Mike Vago, The AV Club

Mike Vago

The AV Club

New York, NY, United States

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Recent:
  • Unknown
Past:
  • The AV Club

Past articles by Mike:

R.I.P. Betty White

Betty White, star of The Golden Girls, has died. She was 99 → Read More

We say goodbye to Wiki Wormhole

These TV shows—and Wiki Wormhole—wrapped up with a series finale → Read More

The U.S. tried to win World War II with a bat bomb

The "bat bomb" contained live bats, each of which would carry an incendiary device and start fires across Japan. → Read More

Wiki Wormhole: The U.S. and Canada nearly went to war over a pig

The Pig War of 1959 was, sadly, not a war between two rival armies made up of talking pigs. → Read More

The tourist who mistook Bangor for San Francisco

The German brewer made it to San Francisco eventually. → Read More

Before in-game ads, these video games were the ads

Advergames like Pepsiman and Gatorade's Bolt! were commercials you could play. → Read More

The Mad Pooper caused a shitstorm in 2017

Somehow, the long plunger of the law never managed to catch up with the Mad Pooper, who struck in the summer of 2017. → Read More

This 19th-century baseball player still holds the record for most wins

The pitcher Charles Radbourn is also the first known person to be photographed giving someone the finger. → Read More

In 1992, Pepsi Fever turned deadly

A misprint put a contest-winning number on 800,000 Pepsi bottles, resulting in rioting, lawsuits, and a massive debacle for Pepsi Philippines. → Read More

Here are the movies with the most gosh-darn f-bombs

Back in 1994, Pulp Fiction’s foul language was still shocking, but it’s been surpassed by a fudgeload of movies in the years since. → Read More

The turboencabulator was the most complicated device never invented

For a number of years now, work has been proceeding in order to bring perfection to the crudely conceived idea of the turboencabulator, an engineering prank that counts General Electric, General Motors, and Hank Green among its participants. → Read More

Meet the Beetles: This jewelry is made from live insects

In several parts of the world, at several points in history, there have been trends of incorporating live insects into jewelry (for some reason). → Read More

The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 was faster than you’d think

It isn’t history’s only molasses spill, but the Great Boston Molasses Flood is the worst. → Read More

Canada’s heist of the century involved $18.7 million worth of maple syrup

The syrup thieves and Walter White used the same methods nearly simultaneously. → Read More

This feline station master always kept things meowving right along

Tama the cat inadvertently saved a railway station in Wakayama Prefecture from closing, becoming both a local celebrity and the station master in the process. → Read More

Cheese-related violence reared its ugly head in 1760s England

Food shortages and price gouging sparked the deadly Nottingham Cheese Riot, or the Great Cheese Riot, of 1766. → Read More

America’s first female detective once saved Abraham Lincoln’s life

Kate Warne joined the Pinkerton Detective Agency at the age of 23, thwarting an assassination plot against Abraham Lincoln and serving as a spy during the Civil War. → Read More

Sam Raimi has a long list of movies he never got to make

The 1990s could have been the decade of the superhero movie, had Raimi had his say. → Read More

Warm up for the big game by reading about the biggest blowout in football history

Are you ready for some football? Because in 1916, Cumberland College was decidedly not. The Cumberland Bulldogs lost to the Georgia Tech Engineers by a remarkable 222-0, still the most lopsided game in the history of football. → Read More

There may have been another, older New England

But like the quiet, mild-mannered Bostonian, the medieval New England may not have actually existed. → Read More