In 1964, 15-year-old Mark Maples became the first person to die at Disneyland after being thrown from the Matterhorn Bobsleds. The coroner determined he had unbuckled his own seatbelt, but the circumstances — including a possible hazing from a social club — were never fully resolved.
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At 15:05 · chapter starts 12:30
Ash sets the scene with Disneyland's July 1955 opening, when early rides like the Railroad and Astro Jets were a far cry from today's hyper-modern attractions. The Matterhorn's origin story is perhaps the episode's first surprise: engineers repurposed the massive pile of excavation debris from Sleeping Beauty's Castle rather than hauling it away, eventually shaping it into the iconic 'mountain.' Named Holiday Hill, then Lookout Mountain, it became the Matterhorn in 1956. Walt Disney then conceived a toboggan-style ride through the structure, which opened in 1959 as the world's first tubular roller coaster — allowing the sled to pass through tunnels and holes in the mountain's walls.
The Matterhorn at Disneyland isn't an engineered masterpiece — it started as a giant pile of dirt left over from building Sleeping Beauty's Castle. Engineers repurposed the debris into what eventually became the world's first tubular roller coaster when it opened in 1959.
The Matterhorn at Disneyland was literally built from a pile of dirt excavated during the construction of Sleeping Beauty's Castle, originally called Holiday Hill.
The Matterhorn Bobsleds, opened in 1959, was the world's first tubular roller coaster, a revolutionary design for its time.
Mark Maples, 15, was the first person to die at Disneyland after being thrown from the Matterhorn Bobsleds in 1964.
Factories that replaced coal engines with electric ones in the early 1900s got only 6% efficiency gains. Those that redesigned their entire factory around electricity got a 3x productivity improvement. Swapping AI tools into your existing structure will give you 6%. Rebuilding around AI will give you 10x.
Lebanese terrorists backed by Iran were holding American hostages throughout the Reagan presidency. Reagan had loudly campaigned against negotiating with terrorists — putting him in an impossible position that his team quietly decided to ignore.
During the Iran-Iraq War, the US openly supplied Iraq with weapons, training, and intelligence. At the same time, Oliver North was secretly funneling missiles to Iran. The US was playing both sides of a shooting war.
Oliver North traveled to Iran under the alias 'William P. Goode' with a fake passport. CIA Director William Casey allegedly gave him cyanide pills so he could kill himself rather than be tortured if captured. He returned safely and the deal moved forward.
The Pentagon sold missiles to the CIA for $3,700 each. The CIA sold them to Richard Secord at cost. Secord sold them to Iranian middleman Ghorbanifar for $10,000 each. Ghorbanifar charged Iran even more. The profit — including $3 million in interest in one Swiss account — was diverted directly to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.
America secretly transferred 2,000 missiles and missile parts to Iran in 8 shipments over more than a year. Only 3 of 7 hostages were released. Three more were taken. The net result was zero freed hostages and a full-blown constitutional scandal.
On October 5, 1986, a CIA Contra supply plane flew a weapons drop at 2,500 feet in broad daylight. A Sandinista soldier shot it down. The only survivor, Eugene Hasenfuss, had borrowed a parachute from his skydiving brother. He was captured, paraded in front of cameras, and told the Sandinistas everything he knew.
The CIA supply operation used a front company called Southern Air Transport, widely known to be a CIA cover. Crew members of the downed plane carried their Southern Air Transport employee IDs in their wallets. One also had a business card directly linking him to Oliver North's office in Washington.
When the scandal broke, Oliver North and his secretary Fawn Hall conducted what became known as a 'shredding party,' destroying a day's worth of documents. The full truth of Iran-Contra may never be known because of what was fed through that shredder.
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