The Unlikely Record · Episode 17 · Twelve stories
Twelve promotions, spectacles and public reactions that developed lives of their own
A publicity campaign asks people to look in a particular direction. The surviving record often shows them looking somewhere else as well: at a worker behind an image, a danger behind a spectacle or a promise behind a joke. These twelve episodes follow the distance between an intended impression and the story that people actually carried away.
Story 01
The Photograph Outlived the Name
The woman known as Miss Atomic Bomb wore a mushroom cloud made of cotton. Don English of the Las Vegas News Bureau photographed her in 1957, when nearby nuclear testing had become part of the city’s publicity. A threatening shape was converted into an instantly recognisable costume.
She performed at the Sands Hotel under the name Lee Merlin. The image promoted the atomic-age spectacle associated with Operation Plumbbob, but the widely reproduced photograph did not preserve an equally clear account of the person wearing the costume. The publicity title became easier to recognise than the dancer’s identity.
Historian Robert Friedrichs began trying to find her while preparing for the Atomic Museum’s opening. The search extended across years of interviews, newspaper records and attempts to separate her from other performers mistakenly associated with the picture. In 2025, a museum exhibition presented her as Anna Lee Mahoney, a dancer originally from the Bronx.
The discovery changed the information surrounding a familiar image. A publicity photograph that had reduced its subject to a symbol could now be connected to a named working performer. The cotton cloud still records how Las Vegas sold the spectacle of testing. Restoring Mahoney’s name also makes visible someone whose life extended beyond the brief assignment that became famous.
Evidence and sources
The staged publicity photograph and restored identity are documented by the museum and exhibition partner. No personal political beliefs are inferred from the pose.
- Miss Atomic Bomb: Icon of the Atomic Age — Las Vegas-Clark County Library District and Atomic Museum
Exhibition history and identity - Unmasking Miss Atomic Bomb: The 25-Year Search to Discover Her True Identity — Atomic Museum
2025 museum account of Friedrichs’s research
Story 02
The Advertisement Exploded
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The railway wanted people to watch a wreck. William George Crush, a passenger agent for the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway, proposed a deliberately staged collision between two locomotives. For a day, a temporary destination called Crush would make destruction an attraction.
On 15 September 1896, excursion trains delivered tens of thousands of spectators to a site near West, Texas. The company provided a special track and the facilities needed for a very large gathering. Two old locomotives, painted in contrasting colours, faced each other as the central performers in an elaborate advertisement for the railway.
The collision was expected. The bursting boilers were the catastrophe. Flying metal and other debris reached the spectators, killing at least two people and injuring others. Photographer J. C. Deane, who was recording the event, was among the injured. An image of the explosion survives, preserving the moment when the planned spectacle escaped its intended boundaries.
The exact casualty total differs between later Texas historical accounts, but the central reversal is clear. The railway had organised transport, publicity and a place to watch; those preparations could not make the wreck behave like a controlled theatrical effect. The crowd had come to see machinery destroyed and instead witnessed people being harmed by the advertisement itself.
Evidence and sources
The staged collision and fatalities are documented. Institutional sources disagree on precise crowd, hour and death totals; only their common minimum is narrated.
- Crash at Crush — Allen Lee Hamilton; Texas State Historical Association
Complete Handbook of Texas article - The Crash at Crush — Texas Historical Commission
Marker 5315, erected 1976
Story 03
The New Formula Made the Old One News
Coca-Cola announced a changed formula on 23 April 1985. The company believed it had tested a better-tasting drink. In its later account, almost two hundred thousand consumers had taken part in taste tests before the decision. The launch nevertheless exposed a difference between choosing a sample and being told that a familiar product had changed.
Complaints arrived through telephone calls and letters. Some customers organised around getting the previous formula back. The company’s retrospective describes a response far more emotional than its tests had anticipated, while the Smithsonian’s account places the episode within the strength of consumers’ attachment to a long-established brand.
On 11 July, seventy-nine days after the announcement, the company said the original formula would return as Coca-Cola Classic. The newer drink did not vanish at that moment. Instead, the business introduced a name that made the recovered version sound like an established category of its own.
The reversal turned a product decision into a public argument about who could define a familiar taste. Management could change the formula and label, but customers supplied meanings that did not fit neatly into the test results. A museum can from 1999 still carries the Classic name, showing how the response to a brief crisis remained visible on later everyday packaging.
Evidence and sources
Launch and return dates are documented. The company’s explanation of its research is distinguished from museum interpretation of brand attachment.
- New Coke: The Most Memorable Marketing Blunder Ever? — The Coca-Cola Company
1985 launch, taste tests, customer response and July return - Can, Coca-Cola Classic — National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
NMAH 880980, historical discussion
Story 04
The Bell Had Not Been Sold
A newspaper advertisement on 1 April 1996 announced that Taco Bell had bought the Liberty Bell. The fast-food company said the purchase would help reduce the national debt and that the landmark would take on the company’s name. The bell, the advertisement assured readers, would remain available to the public.
