• Norma Jeane and the “shadow father” problem: Her legal name begins as Norma Jeane; her mother is Gladys. Her father’s identity remains uncertain, with multiple names circulating but no definitive proof, and she never truly had a lived experience of “dad.” That missing anchor becomes a recurring undertone in how she searches for security and validation later.

• A childhood with no stable “home” feeling: Because of her mother’s severe health struggles and institutionalization periods, she cycles through foster homes, short placements, and repeated separations. The result is not just instability, but a lifelong internal alarm: I can be removed at any moment.

• Marriage at 16 as an exit strategy: When she marries James “Jim” Dougherty at 16, it is often described less as romance and more as a practical escape from returning to institutional care. The marriage reads like survival logistics, not a love story.

James (Jim) Dougherty and Marilyn Monroe

• The first major rupture: fame vs “stay in your place”: While Dougherty is away in the military, her photos begin circulating and the tension spikes: one side expects a conventional wife, the other sees a door opening. This is her first real identity fork: invisible life or public life.

• Radioplane factory: the moment destiny pings: During WWII she works at Radioplane, and is photographed by David Conover for military-related morale/PR documentation. The weirdness is the origin story itself: her path to Hollywood begins on an assembly line, not a red carpet. Some retellings add that early modeling pay could be laughably low, the kind of detail that makes the climb feel even harsher.  Two Inventions That Changed the World : Drones and Marilyn Monroe >>

Marilyn Monroe with a RP-5 in 1944

• The Reagan connection: indirect, but cinematic: The internet loves “Reagan discovered her.” A more grounded version is: Conover’s work is tied to military film/photo operations where Ronald Reagan appears as a figure in the broader chain of that environment. Not “he held the camera,” more his name floats near the machinery of how it happened.

• Learning to be “Marilyn” wasn’t instant: The stage name changes fast; the brain doesn’t. Early anecdotes claim she hesitated with signatures and even fumbled letters, as if her hand didn’t fully believe the new identity yet. It’s funny on the surface, but the subtext is brutal: self-reinvention hurts.

• 1956: the legal lock-in: She uses Marilyn Monroe professionally for years before formalizing it legally in 1956. The symbolism is perfect: she becomes “Marilyn” in public long before she becomes “Marilyn” on paper. The world moves faster than the self.

• Platinum blonde wasn’t a dye job, it was a system: The iconic hair is not one color, it’s a maintained, calibrated look: tone adjustments, repeated touch-ups, and hair-preservation routines shaped around studio lighting. The “nine blonde shades” idea may be mythologized, but the reality is still true: it was brand engineering, not spontaneity.

• Right-profile obsession as micro-control: She reportedly preferred her right profile and staged herself accordingly. In a life where studios, press, and relationships try to steer everything, choosing an angle becomes a tiny island of control: If nothing else is mine, this frame is.

• Glasses and hidden myopia: She is known to have used prescription glasses, but kept them out of the core public image. Glasses can instantly read as “ordinary,” and her persona required “mythic.” Whether she experimented with early contact lenses or not, the motive is consistent: protect the illusion.

• Pushing back against the “dumb blonde” box: From the outside, she looks like she’s simply cast into one archetype. Inside the machine, she is often described as fighting the trap, pushing for better roles, better terms, and professional respect. The point isn’t that she hated glamour; it’s that she refused to be only glamour.

• Marilyn Monroe Productions: the power move: Partnering with Milton H. Greene and forming her own production entity is a loud message in a studio era: I’m not only the face on the poster. I want a seat at the table. For a woman star at that time, it’s an openly disruptive play.

• A private library, a private hunger: Accounts frequently describe her as building a serious reading identity, sometimes framed as 400+ books (the number varies by source). The famous image of her with Joyce functions like a declaration: don’t reduce me to the photo.

• Psychoanalysis and the boundary controversy: She worked with multiple therapists; the best-known debates revolve around Ralph Greenson and whether professional boundaries blurred in ways that are unusual for analysis. Some retellings also mention contact with Anna Freud, though the certainty and framing differ by source. The core driver stays consistent: fear of inheriting her mother’s mental collapse and treating therapy as a shield.

• Stuttering and the origin of the “breathy” voice: Her whispery tone is often marketed as pure seduction, but many narratives connect it to managing a serious stutter through breath and rhythm control. The voice becomes less a cosmetic choice and more a technique: control the breath, control the sentence, survive the room.

• Pregnancies and losses: During her marriage to Arthur Miller, pregnancies and miscarriages are widely discussed in biographical accounts. Some sources tie this to specific gynecological conditions, but the safest framing is: biographers report health complications and repeated losses. Either way, the emotional reality is clear: a quiet grief that doesn’t photograph.

