As American children, we are told that people are often wealthy because they are hard workers who built empires on boot straps and elbow grease.  As we get older, we realize that there is an even more important component of success in America: connections, and pretending you are successful and lying until enough people believe you.  If you learned this lesson after 2003, “then start a reality show” pops up somewhere in there.  For all our talk of head-down hard work, some of the most recognizable entrepreneurs in America are rank phonies who were handed billions of dollars on silver platters and used it to wipe their ass, saying “I heard Bravo’s into edgy shit like that”. 
 

Simon Cowell

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Simon Cowell was the face of British snark for much of the Aughts.  His put-downs and insults of American Idol contestants are nothing short of legendary, and somewhere in the process he created one of the most popular shows in American history.  American Idol regularly puts its time slot to shame by garnering viewers by the tens of millions.  The songs and artists that come out of American Idol have produced numerous chart-topping hits and netted Cowell’s label millions. 

If by this point you’re thinking of Simon Cowell as some sort of genius who worked his way up from the mail room to spearhead a titan of a TV show and record label, you’re actually kind of correct.  But that’s only because, by all accounts, Cowell was an insufferable twat for his entire life and the mail room was the only position even his rich and well-connected father could get for him.  Cowell’s father eventually flexed his muscles again, netting Simon as position as an assistant to a high-ranking executive at A&R.   

It is true that Cowell deserves some credit for his successes beyond this point, not the least of which was American Idol.  But to the rest of us who could only get an entry-level position at a record label through clandestine liaisons in the mens’ room, the point remains that Cowell’s monumental arrogance and general douchebaggery would have gotten him precisely nowhere without his father’s intervention. 
 

Rupert Murdoch

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Like most Australians, Rupert Murdoch reminds us why we shouldn’t allow Australians to own property, have equal rights, or infect our dreams with their terrifying wildlife.  Unfortunately, because of several tenants of the Geneva Convention and that annoying concept of common human decency, we’re forced to give these special little denizens of the southern hemisphere an equal shot.  This despite their apparent homicidal bloodlust for the English language.
 
That aside, Murdoch has managed to build a veritable empire of news media, which owns just about everything ever, except those liberal rags.  Valued in the billions of dollars, Murdoch is best known in America for spawning the laugh-fest known as Fox News, and acquiring the Wall Street Journal in order to turn its once-respected opinion page into Karl Rove’s blog.   

But despite the Fox News love of America and hard work, Murdoch was born into the newspaper industry, and groomed to replace his father at the helm of News Limited from a young age.  Following his father’s death in 1951, Murdoch took over operations and gradually steered the business to becoming one of the largest news organizations in the world.  He may have been born with a silver spoon, but Murdoch worked hard to turn News Limited in the bloated, scandal-ridden embarrassment it is today. 

George W. Bush

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George W. Bush is an international man of mystery, going by many names such as “Worst President of all Time”; “The Precocious Scamp We Love to Hate”; and “Generally Not That Good at Business”.  Before he was elected president of Texas and then president of the neighboring United States, Bush had quite a stint in the oil industry.  And by “stint” we mean he made a habit of running a company into the ground, selling it, running the company he sold it to into the ground and generally not giving a crap because his father was president of the United States and their family had gobs and gobs of money. 
 
Okay, so making fun of George W Bush is like shooting fish in a barrel.  Wait, it’s actually easier than that;  it’s like shooting a fish in a Solo cup (and also the fish is a humpback whale).  That doesn’t change the fact that every business venture he embarked upon wasn’t done through hard work or shrewd business acumen.  Nope, they all basically consisted of him getting a bunch of his father’s friends and wealthy Yale alums to pony up a couple million dollars.  Though, in all fairness, this was probably all a good dry-run for the bank bailouts. 

Carly Fiorina

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Probably the only person on this list you’ve never heard of, Carly Fiorina was once considered one of the most powerful and accomplished businesswomen in America.  Fiorina began her career as a management candidate at AT&T, and quickly rose through the ranks, overseeing the spin-off of Lucent.  Remember when their labels used to be on every phone you used in the 90s?  Phones.  Those things with the cords that go into the wall that you can talk on.

In short, Fiorina was a successful executive and was eventually picked to head HP in 1999, becoming the first woman to head a Fortune 20 company.  It was roughly around this time that Fiorina bought into her own hype and started grandstanding around the lecture circuit while trying to shove a highly unpopular merger with Compaq down the board of director’s throats.  Try to think back to the last time you bought an HP or Compaq computer and you can guess where this story is heading. 

Fiorina managed to get the Compaq deal approved, and both companies proceeded to immediately tank.  The combined company quickly became the largest personal computer manufacturer in the world, and just as quickly lost the title as sales plummeted.  Fiorina had used her considerable power and fame to ascend to HP and work the Compaq deal despite repeated objections from experts in the company (including the son of co-founder William Hewlett), but these traits couldn’t save her from getting booted off the board in 2005.  Almost immediately, stock prices rose and the company quickly regained its status as largest personal computer manufacturer in the world. 

Donald Trump

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It is a testament to Donald Trump’s greatness that in an America filled with Kardashians, Jersey Shore and Michael Bay, he still manages to stand out as a complete and utter phony. 

Trump got his start, like most of the phonies on this list, by investing in real-estate with his rich daddy.  He eventually spun this venture into retarded catch phrases and gigantic money-losing phallic emblems to himself.  After promoting himself and losing hundreds of millions of investors dollars, Trumps favorite activity is talking about how much money he has.  This started way back in the 90s, when Trump started bragging about being worth a cool billion, despite having less money then you probably do now.
 
Forbes recently valued him at around $200 million in net worth, which is certainly no figure to shake a stick at.  Donald Trump, however, has no problem shaking his stick at that number, brazenly claiming that he’s worth $7 billion.  With a “b”.  According to Trump, all those extra zeroes are the result of his “brand” which he values at around $3 billion and the rest of us value at “oh ew. ewwwww. grooooosssss.” 

To round the shameless self-promotion off, Trump decided recently he wanted to be the almost-republican nominee.  He shot to the top of the running with his ceaseless attacks on Obama’s claims of citizenship.  When asked about the quasi-racist nature of his ultimately failed campaign, the Donald kept it classy and replied, “I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.”

We all have things that hold us back in life.  These include a terrible upbringing, a poor education, or a crippling inability to get over your last girlfriend that manifests as poetry you instantly regret (Laura why won’t you come back to me/I’ve changed I swear it/Just think how happy we could be/Why are you screaming in terror it’s totally normal to show up to your apartment at AM-quarter to three).  Most of us manage to hack out a decent existence working menial jobs and furiously trying to stave off ennui with a mixture of alcohol and mix of Coldplay CDs.  But some truly magnificent bastards looked their actual, non-first-world-problems in the face and told their disabilities they’d have an easier time forcing a dirty limerick from a geriatric nun than stopping them people from being absolute badasses.
 

FDR

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The 32nd president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt led the country through some of its most trying time.  He oversaw our slow, gradual crawl out of the Great Depression and worked closely with Allied leaders to fight World War II while he was at it.  Many programs and government agencies he put into place persist to this day, including the SEC, the FDIC and Social Security.  He’s regularly listed as one of the best, if not the best, American presidents in history.  Love him or hate him, there’s no denying that he made one of the largest, most enduring impacts on American politics of any president.  And he did almost all of it from a wheelchair. 

Up until the age of 39, Roosevelt was a generally health old-money politician serving as the Secretary of the Navy and generally hating the shit out of war.  In 1921 he was stricken with what some believe was a bad case of polio, but recent experts speculate might have instead been Guillain-Barre Syndrome.  Long story short, his political career was pretty much dead in the water at that point, owing to the fact that few would trust the strength of a man who could only walk by attaching steel braces to his legs and using the force of his twisting torso to drag them forward one at a time (which sheds new light on a famous quote of his: “A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.”) 

FDR got around all of this through an elaborate production of staged photoshoots and speeches where he was always either leaning against something, or supported by one of his sons.  Only two photos taken of him in a wheelchair during his presidency were ever allowed, which is phenomenal in a modern context, considering that FDR served longer than any other president in history.  Not only did FDR have a debilitating handicap, he managed to fix the greatest economic downturn in history, win one of the largest wars in history, and keep anybody from questioning his strength by simply placing a cigarette stem in his mouth and waving his torso intimidatingly at problems. 

Richard Branson, Charles Schwab and Erin Brokovich

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So a successful entrepreneur, hedge fund manager and a legal clerk walk into a bar and are horribly confused because they can’t read the menu.  They laugh heartily as they pay their servants to read it to them because they’re a few of the many successful people who overcame dyslexia.  Often portrayed in hilarious bumper stickers as a laughable disease that causes people to misspell “unite”, dyslexia can be a very serious disorder that prevents sufferers from recognizing the meaning of evening the simplest of sentences.  It goes without saying that this makes it very difficult to get a proper education, and often inhibits the learning of other important topics such as math or science.   