The date supplied one clue, but the presentation borrowed the confidence of a corporate announcement. The monument’s custodians had to deny a sale that had never taken place. The following day’s Associated Press report described both amusement and anger, including a teacher who intended to use the episode in a lesson about propaganda.
At noon, the company acknowledged the April Fools’ joke. It also announced a fifty-thousand-dollar donation for preservation. National Park Service superintendent Martha Aikens explained that the bell had not been sold; the monument’s custodians had been pulled into answering a publicity claim they had not made.
The advertisement worked by placing a commercial name beside a symbol of public history. Readers had to decide whether an apparently ordinary business announcement could really describe that change. By the time the correction arrived, explaining the joke had become additional news. The bell stayed where it was, while the company’s imaginary purchase travelled through newspapers and classrooms.
Evidence and sources
The original advertisement and next-day report establish the hoax and response. The reported conservation donation was an announcement, not a verified completed transfer.
- Taco Bell Buys the Liberty Bell — Independence Hall Association
New York Times, 1 April 1996, page A13 - Taco Bell rings up April Fools’ hoax — Associated Press; Roanoke Times, archived by Virginia Tech
2 April 1996, page A6
Story 05
Seven Million Points for a Jet
A Pepsi television advertisement ended with an offer-shaped joke: a student arrived in a Harrier jet, accompanied by a price of seven million Pepsi points. John Leonard approached that number as a practical problem. The promotion allowed customers to buy additional points, provided that they submitted a minimum number collected from products.
In March 1996, Leonard sent an order with fifteen original points and a cheque for $700,008.50. He requested the aircraft. The promotional catalogue listed other merchandise but no Harrier. Pepsi returned the cheque and explained that the jet sequence was intended as fantasy.
The disagreement became a lawsuit. On 5 August 1999, Judge Kimba Wood ruled for Pepsi. The opinion examined the advertisement’s exaggerated setting, its relationship to the catalogue and the requirements for an enforceable agreement. The court found that a reasonable viewer would understand the aircraft sequence as a joke.
The surviving judgment gives the episode its unusual precision. It preserves the points, the cheque and the reasoning applied to a commercial that had invited an extravagant daydream. Leonard had converted the displayed number into an order; the court had to decide what the advertisement communicated before treating that arithmetic as a bargain.
Evidence and sources
The facts and disposition are taken from the 1999 federal judicial opinion. The court’s interpretation is reported as this case’s holding.
- Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc., 88 F. Supp. 2d 116 — US District Court, Southern District of New York; Judge Kimba M. Wood
5 August 1999: factual background, objective-advertisement analysis and conclusion
Story 06
The Rodeo Reached Parliament
Cowboys arriving in London were ready-made newsreel subjects. A Topical Budget film dated 16 June 1924 promoted the performers appearing at the British Empire Exhibition’s rodeo at Wembley. Its catalogue identifies Tex Austin’s show and performers including Maud Elder and Skeeter Bill Robbins, bringing the imagery of the American West to a British exhibition crowd.
The attraction also generated a different kind of attention. Animal-welfare campaigners objected to the treatment of cattle. The BFI’s catalogue records allegations of injury during steer roping and the involvement of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
On 19 June, the controversy reached the House of Commons. Lady Terrington sought urgent discussion, and Home Secretary Arthur Henderson said summonses had been issued against those connected with the performances. He had appealed for the disputed events to be suspended while the courts considered the matter. The Speaker also explained the limits of the proposed parliamentary procedure.
The documentary trail changes form within days: a newsreel presenting colourful visitors is followed by questions about responsibility, suffering and legal powers. Promoters could bring an unfamiliar entertainment across the Atlantic, but they could not determine how every audience would judge it. The rodeo became a subject for people who were assessing the conditions of the spectacle as well as watching its performers.
Evidence and sources
Contemporary film cataloguing and Hansard document the promotion and welfare controversy. Allegations and pending proceedings are not converted into a verdict.
- Rodeo Cowboys in London: Topical Budget 668-2 — BFI Replay / London Screen Archives
16 June 1924, silent two-minute film - British Empire Exhibition (Rodeo Performances) — UK Parliament, House of Commons
19 June 1924
Story 07
A Cheese Needed a Freight Shed
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To advertise Canadian dairying at Chicago’s 1893 world’s fair, organisers made a cheese too large for an ordinary cheese factory. The press stood inside a Canadian Pacific Railway freight shed at Perth, Ontario. Manufacturing and transport had to be planned together before the exhibit could exist.
