You Might Be a Zombie . . . (8 page)

2. DIE (AGAIN) FOR YOUR COUNTRY

Stepping on a land mine is general y a risky proposition for the living, but the dead are free to throw caution—and their limbs—to the wind. If you’ve ever wanted to be turned into human chili while making a noble sacrifice for your country, just slip a note saying so into your will.

In 2004, Tulane University found itself at the center of a media firestorm when it was revealed that seven people who had entrusted their cadavers to the Tulane science department had been blown up by the army to test land mine-resistant footwear.

A Santa Clara University professor wrote that the army used cadavers from donors who had no idea they would end up in a mil ion bloody pieces thanks to a detonated mine. So if you donate your body and Uncle Sam gets a hankering to make it rain with your insides, you probably won’t have a say in the matter.

1. STAR IN A GEORGE CLOONEY MOVIE

Forget about taking acting classes or fel ating midlevel studio executives—starring alongside the sexiest man in Hollywood is just one brain contusion away. That’s because Tilda Swinton isn’t the only pale corpse to have shared the silver screen with the star of
Michael Clayton
.

While directing Clooney in the 1999 Gulf War flick
Three Kings
, David O. Russel filmed actual bul ets entering actual human innards to capture hyperrealistic visual effects. The details of how Russel obtained a body to rekil are sketchy, but one thing is clear: Some lucky bastard got the break mil ions would kil for, just by being dead.

Sure, catching a hot one in the spleen is a steep price to pay for a walk-on part. But, like a true celebrity, you won’t feel a damn thing.

REMEMBER
back in elementary school when you were at the peak of your potential as a human being? Remember all those fun stories your hungry brain absorbed about the great men who built the world around you? Yeah, that was all bul shit.

5. COLUMBUS DISCOVERED THAT THE EARTH IS ROUND

The story

In 1492, a ponce named Christopher Columbus won his long-standing feud with the Spanish monarchy to get funding for a voyage to East Asia. It had been a tough battle because everybody besides Columbus thought that the earth was a flat disc and that anyone sailing east would fall off the world’s edge, presumably into the mouth of the giant turtle they thought supported it. Columbus did fail to reach his destination, but only because he crashed into the future greatest nation on earth, baby! Thus Columbus proved that the world was round, discovered America, and a national holiday was born.

The truth

In the 1400s, the flat-earth theory was taken about as seriously as it is today. Greek philosopher Pythagoras had figured out the earth was round about two thousand years before Spain even existed.

The Spanish government’s reluctance to pay for Columbus’s journey had nothing to do with its misconceptions about the shape of the world. Columbus himself severely underestimated the size of the earth, and everybody knew it. He eventual y scraped together enough funds and supplies to get halfway to his destination, at which point he and his crew would have died horrible deaths had he not crash-landed on a continent he didn’t know existed.

The myth probably began with Washington Irving’s 1838 novel
The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus
. Elements of the fictional account started creeping into our history textbooks when editors realized that nobody wants to read history books starring some dumb asshole who lucked into inventing a country.

4. EINSTEIN FLUNKED MATH

The story

Motivational speakers love the story of a German kid who, despite his sincerest efforts, could never manage to do wel in math.

That dumb ass grew up to be Albert freaking Einstein! And if he can do it, then so can you!

The truth

Actually, no you can’t. As it turns out, Einstein was a mathematical prodigy. Before he turned twelve, he was already better at arithmetic and calculus than you will ever be. Not only did he pass math with flying colors, he probably could have taught the class by the end of semester.

The idea that Einstein did badly at school is thought to have originated with a 1935
Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
trivia column, which probably should have been called
Believe It or Not! I Get Paid Either Way, Assholes
. The famous trivia “expert” never cited his sources, and the various “facts” he presented throughout his career were mostly things he thought he heard, combined with stuff he pulled directly out of his ass.

According to Walter Isaacson’s
Einstein: His Life and Universe
, when Einstein was first shown Ripley’s supposed exposé of his early life, he all egedly laughed and politely responded that before he was fifteen he “had mastered differential and integral calculus.” When he final y kicked the bucket in 1955, failure was the one concept that Albert Einstein had never managed to master.

3. NEWTON AND THE APPLE

The story

Isaac Newton was pretty much the Jesus of physics. In the late seventeenth century, he discovered the laws of motion, the visible spectrum, the speed of sound, the law of cooling, and calculus. Yes, all of calculus. Either the man was a supergenius or nobody ever thought about anything before he was born.

