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Land of Disturbing Things

True facts you didn't know but ought to

And more being added all the time

Let Bastable Tell You.
  • Ratio of people applying to the Peace Corps to MTV's "The Real World": 1:2

  • Crest toothpaste contains three known carcinogens: titanium dioxide, saccharine, and FD&C Blue #1. Clairol Nice and Easy hair dye has two, including formaldehyde. Same for Vidal Sassoon shampoo and Cover Girl makeup. How is this possible? The FDA doesn't regulate cosmetics.

  • In 1988, The United States sold 16 percent of arms to other countries. In 1997, it sold 63 percent. Anyone who thinks our peace is going to last with Russia is fooling themselves--whose business do you think we stole?

  • What does our nation's captial say about our nation? In Washington D.C., 1 in 8 men is either in jail or just got out. A newborn baby is less likely to survive its first year of life than in Sri Lanka. In D.C. schools, 81 percent of eighth graders read below par, compared to 21 percent nationally. The dropout rate is 1 in 5, compared to 1 in 20 nationally. All this despite a bloated system that spends $7200 per student, $4500 higher than the American average. God bless America...we sure need it.

  • In 1977, 1 in 5 Americans were obese. By 1996, 1 in 3 were.

  • Walt Disney World sits on Seminole land. Between 1835 and 1842 the federal government spent $20 million (supposed to go toward road building) to try to force the Seminoles off the land. Freed slaves ran to their defense, and in the end some 1,500 white soldiers died. Many Seminoles were killed or moved, but the transfer was never completed. When Disney World broke ground, the dispute was, in effect, settled.

  • Barbie go home! Mattel sweatshop report: In China, laborers earn a quarter an hour and only get two days off a month! In Indonesia, the rate is $2.25 a day! In Bangkok, 4,500 women and children inhale toxic fabric dust and suffer from cramps and irregular menstruation! Of Mattel's 25,000 workers worldwide, only 6,000 are in America. Meanwhile, in 1995 CEO John Amerman made $7 million and held $23 in stock options! What's that, Barbie? Yes, shopping IS fun!

  • Proof that TV news can't control itself: Elvis Presley's death in 1977 earned 31 minutes of coverage on network newscasts over the next five nights. For John Lennon's death, three years later, 59 minutes were devoted to coverage. The death of Monaco's Grace Kelly in 1982 got 24 minutes of coverage. But when Princess Diana was killed in a car accident in 1997, her five-day weekday total was a staggering 197 minutes. (The same week, a proposed international ban on landmines was covered fleetingly by only one network newscast--ABC's.)

  • Henry Ford, that paragon of American idealism who conceived the notion of using people as interchangable cogs in assembly lines, was a fierce anti-Semite. He supplied the Nazis with vehicles during World War II, via a branch of his company in Vichy Algiers. He's also known to have sent Hitler 50,000 Reichmarks every year on his birthday. Yes, he was a true visionary...

  • Cities around the U.S. are installing 24-hour surveillance cameras to keep tabs on their citizenry. A step closer to a police state? In January 1998, New York City's Washington Square Park was added by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

  • The American chestnut tree, which once accounted for one out of every four trees in the Appalachians (some 4 billion trees), was completely wiped out in 35 years (1904-1939) by a disease imported from Asia.

  • It's said that when the pilgrims first landed in America, it was possible for a squirrel to travel from Maine to Florida just on the treetops. (In a related factoid, more than half of America's shopping centers have been built since just 1980.)

  • Between 1908 and 1913, Thomas Edison led the Motion Pictures Patents Company, a consortium which wanted to own moviemaking outright. If you didn't pay an exhorbitant license fee, you got beat up. Since most movie companies were New York-based, they quickly packed up and fled 3,000 miles away to where it was pleasant year-round.

  • Abe Lincoln served as a captain in the military during The Black Hawk War--a war to force tribes into Wisconsin. The tribes went "voluntarily," but as they fled American troops killed them anyway. (1831-32)

  • In September 1996, a Russian Mars probe fell to Earth over Bolivia and Chile. The half-pound of plutonium that powered it is missing. Incidentally, one pound of plutonium, evenly distributed, could induce lung cancer in every single person on the planet.

  • By the way, in 1964, America did it too--and we released 2.1 pounds into the atmosphere. Anyone wonder why 1 in 4 of us will die of cancer?

