JULY 22 –1999 Wayne McLauren, Marlboro Man, dies of lung cancer at age 52; 2003 Jessica Lynch gets hero’s welcome; 1991 Jeffrey Dahmer is caught; 1994 OJ Simpson pleads not guilty; 2010 X-Men #1 becomes biggest selling comic book ever
JULY 22
1779 – Battle of Minisink,
…in Revolution news. One of the complaints sent to the English crown was “…[He] has endeavored to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes, and Conditions.” And destroy indeed the schools and barns there on the Delaware led by Mohawk warrior and chief Joseph Brant. The patriots rounded up and attempted an ambush on the British, the Loyalists and the Iroquois. However the Patriots were unorganized, sloppy and unprepared and the British gained a decisive victory in the battle.
Later on, 3000 Continentals were sent in to destroy every single Iroquois village in upstate new York. Joseph Brant was considered one of the better British military heroes, but after Minisink he would see his defeat later in August at the Battle of Newtown.
1999 — Wayne McLaren, First Marlboro Man dies of lung cancer at age 52.
Meanwhile, that Joe Camel is still alive. Who would’ve seen that coming. Philip Morris’s Marlboro cigarette, introduced in 1924, had a filter on it and was marketed towards women for that reason. But by the 1950s, the marketing changed to include men.
Leo Burnett would be the marketing genius behind started looking for the ultimate fit for the new Marlboro Man; from cowboys to construction workers, soldiers, sailors, and body builders, because you know, nothing puts the fun in funeral like a macho dude holding up 500 pounds weights puffing on a filtered Marlboro Red. Finally the cowboy won the contest, and actor Paul Birch would be the first to appear in Marlboro TV and magazine ads.
Other actors would appear, but the first actual Cowboy to be the Marlboro Man was Darrell Winfield, who would live to the ripe old age of 85, followed by Brad Johnson, who’s still alive as far as I know, and then more cowboys came into play. But five of them – Dick Hammer, no I didn’t make up that name but he might’ve, Eric Lawson, Jeromme Edwards, and Tobin Jackson, and on this day in 1999, the same year that the Marlboro Man stopped advertising,
Wayne McLaren died of smoke-related diseases. Meanwhile, Joe Camel, who looks like a cartoon character, appeared in Camel’s 75th anniversary in 1991, and Old Joe and his rider R.J. Reynolds got in trouble since it came out that 38% of cigarettes at the time were sold to underage youngsters.
Camel actually ran a campaign called Let’s Clear the Air that it marketed to adults and not kids. Joe Camel would ride off into the sand dunes in 1997 after Reynolds failed to prove he wasn’t marketing to minors, when his own R&D department had files on him marketing to kids under the age of 18 since 1974.
Then in 1991 on the TV show Seinfeld, Kramer sued Philip Morris because his mug showed up on a Billboard. Hilarious.
1934 – Dillinger gunned down.
…Jon Dillinger would make Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd and Boonie and Clyde look like Little Red Riding Hood. Public Enemy #1. Dillinger robed at least a dozen banks and led police and federal agents on a yearlong chase across the Midwest before being gunned down outside a Chicago movie theater in 1934. He even robbed a police station once. A police station! Walked right in with his henchman guns loaded and stole tear gas and rifles shotguns from the police.
He not only busted out of jail repeatedly, he came back to bust his friends out. One time he even busted out of jail using a wooden gun, carved just perfectly to look like a regular gun. He burnt his fingerprints off his fingers with acid and got a reconstructive facelift to hide his identity. The federal government spent more money ctrying to catch Dillinger than the amount of money he actually stole. When Dillinger died, several molded plaster cases were taken of his face. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover proudly displayed one in his office for the rest of his career.
2003 – Jessica Lynch gets a hero’s welcome.
…On March 23, 2003 during the Iraq war at the Battle of Nasiriyah her convoy was ambushed and she was severely wounded and captured. On April 1, 2003 she was famously rescued by US Special Ops and as a result was the first ever rescue of an American POW that was female. The media attention praised her to be a hero, and how she fought her captors and that she was mistreated by Iraqi captors…but she testified in front of Congress that wasn’t what happened and was outspokenly critical of these heroic stories. She was knocked unconscious in the ambush, her gun jammed so she couldn’t have fought back if she was conscious, and her captors treated her just fine, in fact. All that exaggeration was simply propaganda coming from the Pentagon, she said.
These days, Jessica is a school teacher.
1991 – Jeffrey Dahmer is caught.
…And when he was the police found a 57-gallon drum full of bodies decomposing in chemicals, plus a couple human heads in the fridge, a couple human skulls on his computer, and pictures of body parts all over his house. I’d continue, but I was hoping to eat lunch after this and don’t want to lose my appetite.
So let’s move on.
1994 – OJ Simpson pleaded
…Absolutely 100% not guilty of murder.
Aretha Franklin is arrested for disorderly conduct after creating a disturbance in a Detroit parking lot. After posting 50-dollars bail, she ran down a road sign while leaving the police station.
2010 — X-Men #1 becomes the best selling comic of all time.
Written by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee, the first issue in X-men’s Volume 2, released in 1991, sold over 8 million copies as of 2010. For this issue Marvel comics took several covers and made them part of a larger image, and the release in August 1991 was so uncanny one comic book retailer reported to have sold 12 cases, or 400 copies, to one customer.
Marvel accepted the award on this day in 2010 from the Guinness Book of World Records in San Diego at ComicCon.