100 of the Worst Ideas in History: Hilarious Missteps That Have Started Wars, Wrecked Companies, Lost Millions, and Sunk Countries

Copyright © 2014 by Michael N. Smith and Eric Kasum

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smith, Michael N.

100 of the worst ideas in history : humanity’s thundering brainstorms turned blundering brain farts / by Michael N. Smith and Eric Kasum.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

(trade : alk. paper) 1. World history—Humor. 2. World history—Anecdotes. 3. History—Miscellanea. I. Kasum, Eric. II. Title. III. Title: One hundred of the worst ideas in history.

D23.5.S65 2014

909—dc23

2013048227

Contents

Front Cover

Title Page

Introduction

Whopping Historical Foul-Ups and Faux Pas

The President’s Scandalous Em-Bare-Ass-Ment

Why Is Dumbo Wearing Hiking Boots?

A Confused Chauffeur Starts a World War

The Great Leap Forward Falls on Its Face

Pay Me Now or I’ll Splay You Later

Tippecanoe and Prez for a Month Too

Friday the 13th: The Original Horror Story

Preventing 9/11 Could Have Been an Open-and-Shut Case

The Assassin’s Gunshot That Backfires Big Time

Sure, He Was a Murdering Marauder, but At Least We Get a Day Off

By George, That Library Book Is 80,665 Days Late

Bones of Contention Pilt on a Lie

If You’re Anti-Nuke, This Will Really Hit Your Hot Button

The Midnight Walk of Paul Revere

Captured Slave Ship Sets the Abolitionist Movement Free

Entertainers with Stars in their Eyes (and Rocks in their Heads)

How to Lip-Sink a Music Career

E.T.’s Mission to Mars Aborted

G-Men Go Screwy Screwy over Louie Louie

Remember the Dorks, Luke

Don’t Tase Me, Bro—(and Don’t Sing to Me Either)

Britney Bares All

Look, Dear, Charlie Chaplin Dropped By for a Sleepover

Smokey, Not Stirred

Capone’s Treasure Turns into Trash TV

Dinosaur Helps Bring Actor’s Finances to the Brink of Extinction

Pete Does His Best to Avoid the Long and Winding Road to Superstardom

Raiders of the Lost Part

Ted Danson’s Minstrel Cramp

Snuff Daddy’s Greatest Hit

Cousin Eddie Checks In, but He Doesn’t Check Out

Dr. Dude Little

More of the Best of the Worst: Fail to the Chief: Five of the Worst Ideas in Presidential History

Inept Inventions, Pitiful Products, and Senseless Services

The Butt of a Fat Joke

A Killer Idea for Saving Lives

The Pinhead Inventor Who Never Got the Point

OctoBomb

They Bet on the Ponies and Lost

This Game Really Sticks Out in Your Mind

A Dumb Way to Test How Smart You Are

Racially Insensitive Restaurant Serves Up a Side of Controversy

New Coke’s Product Launch Goes from Fizzy to Flat

The Pubic Hairpiece

WD-528,000,000,000

Politically Incorrect Politicos

Monkey Business Sinks a Presidential Campaign

Tape Creates a Sticky Situation for Tricky Dick

The Grand High Exalted Hoo-Hah of the United States

A Turkey of an Idea Gets Plucked

Mail to the Chief

The Bridge to Nowhere

Make Your Meeting or Else Meet Your Maker

For Whom the City of Bell Tolls

The President Gives America the Finger

Read My Lips: No New Taxes (Until I Change My Mind)

Pay No Attention to That Exploding Mountain—Just Vote for Me

Pol Pays a Hooker by Check and Really Gets Screwed

This Is How I Look—and I’m Not Making It Up

More of the Best of the Worst: Ten of the Worst Movie Ideas in History

Stupidity at a Major-League Level

The Bambino’s Curse on the Beantown Bombers

Fourth Down and 70 Million to Go

The Heavyweight Chomping-On of the World

Out of the Park? Out of the Question

Dopey Cyclist Pedals a Pack of Lies

A Multimillion-Dollar Career Goes to the Dogs

Disco Inferno Singes the White Sox

Not a Guy You Want to Neck With

War Strategies that Bombed

We Qaeda Sorta Attacked the Wrong Country

A Single Torpedo Sinks the German Ship of State

The Double Agent Who Double-Crossed der Führer

Invade Russia in the Winter? Snow Way!