J. A. Ruddick, the cheesemaker, later described the work in a government account of the industry. In September 1892, curd arrived from twelve factories over two days, with more from three factories on a third day. Twelve jackscrews applied enormous pressure. The finished cheese weighed twenty-two thousand pounds and stood about six feet high.
A photograph by Donald C. Beckett records its departure from Perth on 17 April 1893. The cheese travelled inside a large labelled container, carried through town by a team of horses on its way to the exhibition journey. The label made its size part of the advertisement before anyone reached Chicago.
Ruddick later drew a distinction between technical advancement and publicity: such giant cheeses attracted attention even when they added little to cheesemaking knowledge. The surviving photograph makes that purpose visible. Many factories’ ordinary work had been combined into one extraordinary object, large enough to become a story about an entire industry. Its impressive dimensions depended on collective labour and a remarkably practical choice of workspace.
Evidence and sources
The maker’s 1911 account and an institutional photograph establish manufacture and transport. The familiar exhibition-floor-collapse anecdote is not supported by these sources.
- An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Dairying Industry of Canada — J. A. Ruddick, Department of Agriculture, Canada
Bulletin 28, April 1911; printed pages 58–59, title and transmittal pages - Attractions: Mammoth Cheese — Town of Perth
Mammoth Cheese and modern replica - The Mammoth Cheese leaving Perth, Ontario, en route to Chicago — Library and Archives Canada; Donald C. Beckett
PA-160538 / ITEM 3224178, 17 April 1893
Story 08
The Missing Painting Became an Image Everywhere
The Mona Lisa was already an admired painting when it disappeared from the Louvre on 21 August 1911. Its absence created a new kind of visibility. Newspapers could reproduce and discuss the missing picture for readers who had never stood in front of it.
The story travelled well beyond the search for a thief. On 27 September, the American magazine Puck used it for a political cartoon. President William Howard Taft appeared as a burglar carrying a portrait of Robert La Follette painted as the Mona Lisa. The joke depended on readers recognising both the familiar pose and the recent disappearance.
For more than two years, the actual painting remained away from the museum. In December 1913, Vincenzo Peruggia tried to sell it to an art dealer in Italy, who alerted the authorities. It was recovered in Florence. His later explanation that he was acting for Italy became part of the reporting, rather than a reason to accept every claim about his motives.
The Louvre had not planned this publicity, and the theft was a serious loss while it lasted. Yet the reporting enlarged the painting’s international audience. The Puck image preserves a particularly clear trace of that change: a missing work in Paris had become visual shorthand for an entirely different argument across the Atlantic.
Evidence and sources
The theft, recovery and wider publicity are documented. The painting’s pre-existing reputation is preserved, and the political cartoon is explicitly identified as satire.
- From the Mona Lisa to The Wedding Feast at Cana — Musée du Louvre
The theft and subsequent fame - Theft of Mona Lisa: Topics in Chronicling America — Library of Congress
Introduction and full chronology - The Republican Mona Lisa—can he get away with it? — Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Puck, 27 September 1911; LCCN 2011649066
Story 09
The Publicity Campaign Acquired Its Own Legend
Edward Bernays arranged for women to smoke publicly during New York’s 1929 Easter parade as part of his work for the American Tobacco Company. The cigarettes were presented as symbols of freedom. A commercial assignment borrowed the language of emancipation to make the act attractive to reporters.
The event became a celebrated example in histories of public relations. Bernays’s papers and scrapbooks preserve the machinery of his career: publicity, clippings and accounts of campaigns. The smoking procession offered a compact story about an expert who supposedly understood the public well enough to change its habits.
Historian Vanessa Murphree later examined how that reputation had been constructed. In her published explanation of the research, she describes reviewing more than two hundred and fifty articles and finding a more complicated response. Some editors recognised the publicity device, while later accounts enlarged the event’s apparent influence. Women’s smoking already had a history that could not be reduced to one parade.
The resulting reversal concerns the campaign’s own afterlife. An event designed to persuade newspaper readers became evidence used to persuade later readers of the publicist’s extraordinary power. The procession happened; the sweeping story about what it accomplished requires more care. Keeping those claims separate makes the surviving clippings useful records of both advertising practice and the reputation built around it.
Evidence and sources
The staged smoking event is documented; broad claims that it transformed women’s behaviour are disputed by later research. The author’s public summary of that research was read, not the inaccessible full journal paper.
- Housing Bernays’ Scrapbooks — Leslie Long; Library of Congress Preservation
7 November 2022, scrapbook holdings and tobacco publicity - Propaganda, Puffing and the Public Interest: The Scientific Smoke Screen for Cigarettes — Richard W. Pollay, University of British Columbia
May 1990 manuscript for Public Relations Review, especially pages 4–6 - Teaching Our Journal: Edward Bernays’s 1929 Torches of Freedom March — Vanessa Murphree; American Journalism
Author’s discussion of her 2015 American Journalism study
Story 10
The Advertisement Addressed the Year 6939
Westinghouse prepared an audience that could not yet buy anything. On 23 September 1938, the company buried a time capsule fifty feet beneath the grounds being prepared for the New York World’s Fair. Its intended readers belonged to the year 6939.
