Category: A Victory!
The Baird Televisor could be considered the world’s first commercial television set. This device used a neon tube to produce a visible image about the size of a postage stamp that was then enlarged to roughly twice that size via a magnifying lens. Between 1930 and 1933, they sold about a thousand units.
Ours is a nation of 332 million people. Nowadays there are 125 million TV-equipped households in America. Until the advent of the ubiquitous smartphone, the television was the most popular consumer electronic device on the planet. Lamentably, there are no televisions or cell phones actually made in America any more.
For most of us, the television is a multi-function instrument. It offers entertainment, childcare, or a welcome distraction after a hard day at work. For many, however, the idiot box has become an unholy altar of sorts, the sort of false god that demands incessant supplication and unfettered attention. One such man presented to the urban emergency room where I worked with his foot wrapped in a bloody towel.
The Player
Our hero was fat, sedentary, and eminently likable. Once I set him up on an exam table and unwrapped his offended limb I discovered a through-and-through small-caliber gunshot wound to his right great toenail. Intrigued, I inquired regarding the details.
His was a rough neighborhood, and the local wayward delinquents had been breaking into people’s homes and stealing stuff. As a result, our protagonist had retrieved his .22 pistol from the closet shelf some months back and prepositioned it underneath his recliner for easy access. Over time he forgot it was there.
One evening he was watching his shows when he fumbled his TV remote. The slippery device took an unlucky bounce and slid underneath his chair. Leaning over to fish around for the little widget he unexpectedly discovered the familiar shape of his forgotten rimfire pistol.
The man got his television sorted and studied the pistol in detail. It had indeed been several months since he had deployed the gun underneath his chair. In all the excitement, he had forgotten whether or not it was loaded. At this point training and experience kicked in.
Safety is Everybody’s Responsibility
Anyone frequenting this hallowed site would have pointed the gun in a safe direction, carefully ejected the magazine, and then manually cycled the slide before ensuring both by sight and feel that the chamber was empty. However, that’s not the way this guy rolled. He just drew a careful bead on his right great toe, slipped off the safety, steadied his breathing, and squeezed the trigger.
At a slant range of maybe three feet, the guy was Carlos Hathcock-grade accurate. The zippy little 40-grain bullet transited his fat, hairy toe and then, in a simply breathtaking example of universal irony, also center-punched his big flat screen television.
As I cleaned his wounds and got my head around the details, this man and I enjoyed a spirited conversation. He was disappointed that he had nearly blown his big toe off, but he was quite literally gutted over the untimely demise of his television set.
Once I got the man tidied up I sent him on his way. We lost touch afterwards. If I recall correctly he also had diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, so there’s a fair possibility he eventually lost the end of his foot over his little gun safety faux pas.
Stay frosty, my friends. They walk among us. Or in this case, they just sort of hobble…
The legend of the skunk ape is as old as antiquity.
“Something killed my cat,” the boy said flatly. The ride home from school on the bus always seemed interminable. Danny and Bud were the same age and lived side-by-side way out in the sticks in north-central Mississippi. They both despised school. As 10-year-old boys, they certainly did not break any fresh ground in that regard. All 10-year-old boys hated school.
Their friendship was the only thing that made the day tolerable. The weather had been too bad to go outside for recess. As a result, the bus ride home was their first real chance to visit. Additionally, Danny had held sincere affection for that cat. He had not felt like discussing it previously.
“Something killed Felix?” Bud asked. “I liked your cat.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Danny said. “He was a good cat, always bringing up dead moles, lizards, and stuff. I found him out behind the barn. What I found didn’t really look much like a cat.”
“What happened to him?” Bud asked.
“Don’t much know,” Danny replied. “Dad said it was most likely a bobcat or a coyote. He said it didn’t hurt long, so at least there’s that.”
The bus came to a complete stop in front of a railroad crossing. When the driver took the vehicle over the tracks, the rear end jumped, throwing the two boys briefly up and out of their seats. This phenomenon was most pronounced right over the rear axles. That’s why they chose this seat. After a few moments in silence, Bud continued, “I bet it was a skunk ape.”
Danny looked at his friend curiously and said, “What’s a skunk ape?”
“Caitlyn told me about it,” Bud explained. “A skunk ape is kind of like Sasquatch or the abominable snow monster. They live in the woods in Florida and eat people’s dogs and stuff.”
Danny looked at Bud in silence for a full half minute.
“Caitlyn told you?” he asked. “Your sister Caitlyn? The same Caitlyn who also convinced you there was a bridge to Hawaii? Caitlyn lies about everything. There’s no such thing as a skunk ape.”
