stupid history

One of the first bike club rides earlier this year had us stopped at a garage sale across from Rackham golf course in Huntington Woods. I loved the architecture of the house and jotted down the address so I could marvel at it again later. Among the used children's books they were getting rid of, one was intriguingly titled Stupid History - "Tales of stupidity, strangeness, and mythconceptions throughout the ages." I flipped to a random page and read a one paragraph story about a military repairman who dropped a wrench down a missile silo which knocked into a pressurized fuel tank, caused a leak and forced an evacuation. Eight hours later the silo exploded, sending a nuclear warhead into the air, which thankfully didn't detonate when it crashed back to earth. Amused by the humorous footnote, I bought the book and figured it would make for good, light reading. While it does have a number of interesting anecdotes, they're offset by incredibly terrible puns. To quote an example, at the end of a story about Lamar Savings and Loan Association's attempt in 1984 to open an S&L on the moon and the coincidental theft of its assets years later: "No one ever saw an S&L built on the moon or anywhere in space, but people who had invested their money in S&Ls did see it sucked into a black hole." Coupled with grammatical errors, this book is certainly a cringe-worthy read. That doesn't keep it from providing interesting tidbits. For instance, did you know the British used a dead body planted with deceiving evidence and tossed from a submarine near Spain to confuse Axis intelligence and expose Sicily to an attack which helped set up the successful D-Day invasion? Before breaking out these stories at a party, however, I feel the need to run them through a Wikipedia check.