David Lee Edwards, a Kentuckian, won the state lottery and blew his winnings - 74 million dollars - on cars, Oxycontin, houses, jets, a limo company, and other genuinely useless things, including $78,000 worth of replica medieval swords, and ended up living in a storage unit in Riviera Beach. Edwards is on his deathbed with hepatitis.
Len George Koenecke, Brooklyn Dodger and New York Giant, beaten to death with a fire extinguisher by the flight crew of a chartered aircraft after picking the fight with the pilot. Death in 1935.
Helen Stathatos, homeowner in southern California, the walls of whose Tudor-style house began to ooze honey because several million bees had resided in them for twenty years. When last in the news, Ms. Statathos had decided not to have the bees removed from her home, as the extermination would damage the walls of her historic home. Her living room smells exactly like a pot of honey.
Jeremy Joe Kronsberg, director and screenwriter, involved in the Clint Eastwood-orangutan vehicles Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can, which are extremely funny movies. as well as something called Going Ape!, which was not successful. Verbatim from his IMDB entry: Often referred to as the godfather of the modern ape chase movie.
Gilbert Lacher, my father's cousin, who was, as they say in the parlance of politeness, touched. Gilbert robbed a savings and loan institution in southern Minnesota, I don’t even know what a savings and loan association is. There are many Gilberts in my family.
Harry Randall Truman, former Navy Man who survived World War I, notable for his refusal to evacuate Spirit Lake prior to the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens. He reached some level of fame for dying so stubbornly, but of this we must say: 65 others refused to leave and died, what of them?
Norman Morrison, a Quaker, doused himself in kerosene and set himself on fire just below Robert McNamara's office in protest of the Vietnam War. McNamara speaks of the event with great sadness, as he speaks of much of the decisions of his life. In Vietnam, his name was rendered Mo Ri Xon and his face is on a postage stamp.
Richard Lewis, an eccentric 56 year old, visits the Ballard Locks in Seattle, Washington, every weekday and has for the past 34 years. Lewis knows the history of every tug boat, when it was built, who owns it, and the succession of owners. He wears thick glasses and carries a backpack filled with maritime magazines and books, and two plastic bags for the overflow.
Johnny Roventini, bellboy discovered by an advertising mogul, became spokesman for Phillip Morris cigarettes. Johnny was less than four feet tall and repeated the slogan of the cigarettes – “Call for Phillip Morris” – in a perfect B-flat tone.
Arthur Bicknell, producer of Moose Murders, a notoriously bad Broadway show, which opened and closed on the same night, and which has the funniest name of any play in the world.
Kurt Gödel, best known as a logician and philosopher, suffered a paranoid fear of poisoning in later life. Gödel would not eat unless his wife Adele, whom he trusted, tasted his food. When Adele was hospitalized in 1977 and could not taste his food for him anymore, he refused to eat. He weighed sixty-five pounds at his death.
David Hahn, not much older than me, an Eagle Scout who attempted to build a nuclear reactor in a shed in his Detroit suburb in the mid 1990s. Gained secondary attention in 2007 for his theft of smoke detectors, from which he was extracting radioactive material, and for his face at the time, which was pock-marked, apparently by exposure to said radioactive material en masse.
James L. Harris, a Miami eighteen-year-old, stole three Miami-Date Transit buses dressed like a Miami-Dade Transit driver. Harris would take the buses from several Miami-Dade Transit bus depots in the county and drive the buses on their routes, picking up and dropping off passengers along the way. He would then return the buses at the end of the day. Harris did not steal any bus fare.
Arthur Bremer, shooter of 1972 presidential candidate George Wallace, later the inspiration for Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, himself the inspiration for John Hinckley Jr.'s shooting of Reagan, appropriate for a president with roots in show business.
Robert Shields, a former high school teacher, kept a diary with entries made every five minutes from 1972 to 1997. Shields spent four hours per day in his underwear recording his body temperature, blood pressure, and medications, and slept two hours a time so as to describe his dreams. Quote: "Maybe by looking into someone's life at that depth, every minute of every day, they will find out something about all people." Shields’ diary is now in the collections of Washington State University, and under the terms of his donation, may not be read or subjected to a precise word count for fifty years after his death.
Stella Nickell, Seattle woman, murdered her husband in 1986 in order to use his life insurance money to open a tropical fish store. Nickell poisoned her husband with cyanide and then planted five bottles of Excedrin, each contaminated with cyanide at a local convenience store in order to make her husband’s death appear the work of a serial killer. Her Excedrin killed one other woman.
An unnamed young man, flew from Nashville to Los Angeles with a ticket back to Louisiana, intending to hijack a commercial jetliner to commit suicide. Notable in that the boy, sixteen years old, had no political purpose, instead wishing, rather comically, to crash his plane into a Hannah Montana concert. He brought handcuffs, duct tape, and yarn to overpower the flight crew.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, you likely know of them from their appearances in the public media, but of whom you are unlikely to know the following: Despite being twins, they are not identical.
