Now I Know More
Authors: Dan Lewis
KNOW
MORE
THE REVEALING STORIES BEHIND
EVEN MORE
OF THE WORLD'S MOST INTERESTING FACTS
DAN LEWIS
AUTHOR OF
NOW I KNOW
AVON, MASSACHUSETTS
To Stephanie, Ethan, Alex, Annie, and my parents.
The Case of the Missing Magenta
Neither Rain nor Sleet nor 140,000 Potholes
Eggplants, Rice, Duck Meat, and Dog Food
Getting a Handle on the Problem
One's Trash, Another's Treasure
The Potato Farmer and the Hares
I opened my first book,
Now I Know
, with a quote from Mark Twain that I think bears repeating, because it's still just as correct and now twice as relevant: “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”
The world is filled with stories that are literally incredible and unbelievable, shocking our sense of what's possible. Nonetheless, they're real. For more than four years, I've collected those storiesâfirst as an ongoing e-mail newsletter; then as a book titled
Now I Know
, a precursor to this one; and now, in
Now I Know More
. You need not be familiar with either of this book's precedents, though. All you need to be is curious about the world and the unlikely things that history, science, technology, and life have thrown at us.
For example, have you ever seen a word in a dictionary and didn't think it was real? It may not have been. Or, doorknobsâeveryone knows what they are, but why are they controversial . . . doubly so in Colorado? Of course, we all know that on 9/11, air traffic came to a halt. But how'd that happen, and what does it have to do with whales? For that matter, what does a home cleaning solution have to do with the War on Terror?
In the following stories and their bonus factsâeach story has at least one bonus factâwe'll tackle all of that and more. We'll talk about the color pink, panda bears, shopping malls, birthdays, DNA, the post office, burritos, and a town that never existed. I've written these stories so that each one connects to the next in some way or another, because while I don't expect you to read this book in one sitting, I hope that each piece of mind-blowing trivia will encourage you to explore further. After all, curiosity is what got you here in the first place. When you're done with the book, don't worryâthere's more. Every weekday, I send out a free e-mail newsletter with another one of these stories. You can get that at
http://NowIKnow.com
.
So let's begin. Let's steal the Empire State Building.
Really. That happened once. (Just go to the next page.)
HOW TO STEAL THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING
$45 million, stolen.
It took a pair of incidentsâone in December 2012 and another the following Februaryâbut seven people, all part of what the
New York Post
called “a sophisticated cyber crime ring” spanning the world, managed to get thousands of ATMs to wrongfully pay them a sum of money approaching the net worth of the
Boston Globe
. That's a huge heist. But it's tiny compared to one pulled off in Manhattan in late 2008. It took ninety minutes, and the property stolen was worth $2 billion. That's roughly the value of the Empire State Building.
Which makes sense, because that's exactly what was stolen.
Around Thanksgiving in 2008, a deed of sale came across a desk at New York City Hall, signifying the transfer of a building from Empire State Land Associates to a company called Nelots Properties. The description of the property conveyed by this deed of sale matched that of the Empire State Building, but the clerks who processed the paperwork either didn't notice or didn't care. All the important information was on the deed, as required, including the signatures of witnesses and that of the notary. The fact that one of the witnesses was named Fay Wray, the actress who played King Kong's captive as he ascended the Empire State Building in the 1933 film, likely escaped them. (To be fair, how many people in 2008 knew her name? It couldn't be all that many.) And that notary? He was a guy named Willie Sutton, who happened to share a name with a famous bank robber. Even the name of the acquiring company was a clue that something was awry; “Nelots,” spelled backward, is “Stolen.”
The good news for Empire State Land Associates is that Nelots was not a true threat to the rightful owners' property. Nelots didn't exist. It was a figment of the imagination of the
New York Daily News
, which concocted the fake deed of sale to demonstrate how easy it is to temporarily, and illegally, obtain “official” ownership of real estate.
As the
Daily News
noted, this stunt isn't just used by pranksters and jokesters. It's used by swindlers, and no, they aren't trying to move into your houseâin fact, these con artists don't ever need to (and often don't) visit their newly but wrongly acquired property. These new “owners” can take out a mortgage or other line of credit against the property, and once they have the money in hand, disappear. The true owners are left with an unclear title, liens against their property, and at times, banks looking to foreclose even though the rightful owner never took out a loan. It's not only (or even mostly) the fault of the city clerk who processes the deeds. As a
Philadelphia
City Paper
editor said in a video on deed fraud created by the University of Pennsylvania Law School, “It's pretty hard to stop a forged signature and a bribed notary. Where do you stop that? It's a little more difficult.” The system doesn't make it all that difficult; in the same video, an attorney who has worked on these cases claimed, “It is easier to steal a home in the city of Philadelphia than it is to steal a purse.” Given the
Daily News'
s ruse, this is probably true for New York, too, and probably many other places as well.
Homeowners and landlords aren't the only victimsâthe loans banks make often go unrepaid. Therefore many lending institutions have developed a system to alert them to potential fraud. The telltale sign: the mortgagee's failure to make his or her first payment, which one law enforcement agency describes as a “first payment default.” The theory is simple: A true borrower would be able to pay the first bill, but one committing deed fraud would likely not be at the address and therefore never receive the bill, which would go unpaid.
As for the Empire State Building, the
Daily News
“returned” it before any of this was an issue.
It took nearly two decades before the Empire State Building turned a profit. Why? It couldn't attract tenantsâit was much farther away from the two main train stations, Grand Central and Penn Station, than competing skyscrapers such as the Chrysler Building. The rental revenues were initially so poor that in its first year the Empire State Building earned as much revenue from its observation deck as it did from renters.
