Steam locomotives leaving chemtrails, claims Victorian conspiracy theorist

A CONSPIRACY theorist of 1847 believes new-fangled steam locomotives are spreading trails of gaseous compounds to subdue the brain. 

Silas Finch Hatton, a scrivener from London, has hand-printed bills warning of the network of mind-controlling railway tracks spreading to every corner of Britain.

He said: “Take the words George Stephenson and Rocket Locomotive and add the numerical values of the letters. The total? 835. The fifth line of the 83rd Psalm reads ‘With one mind they plot together’. It could not be more clear.

“Within eight months of the first locomotive arriving in London there was a cholera outbreak in Whitechapel, a dog in Southwark came down with distemper and three chimney sweeps died of malnutrition. Coincidence?

“The menfolk who gather at the stations taking numbers? Clockwork automatons, monitoring the miasma loaded on board at the behest of their overlords Victoria and the Viscount Melbourne.

“You can see the chemtrails puffing out, men more akin to sheep of the field, and yet you gather and bleat! I should not ride a horseless carriage for all the cabbages in Gloucestershire.

“And do not get me started on the smallpox vaccine. It is just the Whig government’s way of subjugating the peasantry.”

Sea monkeys, and other pets you sincerely wished would die

REMEMBER when you asked for a dog and your parents palmed you off with one of these substandard substitutes, all worse than nothing? 

Sea monkeys

How do you sell brine shrimp to kids? Call them sea monkeys and advertise them with a drawing of a wizened, cheerful creature smoking a pipe in a rocking chair. The creator of this con is living in a billion-pound mansion, laughing at children staring at a bowl of ugly little swimming prawns and wonder if anyone would notice if they flushed them.

Stick insects

You wanted to throw a stick for a lovely bouncing Labrador. Instead you were given the f**king stick to look after. In addition to being boring and crap, they bred like crazy so even when the original died you still had 50 disgusting offspring you resented owning and gave away at school.

Goldfish

The ultimate crap pet, a halfway house between animal and plant, bought so you could prove you could look after a pet. Proved the opposite by dying. Your mum swore it recognised her and had a personality, but she was projecting. It provided the companionship of a Birds Eye fish finger.

Gerbil

Hamsters had personality. Gerbils were desert mice on speed that slept all day and pissed all night. Constantly twitching in fear of predators, they couldn’t be played with and weren’t cute. Never actually died, but after escaping the 466th time the family tacitly agreed to stop looking.

Tortoise

Tortoises are cool for maybe the first year. But then they keep living and living and living, if you can call being largely comatose living. If it died then you wouldn’t have to pass this boring curse down generations like a slow-moving, lettuce-munching hereditary disease.