The world's littlest skyscraper was a massive scam
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- Опубликовано: 15 дек 2019
- In Wichita Falls, Texas, the Newby-McMahon Building stands 480 inches tall. Not 480 feet: 480 inches. There's a story of a smooth-talking scammer that sounds almost too good to be true. But is it?
Thanks to Jan and all the folks at Hello Again: helloagainwf.com - and to everyone at the Wichita Falls Library!
Edited by Michelle Martin (@mrsmmartin)
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And to answer the question at the end: yes, I did make it to the airport in time!
epic
2 weeks ago
I like that they still call it a skyscraper.
Wrong you were hit by a lorry whilst filming in the middle of the road. You think you are alive, but are really just in the queue for heaven.
At least you are honest about being unable to find sources because so many others don't have accurate sources but steamroll ahead and even treat fiction as fact, keep up the good work
it would be worth $3 million in london
Thats true
It wouldnt exist in London the land might be worth 3 million but the building would have been knocked down for something actually 48 stories tall by now.
Shaun Toochaos Waw so clever I never thought of that
@@shauntoochaos235 but the land would be to small for a 48 story building so it would exist
The rooms wouldn't be as big in London.
imagine that line on your gravestone "drowned in a house-fire" must be weird
If it happened to me, I'd say it was almost worth it for the sheer weirdness factor.
"Drowned in a House fire" sounds like a band name.
"They died by fire
But they felt no heat"
@@adenowirus "The building wasn't higher, and so they couldn't retreat"
@@natesmodelsdoodles5403 no one would go there
Plot twist: The other 44 floors are under ground and the door is locked.
👁 👁
👃
👅
Creepy twist: and *for a good reason too*
@@TheWinjin The Wichita Fallen are trapped down there.
and its seems as if the joblins want to go out
DONT DEAD OPEN INSIDE
Tom, something to realize about small town newspapers... Small towns are competitive against each other, and the newspapers often act as boosters, only telling the good news. Having some prominent town citizens get lampooned for falling for a scam is a bad business model for a small-town newspaper. It doesn't surprise me that this story was not in the paper.
Exactly
Then perhaps the answer to this problem would be to look at the archives of newspapers in neighboring rival towns.
Also the newspaper owner could have had ties with the scam artist. Since the beginning of printing press news has been a lie. Kind of funny how he wants that article so bad.
The news just interview people. So it’s the same as the rumors of the locals. It’s all anecdotal
He could try to go back through the court records. If there was a lawsuit there is some data at least on a fixed date that we know is factual.
I'd love to turn that into a residence and tell everyone I owned a skyscraper and I lived on the top 4 floors.
Now that is a perfect plan
I have heard it isn't in a very good part of town
It’s all about perception. 😎
I tried to buy an old bank from the 40s to convert into a home but the city of Jacksonville FL wouldn’t allow it to be zoned as a residence.
Bottom floor was nothing more than a receptionist desk, staircase, elevator and small lobby. It was three stories tall. Idk what the other floors were like but it was plenty big enough to be renovated into a home. And it had roof access so I could still have a “back yard”. Would have made an awesome house.
@@youtubeisbroken241 Lie. Put a...I don't know, 5-and-10 shop where you sell garage sale level crap on one floor, live in the top two. :)
It’s not a skyscraper, it’s a skyscratcher.
Or a skyscuffer!
A skymisser
Skytickler
@@pickledpopo3153 dang beat me to it!
A scratch would be bigger than a scrape.
We were driving through Florida when we saw "Visit the biggest waterfall in Florida!" We paid $10 bucks for access when we finally located the "waterfall", It was a small creek with a sinkhole and the tiniest amount of water flowing into it.
@@gaelurquiz5755 yes they did
@@David001 no, they didn't. they said "big*gest*", in relation to others, but in no way self-describing. Given the choice between stabbing your throat, or your heart, stabbing your throat is the SAFEST one out of the two, but is in no way safe at all.
@@David001 sucks to be mentally challenged, huh?
@@CDCHexaku woah there socrates
classic prank
I am a resident of Wichita falls and I have to say we love our skyscraper it may have been a scam but it's our scam I love how much attention our little town is getting recently.