Despite their learning disabilities, Branson and Schwab are currently worth billions.  Branson has even gone full supervillain/superawesome by setting out to build his own goddamn space ship.  Brockovich stands a a paragon of good-old-fashioned American elbow grease, boobboot-strapping her way to the head of one of the largest legal settlements in American history.  But of course, this list of successful sufferers of dyslexia wouldn’t be complete without Levar Burton, you know that guy who taught us all the magic of reading?

Stephen Hawking

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Widely known as the only person with a Ph.D. In physics that you recognize, Stephen Hawking’s list of achievements would fill the rest of this article.  Suffice to say, he’s pretty freaking smart and has made amazing contributions to both science and the public’s understanding of complex physics.  He did this despite being confined to a wheelchair and being almost completely incapable of movement or speech since 1985. 

This not-so-walking-robot-talking monument to how much you are wasting your life was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) shortly after beginning his Ph.D at Cambridge.  It severely inhibited his ability to move, and he was soon confined to a wheelchair.  In case you don’t think working on quantum gravity from a wheelchair was difficult enough, you can only really appreciate how much face-melting awesome Hawking contains when you realize the average prognosis for someone with ALS is a lifespan of three to five years from the onset of symptoms.  Only 10-20% of sufferers survive for 10 years.  Hawking has survived 40. 

John Nash

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Despite the fact that it was riddled with over-exaggerations and inaccuracies, A Beautiful Mind got the point of John Nash across pretty well: he was a mind-bending mathematical genius who was seriously hampered by a severe case of seeing children who never age and Russian spies.  The only mathematician you’ve ever heard of changed the face of economics with the Nash Equilibrium, which basically gives game theorists a way to calculate an equilibrium state given that each player knows the optimal strategy of the other players but cannot affect the equilibrium through unilateral action.  To put it in simpler terms: just trust us, it’s important.
 
In the movie, one is led to believe that Nash used the power of his incredible intelligence to see through his hallucinations, bolstered by the support of his loving wife and academic community.  The reality is that for almost 40 years, he was forced to deal with his illness almost completely on his own.  There was also that part where he ran off to Europe, attempted to renounce his US citizenship, and had to be arrested and hauled back to the states.  From 1970 on, Nash refused to take any medications, and it is believed his schizophrenia was generally under control.  He became something of a mythical mathematics hermit, haunting the halls of Princeton and scrawling mathematics on blackboards.  He very slowly regained credibility and recognition after his theories gained increasing credibility and importance, and was eventually awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994.  And in case you’re wondering, he looks nothing like Russel Crowe at all. 
 

Abraham Lincoln

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Even the most poorly educated American student can still spout out a few facts about that guy in the stove-pipe hat.  He freed the slaves, he won the Civil War, he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.  It goes without saying that he was pretty awesome (shut up Alabama), so let’s skip forward to the part where we talk about his hilariously crippling disabilities. 

Among historians, Lincoln is known as that one president who was so exceedingly hideous that we keep trying to find explanations for why he was ugly as sin.  For a while, the going theory was that he was afflicted with Marfan’s Syndrome, which would explain his tall, lanky stature and generally poor health.  This theory is generally considered debunked since, when put in perspective for the time, Lincoln’s health was pretty much average— despite suffering two bouts of malaria, smallpox, possible syphilis, and getting kicked in the head by a horse when he was 9.
   
The going theory now is that Lincoln was afflicted with MEN2B.  Without going into the details since some of you might be eating while reading this, the basic gist of MEN2B (aside from it sounding like the sequel to a gay porno) is that you get tumors like…everywhere.  That would explain Lincoln’s somewhat puffy lips (neoplasms in the mouth) and even the distinctive mole on his right cheek.

What does it take to be the World’s Youngest CEO? Marbles, apparently. A lot of marbles. At the age of 8, British “Marble King” Harli Jordean has recently been dubbed the World’s Youngest CEO, stripping 14 year-old Indian animation queen Sindhuja Rajaraman of her title. No joke, folks: The two youngest CEOs this year aren’t even old enough to have their driver’s licenses. But all CEOs have their own personal drivers anyway, right? With an almost 10-year gap separating the young guns from the younger guns, the other three entrepreneurs on our Top 5 Youngest CEOs list each come in under the age of 30.
 

Harli Jordean

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8 year-old Harli Jordean “has been obsessed with marbles ever since he was six,” according to his mother, Tina. Amazingly, this little nugget had a hobby for two years and is now the World’s Youngest CEO. Is anyone else out there starting to rethink career choices? After accruing a notable collection of marbles and later becoming frustrated by the lack of selection online, Harli and his family developed their business  (which revolves around the whimsical “Land of Marbles, where everybody has Marble MANIA”), and are now selling specialty marbles for up to $1,000 US dollars. According to Marble King’s website, Harli, who is the fedora-clad face of the company, aspires to one day “become an active co-owner and to actively take his throne, to take the leadership in running the business.” So essentially, this kid gets to live large by playing with marbles all day until he’s old enough to start balancing the books. Or old enough to hire someone to do that for him.
 

Sindhuja Rajaraman

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Coming in at a close second is 14 year-old Sindhuja Rajaraman, who is the CEO of Seppan, a successful animation company in Chennai, India. Despite being bumped from the top spot on this list earlier this year by Harli Jordean, Sindhuja still remains the youngest CEO recognized by the National Association of Software and Service Companies. And all of Seppan’s success has stemmed from yet another child with a hobby. “It all started five years back when I wanted to take my mind off studies and do something new,” she says. She credits her father, a cartoonist, as her inspiration – He taught her the art of animation that has propelled her into short-film creation. Yet despite spending the majority of her day in the Seppan offices, Sindhuja claims to be raking in a smaller salary than any of the other 10 employees. Perhaps the only CEO who is paid less than the employees, she notes. But don’t get it twisted: she still wants to play with friends and go to film school and stuff. She just has to prioritize a little (a lot) differently than the average teenage girl.
 

Adam Goldstein

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With nearly a decade between the ages of numbers two and three on our list, Adam Goldstein is still far from old (and just as close to the possibility of retirement) at the ripe old age of 23.  As the CEO of Hipmunk, a travel start-up with an adorable and aeronautically adorned chipmunk mascot, Goldstein and co. are giving better-known travel search engines like Kayak and Orbitz a run for their money.  Hipmunk “takes the agony out of flight search,” and shows users their best bet via one of the most visually appealing timeline interfaces on the web. They rank flights not only based on lowest price, but on the overall “agony” of the trip, which includes travel time and total stops. It also supports both city names and airport codes, and inserts train travel options, which are often time the cheapest (albeit longest) way to go – You know, for those of us who just can’t seem to plan ahead. 
 

Jared Hecht

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GroupMe’s Jared Hecht slides in at number four, hot on the heels of Goldstein at age 24.  Hecht’s company, which was recently acquired by Skype (for $85 million a year, no less), is, at the most basic level, seamless group text messaging. When faced with the difficultly of rallying the troops at the ever-cellularly-elusive music festival, Hecht and his partner Steve Martocci conceived a text service akin to group email chains. Every group receives a unique phone number upon sign-up, and each text sent by a member of said group is broadcasted to everyone on the chain. Thanks to GroupMe, at least one of your friends is bound to meet you at the port-a-pottys after the Cut Copy set.
 

David Karp

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Tumblr’s David Karp brings up the rear of our list at 25 years old, barely edging out  Globals Incs.’s Suhas Gopinath, who took the top spot last year. According to the NY Observer, “Mr. Karp is tall and skinny, with unflinching blue eyes and a mop of brown hair. He speaks incredibly fast and in complete paragraphs.” But sorry ladies, he’s got a girlfriend that pretty much meets this same description. Karp started Tumblr, a short-form blogging platform, to create something  “much more free-free, much less verbose” than typical blogs. Basically, if you don’t like to write but still want to create a home for our online personality (that isn’t the increasingly-invasive FaceBook), Tumblr makes it easy for you. High expression, low commitment. Just how we like ‘em these days.

It’s pretty clear that depending on your level of skill, crime really can pay. A lot. Drug trafficking, murder-for-hire, car jacking, check fraud, and identity theft are all booming industries right now. Many criminals have failed to complete a formal education, another thing that’s been debunked as necessary for success. Intelligent deviants who choose a life of crime often profit — and sometimes, they go legit and become incredibly successful in business. Here are five criminals who became entrepreneurs.
 

Judge Mathis

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Although not nearly as entertaining as Judge Judy, Judge Mathis is a popular and well paid daytime television judge. Instead of enforcing the law, Mathis routinely broke it as a teenager. In his high school years, he joined an infamous Detroit street gang called the Erroll Flynns. At age 17, Mathis was arrested and sentenced to prison time after the judge saw his heap of past arrests. Mathis had had enough of crime.

