Tell Me If This Mega-Hurts

Although it might be worth pointing out how in 1968 Iron Butterfly's "In-a-gadda-da-vida" became the 1st heavy metal song to hit the charts, coming in at #117, #118 (the drum solo), and #119, we have to instead talk about a pioneer who helped make radio happen in the first place, at least if he wasn't a failure. Dentist Mahlon Loomis grew up wanting to be an elf working for Santa, but even though he lived in Virginia there is no Santa Claus, so he instead turned to a toothy profession. He thought it might be fun to ask people to rinse from a great distance, so attempted to communicate wirelessly through the atmosphere, which sounds like a wordy way to say charades. Between 1866 and 1873 he transmitted telegraphic messages a distance of 18 miles--as the crow flies, if hermit Henderson wouldn't shoot the crow out of the sky and make crow pie--between the tops of Cohocton Mountain and Beorse Deer Mountain, Virginia. Clearly if Loomis wanted to be a serious and famous inventor he would have chosen hills with names easier to spell, but what do you expect from someone named Mahlon Loomis. Heck, you can't even mispronounce his name into a kind of pasta, so how could he be remembered as the father of radio? Indeed, all he managed to do was move a kite via remote control, as it were, which makes him the patron saint of RC dweebs. Loomis sold his patent, and a goodly amount of dental anesthetic, to his neighbor farmer Lush Brimbaugh, who adapted the invention and soon had a group of kiteheads who bobbed mindlessly in the wind at his remote control command.