‘…. it may have been a scam but it's our scam’
…and I love your thinking, lmao 🤣👌
Wichita Falls is most certainly not a little town hahahaha
@@theSato compared to most places in texas it's a smaller sized town
It's a solid scam. Brick wall and everything.
Me on Tinder when I say I'm taller than 6"
Ye got me. The same way the scammer got to scam the investors.
... as the legend goes
Erick Wright 6 cm? 6 m? wtf does that even mean
@@taikajorma7276 Due to Poe's law, I'm unsure if that's a joke or not.
Albus Dumbledore 6 feet
Tom is actually standing immediately next to the building.
Good job Boog
The whole “focus” thing seemed a little sketchy..
What is that supposed to mean
Immediately? Isn’t that used for time? Like “Immediately after...”? Is this supposed to be a joke or did you accidentally use the wrong word and meant “exactly”
Sack Of Potatoes That’s what I’m thinking
I read it as 48” instead of 480” and I was so confused how they made a model building look so realistic
It's only a model.
- Shhh!
As someone whose mother grew up in Wichita Falls, I found it fitting how quickly Tom wanted to get out of Wichita Falls at the end.
My personal guess is that they had plans that said "Each standard floor will be like this" and therefore they didn't have to state that there would only be four floors.
Looking at the side wall, it seems like it was added on afterwards.
I work in construction and that’s usually what happens. Theres a floor drawing that will often just be the same floor duplicated X amount of times and then there will be another drawing showing a facade. Between the two it would be easy to con someone who wasn’t picking up on a simple thing like this. Or they’d just presume it was a mistake but didn’t think that’s what they were actually getting.
@@SammyInnit
Yay! I guessed something remotely plausible!
You just made my year! Or hour. We'll see.
Even if. It's 48 Stories and a plan for 48 Stories without an elevator shaft should raise some eyebrows.
@@akshatprakash871 Common sense was already a thing back then. This building looks insanely tiny. And paying $3 million while not mentioning the amount of floors makes no sense whatsoever either.
"The boom was followed by a bust and by the great depression."
Ouch.
I felt that as well.
:(
* Oof.
@@stevenkelby2169 I'm not a zoomer.
@@Number_055 who asked
Thank you, Tom, for championing Primary Sources. That’s the good kind of old school- doing due diligence to get your facts (and story) straight. Also thanks for the fun little bit of trivia- I had never previously heard of this “smallest skyscraper”, but will definitely try to see that someday!
Watching this guy is a great way to learn how research is actually done. Not by looking for people who agree with you.
I have a small skyscraper in my pants every morning when I wake up. 🤣
Ya some of the other youtubers just spew nonsense
Back in the 80's Canada went to the metric system. We had a lot of fun trying to figure out the measurement for construction as the industry was still producing in inches and feet but we were drawing in metric. The best cartoon was the bridge that was started in imperial on one side and metric on the other. In the middle they played catch-up with the materials.
And people wonder why the US still holds on to imperial, could you imagine the nightmare…actually I guess you can you lived through it in Canada 😅
it caused a Canadian airliner to run out of fuel mid flight as someone screwed up the metric conversion. True story. Fortunately the pilots glided the aircraft to a disused runway and everyone survived.
An American who was never taught metric screwed up the calculations and was responsible for the Hubble telescope lens to be ground incorrectly, resulting in a second space mission to correct the error. Everyone else on the international team had no issues. Billions were lost. Oopsie. Here in Canada, when we see Americans counting feet and inches, we look at you the same way you look at the British when they tell you they weigh 12 stone. Time to move into the future kids. The British 'Stone" was exactly that. Weighing rocks. Feet and inches were based off of human body parts.
Been on engineering and construction as designer: we lead the projects in millimeters but where building materials are considered, we make sure to point out the imperial sizes.
Wow. As a Canadian born in the 80's I never knew that. I looked up Metrication in Canada on Wikipedia just now...
As an engineer, I can firmly say that on the blueprints, you can add a note on the edge calling out what units you are using. Then you can place your dimensions all over the place without having to say 10' or 10". It just reads 10. I can TOTALLY see this happening.
I’m graduating from engineering school in a few weeks. I agree - This could absolutely happen.
Maybe meters is a better option?