Upon his release, Mathis attended college and became a campus activist. After graduating, he went on to become a court judge for Michigan’s 36th district and never looked back. His show has now been running for ten seasons (since 1999), taping over 2000 episodes. Mathis’ laid back, jovial attitude has gained fans who love his sense of humor. Not only does he allow long, angry diatribes by the disputing parties, but he often lets aspiring rappers and singers showcase their talents for a few seconds during the show. What a guy.

Tim Allen

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Yes, really. Before becoming famous for the quirky show Home Improvement, Tim Allen Dick (his real name) was an avid lover of cocaine. That’s not to say he gave up the stuff once on the show — just that he stopped getting caught. In 1978, Allen was caught trying to board a plane with over a pound of cocaine. Instead of taking the mandatory life sentence, Allen Dick ratted out 21 accomplices and got off with only five years prison time.

As most people would, Allen dropped the ‘Dick’ from the end of his name and began doing standup on a dare. When the crowd loved his ‘lovable loser with tools’ persona, he developed it into what would eventually become Home Improvement.

Although he became very successful, Allen didn’t leave his Dickish ways behind him. In 1997, Allen drunkenly crashed his car into a 72-year-old man… and then sued the guy for “damaging his well-known and well-respected name.” Allen dropped the lawsuit after learning the man had brain cancer. He actually went on to call this a humanitarian gesture.

Ironically, Allen’s dad was killed by a drunk driver. This didn’t stop Allen from getting arrested again on a DUI in 1999 for literally falling over during a sobriety test. So maybe he turned around — and then turned back around.

Jay Z

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Jay Z started out as a drug dealer in Brooklyn’s Marcy Projects who shot his own brother over stealing his jewelry. Today, he’s one of the richest guys on earth and really knows how to run a business. Jay Z has released multiple rap albums, many of which are considered ‘landmarks’ of the rap music genre. He’s had four number one songs on the Billboard Hot 100. Jay Z owns clubs in multiple cities, will be partial owner of the soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets, has a stake in Roca Wear, is a partial owner of the NJ Nets, and owns an investment company which has equity in a number of odd but profitable ventures. Combined with wife Beyonce, the couple has a value of around $150 million dollars.

Danny Trejo

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Danny Trejo could win a Grammy with zero acting skills whatsoever. All he has to do is stand around and stare at stuff to look pensive, terrifying, badass, and/or angry. He used his intimidating appearance to rob convenience stores and was in trouble so much that his own mother “stopped being surprised” when the cops would show up at their house. After his drug habits and life of crime landed him in prison for 15 years, Trejo decided to do something better with himself.

Trejo learned how to box and took a 12-step program to get clean and stay that way. One of his friends in the program happened to be a film production assistant, and asked Trejo if he could ‘look like a convict’ for a role in Runaway Train. Of course he could. Trejo has been in 124 movies since then, always playing the same character but never becoming uninteresting or trite.

Georgia Durante

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You may not have heard of Georgia Durante, but her story is the most badass one in this list. A model by 12 and nationally known as the model for Kodak by age 17, Durante was legit from the beginning. She turned to a life of crime after marrying mob man Joe Lamendola, who convinced her to become the getaway driver for many of the mob’s crimes. Durante learned tricks, stunts, and all-around crazy driving moves to elude the police.

It came to an end when Durante decided she had finally had enough of her husband’s abusive ways. During her divorce, she testified against many of the criminals she used to work for and with. Consequently, Durante started her own performance driving school and wrote a book about her life experiences. Her company has been used for the stunts in over 100 films, and Durante has personally been the body double for Cindy Crawford and Priscilla Presley.

The history of the international fraternity of Freemasonry is riddled with secrets. Attempting to make a definitive account of its beliefs, rituals and influence would prove to be an extremely difficult, if not impossible, task. By their very nature, the Freemasons are a mysterious group, and although in the 21st century they claim to be “less a secret society and more a society with many secrets,” they do not relinquish covert information to non-members readily. What is known about the Freemasons is that a phenomenal number of great innovators, thinkers and influential individuals have been, upon closer inspection, members of this shadowy organization. The following inventive and original minds all, in their own ways, changed the world — and they were also all members of the Freemasons.

10. Vannevar Bush (1890 – 1974)

American engineer, scientist and developer of the first electronic analogue computer Vannevar Bush is perhaps best remembered as the author of the revolutionary essay “As We May Think.” Published in 1945, it envisaged much of the technology we take for granted today, including personal computers, the Internet, hypertext, online encyclopedias, and speech recognition software. In 1939, Bush — a Worshipful Master in Massachusetts’s Richard C. Maclaurin Lodge — was appointed president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington; as such he assumed considerable influence with the US Government in military and scientific research. Bush was involved in the development and proposed use of the atomic bomb. And, as the alleged head of the “Majestic 12” — the purported code name of a secret committee of scientists, leaders and officials formed by President Harry Truman — Bush is rumored to have investigated UFO activity in the wake of the Roswell incident, the supposed crash of an alien aircraft in New Mexico in 1947. The secrets his fellow Lodge members may have heard are almost too immense to contemplate.

9. Sandford Fleming (1827 – 1915)

Sir Sandford Fleming was a Scottish-born Canadian inventor and engineer. Perhaps best known as the man who, in 1851, designed the first Canadian postage stamp, Fleming is also often credited with the invention of standard time zones. Amongst his many achievements, Fleming was chief engineer of the cross-continental Canadian Pacific Railway. Knighted by Queen Victoria in 1897, Fleming was also a Freemason. Freemasonry helped Fleming in no small way, providing him with links to many influential members across the international fraternity. His proposal of world time zones was supported by many powerful masons, most notably the fourth Governor General of Canada, 9th Duke of Argyll John Campbell. Fleming’s engineering genius also helped to bring about the trans-Pacific submarine telegraph cable, which some have dubbed the “Victorian Internet.”

8. John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683 – 1744)

The French-born astronomer, scientist, natural philosopher and priest Rev. John Theophilus Desaguliers has been credited with the invention of the planetarium and is also remembered as the man who took steam engine design a step further though the addition of a safety valve. Influenced by Sir Isaac Newton, whom he was an assistant to, the Oxford-educated Desaguliers chose to settle in England. Desaguliers was also an extremely prominent Freemason and a major force both in collating the early history of the society and in attracting noblemen to the world’s first known Grand Lodge — the Premier Grand Lodge of England. Mystery shrouds his connection with Freemasonry up to 1719, but in that year he was elected the third Grand Master, and after serving in this post he subsequently held various prestigious positions within the Fraternity — in his adopted home as well as in Europe. Desaguliers, who appears to have invested far more time in science and Freemasonry than he did in the Church of England, has been called the “Father of Modern speculative Freemasonry.”

7. King Camp Gillette (1855 – 1932)

It can be reasonably claimed that the American innovator King Camp Gillette changed the world when he launched the cheap, disposable safety razor to a grateful public in 1901. Yet the founder of the world famous Gillette brand (now a business unit of Procter & Gamble), who was known for his business acumen and innovative marketing strategies, was also a Freemason. Little is known of Gillette’s personal experience within the Fraternity, but his political ideas are well documented and must surely have been shared among other members. Gillette was a “Utopian Socialist,” and envisioned a single public-owned corporation that controlled the entire world’s industry. He also imagined a giant US-wide city named Metropolis that would be powered exclusively by Niagara Falls. King Camp Gillette: dreamer; inventor; Freemason.

6. Traian Vuia (1872 – 1950)

The Romanian inventor, engineer and aviation pioneer Traian Vuia was one of the earliest innovators in flight technology. In 1906, his self-propelled, fixed-wing aircraft – complete with landing wheels – managed to fly 39 feet, approximately 3 feet off the ground. What is less well known is that the aeronautics genius was a member of Romania’s Masonic Order, which had grown steadily more organized following the unification of its lodges in 1880. It has been reported that, in the wake of World War I, Vuia was part of a small group of Freemasons who traveled to the Peace Conference in Paris to facilitate links with the Paris Ernest Renan Lodge — and in turn, between the governments of the two countries. As a world famous innovator and designer, Vuia’s value to Romania and his lodge was priceless, while journalists who were part of the French fraternity ensured Romania got good press at the conference.

5. Antonio Meucci (1808 – 1889)

It is widely held that Alexander Graham Bell was the inventor of the telephone. However, it is also claimed that inventor, revolutionary thinker and unconfirmed Freemason Antonio Meucci had devised the principles of the telephone when Bell was still an infant, and had a working model by 1859 — long before Bell and others. Unfortunately for the Italian, due to technical omissions relating to vocal sounds in his patent — which was filed five years before Bell’s — he never gained the credit for his work; until recently, that is. In 2002, the US Congress officially recognized Meucci’s work in the development of the telephone. The rumors of Meucci’s involvement with the Freemasons appear to be largely down to his close friendship with the great military hero Giuseppe Garibaldi, the unifier of Italy. Garibaldi was an active Mason and arrived in New York around the same time as Meucci. The two shared ideas, and it seems likely that Freemasonry played some part in this exchange.

