In the world of cartoons, where a Tasmanian devil can spin into a twister and a rabbit can squabble merrily with a hunter, there is no sorrier figure than Wile E. Coyote. The calamitous desert dog has been desperately trying—and spectacularly failing—to catch his nemesis, The Road Runner, for nearly 70 years now, all the while utilizing the constantly malfunctioning products of the ACME Corporation. Poor Wile E. Coyote can never count on the mechanics of his gadgets, the timing of his plans, or even the laws of physics to play their part in his schemes.
Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner were created by acclaimed animation director Chuck Jones in 1948 ahead of the pair’s first appearance in the 1949 cartoon Fast and Furry-ous, which sees Coyote’s plans undone by an uncooperative boomerang and an even more uncooperative rocket. The short was written by Michael Maltese, who would go on to collaborate with Jones on 16 more cartoons featuring the pair. Coyote and Roadrunner remain key fixtures in the colorful world of Looney Tunes to this day.
When putting the character of Wile E. Coyote together, Jones drew from a surprising source of inspiration— specifically, the writing of Mark Twain. In his 1872 book Roughing It, Twain describes a coyote that he sees on his travels as a “long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton,” and Jones cited this passage as having informed his character. In the same book, Twain describes the coyote as “a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry … He is always poor, out of luck and friendless,” also a fitting image of Jones’s hapless cartoon character.
Jones also took a cue from philosopher George Santayana when creating a list of rules that Road Runner cartoons needed to adhere to. Rule #3 states that “The coyote could stop anytime—if he were not a fanatic.” Jones then added a reminder, quoting Santayana: “A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim.”
An apt description of the bungling but dedicated Wile E. Coyote if ever there was one.
Around the world, erosion draws sand off of beaches and into the sea. So engineers periodically dredge the sand from offshore and pump it right back onto the beaches. This has been going on for decades. (And occasionally they dredge up bombs!)
Part of our sand-loss problem is that billions of tons of sand are also used in construction (most notably in concrete), effectively locking it up so it can’t be reused on beaches. So, over the long haul, we are running out of sea sand.
Why not just use desert sand for the construction stuff? We have lots of deserts in the world, with lots of relatively bomb-free sand in them! Sadly, desert sand doesn’t work for construction because of its chemical composition. So for now we’re stuck using a resource that is only renewable on an extremely long timeline, as waves crash onto shores.
Check out this video from Tom Scott to learn more about the problem—and learn about illegal sand mining too!
Though it continues to air new episodes five days a week in syndication, most everyone nostalgic for The People’s Court remembers its glory days in the 1980s. Presenting real small claims cases with binding rulings, former Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Joseph Wapner, his trusty bailiff Rusty, and court reporter Doug Llewelyn became daytime television celebrities.
Premiering in 1981, The People’s Court effectively launched the on-air reality trial genre that gave us Judge Judy, Judge Mathis, and Judge Mills Lane. (The latter was previously a boxing referee.) If you still have the show’s theme stuck in your head, you’ll probably enjoy some trivia about Wapner’s history, Rusty’s ties to Charles Manson, and why one Mr. America decided to sue the show.
1. NO ONE WANTED TO AIR IT.
In the 1970s, it was not yet common practice to see cameras installed in real courtrooms. That didn’t stop producer John Masterson from approaching Let’s Make a Deal host Monty Hall in 1975 with the idea to record legal proceedings and air them on television. While the idea was well-received by Hall, networks weren’t interested. It wasn’t until a Masterson associate named Stu Billett thought to tweak the idea by replicating a courtroom and staging a kind of mock trial that the format began to show promise.
Billett’s notion to take a portion of small claims cases in Los Angeles and offer the parties arbitration in exchange for television coverage found a receptive audience at NBC. But the network didn’t want a real judge to preside: They preferred a comic—Nipsey Russell was one name floated—that would listen to the cases and make jokes while being coached off-screen by a legal expert. When Billett got television station KTLA interested, they asked him to make two pilots: one played straight and one played for laughs. Billett refused, taping only the “straight” version with retired LA County judge Joseph Wapner. After being passed up by networks—again—Billett took it directly to syndication in 1981, where it became an immediate hit.
3. WAPNER NEVER USED THE GAVEL.
Wapner had gotten a call from Billett and partner Ralph Edwards about appearing on the series as the judge. When he arrived to their offices for an audition with a real case, he found it amusing that it had been set up with a gavel—the prop was something he had never used in 20 years of law and never once picked up on the show.