@@GamingOS Only the outcome would be more hilarious
That's probably why in Europe, in most (if not all) blueprints, the milimeter is the basic unit of measurement. You don't write 10 milimeters, you don't write 10mm, you just write 10. Drawing something big? Tough luck, better change the scale, that thing's 30000 long.
@@dydlus Reason number 53532 that the US should switch to metric..... The far superior system.... (said as a US resident and imperial system hater.)
I love how your thesis for this video is essentially “I couldn’t find any primary sources for this story, but I already booked a flight and an interview so screw you look at this cool tiny building”
*ha*
*guffaw*
@shahzeb ali I dont think you left this comment where you meant to
@@Chomuggaacapri *bold*
@@Chomuggaacapri *why *
What I love about this (and his other) video(es) is that he is very up front about what he can, and can not, find in the way of supporting facts for these stories. Modern folklore seems to be severely underappreciated these days and Tom is bringing a lot of them into the light. The verifiability of them is less important than the telling of the folklore story. Safe travels Tom!!
The blue print probably only had the main floor and one floor drawn with 'all floors same as' written underneath.
If it was target of lawsuits, the city courthouse should have records.
This was my thought, also. City and County court records, maybe even state court records could be the best authoritative source if the lawsuit existed.
The courthouse should also have property ownership records and when transactions occurred.
@@BernardS4 That would be a good way to get names. The lawsuit may have been filed in the county where the transactions took place rather than where the building was built. Dallas would be the most likely place to look, or maybe also Houston. The deal may have taken place as far away as NYC. Also might be a good idea to look up what field operating companies were doing business there and check company archives if the companies are still around.
@@Bacopa68 701 La Salle in downtown Wichita Falls, Texas
@Kalev Bischof Weiß When was the last time a US court house burned down for no reason?
When I'm teaching history to 9th graders, I define _apocryphal_ as "A story that probably isn't true, but is too good a story not to pass on." Which is kind of how folklore happens
That's a lovely and charming definition, and I'm probably going to use it. Thanks!
@@K4inan how is that misleading? The standard definition is "(of a story or statement) of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true."
@@K4inan - How so?
@@IanGrams Oh... In my native language it has another definition aswell, sorry.
Never let facts get in the way of a good story.
That is the basic story I remember from growing up. In my 60's now and my grandparents lived there starting in about 1910. I have some old newspapers from the centennial (Wichita Falls Paper, Times and Record News). I'll look them up from storage and see if I can find what they mentioned about it, if it is in there. Will let you know if I find anything out, great video.
Were you able to find anything?
Did you find anything?
Found anything?
I lived in the Wichita Falls area for many years. This story is told often, but then the details never get mentioned and everything else is vague. I've often wondered if it was because some notable person was involved and chose to have the details covered up.
*A short poem by Tom Scott:*
I haven't got long;
It is the end of the day,
i'm losing the light.
I've got to drive on,
and then catch a flight
Take my like.. You earned it...
Gold
A short poem by TheTroll Mastah
I once cared about what I wrote
I thought only water
Could float my boat,
So I sit here
And you sit there,
I type this ‘cause life ain’t fair
Brilliant!
@@TheTrollMastah your mother lays mad pipe bro 🥺
Tom: "ONE TAKE, ONE TAKE!"
The driver: **sweating a lot**
"Oh not again"
Puts "True Detective" season 1 episode 4's long take to shame
"WE'LL DO IT LIVE"
@@CS2architecture To be fair, Tom didn't have to do 6 minutes of running and fighting whilst doing this :P
My father has a particular phrase he is fond of. "Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story." Seems it could be appropriate here.
I've heard James Carville use that one as well. No sure the origin though.
This is in my hometown and I've actually been in it. Its so incredibly tiny.
It's weird seeing a familiar place being highlighted on the internet, at least for me it is.
"In the end, we all become stories"
well in the end this tale was only 4 stories, not 48
What a pun
I came to the comment section to find a pun involving stories and I am pleased
You got me good
It's not a very tall tale.
@@crunglemcbungley An unusually short one, in fact.
0:05
"It is the end of the day,
I'm losing the light,
I gotta drive on
and then catch a flight."
Tom is spitting some proper bars here 🔥🔥🔥
bars 😂
“Tom Skatman”
"i don't want it to be night,
Cuz I'll lose the flight,
So catch on
Or break the ice"
Alternate parts could have included:
"Investors lined up,
the building couldn't be beat,
But the blueprints were in inches
where they thought it was in feet.