4. James Bowie (1796 – 1836)

James “Jim” Bowie, legendary frontiersman, pioneer, battle hero and reputed joint designer of the Bowie knife (with a little help from his brother, Rezin), is something of a folk hero in American cultural history. Bowie’s fame was born of violent circumstances. Having been shot and stabbed in the famous brawl known as the Sandbar Fight, Bowie killed the sheriff of Rapides Parish, Norris Wright, with an unusually long knife. It’s said that this became the basis for the design of the now-famous hunting knife. While many different manufacturers have produced their own versions of the blade, Bowie can lay claim to being the original inspiration for the design. Among his many other roles — including a slave trader and land speculator — Bowie was an esteemed member of L’Humble Chaumiere Lodge No. 19 at Opelousas, Louisiana. Yet just as his life appeared to be at its most settled and comfortable, his wife and children were killed in a cholera outbreak. He then fought and died alongside fellow national icons Davy Crockett and William Travis at the Battle of the Alamo in 1836.

3. Samuel Colt (1814 – 1862)

The American industrialist and inventor Samuel Colt is best known for popularizing the revolver that eventually led to the Colt Single Action Army, otherwise known as the Colt .45. He applied for his first patent at the age of 18, and his dream of perfecting the ‘impossible gun’ never faded. An engaging and pioneering character in the world of munitions and other fields, Colt once made a living as “the celebrated Dr. Coult,” lecturing on chemistry and performing demonstrations of the effects of Nitrous Oxide on willing audience members. Like his manufacturing rival Daniel Leavitt — who patented the first revolver after his own — and another great firearms exponent, Richard Gatling, Colt was also an active Freemason. Colt’s name will forever be associated with the gun, and interestingly his products were of great use to fellow Masons Benito Juárez, Simon Bolivar, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Sam Houston in their various violent revolutionary activities.

2. The Montgolfier Brothers (Joseph-Michel Montgolfier (1740 – 1810) and Jacque-Étienne Montgolfier (1745 – 1799))

The celebrated French inventors the Montgolfier Brothers — arguably the earliest important names in the history of aviation — performed the first manned ascent of a hot air balloon in 1783. Based on experiments with bags made of paper and fabric and a naked flame, their paper-lined silk balloon was lifted 6,562 feet in the air. In the same year they successfully transported first animals (a sheep, a rooster and a duck) and then later human passengers, the first one being Jacque-Étienne himself. Less is known about the brothers’ lives as Freemasons, but like Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier — who made the first untethered manned flight in a Montgolfier balloon — they were active members of the Fraternity.

1. Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)

Benjamin Franklin, the great statesman, scientist, political theorist and philosopher, is without doubt one of the most important inventors and public figures in American history. The creator of the Franklin stove, bifocal glasses and the glass harmonica also believed in generously donating his genius and never patented his work. He was a true Renaissance man, and possibly his greatest gift to civilization was the lightning rod, which led to a greater understanding of the nature of electricity. Franklin was active as a Freemason from at least as early as 1731, when he was initiated into St. John’s Lodge in Philadelphia. Appointed Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania in 1934, he was heavily involved in Masonic work his entire life, and edited and reprinted Scotland’s Rev. James Anderson’s Constitutions of the Free-Masons in the same year as his high appointment. This was the first Masonic book in America and effectively linked the “Antient” and the “Modern” world. Franklin, known as the “First American,” was instrumental in the creation of modern America and, in doing so, brought the secrets of Freemasonry to a new nation. Or at least to its chosen few.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past month, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the death of a computing icon, a man who changed how we interact with the virtual world forever.  I’m talking, of course, about Unix creator Dennis Ritchie.  Just kidding, odds are the first time you heard Ritchie’s name in a sentence was recently, and the sentence had more mentions of “Apple”, “Steve Jobs”, uncapitalized “i”s and the phrase “and also Dennis Ritchie” than “Unix”.

During his life, Steve Jobs was no small source of contention among nerds, and the Mac vs. PC debate raged for year after incomprehensibly rage-filled year (oh by the way we’re talking about Steve Jobs, he’s the one who died in case you missed that).  So undoubtedly, once the near-beatifying mourning of Jobs dies down, these same people will begin to whisper a whole slew of critiques of Jobs.  Some will be honest and well-reasoned, but this is the Internet so the majority will probably be loud, not very nuanced, and unfair to Jobs.  Some critiques such as:

Tablet Computers Pre-Date the iPad by Decades

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What They’ll Say:
The concept of a tablet computer is by no means novel at all.  In fact, the first patent for a tablet that electronically recorded handwriting was filed in 1888, barely more than a decade after Thomas Edison first demonstrated his incandescent light bulb.  And even as far back as 1992, IBM was releasing fully-functional tablet PCs as part of the ThinkPad lineup.  Of course these early versions didn’t have the power or functionality that current technology can offer, but all Jobs did was take a half-step forward based on almost a century’s worth of work by other people.

Why It’s Unfair:
No less a great mind than Sir Isaac Newton once said, “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.”  In a word, no innovation occurs without building on millennia of effort that preceded it.  But most importantly for the iPad, it wasn’t the tablet technology that came before it, it was the technology the grew alongside it, most importantly the internet and Wi-Fi.  No matter the power of the processor or the amount of memory in a tablet, if you have to plug it in, its fundamental purpose is negated.  Tablets were envisaged as early as 1968 in 2001: A Space Odyssey as tools of convenience, not workhorses, as we see a character use a tablet to watch a video message while eating his dinner.

So yes, Jobs didn’t exactly re-invent the personal computer with the iPad, but he did recognize that this oft-failed concept was finally at a point where it could be made feasible, at a time when the market for tablets had been dry for almost a decade.  Not giving Jobs credit for gathering the knowledge of the preceding decades and distilling them into an elegant framework because a similar concept had been done before is like not giving Newton credit for creating calculus simply because Leibniz came up with something similar at around the same time.

The iPod is Just a Fancy MP3 Player, Not a Fundamental Innovation

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What They’ll Say:
The product that really brought Apple into everyone’s side pocket was the iPod, but what’s so special about it?  Sure it allowed you to play MP3s and ditch the pile of CDs you used to carry around, but so did a lot of other products in the market at the same time.  And a lot of those were cheaper, more versatile, and didn’t force you to go through proprietary Apple software to get music on your device.  The iPod won this war simply because it had the sexiest marketing campaign, not because it was the best value.

Why It’s Unfair:
Raise your hand if you owned an MP3 player before 2001.  Now explain the process by which you loaded music onto it.  Now explain how in the world you expected that to fundamentally replace a system where you put-a-thing-in-a-thing and press play.  The problem with MP3 players wasn’t sexiness or even technology; it was getting the digital files from the record producer to your device.  This involved a whole host of technological savvy and legal issues which Apple solved not by making the iPod, but making iPod stupid-simple to sync and (later) the iTunes store, respectively. Though it certainly didn’t hurt that they had some amazing advertising.

Apple’s Computers Haven’t Changed Personal Computing Since the 80s

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What They’ll Say:
While all of Apple’s shiny portable products are nice, the truth is that you still do the vast majority of your day-to-day work on either a PC or a laptop.  No giant capacitive touch screen is going to change the fact that you can type a lot faster on a keyboard.  The personal computer forms the great spine of any productive worker (or particularly productive procrastinator), and Apple hasn’t made any great contributions to the field since the 80s.  Sure the iMacs are pretty and all that, but there’s simply no denying the fact that they’re over-priced, underpowered devices for people who don’t know enough about computers.  Steve Jobs’ greatest contribution to Apple before 2001 was little more than designing a computer that didn’t come in a beige box.  Bravo.

Why It’s Unfair:
No matter how impressive the specs or price of your computer, if you’re shipping a product with features that a majority of your users are nigh-incapable of accessing, that’s riddled with problems that require specialized training to address, you’re shipping an over-priced, under-powered product.  What a customer can do with your product is the ultimate test of how powerful it is, not the processor speed or memory size.  And by the ease-of-use measure, iMacs come out far ahead.  Of course this isn’t to say that someone with proper knowledge can’t do more with a high-powered PC than a Mac, but we’re talking about the average user.

But the far larger and more important point is that Apple didn’t have to revolutionize the personal computer market.  PCs are already insanely cheap, Windows XP wasn’t that bad, and, to a certain extent, most people have acquired the working computer knowledge to address basic bugs and open Excel.  All iMacs did was fill a niche of people looking for an easier and (yes) more eye-pleasing less intimidating PC.  Asking why Steve Jobs focused on mobile devices and didn’t bother to create a better computer is like asking Henry Ford why he made the flashy, expensive automobile instead of a faster horse.

