Urban Legends

Urban Legends exist in every country. I thought it might be interesting to see a few American ones and I would like to start with a legend about a family who had a nice apartment in Chicago, but the bedroom floor had a bolt sticking up and the kids were told never to touch it, but were never given a reason. The bedroom was over another apartment. One night the kids snuck into the bedroom and tapped on the bolt, but nothing happened. The next night they did it again, but harder and a night later they hit it so hard it fell through the floor and they could hear a crash. The kids ran into their bedroom and went to sleep. A few minutes later a neighbor knocked on the door. One of the kids ran to it and opened it to find the neighbor cut up and covered with blood. He informed the kids he was standing under his glass chandelier with the parents of the children when the chandelier came crashing down killing the parents and wounding the neighbor.

I think everyone knows the melody Taps. It is used in the military all the time. There is an urban legend to how taps came about. It is said during the American Civil War a certain Captain in the northern army was near Harrison’s Landing in Virginia and the Confederate Army was near them. The captain was said to hear a moaning soldier during the night and decided to go out and help him even though he didn’t know if the soldier was Union or Confederate. He reached the soldier by crawling through gunfire and managed to drag him back to the Union camp. The soldier was a Confederate and was dead. When the captain lit a lamp he was horrified to see the soldier was his son. The captain asked his superiors if he could have a military band for the funeral, but was turned down since the soldier was a Confederate, but out of respect for the father he was granted one musician. He chose a bugler and gave him a series of notes to play which he found on a piece of paper in his son’s pocked. It turned out to be Taps and is now played at every military funeral.

There is an urban legend which states a blind girl was able to see the flash from the first atomic bomb test. After we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima many urban legends about the bomb came into being. The bomb’s existence had been secret up to the point of it being dropped on Japan and it was a mystery to the general public.

There is an urban legend which states Coke became a carbonated drink by accident. It is said in 1886 Dr. John Pemberton was sending runners with his syrup to Willis Venable’s soda fountain three blocks away. The idea was to conduct a taste test with the customers of the soda fountain. The legend states the soda fountain accidently served Coke using carbonated soda. The truth is this was not an accident, but done on purpose.

There is a legend about Thurgood Marshall the first black member of the Supreme Court. He owned a beautiful home in a Washington suburb and decided to mow the lawn himself. As he was mowing a car pulled up and a woman rolled down the window and asked him what he would charge to mow her lawn. He didn’t answer right away so the impatient woman asked what does the lady of this house pay you? He said she didn’t pay him anything she just lets him sleep with her.

There are a lot of urban legends about the Titanic. It was said that when the Titanic was sinking the order rang out to save the women and children first. It was felt anyone who would go against this rule was worse than a criminal and would be branded as a coward for life. A man named William T. Sloper of New Britain Connecticut was identified as a man who put on women’s clothing so he could get into a lifeboat. When the man was on the rescue ship which eventually docked he was taken away by his family and hidden away in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. The truth is the lifeboat, number 7, was sitting practically empty because no more women would board, so it was free for any man who wanted to be rescued. There was no disguise and no shame attached when Sloper boarded it. It was said the story about how he disguised himself as a woman came out, because he had refused to talk to reporters outside the hotel and they wanted to get even.

There is a joke which keeps coming up and has become an urban legend in a way, so here it is:
A Chicago man dies and goes to hell. The devil tells him it gets uncomfortable down here and he says it’s okay, I’m from Chicago. The devil then goes to the thermostat and turns it up to 100 and the humidity up to 80. He visits the man and asks him how he is doing. He says fine it’s like Chicago in June. The devil goes back to the thermostat and turns it up to 150 degrees and the humidity to 90. When he goes back to the man, he is sweating a little, but seems fine. The devil asks him how he is and he says fine it is like Chicago in July. Angrily the devil goes to the thermostat and turn up the temperature to 200 and the humidity up to 100 and revisits the man who is now sweating a lot, but still looks fine. The devil asks him how he is doing and the man says fine it is just like Chicago in August. By now the devil is disgusted and turns down the temperature to minus 150 degrees and hell is now covered with ice and has become a frozen wasteland. He goes back to visit the man who is now jumping up and down and yelling “THE CUBS MUST HAVE WON THE WORLD SERIES!” For those who don’t understand the joke, it has been said that the Chicago baseball team the Chicago Cubs could only win the World Series of baseball when hell freezes over.

There is an urban legend which states gangs in the western part of the United States are marking the tires of cars which are parked outside gun stores so they know who has the guns so they can rob them. The legend states the reason for these marks is the gangs believe if they break into these cars they are likely to find guns and ammunitions in the vehicles. No news articles have supported this.

There is an urban legend which states Cabbage Patch dolls were made to intentionally look like survivors of a nuclear holocaust. It was said the government wanted people to become familiar with the look of the dolls, because this is what nuclear war survivors would look like. There are other versions of this story which state the dolls were the idea of the CIA.