#at least she ended up getting some good shots of Marm

[victorluvsalice]

-->So I was like “Okay, everyone – we are ALL GOING OUTSIDE BY THE TREE FOR PHOTOS.” XD I thus wrangled the trio, Marm, and their guests, and made them all stand by that one tree in the front corner of the lot so Alice could whip out her camera and hopefully get a good shot or two of the whole group. Which was, uh, TRICKY, to say the least – in the first one, she was WAAAY too close to Victor, meaning she couldn’t get everyone in the shot (though she did try!). I managed to get her into a better spot to take a picture of the entire group, and got a few good shots there (even if not everybody looked very happy in the picture – Marm and Clement weren’t having a good conversation), then tried to set up the camera and the tripod outside the front steps of the house for her to take a picture with Victor, Smiler, and Marm –

Only to discover that she could only take a picture with two other Sims. I thought you could do four Sims at once in one shot with the tripod? Like, I swear I saw that in a James Turner video once? Maybe that’s only if the photographer isn’t joining them… I decided “Okay, can’t do that, I’ll do some solo shots of Marm instead” – but while he did go over to take some pictures, his Tense angry eyes didn’t exactly make for great photography. I mean, I guess him looking so grouchy in the pictures was FUNNY, but it wasn’t exactly what I intended as a party memento. *shakehead* Figuring what I needed to do was get a start on fixing one of the problems making him so tense, I had Alice stop taking pictures to talk to him about her werewolf experiences (hoping to bond with him a bit and turn him into a Werewolf Ally later) while Smiler shared some pictures on their phone with Nalani and Victor shared some with Rory before handing out hugs to complete the final “minor” party goals –

-->Only for the fucking NAP Inspector to show up midway through! And it wasn’t even Brian – it was some other random Sim! Maybe the NAP people didn’t want to send Brian since Smiler’s now friends with him. Conflict of interest and all. XD I went “fine” and had Alice invite her in as the guests started wandering off again –

And THEN some random woman named Jaclyn showed up! Along with Thomas Watson, asking if he could help fix stuff! What the fuck? Why was this suddenly the most popular house on the block all of a sudden, game?! *sigh* Anyway, I let the NAP inspector do her thing and check the lot for violations (none, fortunately) and left Jaclyn and Thomas on the porch to be annoyed by the specters as I tried to get back to tending to my ACTUAL GUESTS –

-->Only to find Alice had run off into the kitchen to drink some orange juice; Rory and Nalani had gone upstairs to dance to Smiler’s radio; Marm had followed them in to do some more yoga on Smiler’s mat (I made him stop and leave to try and alleviate his “scary werewolf” Tense moodlet a bit – it didn’t work well); and that Victor kept trying to slip off to bed or to the attic couch to have a nap. Oh, and that Clement had insisted on heading into the attic to judge the gang's bubble blower. *facepalm* I tried to set up a gathering in the upstairs hallway for Victor, Marm, Smiler, and Clement – having Victor and Marm get to know each other while Smiler entertained Clement (hearing about Clement’s enthusiasm for exclusive relationships) – and allowed Alice to start cleaning up all the various dishes in the kitchen just so they’d be done, but I was getting quite stressed out about trying to keep an eye on everyone, so I had everyone in the group go downstairs again to try and get them all in one place –

[lillabeast]

Brontophobia (wandersong au fic)

This is my first Fanfiction, and its for my wandersong sibling au.

Characters are kawn baron (the bard) and audrey redheart (the hero)

It’s a stormy night and Kawn and Audrey talk about the past.

It was midnight in the sleepy little village of Langtree. Everyone was sleeping to the sound of a heavy storm passing over. Everyone, but Audrey Redheart. 

She sat sharpening her blade, listening as the rain poured heavily on the little shed-turned-house the ex-hero built. Her mind was wandering as she slid the whetstone across the blade. How long has she been in Langtree? One month? Two? It felt like she’d lived here much longer. It was a miracle they even accepted her, after she tried to-

She shook her head. She did not want to relive that.

She thought instead about her job.

Lumber work, Bronson offered it to her. She was very grateful for that, although it’s thanks to the bard she even got a place to live. They offered to let her live with them, and was the one making dinner and all that. She looked over at their house. It was small, barely able for even one person to live in. Her eyes drifted down to Marmalade’s chicken pen.

The witch, Miriam, had gifted a chicken to the bard. According to her, Kawn kept getting confused by egg labels, and was spending 20 Dollars on a 6-egg carton. 

Audrey still can’t believe they outsmarted her.

Despite Marmalade being the bard’s chicken, she very much loved her. It reminded her of a simpler time when she lived with the other orphans in the monastery. It was bittersweet, the only people who seemed to actually care who Audrey was, was her sister and the sky seals. She still missed the sky seals. She told Kawn about them, and when she returned from a Lumber work trip from Xia-Tian, Kawn had surprised her with a small stuffed animal sky seal. She never deserved any of this. She tried to hu-

A crack of thunder brought Audrey’s attention back to the chicken pen. Marmalade was probably cold and scared in this storm, The pen isn’t the best at protecting her from rain (Boni promised to come fix it when they had time off work) but it was a good temporary arrangement. 

Audrey sheathed her sword and hung it up on the wall before grabbing her scarf and putting her boots on. She didn’t bother with the gloves, They were just to protect from the cold, and to protect her hands from blistering while using a sword.

She trudged out into the cold, dark, and wet night. She was almost immediately drenched by the rain 

“Guuugh…” She hated being soggy, it was the worst feeling. But she had to do this

She had to save Marmalade.

She carefully opened the pen, and heard marm’s clucking. Carefully, she reached in and wrapped her arms around the sopping wet bird. The feeling of wet feathers was… indescribable.

“Eugh… Boni had better get time off soon.” Audrey muttered, as she pulled the chicken out of the pen. There was another crack of thunder, and Marmalade started flapping her wings and struggling while making distressed clucking noises.

“Wh- HEY! I’m trying to help you!!” 

She ran into the shed, struggling to hold a panicked and very upset hen without hurting it. Audrey was very glad no one was awake at this hour.

She burst through the shed door, and put marmalade on the ground as quickly (and carefully) as she could. Marmalade sat on the ground, shivering while looking around. Her beautiful feathers now depressed looking as the water dripped off of her. Her usually plump and fluffy appearance was now sleek and weighty on her slightly less plump form (she is a well fed chicken, afterall). 

She wrapped the sopping hen with her scarf and set her in a corner. She decided to turn in for the night, It must’ve been close to one am at this point. However, as she went to close the door, there was a loud crack of thunder that made her stumble back a bit, and then soon after she heard a very familiar scream. 

She jumped into action, grabbing her sword and running towards the small house, and she burst in as another bolt of lightning illuminated the sky.

She was greeted not  by danger, but by her friend. 

They were on the ground, shaken and trembling. They looked up at her in terror, tears glinting with the brief flashes of light in the sky. Both of their hands were gripping their chest- almost digging into it. 

