Author: Jake Rossen

If you’ve ever been alarmed to see prices for airline tickets spike within minutes of checking them, you’ve probably wondered if you’re missing out on a sweet spot for purchasing.

The answer is yes—and it’s on a Sunday. According to Conde Nast Traveler, a joint study by travel site Expedia and the Airlines Reporting Corporation used data [PDF] from billions of personal-travel bookings to decipher when travelers were getting the best airline deals. Passengers who booked flights on Sundays saved an average of 17 percent on domestic flights and 30 percent on European travel.

There is a caveat, though. In order to have a chance at the best pricing, Expedia found it’s best to book a minimum of 21 days in advance. (A ticket between Europe and the U.S., for example, was an average of $669 less expensive when booked more than three weeks before travel.) And you’ll want to avoid attempting any bookings on Friday, since you’ll be jockeying for seats with business travelers.

The companies found one other airline hack: Trips that include a Saturday night stay are generally cheaper (up to 19 percent for travel within the U.S.). Combine that with a 5 percent price drop for an average ticket in 2016 from the year before, and flying in 2017 could be easier on your bank account than ever before.

[h/t Conde Nast Traveler]

Johnny Brennan and Kamal Ahmed bonded over a dummy. It was the 1970s, and a teenaged Brennan had dressed a human-shaped sack in a football helmet and jersey before launching it off the roof of his parents’ Queens home and in front of oncoming traffic. Panic-stricken, drivers would swerve to avoid a collision while Brennan was in hysterics.

Ahmed, who was several years younger, found that he shared his neighbor’s questionable taste in humor. With Ahmed as a co-conspirator, Brennan would spend much of the 1980s and ’90s making prank phone calls to businesses in various character guises, insulting employees or owners with belligerent requests for work. Though it started as a lark, The Jerky Boys would go on to sell millions of albums, star in a movie, and inspire a future generation of comedic talent like director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) and Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy). Spin magazine once declared them the “Hall & Oates of crank calling.”

There’s just one problem with that comparison: Hall & Oates stayed together.

Although phony phone calls have probably been around for as long as the telephone itself, it wasn’t until the 1960s that entertainers began using them as a premise for comedy. Jerry Lewis made calls using an expensive recording system he had Paramount build for him, releasing the back-and-forth on his albums. Steve Allen did the same, with compilations that came from his late-night talk show.

But it wasn’t until Jim Davidson and John Elmo, better known as the Bum Bar Bastards, decided to prank a salty old bar owner named Louis “Red” Deutsch in the mid-1970s that crank calls morphed into a raw, underground sensation. The two would call Deutsch at the Tube Bar and ask to speak to “Ben Dover” or another sophomoric patron.

Red, who seemed to have a zero-tolerance policy for humor, would escalate the situation rapidly.

“I’ll put a few bullets into you, yo muddaf*ckin’ bum!” he rasped. “Come over here and say these things!” Davidson and Elmo did not, but they did keep calling Red almost every weekend for two years straight.

The “Tube Bar tapes” proved there was an appetite for a garage-band level of prank callers. In 1986, Brennan started breaking up the monotony of his construction job by coming home and pranking New York businesses with a tape recorder running. Honing characters like the brusque Frank Rizzo or the withdrawn Sol Rosenberg, Brennan would rope unsuspecting civilians into his audio sketches, prompting outbursts of anger or resignation; Ahmed would sometimes whisper jokes into his ear.

Ahmed, who worked as a bouncer, gave one of their tapes to a club patron. Before long, the calls were being dubbed and circulated through small-press music ‘zines like Factsheet Five and aired on morning shows. Howard Stern started to recap the machinations of Frank Rizzo.

Calling an auto mechanic, “Rizzo” made his case for an open position.

“Are you applying for a job?”

“That’s right, tough guy. I’ve worked on race cars for 18 years … right now I had to leave an old job because of problems with my boss … I’ll come down there with my tools and start work tomorrow!”

