“Just the facts, ma’am,” said the detective in that old TV show. Which show was that again? Was it Dragnet?
People remember it from Dragnet, but no one ever actually said that exact phrase on the show. And nowadays, fewer and fewer people even remember Dragnet. Anyway, if a detective ever does look at you and asks for “just the facts,” here’s what you should tell them:
Instead of ghosts, the camera revealed his girlfriend and his son having sex. This was not technically an example of stepmom-stepson sex, as the man and woman weren’t married, ruining this as a porn premise, but it was still an unpleasant surprise.
Mosquitos are the deadliest animal because they transmit malaria. Snails clock in not too far behind because they transmit parasites that kill hundreds of thousands of people every year. (The parasites, known as blood flukes, are also deadly animals; blood flukes and snails both receive credit for the resulting kills.)
He went through with it, tattooing the initials “HM” on his shoulder. Despite this, he never did end up getting to guest star on Hannah Montana.
Invisible inks like lemon juice are invisible once they dry, but they do not confer invisibility on other objects. In the robber’s defense, he tested the process with a selfie before going through with the robbery, and the resulting photo did show him with a blurred face, but that was just a photographic error.
First, he tried to insist that he’d obtained the semen for his microscope through sex rather than through masturbation, as though that distinction mattered. Then, he decided it was too humiliating either way and asked his colleagues not to share the findings at all.
The following New Year’s Eve, authorities raided his home and found drugs worth over $1 million. It appeared that he and his colleagues had been using a cement mixer during the manufacturing process and had been shipping the stuff out using the postal service.
They reasoned that the rise of digital photography has severely hurt the market for physical film. So in the 21st century, they decided to apply their knowledge of how pigments fade to a new application: cosmetics. After all, makeup and film are both about how collagen and pigments interact.
The investigation started with someone attacking point-of-sale terminals in Subway. To trick the culprit into coming to the U.S. for an easy arrest, a male agent pretended to be a female casino dealer. The hacker flew into Boston with a gold necklace and three boxes of grape-flavored condoms.
Based on the now-forgotten Texas stereotype that Black people fear snakes, he’d roll up to a Black employee and ask him to open the trunk. One time, the employee followed the discovery of the snake by picking up a tire iron and threatening LBJ with it, till a manager intervened.
He sold the house to pay for his court defense — a court defense that succeeded. By the time authorities saw the photos, he had been acquitted and therefore could not be charged for the murder again. They did get him on perjury charges, at least.
You might know da Vinci as an anatomist, but he stopped experimenting on animals after this. He became a vegetarian, and he’d even buy animals from shops just so he could set them free.
Over time, the paint on the doll’s face would change, giving Osama a red face with black markings, to make him look like a demon. Hundreds of the dolls sailed to Pakistan. The doll’s designer? Donald Levine, creator of G.I. Joe.
Doctors attributed the damage to neuropathy from years of a diet deficient in B vitamins. They halted the vision loss by prescribing him dietary supplements, but he didn’t regain any of the lost vision and remained legally blind.
Elmer Alvarez tracked down the recipient, Roberta Hoskie (who could always have just had the check reissued; losing it wasn’t that big a deal). Hoskie, who had also previously been homeless, then got Alvarez a house and a job.
Days before the operation, Janet Frame won a literary prize, and so, doctors canceled her lobotomy. They later concluded that she had in fact never actually had schizophrenia.