Dennis Ritchie Did More Than Jobs, but Jobs’ Death Overshadowed Ritchie’s

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What They’ll Say:
Among other things, Dennis Ritchie created the C programming language and the UNIX operating system.  To put it simply, Apple may have made your phone, computer and MP3s, but code written by Ritchie are in virtually every complex electronic device you own.  And it’s likely Ritchie’s creations will continue on in some form for decades.  What’s more, Jobs operated a greedy, extremely private corporation that pursued numerous lawsuits when competitors got even remotely close to Apple’s technology.  In contrast, C and Unix are open-source, and have been used as a powerful resource for entrepreneurs and amateurs alike.  Jobs may be the name everyone remembers, but Ritchie had a much larger impact, and should have received a little more publicity.

Why It’s Unfair:
Ritchie was an academic and an engineer.  Jobs was a college drop out and an entrepreneur.  Jobs was a perfectionist, megalomaniacal CEO with billions of dollars to his name who deliberately sought the spotlight.  Ritchie was, by all accounts, a quiet, humble man.  Jobs shut down Apple’s philanthropic giving in 1997 and never restarted it.  It has also been reported that Jobs kicked way more puppies than Ritchie.

Comparing the two is like comparing oranges and (ahem) apples.  You can set up the same sad dichotomy by comparing just about anyone famous with a lot of people who actually contributed something and no one’s heard of.  In an ideal world, Ritchie would be the icon and Jobs would be the greedy capitalist, but in the end it still doesn’t diminish the fact that Jobs made substantial contributions to technology.

iTunes is Awkward and Propriety, Making it Difficult to Hold On To Music

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What They’ll Say:
If you own an Apple product, you are forced to use iTunes to get your media from your computer to your device.  Sure, you can download podcasts and load a fair amount of third-party content on there, but you still have to use Apple’s software every step of the way if you want to play it.  Any apps have to be specifically approved by Apple, leading to a media experience greatly out of the hands of the end user, and that’s the way Apple likes it.

Why It’s Unfair:
Years from now when you’re explaining to your grandkids that yes, at one time all media was sold and held in physical form by the end user.  And in much the same way you once asked your parents when was the first time they bought a CD instead of a cassette, your grandkids will ask you when was the first time you downloaded a song.  Most of us will not tell them the truth (Kazaa), but will instead tell them about the first time we downloaded music was from iTunes.  Apple may be annoyingly guarded in what software and hardware will work with their devices, but they (along with others) fundamentally changed the way media is distributed, and—more importantly—proved that in an era of pirating lawsuits, that it could be done profitably.

On top of this, Apple has inspired several copycat devices and marketplaces among all their major competitors, almost all of which are much more open and forgiving of customization.  Henry Ford insisted the original Model T would only be sold in black, and then his competitors made them in all sorts of colors.  Attacking Apple for an authoritarian but highly functional model is like attacking the Model T because it only came in black—it still worked well and ended up changing the world.

The iPhone and iPad Are For Movies and Games, Not Work

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What They’ll Say:
Let’s be honest, the iPad is basically a more expensive, less useful netbook.  They’re pretty and eye-popping, and most importantly of all, you can read them while eating cereal at the same time.  The iPhone is bright and flashy, but typing anything longer than a few sentences on a touchscreen is exhausting and frustrating.  Giving Jobs credit for a “revolution” in these devices is shiny-object salesmanship: he didn’t fundamentally make them better, he just made the brighter, flashier, and more fun.

Why It’s Unfair:
It turns out that all the moaning that came with the switch from keyboard to touch screen was largely unfounded, as recent studies show that the average user can output around 33 words per minute on the touch screen—just a hair below the average for keyboards.  Some can even get up to 80 words per minute.  On top of this, the larger screen allows you to read e-mails, presentations, photos etc… on a screen that doesn’t cause eyestrain.

But the most important part here is that, especially for the iPhone, any work you do on it is work done during time when you would usually not be able to do this work (since you didn’t have access to a computer).  And say what you will about the iPad, it’s bright, crisp screen and smooth lines are a lot more inviting than a giant lumpy textbook.  Which is exactly why more and more educational institutions are using them as tools to entice children to read and play educational games, as well as a way for students to communicate with teachers and store all their academic work in one place.  Oh and they’re also great tools for our rapidly aging population and the visually impaired.

He Tried to Strangle Apps

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What They’ll Say:
The biggest beef that nerds likely have with Jobs is his enmity toward open-source.  To the independent developer, Apple is the tallest, most lucrative fortress with the most impenetrable walls on the planet.  Everything is developed in-house under Jobs’ watchful, perfectionist eye, any third-party apps have to go through a rigorous approval process, and Apple gives only piecemeal, begrudging support to developers.  Jobs’ attempt to stop the App Store is viewed as one of his few professional mistakes, even by his fans.

Why It’s Unfair:
Most people seem to forget that every iPhone comes equipped with a button that takes them to the Internet, a world filled with all of the smut and apps you’d like — none of it restricted by Apple, and this space is only getting bigger and more capable.  More and more, it’s getting harder to distinguish what content is based on your browser.  Jobs realized this, and his resistance to the App Store seemed to come less from the fact that he didn’t like third-party development on the iPhone, it’s just that he wanted it to be done in the cloud.  Those of us who don’t live in Cupertino and have experienced the hellacious nature of AT&T’s network can attest that, while a noble idea, going completely to the cloud simply isn’t feasible yet, though Jobs was probably only a few years off (after all, without apps, how would we play Angry Birds on the subway?).

He Contributed to the Myth of the Silver Bullet CEO

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What They’ll Say:
In an era where Americans are particularly…perturbed at the growing economic inequality in this country, where CEOs make 475 times the average worker, here comes Steve Jobs perpetuating the myth that all a company needs is a magical CEO to save them.  These CEOs demand exorbitant pay, rarely pan out, and then take millions in golden parachutes. Steve Jobs was a visionary CEO for his company, but his visibility will only make corporate America’s views on management more perverse, tyrannical, and full of magical, short-term thinking.

Why It’s Unfair:
Steve Jobs’ salary: $1.  Of course he makes millions a year in stock appreciation and has numerous other investments, but Jobs was part of a growing club of CEOs that take only a small, symbolic salary and draw all of their income from the company’s growth.  While this may seem like an empty gesture, let’s say that, theoretically, Jobs demanded the salary of $33 million including bonuses that Ray Irani of Occidental Petroleum does.  With that money, he’d essentially be depriving Apple of more than 400 talented engineers making around $75,000 a year.  For some perspective, the average firm in the US employs roughly 16 people.  Jobs may be the quintessential magic CEO in most peoples’ minds, but if more CEOs were like him, outrageous CEO pay wouldn’t be a problem in the first place.

Outsourcing Products to Foxconn

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What They’ll Say:
Apple’s relationship with Chinese supplier Foxconn is storied and gruesome.  In addition to the high-profile suicides a few years ago, stories emerge of 34-hour shifts and employees so young that their hands become mangled and twisted as they grow into the repetitive work.  Reports indicate that Foxconn only pays the equivalent of $300 dollars a month.  Despite all their clean, sexy, innovative flashiness, the iPhone was built on the pain and suffering of hundreds.

Why It’s Unfair:
First off, Jobs was a good CEO, not necessarily a foolhardy philanthropist who would inexplicably force his company to source products from factories that would drive costs several orders of magnitude higher than the competition.  In a word, outsourcing wasn’t his choice; it was made for him by the market.

In addition, at the risk of sounding like a heartless imperialist, Foxconn pays far better than the average Chinese job.  Plus Foxconn recently raised wages, and are seen as a positive force of upward wage growth in China.  While we should never get comfortable saying “they’ll take their slave wages and unsafe working conditions and like it”, and always pressure foreign and domestic suppliers to funnel profits into wage growth and better worker conditions—there is and will always be some dark underbelly to the world capitalism that we all support.  If this is your first time coming face-to-face with this fact you should also know that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny aren’t real, and that the failings of capitalism can’t be laid across Jobs’ shoulders any more than they can be laid at the feet of everyone who bought an iPhone.

He Struck a Deal With the Devil Dealing with AT&T

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What They’ll Say:
When you hear complaints about peoples’ smartphones, they rarely complain about the operating system, the touch screen, or even the ergonomics.  The number one complaint is always about dropped calls, slow data speeds, and text messages that vanish into the ether, only to reappear about 8 hours later along with 4 to 5 copies.  For all the perceived faults of Apple, their product is streamlined, reliable, and does what you ask it to.  Meanwhile, AT&T and other telecoms have responded by throttling data plans and continuing to charge exorbitant rates for services as basic and inexpensive as text messaging.  Jobs clearly believed in cloud-based services as an end-game, so why did he sell his soul through an exclusive deal to a company whose profit structure depends on throttling everything that makes the iPhone valuable?  Wouldn’t it make more sense to offer it up on all major carriers to encourage competition?

