Husband, Father, Escape Artist. Here for the laughs, the truths and the occasional hot take. 🇺🇸
VA
Joined October 2024
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Brandon retweeted
125 years ago today, a 63-year-old widowed schoolteacher climbed into a wooden barrel and went over Niagara Falls. Nobody had ever survived it.
Annie Edson Taylor was broke. She'd lost her home to a fire and her savings to a bad investment, and she was tired of scraping by. So she came up with a plan to make herself famous and secure her old age: be the first person to ride over the falls in a barrel.
She had it custom built from oak and iron, about four and a half feet tall, padded with a mattress, with a leather harness inside. Two days before her attempt, a cat was sent over in it as a test. It came out with a cut on its head and later posed for photos with her.
On October 24, 1901, her 63rd birthday, she climbed in with her lucky heart-shaped pillow. Friends screwed on the lid, pumped in air with a bicycle pump, and plugged the hole with a cork. She was set adrift about a mile upstream.
Thousands of people watched the barrel tumble through the rapids and drop over the Horseshoe Falls. Minutes later it was pulled from an eddy. Rescuers had to saw off part of the top to get her out.
She was alive, in shock, with a gash on her head. Asked what it was like, she said: "I felt as if all nature had been annihilated... I would never do it again."
Her plan for money never worked out. Crowds thought she was odd, and her manager even ran off with the barrel. She died poor in 1921. But she's still the first, and she told the papers she was 43.
Proof that it's never too late to do something nobody else ever has. Would you have climbed in?
Disclaimer: Based on newspaper accounts from 1901 and Niagara Falls historians. Her quote is as reported at the time; she claimed to be 43, but records show she was 63.
Photos: Annie Edson Taylor with her barrel and her cat, 1901 (Francis J. Petrie collection; Bain News Service/Library of Congress); Taylor helped to shore, 1901 (Teresa Lasher collection); Horseshoe Falls, about 1896 (DPLA); public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Brandon retweeted
This video is one of the most epic political takedowns of the Democratic Party…
that I have seen in a long time!!
The guy is SPOT ON‼️
Brandon retweeted
Why the HELL would you go to a “women’s” sporting event…
to then be forcibly removed because you’re wearing an “xx-xy” tshirt, supporting “women” in sports?!
Unbelievable!! 😡There are no longer 1A rights in this country anymore.
I was just forcefully removed from a @ThornsFC game for the crime of wearing an @xx_xyathletics t-shirt. I am in shock. We peacefully wore our shirts. We were assaulted by fans. Then WE were forced to leave – with FORCE by stadium security. I am utterly in shock.
Brandon retweeted
This is actually wild.
Lady finished unloading her groceries, then actively put her trash into the shopping cart so someone else has to deal with it.
Zero shame.
Is she just entitled or just being lazy AF?
Brandon retweeted
On January 13, 1982, a man in the icy Potomac River kept handing away his own rescue. He never got another chance.
Air Florida Flight 90 had waited 49 minutes in a snowstorm at Washington National Airport, with ice building on its wings. At 4:01 PM, seconds after takeoff, it hit the 14th Street Bridge and plunged through the frozen river.
Only six people made it out, clinging to the broken tail in water barely above freezing. One was Arland Williams Jr., a 46-year-old bank examiner from Mattoon, Illinois. His legs were trapped in the wreckage.
About 20 minutes later, a Park Police helicopter arrived and dropped a lifeline. It pulled one man to shore and came back. This time the line reached Williams. He caught it and passed it to a flight attendant.
The helicopter came back again. Again the line reached Williams. Again he passed it on.
One by one, the others were pulled out. On the bank, a government clerk named Lenny Skutnik saw a woman too weak to hold on and dove into the ice to drag her to shore.
When the helicopter came back for the last man on the tail, he was gone. The tail had shifted and sunk. Arland Williams was the only passenger who died by drowning.
At first, no one knew his name. Newspapers called him "the man in the water." Investigators later identified him.
Today the bridge his plane struck carries his name: the Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge. He was awarded the Coast Guard Gold Lifesaving Medal.
Some heroes run toward danger. Arland Williams was already in it, and he still put everyone else first. Would you have passed the line?
Disclaimer: Based on the NTSB report and accounts from the helicopter crew and survivors. Five people were rescued from the tail; 78 people died in all, including 4 motorists on the bridge.
Photos: FAA (Flight 90 tail, 1982); San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives (helicopter rescue, 1982); U.S. Army Corps of Engineers/Sp4 Alan Adams (recovery site, 1982); Jack E. Boucher/HAER (Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge, 1992); public domain via Wikimedia Commons
The photos are real 1982 rescue photos plus the bridge, and none of them shows Williams himself.
Brandon retweeted
What a lying incompetent beauracrat
@SaiKate108
Of course it's a gatekeeper
Where have you been under a rock
Just sack it sack all of them
Aussies have had enough
Stop the rot sack the lot now
No need for election selection
👊✊️🤜🤛💪🇦🇺🇦🇺
We are calling them out
👎👎👎
Brandon retweeted
75yo woman shaking her head the entire time while a parking attendant enforces a decal rule—empty spots everywhere. She calls him a “fckn robber,” says the fine means no groceries and she won’t be able to eat.
Him: “I’m just doing my job. You can’t be mad at me.”
Rules are rules… or is this what happens when enforcement has zero discretion for a fixed-income senior who’s clearly stressed?
Who’s wrong?
Brandon retweeted
We need more of this. Sorry, but if you look like a man, it is how i will address you.
I'm not playing that game. Neither should anyone. This "tolerance" of mental illness is what has reduced us as a society.
