User Matthew Erlich writes in to say: "I'm wondering what nobody's asking about. What are the 50 fewest searches?" Good question. So today let's go to the low end of our search logs and check out some of the Web's LEAST popular people.
Since tens of thousands of people and items get just one or two queries per week, we decided to move up a bit and look for people who got about five searches per day last week. And -- surprise! -- they turned out to be pretty interesting. Let's take a look:
HEINZ GUDERIAN was a leading proponent of armored warfare in WWII-era Germany and father of the Blitzkrieg. (You may remember his 1937 classic Actung! Panzer.) We hadn't heard of him ourselves, but somebody clearly has.
Speaking of military men, remember when SCOTT O'GRADY was shot down over Bosnia in 1995, then rescued six days later in a daring daylight raid? Five people a day still look him up. (And was that really only five years ago? )
JOHN SHELBY SPONG turns out to be the Right Reverend John Shelby Spong, retired Bishop of Newark. Rev. Spong seems to be active in gay rights, which perhaps is why surfers are searching for him. Extra credit: according to his Web site, "Bishop Spong has always had an active interest in sports and was at one time a play-by-play announcer for radio stations in Tarboro, North Carolina, and Lynchburg, Virginia."
JOSE FELICIANO. Perhaps these surfers are remembering the summer of 1968, when Feliciano's version of The Doors' tune "Light My Fire" was #1 on the charts. Feliciano never quite hit those heights again, though his own website does give him credit for being the first performer ever to stylize the National Anthem. ("Veterans, reportedly, threw their shoes at the television as he sang.")
Also in the pantheon of faded musicians: CHYNNA PHILLIPS. Can it be TEN years since Wilson Phillips released their smash self-titled album? These days, the Chyna-spelled-with-a-'y' searches all go to someone else.
According to her biography, the late MARIE LAVEAU was "a free woman of color as well as a Quadroon (African, Indian, French and Spanish). She became the most famous and powerful Voodoo Queen in the world, so powerful that she acclaimed herself the Pope of Voodoo in the 1830s." Woo!
Another spicy Southern female was BELLE BOYD. A Civil War sidelight, Ms. Boyd was a Confederate spy who once shot a Union soldier for pushing her mother -- then later married a Union sailor.
MARTIN SHORT. Ouch! What's Martin Short doing down here with the old-timers and has-beens? Isn't he supposed to be pretty popular? Must be hard for him to find himself tied with 19th century semi-luminaries like Belle Boyd and...
THOMAS CRAPPER. Yes, these searchers are no doubt hoping to answer the age-old question: was the man who invented the commode really named Crapper? (For the answer, read what plumbers have to say about the man and the myth.)
That's all for today's "bottom feeders" of the search world. Tomorrow we'll return to more popular queries.
