• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, June 6, 2005

Following press reports that former FBI official W. Mark Felt would receive offers in the millions for a peek down his deep throat, inbound calls from others wanting to reveal great secrets of the 20th century have melted down PBX switchboards and crashed news Web sites.

Among those willing to betray long-standing promises of confidentiality in exchange for large cash advances from publishers and the chance to meet Mark Burnett:

John Pemberton VII, great-great-great-grandson of the inventor of Coca-Cola, says that the critics were right all along: "It really IS sugar water, with a little caramel coloring. The real secret was keeping the cocaine urban myth alive for a hundred years and keeping teenagers convinced that combining Coca-Cola and aspirin will get you high!"

Former catalog model Algonquin J. Calhoun confirmed that indeed it was his manhood peeking out from boxer shorts in Sears' 1975 Fall-Winter catalog.

In spite of an official explanation that the "object" was a blemish caused by water or some other liquid falling onto the artwork during the printing process, Calhoun says: "What can I tell you, I'm hung like a horse."

Harlan Sanders, Jr. promises to reveal the heretofore secret mix of herbs and spices in KFC food. "Basically it was just some salt and pepper, some egg and flour and some wood dust we used to put on the floor to absorb spills, especially chicken innards."

East Jesus, Iowa ice cream counter girl Windy Mallard is circulating a book proposal in which she promises to reveal that in fact there are not 31 flavors at Baskin-Robbins, where she worked for three years in high school. "We just took vanilla and added food coloring or put our lunch bag leftovers in a blender and sprinkled in the results. Those were the daily 'specials'."

Ad Age columnist Bob Garfield is ready to reveal that he copied his well-regarded Chaos Scenario column from his junior high school daughter's Mass Communications midterm paper. "Geez, she's about a hundred times smarter than me. I just copied her files onto one of those little key ring UBS storage thingies and took it to work. It's been great for my speaking fees. I bought her a mini iPod."

Behavioral targetist Omar Tawakol plans to disclose that he invented the number 56. "I was counting people who had read auto classifieds on one of our partner Web sites and when I arrived at 55, there was yet another person uncounted. So, I applied a proprietary algorithm and overlaid a retrograde analysis to come up with the number 56. We are making the technology available to our customers."

Former University of North Carolina Kappa Alpha frat boy Eugene Ormando says that he produced the Shroud of Turin by sleeping nude under the same unwashed sheet for four straight years. "Never showered, even after lacrosse practice," he tells MediaPost. "The image emerged after about two years, and it really baked in during my junior and senior years. It really helped in keeping the House from putting roommates in my crib."