A Military Strategy That’s Dead On

You Better Watch Out, You Better Not Cry, You Better Read Your Mail, I’m Telling You Why: Sneaky George Is Coming to Town

Caesar’s Fiery Battle Tactics Leave Historians Burning Mad

America’s Best General Gets a Slap in the Face

More of the Best of the Worst: Fashion Frock-Ups: Pick Your Favorite Worst Ideas for Under-, Outer-, Foot-, and Headwear

A Healthy Dose of Dumb

Hats Off to the World’s Maddest Profession

Help Yourself to a Steaming Cup of Influenza

A Dental Care Product That Could Rot Your Teeth

Lincoln’s Mercury Dealers Nearly Drive the President Crazy

The Hippocratic Cure Only Dracula Could Love

Ignorance Is Dr. Bliss

The Dental Amalgam That Might Have You Feeling Down in the Mouth

In the News and Out of Their Minds

Balloon Boy Floats a Story Full of Hot Air

India’s Roll of the Dice Comes Up an Unlucky Sevin

Eight Is More Than Enough

Y2K Is A-OK

The London Big Mac Smackdown

Cattlemen’s Beef with Oprah Needs More Cowbell

Bernie Made-Off with Their Money

Break Glass and Get Thirty Years of Bad Luck

More of the Best of the Worst: What the Flock Were They Thinking?: Straight, Not-So-Straight, and Crooked Preachers

Stinky Thinking from Air, Land, and Sea

Test-Drive the Luxurious New Ford Lemon Sucker

I Can Stop This Train—and I’m Not Just Yanking Your Chain

Oh, the Stupidity!

Holy Schettino, How Did That Guy Become a Captain?

They Sing the Body Electric, Then Hummer a Different Tune

A Horseless Carriage of a Different Color?

Uncool at Any Speed

Blind Ambition Meets Highway Robbery

The Worst of the Worst: Hook, Line, and Sinker: The Titanic: One Bad Idea Begets Four Others

Mad Scientists and the Monsters They Create

Mr. Cane Toad’s Wild Rise

These Dudes Must Have Been High When They Made This Weed Deal

Oilpocalypse Now

Attack of the Frankenfish

The Pesticide That Commits Homicide

More of the Best of the Worst: Bad Ideas Gone Good

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Bibliography

Back Cover

To Phyllis, who helped me become a better writer. To Walt, who helped me become a better worker. To Debora and Drew, who helped me become a better person.—Mike

To Marah, my angel and the light of my life. To Ben and John, the most wonderful sons in the whole world, you make me so proud. And to my dad, Michael, who gave me my writing dream.—Eric

Introduction

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

They are priceless, multifaceted jewels of misjudgment. Masterworks of the moronic. Steroid-juiced stupidity wearing a size 9XX dunce cap embroidered with one simple word: Duh.

They are the colossally, cringingly, often laughably bad notions that have leapt from the short-circuiting synapses of some of the world’s brightest (and dimmest) brains, now faithfully chronicled here as 100 of the Worst Ideas in History.

Hailing from the worlds of politics, popular culture, international relations, finance, business, sports, entertainment, and news—from the near and distant past—these shoddy concepts have started wars, sunk countries, wrecked companies, scuttled careers, lost millions, endangered Earth, and left the bad idea’s mommy or daddy as red faced as, well, your mom or dad will be when they learn that you like to dress your pit bull as one of the Backstreet Boys.

On this rollicking romp through the bungles and stumbles of humanity, we’ll:

• Meet the U.S. president who starts each day skinny-dipping in the Potomac.

• Sample the dental hygiene product that could rot your teeth.

• Get an earful of the hit singing group that can’t really sing.

• Munch on the tasty new snack food that might just give you diarrhea.

• Drop by the restaurant chain named after a derogatory term for African Americans.

• Encounter the famed archaeologist whose discovery of the missing link is revealed to be a monkey jaw glued to a human skull.