The capsule combined everyday objects with a much larger body of text and images on microfilm. Company publications described the selection as a record of modern civilisation. The choices also displayed the products and technologies that an industrial firm wanted the distant future to associate with its own age.
Preserving the container would solve only part of the problem. The Book of Record included help for understanding English and instructions for locating buried metal. Future discoverers might need to recover both the object and the knowledge required to read it. Copies of the book outside the capsule were part of that larger effort to carry the message forward.
The book also made the project legible to people living in 1938. While the capsule was meant to remain hidden for millennia, its company-authored description could already be read. The distant audience gave the project its grandeur; the contemporary audience could recognise the company’s name. A plan for long preservation was also a published event in the present.
Evidence and sources
The burial and intended future opening are documented in contemporary company records. Preservation claims are ambitions, not verified future outcomes.
- Book of Record of the Time Capsule of Cupaloy — Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company; transcription on Wikisource
1938 front matter, preparation, contents, language key and recovery instructions - A Time Capsule Capable of Lasting 5,000 Years — Noelle Charbonneau; Library of Congress, Inside Adams
28 July 2023, contents, engineering and burial sections
Story 11
The Fair’s Monument Moved
Chicago’s world’s fair needed an attraction that could answer the Eiffel Tower. The challenge was already shaped by publicity: another exposition had left behind a structure that people everywhere could recognise. Engineer George Washington Gale Ferris proposed a monument whose defining feature would be movement.
His great wheel carried passenger cabins around a towering circle. Building it required support from investors as well as acceptance from the fair’s organisers. The structure transformed engineering into an experience that visitors could buy, enter and describe after they came down.
The wheel opened on 21 June 1893. Thirty-six cabins carried passengers above the fairgrounds, with a ride costing fifty cents. Contemporary photographs show the enormous circle rising above nearby exhibition buildings. The attraction supplied a recognisable outline while allowing its audience to move through that outline themselves.
The surviving image makes the response to the original challenge unusually clear. A fair could advertise its scale through a fixed tower, but Ferris offered height as a repeated public journey. Each rotation returned the passengers to the ground and made room for another group. An ambitious piece of machinery became both the display and the means by which people experienced the display, turning a competition between expositions into a new form of amusement.
Evidence and sources
Institutional history records the design challenge, financing and opening. Origin-story dialogue and inconsistent component weights are omitted.
- George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. — Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission / ExplorePAhistory
Behind the Marker: competition, financing and 1893 opening
Story 12
The Exhibition Became an Argument
The American National Exhibition in Moscow displayed consumer goods as an argument about everyday life. On 24 July 1959, Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev inspected its attractions. A model home and appliances gave their larger rivalry an unusually domestic setting.
Discussion of how people lived became an exchange about the competing political systems. The encounter is remembered as the Kitchen Debate, but its surviving record joins conversations that happened in different parts of the exhibition. Reporters covered the kitchen exchange. A separate encounter in a model television studio was recorded on videotape.
The distinction mattered when the material reached viewers. The diplomatic chronology records an agreement that translations should be prepared for simultaneous broadcasting in the two countries. American television networks broadcast the studio exchange late on 25 July before that arrangement had been fulfilled, and without Nixon’s approval.
An exhibition intended to demonstrate one country’s goods had created a media event whose presentation could itself become disputed. The appliances were props in a serious argument, while television equipment became both another exhibit and the means of carrying the argument elsewhere. The familiar name compresses that sequence into a single room; the documentary record restores the movement between rooms, reporters, recordings and decisions about when audiences would hear the words.
Evidence and sources
Diplomatic records distinguish the filmed studio exchange from the kitchen conversation reported by journalists. The exhibition context is documented; claims of a decisive winner are omitted.
- If You Can’t Take the Heat… — Richard Green; US National Archives, The Unwritten Record
26 July 2012, exhibition and newsreel context - Editorial Note: Vice President Nixon’s visit to the Soviet Union — US Department of State, Office of the Historian
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Volume X, Part 1, document 92
Advertisements and exhibitions leave more than slogans. Their records preserve arguments, objects, court decisions and names recovered long after the audience dispersed. Following those traces makes it possible to see both how attention was invited and what happened after the invitation left its makers’ hands.
About the evidence labels
Documented identifies a supported historical event. Disputed marks an account whose explanation or details remain contested. Folklore identifies a recorded tradition; its inclusion does not establish that a supernatural event occurred.