They  let out a small whimper, and tried to scoot away

Quickly, Audrey dropped her sword, but didn’t move beyond that. She barely even recognized that disheveled and fearful figure to be the annoyingly happy-go-lucky bard that played along with her antics and helped give her a new life.

After what seemed like forever, Audrey found the strength to break the silence.

“Kawn? Is everything alright?” Audrey you fool of course they’re not alright, they are on the ground  shiv-

“Y-Yeah! I’m f-fine!” ...Are you Serious? 

Audrey couldn’t believe it. Do they really think she’s gonna believe that?? 

“Kawn, you are on the floor shaking like a leaf and crying. You can barely even smile!”

The shaky smile that the bard had formed, quickly faded. It didn’t look right, she’s seen the bard without a smile before but there was at least some form of.. Strength? Hope? She wasn’t sure. Whatever it was, it wasn’t there now. They seemed to be at their weakest point, and she had no idea how to help. She only knew how to fight. 

And there was no way to fight this problem.

The bard seemed to know she was at a loss at what to do, they didn’t want to be a burden. They attempted to stand, but their legs threatened to give out under them. 

“Wai- No! You’re shaking too much!” Audrey exclaimed as she ran over to go support the shaken singer.

Kawn let out a yelp, and stiffened as Audrey supported them. They were expecting a rush of unpleasant memories, but instead they found themself comforted by Audrey’s embrace. Other than her initial appearance a few moments ago, they didn’t seem to connect their friend with The Hero that threatened to end the world. They softened after a second, before attempting to hug Audrey. 

She panicked, she was not expecting this. She started to quickly get Kawn to their bed, but stopped when she heard another whimper. She looked down at her whimpering friend, a wave of more awkwardness and worry washed over her. The whimpering got more frequent as the bard buried their face into their friend. Audrey, now being clinged to, awkwardly shuffled herself and her friend to the bed. 

  Carefully, she sat on the bed, having to pull the bard onto her lap as they started to full on sob. There was another crash of thunder and the bard dug their fingers into Audrey’s shirt. She swore that they were about to rip a hole in it or something. This was not how she expected her night to go. She should have just gone to bed. 

Except… that would have been cowardly. Kawn would have been stuck cowering on the floor!

 ...Wait what was kawn cowering from? 

Audrey looked at the sobbing bard, it occurred to her it probably wasn’t the best time to talk to them about it. Instead, she carefully started to rub kawn’s back, and tried her best to hum the Overseer song the monks taught her and the other orphans. She never had to use it, since the Heart Overseer’s castle appeared in the real world. 

Her voice was nowhere near as good as Kawn’s, but they seemed to start to calm down. Their sobbing eventually quieted down, and Audrey carefully started to finish her song.

“...Y..you have a very pretty voice.” 

Audrey blushed. 

“Thanks.” She wasn’t used to genuine compliments from anyone other than adoring fans, despite however many months she’s been there. 

“What scared you?”

“...I don’t want to talk about it.” The bard’s voice was barely audible as they looked away.

Audrey groaned, she would threaten to call Miriam, but it was still dark outside. 

“Kawn. It would help me help you if you would tell me what’s up.” That...came out way more aggressive than she wanted. 

“I-I can help myself Audrey. I’m ok.”

“Bull.” She would swear if it didn’t put the fear of Eya in her.

The bard responded with silence. She really reminded them of Miriam right now, but they didn’t wanna say that. Instead they debated on wether or not they really wanted to share their thoughts.

“I...I’m just scared of the thunder, that’s all.”

“Oh. why would you hide that from me?” 

The Bard paused again. They wanted to word it without making Audrey feel bad. However, before they could speak, A flash of realization crossed The Ex-Hero’s face.

“Wait, it's because of me isn’t it?”

“No! I mean- yes but-”

Audrey glared at the floor, what was she thinking? She could’ve killed them. That was a fully charged shot! They-”

“Please, don’t be upset with yourself…”

What? How could she not Be upset!? 

“Kawn, I shot you!” she was mad. Not at him, just… just mad that they were trying to downplay her actions. 

“I… I know.” Kawn shifted off of Audrey, now sitting next to her. “But, I ran at you, you just reacted.”

“I was charging that shot long before you ran at me.”

“...”

“Besides-” Audrey was now choking back tears “Aren’t you mad that I hurt Miriam?”

Kawn paused. They were mad, but...not at her. They were mad at what she did, and they were mad at how she reacted. But she acknowledged that she was wrong (albeit, she made him question if she was even sorry after she killed the Heart King) and she obviously wanted to be better now! It felt wrong to still be upset.

“I...Yes. I’m still upset but… I shouldn’t be.”

“...What.”

Kawn was tense, They hated being open about this, but Miriam said that sharing these thoughts helped her. They could help Audrey! They’d just have to take that chance. 

“You are trying so hard to change. You have come so far from the egotistical and snooty hero, and actually resemble the compassionate and capable hero i knew you could be!”

Audrey huffed, she did feel like she has improved but she didn’t feel like a hero anymore. She wasn’t saving anyone, she was just a lumb-

“But…”

Oh no.

“I’m still… upset by your actions. I’m upset with Eya for telling you to kill the overseers.”

“That’s bold. Being angry at a Goddess I mean.”

Kawn gave out a small laugh, it somehow sounded musical, and it made audrey feel a little bit better. 

“Yeah… but again I’m just mad at  her actions. I’m mad that you didn’t listen to Miriam and I, or even Eyala. I know why you didn’t listen, and I completely understand why you did all this! It’s just… It still makes me upset when I think about it.”

Kawn looked at the ground, and swung their feet back and forth.

“I-I know, it’s unfair to you and i have no right to-”

“Are you kidding? You have every right to still be upset.”

Kawn looked up in surprise. Audrey was looking at them with a soft look that they’ve never seen on her before. 

“I hurt so many people, and I’ve disfigured you for life!”

Kawn carefully put his hand on their chest.

“It’s ok to still be upset. You can forgive me and still be hurt by my actions.”

She put a hand on Their shoulder. Kawn looked back on the ground and put their hand on the hand on their shoulder. 

“But… I don’t even see you and the past you as the same person.”

“Huh?”

“I see ‘The Hero’ as someone completely different. When I see her in my nightmares, I don’t think of you.”

Audrey blinked.

“I...but we are the same person.”

“I know but I can’t see it that way. I don’t think of you when I think of all the things you’ve done. Maybe I’m just broken or someth-”

“Don’t say that.”

“Huh?”

Audrey turned Kawn to make them look at her. 

“You are not broken. You are just trying to cope in your own way.”

“G-Gosh I’m sorry I didn’t mean to make you upset!” Kawn cracked a very awkward smile.

Audrey sighed.

“It’s just… I don’t like when you put yourself down. I’m sure Miriam also hates that.”

Kawn frowned.

“I’m sorry, I’ll try not to do that again.”

“...You’re a very funny person, you know that?”

“Huh?”

Audrey Leaned back.

“You were completely willing to help me, just as you would anyone else. Despite everything i’ve done to you.”

“Well… yeah! I believed you could be better and you seemed like you needed a place to stay!”

“...You didn’t even want my money or anything. You help while not wanting or expecting anything in return. Despite me questioning why you would do that, I think I’m beginning to understand why you do it.”

