One old saying goes, "pizza can be compared to good sex." Even if she failed, she would still be eaten with appetite. Pizza is one of the most popular foods in the world, with approximately three billion fresh and one billion frozen pizza sold annually in the United States. This is almost 11 million pieces per day. Most recently, we published an interesting article on hamburgers, which was quite a good success. That is why today we write about pizza, as one more equally popular product. The following are ten strange stories about pizza, from larvae and bombs to war criminals and gremlins.
1
Pollution
If we consider pizza as part of fast food, then the United States is considered the standard of quality for such products. As one of the most popular food items in the world, you might think that the US government strictly follows the pizza production process. But if you saw a list of contaminants that the US Food Safety Authority considers acceptable, you would go on a hunger strike.
According to these standards, tomato paste and pizza sauce can contain funny additives in the form of 30 eggs of flies per 100 grams of product. When you try the crust or filling of pizza, you will surely taste mold, insect fragments, larvae, rodent hair, and all that the Office politely calls “mammalian waste”.
By the way, on our site most-beauty.ru there is an interesting article about the most unusual items found in fast food.
2
Moon
The well-known pizza chain Pizza Hut turned out to be not alien to wild marketing tricks. In 1998, they came up with the idea to illuminate with their logo the surface of the moon with powerful lasers. Fortunately, when common sense prevailed, they learned that there would be no such technology for several more years. Moreover, for the inhabitants of the Earth to be able to see the logo with the naked eye, it must be the size of the state of Texas.
But the company was still able to get closer to space. She signed a contract with the Russian space program. According to him, their logo was applied to the rocket, as well as pizza is regularly delivered to astronauts on the ISS.
3
Nguyen Ngos Loan
On February 1, 1968, a photograph was taken, which in the most vivid way was able to describe all the horrors of the Vietnam war. Photographer Eddie Adams was able to catch the moment of the shot of the commander of the South Vietnamese military police Nguyen Ngos Loan in the head of an unidentified prisoner on the street of Saigon. Photography (which then brought Adams considerable income) became unshakable evidence of the horrors of war. On it you can really see a bullet flying out of a person’s head. For the technology of those times, it was just an incredible photo.
The Vietnam War was not popular with the Americans, but this incident heated anti-war sentiment to the limit. Three months after the incident with the photo, Loan was injured in the fighting, and due to injury, he then lost his right leg.
He was taken to the United States. Although there was talk of his deportation back to South Vietnam as a war criminal. But he and his family were allowed to stay in the United States.
After the war, he opened a pizzeria in a suburb of Virginia, Washington, DC. His restaurant was called the Consolidation of Le Trois, which he led for about 15 years, until the locals knew who he really was. Business declined. According to some reports, Loan regularly found threatening notes. He was forced to close his business. Loan died of cancer in 1998 at the age of 67.
4
Bulletproof vest from the pizza delivery man
In 1969, former infantryman Richard Davis delivered pizza to Detroit when he was attacked. During the shootout, he wounded two attackers, but he himself received two bullet wounds. During treatment, Davis got the idea to create a bulletproof vest.
His idea was not an innovation. Bulletproof vests have been used since the 1500s, but they were bulky and ineffective. It was just heavy sheets of metal.
David, however, sought to create a vest that could be hidden under clothes. He constructed a vest from nylon and called it "second chance". He believed in his vest so much that he went into the police stations and allowed officers to shoot him in the chest with a pistol. So he made an advertisement for his invention.
In the mid-70s, nylon was replaced by Kevlar. This is a synthetic fiber originally designed for use in tires. According to statistics, bulletproof vests saved the lives of more than 2,000 police officers in the United States alone.
5
Danger
Richard Davis survived a clash with the burglars because he was a former Marine and had excellent training. Other pizza deliveries in the US were less fortunate. At first glance, it seems that this is a harmless profession that teenagers often take on; pizza delivery can be extremely dangerous. Robberies and beatings occur every week. Delivery workers are often lured to fake addresses, where they are then attacked. There have been cases of murder and rape. Worst of all, large pizza delivery chains do not allow their employees to carry weapons or other protective equipment. This is what happened after the incident in 2004, when a pizza delivery man shot a robber at work, for which he was fired.
6
30 minutes or less
Domino`s Pizzeria Network began its development at Ann Arbor College in Michigan in 1960. Today it is a huge company with a billion turnover. Domino`s adheres to even more paradoxical advertising strategies than the aforementioned Pizza Hut.
