In 1966, 19-year-old Thomas Cleveland scaled a 16-foot fence to sneak into a Disneyland graduation party and hid on the active monorail track. He was struck and killed instantly — the driver only knew something had happened because he 'felt a bump.'
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At 19:50 · chapter starts 15:05
The episode's first genuine horror arrives with the story of Mark Maples, 15, who boarded the Matterhorn with friends Doug Gibbs and Gary Payne on a May evening in 1964. At the steepest descent, Mark was thrown violently from the sled headfirst. Initially, park attendants refused to believe the boys' account and had to be corroborated by girls in the car behind before they searched the tunnel and called paramedics. Mark was found unconscious and bleeding; he never regained consciousness and died four days later. The coroner ultimately concluded the death was purely accidental and that Mark had unbuckled his own seatbelt 'for no explainable reason,' though hints of a hazing by a social club called Phidias were investigated and dismissed. Disneyland's official position — that Mark stood up and fell out — was backed by a test in which no one of Mark's size could free themselves while buckled.
Mark Maples, 15, was the first person to die at Disneyland after being thrown from the Matterhorn Bobsleds in 1964.
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.
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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