Unsettling May Have Occurred: Occasionally Uncomfortable Obscure True Stories from Human History

by Damn Interesting Editors, The

  The Federal Communications Commission and the FBI sprang into action, launching independent pirate-hunting squads to unmask the disturbing messenger. It was clear that the fellow had a rare knack for electronics and microwave equipment. WTTW's uplink antenna was atop the 1,454 foot Sears tower in downtown Chicago, and investigators concluded that the "signal pirate" smothered the legitimate broadcast by sending a more powerful signal to this antenna. According to some experts in broadcasting, a rig of sufficient power could be purchased for about $25,000-- or perhaps rented for a few thousand dollars-- and the disassembled equipment could be transported using a few large suitcases. Agents believed that the perpetrator either beamed his message from the rooftop of an adjacent building, or that he somehow gained access to a powerful ground-based transmitter. But Max had covered his tracks well, there was no clear indication of how he had executed his sophisticated attack.

  His motive was even more puzzling than his methods. The enigmatic message may have been due to a grudge against WGN-TV, since the station's call letters stand for "World's Greatest Newspaper," and he makes a reference to "greatest world newspaper nerds"; and he also mentions Chuck Swirsky, another WGN sports reporter at the time. But given the resources and risks involved in commandeering a commercial signal, the message seems disproportionate. At that time, the law allowed for a maximum penalty of $100,000 and one year in prison for such signal piracy. Perhaps the intrusion was merely a proof-of-concept-- a precursor of future ambitions-- or perhaps there is more meaning to the message than what is immediately evident. The Max Headroom television show had been set in a post-apocalyptic future where evil television corporations controlled the world, and freedom fighters spread their messages by zipping their pirate signal into live television feeds, and this subtle social commentary was not lost on investigators.

  Whatever the impostor's intentions, he certainly took significant risks to bring his nebulous message to the televisions of Chicago. The exhaustive investigations by the three-letter agencies turned up nothing substantial, and over time the FCC and FBI resigned their manhunts without any significant insight into who he was, how he did it, or why. To this day the unexplained transmission of 22 November 1987 remains an historic curiosity, since it represents the last such signal of its kind... no other instance of a complete hijacking of a commercial broadcast has occurred in the US in the twenty years since. For now the mysterious masked Max Headroom lookalike remains at large, but his backside may never truly be safe from the mighty flyswatter of justice.

  Originally published 09 January 2007

  http://dam.mn/remember-remember-the-22nd-of-november/

  The Mysterious Toynbee Tiles (1992 AD)

  In 1992, a chap in Philadelphia by the name of Bill O'Neill starting noticing strange tiles randomly embedded in local roads. They were generally about the size of a license plate, and each had some variation of the same strange message: "TOYNBEE IDEA IN KUbricK's 2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER." They varied a bit in color and arrangement, but they were all made of an unidentifiable hard substance, and many had footnotes as strange as the message itself, such as "Murder every journalist, I beg you," and "Submit. Obey." Some were accompanied by lengthy, paranoid diatribes about the newsmedia, jews, and the mafia.

  So Bill started asking around about these tiles, but nobody knew anything about their origin or meaning. So, he created a website devoted to the mysterious tiles, and in doing so learned that it is not just a local phenomenon. Similar tiles have appeared in many US cities, including Washington DC, Pittsburgh, New York City, Baltimore, Boston, and many more. Some have even shown up in South America; in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. To date, about 130 tiles have been discovered. Somehow, someone is managing to embed these tiles into public roads-- some of which are busy 24/7-- without being spotted.

  The tiles all mention "Toynbee," most likely Arnold J. Toynbee, a religious historian born in England in 1889. Some of the tiles mention Kubrick, the filmmaker responsible for 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was a movie that made implications that a man was reborn on a mission to Jupiter, not exactly resurrected. There is only one known intersection between the works of Toynbee and Kubrick, and it's pretty circumstantial: Toynbee's writings spoke of a man named Zoroaster who conceived the idea of monotheism, and this name also occurs in the title of the famous 2001: A Space Odyssey theme song; it's entitled "Thus Spoke Zoroaster."