Kawn gave Audrey a confused glance. To be honest it just made them feel good to help others. 

“You just like spreading happiness. You want people to remember you for being kind and caring, and maybe even pay it forward by helping someone else.”

Kawn thought about it. It made sense but they didn’t think of it that way.

“Actually it just feels good to help people…”

“Well yeah but still.”

“...Yeah maybe you’re right.”

Kawn stared at the ceiling, thinking about what Audrey had said. Suddenly a snoring sound brought him back to the real world.

“Audrey?”

They looked over and found audrey passed out, half hanging off the bed. Kawn smiled softly and properly tucked Audrey in (remembering to remove her boots). They then pulled the sleeping bag out and set it up, and tucked themself in after grabbing a book and a flashlight.

They weren’t particularly tired, they would probably take a nap today.

For now they would just read through the night, hopefully they’ll doze off soon.

[old-souldier]

#5 Prank

It was the 21st, Fifth Astral Moon, 1553 6AE.

Jordan woke up, bruised, hungover, and chilly. She rubbed her eyes. She sat up, pulling away the burlap blanket and felt a cold breeze.

It was then she realized the following:0

She was naked.

She was in a jail cell.

She had a killer headache.

She covered herself up again in the burlap blanket, the rough cloth brushing against her skin like sandpaper.

"What in the Seven 'ells..." Jordan said aloud.

"Finally awake, are we, Private Kennedy?" a husky voice said. It was a tall Sea Wolf woman in a Barracuda Knight outfit. Jordan Immediately recognised the insignia of a Sergeant

"I... Aye, marm..." Jordan looked down, before asking in a raw voice, "Wha' 'appened ta me clothes?"

"Navigator only knows..." the Sergeant sighed. "We found ye at the Anchor Yard splayed on top of the gull statue making "whooshing" noises and calling out for, accordin' ta witnesses, quote 'ma sweet Emmie baby girl, I miss ye and so does me tongue'."

Jordan froze for a minute, trying to process the words she just heard. "Ah, shite..." she finally replied.

"Shite indeed, Private." The sergeant stifled a laugh before correcting herself. "Can ye even recall what ye were doin' last night, lass?" the officer asked.

Jordan brushed a hand on her short, buzzed hair. "Well, I just came back inta town after a stint patrolling the Northwest La Noscea and the cliffsides 'round O'Gohmoro..".

The night before Jordan and a trio of young men sat around a table in a small dockside bar, the Navigator's Bosom. They were passing around pints of dark beer. After a rough clink of cups, spilling some foam on the table, they all downed their pints in one swig before slamming the cups down. On the table. At once they all cried out with a satisfied "oh!"

"Aye, that 'it the swivin' spot!"  Jordan exclaimed, wiping some of the residue from her face.

"Nothin' like that first pint after comin' 'ome ta ease yer troubles." Salulu Pilulu exclaimed, the Lalafellin man remarked before lighting a pipe.

"First cups' always the best one." Bluomwilf added.

"Aye, just like the first woman ye 'ave when ye get inta town too!" A Midlander, Redmond, remarked to raucous laughter from Jordan and Bluomwilf, and a mild nod from Salulu.

"Ye don't 'ave t' get quite so vulgar just because we're in a place like this, Red..." Salulu remarked, taking in a bit of pipeweed.

"Ah, yer no fun," Redmond added, "Kennedy understands what I'm talkin' 'bout, aye?"

Jordan laughed, "Aye, aye/ Though tonight I think I'd rather spend it with good friends than trying me luck at the Member."

Bluomwilf laughed, "Ye gotta get back in there sometime, shrimp! This is where ye n' I differ. Ye can't keep  'oldin a torch for a lass that's off n' been married for two cycles."

Jordan nodded, "Aye, aye... when ye fall fer a lovely raven-haired byoot 'ard and then lose 'er, I'll listen ta ye, ye fat bastard."

Bluomwilf smiled. "Red n' I were thinkin' about goin to a show tomorrow night. Yer welcome ta join. I 'eard the dancers like performin' fer interested lasses, even willing ta go 'the extra malm or two'." He raised his eyebrows in an overly suggestive manner.

Jordan thought about it for a moment. "May'aps... but I need more drink in me first." She looked out to a barmaid, "Lass! Another round fer the table! On me gil!"

As they drank another round, Jordan said. "Aye, this is what I'm achin' for tonight! Say Bluomwif, let's see if'n I can drink ye under the table."

"Yer already 'alfway under the table, shrimp."

"The only thing that's shrimp-like 'ere is that thing ye call a cock."

Bluomwilf laughed. The Sea Wolf waved the barmaid over. "Two bottles of whiskey and two cups. We're celebratin' this eve!"

An hour later, Redmond and Salulu sat amused. The Midlander was half-asleep from drink and Salulu was having a laugh as Jordan took her tenth shot. She bobbled left to right like a buoy in choppy waters, but, after a second to steady herself, she slurped the last few drops in the shot glass and violently slammed it upside down on the table in front of her.

Bluomwilf, looking about as worse for wear somehow, slurred, "Twelve Dammmit... if'n I grow up with ye... I'd swear ye was a Sea Wolf in a Lalafell glamour....:

Jordan countered, "Enh, ye've always been a lightweight....n' a coward... nex-next round... what number issit?"

"11, Jordan." Salulu pointed out helpfully as he poured whiskey in Bluomwilf's glass.

"Aye 'leven. Gooo 'wilfy"

The young Sea Wolf grunted and took the shot glass. He stared at the glass, concentrating as he brought it to his lips and drank, his eyes shut.  Looking at the table, he moved to place the glass down, but missed and dropped the glass on the floor, the glass clinking and rolling under his chair as he leaned back and let out a groan.

"Well," Red piped up. "Looks like the whiskey's swallowed 'im up."

"Wand'rer blesssss me iron liverrrr," Jordan said as she raised her arms to polite applause from the conscious companions.

After sighing in satisfaction, Jordan brushed her fore'ead, "Gods, it's gettin' mighty warm in ';ere."  She stood up and, with a wobble that looked like would keel over at any time she stumbled outside.

"Ah, that's nice, " Jordan thought as the crisp fall air his her face. "'Tis a nice sky... I member when Emmie n' I use ta gaze at the stars after we did it in her room... she wore this lovely filly robe and I was in just me britches when we sat on the roof of 'er 'ouse 'n'... *hic*"

Jordan began stumbling up towards the Upper Decks. She wandered the oil lamp-lit streets and found a lit building. Outside a lone young woman stood outside. She was a Midlander, a bit on the short side, but with long black hair and a low cut tunic that advertise ample décolletage.

Jordan took a look at her and let out a long low whistle as she walked by.

"Like what ya see, sailor?" the woman asked.

Jordan covered her mouth with her hands. She swayed from the momentum for a bit until she settled and said, "pardon.. S'not polite ta be catcallin', but yer a byoot... a sight fer me sore eyes."

"I can make a few other things sore, if ya 'ave the gil, missy." the Midlander woman replied with a wink and a wave of her hand, making a point of showing her beautifully painted, but short nails.

