LATEST NEWS

We think of milkshake ducks—people who are enthusiastically embraced by the public and media only to have their horrible past revealed—as a relatively new phenomenon, fueled by a fast news cycle and social media. It’s not. In 1895, a man named Gustaf Broman made national news for announcing a brave and foolhardy scheme: he would sail across the Atlantic in a 13-foot-long sailboat crafted from a cedar log, which he christened the Gustaf Adolph II in honor of the king of Sweden. Paradoxically, he planned to begin this transatlantic journey in Coos Bay, Oregon (then called Marshfield), from which he would sail down the coast to San Francisco, then take the boat by rail to New York City before heading east. His plan for transcontinental travel was even less practical than his boat:

from Stories from Slate https://ift.tt/2IUKDY3