On August 24th, 1910, from atop the 555 foot Washington Monument, White Sox pitcher Ed Walsh threw 23 balls before C Billy Sullivan snared one. Sullivan then caught two more, It duplicated Gabby Street’s catch of August 21, 1908. The estimated speed of the ball was 161 feet per second. The White Sox catcher, after feeling the 200-to-300 pound force that the balls gained in their vertical descent, nixed the idea of trying to catch a ball tossed from a plane.

Long before TikTok, people also did a lot of random and stupid things and recorded them. In the 1910s newspapers photographed things like Ed Walsh throwing balls to Billy Sullivan. Today we skip the newspaper photographer, people just post things directly .

The inspiration for trying weird things and recording them is a complex combination of several weird human attributes. It is part attention-seeking, part curiosity, part boredom-relief, part basic fun-lovingness, and finally part temporary-insanity.

Certainly trying to catch a ball thrown from 550 feet in the air required some amount of temporary insanity. That a group of people thought it might be a good idea to try do it in the first place is further proof that human stupidity multiplies exponentially.

Sullivan was stupid enough to try the trick once. Luckily he did not get hurt. It was enough of an experience for him to conclude that he was not going to compound the mistake by doing it again from even a further distance.

Sometime people learn from their mistakes. Sometimes not so much. Human stupidity is a pernicious thing after all. Like the number of my fellow Americans thinking that maybe it would be a good idea to put Trump back in power again. What could possibly go wrong this time?