“I have to hire you first, guy.”

“Well, I’m the best!”

Sensing opportunity, Brennan and Ahmed began selling their tapes through a 900 number. Their continued popularity got them signed for a full-fledged record release in 1993.

At the time, the team still didn’t have a name. When Brennan told his mother about the album deal, she suggested they call themselves The Jerky Boys.

Bolstered by airtime—and as a consequence, free advertising—on national radio programs, The Jerky Boys went double platinum, selling 500,000 copies. The Jerky Boys 2 followed in 1994, and sold the same number in its first two weeks of release. Brennan and Ahmed quit their day jobs, hired a manager, and devoted themselves full-time to the business of annoying people.

The boys didn’t bother with any legal details early on. Once success hit and the potential for lawsuits loomed, a crank call would typically be followed by a more reserved phone call from their manager, who would try to convince the offended party to sign a release form. Most would: Brennan once recalled that only one suit was ever filed as a result of his years as a telephone harassment specialist.

The success of the albums drew the attention of Hollywood. The kids of singer Tom Jones were reported to be big fans. In 1994, Brennan and Ahmed were courted by actors Tony Danza and Emilio Estevez, who executive produced The Jerky Boys movie in 1995. The film—in which the two played fictionalized versions of themselves—gave them unprecedented visibility but savage reviews. An unimpressed critic from The New York Times noted that:

“As telephone guerrillas puncturing institutional defenses with their rude crank phone calls, the Jerky Boys have touched a nerve. The comic flailings of these self-described ‘lowlifes from Queens’ are comic cries of anger from a social stratum that looks ahead and sees only dead ends. Adopting funny voices and taping phone calls that make fools of their frequently snippy recipients is as efficient a way as any of momentarily leveling the social landscape.”

Undeterred, the Boys released several more albums before Ahmed decided to call it quits to pursue a filmmaking career. The split seemed less than amicable, with Ahmed chastising Brennan for continuing what he felt was a juvenile pursuit and Brennan downplaying Ahmed’s contributions.

Brennan released two more albums in 2001 and 2007, but stayed largely silent. He told Rolling Stone in 2014 that the death of his father in 2000 diluted his passion for pranking: His dad had been an inspiration for the rough-hewn Frank Rizzo character.

While Brennan wasn’t producing much new material, his library of classics endured. Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy, credited Brennan with helping to shape his sense of humor; so did Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig, who felt inspired to commit to what people might consider “lowbrow” comedy in films like Bridesmaids.

Today, the 53-year-old Brennan operates The Jerky Boys’s official website, which is home to sporadic new calls and a small line of gourmet foods. Although Ahmed is still absent, his business is still plural: Brennan has explained that the “Boys” of the name refers to his characters, not themselves.

For all of its benefits as a space-saving medium of convenience, digital storage still has one glaring asterisk: Files can be corrupted, leading to partial or total loss of information. Depending on the digital format used, there’s also a natural life expectancy to deal with. If an optical disc (like a DVD) is scratched, it inhibits retrieving information. If it’s a solid-state medium like a flash drive, continual rewriting can degrade the memory.

With that in mind, the team behind the historical archive Rosetta Project is going analog. They’ve created a tiny (.78 inch) wearable disk that houses 1000 pages of 1000 different languages still in use as of 2016. The files are visible to the naked eye and don’t require a digital deconstruction—just a microscope with magnification capability of at least 500x.

The first text on the disk is the “Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” rendered in 327 languages, beginning with Abkhaz.

The coin consists of a glass plate embedded with tiny bits of nickel that contain written examples of the languages. A laser is used to write the data onto the nickel. If all goes well, the disk is expected to last another 10,000 years—long enough to provide a historical relic for some future or alien civilization.

If you’d like your own, Rosetta will be happy to supply you with one after you’ve made a $1000 donation toward their archiving efforts.