JD McMahon bolted
and I'm in a similar plight
Cuz I got not enough time
to reach my Dallas flight."
BARS
Absolutely love your channel's whole vibe, Tom. Thoroughly enjoying the stuff you investigate and come up with. Candid journalistic no-nonsense matter of fact (or not as the case may be) keep up the great work.
I've seen other/anecdotal information suggesting that sometimes, a comparatively small building may be constructed as an architectural study in the type of materials and/or manner of construction, in order to inform a much larger project. It's always possible that a project never progressed beyond a "demonstration" building.
Was really hoping he'd end it with "Everyone ends up as a story, this one ended up as 4"
hehe
I was realy suprised there was no story joke at the end.
This would have been brilliant. 10/10 pun
That’s an awesome line ! Nice
this made me smile so wide, I live in Wichita County. It's a funny story, and we're still a thriving community thanks to Sheppard AFB, it's the largest Air education and training base and they get people from around the world that come here for training. BTW, you're awesome Tom Scott
It looks really quaint, I wouldn't mind living there.
Tom trying to fact check this story: "impossible, perhaps the archives are incomplete"
ា Omg it don’t say minus 1 lmao. It says e i pi. I think it’s a maths reference vro
If it’s not in our children’s book it doesn’t exist
So are all of you guys ignoring his star wars reference
@@korloq8968 As soon as I heard it I rushed to the comment section.
GENERAL KENOBI
"Ripley's Believe It or Not is not a reliable primary source."
How. Dare. You.
This was the only reason I checked the comments. You're doing God's work sir
believe it or not
That notwithstanding, I did check right through the Contents pages of my ancient "Omnibus Believe It Or Not".
Believe it or not, a blow of a hammer can freeze water! And guess how "phtholognyrrh" is pronounced !
Couldn't spot any mention of Wichita Falls though.
That's why the or not is there
Impossible. Perhaps the archives are incomplete
I've seen stuff like this too many times. Usually the investors are cocky and trying to cut corners so they don't hire their own engineer or architect to review the plans.
Im from not very far from Wichita Falls, born and raised, 30 years and ive never heard of this building
I love how you ended saying we are all stories. I see a missed opportunity though. This building has become a story. A four story building!
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk
I think lots of things and now im thinking about this :
Four staged of a criminal drama.
nice
i was looking for this pun... thanks
*smug smile*
Lesson learned:
Always double check the blueprints before investing $3 million
Especially today; where computers are another factor in error making.
Case in point the CAD technician whom sent out building plans to the construction firm with the foundations *upside down* . Nobody realized until that build phase was done, meaning that stage of the building work had to be redone from scratch.
In theory such an error was unheard of in the prior physical TD era; though chiefly because more eyes tended to see the plans, and a single action couldn't invert entire objects on the plans.
(without the old trope of holding them upside down of course XD)
This and other daft yet costly errors; are going nowhere soon.
@@jimtaylor294 UPSIDE DOWN WHAT?! HOW DID THEY NOT NOTICE THAT?
@@almostcertainlynotapotato6528 Good question XD.
The apparent reason why it was missed was as simple as less pairs of eyes seeing the drawings [relative to an oldschool technical drawing office] between their production on CAD, to being delivered to the building firm in print form.
@@almostcertainlynotapotato6528 : Likely someone did, and just didn't point out that the stem walls were missing because they didn't want to deal with it. Everyone else wasn't thinking about the foundation, but instead were wondering why the architect had chosen a weird style with a concrete lip sticking out of the wall part way up.
Rookie mistake. 😅
Well done, I've lived in this town for most of my life and you've got the story right. It's funny that I just happen to cross this video by chance.
I was wondering about the lady's accent, is it typical of the region?
I doubt that you just came across this by chance. The 'machine' is monitoring everything and 'It' decided that this story was right for you.
Ya'll Take Care and be safe, John
@@JohnDoe-pv2iuthanks, john
As someone who has drafted a few blueprints, I could totally make this building as blueprint and hide the fact that it's a scam. Have a global blueprint for it's external dimensions, then use a sample floor blueprint to indicate what pattern would be repeated for each floor, and you can easily hide how many floors the building would have.
