College football fans are no strangers to blowouts. Just look at the 2016 season: Missouri pummeled Delaware State, 79-0; Michigan smothered Rutgers, 78-0; Miami slugged Florida A&M, 70-3. But those games sound like gentle drubbings compared to the lopsided 1916 skirmish between Georgia Tech and Cumberland University, which ended 222-0.

If that score sounds spiteful, it was. Georgia Tech’s coach, John Heisman—for whom the coveted trophy is named—was reportedly bent on revenge. A year earlier, during the spring of 1915, Cumberland’s baseball club had recruited a handful of semi-professional ballplayers from Nashville and disguised them as college athletes. Boasting a lineup stacked with pros, the little Tennessee college creamed Georgia Tech’s ball club, 22-0.

The defeat garnered national attention, leaving Heisman, who coached both Georgia Tech’s baseball and football teams, humiliated. When he discovered that Cumberland had cheated, he vowed to get payback.

Oddly, Heisman nearly missed his chance. By 1916, Cumberland, a university out of Lebanon, Tennessee, a small town about 30 minutes outside of Nashville, was facing financial difficulties and as such canceled that year’s season of football. The football squad’s student manager notified its opponents that, since it would not be fielding a team that season, Cumberland would have to cancel all scheduled games. But Cumberland made a careless mistake—they forgot to brief Georgia Tech. When Cumberland discovered the error, it was too late: They were contractually obligated to play, football team or no football team.

Tasting blood, Heisman wrote Cumberland’s football manager a pointed letter to ensure he wouldn’t flake: “I hearby offer you the sum of $500 and an all-expenses-paid trip to Atlanta for your football team on the condition that you honor your contract by participating in and completing the Cumberland-Georgia Tech football game.” The offer was freighted with a legal threat: If Cumberland didn’t play, Georgia Tech would charge a $3000 forfeiture fee. The expense “would have been a severe blow to Cumberland,” says Sam Hatcher, author of Heisman’s First Trophy, in an interview with The Tennessean, “and probably would have closed the school, if you want to know the truth.”

Cumberland agreed to play. The old football manager assembled a team of at least 13 players (some sources say up to 19), consisting of fraternity brothers, law students, and boys from town. To avoid getting caught by university administrators—who were unaware of Heisman’s ultimatum—the team covered up their practice sessions by calling them “men’s choir meetings.”

Most of the volunteers had no knowledge of, or experience playing, football. “I played once in high school and once in prep school,” Cumberland’s Gentry Dugat admitted to Sports Illustrated in 1961. He wasn’t that interested in playing football anyway. He had signed up because he’d never ridden a passenger train before; it was basically a free vacation.

As Cumberland practiced, no one bothered to cook up trick plays or study the Xs and Os of fundamental football. Instead, coaches assigned each player a code name that corresponded with a specific vegetable. When the offense took to the line of scrimmage, the quarterback called plays by hollering the names of different crudités. “Plays sounded like this: ‘Turnip over lettuce. Hut one, hut two…'” reported Jay Searcy of the Chicago Tribune. “Cucumber to cauliflower. Hut one, hut two…”

The week before the big game, Cumberland’s rag-tag team tested their strategy in a meaningless exhibition game against Sewanee: The University of the South. They lost 107-0.

On October 7, 1916, more than 1000 fans passed through the turnstiles of Grant Field in Atlanta to watch the greatest slaughter in college football history. Cumberland was a wreck before the first whistle blew. Aside from their obvious shortfalls—a severe lack of strategy, knowledge, and, well, talent—Cumberland was already at a disadvantage because three of its players had gotten lost during a layover in Nashville and failed to chase down the connecting train to Georgia.

The game that ensued would turn out to be a mythical comedy of errors that is today riddled with fuzzy details. We know that Cumberland received the first kickoff, and, as the ball hurtled through the air, their quarterback attempted a block and was promptly coldcocked. Morris Gouger took the reins and gave Cumberland fans a ray of false hope when, on the team’s first drive, he rushed for three yards. (It would be one of Cumberland’s best plays all day.) Shortly after, Cumberland punted, Georgia Tech got the ball, and it scored on its first play.

When Cumberland got the pigskin back, it wasted no time and fumbled. Georgia scooped it and scrambled to the end zone. Touchdown. When Cumberland got the ball again, it fumbled a second time. Georgia picked it up and rushed to the goal line again. Touchdown. According to some accounts, Cumberland must have believed in the power of threes, because when the team received the ball again, they repeated the fumble-turnover-touchdown trifecta for a third time.