Bud pulled out his phone. He had gotten it two months earlier for his birthday. It was a hand-me-down from his mom after she upgraded. His parents had put filters on it, but he could still get Wikipedia.
The skunk ape and his cousin Sasquatch have purportedly
been seen countless times.
“I looked it up,” Bud said. “Wikipedia says the skunk ape is a real thing. You’re right. Caitlyn lies about everything, but Wikipedia doesn’t lie. Wikipedia is like the government or something.”
Both boys hovered over the vintage iPhone as Bud worked his thumbs.
“The skunk ape is a large hairy human-like mythical creature purported to inhabit the forests and swamps in the southeastern United States, most notably in Florida. It is often compared to Bigfoot.”
“I don’t know,” Danny said. “Still sounds fake to me. Even if it is on Wikipedia. What’s a skunk ape look like?”
Bud scrolled down further.
“The skunk ape is commonly described as a bipedal human or ape-like creature, approximately 1.5–2.1 m (5–7 feet) tall and covered in mottled reddish-brown hair. The skunk ape is often reported to be smaller in stature compared to traditional descriptions of Bigfoot. It is named for its foul odor, often described as being similar to a skunk.”
“Doesn’t say anything about what a skunk ape eats,” Danny said. “If it ate cats, I’d think Wikipedia would say.”
The two boys pored over the rest of the article between potholes. Bud and Danny’s homes were the last stop on the run. By the time the driver finally put out the folding Stop sign they had both read the article and knew a fair amount about skunk apes.
“Thanks, Tommy,” Bud said to the driver as they climbed off the bus. The bus driver smiled and closed the door behind them, anxious to get the bus put to bed. It was a quarter mile down a meandering common drive to get to Bud and Danny’s respective houses.
“I still think it was a bobcat,” Danny mused as they walked. “I don’t think skunk apes are real. And this is Mississippi, not Florida. Even if they were real, I don’t think they’d live up here.”
“You’re probably right,” Bud said. “And Caitlyn does lie a lot.”
The two boys continued down the driveway in silence.
The skunk ape lurked within the tree line, watching the two boys intently as they kicked along the dusty driveway. His thick, matted red hair melded into the surrounding foliage perfectly. He sat perfectly still, embracing the shadows.
This particular skunk ape was fully eight feet tall. He traveled at night, and his prodigious stride made the trek up from Florida a fairly expeditious affair. Most of this area was still unspoiled wilderness, so finding his coveted solitude was not a chore. Climate change had left the Florida swamps too hot and fraught with mosquitoes.
The skunk ape was hungry. That stringy cat had not been terribly filling for a creature his size. He peered silently at the two unsuspecting boys, his stomach beginning to growl.
A 28-year-old armed citizen in Valdosta, Georgia, will face no charges after shooting a man who was beating a woman and her teenage daughter inside a Dollar General. The man he shot is going the other direction — through booking, with a stack of felony and misdemeanor charges to answer for.
What Happened
Valdosta Police put the incident on October 1 at about 4:50 p.m. inside the Dollar General in the 2100 block of Bemiss Road. A woman was shopping with her teenage daughter when her boyfriend, 32-year-old Tevin Jay Love, walked in and started assaulting her, striking her in the head repeatedly. When the daughter stepped in to defend her mother, Love allegedly turned on the girl.
A 28-year-old shopper saw the attack and intervened. He drew his firearm and ordered Love off the victims. According to police, the sight of the gun was enough to let the woman break free and run out of the store.
The shooter did not open fire the moment the gun came out. He held Love at gunpoint, and that was enough to break the attack long enough for the victims to clear the scene. The trigger didn’t come until, per the police account, Love charged him and started hitting him too. One shot, one hit.
This is a pretty typical guillotine automatic beheading device. It’s honestly pretty pathetic that, as a species, we have to make stuff like this.
Wikipedia photo by Christian Ries.
Mary, Queen of Scots, was late to her own execution. A famously Catholic regent, the well-known diva was condemned by her cousin Elizabeth I, the reigning queen of England. The Protestant Elizabeth had been surreptitiously reading Mary’s encoded mail. She discovered a murder plot against her that Mary had been directing from captivity.
Marry Queen of Scots. Public domain.
The Big Event
On the morning of 8 February 1587, Mary procrastinated while getting dressed and eventually made it to the scaffold at Fotheringhay an hour after the appointed time. There, her executioner, a hulking man known only as Bull, knelt before her and begged her forgiveness for what he was about to do. As weird as that sounds, this was common practice at the time. Mary responded with, “I forgive you with all my heart, for now, I hope, you shall make an end of all my troubles.”
