Originally posted Dec. 30, 2009:

Today’s From the Wikipedia comes upon request by multiple readers, but does not aim to make light of the numerous deaths — at least six, according to the Wikipedia — that occurred at the theme park in question.

It does very much aim to make light of the horrible, horrible planning that led to said deaths, and I sincerely apologize if anyone out there lost a loved one due to the carelessness and downright stupidity involved in the creation of these rides. Death due to any circumstance — theme park mishap, bear attack, leprosy, whatever — is tragic and not funny, and please do not take this post to imply otherwise.

From the Wikipedia: Action Park.

Action Park was a water park and motor-themed park that opened in Vernon Township, New Jersey in 1978 and stayed open, against all odds, for 18 years. I’ll quote the Wikipedia directly:

Many of Action Park’s attractions were unique. They gave patrons more control over their experience than they would have at most other amusement parks’ rides, but for the same reason were considerably riskier.

In other words, unlike most theme parks, Action Park made no attempt to idiot-proof its rides. Then, as if to tempt fate, they put it right in the middle of New Jersey.

(That’s not to say, of course, that everyone in New Jersey is an idiot. Plenty of the most brilliant readers of this very blog are from Jersey. It’s just that every place in the world has idiots there, and the suburban New York variety of idiot is a particularly brazen and callous idiot, like the cast of Jersey Shore or 30 percent of the drivers on the Turnpike — precisely the type of idiots that strike me as likely to injure themselves if trusted with their own safety on theme-park rides.)

Oh, and they served beer there. Brilliant.

The Action Park Wikipedia page is amazing. Absolutely, blisteringly amazing. It basically goes into detail about how every single ride contained serious design flaws that led to injuries. It’s far too long to even summarize here.

The best part is that I remember most of them. I used to go with my family about once a summer. On my block, we called it “Traction Park,” though other nicknames listed on the Wikipedia include “Class Action Park” and “Accident Park.”

We called it Traction Park and we went anyway, because no matter how dangerous it was, Action Park was still really, really fun.

The Wikipedia mentions that the Go-Karts were regulated by governor devices which limited their speed to 20 miles per hour, but that park employees knew how to disable the governors so they could race the Go-Karts at up to 50 miles per hour when the park was closed.

I didn’t know that backstory, but I’ll tell you this much: I sure remember that every once in a while, one Go-Kart in the race would be zipping around the track about twice as fast as the rest. No joke. Amazing. My dad got one once. He was terrified, but at the same time really proud to have so handily beaten my brother and me in the Go-Kart race.

Even the mini golf course at Action Park was dangerous. Why? You guessed it: Snakes.

The biggest and best symbol of all that was awesome and ridiculous about Action Park was the looping water slide. A water slide with a loop-de-loop. How would that even work? You’re not harnessed into anything, like you are on a roller coaster. Doesn’t seem to make any sense, right? But it made perfect sense at Action Park.

The Wikipedia claims it was actually operated on occasion, but I never saw it open. And anytime you asked anyone about why it was closed, you always heard the same thing:

“Some fat guy got stuck in there and drowned.”

It turns out that was probably an urban myth, as were the stories that crash-test dummies sent down the tube to test it out came back dismembered. But who really thought a looping water slide was a good idea?

The Action Park people, that’s who.

Some of the Action Park rides are still open today at Mountain Creak Waterpark, but the Wikipedia mentions a “vastly increased emphasis on ride safety,” which I’ll take to mean they’re “incredibly lame now.”

From the Wikipedia page for “Pitching machine:”

In 1897, mathematics instructor Charles Hinton designed a gunpowder-powered baseball pitching machine for the Princeton University baseball team’s batting practice.^[1] According to one source it caused several injuries, and may have been in part responsible for Hinton’s dismissal from Princeton that year.^[2]

OK, so don’t ask how I got there, but I wound up on the Wikipedia page of Charles Osborne, an Iowa man famous for a bout of hiccups lasted 68 years.

But here’s the thing: According to the Wikipedia, Osborne’s hiccups ended in 1990, but he died in 1991. What gives?

Also, I imagine Osborne’s life would have been a whole lot less complicated if someone told him about the so-called Morrison Method, as practiced by my high-school band director and named for some kid named Morrison that must have gone to my high school years before me. Turns out drinking a glass of water while someone plugs your ears cures the hiccups every time. Only problem is it’s so silly that you often giggle enough to get the hiccups again.