To wipe its competitors' nose and effect customers, the company announced a delivery guarantee of 30 minutes or less. If the pizza does not arrive on time, then it will get completely free. Unfortunately, such a framework into which the company drove itself, forced the suppliers to act recklessly. They often got into accidents, as they were constantly in a hurry.
In 1992, the company paid $ 2.8 million to the family of a Illinois woman whose car smashed into a pizza delivery car. Then there was a case in 1993, when a court ordered the company to pay $ 78.7 million to a woman from Missouri who was also injured in an accident. The company settled the dispute without a court, paying approximately $ 15 million.
7
Noyd
For more advertising, Domino`s created the computer game “Noid Domino`s”. The main villain of the game was a not very attractive gremlin in a red rabbit costume, who in every way prevented the delivery of a 30-minute pizza. Noyd did everything in his power to stop the delivery man, including shooting pizza with a pistol, which turned it into ice. The game was quite popular.
But on January 30, 1989, the game’s history took a truly unexpected turn when a crazy client named Kenneth Lamar burst into Domino`s Pizzeria in Atlanta, Georgia, taking the employees of the pizzeria hostage. Kenneth actually believed that Noyd was chasing him like in a game. The siege lasted five hours. Kenneth demanded $ 100 thousand and a car. During his capture, he forced an employee to make him pizza. Then he fled, but still surrendered to the police. He was accused of several counts, but released, because they recognized him insane.
8
Philip Workman
Phillip Workman attacked one of the Wendy`s restaurant chains while being intoxicated. A restaurant employee managed to press the panic button. When the police arrived, Philip managed to escape. What happened next is still controversial.
Workman claimed that he was running away, but when he saw that the police officers were catching him, he tried to surrender his weapon. At that moment, when the police hit him with a flashlight, the gun suddenly began to shoot involuntarily. The police returned fire, injuring him.
In the incident, Lieutenant Ronald Oliver was killed. The court, which many considered fictitious, eventually sentenced Workman to death. There was some evidence that Lieutenant Oliver had died from the shot of his partner, and Workman was granted a deferral of execution. But the court ruled that evidence was insufficient to initiate a new case.
As a sign of his martyrdom, as a last wish, Workman asked for pizza to be delivered to every homeless person in the prison district. His request was rejected. When the story became public, it got a wide response and hundreds of pizzas went to homeless shelters across the country.
9
O. Jay Simpson
Sunday's Super Bowl in America is considered the day they sell the most pizza. But there were other events that caused a surge in sales.
One of these events was the case of O. Jay Simpson. On June 17, 1994, the entire nation was glued to their televisions, watching a former football star flee from the police with her friend Al Cowlings. Domino`s pizzeria chain reported a sharp increase in pizza sales at a time when a white SUV running away from the police was shown on TV.
A few months later, another rush for pizza was recorded when the moment of the trial and the verdict in the Simpson case was shown on TV. According to company representative Tim McIntyre, the situation changed dramatically in the afternoon, when the verdict was already read. “We could hardly believe it, but not a single pizza was ordered in the United States between 1:00 and 1:05,” he said.
10
Explosive Pizza Delivery Man
The explosive delivery case is one of America’s most bizarre and complicated crimes. On August 28, 2003, Brian Wells, a pizza delivery service employee, broke into a bank in Erie, Pennsylvania. He had a shotgun in his hands, and a makeshift bomb was tied to his neck. Wells demanded 250 thousand, but the box office turned out to be only $ 8,702.
Grabbing money, he ran out to the parking lot, where he was seized by the police. There he began to tell the police a strange story. According to him, he was just delivering pizza to the address when some people grabbed him and tied the bomb to his neck. If he had not agreed to a robbery, he would have been blown up, and here he is an accidental victim of circumstances. A minute before the sappers arrived, a bomb exploded on his neck, killing him.
For many years, this case remained a mystery to the investigation, which was resolved in 2007, when two other participants in the conspiracy were charged.
The Trinity, including the late Wells, originally planned this robbery. Among them was a lady of easy virtue named Margery Dial-Armstrong. The second member was Kenneth Barnes. It was Margery who wrote the story for Wells, in case the police grab him. But Wells believed that the bomb was a fake and did not pose any danger to him. That was not so. Margery and Kenneth specifically told him that the bomb was fake so that all the strings of crime leading to them would break. Wells died - the deed was done.
Dil-Armstrong was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 30 years from above, and Kenneth Barnes received 45 years in prison.
This story will then be used as a plot in many television shows, as well as in the comedy 30 Minutes or Less.