HEARD ON THE BUS // “I don’t trust the moon. It’s always following me.” — bus, Madrid ✦ “No, February has 30 days on leap years. That’s why they’re called that.” — office kitchen ✦ “I’m not superstitious. I’m just careful around ladders, mirrors, cats, and Tuesdays.” — family dinner ✦ “The Wi-Fi is slow because it’s raining on the internet.” — train, somewhere ✦ SUBMIT YOURS — THE DONKEY IS LISTENING

Shittypedia

THE ALMANAC OF HUMAN FOLLY
Chapter IV

We All Believed This

Expired collective certainties. Handled with gloves, served with love.

ENTRY № 0041
We All Believed This

Radium: Now in Toothpaste, Water, and Chocolate!

In the 1920s, radioactivity was the hot new wellness trend, and we — collectively, enthusiastically, with money — put radium in toothpaste, face creams, chocolate, and drinking water.1 “Radithor,” a radium tonic, was sold as a cure for over 150 ailments.2 Products glowed, quite literally, with the promise of vitality.

We entered our radioactive wellness era with the same confidence we now bring to whatever is currently in our smoothies.3 The entry is dedicated to every generation’s certainty that this time, the miracle ingredient is real.

  1. The past is another country; they had glowing face cream there.
  2. It cured none of them. It was, however, extremely energetic about it.
  3. This footnote will age. That is the point of this footnote.
Ear twitch “Humans drank the glowing water because it glowed. I drink from the trough. We are not the same.” — The Donkey
DONKEY-O-METER
ENTRY № 0042
We All Believed This

“More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette”

For decades, cigarette advertising featured doctors — real imagery of white coats, stethoscopes, and reassuring smiles — endorsing particular brands as the healthy choice.1 Physicians recommended smoking for sore throats. Some hospitals had cigarette carts.2

We publish this not to sneer at our grandparents, who trusted the best information they were given, but as the Almanac’s standing exhibit on a timeless mechanism: when authority, habit, and profit all agree, evidence waits politely outside.3 It is still waiting outside somewhere today. We just can’t see which door yet.4

  1. The campaigns ran roughly through the 1940s and 50s, surveys and all.
  2. Patients could smoke in bed. In the hospital. While recovering. From smoking.
  3. The mechanism is the villain. The people are just us, earlier.
  4. Our grandchildren’s Shittypedia will tell them. Be kind, future editors.
Unmoved “Nothing about this amuses me. It IS the most human entry in the Almanac, though. Publish it.” — The Donkey
DONKEY-O-METER
ENTRY № 0044
We All Believed This

The Two Centuries Europe Feared the Tomato

For roughly 200 years, much of Europe classified the tomato as poison.1 Aristocrats did occasionally fall ill after eating them — because their pewter plates were high in lead, and the tomato’s acidity leached it into the food.2 The tomato took the blame, as the innocent so often do, and was grown mostly as a decorative curiosity called the “poison apple.”

The pattern deserves its own museum wing: correct observation, wrong culprit, two hundred years of pizza delayed.3

  1. The wealthy feared it; the poor, lacking pewter plates, ate it happily and mysteriously survived.
  2. The plates were poisoning them. The plates! It’s always the plates.
  3. Historians estimate the delay to pizza at two centuries. Civilization’s greatest loss is uncounted.
Smirk “Two hundred years blaming the vegetable instead of the dishware. I bite the hand that feeds me too, but at least I know why.” — The Donkey
DONKEY-O-METER

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