Jordan stopped for a moment and reached into her pockets. "I shouldn't but. enh, just got me pay, I can live a little."

"Why don't we step in, 'ave a drink, and a nice talk. Just us gals," the woman giggled and as though using conjury, beckoned Jordan inside, the Lalafellin woman easily pulled in behind her.

In a small parlor, the woman poured Jordan some brandy in a glass over ice. "This is a nice one, Flight of the Fish Gull, they call it. 'Ave a drink."

Jordan looked a bit nervous now, having sobered up a tad. "Aye, looks good. What about you?"

"Oh, I've been nursin' a cheap rosé. Ye'd much prefer the brandy, love." The woman smiled and poured herself a glass of wine. Before sitting down quite snugly next to Jordan, letting the Lalafell rest her head on her bosom.

"Cheers 'en, "Jordan said raising a glass and taking a hearty swig.

Five minutes later, Jordan was passed out asleep. The woman stood and smiled as sealed the cap on the brandy.

"Poor sod, well at least she'll learn 'er lesson." The woman took no time grabbing Jordan's coin purse, stripping the young woman and throwing her out on the street. Jordan staggered about the only road she could see before ending up at a dead end.

"Oh, I'm a bleedin' fool I am..." the young woman moaned. She looked up and saw the white stone statue glisten in the moonlight. "Ye's da only one 'oo understands me, tiny bird. Les' fly away from our trubblezzzz..."

"Enh, last I remembered, I was drinkin' with me squadmates. The rest's a blur." Jordan finally answered after thinking on it for a few minutes.

The Sergeant sighed. "Well, he're some loaner clothes that should fit you, Private."

"Aye ma'am. Thank ye ma'am."

"Normally we'd fine you for disturbing the peace n' public indecency-"

Jordan winced. "Aye?"

"But due to your status as a Private in the Knights of the Barracuda, we've decided to discipline you internally. Your immediate superior officer, Sergeant Styrnskoefsyn has already taken responsibility for your action and will be dealing with you as is considered appropriate.

Jordan nodded. She knew six months of Latrine Duty was in her future.

[samanthasroberts]

6 Real Crime Waves From History That Were Hilariously Insane

Thanks to the news, it’s easy to feel that right now is the most dangerous time to be alive. However, the truth is that the world in general keeps getting safer. You see, not only was the past lousy with criminal terrors, but ye crime waves of olde were also bit more … eccentric. Case in point …

6

A Bootleggers’ Turf War Included Tank Battles And Bomber Planes In 1920s Illinois

Illinois was both a great and terrible place to be a beer fan during Prohibition. Sure, there was no real shortage of booze, but there was a decent chance you’d be shot while drinking it. But while we all know about the glamorous gangland violence of Al Capone’s Chicago, a wholly different criminal empire was tearing it up in the southern part of the state at that time: the hillbilly mafia. And when they got into fights, it wasn’t with blunderbusses and cussin’, but with homemade tanks and aerial bombs.

During Prohibition, the booze king of Southern Illinois was a bootlegging antihero named Charlie Birger. He was loved because he drove the KKK out of the area, omitting that he did so mostly because they kept trying to steal his liquor. Soon after, he joined forces with the Shelton brothers, who agreed to take a cut of the profits from Birger’s speakeasies in exchange for providing him with only the most primo hooch directly from Florida. And if Floridians use it to blot out their reality, you know that’s some powerful hooch.

The partnership quickly dissolved, however, and the two sides went to war. Like, actual war. The Sheltons’ retribution involved attacking Birger with an armored truck they’d made themselves which rolled through the streets equipped with “an assembly of weapons” — i.e. a freaking tank.

As if that wasn’t enough, the brothers then performed perhaps the first aerial bombing on U.S. soil ever when a plane they hired dropped a few bottles of nitroglycerin wrapped in dynamite over one of Birger’s hideouts. You might be okay with dozens of people dying on the street, and you might be okay with criminals blasting each other with Tommy Guns, but when your criminal element is better-armed than the Army Reserve, it’s time to move.

5

19th-Century Sexual Harassers Were So Bad That Women Would Stab Them

While it’s oddly comforting to know that street harassment is not a modern problem, we should all long for a return of the Edwardian era, and not only because their catcalls involved complimenting a lady’s ankles and expressing a strong desire to experience the sublime sight of her ravishing bosom. At least in our great-great-grandmothers’ day, harassment had to be done face-to-face, which gave them a lot more options regarding what to do with said faces.

By the end of the 19th century, it became commonplace to fend off unwanted advances by plucking one’s hatpin out of one’s fashionably enormous hats and stabbing the fucker. These were no puny little thumbtacks, either — they could be well over a foot long and do fatal damage.

San Francisco Sunday Call Cutting-edge fashion.

One woman even forced robbers from a moving train armed with nothing but her hatpin, while 100 factory workers all wielding theirs fought off police who had come to make one of them as a political prisoner. You simply don’t see that kind of sisterhood anymore. Two women in Chicago, upon the former’s discovery of her husband’s infidelity with the latter, “drew hatpins and circled each other, duel-style, until policemen broke it up.” Cops just don’t get called to bust up hatpin phalanxes anymore these days.

And while today there’d be badly kempt rioting in the streets if dudes got stabbed every time they “accidentally” brushed a woman’s derriere on the sidewalk, 19th-century society still had a strict “gentleman or GTFO” attitude. Reporters were only too happy to dub someone a harasser, or “masher.” Even asking “insulting questions” was all it took to find yourself cast as the mustache-twirling villain. It was such an accepted part of society that it became a trope in the fiction of the era, and newspapers printed tutorials on how to get the most out of your deadly accessory, mostly by encouraging the lady to go straight for the balls. The clothes might make the man, but a hatpin can reverse that process in a pinch.

Brooklyn Museum Repeat: One foot long. Right through the balls.

Unfortunately, errant hatpins had a nasty habit of stabbing people by accident, too. At least, that was the purported reasoning behind laws banning or regulating hatpins — which, coincidentally, women weren’t allowed to vote against. Those laws are presumably defunct now, so if any fashion industry moguls happen to be reading, please bring back ridiculously huge hats and their pins. Plenty of people need reminding of that particular fashion tip.

4

New York Had a Gang Of Child Criminals Run By A Kindly Matron

When Fredericka Mandelbaum emigrated from Prussia to New York City in the mid-19th century, all she wanted was for her husband and herself to eke out a modest living to feed their children. She didn’t count on becoming the country’s first female crime boss.

Starting out as a snazzy street peddler, Mandelbaum discovered there was a fortune to be made befriending the countless Dickensian pickpockets in the city and buying their stolen wares. “Marm” Mandelbaum then used her motherly charms to recruit these baby criminals as her own private ragamuffin army.

Valerian Gribayedoff To supplement her regular muffin army.

