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Back in 1976, my girlfriend's mother had a friend who worked for a map company and was a graduate of the University of Michigan. The company made very popular
by creeble 12y ago
Back in 1976, my girlfriend's mother had a friend who worked for a map company and was a graduate of the University of Michigan. The company made very popular maps, everyone had one in their car.
Ohio State University, near Columbus, was the nemesis and rival of UofM. So this mapmaker stuck a couple of short texts accompanying two roads near Columbus. One said 'mgoblu' and the other 'beatosu'. They were pretty hard to find unless you knew where to look.
But his bosses found out eventually and fired him. Haha.
Agloe is a better story.
- RyJones 12y agoMy favorite perk, from any job I've had, was being allowed to insert a POI[0] into the USGEO[1] dataset before MapPoint 2000 shipped. The tradition lived on for a couple releases before it got canned. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_interest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_interest [1] USGEO owned the data underneath two shipping products, MapPoint and Streets and Trips, as well as several online products.
- ben010783 12y agoThere's a Wikipedia article on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatosu_and_Goblu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatosu_and_Goblu
- creeble 12y agoOMG. I wonder if her comment about the dude losing his job was true.
- mikeash 12y agoI think it's mildly interesting how these two fake towns were in the once-disputed border region that involved an armed conflict between Ohio and Michigan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_War An example of sports rivalry subsuming more deadly fighting instincts?
- ahi 12y agoYou have bits and pieces of the real story. It was the chairman of the Michigan State Highway Commission. http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/11/rivalry_week_how_a_real_michig.html http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/11/rivalry_week_how...