Why It’s Unfair:
The short answer is basically US networks couldn’t handle the iPhone’s increased data demands, and Apple needed a carrier willing to build out the network improvements necessary to support the phone.  You may complain about how long it takes to load your joke-a-day column each morning, but before 2007, even decently fast Internet on your phone was a laughable pipe dream.  You know how when your phone (if you have AT&T) loses a good data signal, displays the dreaded “E” and speeds drop to next to nothing?  Before the iPhone, no network had even that lumbering speed.  Yes the way in which Apple went about this was annoying to those who were locked into two year contracts with other providers, and yes there might have been some shady, under-the-table kickbacks going on.  But Apple pretty much single-handedly forced some of the biggest improvements in network infrastructure in a decade.  Far from a deal with the devil, Apple essentially told the devil “Okay we’re gong to make this deal, but in return you have to be slightly less of a dick”.

You may think Steve Jobs was a greedy megalomaniac, but there’s little doubt that he knew what he was doing and did it well.  In a time when Americans are near-desperately searching for fast-fading examples of American exceptionalism, Steve Jobs was one of the few that really remained.  In the years to come his life, business and management style will undoubtedly become the subject of many studies and books.  Most of us can’t really touch the unfolding narrative of Steve Jobs, but maybe after this article some of the comments on blogs will be a little less petty and asinine.

What could be more enticing, more adventurous, and more romantic than a tale of outlaws in love?  Maybe you’re familiar with the lives of Bonnie and Clyde, the love-struck public enemies who led a bloody tour across America during the Great Depression.  They’ve left a legacy that has been immortalized in film, song, and stage, and set a precedent for romantically-charged crime sprees.  Here’s a list of some more notorious crooked couples — some sweet, some sad, and some downright horrific.

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow

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Our list begins with the most notorious romantic outlaws of all time: Bonnie and Clyde.  The pair met in Texas in 1930, right before Clyde was sent to jail for burglary.  Using a gun that Bonnie snuck in to the prison, he escaped, was rearrested, and eventually received parole in 1932.  By 1933, the pair had assembled a gang of five — including Clyde’s brother Ivan and his wife Blanche — who committed a gaggle of bold robberies.  Because of the sensational nature of the crimes (and the strength of Bonnie and Clyde’s love for each other), they made headlines from coast to coast.  Most of their crimes were larceny-related: carjackings, gas-station holdups, and, most famously, bank robberies.  It is estimated that they were responsible for the deaths of more than a dozen people, at least nine of them policemen.  Their rampage came to an abrupt halt in May of 1934, when they were shot down by police beside a stretch of highway near Sailes, Louisiana.

Belle and Sam Starr

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Back in frontier days, Belle Starr was one of the more notorious cattle rustlers of Indian Territory.  Starr (born Myra Maybelle Shirley) was a childhood friend of the infamous train robber Cole Younger, and often let him and his friends Frank and Jesse James hide out on her farm.  In 1880, she married Sam Starr and started a ranch in what is currently Oklahoma (it’s also when she started going by the nickname, “Belle”).  From there, the Starrs controlled a number of illegal operations, including bootlegging and planning and harboring “rustled” cattle and horses.  In 1883, Belle and Sam were each sentenced to a year in prison for horse theft — a surprisingly lenient sentence for a case presided over by Fort Smith, Arkansas’s “Hanging Judge” Isaac Parker.  Their romance ended when Sam Starr was killed in a gunfight in 1886.  Belle took up with one of his relatives, and was shot in the back while carrying home some groceries in 1889.  It was that year that a writer named Richard K. Fox wrote Bella Starr, The Bandit Queen, or The Female Jesse James, hurtling her into infamy.

Doc Holliday and Big Nose Kate

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Mary Katherine Horony Cummings, a Hungarian immigrant, and John Henry Holliday, a dentist (and, more notably, a gambler, gunfighter and tough guy) met in 1876 in Texas frontier country, fell in love, and settled together in Tombstone, Arizona.  Mary Katherine, who garnered the nicknames “Rowdy Kate” and “Big Nose Kate,” was said to have operated a bordello in the town, while John (Doc) Holliday made boatloads of money playing blackjack.  Nefarious deeds were afoot.  Doc and Kate were good friends with the lawman Wyatt Earp, and together Earp and and Holliday instigated what would become the most well-known battles in the history of the Old West—the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in which thirty bullets were said to have been discharged in thirty seconds.  Both Doc and Big Nose Kate (who was supposedly out of town during the fight) were charged with murder, but both were exonerated.

Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate

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Raymond Fernandez, a former merchant marine and British Intelligence agent, met Martha Beck after responding to a personal ad she left in the newspaper.  Fernandez had made a habit of responding to “Lonely Hearts” ads, meeting with the women, and robbing them or forcing them to sign over their property.  Beck, a former undertaker who weighed more than 200 pounds, fell madly in love with him and became an eager participant in his scams.  Posing as his sister-in-law, she accompanied him to meet with lonely women, marry them, and steal their possessions.  Finally, in January of 1949, they murdered Janet Fay, one of the lonely women they were scamming.  A month passed before they shot Delphine Downing to death in front of her two-year-old child.  They were arrested at the end of February, and the press latched onto the story, dubbing them “The Lonely Hearts Killers.”  Fernandez later blamed his behavior on a head injury he sustained on a boat trip, and claimed that he had been trained in voodoo and black magic in a subsequent prison stay.  In 1951, Beck and Fernandez were both executed by electric chair.

Myra Hindley and Ian Brady

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These lovebirds from Greater Manchester in Northern England led a much darker criminal career than Bonnie and Clyde.  The couple, led by Brady (who was supposedly obsessed with committing a “perfect murder,” lured five adolescents to their death.  Hindley would bait the young people into her car by asking for help (she asked her first victim to help her locate a missing glove), then take them to a secluded location, where Brady was waiting to slit their throats.  In four of the five murders, Brady also sexually assaulted their victims.  The couple buried the majority of their victims in distant Saddleworth Moor, which earned them the nickname “The Moors Murderers.”  Hindley had became enamored with Brady when she was just 18 years old; together they read works by Marquis de Sade, as well as Dostoevsky’s classic perfect-murder-and-repentance novel Crime and Punishment.  Both were sentenced to life in prison.

Fred and Rosemary West

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The Wests were another deadly couple hailing from England, one whose actions were even more inhumanly brutal than Brady and Hindley’s.  In their youth, both members of the married couple were victims of frequent sexual abuse and incest.  When Fred met Rosemary, he was 27, a father, and married to a former prostitute; she was 15.  They moved in together, and while Fred spent six months in prison for theft, Rosemary murdered his stepdaughter, Charmaine— purportedly because she refused to cry when Rosemary abused her.  The Wests were married in 1972.  Fred encouraged his wife to sell her body, and she eventually had seven children, almost all from different fathers.  In late 1972, they hired a young woman to nanny their children, and then raped her.  The following year, Fred began raping his daughter, eight-year-old Anne-Marie, and continued to do so until she was 1979 when she suffered an ectopic pregnancy and managed to escape.  Finally, in 1992, Fred and Rosemary’s activities were discovered and both were charged with rape.  During the investigation, police discovered human bones buried at their house in Gloucester.  It is commonly believed that Fred and Rosemary had murdered 10 victims together, including Fred’s ex-wife and both of the children from his former marriage.  Fred West hanged himself a few years later; Rosemary is currently serving a life sentence.

Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo

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Like Fred and Rosemary West, Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo were a young married couple who corroborated on the murders of three young girls.  The first was Karla’s 15-year-old sister, Tammy, who they drugged with animal tranquilizers.  While she was unconscious, Paul raped her, and she eventually choked on her own vomit; she never woke up from the episode.  The next was Leslie Mahaffy, who they held hostage and assaulted for more than 24 hours before killing her.  Their final victim was Kristen French, who they brutally assaulted for three days before strangling her to death.  Because the defendants were an attractive young married couple, their story made headlines across their native Canada, and were even dubbed “the Ken and Barbie of murderers” by national newspapers.

The Dougherty Siblings

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While it’s true that these cross-country murderers weren’t necessarily a couple, their familial relations makes their story just as captivating.  Stripper Lee Grace Dougherty and her brothers Ryan and Dylan, lived in Zephyrhills, Florida, just North of the Tampa Bay area.  Their misadventure began in early August 2011, when a they sped away from and fired shots at a police officer who had tried to pull them over for speeding.  From there they headed to Georgia, where they robbed a bank wielding high-powered artillery.  Their semi-successful getaway came to an abrupt halt a week later, when police at a restaurant outside of Walsenberg, Colorado cornered them.  After attempting to escape, they were arrested.  Searching through their car, investigators found a machine pistol, two assault rifles, and a handgun.