Mother Mandelbaum used her stolen-goods-for-candy-and-affection racket to move up in the criminal world, leasing a store as a front from where she ran her operations, which ranged from financing bank robberies to moving stolen livestock. As a devotee of continuing education, she used the back as a classroom to teach her young delinquents how to become better at crime, a sort of finishing school for repeat offenders. She particularly exalted her female students, whom she was proudly saving from “wasting their lives being housekeepers” — a weird glass ceiling to break. With her sharp eye for business and nurturing of young talent, Mandelbaum soon had enough resources to buy the most important thing for a criminal: friends in high places. She had everyone from the local cab drivers to the police to the city’s highest-powered defense attorneys in her pocket.

In the end, it took a private detective agency hired by the district attorney to bring her down, as no local cop dared to raise a hand against Mother. But before the law could close in, Mandelbaum simply packed up and retired to Canada, making everyone to feel bad for never visiting. She lived there quietly under an assumed identity until her supposed death in 1894. Rumor had it that her coffin, transported back to New York City, was filled with stones, and she had in truth returned in the flesh under the name Madame Fuchs, indicating how few of them she gave. In any case, at her funeral, many mourners reported having been pickpocketed. It’s what she would have wanted.

3

Bandits Used To Steal Wigs All The Time

These days, a secondhand wig is worth about as much as the cheap bald bastard who bought it. But in the days of dandies, having a fancy wig was both necessary and expensive. That meant wigs, which cost about as much as the average worker made in a year, were right alongside jewels and cash on every highwayman’s wish list.

Wigmaking was a process that took “six men six days working from sunup to sundown” and a complicated pre-UPS importing system. That’s a lot of money for something that looks like a Bond villain’s pet died on your head. In fact, getting your hands on a bigwig’s big wig was such a score that it made other types of robbery not worth the risk. Instead of slyly trying to cut a purse or pick a pocket, all a would-be bandit had to do was cut a hole or two in the back of a carriage, grab a few fistfuls of powdered perfection, and take off before their now-unsightly owners had any idea what hit them. Boom, that there’s a year’s worth of absinthe.

And with way less needless crotch contact than pickpocketing.

One story tells of a thief so bold as to simply replace his mark’s wig with his own cheap rug when he wasn’t looking. The mark, not feeling the difference, simply walked away, not realizing he had lost a fortune in doll hairs. Unfortunately, the bandits too fell victim to fashion. Wigs eventually stopped being stylish, thereby killing one the criminal underworld’s sillier sources of revenue.

2

17th-Century Dairy Farmers Used To Dye Their Cheese To Jack Up The Price

Food coloring is an important staple in today’s food, especially when it contains little to no actual food. That’s why we’d be more upset at finding out that Cheetos do in fact contain cheese. But back in the day, fake cheese was a huge scandal.

Before we needed an advanced chemistry degree to read food labels, a food’s color was often a sign of its quality. For cheese, a bright orange color signified that it came from quality breeds of cows that eat certain types of grass, which affected the taste greatly. However, in the 17th century, English farmers had figured out that they could get more bang for their cheese by separating the cream first and using it for other products. But it was the cream that had all that orangey goodness, and while their now-white cheese was of the same quality, there’s such a thing as branding. Paint those McDonald’s golden arches green, and it’s game over, baby. Game over.

So the cheese makers came up with a way to disguise their stupid white skim cheese as the full-fat good stuff. They started using natural dyes from a number of plants, including saffron, marigolds, and carrots, and the monocled masses were none the wiser. Later, they started using an extract called annatto, which is what Kraft now uses instead of artificial coloring, because you can even make fraud more lucrative by making it “vintage.” In a matter of decades, the ruse had become an industry standard, being used by cheesemongers all across the UK and the U.S. (except New England, as they prefer to dine on their own smugness). However, the practice of coloring cheese eventually backfired, as it became so common that orange cheese came to be regarded as low-quality instead, begetting an industry of “artificial cheese products” and giving previously exalted cows low self-esteem.

1

A Gang Of One-Legged Men Terrorized Australia

Everything in Australia is deadlier than it should be, and that extends to their old-fashioned gangs. Around the turn of the last century, the scourge roaming (or rather, hobbling around) the streets of Melbourne was a gang called Crutchie Push, and it consisted almost entirely of one-legged men.

They might not have been fast, but death was certain if you were caught by the Crutchie Push (“push” being so hilariously appropriate Australian slang for “gang”). It was a requirement to be one limb short of a set to join the gang, meaning most of them went into battle already on crutches — except for one berserker who still had both legs and ran into fights swinging a brick stuffed inside his sweater sleeve like a low-rent Mr. Fantastic. From there, everyone else (hopefully in choreographed synchronicity) balanced on one leg and used their crutches as weapons. Their signature move was to jab an opponent in the stomach with the tip of the crutch, then swing it around and beat him with it while he was doubled over. It was a surprisingly effective way to force compliance from shop owners and random people of whom they demanded money, food, and booze. Still more reliable than Social Security.

But for a bunch of people who were physically unable to run, the Crutchie Push were bizarrely hard to catch. You’d think you could just lead them to a staircase and be done with it, but when an officer became involved in a brawl with leader Valentine Keating, the one-legged man actually outran the officer before he could be arrested. That’s either Olympic-level crutch skills or a hilariously unfit cop. Eventually, the police became so frustrated with the gang that they assembled a task force made up by the ten most violent police officers in Australia. These “Terrible Ten” were sent out to track the Crutchie Push down and beat them with hoses, because there is apparently a very fine line between legitimate Australian history and the fever dream of a wealthy conservative business owner looking to build a casino atop an Army veterans clinic.

Keating was eventually imprisoned for beating a cop to death with his crutches, after which he … um, went on to a nice, quiet life as a barkeep until his death from tuberculosis. In all of his days tending bar, he never called the police to break up a fight. Why use them as a crutch if you can beat a man to death with your own?

You don’t have to steal to get this wig for your dog.

Also check out 8 Unsolved Crimes That Were Clearly Committed By Satan and 4 Terrifying Historical Crimes No One Can Explain.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Why Thomas Edison Was History’s Biggest Dick, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Follow our new Pictofacts Facebook page, and we’ll follow you everywhere.

Get intimate with our new podcast Cracked Gets Personal. Subscribe for funny, fascinating episodes like Rape, Pee Funnels and The Dolphin: Female Soldiers Speak Up and Inside The Secret Epidemic Of Cops Shooting Dogs, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/6-real-crime-waves-from-history-that-were-hilariously-insane/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/03/25/6-real-crime-waves-from-history-that-were-hilariously-insane/

[adambstingus]

6 Real Crime Waves From History That Were Hilariously Insane

Thanks to the news, it’s easy to feel that right now is the most dangerous time to be alive. However, the truth is that the world in general keeps getting safer. You see, not only was the past lousy with criminal terrors, but ye crime waves of olde were also bit more … eccentric. Case in point …

6

A Bootleggers’ Turf War Included Tank Battles And Bomber Planes In 1920s Illinois

Illinois was both a great and terrible place to be a beer fan during Prohibition. Sure, there was no real shortage of booze, but there was a decent chance you’d be shot while drinking it. But while we all know about the glamorous gangland violence of Al Capone’s Chicago, a wholly different criminal empire was tearing it up in the southern part of the state at that time: the hillbilly mafia. And when they got into fights, it wasn’t with blunderbusses and cussin’, but with homemade tanks and aerial bombs.