By halftime, the score was 126-0. Coach Heisman appeared underwhelmed during one pep talk. “You’re doing all right,” he lectured his team. “We’re ahead. But you just can’t tell what those Cumberland players have up their sleeves. They may spring a surprise.”

If Cumberland had tricks up their sleeves, they probably weren’t the tricks Heisman was expecting. At one point, a few frazzled Cumberland players marched over to Georgia Tech’s bench and plopped down; one grabbed a blanket and hid underneath it. Heisman accosted them and screamed, “You’re on the wrong side of the field!” But the boys shook their heads. “No, we’re not. We’ve been in there too many times, and we’ve had enough.”

Later on, two Cumberland players would jump the stadium fence.

Georgia Tech found time to goof off, too. “At one point, I remember, our tackle, Bill Fincher, took out his glass eye and threw it in the water bucket,” Tech’s George Griffin told The New York Times in 1986. “Some Cumberland boys came over and started to drink out of it, and they got a terrible fright.”

But nothing was as terrifying as the action on the field. In one (likely apocryphal) story, a Cumberland player fumbled and watched the ball bounce toward a teammate’s feet. The fumbler pleaded for his teammate to pick it up, but he was having none of it: “Fall on it yourself,” was the reported reply. “You dropped it.”

According to Sporting News, Cumberland’s Charlie Warwick would later brag that, “We were sort of getting to ’em in that last quarter.” Which, statistically, was kind of true. Georgia Tech scored 63 points in the first quarter but only managed 42 in the fourth quarter. But Warwick neglected to mention that Coach Heisman, in what can only be interpreted as a merciful bid for sainthood, had agreed to shorten the second half to 15 minutes.

The final score of 222-0 was so one-sided people must have expected the scoreboard to tip over. The statistics were obscene. Georgia Tech scored 32 touchdowns. One player, the All-American G.E. Strupper, scored eight times. He could have scored more, but at one point, Strupper ran through open field, stopped short of the goal line, gently placed the ball on the grass, and waited for a teammate to pick it up and walk into the end zone. Georgia Tech, which never threw a pass, finished with 501 rushing yards.

Cumberland, on the other hand, never earned a first down. It never crossed the 50-yard line. Five of their punts were returned for touchdowns. They lost at least nine fumbles. Their statistical superstar, Morris Gouger, finished the day with less than zero yards of offense. They threw 11 passes, and completed eight of them. (Technically, only two completions. Six of them were caught by the wrong team.)

To Cumberland’s credit, they weren’t the only big loser that season. Cockeyed mismatches were common during the sport’s nascent days: One week after Cumberland’s licking, Ohio State would rout Oberlin College, 128-0. And in Illinois, the Lane Technical School would give Cumberland’s dismal performance a run for its money in a blowout loss to St. Viator College.

That final score? 205-0.

 
There is a beehive in space, and tonight, November 18, the Moon will help you find it. Are you in?

You’re going to need a pair of binoculars. Around 11:59 p.m. EST, look east. You’ll see a giant disc in the sky marked with mysterious shadows that appear to be dark oceans. That is the Moon. Look a little to the left, and a little bit down, and for the first time in your life, you’ll probably see the constellation Cancer. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Cancer is the ninja of constellations. It’s hard to find, but when the skies are dark and clear and you manage to spot it, lots of things happen very quickly: First, you pat yourself on the back, because it is comprised only of a few faint stars, including one called Arkushanangarushashutu, which is Babylonian for “southeast star in the Crab.” Second, you wonder how the ancients got a crab out of that (it looks a lot more like a wishbone or Y). Third, you notice what appears to be a vague haze or cloud within its little crab body.

That’s what we’re after tonight! Within the crab is not a smear, but rather, a grouping of a thousand stars. (You won’t see that many.) This is the Beehive Cluster, also called Praesepe. It is an “open cluster”—that is, a collection of stars formed from the same stellar nursery. (Praesepe is Latin for “manger.”) Some of the stars in the Beehive are Sun-like with Jupiter-like gas giants orbiting them. You can see two of these planets, Pr0201b and Pr 0211b, highlighted in the top image—they are, NASA says, “the first b’s in the Beehive.” (You definitely won’t see planets tonight.)

Who first put the beehive on the map? The father of modern science himself, Galileo, who spied it with his paper telescope. That’s why you need binoculars tonight: Because unless you were born on Krypton, you cannot resolve these stars with the naked eye. That you need only a decent set of binoculars makes this a perfect celestial starter kit. You can enjoy the experience without figuring out how to aim and focus a telescope in the freezing night air (or, thanks to climate change, in the sweltering, mosquito-dense night air).