  Due to strong similarity in craftsmanship and writing style, these tiles are most likely the work of a single individual (in the interest of conserving slashes and pronouns, we'll assume this individual is a male). Either this man is disturbed, or he has a bizarre sense of humor. He is certainly creative, as the messages' delivery system indicates, and he must be a patient and methodical man to have invested the time in making these 130 or so tiles by hand. And given the diverse locales where the tiles can be found, he has the means and money to travel. Some people also suppose that he is European, given that Kubrick and Toynbee are both English, and because one of the paranoid-ranting plaques indicates that he is/was hiding in Dover, England.

  One Toynbee Tile enthusiast has claimed that a freshly laid tile was once found and examined:

  The highlight of my search for answers to this mystery occurred one Sunday night of this previous winter. I had gone to my local convenience store for a snack around 4:00 A.M., noticing nothing unusual. On my way home I noticed something unusual in the street. Upon closer inspection, I discovered it to be a "Toynbee Idea" tile - freshly placed and only minutes old. Of course I was beside myself with excitement and I could now see exactly how, and of what materials these tiles are made. (This tile, by the way, is located on 13th. & Arch St. in Philadelphia.) The tiles are just that - tiles....although not the standard vinyl floor tile, as I had suspected. The letters are cut out of a material with, I assume, a higher rubber content than a standard floor tile. The inlay letters seemed to made from a less maleable substance, and in this case were red and yellow. The tile is secured to the street by intricately folded and layered tar paper, glued together. A layer of raw tar seemed to lie beneath the whole tile, anchoring it. The weight of cars, as they run over the tile, forces the layers of tar paper to impregnate the spaces in the cracks of the letters.

  The most tantalizing clue as to the source of these tiles was a 1983 newspaper interview with a social worker from Philadelphia, a man named James Morasco, who claimed that Jupiter could be colonized by bringing Earth's dead people there to have them resurrected. When writing an article on the tiles in 2001, one reporter stumbled upon the original 1983 article, found the link intriguing, and tried to call the only James Morasco listed in Philly. A woman who answered said Mr. Morasco couldn't come to the phone because a mysterious ailment had required that he have his voicebox removed. Another reporter writing another story in 2003 tried to call the same man, only to be told that he had died the previous March at age 88, but that he had known nothing about the tiles:

  "My husband doesn't know anything about that," she said. "Besides he died in March. But he didn't know anything about it."

  Thou dost protest too much? Given the strong ties and strange circumstances, some believe that Mr. Morasco was the responsible party... but there are some problems with the Morasco theory: A) He would have been in his 70s when most of the tiles were placed, and B) some new ones have been installed since his death in 2003.

  Another ambiguous Toynbee-2001 link appears in a 1985 play by Pulitzer-prize winning playwright David Mamet. In his "Goldberg Street" collection, he wrote an exchange between a radio talk show host and a caller obsessing over Arnold Toynbee, the movie 2001 and dead people. This play was written seven years before the first Toynbee tile was discovered, but two years after the Morasco article.

  Despite finding a few links and some background information, the purpose and message of these tiles remains inexplicable. Did 70-year-old James Morasco install the tiles, then pass the legacy on to another to continue after his death? Was it some dis
turbed individual who latched onto the theory described in the 1983 article, and acted on his/her own? Or could it be someone who made the bizarre Kubrick-Toynbee link independently? Particularly fitting is the last line of the original 1983 article on James Morasco:

  "You may be hearing more from Morasco. And then again, you may not."

  Update: Since this article was published one Jon Foy has created a documentary

  Originally published 25 September 2005

  http://dam.mn/the-mysterious-toynbee-tiles/

  Aches on a Plane (1994 AD)

  Alongside Memphis International Airport in Tennessee there lies a sprawling complex filled with hundreds of miles of conveyor belts, thousands of employees, and millions of parcels. A steady stream of cargo planes--often hundreds per day--carries in cargo from around the world to be sorted and redistributed. This is the FedEx Express global "SuperHub," and in spite of its titillating name it is seldom the site of much excitement. One notable exception to the day-to-day routine occurred in mid-1994. It was the same year that Federal Express embraced the abbreviated "FedEx" moniker and changed to their infamous hidden-arrow logo, and it was just four years after the release of MC Hammer's multi-platinum hit U Can't Touch This.

