When 12-year-old Joshua Smurfett slipped out of his harness and fell 20 stories to his death from the Drop Zone at Great America, investigators found the ride attendant was 14 years old and the harness checker was 16. A 900-page report found poor training procedures throughout the park.
Where this was said
At 42:40 · chapter starts 37:00
The Great America Top Gun incident of September 7, 1998 begins as a cautionary tale about restricted zones but pivots into something far stranger. Newlywed Hector Mendoza and his brother-in-law re-entered the secured perimeter of the inverted roller coaster to retrieve a blown-off baseball cap. Just as he picked it up, the coaster rounded the corner and a dangling passenger foot struck him in the head at full speed, killing him instantly and breaking the passenger's leg. Great America and the victim's family disputed whether the gate was locked, but police backed the park's account. Then, a week after the accident, fingerprint analysis revealed the dead man's documents were fraudulent: the real Hector Mendoza was alive in Mexico. The victim was eventually identified as Suárez Robles, adding a layer of identity-crime mystery to an already tragic story.
A man killed at Great America in 1998 after straying into a roller coaster's path was identified as Hector Mendoza — but that was a stolen identity. The real Hector Mendoza was alive in Mexico. The victim was eventually identified via fingerprints as Suárez Robles.
The man killed at Great America in 1998 by a dangling roller coaster foot was found to have been using a stolen identity; he was identified via fingerprints as Suárez Robles.
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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