Roy and Jessica Fritts

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This romantic duo may not have been as bright or brilliant as Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, but they were just as human.  Roy and Jessica Fritts met through a prison pen pal program (Roy was in jail for attempted murder; Jessica was serving time for a bank robbery), and the pair married while they were still incarcerated in an Oregon state prison.  Last month, the Fritts broke Roy’s parole in order to take a trip to Nevada.  They hitched a ride with a stranger, murdered him, dumped his body on the side of the road, and took off with his van.  After police managed to blow out the van’s tires, the Fritts fled on foot and ended up at the residence of an old man living in Summit County, Utah.  Again, they committed murder for a car — but this car had manual transmission, which neither Roy nor Jessica knew how to operate.  The car went on the fritz, and the Fritts went into police custody.

You may have been born ugly, but your children are the future! Thanks to medical science, technology and your low self-esteem, you can now make them beautiful and live vicariously through them. All it takes is beauty pageant, a healthy checking account and no moral qualms about righteously screwing up your child’s mind.

A College Education

The average college tuition for an out-of-state student is $11,600 a year. That’s probably cold comfort to the parents of Ms. South Carolina. This mumble mouth could make a George W. Bush speech sound like it makes sense. It’s unknown if she majored in Dumbassology at Appalachian State University.

Pageant Coach

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Although the coach is probably not going to sound like Mickey from the Rocky movies, some pageant contestant parents spend up to $5000 a day coaching their kids. Apparently, answering that you want world peace and walking with a bouquet of flowers is more difficult than you thought.

Clothes

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Let’s face it, beauty pageants aren’t like doing porn. Porn producers can forgive a bad wardrobe if their starlet can suck a golfball through a garden hose. Sadly, pageant contestants need to keep their clothes on and when a clothing fail happens like this one, you’d better have your landing strip landscaped. Even if you are nine.

Botox Injections

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We all heard about the mother giving her 8 year-old daughter Botox injections, but what about the other side of the story? Oh, right, there is no other side to the story. Casey Anthony probably thinks this woman is crazy. She did wind up claiming that she was “paid 200 dollars” to lie about it as a publicity stunt. However, anyone receiving national backlash and getting visits from CPS would do the same thing.

Toddler Spray Tan

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Not only can adults look like the mutants from the Jersey Shore, now your preteen can too! Why not cap the complete destruction of your child’s childhood with the destruction of their skin? Spraying your kid with a chemical dye? How could that go wrong?

Video Equipment

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While not a tremendous expense anymore, the cost may actually come when your child posts a video on YouTube. Many beautiful contestants mistake the attention they get for actual personality. Sadly, they are never forced to watch their annoying and boring videos. Won’t someone tell them they have no taste in music?

Makeovers

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Makeovers used to be for aging housewives looking to impress the pool boy or the pizza delivery guy. Now, suddenly, children are on the list to get their look “revitalized”. A one year-old getting a facial? A one year-old needs that like Charlie Sheen needs another case of whiskey and a hotel room full of hookers. Speaking of which, with this much self-esteem being destroyed at an early age, escort services will have plenty of applicants for years to come.

Caviar for the Hair

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Just when you thought they weren’t wasting enough money on these things, let Toddlers and Tiaras show you how to turn one of the world’s most expensive appetizers into hair gel for your kid. Later in this episode, she crushes up Faberge eggs into her cereal and paints her toes with liquid gold.

Crowns

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But the most insane expense of all time is, fortunately, absorbed by the pageant organizers. In Russia, the world’s most expensive crown is over a million dollars. Apparently, Russian oligarchs ran out of places to spend their money and decided to put on it on the heads of their prettiest girls.

Glamour Shots

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Nothing like forcing your child to sit around through hours of hair and makeup before carting them off to the nearest mall for beauty shots. Stay still! Stop crying! I’ll feed you… when you make me some money! Pose, dammit! Okay, now airbrush the hell out of it.

We the people of the United States of America are a very fickle people. We like to worship our celebrities. But we also like to tear down those celebrities and harshly judge them when they mess up. We also like to forgive them… if they deserve to be forgiven. In this way we create Gods out of men and then enslave those Gods for our own entertainment and use.

The ethics of this strange societal obsession aside, when celebrities screw up and risk losing the affection the American public, they freak out. And instead of apologizing to whoever they hurt/lied to/cheated on, they apologize to us.

Bill Clinton

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Few who lived through it will ever forget the excitement of the Monica Lewinsky affair. The constantly surfacing details about rock star President Bill Clinton and bodacious office skank Monica Lewinsky dominated the airwaves and imaginations of the nineties. Most moving of all, of course, is the memory of Clinton’s forced sounding and highly stupid public apology for his personal life.

Yes, it wasn’t exactly about his personal life seeing as he brought it into the public sphere when lying obscuring the truth under oath. But still, can’t we cut the man some slack? He’s the Leader of the Free World for crying out loud. Apologizing for getting some face time with the White House interns is just plain undignified.

Ted Haggard

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Sometimes the simple truth of the daily news is much better than fiction could ever hope to be. Such is the case with the story of Mike Haggard, a perfectly framed media fable about the consequences of hate mongering and deceit.

Haggard was an evangelical preacher in a Colorado mega-church known to his congregation as devoted spiritual leader and family man. He was also a passionate fan of talking about how gay people go to hell. Then, of course, it came out that he had been doing the deed with professional escort boyfriend Mike Jones for over three years! His apology/confession was honest and troubling. Haggard alluded to the part of his personal like that was too “repulsive and dark” to even put words to. His congregation cried with pity and scowled with rage… and then, most likely, went home and called their gay prostitutes.

Tiger Woods

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In 2010 the blogosphere exploded with news about Tiger Woods and his multiple affairs. Mistresses popped up from every corner and it seemed that in mere moments golf has suddenly, miraculously, become marginally interesting to the majority of the American public.

When the amount of mistresses breeched the double digits, Tiger Woods did the sensible thing and apologized to us for cheating…on…us? Well, yes, it actually makes a lot of sense. Celebrities are property of the public and thus when they fuck up it’s a personal betrayal to every single fat-ass with a tv and a couch in the United States.

John Ensign

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John Ensign and his public apology will not be remembered. There simply won’t be enough room in the history books to record every single philandering senator in this crazy world of ours.

John Ensign cheated on his wife and had to apologize amid flashing cameras and pushy press-members about how he had ruined the lives of his wife Darlene and his children. But the question remains, why do we care? Clearly extramarital affair is somehow intrinsic to the job description of senators. Perhaps it’s vital to their performance!

Michael Phelps

Why anyone would want to succeed in athletics is beyond me. Isn’t the whole point of success to imagine having a comfy, lazy life of hedonistic pleasure, money, and sex? Isn’t that while people become actors and singers? But sportsmen only have to work, work, work and work. And while it pays off for Michael Phelps in both money and muscle tone, I bet he’d like to relax.

But when you’re famous you aren’t allowed to relax. Phelps was busted for hitting a bong in 2009. Michael Phelps was revealed not to be the only human being in America who hasn’t smoked pot to the feigned surprise of annoying people everywhere. After training every single day for his entire life to be a swimmer, Phelps then had to apologize to a bunch of strangers for something he did one night at a party.

Michael Richards

When Michael Richards screamed the N-word at his audience during a stand-up comedy routine, we all knew that we needed an apology. No, he screamed at every person in America personally, but we all felt hurt. The pain of seeing our beloved Kramer revealed as an angry, neurotic, insecure racist was something an already fragile America did not need.

So we awaited his apology and it came and we wanted so very badly to believe him. But the change in his appearance and in our perception had already been affected. He was no longer Jerry’s kooky neighbor. He was an old racist man who reminds us of our grandfathers. Done.

Mel Gibson

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Mel Gibson laid down the gauntlet. After the drunk driving arrest, the anti-semtic rant, that crazy Christian movie, and all his other bull, people will not be changing their minds about the “What Women Want” star. People either hate him, or they are like minded neo-Nazis who love him.

So it didn’t matter that his public talk-show apology was such a lame rant. He laughed like ranting about Jews is just one of those things and he went off on a rather bizarre tangent about trying to murder his toaster, but who cares? He could have gotten it all right and we still would hate him… or else be like-minded Nazis who love him.

David Letterman

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Letterman came out to say that he had had extra-marital affairs with female employees of his show. First off, it was very bizarre to hear Letterman speak so openly about his actual sexual history (line cross!) but lovely how he remained contrite, honest, humorous, and level-headed (acknowledging that this isn’t anything more than “something stupid he’s gotten himself into) all at once.