During Prohibition, the booze king of Southern Illinois was a bootlegging antihero named Charlie Birger. He was loved because he drove the KKK out of the area, omitting that he did so mostly because they kept trying to steal his liquor. Soon after, he joined forces with the Shelton brothers, who agreed to take a cut of the profits from Birger’s speakeasies in exchange for providing him with only the most primo hooch directly from Florida. And if Floridians use it to blot out their reality, you know that’s some powerful hooch.

The partnership quickly dissolved, however, and the two sides went to war. Like, actual war. The Sheltons’ retribution involved attacking Birger with an armored truck they’d made themselves which rolled through the streets equipped with “an assembly of weapons” — i.e. a freaking tank.

As if that wasn’t enough, the brothers then performed perhaps the first aerial bombing on U.S. soil ever when a plane they hired dropped a few bottles of nitroglycerin wrapped in dynamite over one of Birger’s hideouts. You might be okay with dozens of people dying on the street, and you might be okay with criminals blasting each other with Tommy Guns, but when your criminal element is better-armed than the Army Reserve, it’s time to move.

5

19th-Century Sexual Harassers Were So Bad That Women Would Stab Them

While it’s oddly comforting to know that street harassment is not a modern problem, we should all long for a return of the Edwardian era, and not only because their catcalls involved complimenting a lady’s ankles and expressing a strong desire to experience the sublime sight of her ravishing bosom. At least in our great-great-grandmothers’ day, harassment had to be done face-to-face, which gave them a lot more options regarding what to do with said faces.

By the end of the 19th century, it became commonplace to fend off unwanted advances by plucking one’s hatpin out of one’s fashionably enormous hats and stabbing the fucker. These were no puny little thumbtacks, either — they could be well over a foot long and do fatal damage.

San Francisco Sunday Call Cutting-edge fashion.

One woman even forced robbers from a moving train armed with nothing but her hatpin, while 100 factory workers all wielding theirs fought off police who had come to make one of them as a political prisoner. You simply don’t see that kind of sisterhood anymore. Two women in Chicago, upon the former’s discovery of her husband’s infidelity with the latter, “drew hatpins and circled each other, duel-style, until policemen broke it up.” Cops just don’t get called to bust up hatpin phalanxes anymore these days.

And while today there’d be badly kempt rioting in the streets if dudes got stabbed every time they “accidentally” brushed a woman’s derriere on the sidewalk, 19th-century society still had a strict “gentleman or GTFO” attitude. Reporters were only too happy to dub someone a harasser, or “masher.” Even asking “insulting questions” was all it took to find yourself cast as the mustache-twirling villain. It was such an accepted part of society that it became a trope in the fiction of the era, and newspapers printed tutorials on how to get the most out of your deadly accessory, mostly by encouraging the lady to go straight for the balls. The clothes might make the man, but a hatpin can reverse that process in a pinch.

Brooklyn Museum Repeat: One foot long. Right through the balls.

Unfortunately, errant hatpins had a nasty habit of stabbing people by accident, too. At least, that was the purported reasoning behind laws banning or regulating hatpins — which, coincidentally, women weren’t allowed to vote against. Those laws are presumably defunct now, so if any fashion industry moguls happen to be reading, please bring back ridiculously huge hats and their pins. Plenty of people need reminding of that particular fashion tip.

4

New York Had a Gang Of Child Criminals Run By A Kindly Matron

When Fredericka Mandelbaum emigrated from Prussia to New York City in the mid-19th century, all she wanted was for her husband and herself to eke out a modest living to feed their children. She didn’t count on becoming the country’s first female crime boss.

Starting out as a snazzy street peddler, Mandelbaum discovered there was a fortune to be made befriending the countless Dickensian pickpockets in the city and buying their stolen wares. “Marm” Mandelbaum then used her motherly charms to recruit these baby criminals as her own private ragamuffin army.

Valerian Gribayedoff To supplement her regular muffin army.

Mother Mandelbaum used her stolen-goods-for-candy-and-affection racket to move up in the criminal world, leasing a store as a front from where she ran her operations, which ranged from financing bank robberies to moving stolen livestock. As a devotee of continuing education, she used the back as a classroom to teach her young delinquents how to become better at crime, a sort of finishing school for repeat offenders. She particularly exalted her female students, whom she was proudly saving from “wasting their lives being housekeepers” — a weird glass ceiling to break. With her sharp eye for business and nurturing of young talent, Mandelbaum soon had enough resources to buy the most important thing for a criminal: friends in high places. She had everyone from the local cab drivers to the police to the city’s highest-powered defense attorneys in her pocket.

In the end, it took a private detective agency hired by the district attorney to bring her down, as no local cop dared to raise a hand against Mother. But before the law could close in, Mandelbaum simply packed up and retired to Canada, making everyone to feel bad for never visiting. She lived there quietly under an assumed identity until her supposed death in 1894. Rumor had it that her coffin, transported back to New York City, was filled with stones, and she had in truth returned in the flesh under the name Madame Fuchs, indicating how few of them she gave. In any case, at her funeral, many mourners reported having been pickpocketed. It’s what she would have wanted.

3

Bandits Used To Steal Wigs All The Time

These days, a secondhand wig is worth about as much as the cheap bald bastard who bought it. But in the days of dandies, having a fancy wig was both necessary and expensive. That meant wigs, which cost about as much as the average worker made in a year, were right alongside jewels and cash on every highwayman’s wish list.

Wigmaking was a process that took “six men six days working from sunup to sundown” and a complicated pre-UPS importing system. That’s a lot of money for something that looks like a Bond villain’s pet died on your head. In fact, getting your hands on a bigwig’s big wig was such a score that it made other types of robbery not worth the risk. Instead of slyly trying to cut a purse or pick a pocket, all a would-be bandit had to do was cut a hole or two in the back of a carriage, grab a few fistfuls of powdered perfection, and take off before their now-unsightly owners had any idea what hit them. Boom, that there’s a year’s worth of absinthe.

And with way less needless crotch contact than pickpocketing.

One story tells of a thief so bold as to simply replace his mark’s wig with his own cheap rug when he wasn’t looking. The mark, not feeling the difference, simply walked away, not realizing he had lost a fortune in doll hairs. Unfortunately, the bandits too fell victim to fashion. Wigs eventually stopped being stylish, thereby killing one the criminal underworld’s sillier sources of revenue.

2

17th-Century Dairy Farmers Used To Dye Their Cheese To Jack Up The Price

Food coloring is an important staple in today’s food, especially when it contains little to no actual food. That’s why we’d be more upset at finding out that Cheetos do in fact contain cheese. But back in the day, fake cheese was a huge scandal.

Before we needed an advanced chemistry degree to read food labels, a food’s color was often a sign of its quality. For cheese, a bright orange color signified that it came from quality breeds of cows that eat certain types of grass, which affected the taste greatly. However, in the 17th century, English farmers had figured out that they could get more bang for their cheese by separating the cream first and using it for other products. But it was the cream that had all that orangey goodness, and while their now-white cheese was of the same quality, there’s such a thing as branding. Paint those McDonald’s golden arches green, and it’s game over, baby. Game over.

