People have loved attention for as long as attention has existed. Publicity stunts exist for this very reason, and when they work well, they can create a buzz and entertain thousands of people. But when they go wrong, everything can go wrong.
10. Accident in Krash
What did it take for someone to bring a crowd of 40,000 people into the Texas wilderness in 1896? William George Crush was the man who answered that question with a historic event that became known as the Crush Crash.
Crush, Texas became one of the biggest cities in Texas for one day only because there was only one day, a place where a man named Crush planned to stage an amazing spectacle. He made two locomotives racing towards each other along the same path, a sort of primitive demolition derby.
The stunt was intended to encourage train travel and ticket sales. 40,000 spectators camped out near the crash site, drinking lemonade and playing games.
Each train had six covered cars and was travelling at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour. The force of the collision would have been between 1 to 2 million pounds sterling . The boilers of every locomotive exploded, sending debris flying into the crowd. Three people were killed and a dozen or so others were seriously injured. Crush was fired, but was rehired the next day because, despite the chaos, he was making money for the company.
9. Cleveland United Way Balloon Crash
One of the best ways to get attention these days is to do something bigger than anyone else. Set a world record, and you'll probably be trending on social media for a day. They didn't have social media in 1986, but the idea was the same: If you wanted to release 1.5 million helium balloons in downtown Cleveland, you could get some press.
The United Way of Cleveland did just that to draw attention to its annual fundraiser. A couple thousand people showed up, and there were plenty of photos of the colorful mass of balloons taking off from downtown. But then science came in. Balloons can't stay afloat forever, and in the end 1.5 million balloons had to return to earth.
A cold front knocked the balloons back to earth, and many the cars crashed , trying to avoid them. The runway at Burke Lakefront Airport was closed because of the balloons. A farmer's horses were badly injured when they panicked, and he sued a charity. But most seriously, two men on Lake Erie were in an accident, and their boat capsized The Coast Guard had trouble getting through all the balloons on the water, and their rescue attempt was slowed. Two boaters were killed.
8. Greenpeace on the Nazca Lines
No stranger to controversial tactics, Greenpeace has been working since 1971 to affect change in the world, whether it’s protesting nuclear bomb testing, deforestation, overfishing, and more. While their goals are for the good of the environment, their members have been known to be overzealous in the past and have been criticized for, among other things, recklessness. And when they decided to visit Peru’s famous Nazca Lines during a climate change summit as a publicity stunt, they ended up damaging a 1,500-year-old UNESCO World Heritage site.
The hummingbird-shaped lines were made by removing rocks and leaving a different colored soil, and the dry climate has preserved them for centuries. Access to the site is strictly regulated, and you need special shoes to even walk near them, so as not to disturb the soil. Greenpeace did not do this. Instead, they installed banners in the lines that read "Time for a Change."
The Peruvian government feared the lines were irreparably damaged, and Greenpeace claimed they had followed all protocols to protect the site until were published drone footage , showing that they had done nothing to protect him. Once they were exposed, they apologized . Several years later, after an attempt to find the culprits, at least one activist was sentenced to probation and a fine of $200,000 .
7. Harold Lloyd's Explosive Photoshoot
History has shown that dangerous stunts can turn deadly if safety precautions are not taken. Just look at the tragic accident of Brandon Lee on the set of The Crow. A few years earlier, silent film star Harold Lloyd was seriously injured in a publicity stunt gone wrong.
Before he became an icon of silent cinema, he was struggling to get his career off the ground. In 1919, he was taking some publicity photos. At the studio, they had a box of props that included fake bombs. What no one realized was that some of these bombs were not unexploded ordnance , but props that had been discarded from an earlier film as too dangerous. They were, in fact, real bombs that someone had mixed up.
Lloyd was given one of the bombs for his photographs. He lit it with his own cigarette and then held it up to take the pictures. During the explosion he got ripped off half of the right hand .
6. Stick with the Wii
When Nintendo entered the console wars with the Wii, it was a big deal for some. In fact, it was so big that KDND radio in California held a contest to give away a brand new Wii, which resulted in someone getting killed.
The Hold Your Wee for a Wii contest was pretty simple. The winner would be the one who could drink the most water without going to the bathroom. A nurse called to alert the station that the contest was dangerous , but it was ignored.
Jennifer Strange drank more than two gallons of water in three hours to try to beat the system. She went home crying and complaining of a headache. She later died of water poisoning. Two years later, a jury found the station liable for the payout. 16.5 million dollars .