  • The space shuttle that was to follow the Challenger into space (May 1986) was slated to carry 46.7 pounds of toxic plutonium 238. If that one had exploded, the plutonium would haved rained down upon Florida and an estimated 1,000,000 people would have died of cancer. (NASA continues to launch spacecraft with radioactive payloads.)

  • Bet They Never Told You: It was the worst nuclear accident in American history. On July 16, 1979, 100 million gallons--or 1,100 tons--of radioactive water containing uranium waste leaked into the Rio Puerco river in New Mexico, which feeds into Los Angeles' water supply.

  • Why do so many northeastern American towns have -field on the end of their names? Because in many cases, when European settlers arrived there, large towns of Native Americans had just been wiped out by plague. When settlers arrived, they found not a "wilderness," but whole towns--with cleared crop fields nearby--ready to be moved into. Insta-colonies.

  • Ponce de Leon didn't go to Florida to find the fountain of youth. He went mostly to capture Native American slaves for Hispanolia. (In early 1700s New York, for example, one in every four slaves was an Indian.)

  • Since 1950, a quarter of the world's trees have been cut down.

  • Ratio of weekly minutes of meaningful conversation between kids and their parents to weekly minutes of teevee watching: 1:43

  • Why are we taught he was a hero? President Woodrow Wilson was an open white supremicist. His administration tried to pass a bill curtailing the rights of blacks (Congress wouldn't do it), he told "darky" stories in cabinet meetings, and segregated countless government offices. To wit, his famous quote about Birth of a Nation, the film that revived the Ku Klux Klan: "It's like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so true."

  • On the floor of Congress in May 1856, Preston Brooks approached Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, raised a heavy cane, and beat him. Sumner rose with such force from his desk that he tore it from its bolts, then collapsed, unconscious and bleeding. His injuries were so severe he couldn't serve for four years. All because of Sumner's political tirade against Brooks' uncle, Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina, over the issue of slavery.

  • Bet They Never Told You: The Associated Press reports that 250,000 million people have been slaughtered in East Timor, Indonesia since 1975--one of the worst population cleansings since the Holocaust. Why didn't America intervene as they have in Bosnia? Possibly because it would have made drilling impossible for the following interested oil corporations: Exxon. Conoco, Chevron, Texaco, Marathon, Arco, and Unocal.

  • How did Sears become a power in the early 1900s? By placing bigger and bigger orders every year, Sears fixed it so that manufacturers would rely on their business. Then, one year, Sears would pull the plug and give no orders at all. When that manufacturer went bankrupt, Sears would swoop in and buy them out. How sporting!

  • U.S. child labor violations today are greater than in the 1930s.

  • Why are the names of America's cities so boring compared to other nations'? In 1890, the Board of Geographic Names was founded to simplify things. Among its decrees: All city names must be less than a certain length, cannot have accents, those ending in -borough must be changed to -boro, and -burgh must become -burg. Almost every town complied. Pittsburgh refused.

  • The amount lost annually to medical fraud--$100 billion--could easily cover the health care costs of America's 37 million uninsured.

  • Think the First Amendment entities you to free speech? During World War I, a federal law (the Sedition Act of 1918, enforced with the help of George Creel) forbade anyone to badmouth President Wilson's war plans--and some 1,500 were even arrested for it. Simultaneously, the Postmaster intercepted letters deemed socialist, anti-British, and pro-Irish.

  • Laws on the books in more than two dozen states forbid you to insult food. That's right, don't insult your dinner, or you'll end up, like Oprah, in court.



    • Golly, That's Troubling. Tell Me More!

    A great source of disturbing information is the group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), a group which screams, yells, and otherwise makes a scene when newspapers ignore a major story (which, when there's an O.J. Simpson or a Monica Lewinsky, tends to happen). FAIR has a new website, including some of their greatest hits and a whole section devoted to Rush Limbaugh's many factual gaffes.

    The truly rattled roll with Michael Moore.

    Someone else who's disturbed is cartoonist Tom Tomorrow, the tormented mind behind This Modern World. Check out this week's comic (and his archives).

    Smiley happy McDonald's is nothing but a virulent, greedy bully. I don't give them my money any more. McSpotlight will explain: www.mcspotlight.org


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