So what can you expect? Galileo saw 40 stars in the cluster. Forty might not seem all that special, but it’s an awful lot for such a small space, and if you can see even a quarter of that, you’ll be glad you took the time. The cluster’s stars—some small and dim, some larger and less dim—come together to form the appearance of an electric, 3D image of swarming bees. (They won’t be moving, though, and if they are, run.)

The usual terms and conditions apply. You will need to be in an area of very little light pollution. Cancer is really hard to see, and if you’re competing against the floodlights of a Walmart parking lot, you may as well save yourself the trouble and call it an early night. While the position of the waning gibbous Moon will help you locate the beehive, the light reflecting off it won’t, but we have to play the hand we’re dealt. Here’s the good news: Your binoculars are likely similar in power to Galileo’s telescope. They might even be better. So get out there and give it a try. If you can find the Moon, you can find a star cluster. And if you can’t, the Moon is reason enough to look up tonight. You really can’t lose.

VORONEZH STAR PAINTED AS SPONGEBOB’S PATRICK

The historical residential building at 48 October 25 Street in Voronezh, Russia, has an old Soviet star atop its spire. Somehow, the star has been painted to resemble the starfish Patrick from the TV show Spongebob Squarepants! No one knows how long ago the vandalism was, but the paint is already chipped, so it may have been there for months. OTRV, the local union of roofing companies, denies any involvement in the vandalism. Voronezh administrators say the star will be repainted, but so far no action has been taken. Photographer Vladimir Muldar wrote that the vandalism was a disgrace and that maybe the paint could just be washed off.

CAT RESCUED FROM FLOOR DRAIN

Curiosity can kill a cat, but not this time. Chris Threadgate’s cat Kiba tried to check out the floor drain in the family’s bathroom and stuck his head in a little too far. Then he couldn’t pull his head out. The Cessnock District Rescue Squad in Cessnock, New South Wales, was summoned to help. They tried to extract the cat, and ended up removing the collar around the floor drain, and then removing the collar from the cat. They used the same tools they normally use to remove rings stuck on fingers. Kiba survived the incident wet and uninjured.

MEN ROLL DEAD DEER INTO SHORT PUMP WALMART

Two unnamed men in Short Pump, Virginia, picked up a dead deer off the road after it was hit by a car Tuesday night, but couldn’t transport it. They called a friend to come pick the carcass up. To stay warm, the two men went into a Walmart store. They took the deer, too, in a shopping cart. They only got as far as the store’s vestibule because shoppers became alarmed. Management asked the men to leave the store, and take the deer with them.

In other news, there’s a town in Virginia named Short Pump.

ID THIEF BLAMES ELVIS IMPERSONATOR

Rick Thompson of Seattle was an upstanding man who supported his wife and children as a builder. Then his wife left him for an Elvis impersonator. Thompson turned to drugs and alcohol. To fund his activities, he organized an identification theft ring. He and three accomplices were arrested in 2014. Thompson was charged with identity theft and bank fraud. 

“He knows now how stupid that was, just as he knew it before he plunged into severe addiction. But in the middle of that horrible time, he was just a failed entrepreneur who (lost) his 20-year marriage to a casino-dwelling Elvis impersonator.”

Writing in court papers, a U.S. Secret Service special agent described a multi-jurisdictional investigation into the crime ring. The effort grew to involve seven police departments and several federal task forces.

Thompson was sentenced this week to five years in federal prison.

VANDALS HOLD STREET SWEEPER RACE

A break-in at the council house in Kendal, Cumbria, UK, left quite a bit of of damage. A group of unknown persons entered the equipment storage area Sunday night and took out four mini-sweepers. They apparently raced them around, which left one sweeper turned over on its side, and a van badly damaged by a collision. No equipment was found to be missing. The overturned sweeper sustained £8,000 in damage. Police are interested in speaking to anyone with information on the perpetrators.

In Victorian Great Britain, a new sickness spread among the wealthiest in society. Sufferers became obsessed with obtaining a fix, regardless of the danger or money involved. The name of this illness? Orchidelirium—a mania for collecting orchids.

Orchid fever gripped England starting in the early 1800s after British naturalist William John Swainson used some orchids that hadn’t yet bloomed as packing material, thinking they were worthless weeds, while sending back some other exotic plants from Brazil. Upon arrival in Britain, some of the orchids burst into glorious flower, entrancing all those who saw them and sparking the growing obsession with the plant.