So the cheese makers came up with a way to disguise their stupid white skim cheese as the full-fat good stuff. They started using natural dyes from a number of plants, including saffron, marigolds, and carrots, and the monocled masses were none the wiser. Later, they started using an extract called annatto, which is what Kraft now uses instead of artificial coloring, because you can even make fraud more lucrative by making it “vintage.” In a matter of decades, the ruse had become an industry standard, being used by cheesemongers all across the UK and the U.S. (except New England, as they prefer to dine on their own smugness). However, the practice of coloring cheese eventually backfired, as it became so common that orange cheese came to be regarded as low-quality instead, begetting an industry of “artificial cheese products” and giving previously exalted cows low self-esteem.

1

A Gang Of One-Legged Men Terrorized Australia

Everything in Australia is deadlier than it should be, and that extends to their old-fashioned gangs. Around the turn of the last century, the scourge roaming (or rather, hobbling around) the streets of Melbourne was a gang called Crutchie Push, and it consisted almost entirely of one-legged men.

They might not have been fast, but death was certain if you were caught by the Crutchie Push (“push” being so hilariously appropriate Australian slang for “gang”). It was a requirement to be one limb short of a set to join the gang, meaning most of them went into battle already on crutches — except for one berserker who still had both legs and ran into fights swinging a brick stuffed inside his sweater sleeve like a low-rent Mr. Fantastic. From there, everyone else (hopefully in choreographed synchronicity) balanced on one leg and used their crutches as weapons. Their signature move was to jab an opponent in the stomach with the tip of the crutch, then swing it around and beat him with it while he was doubled over. It was a surprisingly effective way to force compliance from shop owners and random people of whom they demanded money, food, and booze. Still more reliable than Social Security.

But for a bunch of people who were physically unable to run, the Crutchie Push were bizarrely hard to catch. You’d think you could just lead them to a staircase and be done with it, but when an officer became involved in a brawl with leader Valentine Keating, the one-legged man actually outran the officer before he could be arrested. That’s either Olympic-level crutch skills or a hilariously unfit cop. Eventually, the police became so frustrated with the gang that they assembled a task force made up by the ten most violent police officers in Australia. These “Terrible Ten” were sent out to track the Crutchie Push down and beat them with hoses, because there is apparently a very fine line between legitimate Australian history and the fever dream of a wealthy conservative business owner looking to build a casino atop an Army veterans clinic.

Keating was eventually imprisoned for beating a cop to death with his crutches, after which he … um, went on to a nice, quiet life as a barkeep until his death from tuberculosis. In all of his days tending bar, he never called the police to break up a fight. Why use them as a crutch if you can beat a man to death with your own?

You don’t have to steal to get this wig for your dog.

Also check out 8 Unsolved Crimes That Were Clearly Committed By Satan and 4 Terrifying Historical Crimes No One Can Explain.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Why Thomas Edison Was History’s Biggest Dick, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Follow our new Pictofacts Facebook page, and we’ll follow you everywhere.

Get intimate with our new podcast Cracked Gets Personal. Subscribe for funny, fascinating episodes like Rape, Pee Funnels and The Dolphin: Female Soldiers Speak Up and Inside The Secret Epidemic Of Cops Shooting Dogs, available wherever you get your podcasts.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/6-real-crime-waves-from-history-that-were-hilariously-insane/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/183703998612

[allofbeercom]

6 Real Crime Waves From History That Were Hilariously Insane

Thanks to the news, it’s easy to feel that right now is the most dangerous time to be alive. However, the truth is that the world in general keeps getting safer. You see, not only was the past lousy with criminal terrors, but ye crime waves of olde were also bit more … eccentric. Case in point …

6

A Bootleggers’ Turf War Included Tank Battles And Bomber Planes In 1920s Illinois

Illinois was both a great and terrible place to be a beer fan during Prohibition. Sure, there was no real shortage of booze, but there was a decent chance you’d be shot while drinking it. But while we all know about the glamorous gangland violence of Al Capone’s Chicago, a wholly different criminal empire was tearing it up in the southern part of the state at that time: the hillbilly mafia. And when they got into fights, it wasn’t with blunderbusses and cussin’, but with homemade tanks and aerial bombs.

During Prohibition, the booze king of Southern Illinois was a bootlegging antihero named Charlie Birger. He was loved because he drove the KKK out of the area, omitting that he did so mostly because they kept trying to steal his liquor. Soon after, he joined forces with the Shelton brothers, who agreed to take a cut of the profits from Birger’s speakeasies in exchange for providing him with only the most primo hooch directly from Florida. And if Floridians use it to blot out their reality, you know that’s some powerful hooch.

The partnership quickly dissolved, however, and the two sides went to war. Like, actual war. The Sheltons’ retribution involved attacking Birger with an armored truck they’d made themselves which rolled through the streets equipped with “an assembly of weapons” — i.e. a freaking tank.

As if that wasn’t enough, the brothers then performed perhaps the first aerial bombing on U.S. soil ever when a plane they hired dropped a few bottles of nitroglycerin wrapped in dynamite over one of Birger’s hideouts. You might be okay with dozens of people dying on the street, and you might be okay with criminals blasting each other with Tommy Guns, but when your criminal element is better-armed than the Army Reserve, it’s time to move.

5

19th-Century Sexual Harassers Were So Bad That Women Would Stab Them

While it’s oddly comforting to know that street harassment is not a modern problem, we should all long for a return of the Edwardian era, and not only because their catcalls involved complimenting a lady’s ankles and expressing a strong desire to experience the sublime sight of her ravishing bosom. At least in our great-great-grandmothers’ day, harassment had to be done face-to-face, which gave them a lot more options regarding what to do with said faces.

By the end of the 19th century, it became commonplace to fend off unwanted advances by plucking one’s hatpin out of one’s fashionably enormous hats and stabbing the fucker. These were no puny little thumbtacks, either — they could be well over a foot long and do fatal damage.

San Francisco Sunday Call Cutting-edge fashion.

One woman even forced robbers from a moving train armed with nothing but her hatpin, while 100 factory workers all wielding theirs fought off police who had come to make one of them as a political prisoner. You simply don’t see that kind of sisterhood anymore. Two women in Chicago, upon the former’s discovery of her husband’s infidelity with the latter, “drew hatpins and circled each other, duel-style, until policemen broke it up.” Cops just don’t get called to bust up hatpin phalanxes anymore these days.

And while today there’d be badly kempt rioting in the streets if dudes got stabbed every time they “accidentally” brushed a woman’s derriere on the sidewalk, 19th-century society still had a strict “gentleman or GTFO” attitude. Reporters were only too happy to dub someone a harasser, or “masher.” Even asking “insulting questions” was all it took to find yourself cast as the mustache-twirling villain. It was such an accepted part of society that it became a trope in the fiction of the era, and newspapers printed tutorials on how to get the most out of your deadly accessory, mostly by encouraging the lady to go straight for the balls. The clothes might make the man, but a hatpin can reverse that process in a pinch.