On air, DJs joked about someone dying from drinking too much water, with one saying it was impossible. Ten staff members were fired.
5. Juliet Prowse and the Leopard
Dancer Juliet Prowse was famous for her dance moves and her feet. But the most notable aspect of her fame was probably the fact that she was bitten twice on completely different occasions by the same jungle cat.
Prowse rehearsed the show "Circus of the Stars" when the leopard bit her on the neck. The incident sounded worse than it actually was, and she was apparently fine after the initial attack. Overall five seams ! But this was the first attack.
Because near-death experiences are enjoyable, The Tonight Show invited Prowse for a publicity stunt. They would have her recreate the incident with the same leopard. And the same thing happened again, only this time the cat bit off her ear, and the wound required a surgeon to sew it up him back .
4. The Late Late Breakfast Show
Reality game shows often push contestants to the limit. Survivor asks you to live in a remote location for a month. Fear Factor contestants performed death-defying stunts. But it all has to be supervised by professionals. The danger is never real. Except when it is. In the early to mid-1980s, British viewers saw show "Late Late Breakfast", in which the audience had to try recreate hollywood stunts without any preparation.
Michael Lush, an unemployed construction worker, was required to perform a stunt in which he escaped from the box , suspended 100 feet in the air, and bungee jumped from it. Instead, Lush fell to the ground and died from his injuries in front of the rest of the audience. The bungee was not properly secured. No one doing the stunts was watching the procedure. The show was cancelled after just a few days.
3. 10 Cent Beer Night in Cleveland
If you want to get a lot of attention, give people something they like at a very low price. If you want it to be ugly, make it alcohol. That's what happened when the Cleveland Indians tried 10 Cent Beer Night in 1974.
In the ninth inning, Cleveland was recovering from a 5-3 lead against the Texas Rangers. But by then, a lot of 10-cent beers had been sold, and the fans were running out of patience. Even though Cleveland had two runners on base and a chance to win, drunken quibbles got the better of it. Right fielder Jeff Burrows was knocked down when drunken fans tried to steal his hat. Texas manager Billy Martin brought the rest of his team, armed with bats, onto the field in his defense.
Fans began flooding the pitch. Mike Hargrove received on the head beer bottle . Others were hit with chairs. A riot had begun. 60,000 cups of beer were sold to 25,000 fans, and the 50 security guards on site had no way to maintain order. Twelve fans were arrested, and the Indians lost the forfeit.
2. Burning of the Temple of Artemis
In 356 BC, a man named Herostratus set fire to the wooden beams of the temple. Artemis Nearly 400 feet long, 150 feet wide, with 40-foot columns and built almost entirely of marble, it would have been quite a sight today, let alone more than 2,000 years ago.
Herostratus set fire to the wooden roof beams for no other reason than to be famous as the man who had burned them. So who was Herostratus? We don't know. He may have been a peasant, or perhaps a slave. But his punishment for the deed was not simply death, but exile from the mind, a punishment called condemnation of memory. After that, his name could not even be pronounced.
Clearly his name has survived, but who he was has been lost, so the fame he sought, his only goal for the trick, continues to elude him centuries later.
1. Disco Night of Demolition
Any time you gather an arena of sports fans together and ask them to destroy things, you create chaos. Which brings us back to nights when disco died , July 12, 1979. Chicago White Sox fans were encouraged to bring disco records into the park with the express purpose of destroying them. This quickly led to madness and rioting.
Disco, as you know, was popular in the 70s, but it wasn't for everyone. Just like in the 90s, when rap started to gain popularity, there were a lot of rock fans who felt that this new music was somehow encroaching on their favorite music, that it wasn't music at all, and that it needed to be stopped. Heavy metal, dubstep, and even rock 'n' roll itself all faced similar criticism at some point.
The event was organized by the popular DJ , who was fired from a station when it switched to disco. Any fan who brought in a disco record would get 98 cents, and the record would be blown up in the middle of a doubleheader. The entire stadium was sold out, about 48,000 tickets. But there were still 20,000 people outside.
Fans threw records on the field during the game. The destruction happened as planned, but it created a crater in the center of the field. Then everything went to hell. People threw cherry bombs and beer. They rushed onto the field en masse, thousands of them. They jumped 40 feet from the stands; they set fire to banners. About 7,000 of them came onto the field, and those outside rushed toward the goal.
Riot police finally cleared the field, but by then the Sox had been forced to forfeit the game, and the promotion went down in history as one of the biggest misfires of all time.
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