  On 7 April 1994, just after 3:00pm, 39-year-old FedEx flyer Andy Peterson boarded a DC-10 cargo plane at the SuperHub. He was scheduled to join Flight 705 as the flight engineer; a support role in charge of monitoring and operating aircraft systems. As Peterson entered the aircraft, he was greeted by 42-year-old Auburn Calloway, a fellow flight engineer. Calloway introduced himself as the "deadhead," for the flight. He was just there because he needed a lift.

  Shortly the men were joined by the plane's pilot, 49-year-old Captain David Sanders, and his 42-year-old co-pilot Captain Jim Tucker. The DC-10 had a bellyful of electronic gear bound for San Jose, ultimately destined for Silicon Valley. But flight 705 wouldn't make it anywhere near California that day.

  Flight 705 was the crew's first time flying together, and none of the men had previously met Auburn Calloway, but each of the FedEx veterans knew his role well. To prepare for departure, Sanders and Tucker buckled into the cockpit, and Peterson took his seat at the flight engineering station just behind the co-pilot seat. As he settled in, flight Engineer Peterson discovered that their jump-seater Calloway had already begun the pre-flight procedure. This was considered a breach of etiquette, but Peterson opted not to raise a fuss. During his routine checks he noted that the circuit breaker for the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) needed to be reset, something he'd never seen before. When he returned to the cockpit after performing some other checks around the aircraft he noticed that the CVR fuse was once again in the off position. Perplexed, he corrected it and made a mental note to report the issue to maintenance if it continued.

  Having completed their pre-flight preparations, the crew was cleared for takeoff. Calloway settled into the jump seat in the galley just outside the cockpit, and co-pilot Jim Tucker piloted the plane into the air. Barring any unexpected turns of events the voyage to San Jose and back was to take approximately 10 hours.

  As the plane ascended to cruising altitude, Calloway unfastened his safety restraint and crossed the galley to retrieve his carry-on luggage. Sounds of laughter emanated from the cockpit as the flight crew joshed at the ground crew's expense. Tucker was making jokes about the ground crew's recent "goatrope"--a term referring to good intentions gone wrong. As the new flight crew got to know one another, Calloway quietly opened a hard-sided acoustic guitar case he had carried with him onto the flight and withdrew a pair of hefty hammers.

  Despite the calm, innocuous exterior Auburn Calloway had displayed to his fellow FedEx flyers that day, he was in a strange state of mind. His résumé suggested a healthy, well-balanced employee--he was a graduate of Stanford University, a former Navy pilot, and an expert in martial arts. His earnest purpose in life was to provide a top tier college education for his two children, and he had taken a career in commercial flight as a pragmatic way to accomplish this. But recent circumstance had sent him into despair. He felt that FedEx had been discriminating against him due to his African-American heritage, squandering his piloting skills by assigning him as a mere flight engineer. His wife had divorced him four years earlier. Most recently, management at FedEx had discovered "irregularities" in the reporting of his flight hours. Calloway had been summoned to a hearing to discuss these suspicious inconsistencies on April 8--the day after flight 705 took to the air. Calloway was convinced that this hearing would result in FedEx terminating his employment, along with any chance of providing a good future for his children.

  In the week prior to the scheduled hearing, Auburn Calloway began rejiggering his financial affairs. He collected all of his wealth and transferred it to his ex-wife, including almost $14,000 in cashier's checks and approximately $40,000 in securities. He visited a lawyer to revise his will, and he updated the beneficiary information on his employee life insurance. According to FedEx accidental death policy, if Calloway were to be killed on the job his family would receive an additional $2.5 million in compensation. Consequently, Calloway concluded that the only opportunity his children had for a fair future was for their father to perish in a work-related accident. And he was dead-set on creating one.