Brooklyn Museum Repeat: One foot long. Right through the balls.

Unfortunately, errant hatpins had a nasty habit of stabbing people by accident, too. At least, that was the purported reasoning behind laws banning or regulating hatpins — which, coincidentally, women weren’t allowed to vote against. Those laws are presumably defunct now, so if any fashion industry moguls happen to be reading, please bring back ridiculously huge hats and their pins. Plenty of people need reminding of that particular fashion tip.

4

New York Had a Gang Of Child Criminals Run By A Kindly Matron

When Fredericka Mandelbaum emigrated from Prussia to New York City in the mid-19th century, all she wanted was for her husband and herself to eke out a modest living to feed their children. She didn’t count on becoming the country’s first female crime boss.

Starting out as a snazzy street peddler, Mandelbaum discovered there was a fortune to be made befriending the countless Dickensian pickpockets in the city and buying their stolen wares. “Marm” Mandelbaum then used her motherly charms to recruit these baby criminals as her own private ragamuffin army.

Valerian Gribayedoff To supplement her regular muffin army.

Mother Mandelbaum used her stolen-goods-for-candy-and-affection racket to move up in the criminal world, leasing a store as a front from where she ran her operations, which ranged from financing bank robberies to moving stolen livestock. As a devotee of continuing education, she used the back as a classroom to teach her young delinquents how to become better at crime, a sort of finishing school for repeat offenders. She particularly exalted her female students, whom she was proudly saving from “wasting their lives being housekeepers” — a weird glass ceiling to break. With her sharp eye for business and nurturing of young talent, Mandelbaum soon had enough resources to buy the most important thing for a criminal: friends in high places. She had everyone from the local cab drivers to the police to the city’s highest-powered defense attorneys in her pocket.

In the end, it took a private detective agency hired by the district attorney to bring her down, as no local cop dared to raise a hand against Mother. But before the law could close in, Mandelbaum simply packed up and retired to Canada, making everyone to feel bad for never visiting. She lived there quietly under an assumed identity until her supposed death in 1894. Rumor had it that her coffin, transported back to New York City, was filled with stones, and she had in truth returned in the flesh under the name Madame Fuchs, indicating how few of them she gave. In any case, at her funeral, many mourners reported having been pickpocketed. It’s what she would have wanted.

3

Bandits Used To Steal Wigs All The Time

These days, a secondhand wig is worth about as much as the cheap bald bastard who bought it. But in the days of dandies, having a fancy wig was both necessary and expensive. That meant wigs, which cost about as much as the average worker made in a year, were right alongside jewels and cash on every highwayman’s wish list.

Wigmaking was a process that took “six men six days working from sunup to sundown” and a complicated pre-UPS importing system. That’s a lot of money for something that looks like a Bond villain’s pet died on your head. In fact, getting your hands on a bigwig’s big wig was such a score that it made other types of robbery not worth the risk. Instead of slyly trying to cut a purse or pick a pocket, all a would-be bandit had to do was cut a hole or two in the back of a carriage, grab a few fistfuls of powdered perfection, and take off before their now-unsightly owners had any idea what hit them. Boom, that there’s a year’s worth of absinthe.

And with way less needless crotch contact than pickpocketing.

One story tells of a thief so bold as to simply replace his mark’s wig with his own cheap rug when he wasn’t looking. The mark, not feeling the difference, simply walked away, not realizing he had lost a fortune in doll hairs. Unfortunately, the bandits too fell victim to fashion. Wigs eventually stopped being stylish, thereby killing one the criminal underworld’s sillier sources of revenue.

2

17th-Century Dairy Farmers Used To Dye Their Cheese To Jack Up The Price

Food coloring is an important staple in today’s food, especially when it contains little to no actual food. That’s why we’d be more upset at finding out that Cheetos do in fact contain cheese. But back in the day, fake cheese was a huge scandal.

Before we needed an advanced chemistry degree to read food labels, a food’s color was often a sign of its quality. For cheese, a bright orange color signified that it came from quality breeds of cows that eat certain types of grass, which affected the taste greatly. However, in the 17th century, English farmers had figured out that they could get more bang for their cheese by separating the cream first and using it for other products. But it was the cream that had all that orangey goodness, and while their now-white cheese was of the same quality, there’s such a thing as branding. Paint those McDonald’s golden arches green, and it’s game over, baby. Game over.

So the cheese makers came up with a way to disguise their stupid white skim cheese as the full-fat good stuff. They started using natural dyes from a number of plants, including saffron, marigolds, and carrots, and the monocled masses were none the wiser. Later, they started using an extract called annatto, which is what Kraft now uses instead of artificial coloring, because you can even make fraud more lucrative by making it “vintage.” In a matter of decades, the ruse had become an industry standard, being used by cheesemongers all across the UK and the U.S. (except New England, as they prefer to dine on their own smugness). However, the practice of coloring cheese eventually backfired, as it became so common that orange cheese came to be regarded as low-quality instead, begetting an industry of “artificial cheese products” and giving previously exalted cows low self-esteem.

1

A Gang Of One-Legged Men Terrorized Australia

Everything in Australia is deadlier than it should be, and that extends to their old-fashioned gangs. Around the turn of the last century, the scourge roaming (or rather, hobbling around) the streets of Melbourne was a gang called Crutchie Push, and it consisted almost entirely of one-legged men.

They might not have been fast, but death was certain if you were caught by the Crutchie Push (“push” being so hilariously appropriate Australian slang for “gang”). It was a requirement to be one limb short of a set to join the gang, meaning most of them went into battle already on crutches — except for one berserker who still had both legs and ran into fights swinging a brick stuffed inside his sweater sleeve like a low-rent Mr. Fantastic. From there, everyone else (hopefully in choreographed synchronicity) balanced on one leg and used their crutches as weapons. Their signature move was to jab an opponent in the stomach with the tip of the crutch, then swing it around and beat him with it while he was doubled over. It was a surprisingly effective way to force compliance from shop owners and random people of whom they demanded money, food, and booze. Still more reliable than Social Security.

But for a bunch of people who were physically unable to run, the Crutchie Push were bizarrely hard to catch. You’d think you could just lead them to a staircase and be done with it, but when an officer became involved in a brawl with leader Valentine Keating, the one-legged man actually outran the officer before he could be arrested. That’s either Olympic-level crutch skills or a hilariously unfit cop. Eventually, the police became so frustrated with the gang that they assembled a task force made up by the ten most violent police officers in Australia. These “Terrible Ten” were sent out to track the Crutchie Push down and beat them with hoses, because there is apparently a very fine line between legitimate Australian history and the fever dream of a wealthy conservative business owner looking to build a casino atop an Army veterans clinic.

Keating was eventually imprisoned for beating a cop to death with his crutches, after which he … um, went on to a nice, quiet life as a barkeep until his death from tuberculosis. In all of his days tending bar, he never called the police to break up a fight. Why use them as a crutch if you can beat a man to death with your own?

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from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/6-real-crime-waves-from-history-that-were-hilariously-insane/