In the 1920s, young women were hired to paint watch dials with radium-based paint and instructed to point their brushes with their lips. The Radium Girls and their legal fight established precedents that still govern industrial harm cases today.
Einstein never defined insanity. Churchill never said to keep going through hell. Twain never commented on San Francisco winters. The history of misattributed quotes is a history of information laundering.
In 1953, the CIA and MI6 overthrew Iran’s democratically elected government to protect an oil company. The consequences reshaped the Middle East and are still playing out today.
In 1894, France convicted an innocent man of treason in four minutes. It then spent twelve years forging evidence, suppressing the truth, and acquitting the actual spy. The Dreyfus Affair remains a case study in institutional self-preservation.
On January 15, 1919, a tank holding 2.3 million gallons of industrial molasses collapsed in Boston’s North End, killing 21 people. The company blamed anarchists. The Great Molasses Flood trial proved otherwise.
