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The curious history of chain letters (2010)
On the occasion of the release of the horror film Chain Letter, in which "a maniac murders teens when they refuse to forward chain mail," Slate asked...
That November, the Bishop of Bedford oversaw a “snowball collection” to fund the Home for Destitute Women in Whitechapel, where crimes against prostitutes were raising an outcry for charitable relief. Earlier that year, a 17-year-old Red Cross volunteer in Long Island, Natalie Schenck, had contrived a chain to provide ice for troops in Cuba, causing 3,500 letters at a time to pour into the tiny post office of Babylon, N.Y. “We did not consider what patriotic Americans are capable of,” the girl’s mother fretted to the press. A few residents of Springfield even attempted a “ drunk chain “—doubling their crowd in size with each round of highballs at a new tavern, while “the originators were hazily trying to figure out how long it would take to get the whole city drunk.” Alas, they passed out before completing their calculations.
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