[h/t Gizmodo]

Storing someone’s urine for up to 10 years would normally be considered unusual behavior. If you’re the International Olympic Committee (IOC), though, it’s just business. The organization maintains a library of liquid waste so they can re-test athlete samples for prohibited substances.

That’s exactly what the IOC just did with Nesta Carter’s pee. The Jamaican runner won a gold medal for the 4×100 meter relay in 2008, along with teammates that included the decorated Usain Bolt. Unfortunately, Carter’s urine tested positive for a stimulant called methylhexanamine. As per IOC policy, the entire team’s medals for that competition will be officially considered stripped.

But what happens to the actual medal? Is it shipped back? Does the Olympic Committee hire a repo man?

The fate of Bolt’s hardware can be predicted based on a past case history. In 2007, five-time Olympic medalist Marion Jones came under fire for using performance-enhancing substances during the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia. After her admission, the IOC stripped her of the medals and asked that they be returned.

Why not demand? Because the organization has no actual legal recourse to seize or repossess them. Athletes return them voluntarily, based on the spirit of fair play.

Jones’s attorneys met with the IOC and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency at a conference in Austin, Texas, where their client’s medals were turned over. The prizes were then forwarded back to IOC headquarters. Other athletes who have faced similar circumstances were free to simply mail their medals back.

Once the medals are back in the IOC’s possession, they’re free to either keep them in a vault—as in the case of the 1972 U.S. Olympic basketball team that refused to accept a controversial decision that left them with silver—or reallocate them to the athlete who would have placed if not for the stripped athlete’s cheating ways. That’s what happened in 1988 when Carl Lewis was awarded the gold medal that originally went to Ben Johnson, who failed a drug test.

As for Bolt: When he learned last year that giving back his medal might be a possibility owing to Carter’s failed test, he appeared to have accepted it. “If I need to give back my gold medal I’d have to give it back,” he told The Guardian. “It’s not a problem for me.” Then again, that might be easier to do when you’ve got eight more at home.

Have you got a Big Question you’d like us to answer? If so, let us know by emailing us at bigquestions@mentalfloss.com.

Real estate developer Bruce Makowsky estimates that there might be only 3000 viable buyers for his newest housing project. If that sounds like a gamble, it is—but one that could pay off in a major way. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the $250 million price tag dangling from the front door of his newly built luxury property at 924 Bel Air Road in Bel Air, California, makes it America’s most expensive home.

The specs are a few degrees removed from what you might find in your standard Century 21 booklet. The 38,000 square-foot construction boasts 12 bedrooms, 21 bathrooms, a 4-ton stainless steel spiral staircase, a fully loaded 40-seat home theater, a poolside movie screen, three kitchens, and five bars.

The property also comes with plenty of character. There’s a parking garage with more than $30 million worth of luxury automobiles, including Ferraris and Bentleys; a massive candy dispensing wall tops off a game room next to a bowling alley; the helicopter from the 1980s television series Airwolf sits on the grounds. (It’s non-operable.)

Makowsky has good reason to be optimistic: He sold a $147 million spec home in 2014 and told The Hollywood Reporter that if the wealthy spend $200 million on yachts, they’ll be open to spending a little more on a land-locked property.

 All images courtesy of Hilton and Hyland.

 [h/t The Hollywood Reporter]

There’s no question that frying bacon in a pan is the best way to prepare the world’s most delicious threat to your arteries. For the unmotivated, heading for the microwave runs a close second—but that often leads to a not-so-crispy product and a coating of grease inside your appliance.

A new alternative has arrived. It’s the Bacon Express, a $30 countertop device that seems destined for late-night television advertising. It’s manufactured by a company called Nostalgia Products.

The appliance has two reverse gull-wing doors that fold down to allow for the introduction of raw bacon slices that dangle over the middle heating element. Once the doors are closed, it takes only minutes to deliver up to six pieces to your plate, with the grease draining to a disposal tray below. Nostalgia asserts that their vertical cooking approach means a no-shrivel bacon experience.