An aspiring professional baseball player, Rusty Burrell came to Los Angeles in the 1950s and wound up working in the sheriff’s department. After becoming a bailiff, producers spotted him and invited him to appear on Divorce Court, a series that staged mock trials using a mix of actors and real legal professionals. (Burrell also moonlit as an actor, appearing on General Hospital.) One of the attorneys who made frequent appearances on the show was Joe Wapner, Sr.—Joe Wapner’s father. Later, when Billett began insisting they use a “sexy” female bailiff on the air, Wapner refused and told him to hire Burrell instead.
5. RUSTY WAS A BUTTERFINGERS.
In one moment from the series that got a lot of repeated play on blooper specials, Rusty was asked to show Wapner a clock that was at the center of a repair dispute between the plaintiff and defendant. When he got to Wapner’s bench, Burrell dropped the clock, damaging it. Wapner joked that it was a “cheap clock” anyway.
6. SOME CASES WERE OVER PEANUTS.
Bill Perron via YouTube
The show’s producers culled from real small claims filings in Los Angeles, enticing parties to drop out of the judicial system to come on the air and have Wapner settle their dispute in what amounted to arbitration. The appeal: The show would pay the damages, which at the time was limited to $1500 (and eventually $2000) in Los Angeles court. While that was the maximum, producers frequently got away with spending far less: Wapner once ruled on a moldy cake, awarding the plaintiff $9 for having her daughter’s birthday ruined.
7. WAPNER ONLY WORKED ONE DAY A WEEK.
Good work if you can get it. Owing to the shooting schedule of People’s Court, Judge Wapner was only needed on the bench for one day out of the work week. The production would shoot 10 cases—making for five episodes—in a single shift, leaving the rest of the week free and clear for the on-camera talent. In 2000, Wapner told Salon.com that despite his condensed schedule, he made far more as a television judge than he did while on the bench in Los Angeles County.
8. WAPNER MEDIATED A CONFLICT BETWEEN JOHNNY CARSON AND DAVID LETTERMAN.
At one point, it was reputed that Wapner was recognized by more people than Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. In acknowledgment of his popularity, The Tonight Show host Johnny Carson invited Wapner to mediate a “dispute” between Carson and Late Night host David Letterman in 1986 for Carson’s show: Carson once hauled away an old truck of Letterman’s, causing damage. While the hosts wanted to play it as a comedy sketch, Wapner refused to appear unless his ruling was binding. He awarded Letterman $24.95 for a new headlight.
9. RUSTY ONCE GUARDED CHARLES MANSON.
After the “Helter Skelter” murders of 1969, cult leader Charles Manson became one of the most infamous figures in American culture. During his trial in Los Angeles, Burrell was charged with guarding him on a daily basis. Burrell recalled that Manson, who sat right beside him, would say, “You know, I could get up and walk out of here any time I want.” Burrell advised him that it wouldn’t be a good idea.
With 7.5 million viewers tuning in every week during its heyday, The People’s Court offered more than just entertainment: It acted as an educational tool for people who had never before considered small claims litigation. According to a 1989 New York Times report, the series led to an increase in the number of cases filed and even had some plaintiffs citing the television cases as if they were a proper precedent. And although the show offered an immediate financial reward, “real” litigants were often surprised to discover that many defendants preferred not to pay judgments. “If Judge Wapner were here,” one was heard to lament, “he’d see that I was paid.”
11. THE SHOW’S PRODUCERS WERE SUED BY MR. AMERICA.
Not all resolutions were respected by the litigating parties. In 1988, former Mr. America Rex Ravelle sued the show’s producers for $1 million owing to Wapner’s ruling. Ravelle alleged Wapner had made him look like a “bully and a buffoon” during the proceedings, which saw him attempt to reclaim back rent owed by an evicted tenant. Wapner ruled in the defendant’s favor, prompting Ravelle to file the substantial lawsuit after the show ignored his request for his episode to not be broadcast. He settled for $2500.
After 12 years and more than 2400 episodes, producers decided that The People’s Court had run its course in 1993. According to Wapner, he was the last to know: His brother-in-law had read of the show’s cancelation in a local San Francisco newspaper. “It irritated me to no end for a long time,” he said. “I don’t know if it was my age. I think I had all my marbles.” (The show returned in 1997, with former New York City mayor Ed Koch presiding.)