Letterman’s apology is a shining example for all celebrity philanderers, drug users, and general douche bags. He comes off in the end as a hero and a champion for the cause of standing up to extortion, blackmailing, and media pressure. Bravo!

Alec Baldwin

The American People love Alec Baldwin for his low, raspy voice which is why we were absolutely shocked to discover that it could be put to so much evil. A leaked phone message he left for his 11 year old daughter revealed Alec to be a rather sharp-tongued father, calling his daughter a rude pig and a whole lot of other disturbing insults.

While that’s definitely not cool, it’s hard to say just what makes it anyone’s business and we might wonder why he has to apologize to anyone other than his ex-wife and eleven-year old daughter. Worst of all, he apologized on “The View” as if to imply that nothing he is saying can be taken seriously by anyone… like the rest of the content on “The View.”

Hugh Grant

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America gasped to see the charmingly bewildered British “Nine Months” star get busted with prostitute Divine Brown. After all, who needs a prostitute when they’ve got Elizabeth Hurley at home? It’s hard to imagine that that woman was ever not in the mood.

But still, Hurley became the center of media obsession and had to issue a generic, cheaply made apology to all of us. He reclaimed his power in 2010 when he turned the tables on the media and shed light on the growing issue of tabloid phone tapping.

Jane Fonda

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Jane Fonda will surely go down in history alongside such luminaries as Sharon Stone and Bono as one of the most annoyingly ignorant political minds of her time.

In 1972 Fonda incurred great criticism after a ’72 trip to Viet Nam when she betrayed the United States by siding with the Vietnamese army, calling the U.S. POWs war criminals, and being photographed NVA anti-aircraft.

She offered a hurried apology but while it can’t be called insincere, it remains to be shown whether or not Fonda even understands why everyone got mad in the first place.

Mark Sanford

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In 2009 United States Governor Mark Sanford resigned after it was revealed that he had been having a long-term extramarital affair with an old friend who lived in Argentina.

Why a person should actually have to resign for this is unclear, but it’s clear that it’s yet another example of the United States’ hypocritical, schizophrenic attitudes about sex and marriage.

Mark Sanford apologized to the public and came off as a very intelligent and well worded man. It’s important to not sound too contrite. It comes off as phony. Sanford hits the perfect balance, admitting fault but putting the culture of politics on trial to a certain degree.

Gary Hart

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In 1988 a man named Gary Hart was nearly president of the United States, until it was revealed that he was involved in an extramarital affair with a woman named Donna Rice. This, quite naturally, was the moment where politicians learned to not have affairs until they were already safe and sound inside the walls of the Oval Office.

Hart apologized on Nightline after resigning as Senator. Like other politicians would after him, Hart did call the integrity of the press into question, but then reiterated that the blame is all his. But looking at the fun pictures of Hart and Rice on yachts together, it’s hard to imagine that he has many regrets.

Eliot Spitzer

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Eliot Spitzer was a politician. By extension of this statement we can guess a few things. One, he was dishonest. And two, he slept around a lot. This is what we know about politicians, isn’t it? And yet, we love to act surprised.

On March 10 2008, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was discovered to be a frequent patron of high-class prostitutes, particularly one young woman called Ashley Alexandra Dupre, who charged $1,000 an hour, which leads us to believe that being a prostitute is a better financial option than being a governor, and with the comfort of a contract with no clause against immoral sexual behavior.

Spitzer was forced to resign after issuing an apology, which is tragic as he was an early champion of same-sex marriage in New York and immigrant rights.

The scariest thing about identity theft is how easy it can be for someone to be impersonated. A quick root through the weekly garbage can sometimes be all that a con artist needs to take on the identity of an innocent victim and rack up debt in their name, or even steal their assets. Perhaps there is some comfort in the fact that celebrities aren’t immune to this problem, and indeed at times are deliberately targeted by the identity thieves. When your own name is at the core of your personal business, and squarely in the public eye, maybe you’re more likely to fall victim to this kind of white collar crime than most – though the thieves are also more prone to getting busted.

10. Tiger Woods

Despite a striking lack of resemblance to the world-famous golfer, Anthony Lemar Taylor managed to successfully impersonate him. Taylor used Woods’ social security number and date of birth to get a drivers’ license in the golfer’s real name, Eldrick T Woods, and from there, credit cards. He got himself $17,000 worth of presents including a luxury car and a 70-inch TV. However, there’s unlikely to be any room for those falsely obtained goods in prison, where Taylor was sentenced to spend the next 200 years, or life, whichever comes sooner. Talk about landing in the bunker.

9. Ty Law

Former New England Patriots star Ty Law thought that all he had to worry about was the next big game. What he didn’t know was that Jonathan Hoskins, a complete stranger, had managed to get a driving license from the state of Ohio in Law’s name using a copy of the football star’s birth certificate. Hoskins then used the license to withdraw $10,000 from Law’s account – not once, but twice! Adding insult to injury, he then had the cheek to sign autographs as Ty Law before making his getaway. Hoskins was busted when he tried to pull the same trick on Kevin Mitchell of the Washington Redskins and was sentenced to 1 year in prison.

8. Ricky Gervais

Using information gained from bank insiders, a dead pensioner’s passport and a picture of Ricky Gervais cut out of a DVD box, two men stole £200,000 from the British funnyman’s bank account. The next step in their plan was to exchange the cash for gold bars, but the entire scheme was foiled by the gold dealer, a huge fan of the Extras star. When one of the thieves telephoned to arrange the sale, he claimed to be Gervais, but the dealer didn’t recognize the voice and alerted the authorities. Gervais’ fame saved him a pretty penny.

7. Ruben Studdard

Poor Ruben Studdard wasn’t conned by a stranger – his own manager decided to fleece him for more than $250,000. The American Idol winner accused his adviser and godfather, Ronald W. Edwards, of using his credit cards, improperly accessing his bank accounts and even using his money to pay off a $10,000 loan. The courts decided in Studdard’s favor, awarding him a total of $2 million in losses and punitive damages. Studdard needs to be more careful who he trusts with his ATM card.

6. Michael Bloomberg

New York City mayors often try to portray themselves as tough on crime. So imagine Michael Bloomberg’s horror when he found that he himself had been the victim of identity theft. Charles Nelson used an online transaction to net himself $10,000 from the mayor’s personal account. Meanwhile, Odalis Bostic tried to deposit two fake checks from the same personal account into his own, one for $190,000 and one for $230,000. Banking officials smelled a rat, but it was only during the investigation of Bostic that they found evidence of Nelson’s crime.

5. Lily Allen

The English pop-star Lily Allen always had a weakness for cab rides, using them to travel all around London. But imagine her surprise when she saw a bill for $7,500 worth of taxi journeys, none of which she’d taken. It probably wasn’t close to the confusion she must have felt when she saw that many of the journeys were to and from strip clubs. It turns out that a stripper stole the details of her account with the taxi company and used Lily’s money for her own transportation.

4. Will Smith

Carlos Lomax charged over $30,000 worth of purchases to Willard C. Smith – the legal name of the actor famous ever since his days as the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Lomax used a total of 14 fake accounts to make the purchases and was apprehended when Will Smith’s business manager noticed over $5,000 dollars in charges payable to Sears. The identity thief was sentenced to 37 months in prison for his crimes.

3. Steve Smith

It seems that Carlos Lomax really didn’t like people named Smith – or liked their names rather too much! When Lomax was arrested for the identity theft of Will Smith, it turned out he was already on probation for the theft of another Smith’s identity. Lomax had managed to take out an American Express card in the name of Steve Smith, the Atlanta Hawks basketball player turned TV commentator. He racked up an impressive $81,000 in Smith’s name before he was finally caught.

2. Liv Tyler

People often tell their hairstylists and beauticians intimate details about their lives, but it seems that you can’t trust anybody these days. Liv Tyler was just one of a host of A-list clients whom beautician Maria Gabriela Perez, owner of the Beverly Hills salon Chez Gabriela Studio, swindled out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Perez used their credit card information for her own gain, netting over $200,000 from Tyler alone. Among her other victims were Jennifer Aniston, Anne Hathaway, Melanie Griffith and Cher.

1. Oprah Winfrey

As a teenager, Abraham Abdallah appeared in an anti-fraud video for the State of New York. Clearly this brush with fame gave him an idea, as years later he used Forbes Magazine’s rich-list as his hunting ground for identity theft victims. His copy of the magazine was filled with home addresses, social security numbers and other personal information. The restaurant busboy used personal details to convince banks and brokerage firms to authorize purchases from his victims’ accounts. Apart from Oprah Winfrey, his targets included Martha Stewart, Steven Spielberg, Warren Buffet and Ross Perot. He was finally apprehended when his greed and ambition spurred him to attempt to move $10 million of software tycoon Thomas Siebel’s money.