Now blindfolded with an embroidered white veil and clad in a scandalous crimson undergarment, Mary submitted her neck to the block. However, Bull was understandably anxious. His first blow missed the poor woman’s neck and struck her in the back of the head. She shrieked like, well, somebody having her head cut off.
The second stroke fell true but still failed to fully sever her head. The embarrassed Bull was forced to saw with his axe to get through the last bit of gristle. To add insult to injury, the formal presentation of the severed head did not go as planned, either.
Mary was known for her legendary auburn tresses. When Bull grasped her hair to hold her liberated head aloft, her much-admired coif was found to have been a wig. The pathetic woman’s small, nearly bald head rolled ignobly around the scaffold whilst Bull and his assistant struggled to get control of it. One of the witnesses later said, “Her lips stirred up and down a quarter of an hour after her head was cut off.” Mary’s small dog was also later discovered to have been hiding in the decapitated queen’s copious flowing skirts. All in all, Mary’s execution was just a bloody, gory mess.
This is Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. He actually didn’t invent the death machine that bore his name. He just felt there should be something more compassionate
than burning people alive. Public domain.
The Guy
Joseph-Ignace Guillotin was a French politician, Freemason, and physician born in 1738. Though his name has been forever linked to the death machine made famous during the hemoclysm that was the French Revolution, Dr. Guillotin did not actually invent his eponymous automatic beheading device.
The first recorded reference to such a contrivance dates back to 1210 and a book titled the Old French High History of the Holy Grail. This curious machine serviced three victims at once.
From the book, “She setteth her hand toward the openings and draweth forth a pin that was fastened into the wall, and a cutting blade of steel droppeth down, of steel sharper than any razor, and closeth up the three openings.”
The 16th-century Halifax Gibbet did something similar. This infernal engine remained in use until Oliver Cromwell forbade capital punishment for petty theft. The Halifax Gibbet went on to inspire the Scottish Maiden beheading machine that was used to kill James Douglas, the 4th Earl of Morton in 1581.
Private executions are a fairly recent concept. In eons past, they were typically quite public affairs.
Holding aloft the recently-severed head was a critical aspect of the festivities. Public domain.
But Then in France …
The French device was actually known for a time as the louisette after its inventor Antoine Louis. It was only later named after the good Dr. Guillotin. Guillotin was, perversely, an ardent opponent of capital punishment himself. He recommended the device that later bore his name with reluctance in an effort at ending such abominable practices as breaking on the wheel and burning at the stake.
Early beheading machines used a crescent blade, but this design was found to yield suboptimal results. The soft steel of the day dulled rapidly under hard use, and the curved blades were bad to make an unnecessary mess of things. It was found through extensive empirical testing that the classic angled design produced more uniform results. The first French execution by guillotine was of a highwayman named Nicolas Jacques Pelletier on 25 April 1792. There would be many, many more.
Some 17,000 people were guillotined during the Reign of Terror, Marie Antoinette famously among them. Sometimes dozens of victims fell in a single day. The executioners would clean and disassemble the device at night to resharpen the blade. However, after a long day of neck chopping, they oftentimes became unsettlingly dull. The wealthy condemned not infrequently paid the executioners so they could bump up to the front of the line and be spared the agony of a dull blade.
Modern Treatment
Hamida Djandoubi was a Tunisian pimp convicted of murdering one of his girls in 1974. He was the last man executed by guillotine in France. However, Djandoubi’s 1977 execution was performed in private. It was not a public spectacle. The last public execution by guillotine in France occurred on 17 June 1939 in Paris.
On this day, serial killer Eugen Weidmann was publicly beheaded outside Saint-Pierre Prison in Versailles. In the immediate aftermath, the crowd literally went wild. So much so that French President Albert Lebrun banned all future public executions.
Tucked into the crowd was a 17-year-old Englishman named Christopher Lee. Lee had been visiting a family friend and came out to see the spectacle driven by simple curiosity. Lee went on to an amazing career as a spy during WWII and later hunted Nazi war criminals. Afterward, he became a famous movie star playing predominantly horror roles. He is likely best known for playing Count Dooku in Star Wars and Saruman in The Lord of the Rings.
Lee later said, “We arrived to an open square, steadily filling with people. Dawn broke on the scene, and I realized the focus of the amassed crowd was on Madame Guillotine … (Weidmann) was whisked off his feet, bound, punched in the gut, placed on the monstrous contraption, and adjusted into position. The blade fell and I failed to look away. I was sick to my soul …”
The idea of halo dropping a cook behind enermy line to sabotage the food of the enemy is intriging to me. Grumpy