Collectors were quickly dispatched by rich patrons and wily businessmen to sail across the oceans to the jungles of South America, the South Pacific, and elsewhere to search out the elusive plants. Such expeditions were hugely risky given the perils from wild animals, hostile natives, and tropical diseases, and many orchid hunters met a grisly end. For example, in 1901 an expedition of eight men entered the jungles of the Philippines in search of orchids: one was eaten by a tiger, a second was doused in oil and burnt to death, and five more were never seen again. The lone survivor of this dangerous mission emerged with an enormous haul of Phalaenopsis, also known as moth orchids, and probably made his fortune.

The potential to make huge amounts of money meant that many ignored the danger of the jungles and joined the hunt for orchids. Many of these hunters were keen naturalists with a spirit of adventure who were employed by large orchid firms back in Europe to keep up their stock of fresh plants and hopefully discover new species. The list of collectors who perished in the search for orchids is long and full of gruesome anecdotes—William Arnold drowned in the Orinoco River, Gustavo Wallis died of yellow fever and malaria, David Bowman caught dysentery in the jungles of Columbia after returning there to restock when his first haul was stolen by rivals. Albert Millican, who in 1891 published the landmark text on orchid hunting Travels and Adventures of an Orchid Hunter, took part in five perilous trips to fetch orchids from the Andes. During his final expedition, he was stabbed to death.

Safely back in Britain, it was the orchid dealers who became amazingly wealthy. Frederick Sander became known as “the orchid king,” and beginning in 1886 he was the official Royal Orchid Grower to Queen Victoria. He employed 23 orchid hunters, and owned a large orchid farm in St Albans, England with 60 greenhouses in which to store and cultivate the tropical plants. As his business boomed, he also opened farms in Summit, New Jersey and Bruges, Belgium. Sander trafficked in vast quantities of plants—at one point, he claimed to have imported over one million specimens of just one species from New Guinea. Sander and his fellow orchid dealers shipped millions of orchids back to Europe, but such was the delicate nature of the bulbs that frequently less than 1 percent of a ship’s cargo of orchids safely made it to market.

One of Sander’s most valuable partners was Benedict Roezl, an orchid-hunter from Prague. Roezl was especially striking because he had only one hand, the other having been replaced with a metal hook after an accident while demonstrating some machinery he had invented. The piratical look only enhanced his reputation as an especially intrepid and ruthless orchid hunter. For 40 years, Roezl traveled across the Americas, either on horseback or by foot, discovering numerous new specimens (at least seven orchid varieties have since been named in his honor) and shipping vast quantities back to Sander to sell at great profit. Roezl was one of the few orchid hunters who made it to retirement, despite being robbed 17 times. His contribution to botany was so great that a statue of him was later erected in his home city of Prague.

Sander was a tough boss, always pushing his orchid hunters to greater glories. He communicated with his team via cable and letter, and some of these fascinating pieces of correspondence now survive in the archives at Kew Gardens in London. One series of letters reveals that orchid hunter Wilhelm Micholitz, during a mission to New Guinea, was terrified by natives who practiced ritual sacrifice. Micholitz collected a shipload of orchids and was getting ready to sail home when disaster struck and his ship caught fire, resulting in the loss of his precious cargo. Micholitz wrote to Sander outlining the dangers and asking to be allowed to come home, only for Sander to cable the curt reply: “Return, recollect.” However, Sander did allow Micholitz to employ an armed guard, and the latter was delighted to later recount that he had found a new source of orchids in the jungle, albeit in rather gruesome circumstances—growing on a pile of human remains.

Inevitably, given the great riches at stake—valuable plants could change hands for more than $1000 per plant, roughly equivalent to $24,390 in today’s money—the teams of orchid hunters developed fierce rivalries. Once a new species had been discovered, the collectors would strip the area to prevent their rivals from obtaining any of the new plants, devastating the environment in the process. On one occasion, orchid hunter William Arnold wrote to Sander to reveal he had been forced to pull a gun on his rival while collecting plants in Venezuela. Sander replied advising him to follow his enemy, collect what he collected, and then, when the opportunity arose, to urinate on the rival’s plants in the hopes of destroying his haul.

After nearly a hundred years of orchidelirium, the madness ended almost as suddenly as it had begun—increased botanical knowledge and the development of more sophisticated greenhouses meant that orchids no longer needed to be imported and could be cultivated in Europe. And of course, as soon as the plants became easily sourced, their value and cachet dropped. Today one can pick up an orchid for as little as $15—meaning that orchid hunters need not risk their lives for these amazing plants, and anyone can own a slice of the exotic.