Dumb & dumber

100 Of The Worst Ideas in History Humanity’s Thundering Brainstorms Turned Blundering Brain Farts by Michael N. Smith and Eric Kasum

Sourcebooks

In the late 1950s, several game manufacturers introduced versions of an outdoor game for kids where “one player heaves a weighted, footlong, metaltipped dart skyward, hoping to land and stick it in the middle of a plastic hoop placed at the feet of his opponent some 20 feet away.”

Several decades later, after more than 6,000 children had been injured, and three killed, by these weapons of destruction — commonly known as lawn darts — it would go down as one of the worst kids toys ever.

This new book features 100 ideas as illconceived as these. (Lawn darts, which were also used in a 1980 gang killing in Idaho, were outlawed in the US in 1988.) Here are a few that will make you feel very smart by comparison:

THE TOAD INVASION

In 1935, the Australian sugarcane crop was being decimated by hungry beetles. To save their yield, the sugarcane farmers decided to import “102 toads from Hawaii to scarf up the bothersome beetle population.”

But there was one important thing about beetles, toads and sugarcane plants that the farmers didn’t know — that “beetles can scurry safely to the top of a cane plant where the heavy, dinnerplatesized cane toads can’t reach.”

By failing to take this into account, the farmers created “one of the worst ecological calamities in Australian history.”

The beetles still ate the sugar crops, but the toads — some of which grew to “over 2 feet in length, tip[ped] the scales at more than 6 pounds, and live[d] up to 35 years before croaking” — ate “virtually everything else in sight.”

“With females producing over 50,000 eggs per year, the cane toads soon displaced rabbits as the island nation’s biggest pest,” write the authors, “found rummaging in home trash cans, bushels of grocery store produce, restaurant pantries, home cupboards and more. Meanwhile, thanks to their poisonous innards, they cause the death of thousands of birds, snakes, dingoes and crocs that dine on them.”

There are currently over 200 million cane toads in Australia, a number that appears to only increase by the year. There are no good solutions to the problem in sight, but that doesn’t stop resourceful Australians from trying. “Recently, a $50 pertoad bounty has been posted. And one of the country’s richest men has offered a glass of beer for every bag of dead toads delivered.”

NUMB-SKULL

The late 1800s/early 1900s were a boom time for scientific discoveries related to the origins of humankind, including the findings, by the French and the Germans between 18561907, of human ancestors Neanderthal Man, CroMagnon Man and Heidelberg Man.

As such, British scientists were anxious to make their own claim to greatness in this area, and sought to “uncover the ‘missing link’ on English soil. Britain, they believe, must rightfully lay claim to what Darwin terms ‘the origins of man.’ ”

So there was rejoicing throughout the kingdom in 1912, when amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson discovered what came to be called “Piltdown Man — ancient skull fragments uncovered in an English quarry that appear to be part man, part ape.”

But those in the scientific community had questions. The dig on which Dawson found the fragments had been going on for four years. How did every other archaeologist fail to see them?

Skepticism remained, but overall, “British scientists, in their nationalistic zeal, had been too accepting of Dawson’s shaky assertions.”

The end of the road came in 1953, when Time magazine published “evidence that the Piltdown Man fossil is actually constructed of a medieval human skull and the jaw of a 500yearold orangutan, each stained with chemicals to appear older. Dawson, now deceased, had been a fraud.”

Piltdown Man lost his place in the annals of scientific history, but not before “lead[ing] the world’s archaeologists down a blind alley that set evolutionary science back decades.”

POISONING LINCOLN

President Lincoln suffered from deep depression. One method doctors used to try to cure him could have led to our country’s downfall.

Lincoln had already suffered two mental breakdowns by the time he ran for president in 1858, and the pressure of the ensuing campaign led him to “regularly contemplate death.”

He sought treatment and was prescribed a pill known as blue mass.

A common treatment for melancholia at the time, the pill consisted of “high doses of mercury,” which doctors believed would “flush the liver and brain of irritants that cause depression.” They were wrong. “Throughout 1859,” write the authors, “Lincoln suffers violent anger, memory loss and tremors — further symptoms of metal poisoning.”

As the Civil War took hold, the new president, “anxious to try anything to relieve his darkening mental state, decides to stop taking blue mass. And having done so, he’s able to bravely keep the American house undivided through its most divisive era.”

ANYTHING FOR A VOTE

In 1902, Louis Mouttet was running for reelection as governor of the city of St. Pierre, Martinique, a city whose local mountain, Mount Pelée, had “begun to rumble and smolder” — since it contained a volcano.

Mouttet was concerned about his reelection chances, especially as the citizenry grew nervous about the volcano and many considered leaving. To prevent that from happening and hopefully secure his victory, Mouttet, insisting there was nothing to worry about, issued an order for all citizens to “ignore the volcano, stay put and vote for me.”

Mouttet even “order[ed] troops to block the roads out of town, decreeing that the city is the safest place around in the event of an eruption.”

Mouttet was deadly wrong, as the next day, Mount Pelée “explode[ed] in a ball of fire. In minutes, nearly all of St. Pierre’s 28,000 residents, including Mouttet himself, die[d] instantly.”