revisit a home where she had passed so many happy years–it is at least expected, if she be not totally lost to all sense of propriety, that she will, without a moment’s further delay, send back the key of the tea-caddy.

– Advertisement, London newspaper, quoted in Jefferson Saunders, The Tin Trumpet, 1836

| Society

Red Menace

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=WltCAAAAEBAJ

Ladies! Do you look like the loser of a tomato-eating contest? Do children mistake you for Bozo the Clown? Perhaps you’re incapable of applying lipstick properly!

Let’s face it, the task is practically impossible. That clumsy tube, those bewildering lips — where do you start? How do you finish? It’s a wonder you haven’t been injured or killed.

Marie Helehan’s lipstick stencil, patented in 1937, offers “a clean-cut accurate and symmetrical outline” in which to work. Now we just need a mascara gun …

| Society · Technology

Fair Enough

A lady wrote to her lover, begging him to send her some money. She added, by way of postcript, ‘I am so ashamed of the request I have made in this letter, that I sent after the postman to get it back; but the servant could not overtake him.’

– The Poetry and Varieties of Berrow’s Worcester Journal for 1828

| Society

Stormy Weather

In 1998 a retired naval pilot in California began receiving semi-coherent telephone calls from around the country blaming him for torrential rain and crop failures.

“Some of them absolutely curse me out and others just ask me, in a rather grudged way, if I can just stop the rain.”

He takes the calls with good humor and has maintained his listing in the phone book.

His name is Al Nino.

| Oddities · Society

Targeted Advertising

New York florist Max Schling once placed an ad in the New York Times that was written entirely in shorthand.

Hundreds of curious businessmen passed the ad on to their secretaries, requesting a translation.

The secretaries read: “When getting flowers for the boss’s wife, remember Schling’s Florist.”

| Language · Society

Married Life

A Frenchman, who spoke very broken English, having some Words with his Wife, endeavour’d to call her Bitch, but could not recollect the Name. At last he thought he had done it, by saying, Begar, mine Dear, but you be one vile Dog’s Wife. Aye, that’s true enough, answer’d the Woman, the more is my Misfortune.

— The Jester’s Magazine, February 1766

Loud brayed an ass. Quoth Kate, ‘My dear,
(To spouse, with scornful carriage,)
One of your relatives I hear.’
‘Yes, love,’ said he, ‘by marriage.’

— I.J. Reeve, The Wild Garland; or, Curiosities of Poetry, 1866

| Humor · Society

Boss Mob

Senior job titles in the U.S. government, from among 49 compiled by Paul C. Light, public policy director for the Pew Charitable Trusts, for testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, Feb. 11, 1998:

  • Deputy Secretary
  • Deputy Administrator
  • Associate Administrator
  • Assistant Under Secretary
  • Deputy Associate Deputy Secretary
  • Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary
  • Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary
  • Principal Associate Deputy Secretary
  • Deputy Chief of Staff to the Secretary
  • Chief of Staff to the Deputy Secretary
  • Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary
  • Deputy Associate Deputy Administrator
  • Chief of Staff to the Associate Administrator
  • Principal Associate Deputy Under Secretary
  • Associate Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary
  • Chief of Staff to the Associate Assistant Secretary
  • Principal Deputy to the Deputy Assistant Secretary

“At my last count in 1994, there were sixteen layers of supervisors between the President of the United States, who is the ultimate chief executive of the [IRS], and revenue agents far below. Most agents report to a district group manager who reports to a branch chief who reports to an assistant chief of their division who reports to the assistant district director who reports to the assistant regional commissioner who reports to the regional commissioner who reports to the chief of staff to a deputy assistant commissioner in Washington who reports to the deputy assistant commissioner who reports to the assistant commissioner who reports to the chief operating officer who reports to the deputy commissioner of the IRS who reports to the commissioner who reports to the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury who reports to the Secretary who finally reports to the president (assuming that the White House deputy chief of staff and chief of staff don’t get in the flow).”

| Society