Pair it with a grilled cheese toaster and you may begin to wonder why your modest bread toaster ever made you happy.

[h/t Gizmodo]

In the 14 years he spent planning, sculpting, and overseeing the completion of the Mount Rushmore monument, artist Gutzon Borglum harbored a deep concern. He worried that his creation—one that used a 400-foot-long by 500-foot-wide rock canvas to depict the faces of four influential U.S. presidents—would one day be shrouded in mystery.

After all, Borglum reasoned, what did we really know about Stonehenge? Or Egyptian pyramids? Civilizations could rise and fall while Rushmore stood, its origins getting more clouded with time.

To make sure people in the future knew the history of his project and the meaning behind it, Borglum announced an ambitious addition: a massive room situated just behind Abraham Lincoln’s hairline that would contain all the information anyone would ever need about the mountain. It would even house major historical artifacts like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Borglum called it the Hall of Records. In 1938, he had workers begin blasting away with dynamite, carving what he wanted to be the most elaborate artist’s signature ever conceived.

The loud, brazen Borglum was born in 1867—at least, that’s the best information we’ve got. He enjoyed obfuscating his history, mixing and matching facts for his own amusement. A talented artist, Borglum thought he’d have a career in painting. When he saw his brother, Solon, making a reputation as a sculptor, sibling rivalry kicked in, and Borglum found he had even more to offer while working in clay.

After a modestly sized bust of Lincoln garnered Borglum national attention, he was invited to carve the faces of Confederate soldiers into Stone Mountain in Georgia. That work—which was never completed due to disagreements with local government—attracted the attention of Doane Robinson, South Dakota’s official state historian. Robinson told Borglum that a monument in the Black Hills of the state could be an excellent canvas for a work on a grand scale; in return, the state’s tourism statistics might flourish.

Borglum was intrigued. After scouting three mountains, he began to dwell on the possibilities present at Mount Rushmore. To draw national attention, he would focus on four presidents who had a tremendous impact on the country: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Theodore Roosevelt. Each man would be depicted down to his waist. Alongside Washington would be a massive inscription detailing major events in U.S. history.

The actual carving began in 1927, with 30 men working at a time to blast rock with dynamite. The U.S. government subsidized most of the cost of labor, which would eventually amount to nearly $1 million.

As they doled out money, South Dakota and the federal backers were most concerned with Borglum etching the six-story tall faces into the east side of the mountain. But Borglum’s attention was diverted: as ambitious as the project was, he imagined something even greater. He wanted a room accessible to visitors that would have tablets explaining the work done, as well as busts of famous Americans and key documents like the Declaration of Independence. Those looking for admittance would climb an 800-foot-long staircase made from the blasted rock, then pass under a gold-plated eagle with a 38-foot wingspan.

The room began to take shape in 1938, when Borglum finally started blasting out an opening. A doorway 18 feet tall led to a room 75 feet long and 35 feet tall; red paint on the walls told workers where and how to extract the rock. Holes that housed the sticks of dynamite created a honeycomb effect.

Borglum’s ambition wasn’t shared by the government, which had a limited amount of funds to allocate and considered the room frivolous. South Dakota state senator Peter Norbeck wanted to help, and offered relief workers to assist in constructing the staircase. That way, federal funds wouldn’t have to be tapped.

Borglum, however, didn’t warm to the idea. He got a percentage of those federal funds, and using relief labor wouldn’t put any money in his pocket. He pushed the senator away in the belief he could grease the necessary wheels. 

Borglum’s self-confidence may have been his downfall. Governor William Bulow told him that finishing the faces was of the utmost priority, and that any ancillary work could be ignored until later. Any miner could blast a hole in the mountain—it took an artist to conceive of the actual sculpture.

Despite Borglum’s insistence he was in perfect health, Bulow’s urgency turned out to have merit. Borglum died in March 1941, leaving the Hall of Records unfinished.

