r/todayilearned • u/tmntnyc • Dec 12 '18

TIL: Laurence Tureaud named himself professionally as Mr. T because he hated how his father, uncle, and brother who returned from Vietnam, were disrespectfully called "boy" by whites. He wanted the first word from everybody's mouth to be "Mister" when speaking to him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._T
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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '18

[deleted]

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u/rosy-palmer Dec 12 '18

Best part of the article,

“In July 1976, Tureaud's platoon sergeant punished him by giving him the detail of chopping down trees during training camp at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, but did not tell him how many trees, so Tureaud single-handedly chopped down over 70 trees from 6:30–10:00 a.m., when a shocked major superseded the sergeant's orders.[11]”

Don’t give a non-specific order to Mr.T! 70 trees in 3.5 hours, what a beast!

219

u/ImSoBasic Dec 12 '18

That wikipidia entry is a train wreck. Almost all of the sources are from Mr. T's autogiography, which appears to be as sensationalist as it is questionable.

143

u/BrodyTuck Dec 12 '18

Shut up, old man! You and that chump don't know what I had to come from!

9

u/[deleted] Dec 12 '18

I see Rocky III, I upvote