Brandon retweeted
Murry Wilson passed on his love of music to his sons, Brian, Dennis, and Carl. But he was also a terrifying and domineering presence in their life.
In The Nearest Faraway Place: Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, and the Southern California Experience (1996) Timothy White writes that Murry’s pushing his sons toward music could border on obsession.
What’s more, Murry could be violent. Many reports claim that Murry caused Brian to lose his hearing in one ear when he hit him as a little boy, and Murry was physically and emotionally abusive toward all his sons. He would berate them, yelling things “I’m the boss, and beat them with his fists or a leather belt. Some biographers have claimed that Murry once punished Dennis, who hated tomatoes, to eat tomatoes until he threw up.
“He was awful. I’m so glad he wasn’t my father. He definitely did some damage,” Mike Love, Brian, Dennis, and Carl’s cousin, and fellow bandmate, recalled in an interview. “[He was] very abusive and gruff and terrifying and intimidating and negative… Very unsupportive.”
But, as Love acknowledged, Murry did know the music industry. After Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson formed a band with Love and their friend, Al Jardine (called “The Pendletones”), Murry introduced them to music publisher Hite Morgan, who helped the band record their first hit: “Surfin'”
The song was a hit, and Murry Wilson helped the band — renamed “The Beach Boys” — to get a lucrative deal with Capitol Records. Though he became the band’s first manager, things would soon sour.
Indeed, Murry was just as domineering as a manager as he had been as a parent — and was fired as The Beach Boy’s manager in 1964. Despite this, he remained stubbornly involved in the band. Recorded audio from studio sessions of “Help Me Rhonda,” played recently during Disney+ The Beach Boys documentary, captured Murry belittling Brian.
“Brian, I’m a genius too. Let’s go, OK?” Murry says. Another another point, he declares: “When you guys get so big, you stop singing everything from your hearts, you’re going downhill… Downhill, son! I’ve protected you for 22 years, but I can’t go on if you’re not going to listen to an intelligent man.”
But the rift between Murry Wilson and his sons only grew.
Depressed and angry over his termination, Murry Wilson went on to manage a Beach Boys lookalike band called the Sunrays.
In 1972, the dejected patriarch was diagnosed with diverticulitis, which only worsened his pre-existing heart disease. He was hospitalized the following year after a heart attack, and within a few weeks, on June 4, 1973, Murry Wilson died at his home in Whittier, California. The cause of death was an acute myocardial infarction, a heart attack. He was 55 years old.
In the end, his sons had mixed feelings about their father. Dennis, who died just a few years later at the age of 39, once remarked that he and his brothers had a “shitty childhood” and that their father “used to whale on us.” But for Brian, things with Murry were more complicated.
“Lots of things have been written about my dad and the way he treated me and my brothers,” Brian Wilson wrote in his 2017 biography, I Am Brian Wilson. “Lots of them are true. Some of them are dirty lies. But even the things that are true aren’t always what they seem.”
Brandon retweeted
A 9-year-old boy was grabbed by a stranger, forced into a car, and driven away while selling water on the side of the road.
But as the car sped through the streets, the terrified little boy looked out the window and began waving desperately for help. What happened next was unbelievable.
It happened in Jacksonville, Florida. The boy had been selling bottled water near an intersection when a man suddenly forced him into a vehicle and took off.
Shameika Dowell, who knew the boy and was helping supervise the children, witnessed what happened. She jumped into her own vehicle with her son and took off after the suspect, refusing to let the little boy disappear.
As she followed the car through the streets, she could see the boy inside, frightened and crying for help. She kept chasing until the driver finally stopped, then moved to block his escape.
But the boy was still trapped inside. Shameika rushed toward the vehicle and began kicking at the passenger door, determined to get it open. Other bystanders rushed over to see what was happening and began helping. They kept going until she finally managed to force the door open and pull the little boy to safety.
Police arrested the suspected kidnapper, and the boy was reunited with his family. Despite everything he’d been through, he later said he still wanted to sell water so he could buy clothes for school.
Shameika Dowell refused to look away when a little boy needed help. Her courage deserves to be recognized.
Brandon retweeted
Mandy, you are a great actor. But Abdul is MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD. He can’t stand Jews or Israel. Shocked you are promoting this piece of human garbage? 😡😡😡😡
Brandon retweeted
After the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in January 1986, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman was appointed to the presidential Rogers Commission. Many officials expected the famous scientist to serve mainly as a respected figure on the panel. Feynman had other ideas. He began cutting through the usual process and went directly to NASA engineers and workers on the ground.
What he uncovered was bigger than a single mechanical failure. Engineers had repeatedly warned that the solid rocket booster O-rings could become dangerously vulnerable in freezing temperatures, but those warnings had not been properly acted upon. NASA management had softened the seriousness of the risk to keep launch schedules moving.
During a nationally televised hearing Feynman demonstrated the problem in a way anyone could understand. He took a piece of the O-ring rubber, clamped it, and placed it into a glass of ice water. When he removed it the rubber had lost its ability to return to its original shape. The simple demonstration showed millions of viewers exactly what cold temperatures could do to the material that was supposed to help keep the booster sealed.
Feynman refused to allow public relations concerns to weaken the commission’s conclusions. He was battling terminal cancer while working on the investigation, but he threatened to remove his name from the official report unless his own independent findings were included. His analysis appeared as Appendix F. Official estimates had placed the probability of failure at roughly one in 100,000, while engineers working with the system believed the risk was much closer to one in 100.
He ended with a warning that became one of the most remembered statements from the investigation: “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Feynman died two years later, in February 1988, at the age of sixty-nine. His refusal to accept institutional excuses showed why engineering and science depend on something simple but difficult: when the evidence says something is wrong, reality has to matter more than schedules, reputations, or public relations.