With money and time at a premium, the government declared the monument more or less complete on Halloween 1941. Borglum’s ambition for a signature room would be costly, and no more work was done. It remains inaccessible to tourists.

His family wouldn’t drop the matter so easily. For decades, Borglum’s descendants petitioned the government to complete the room in honor of his work. Finally, in 1998, family members were able to assemble in the room and oversee a deposit of several porcelain tablets that explained the work done to the mountain. Lowered into a hole in the floor of the room, it was topped with a 1200 pound capstone. The Mount Rushmore National Memorial Society paid for the ceremony, which represented Borglum’s posthumous completion of his landmark piece of art.

One of the tablets contains Borglum’s intention for both the mountain and the room inside of it:

“I want, somewhere in America, on or near the Rockies, the backbone of the Continent, so far removed from succeeding, selfish, coveting civilizations, a few feet of stone that bears witness, carries the likeness, the dates, a word or two of the great things we accomplished as a Nation, placed so high it won’t pay to pull them down for lesser purposes.

Hence, let us place there, carved high, as close to heaven as we can, the words of our leaders, their faces, to show posterity what manner of men they were. Then breathe a prayer that these records will endure until the wind and rain alone shall wear them away.”

All images courtesy of the U.S. National Park Service.

When President-Elect Rutherford B. Hayes raised his hand and took the oath of office on the East Portico of the Capitol on March 5, 1877, his supporters breathed a sigh of relief. The ceremony marked the end of a lengthy, acrimonious debate between his Republicans and the Democrats over the results of the previous year’s election. Some even believed the tension might threaten to spill over into another Civil War.

Democratic nominee Samuel Tilden had earned the popular vote, and 184 of the 185 votes he needed in the Electoral College. But allegations surfaced that Tilden’s seeming victory was thanks, in part, to voter intimidation and fraud in key states like Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. A special Congressional committee was formed to sift through the paper trail, leaving the outcome in doubt for months.

Hayes being sworn in ended all speculation. But only a handful of people observing the ceremony knew that the celebration taking place that Monday was merely for show: Hayes had been sworn in during a secret ceremony two days earlier, in the presence of outgoing president Ulysses S. Grant. And history still isn’t quite sure why.

In the years following the Civil War, Reconstruction and bitter feelings had created a state of discontent. For the 1876 election, both of the major political parties knew the country would be looking for a president who was tempered in his actions.

The Democrats sided with Samuel Tilden, who made his name as governor of New York by breaking up a corrupt political scene headed by “Boss” Tweed; Republicans backed Rutherford B. Hayes, a Civil War veteran and Ohio governor who was so moderate in every aspect of his life—he abstained from alcohol—that it would be virtually impossible for him to stir up any radical opposition.

Political pundits who predicted a tight race weren’t disappointed. As the results began trickling in on November 7, 1876, Democrats crowned Tilden as the victor, with a winning popular vote margin of 250,000. But four states—Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon—quickly became areas of contention. Democrats were plagued by allegations of intimidating newly empowered black voters to side with Tilden in three of those key territories; Democrats accused Republicans of foul play in Oregon.

Hayes needed 185 electoral votes. He had 184 to Hayes’s 165. Twenty electoral votes were in doubt. As the weeks went by, no one knew who the President-Elect was.

To break the logjam, Congress appointed a special Electoral Commission to investigate the results. Five Republican Congressmen joined five Democrats and five Supreme Court justices. It took them until February 1877 to come to a majority vote of 8-7 in favor of Hayes. He was President-Elect by one commission vote, possibly the narrowest margin of victory in any presidential election.

That decision did little to soothe the Democrats, who were incensed that their idea of the rightful winner was being denied his seat in the Oval Office. Extensive filibustering took place in the House that delayed acknowledgment of the commission’s decision. Rumors began to swirl that Tilden’s more ardent supporters might show up to Washington armed, with an eye on kidnapping Hayes so Tilden would be invited to take his place. One irate Tilden supporter shot a bullet into the window of Hayes’s home.

