Yesterday on Slog, I mentioned the historian Alan J. Stein, and today I have another gift from him: Have you ever heard of the epidemic that hit Seattle’s cars in 1954?
The sheer number of damaged windshields ruled out hoodlums, and experts were at a loss as to the cause of these strange pits and holes appearing out of nowhere. On Whidbey Island, Sheriff Tom Clark postulated that radioactivity released by recent H-bomb tests in the South Pacific was peppering windshields. Geiger counters were run over windshield glass, and also over persons who had touched the pit marks, but all were free of radioactivity. Still, the sheriff held firm that “no human agency” could have created the scars left on the glass.