Tom Scott: "Impossible. Perhaps the archives are incomplete."
Ripley's Believe it or Not: "If an item does not appear in our records, it does not exist."
Thank you i was looking for a comment like this.
agh, you beat me
I bought a croissant yesterday, Ripley, what time is stamped on the receipt? Checkmate.
Ah yes a Star Wars meme reference
Believe it, or not
I would love to have that as my house. "Why yes, my house is 4 stories tall"
It's cool to say, but annoying to live in. Not that fun when you have to go down 4 floors to go to the toilet, lock the front door, etc.
they now build townhouses exactly like this, so yes, you can live in a small skyscraper
I live in Wichita Falls and have been in it several times. It’s sooooo tiny. The video makes it look huge in comparison. It truly is mostly stairs on the inside
My house is 5 stories tall 😂😂😂😂
4 are habitable, and a roof :3
Houses in Morocco are usually 3 stories tall ... the more you know
I grew up in a 5 story house (counting above ground basement). Not much fun to live in. Of course that's partially because it's an A-frame style house, so each floor is half sloped walls and gets smaller the further up you go.
Ah yes, my hometown of Wichita Falls. Famous for having the world's smallest skyscraper and putting Dr. Phil on the map. What a profound legacy!
It's like the Stone Henge model in 'Spinal Tap', but in reverse! Eighteen inches should have been eighteen feet but the set builder made the set exactly according to the sketch on the napkin. The store should sell amplifiers that turn up to eleven!
exactly what I was thinking laksjdks
I was about three years old or so when I lived in Wichita Falls. I was very small for a human. Oddly, after leaving that small town in the Texas panhandle plains, I grew steadily to be several times that size. This should suggest that perhaps if they could transport the building away from that smallish town, it might grow to its proper size. It worked for me.
Makes sense
@@joeyhammer1998 Thanks for the reply. I actually did live there when I was a little kid. And it is also true that I did get a lot bigger. Life is full of mysteries, ain't it? Cheers.
*_"To a rat, a bat is an angel."_*
~~ R.F. _"Steamboat"_ Willie
@@paradisepipeco :)
we should just take the whole building, and push it somewhere else!
Dear Jones, your mom told me you never grew up.
It's really cool seeing that someone like Tom Scott was in my town. I've seen that building so many times. Thanks for stopping in Wichita!
I was born there, I was like “yo that’s kinda cool”
I live there yo that’s kinda cool
I was born there toooooooo but I moved to Florida last December
I've heard of it, so I was like, cool!
Is Wichita Falls, Texas pronounced the same way as Wichita, Kansas: "wichiTAW"?
Thank you, Tom Scott! I live in Texas, and to see you report on this building (which I too went out of my way to visit) is much appreciated!
"Every story ever told really happened. Stories are where memories go when they're forgotten."
Doctor Who!
This building looks like a normal residential building in the Netherlands, Amsterdam specifically
Eduardo Rivero Mejía no one asked
@@mayday4599 I did
zamboni where?
;} in his head
;} no one asked for you to say no one asked
What a lovely and well spoken lady.
That's a rude thing to say to Tom!
I prefer when she's dressed in red.
I was a bit confused for a second
wut😂
Shes nice irl :0
Plot Twist : The building actually has 48 stories and what we are seeing are the actual top 4 stories of the building. 1:15
In my experience, which is fairly extensive, more problems on a construction project are caused by people not reading the blueprints carefully, than any other single factor.
If every sky scraper is scraping the sky, then every time a taller one gets built the sky gets higher.
Nah, the sky is just at different heights at different locations. In fact, most of the planning budget for a skyscraper nowadays goes to finding a plot of land where the building fits underneath the sky.
@@ThomasdenHollander wow, that's really interesting, I actually didn't know that
@@campi832
I suspect that was a joke.
And there is only ever one skyscraper in the world at a time!
@@festethephule7553 no, THAT was the joke
Stuff like this makes me really appreciate historians. You went through a bunch of work to find an answer to such a minor question and came up blank anyway---how do we even know ANYTHING about history? It's impressive.
For my BA I had 2 courses in Historical theory, another one in my MA, and if I went for a Phd I would have had another one.
RedKrossSquad ok?
@@RedKrossSquad I have a theoretical degree in history.