As Hayes and his wife, Lucy, began making the trip from Ohio to Washington, they had no idea if he was actually president. They were still traveling when they got the official announcement, which was made on March 2. The Democrats had finally ceded their point, albeit with concessions: They’d gain a Democrat postmaster general, as well as the removal of federal troops from government buildings, effectively ending Reconstruction.

When Hayes arrived in Washington on March 3, he was invited to dinner by outgoing president Ulysses S. Grant. At some point during the evening, Grant took Hayes to the Red Room in the White House and stood nearby as Supreme Court Justice Morrison B. White administered the oath of office. After the kidnapping rumors and the Democratic response, Grant may have desired a private and controlled inauguration that couldn’t be disrupted.

The two returned to dinner, their guests unaware of what had just taken place. As a result, March 3 was a day when the country had two commanders-in-chief.

Hayes had his official ceremony two days later. With Democrats appeased by the concessions, there were no disruptions. Still, Grant walked Hayes to the podium, protective of the President-Elect until his last moments as president were completed.

The U.S. Senate’s official reason for Hayes being sworn in early cites the calendar as the main issue. Inauguration day fell on a Sunday that year, and the Constitution contains no explicit protocol for what to do. To not swear in Hayes on Sunday and wait until Monday would technically mean the country would be without a president for a day. Dwight Eisenhower took similar dual oaths in 1957 for that reason.

But few elections had been as hotly contested as Hayes vs. Tilden, with the scars of the war still fresh. Grant may have seen potential for Democrats to disrupt the ceremony to the point where he felt it best to make Hayes’s appointment official as soon as possible. To delay might have meant Grant’s exit on March 4 would leave a void in office.

In the end, Hayes was as advertised, almost demure in his service—he and his wife even banned alcohol from the White House—and exited in 1881 just as quietly as he had come in.

It would’ve taken a true political historian to notice that his March 5 inauguration was a duplicate, but there was one clue for the observant. When Hayes arrived at the East Portico to be sworn in, he was sitting on the right of his carriage, a spot that was always reserved for just one person: the President of the United States.

The two women stood stark naked in court, men wrapping measuring tapes around their hips, busts, and shoulders. Normally sporting long, flowing locks, the two had been stripped of every strand so their bald heads could be compared. Absent any apparel or accessories, it would be up to a Dutch judge to determine whether or not the two looked so much alike that one would have to be destroyed.

On one side of the courtroom was Sindy, a vivacious UK fashion plate that had just been exported by Hasbro; on the other stood Barbie, Mattel’s flagship blonde. Reconfigured for international distribution, Sindy bore a striking resemblance to Barbie—so much so that Mattel felt compelled to haul her into court on accusations of counterfeiting, copyright infringement, and whatever else they could use to challenge her existence. Sindy, their lawyers charged, was nothing more than Barbie’s “unwanted sister.”

At stake was a majority share in the billion-dollar fashion doll market. Despite her congenial personality, Barbie couldn’t afford to play nice.

Ever since Barbie made her toy aisle debut in 1959, Hasbro has looked on with envy. Accessorized with hundreds of outfits, cars, homes, and boyfriends, she helped catapult Mattel to record revenue in the 1960s and beyond, swatting down challengers with ease.

Eager to mimic her success, Hasbro tried a doll based on The Flying Nun television series; a model named Leggy came later. In the 1980s, they thought Jem and the Holograms would finally topple Barbie from her perch. None produced a single bead of sweat on her tiny, perfect brow.

Having failed to produce a contender themselves, Hasbro decided to look at existing licenses. In the UK, they noticed a doll named Sindy, a demure toy with a sideways glance who sped around on a moped (or pony) and embodied the kind of high-fashion couture originating out of London in the 1960s. By 1985, Sindy was so popular she had captured 80 percent of the doll market in Britain.

