The epidemic whipped into the height of frenzy on this day in 1954 following newspaper reporters and appeals for intervention from local authorities, the state governor and ultimately president Eisenhower, the 
Seattle Windshield Pitting Panic is considered to be a text-book example of mass delusion—sometimes mislabelled as mass hysteria, classed with near contemporary occurrences like Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast—propagated by rumour, mis- and disinformation and mass media when residents of the Washington capital and surrounding communities were invited to closely examine their cars’ windshields and discovered them to be scored with previously unnoticed pits, dents and dings. I recall getting out of a movie once with a lot of car-bombings and in the parking lot of the theatre was inspired to check below the steering column and was petrified to feel a bundle of wires—though quickly calmed down once I realised that I had never before poked around down there. Originally suspected to be a rash of sabotage or vandalism, but the scale and scope quickly lead to other theories arising beyond a conspiracy of hoodlums, sourcing the normal weathering to a range of agents from sand flea eggs hatching, cosmic rays, a nearby large radio transmitter operated by the navy, UFOs, a shift in the Earth’s magnetic field to fallout from nuclear testing. As damage reports preoccupied police, a committee of scientists from the state university was called together to survey cars on campus and compare to reported incidents. Concluding the wear and tear was the result of average road-use, calls to the police abruptly dropped off two days later.
Seattle Windshield Pitting Panic is considered to be a text-book example of mass delusion—sometimes mislabelled as mass hysteria, classed with near contemporary occurrences like Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast—propagated by rumour, mis- and disinformation and mass media when residents of the Washington capital and surrounding communities were invited to closely examine their cars’ windshields and discovered them to be scored with previously unnoticed pits, dents and dings. I recall getting out of a movie once with a lot of car-bombings and in the parking lot of the theatre was inspired to check below the steering column and was petrified to feel a bundle of wires—though quickly calmed down once I realised that I had never before poked around down there. Originally suspected to be a rash of sabotage or vandalism, but the scale and scope quickly lead to other theories arising beyond a conspiracy of hoodlums, sourcing the normal weathering to a range of agents from sand flea eggs hatching, cosmic rays, a nearby large radio transmitter operated by the navy, UFOs, a shift in the Earth’s magnetic field to fallout from nuclear testing. As damage reports preoccupied police, a committee of scientists from the state university was called together to survey cars on campus and compare to reported incidents. Concluding the wear and tear was the result of average road-use, calls to the police abruptly dropped off two days later.
synchronoptica
seven years ago: Thousand Insects of Japan plus creative anatomies
eight years ago: illustrator Boris Artzybasheff
nine years ago: more words with no English equivalent
eleven years ago: Banksy graffiti at the GCHQ plus sea water to fuel