Because it's continuous. Not all history has to be explored by historians to be known, just stories from old people's grandparents.
@@RedKrossSquad I think we were all hoping you'd provide some insight into the epistemology of historical record, but instead you bragged about your education. Well done. *golf clap*
i know this is an older video but as someone who works in construction i can assure you they would definitely miss that sort of obvious detail and much more.
Spent a lot of time in Wichita Falls due to the Air Force. I’ve stood in this very spot. Crazy to think a small town in the middle of nowhere has caught the attention of a British RUclipsr to the point it’s brought him there.
"I've got about... not enough time"
me everyday, after 5 hours of procrastinating
Truth
I feel like this is a challenge that CGPgrey would spend a year or two on...
😂
And plan a road trip for.
I love how both grey and Scott got sucked into making a video on topics they found interesting but they just turned out to be folklore
@@manaspradhan8041 Well and that one spend a few hours on it and the other one... months?
@@leocurious9919 1 year and two transAtlantic flights😭
‘Those who don’t learn from history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat them’
-Nigel Tufnel
Techdiff talked about the guy who sold the Eiffel tower. Twice. I can totally believe that someone with tons of money and no understanding of how even to read a blueprint got scammed.
It's come full circle..my mom just accidentally purchased miniature rolls of toilet paper on eBay...
that's... very sad..
@@maruftim no..sad was when my dog died..the tiny toilet paper rolls were funny..
How ... miniature are we talkin' here? Dollhouse? Or just disappointing?
A few years ago my mother accidentally bought 600 rolls of toilet paper instead of 60...
@@imogenekoch2151 wow.."ok kids eat up and get to pooping.."
“I've sold skyscrapers to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook, and by gum, it put them on the map!”
Shelbyville Rules
Marge - “But Main Street's still all cracked and Brokem!”
Bart - “Sorry Mom, but the mob has spoken”
Towns people - “Skyscraper! Skyscraper! Skyscraper!”
Everyoneone - “SKYSCRAPER!”
Homer - “Mono...D’oh!”
@@tenraek "Forget it, Mom, the mob has spoken!"
Way to completely misquote something that is widely available on the internet you plank.
Sounds more like a Shelbyville kind of idea.
😂
Thanks for sharing this with us. We appreciate you.
Anyone else thinking of the Stonehenge prop in "This Is Spinal Tap"?
Tom : the archives are incomplete.
But tom, if an item does not appear on our records, it does not exist.
Kush Patel
Nice reference!
Noticed it too and was almost disappointed. You saved the comment section!
Tom hasn’t learnt about google then ... when I was at college we had to learn stuff but yet google and even books had nothing on it to help and so had to ask teacher
The building doesn't exist....
Lost the primary sources, Ripley’s has. How embarrassing!
Similarly to the feet/inches story, every city has a story about a university library that was designed without considering the weight of the books, or a hotel with a pool without considering the weight of the water. It's funny enough to get spread around as common lore without any basis.
@Dominique Hardie "every city has a story" doesn't mean it's true. Just that someone said it and it was believable and funny enough to be passed around
Or someone buys a grand piano, forgetting about its weight - larger grand pianos may weigh half a ton or even more, and if you're unlucky, that's enough to put a remarkable strain on the statics of the building.
@Java Monsoon could find no mention of it, what's it about?
Billiard tables normally contain thick stone slabs and ideally require a very level floor, so it's more common to see them on the ground floor or below.
As a Umass Amherst student, I can agree with this one. Look up the Dubois library.
"The archives are incomplete!" Kenobi
Thanks for sharing that story with us!
"and oh how they danced, the little children of Stone'enge. Beneath the haunted moon for fear that daybreak might come too soon"
*mandolin plucks*
Spinal tap, right?
"I don't think the problem was that the band was off...I think the problem was that we had a Stonehenge monument in danger of being crushed... by a dwarf."
This comment needs to be higher up
@@midwestconcertvideo That tended to understate the hugeness of the object.
I have absolutely no ideas what this comment means, what it implies or what it is referring to, I’m just happy that I saw someone mentioning my instrument, the mandolin.
Mythology in the Bronze age: "The Thunder is the gods being angry!"
Mythology now: "Some rich guys confused '' with ' ."
I know, modern myths are a lot more scary.
