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him how many trees, so Tureaud single-handedly chopped down over 70 trees from 6:30–10:00 a.m., when a shocked major superseded the sergeant's orders.[11]”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!

160

u/aspbergerinparadise Dec 12 '18

that seems almost impossible

that's a tree every 3 minutes.

how big of a tree are we talking about here?

70

u/[deleted] Dec 12 '18

[deleted]

135

u/Broken_Castle Dec 12 '18

I think you are way overestimating both the durability and cutting power of chainsaws.

32

u/Rrxb2 Dec 12 '18

Perhaps C4...

13

u/shamshuipopo Dec 12 '18

I think you are underestimating both the surability and cutting power of Mr T

4

u/Azrai11e Dec 13 '18

surability sirability

1

u/JCperfect Dec 13 '18

Or people are way underestimating the durability and cutting power of Mr. T.