Hasbro approached her owner, Pedigree Toys, offering to manufacture and distribute the dolls all over the world. (Notably, Pedigree had once turned down an offer by Mattel to license Barbie for the UK.) The company agreed, and Hasbro executive Stephen Hassenfeld believed they finally had a product that would successfully compete against Barbie.

Sindy’s proportions, however, would have to be reconsidered. Almost cherubic in Britain, her figure would be enhanced for worldwide appeal. Her legs grew longer and slimmer, and her chest began to protrude in a way that recalled Barbie’s sculpted curves. No longer confined to overcast London, she even got a tan—all the better to replicate her California-loving competition.

During a 1988 European toy exhibition, Mattel CEO John Amerman caught wind of Hasbro’s Hassenfeld showing off a Barbie clone to buyers. While Mattel typically laughed off attempts to cut into Barbie’s market share, Sindy was different by virtue of not appearing to be very different. There was a real possibility that consumers, especially young ones, would confuse the two. Sindy even sported an all-pink packaging that had become synonymous with Barbie.

Agitated, Amerman confronted Hassenfeld and told him that pursuing Sindy would never be in his best interests.

Hassenfeld’s reply was chilly. “No one,” he said, “tells me what to do.”

In March of that year, Mattel’s lawyers dispatched a terse letter demanding Hasbro destroy or turn over everything related to Sindy by April 7: sculpts, stock, and plans. But Hasbro had already spent millions in development and advertising and wasn’t about to be cowed. They ignored the deadline, and began shipping Sindy across the globe.

Everywhere she went, Mattel’s lawyers followed. Sindy was impounded in France, where courts were persuaded by Mattel’s argument of a counterfeit Barbie. Other countries allowed her to be sold without reservation.

In a series of court cases, lawyers for both sides presented their respective dolls for the court’s examination. In one bit of testimony, the size and depth of Sindy’s nostrils became a point of contention. It was argued that Sindy’s nose was more pointed, with deeper nasal passages. Crucially, Hasbro’s sculptors had not altered her chest to the point where her breasts were as disproportionately large as Barbie’s, and the company asserted that was enough to make the two distinct.

By 1992, millions of dollars in legal fees had been spent arguing over the size and shape of doll breasts, with no end in sight.

That year, a representative for Hasbro named Barry Alperin requested a meeting with two of Mattel’s top executives, including newly installed CEO Jill Barad. Opening a suitcase, Alperin revealed five distinct, disembodied Sindy heads. He requested that Barad choose one that she felt was a comfortable enough distance from Barbie’s features.

Barad chose a Sindy head Mattel could live with. The legal battle was over.

Hasbro never had great success in the U.S. with Sindy, which went through several iterations before being dropped in 1998. Pedigree re-launched her in 2006 and again via a licensing agreement with the Tesco store chain in late 2016, taking care to present a doll and personality far removed from Barbie’s. At 18 inches, she towers over her former rival and sticks with sneakers or sandals. No heels, and no dream house.

At the height of a long career, Charles Bronson (1921-2003) embodied the palpable grit and realism that characterized the film industry in the 1970s. Bronson’s unconventional looks and stoic demeanor made him a perfect foil for street crooks in the Death Wish series and as a stern American export in foreign film territories, where Bronson’s popularity soared. Take a look at some facts about the man to ponder the next time he’s glaring at you from your television screen.

1. HE STARTED SMOKING AT AGE 9.

Born Charles Buchinsky in 1921, Bronson was an addition to a large family: He was number 11 out of 15 kids. The brood struggled to make ends meet, with poverty so pervasive that Bronson sometimes had to wear his sister’s dresses to school, had his head shaved to stave off lice, and felt obligated to begin working in the nearby coal mines at the age of 10. That early stress might be why Bronson took up smoking at 9 years old. (He had, he said, been fond of chewing tobacco before then.)