This odd rock came about because Loki met businessmen with a penchant for not reading blueprints carefully
The processes by which mythologies and deities are far more complex. And just may be the most complex thing we do.
There's plenty of mythology that's about people being hoodwinked by a fast-talker, basically anything involving Anasazi or Loki
Wasn't that used in "This Is Spinal Tap!" and taken from a claimed actual incident in rock scene building? Confusion whether quotes or double quotes stand for feet or inches is apparently easy even if it wasn't over 40 years since my last HS drafting/mechanical drawing class.
It grinds my gears that this building is called "littlest skyscraper." Shouldn't the adjective be "shortest" or "smallest" rather?
It's imbued with an overabundance of littlitude.
it's in Texas. They called everything littlest
Exhibit A: the whorehouse
You've got such a great energy!
Me: Mom can we have a Skyscraper?
Her: We have a Skyscraper at home
The Skyscraper at home:
This is the worst thing i have ever seen used with this format but i love it
yes
@@Josuh Wait Until You See "Can We Have The Entire Earth?".
Bro I live in Wichita Falls and have seen the skyscraper beforw
I never get tired of these comments 😆
I think the inches -> feet part makes a lot more sense if you apply it to the width instead of the height. I agree with Tom that a planned building of 40+ stories would have made the contemporary news, as the biggest buildings being built at the time were 10 stories at most. I also don't buy that a 40+ story skyscraper could have been pitched as costing $200K. Even for 1919 money, that is laughably small. For reference, the Kent hotel, an 8-story building that was constructed in the same year and is mentioned in the skyline article shown in the video, was written about as costing $600K.
Maybe the promoter sold them a building at 4 stories tall costing $200,000, but scammed them by telling them it would be 50 ft wide when it's only 50 inches wide (or whatever the number.) If an 8-story hotel costs $600K, then a 4-story building for $200K seems reasonable, and also lines up with the sizes of the buildings going up in Wichita Falls at the time (in 1919 the aforementioned hotel was built along with 2 ten-story banks and another 6-story office building, all of which have contemporary newspaper accounts of their construction with no mention of any 40 story building being planned.) Before all these buildings went up the largest building in the area was the Westland Hotel which was 5 stories in height and located basically across the street from where this "Littlest Skyscraper" is built today. A building twelve times the height of this one would have been ludicrous and cost a lot more than $200K.
Maybe they thought it would be 4 stories high on the whole propery, so the walls that directly connect to it on the side would be all part of it...
Greed is a powerful motivator and the tool of almost every conman. How many people send off money to a Nigerian prince everyday. The investors building this would jump at this proposal a necessary element. If he charged the actual value too many eyes would run over the drawings and more likely to get caught. Also not surprising that the newspapers didn't have anything this would have been quick as already stated and the power players involved probably had the power and certainly motivation to keep it out of the papers after the fact.
The building was built in 1919, not 1819! A 10 story building would have been a small "skyscraper" in 1919! Even in little 'ol Pittsburgh,PA. we had many building taller than 20 floors before 1910.
Yep, came to echo what @jamesslick4790 said. In 1919, the tallest building in the world was the Woolworth Building in Manhattan: 60 floors and nearly 800 feet tall, opened in 1913. A proposed 40-storey tower in Texas would have been local-newsworthy, but might not have garnered much outside attention.
That said, I agree that nobody with a hint of sense would have believed you could have a 40-storey office tower for just $200k. (Going back to the Woolworth Building, its price tag was $13.5 million--close to $400 million today.)
Victor Lustig struck again!
I appreciate all of your efforts and your honesty. Thank you for this fun little video :)
At the beginning of this video, I thought the twist was going to be that the opening shot was forced perspective, and it was actually only like seven feet tall.
3:43
"Impossible. Perhaps the archives are incomplete."
or perhaps someone deleted it from the records. truly dangerous and disturbing this situation is.
"A building full of two steps of stairs" is so funny
I think MC Escher would have approved though...
I feel like in the UK we would have that building. Or the old building would have been knocked down once it couldnt be used. We would not have any sort of compromise.
@@calvinjonesyoutube We'd have simply had smaller stairs... or some really weird technicality which could be counted as stairs.
Many bell towers are buildings that consist solely of stairs except for the very top.