  Prior to his flight, Calloway spent the day attending to a few last-minute details. He placed his will and some other important documents into a neat stack on the bed in his apartment, and he replaced the acoustic instrument in his guitar case with several blunt ones. He telephoned FedEx to secure his "deadhead" seat on flight 705, and he left early to ensure he'd be the first to arrive on the aircraft. When he boarded the plane he switched off the fuse for the cockpit voice recorder in the hopes that it would prevent any scuffle from being recorded. After Andy Peterson fixed the fuse Calloway tried once more when the flight engineer stepped away, but Peterson was too vigilant. As a backup plan, Calloway would need to fly the plane for at least a half an hour to erase any trace of a ruckus from the CVR's 30 minute loop.

  Several minutes outside of Memphis, Jim Tucker was in control of the craft as it climbed to cruising altitude. Captain Sanders pointed out landmarks through the cockpit window as Auburn Calloway stepped quietly into the cockpit. The flight engineer station was to Calloway's right, and the pilots were just in front of him. All of them had their backs to the door, so they could only see him peripherally as he entered, and they assumed he had stepped in to visit. The first indication of trouble in the cockpit voice recorder transcript is a moist cracking sound and Andy Peterson shouting in pain and surprise:

  Sanders: See these trees?

  Tucker: Yeah.

  Sanders: That's a natural fault line.

  Tucker: Oh, this is the New Madrid, uh...

  Sanders: Well, it's part of it, yeah, but it's much higher in elevation and the er, climate is different, you drive in Arkansas, you drive right over it.

  Tucker: Well, I...

  Sanders: You see all those trees there, that's it.

  Tucker: I know it, but I wonder about that. You go, Wynne and all the, you know, stuff over here, you know, where it's flat and you cross over that and I wondered about that. That's not part of the no vaculight uplift and all that, that's where? That's further west, isn't it?

  Sanders: Yeah.

  Peterson: Altimeters.

  Tucker: Nines and twos here.

  Peterson: After takeoff is complete.

  Tucker: Do you, uh, live over in Arkansas, Dave, or...?

  Sanders: Naw, I live in Fisherville.

  Tucker: Aw, Fisherville, great spot.

  (Sounds of hammer blows striking pilots.)

  Peterson: Ow!

  Tucker: God!

  Tucker: Oh, ah, shit.

  Sanders: God almighty!

  Peterson: Ow!

  Tucker: What the fuck are you doing?

  Sanders: God, (groan), (groan), God almighty! God, God, God....

  Tucker: Get him, get him, get him!


  Sanders: He's going to kill us.

  Tucker: Get him!

  Sanders: Get up, get him!

  Peterson: I can't, God!

  Auburn Calloway had swung a hammer with great force into the top of Andy Peterson's head several times in rapid succession. Jim Tucker turned to see what the commotion was about just as one of Calloway's hammers landed a crushing blow to the left side of the co-pilot's skull, driving bone fragments into his brain. Having temporarily incapacitated 2/3 of the crew, Calloway turned his attention to the pilot. Captain Sanders managed to deflect some of the hail of hammer strikes, nevertheless several blows penetrated his confused defenses and rendered him bleeding and disoriented.

  Calloway withdrew back into the galley as the mauled crew members attempted to disentangle themselves from their seats with sluggish limbs and excruciating pain. The instrument panels were spattered with blood and all three men bled profusely from head wounds. Co-pilot Jim Tucker, unable to get out of his seat, repeatedly urged "Get him!" to his more mobile crew mates. Engineer Andy Peterson could barely hear due to a loud ringing in his ears.

  Before Sanders and Peterson could mobilize, Calloway reappeared holding a spear gun. His initial attack employed blunt instruments because he knew that a bludgeoning would be consistent with the normal injuries sustained in an airplane accident, therefore avoiding suspicion of foul play. But he'd brought along his spear gun in case his hammers didn't take all the fight out of the flight crew. "Sit down, sit down," he commanded. "Get back in your seat, this is a real gun, I'll kill ya." In spite of their compromised conditions, it was quite clear to Sanders, Tucker, and Peterson that Calloway had already attempted to kill them once, and given the opportunity he was likely to resume that endeavor.