Maybe Osborne came to enjoy having the hiccups. They were his claim to fame, after all. And maybe he woke up one day in 1990 without the hiccups like, “oh, man, no more talk-show spots for me!”

But probably his relationship with the hiccups was a bit more complicated than that.

Thomas Jefferson, who called all pasta “macaroni”, is known to have had a pasta maker as early as 1793 and to have served a macaroni pie at the White House in 1802. There are also records of his purchasing, or attempting to purchase, imported pasta after his term as president.

– The Wikipedia, “Macaroni and Cheese.”

Who knew? Via Jon Bois.

Tristan de Cunha was in the news a couple of weeks ago due to an oil spill, and my man Ted Burke tipped me off to its Wikipedia page.

From the Wikipedia: Tristan de Cunha.

Tristan de Cunha is the name given to both an archipelago in the South Atlantic and the main island of the group, the only one that is inhabited by people. The “big” island of Tristan de Cunha is nearly twice the size of Manhattan and, with roughly 275 residents, has about .02% of Manhattan’s population. Everyone in Tristan de Cunha lives in the largest city, Edinburgh of the South Seas — known locally as “the Settlement.”

The island is the most remote inhabited island in the world. It lies 1,750 miles west of South Africa and 1,510 miles south of Saint Helena, with which it is linked (along with Ascension Island) as part of a British territory. The territory is called “Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan de Cunha,” which is pretty much the least clever you could possibly come up with for it. It used to be known only as “Saint Helena and Dependencies,” but in 2009 someone determined that the 275 people in Tristan de Cunha and the 880 people on Ascension Island deserved equal footing with the 4,255 people on Saint Helena.

Tristan de Cunha is represented by the governor of Saint Helena, which you figure must be something of a logistical nightmare because Tristan de Cunha is really hard to get to. You can only get to and from the island by boat and you pretty much have to boat to South Africa before you go anywhere. One boat trip a year connects Tristan de Cunha with Saint Helena and Ascension.

Of course, it’s probably not too difficult to govern a population that’s roughly the size of a suburban high school, especially when you figure everybody knows everybody and many of them are related. In fact, residents of Tristan de Cunha have only eight last names, seven of which came from its original 15 settlers. The eighth is Patterson, because a woman from the island left and brought back a husband named Patterson. The Settlement has one full-time police officer and one resident doctor.

The islands were discovered and named in 1506 by Portuguese explorer Tristão da Cunha. Apparently he also wasn’t particularly clever, though I guess it’s hard to fault someone for naming an island group for himself.

The islands pretty much just sat there until 1810, when a guy named Jonathan Lambert from Massachusetts showed up, claimed all the land for himself and renamed the islands “The Islands of Refreshment,” which sounds like something from a Fruitopia commercial. The Wikipedia does not say how Lambert came to Tristan de Cunha or how many people accompanied him, nor does it provide any detail of the boating accident that killed him two years later in 1812.

It is at least a tiny bit suspicious that in that same year, the United States military began using the islands as a base for the War of 1812, which also lacked a clever name. In 1816, the British formally annexed the islands to prevent the French from using them as a base to help Napoleon escape from his exile on Saint Helena, which, as mentioned, is over 1500 miles away. The Wikipedia does not detail how that would have worked, exactly, nor why the most remote inhabited island in the world would be a significant upgrade from exile.

Oh, one of the other islands in the Tristan de Cunha group is called “Inaccessible Island.” The Wikipedia entry contains this gem: “Attempts to colonise Inaccessible Island failed.”

Historically, the island has mostly been used for military stuff. Until at least World War II, its currency was potatoes.

One time a prince visited Tristan de Cunha, and Lewis Carroll’s younger brother lived there for a few years. It is not a great place for celebrity spotting.

It is a good place for bird-watching, farming, lobster fishing and philately. The Wikipedia says that the sale of postage stamps to overseas collectors is one of the main sources of foreign income to Tristan de Cunha.

The smattering of people that live on Tristan de Cunha speak a dialect of English. Because three of the original 15 settlers had asthma, many Tristanians suffer from the disease, much in the same way many Amish have polydactyly. Tristan de Cunha’s flag features a rock lobster, which is also the name of a song by the B-52s.