They could have put fire escape stairs on the outside. So i dont reallyget that. Unless they put a good story and esthetics over safety
This is delightful! I grew up in the state of Arkansas in the US and there was a furniture store in a neighboring small town that would advertise itself as being located "in Sherwood's only skyscraper, two stories high!" :)
Scott; you'd be surprised about what gets overlooked by contractors, developers, investors etc... Not scrutinizing the plans seems like a tale as old as time
This is like the Stone Henge scene from Spinal Tap.
All it's missing are the dancing elves.
The train at the end was a scam as well. The investor thought "two cars" meant it'd have 2 passenger cars, but it just meant two engine cars. Now that train just wanders along the countryside, serving no purpose.
Just unlink them and buy cars for them boom
Engines are far more expensive then passenger cars, that would be one hell of a deal
I'm just imagining that building being filled with servers, covered with advertisements, and topped with a cellular tower, making it's owner a lot of money.
I would have gone to the court house not library. The lawsuit should have court records from what you said.
"I think the problem may have been that there was a Stonehenge monument on stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf. That tended to understate the hugeness of the object."
- This is Spinal Tap
SomeThrillingHeroics I had to scroll way too far to find this.
"And so the two armies united under one goal to invade the planet of origin of the disruption.
However, they got the scale slightly wrong and the entire armada was accidentally swallowed by a small dog"
- The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (more or less)
It would have been better in Dubley.
@@simonf3503 I second that, for the life of me I can't figure out why Tom Scott chose the monorail reference over that one.
Tapped in for the Spinal Tap reference, leaving satisfied.
My guess is that the building is actually an old fire hall. They were sometimes built with towers so they could dry hoses. One way to see if this is true is too find some old map or zoning regulation and see what was the intended purpose of that land.
it doesnt have the barn door style front end you would have in a firehouse building...even if the front of the building had been redone at some point, there would be evidence of the barn door openings in the brickwork
@@grimmace9081 isn’t it not actually wide enough to fit a fire truck in it? So the proper firehouse could have been next door.
@@cjeam9199 Horse-drawn fire wagons were not very wide.
@@Dudemon-1 The original fire house where I live is still standing, it’s not that narrow and it dates back to horse drawn days.
It looks more like practice for firefighters. They would make building like this, where they would train.
It’s ironic in a state where everything is supposedly the ‘biggest’ that this exists. Thanks Tom!
One other point against its ever being sold as a 48-story skyscraper: It’s made of structural brick. You can clad a steel-framed building in brick, but you can’t build an all-brick building very high without making the walls too thick to be practical. The tallest brick building in the world, the Monadnock Building, is only 16 stories high, and its walls are massive. An all-brick skyscraper three times that height would be a monster with very little space on the lower floors for anything but more brick.
That's a point but it could very easily be that investors who get duped by building scams are also not good at engineering.
This almost feels like a Two Of These People Are Lying video where Tom is trying to judge Gary's story on its truthfulness.
+GigglingChinchilla I can’t believe that Gary made his own building just to fool Tom!
The inches instead of feet detail does sound like something Chris would make up but only because that happened in some obscure place in London.
[citation needed]
"Tom Visits Small Towns And Ruins Local History" should be a series at this point
I live there and this ruined nothing
The British are at it again
These days every time he says "It's a great story" ... I feel myself tensing up.
Thanks Tom. You're great.
I can't believe this is a real life Spinal Tap situation.
I lived in Wichita Falls when I was in high school, this is still a common story people talks about
But what High school? Better not be Old High or we will have some beef. -Kid who went to Rider
Which witch in Wichita falls when the witch witch of Wichita Falls which way?
martk fartkerson Yes
@@darthinvaderzimm The correct response was "chair". Chair. As written on the moon. C-H-A--
@@theagelessone3123 It was the Old High...
I've sold skyscrapers to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and by gum, it put them on the map!
keios
“It’s more of a Shelbyville idea...”
North haverbrook... Where have I heard that name before...
Oh no? Oh no!!!
@@logoseven3365 we're twice as smart as the people of Shelbyville. Just tell us your idea and we'll vote for it!
Just cause 3
Great story tom told with great entuseasim for the tag line.
I was literally going to say "I wonder if they had their own Monorail and an Escalator to nowhere", then you mentioned the Simpsons Monorail as I was about to post.