For a total of three minutes, the letter 'S' was replaced with the Devil's smiling face.
"I was teaching a night college class in Manhattan for Japanese students," says Professor Albert Jacks, "and happened to be dealing with the letter 'S'. I was horrified when I tried to write it on the blackboard and was instead compelled to draw the grinning head of Beelzebub. I was mortified."
Advertising billboards startled pedestrians and motorists worldwide, leading to 2787 collisions, 1652 lamp-post prangs and an estimated five million cases of bewilderment.