Did ‘MAD’ Magazine get in trouble with the Treasury Department over a fake bill printed in an issue?

Now that we are firmly ensconced into June, I have to wonder something.

Why don’t we have some silly rodent somewhere telling us how summer is going to be, weather-wise? I mean, we get old Punxsutawney Phil telling us all about how much winter we have left in February, so where’s the rodent predicting how summer is going to be?

I can see it now … a skunk pops out of his burrow (or wherever skunks live) and if he sprays a tree, we get six more weeks of spring. Or something like that. (And yes, I know skunks aren’t rodents.)

Messy, perhaps, but it would serve the purpose, right? Maybe I’d better take this idea back to the drawing board for some more work.

Meanwhile, enjoy some trivia … I got it just for you.

Did you know …

… a total of 292 ways exist to change a one-dollar bill? If you count a one-dollar coin as being change for a dollar bill, it makes the total 293 ways. (I’d tell you what they all are, but if I did, what would happen to the quest for self-gained knowledge? Go look it up for yourself.)

… more people live in the city of Shanghai, China, than in all of the continent of Australia? Australia’s latest reported population was 25.69 million people; Shanghai boasts 26.32 million. (But Australians have a lot more room to spread out.)

… medieval doctors had some pretty strange habits? In the 1500s, for instance, European doctors had to calculate the position of the Moon before conducting surgery. (And if the Moon was in the wrong place, brother, your hospital bill would be enormous!)

… elephants really don’t like peanuts? Elephants in the wild don’t even know what a peanut is, and the little legumes are not part of a captive elephant’s regular diet. The only reason there’s a connection between peanuts and elephants at all is because 19th Century circuses and zoos allowed patrons to feed the animals, and peanuts were thought to be a cheap way to do so. (Another childhood belief shot to heck.)

… NASCAR does not require its drivers to have drivers’ licenses? (The way I’ve seen some of those drivers do their thing on the race track, I can believe it.)

… bears have preferences when it comes to beer? In 2004, a black bear raided a Washington state camp site and broke into a beer cooler. The bear consumed 36 cans of Rainier Beer, but did not touch a single can of Busch Beer. (I’m not at all sure what to make of that.)

… Britain’s World War II prime minister had a great quote about animals? Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) once said: “Cats look down on you, dogs look up to you, but pigs treat you like an equal.” (Hey, wait a minute here!)

… a popular satire magazine got in trouble with the U.S. Treasury? In its December 1967 issue, MAD magazine published a picture of a fake $3 bill (which “most of your friends are as phony as”) with its gap-toothed mascot, Alfred E. Neuman, in the spot where a presidential portrait would be. Nobody thought anything odd about it, as it was a joke – except for one thing. That year, the first machines which would take in dollar bills and give back change were being installed in Las Vegas, and some unscrupulous souls discovered that if one cut out and fed the fake bill into the machine, one would get a dollar’s worth of change. Apparently it was the right size and weight to fool the change machine, and that prompted a visit to the office of publisher William Gaines (1922-1992) by agents of the Treasury Department. The magazine staff never did learn its lesson; during the 1970s MAD turned out a parody of MonopolyTM that had a $1,329,063 bill, and later still made another $3 bill which it called “twe dollars.”

… you may be a bibliophage? If you are, you’re in good company, because I’m one too. A bibliophage is a fancy term for a bookworm, someone who loves to read. (Most writers, in fact, are bibliophages. Not that they’d admit it in public, mind you.)

… a famous author once ran for Mayor of New York? In 1969, author Norman Mailer (1923-2007) ran for mayor with a platform that called for the city’s five boroughs – Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn – to secede from the state of New York and form a 51st state. Mailer’s running mate was columnist Jimmy Breslin (1928-2017). New York voters must not have thought much of the idea; Mailer only secured 5% of the primary vote. (Well, it was a thought, anyway.)

… you may know a quakebuttock? If you do, you know someone who is a coward. Quakebuttock was a word used in the 17th Century to signify such a person. (The visuals alone are priceless.)

… the University of Minnesota is older than the state of Minnesota? The university was founded in 1851, while Minnesota didn’t become a state until 1858.

… an off-camera accident changed the course of an episode of The Twilight Zone? The episode “The Silence,” made in 1961, features Franchot Tone (1905-1968) as a member of a club who bets another member, a loudmouth played by Liam Sullivan (1923-1998), half a million dollars that he cannot remain silent for one year. During the filming, Tone was involved in an accident that scraped up half of his face. The producers of the show used that to their advantage, filming Tone standing partially behind open doors and speaking out of one side of his mouth, accentuating the already-nasty character he was playing.

… at one time, doctors thought the color of a room would help prevent disease? During one of the smallpox epidemics of the 1800s, doctors recommended painting rooms red in order to prevent smallpox. (Kind of like painting a room yellow to help with yellow fever, I would suppose.)

Now … you know!

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