Probably his most famous discovery, however, is the law of gravity. The story goes that Newton was sitting under a tree one sunny day, when an apple dropped from a branch and bopped him right on the head. While most people would merely think, “Ouch! Son of a bitch!” Newton responded by formulating the entire set of universal laws governing the motion of gravitating bodies.

The truth

Newton never mentioned the thing with the apple. The first known mention of the apple thing came sixty years after it supposedly happened, when his assistant John Conduitt wrote an account of Newton’s life. Even Conduitt’s version is vague about whether Newton actually saw an apple or simply used it as a metaphor to il ustrate the idea of gravity for people less intel igent than him (read
everybody
): “Whilst he was musing in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (which brought an apple from the tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from the earth.”

You may also notice the account doesn’t mention the apple hitting Newton in the head. That was added somewhere along the line to bring a bit of much-needed cartoonish slapstick to the history of theoretical physics.

So, why did your elementary school teachers lie? People want to believe that discoveries happen suddenly, with a lightbulb popping on over someone’s head. Makes it seem like it could happen to anyone. The other option would be tell ing kids the truth, which makes for a much less cute story.

For example, Newton spent the best part of his life formulating and perfecting his theories. Hunched over piles of papers covered with clouds of tiny numbers, he put in months and years of tedious, grinding, silent, lonely work, until he had a nervous breakdown and final y died, insane from mercury poisoning. Welcome to the real world, Timmy. If you work hard enough, you too can die a lonely, broken man!

2. WASHINGTON AND THE CHERRY TREE

The story

After his father’s prize cherry tree made the mistake of getting in the way of a young George Washington’s ax, the future president was confronted about the crime. While a lesser founding father might have blamed a slave, Washington was unable to lie, and confessed. Thus ends the first story Americans learn about the life and times of their first president, George Washington, the only superhero to ever run the country.

The truth

George Washington’s elevation to the status of deity is mostly due to a man named Mason Locke Weems. He was the author of the concisely titled biography
The Life of George Washington, with Curious Anecdotes Laudable to Himself and Exemplary to his Countrymen
.

Weems recal ed many fantastic stories about Washington, with particular emphasis on his overwhelming moral fortitude and infallibility. The cherry tree story is of particular importance, because it demonstrates that Washington could easily destroy things, and just chose not to.

Of course, Weems’s recounting of Washington’s exploits were about as historical y accurate as will Smith’s 1999 Civil War documentary
Wild Wild
West
.

Nevertheless, Weems’s lies were taught in American school textbooks for over a century, probably because the truth—that Washington was a bul et-charming borderline lunatic—is much more likely to encourage behavior that will put an eye out (see page 208). The story still resonates today—delivered to your children’s impressionable minds through such reliable media as
Sesame Street
—mostly because the central message still holds true: it’s much easier to tell the truth when you’re the one holding the axe

1. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, THE KITE, AND THE THUNDERSTORM

The story

Another great American mutant superhero is Ben Franklin, the scientist and statesman whose inventions included bifocal spectacles, the urinary catheter, and freedom. But maybe his most famous experiment was the one that led to the invention of electricity.

Franklin went out into a raging thunderstorm and released a kite with a lightning rod affixed to the top and a metal key attached to the string. Annoyed at Franklin’s bravery, God threw a bolt of lightning at him, Franklin blocked it with his kite, the charge passed down the string and into the key, and thus electricity was invented (somehow).

Ben Franklin’s typical morning ritual (according to your sixth grade social studies teacher).

The truth

It’s certainly true that Franklin at least proposed a kite experiment. It’s less likely that he ever got around to performing it. Most scientists familiar with the concepts of electricity and kites agree that if someone flew a kite into a storm and it was struck by lightning, they and everyone around them would be turned into a fine mist of smoldering meat jel y.

In reality, Franklin’s proposed experiment involved flying a kite into some clouds to col ect a few harmless ions, in order to prove that the atmosphere carries a charge. The exaggerated story comes down to us by way of revisionist historian Walt Disney and his classic cartoon
Ben and Me
(a film that also suggests Franklin’s innovations are actually attributable to his pet mouse). The kite story persists to this day, presumably because anyone who’s tried to replicate it hasn’t survived to cal bul shit.

In addition to teaching questionable lightning safety, Franklin’s lightning high-five, like Newton in the apple story, portrays one of history’s great geniuses experiencing naive wonder at a now-common idea, as if everyone who lived before the twentieth century was a childlike simpleton.

Why can’t there be some other legend about Franklin that’s closer to his real personality? Like the time he pleasured six women at once. Sure, we made that up. But if you go out and repeat it enough, it’l be in textbooks by 2050.