2. HE EARNED HIS FIRST ACTING ROLE BY BURPING.

Bronson had always been interested in the arts. After serving in the Army during World War II, he found himself in Atlantic City doing odd jobs. One acting troupe invited him to paint scenery for them; Bronson found he enjoyed performing more. His first film role, in 1951’s You’re in the Navy Now, was landed, he said, because he was the only actor who could burp on demand.

3. COMMUNISM (AND STEVE MCQUEEN) FORCED A NAME CHANGE.

When Bronson (né Buchinsky) was starting out, Senator Joseph McCarthy was preoccupied with rooting out Communists in Hollywood. Fearing his Lithuanian name would provide ammunition for accusations, he took on the name Bronson after driving with friend Steve McQueen, who pointed to a “Bronson” street sign and shouted to him that it would be perfect.

4. HE WAS ROOMMATES WITH JACK KLUGMAN.

Before Jack Klugman became famous for being the disheveled Oscar in the television adaptation of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, he was playing opposite a prototype Felix in real life: Bronson. The two shared an apartment in New York in the late 1940s. Klugman once recalled that Bronson was neat and a “damn good ironer.”

5. HE WASN’T THE FIRST CHOICE FOR DEATH WISH.

After studios began circling an adaptation of author Brian Garfield’s novel Death Wish in 1972, director Michael Winner started his search for the actor who could convincingly portray Paul Kersey, a pacifist-turned-vigilante who begins gunning down criminals after a violent assault against his wife. Henry Fonda was approached but found the subject matter “repulsive.” When Winner solicited Bronson, the actor told him, “I’d like to do it.”

“The movie?” Winner said.

“No, shoot muggers,” Bronson answered.

Released in 1974, Death Wish was a smash hit, grossing an impressive $22 million. At one New York theater, it took in over $70,000 in a single week, outperforming The Godfather at the same venue.

6. HE WAS AFRAID OF FIRE. AND GERMS.

While shooting Death Wish in New York in early 1974, Bronson insisted that he and his family be put up in a suite on the second floor. He refused to be booked in a room any higher up, fearing he wouldn’t be able to get out in case of a fire. Bronson also avoided fans that swarmed his car during shooting, declining autograph requests or any hand-shaking for fear he’d be exposed to germs.

7. HE WASN’T A BIG TALKER.

Bronson’s monosyllabic screen presence wasn’t much of a stretch. As journalists found out, the actor preferred to say as little as possible. When Roger Ebert was dispatched to interview Bronson in 1974, he found a man who would rather be anywhere else. “I don’t ever talk … about the philosophy of a picture,” he said. “It has never come up. And I wouldn’t talk about it to you. I don’t expound. I don’t like to overtalk a thing … Because I’m entertained more by my own thoughts than by the thoughts of others.”

8. HE WAS HUGE IN ITALY.

While Bronson was a bona fide movie star in the States for a portion of his career, he was a megastar in other countries. Italian moviegoers called him “Il Brutto” (The Ugly One) and in France he was one of cinema’s “monstres sacrés” His movies would often earn more in other territories than they would in North America. In Japan, a publicist once said, his name appeared on a sign over a block long.

9. LANCE HENRIKSEN PLAYED HIM IN A TV MOVIE.

After Bronson’s wife, actress Jill Ireland, died in 1990, a film based on her memoirs was produced. Reason for Living: The Jill Ireland Story starred Jill Clayburgh as Ireland and Lance Henriksen (Aliens) as Bronson. The NBC project upset the actor, who threatened legal action to prevent it from being made. “While Henriksen doesn’t resemble Bronson at all,” wrote Entertainment Weekly, “he nonetheless summons up Bronson’s tough-guy inscrutability.”

Additional Sources:
Bronson’s Loose! The Making of the Death Wish Films, by Paul Talbot
Bronson’s Loose Again: On the Set With Charles Bronson, by Paul Talbot