Urban Myths: Who on Earth is going to play Wonder Woman?

Ever since the news broke a decade ago that Hollywood was planning a live-action Wonder Woman film, there has been a torrent of conflicting reports about who will play the lead role, immortalised on 1970s television by Lynda Carter. And although the movie is said to have been in ‘development hell’ for some time, people are still working overtime at the rumour mill. At one point, Catherine Zeta-Jones was said to be cast, but it turned out that she wasn’t. Another story had Sandra Bullock wearing the starry knickers, but Bullock has denied that she was approached. A mendacious internet contributor swore blind that Beyoncé would fill the role. The British actress Kate Beckinsale was a slightly more credible possibility, having actually dressed as Wonder Woman to go trick-or-treating in LA with her family in 2004, but she too has denied involvement in the troubled project. Lindsay Lohan and Dannii Minogue have reportedly expressed an interest, and thousands of websites have linked Megan Fox with the movie. Of all the starlets mooted for the part, Fox has laughed the hardest, calling Wonder Woman a ‘lame’ superheroine. ‘She flies around in an invisible jet, but she’s not invisible,’ she noted recently. ‘I don’t get it.’

Unsung Hero: The American inventor who used his loaf

Otto Frederick Rohwedder transformed the lunch boxes of the world, and at the same time gave us a cliché that refuses to lose its flavour. In the 1920s the inventor and jeweller from Iowa created a machine that automatically sliced a loaf of bread. One problem that Rohwedder had anticipated was that once the bread was sliced, it ran a greater risk of drying out and going stale — so his machine wrapped the loaf as well. The Continental Baking Company used the new technology to make its revolutionary ready-sliced Wonder Bread, which began selling like hot cakes across the world in 1930. We still talk about “the greatest thing since sliced bread”: in the great tide of history, it has managed to sweep away such frivolities as nuclear fission, the lunar landing and the internet. Even rock stars have acknowledged Rohwedder’s achievement: REM sang about “the greatest thing since bread came sliced” in their 2001 hit record Imitation of Life.

Under Cover: The killer who became a children’s puppet

If you’re watching a Punch and Judy show and a puppet pops up with a hangman’s noose, it’s likely to be Jack Ketch. For centuries, Ketch has turned up to deliver justice to the nefarious Punch, whose crimes customarily include wife-beating and murdering his own child. Crafty Punch usually claims to be unable to put his head in Ketch’s noose, whereupon the hangman stupidly shows him how to do it by putting the rope around his own neck, and is then hanged himself. It’s all good, clean entertainment, and it’s partly based on real life. The original Jack Ketch became a public executioner in Britain in the 1660s, and, while he never hanged himself by mistake, he was known for his incompetent axe work. After the Duke of Monmouth was tried for his part in the 1685 rebellion against his uncle James II, he was sent to be beheaded on London’s Tower Hill. Although Monmouth reportedly gave Ketch six guineas to ensure the job was done quickly, Ketch chopped at him several times before flinging the axe down and declaring: “I cannot do it! My heart fails me!” Ordered to continue, Ketch did some more hacking, and only succeeded in severing the head when he swapped the axe for a knife. Clumsy Ketch kept his job until the following year, when he was imprisoned for insulting a sheriff, but he was re-employed when his successor was hanged for theft. After his death in 1686, Jack Ketch not only lived on as a macabre puppet, but his catchy name became a synonym for death and the devil. It was also adopted by subsequent executioners as an alias to preserve their anonymity, which can be useful when you kill people for a living.

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