13. WAPNER WAS NO FAN OF JUDGE JUDY.
In 2002, after 20 years on the bench and 13 on television, the then-82-year-old Wapner ruled on Judge Judy Sheindlin, his heir apparent and a presiding television judge who acted in sharp contrast to Wapner’s own even temperament. “She’s discourteous and she’s abrasive,” he told the New York Post. “She’s not slightly insulting. She’s insulting in capital letters.” Sheindlin retorted she wouldn’t engage in “mudslinging.”
Animal cases were a staple of the original People’s Court, which once had Wapner ruling on whether a cat that was supposed to be dyed blue and came out pink was worthy of financial restitution. (It was.) In 1998, Animal Planet enlisted the semi-retired judge to oversee Judge Wapner’s Animal Court, a series that pitted pet owners in disputes over grooming, vet bills, and furry custody issues. The show, which lasted two seasons, featured Rusty Burrell but not court reporter Doug Llewelyn; during the original Court, he was bitten in the knee by a plaintiff’s dog. Llewelyn got a tetanus shot.
Ninjas are a dying breed, but the Japan Ninja Council has come up with a new plan to drum up excitement around the iconic warriors. As the Associated Press reports, the organization plans to open a ninja museum in Tokyo in 2018.
The plan is part of a nationwide “Cool Japan” initiative, which aims to promote the country’s many cultural treasures leading up to the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. In addition to building a new museum, the council also plans to found an academy dedicated to instructing a new generation of ninjas. According to the AP, there’s only one true Ninja (Jinichi Kawakami, a master of the Koga ninja school) left in the country.
The covert spies were most common from the 15th to the 17th centuries, but the council insists that the values of dedication and humility the ninjas displayed are still useful today. The country’s Aichi Prefecture agrees—last year the region put out a call for six full-time ninjas in an effort to promote “warlord tourism.”
Richard Nixon was concerned that birds would make an unsightly mess on the parade route during his presidential inauguration, so he took steps to keep the birds away—but what ended up happening was way worse than some pigeon poop.
Last June, a special edition of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens soundtrack was released on vinyl, with a special bonus: holograms that appear to float above, and beneath, the discs.
In the two-disc set, each has a B-side that contains music on the outer edge of the disc, and a specially etched center area. In that center area is the nifty hologram. You set the disc playing and point a directional light (like a small flashlight) at the center area. When viewed this way, two 3D holograms appear and rotate—and you’re simultaneously playing the soundtrack! The etchings were made by Tristan Duke.
The two holograms are the Millennium Falcon and a TIE Fighter. In this video, we see the holograms in action—including a test on a vertical record player, which works just as well. Enjoy:
As a recurring feature, we share some amazing Amazon deals we’ve turned up. These items were the ones that were the most popular with our readers this week, and they’re still available.
Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers (including Amazon) and may receive a small percentage of any sale. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy. Good luck deal hunting!
For almost 90 years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has awarded excellence on the big screen. Over the decades, there have been a lot of “first”s (and some “first and only”s) as the Academy Awards have grown and evolved. Here are 15 of them.
1. FIRST BLACK ARTIST TO WIN AN OSCAR: HATTIE MCDANIEL
In 1940, Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to be nominated for an Oscar, then the first African American to win an Oscar, when she took home the Best Supporting Actress statuette for her work in Gone with the Wind. Nearly a quarter-century later, in 1964, Sidney Poitier became the first African American to win a Best Actor Academy Award for playing Homer Smith in Lilies of the Field.
2. FIRST ACTOR TO REFUSE AN OSCAR: GEORGE C. SCOTT
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In 1971, George C. Scott refused both the nomination and eventual win for Best Actor in Patton. Scott sent the Academy a telegram saying that he refused to accept the nomination because he disliked the voting process and felt that competing against his fellow actors was artistically wrong. When his name was announced as the winner, Scott was asleep at home with his family in upstate New York. When asked about refusing the Academy Award a few days after the ceremony, Scott replied that he had “no feeling about it one way or another.”
3. FIRST PERSON TO PRESENT HIM/HERSELF WITH AN OSCAR: NORMA SHEARER
During the third Academy Awards in 1931, Norma Shearer was the presenter for the Best Actress category. Shearer was nominated for two Oscars in the Best Actress category that year, and she won the award for her role in The Divorcee (which she had to announce, rather awkwardly). It was the last time a nominated actor presented an Oscar for his or her own category.
4. FIRST COLOR MOVIE TO WIN A BEST PICTURE OSCAR: GONE WITH THE WIND
In 1938, A Star Is Born became the first all-color movie to receive a Best Picture nomination. Two years later, Gone with the Wind became the first color movie to win the award. It took a long time for Hollywood to fully embrace the technology; it wasn’t until 1956 that all five Best Picture nominees were color movies.