• Stick an angry ferret down our pants for fun and prizes.

• Plus so much more (of so much less).

Peppered with scores of info-taining photos, Hey-I-Didn’t-Know-That factoids, and perspective-gaining Afterthoughts, this collection of our species’ most stupendously stinky thinking spotlights how the ideas of yesterday—from funny flubs to the stunningly strange to classic mind-bogglers—continue to resonate in each of our lives today.

Without further ado and in no particular order, here are 100 of history’s thundering brainstorms that turned out to be blundering brain farts.

WHOPPING HISTORICAL FOUL-UPS AND FAUX PAS

The President’s Scandalous Em-Bare-Ass-Ment

The Bad Idea:

Start each day with a skinny-dip in the Potomac.

The genius behind it:

U.S. president John Quincy Adams

The brainstorm struck:

1825

Bring on the blunder:

Nearly a half century after George Washington dons a three-cornered hat, courageously crosses the Delaware River, and defeats the British redcoats, President John Quincy Adams strips down to his birthday suit, swims naked in the Potomac River, and leaves America red faced.

Giving crack of dawn a whole new meaning, each morning Adams sneaks down to the riverbank, surreptitiously undresses, and proceeds to folly about with the local ducks and geese—all the while naked as a jaybird.

From bad to worse:

Reporter Anne Royall, upon learning of Adams’s au naturel aquatic adventures, hides out in the Potomac’s foliage and catches the unsuspecting Prez in the buff. Opportunistically scooping up the commander in chief’s briefs, she holds his clothing captive until Adams reluctantly agrees to grant her a long-awaited interview.

Although the interview goes swimmingly—and Royall promises to keep the president’s daily skinny-dip a watertight secret—other reporters eventually learn about Adams’s ballsy escapades and expose him (so to speak), much to his (and the nation’s) embarrassment.

Dumb luck:

The exposé does little to forward the Adams administration’s policy agenda. He’s soundly defeated for reelection in 1828 by Andrew Jackson. In the end, the electorate, upon contemplating Adams’s sagging credibility (and saggy backside), concludes: The emperor has no clothes.

Afterthoughts:

Benjamin Franklin and President Teddy Roosevelt were also said to be fans of skinny-dipping. But the media never caught them with their pants down.

Why Is Dumbo Wearing Hiking Boots?

The Bad Idea:

Insist that an elephant can’t climb the Alps.

The geniuses behind it:

Roman generals battling the Carthaginian army

The brainstorm struck:

218 BC

Bring on the blunder:

In the brutal war between Rome and Carthage, the Carthaginians deploy what might be considered the polar opposite of a stealth weapon: big, gray, hulking, 11,000-pound elephants.

Invading Gaul (today’s France) with over 50,000 troops and thirty-seven pachyderms, Hannibal’s troops wreak stomping, earth-shaking terror on enemy foot soldiers while en route to the city of Rome.

From bad to worse:

But the towering, treacherous Alps stand in Hannibal’s path. Overconfident Roman military leaders assure their emperor that the Carthaginian forces will never, ever be able to move their elephants over the mountains. Rome, let it be known, is safe.

Yet Hannibal and his men brave blinding snow and steeply unforgiving Alpine terrain—losing half their army and almost all their elephants—to descend virtually unopposed into Italy’s lush green Po Valley.

Dumb luck:

With a hard-earned foothold in Italy, Hannibal destroys more than twenty larger, better-equipped Roman legions while sacking over four hundred towns in a sixteen-year rampage through enemy territory. The city of Rome, it’s clear, is his for the taking. But he never gives the order to attack, a mystery that remains to this day.

Afterthoughts:

A transcendent tactical genius, Hannibal and his exploits are required reading at military academies today. He’s been studied by commanders from Napoleon to General George Patton to General Norman Schwarzkopf, who utilizes Hannibal’s strategies of diversion in the first Gulf War.

A Confused Chauffeur Starts a World War

The Bad Idea:

Chauffeur your country’s future leader into an assassin’s sights.

The genius behind it:

Limo driver Leopold Lojka

The brainstorm struck:

June 28, 1914

Bring on the blunder:

Ensconced in the backseat of his open-roofed Double