196
S C A T T E R B R A I N E D
Current Level of Scariness:
moderate.
Most of the chief play-
ers from the cartel are in jail, but a series of warring “baby
cartels” have sprung up in its place.
How to Say “Your little friend, he sleeps with the fishes”:
“Tu amigo pequeño, él duerme con los peces.”
Media Saturation Level:
lowish. Pablo Escobar and his Me-
dellín cartel got way more press. Really, Orejuela and Lon-
doño should be just as famous as Escobar. Speaking of people
who ought to be more famous . . .
03
Righting History’s Wrongs:
People Who Should Be More Famous
Sure, there’s a bad rock band named after him, but Serbian-
American Nikola Tesla doesn’t get nearly the credit he de-
serves. Tesla’s discoveries made alternating current—the
form of electricity much more reliable than direct current—
possible, and both Th
omas Edison and George Westinghouse
repeatedly bought,
or stole, Tesla’s work. Edison and West-
inghouse ended up with fortunes and Nobel Prizes, while
Tesla ended up toiling in obscurity. In his later years, he
started seeking messages from outer space and falling in
quasi-romantic love with pigeons (really—see p. 119), but
who can blame him? He was always
denied his rightful place
in history—although he is now featured on the 100 Serbian
dinars bill. Last we checked, neither Edison nor Westing-
house had made it onto anybody’s money.
✖ ✖ ✖
With a name like Philo T. Farnsworth and an invention like
television, it’s amazing he’s not more famous. Th
e son of a
197
sharecropper, Farnsworth
(1906–1971) was always fas-
cinated by technology. He was
only 14 when he conceived the
basic
idea for a television, and
by the time he was 21, his con-
traption had transmitted its
fi rst image (a single straight
line—like Pong, except more
boring). Sadly, Farnsworth’s
unwavering beam of light,
which presaged everything
from
Th
e OC
to Tivo, was the
last great accomplishment of
his life. He grew depressed
and
spent the last decades of
his life in a drunken stupor. If
only Philo had realized the power of his own invention: Who
needs booze to treat depression when there’s a
Laguna Beach
marathon on MTV?
✖ ✖ ✖
It’s a crying shame when the discoverer of history’s greatest
miracle drug isn’t even the world’s most famous Felix. (Th
at
would, of course, be Th
e Cat.) Felix Hoff mann (1868–1946)
was a shy chemist who never married, had no children, and
was never well known. But he discovered the fi rst stable form
of acetylsalicylic acid, now known as aspirin. Hoff mann’s fi rst
test subject
was his arthritic father, who pronounced the medi-
cation a success. It became the fi rst reliable, non-narcotic pain
medication—and, as a bonus, it can slow the progress of heart
disease. Th
is was great for people everywhere—except opium
manufacturers, who, pushed out of the aches-and-pains racket,
Bringing
Up Baby
In 1946, former
Vogue
editor
Marion Donovan invented the
fi rst reusable, leakproof plas-
tic diaper. Like an awesome
mix between Martha Stewart
and MacGyver,
Donovan built
the prototype with nothing but
her shower curtain and a sew-
ing machine. Donovan then
went on to invent the fi rst dis-
posable diaper in 1951. Sure,
diapers now account for near-
ly 1 percent of landfi ll waste,
but that’s not Marion’s fault.
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