5. FIRST PERSON NAMED OSCAR TO WIN AN OSCAR: OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN
Composer Oscar Hammerstein II was the first person named “Oscar” to win an Oscar. Hammerstein won two Academy Awards throughout his career, one for the song “The Last Time I Saw Paris” from Lady Be Good in 1942 and another for “It Might As Well Be Spring” from State Fair in 1946.
6. FIRST TELEVISED AWARDS CEREMONY: THE 25TH ACADEMY AWARDS
The first Oscar ceremony to be televised was the 25th Academy Awards back in 1953. The event was simulcast in black and white from both the RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, with Bob Hope as host, and the NBC International Theatre, with Fredric March, in New York City.
In 1966, the Academy Awards ceremony was broadcast in color for the first time on ABC.
7. FIRST X-RATED MOVIE TO WIN A BEST PICTURE OSCAR: MIDNIGHT COWBOY
The first and only X-rated movie to win Best Picture was Midnight Cowboy in 1970. In 1972, A Clockwork Orange was the last X-rated movie to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. In 1990, the MPAA moved away from the “X” rating because of its association with pornographic films and instead introduced the “NC-17” rating for movies with graphic sex and violence.
8. FIRST SEQUEL TO BE NAMED BEST PICTURE: THE GODFATHER: PART II
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In 1975, The Godfather: Part II became the first sequel to win an Oscar for Best Picture, two years after the original won the same award. The Silence of the Lambs and The Return of the King would follow The Godfather: Part II as sequels that also won Best Picture Oscars.
9. FIRST WOMAN TO WIN A BEST PICTURE OSCAR: JULIA PHILLIPS
In 1974, Julia Phillips accepted the Oscar for Best Picture for The Sting, alongside Tony Bill and her then-husband/producing partner, Michael Phillips. The film’s success paved the way for Julia and Michael to make Taxi Driver just two years later; in 1977, they earned another Best Picture nomination for the dark Martin Scorsese classic.
10. FIRST WOMAN TO BE NAMED BEST DIRECTOR: KATHRYN BIGELOW
In 2010, after 82 years of Academy Awards, Kathryn Bigelow was the first female filmmaker to win the Best Director Oscar. She won for directing The Hurt Locker, which also ended up winning Best Picture.
Only three other women have been nominated for Best Director Oscars: Italian director Lina Wertmüller was nominated for Seven Beauties in 1977, Jane Campion was nominated for The Piano in 1993, and Sofia Coppola was nominated for Lost in Translation in 2004.
11. FIRST BEST PICTURE NOMINEE TO BE RELEASED ON HOME VIDEO BEFORE THE OSCARS CEREMONY: THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
The Silence of the Lambs was the first Best Picture nominee to be released on home video (VHS and laserdisc) before the start of the awards ceremony.The movie was released in theaters on February 14, 1991 and on VHS on October 24, about four months before the Oscars telecast in 1992. It was also the first horror film to win Best Picture.
12. FIRST ANIMATED FILM TO EARN A BEST PICTURE NOMINATION: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
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Although it didn’t win the award, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991) was the first animated movie to receive a nomination for Best Picture. Since then, Pixar’s Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010) have also received Best Picture nominations. In 2001, the Academy introduced a Best Animated Feature Film category.
13. FIRST ACTOR TO RECEIVE TWO NOMINATIONS FOR THE SAME ROLE: BARRY FITZGERALD
In 1945, Barry Fitzgerald became the first and only actor to ever be nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor for the same role, for playing Father Fitzgibbon in Going My Way; Fitzgerald ended up winning the latter. AMPAS later changed the rules and guidelines for acting nominations, so that a double nomination couldn’t happen again.
14. FIRST ACTOR TO WIN A POSTHUMOUS AWARD: PETER FINCH
Peter Finch was the first actor to win an Academy Award posthumously. He received the Best Actor Oscar in 1977 for his electrifying performance as TV anchor Howard Beale in Network. Finch died of a heart attack on January 14, 1977, less than three months before the ceremony.
15. FIRST 3D FILM(S) TO EARN BEST PICTURE NOMINATIONS: AVATAR AND UP
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Though the 3D format has been around since 1915, it took until 2010 for the first stereoscopic film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. And it was a big year for the format, as it wasn’t just one 3D film that earned the Oscars’ top nod—there were two of them: James Cameron’s Avatar and Pete Docter and Bob Peterson’s Up (ultimately, both films lost to Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker).