• Body measurements as an industry weapon: Numbers like 94-58-91 circulate constantly. The deeper truth is not the exact digits, but the system: Hollywood reduces a living woman into metrics, then sells the metrics back as destiny. The cruelty is the conversion of a person into a product label.

• The subway grate scene: iconic shot, chaotic night: The famous scene is repeatedly described as drawing huge crowds and requiring multiple takes, turning her body into a public event. Some biographers go further, tying the night to severe marital conflict and even violence allegations. If you include that, the responsible phrasing is: some biographies claim it escalated dramatically.

• Helping Ella Fitzgerald: celebrity as leverage: The story goes that Marilyn used her visibility to support Ella Fitzgerald getting bookings, effectively saying she’d show up and sit up front, making it profitable and socially “safe” for the venue. The striking part is the tactic: soft power, applied directly, with no speeches.

• The “glow” secret: optics plus discipline: The dreamy on-camera look is often explained as a layered stack: fine facial hair (vellus), lighting choices, lens behavior, and classic set hacks like petrolatum-based shine tactics. Not magic. A controlled illusion built from physics.

• DiMaggio’s roses: love, guilt, or ritual: The long-running tale is that Joe DiMaggio arranged regular flowers at her grave for years. Exact frequency and duration vary by retelling, but the reason the story survives is emotional clarity: a devotion that arrives most loudly after it can no longer help.

The other day I stumbled upon one of those internet-ready lines that sound profound enough to be printed on a mug:

“People are generally more honest when physically tired. This is why people confess things during late night conversations.”

Translation: when we’re physically worn out, we tend to be more honest—hence all the late-night confessions.

And sure, it feels true. Nighttime has that “the world is quiet, the guard is down, the truth slips out” vibe.

But since the internet has a long and proud tradition of sounding confident while being wrong, I did what any suspicious modern human does: I went digging.

And guess what I found?

Naturally… the opposite.

Are We Morning Angels And Evening Raccoons?

A trio of researchers from the business schools of Washington, Johns Hopkins, and Georgetown noticed something interesting in the research landscape. In 2013, a paper published in Psychological Science suggested that people behave more ethically earlier in the day—and it even got a wonderfully sweet label:

“morning morality.”

Then, in 2014, these researchers decided to run their own work building on that idea. The headline takeaway is pretty simple (and mildly unsettling):

As the workday progresses, the average adult’s ability to control behavior and speech gradually decreases.

And as that control declines, honesty tends to wobble too—especially closer to the end of the day.

So the night might be good for heartfelt conversations, but daytime—particularly the earlier part—may be where our “ethical settings” are set to high.

It’s Not Just Long Hours — It’s Your Body Clock

Here’s the part I find most annoyingly persuasive: the researchers link this pattern not only to long work hours, but to circadian rhythm—your internal clock.

In other words, it’s not one-size-fits-all.

If you’re a night owl, mornings might be your sketchiest hours—your brain is booting up, and your self-control may be running on fumes.

If you’re a morning person, you may stay solid early on… but get more “creative” by late afternoon when your mental battery starts flashing red.

So two people can be equally tired, equally stressed, and still follow totally different honesty patterns depending on when their system is naturally “online.”

Your Self-Control Runs ON… Glucose

Now, why would time of day affect ethical behavior in the first place?

Some earlier research points to something very unpoetic: glucose.

A 2007 study by researchers from Florida State University (published in Personality and Social Psychology Review) suggests that one of the key fuels behind self-control is, basically, sugar energy. The ability to:

focus attention,

regulate emotions,

handle stress,

resist impulses,

avoid quick-and-dirty shortcuts (including lying),

…requires mental resources. When glucose drops, impulsive behavior becomes more likely, and self-control gets weaker.

And to make it even more interconnected, a Stanford study in 2009 highlighted a direct relationship between sleep patterns and blood sugar regulation. When sleep gets weird, the body’s ability to manage sugar can get weird too—meaning your “self-control fuel gauge” may be off before the day even starts.

So What About Late-Night Confessions?

Does this mean late-night confessions are fake?

Not necessarily. Night conversations can still be intimate, emotionally loaded, and disarming. But the mechanism might not be “tiredness makes you honest” so much as:

fatigue reduces your filters.

Sometimes what spills out at 2 a.m. isn’t a pure, noble truth—it’s your brain saying:
“I don’t have the energy to keep editing myself.”

Which can look a lot like honesty. (And sometimes is.)

In Short

People aren’t permanently good or bad, ethical or unethical—sometimes we’re not even consistent across the same day.

Your “morality settings” can shift with your internal clock, your sleep, and your energy. Morning can make saints of us. Late afternoon can turn us into little loophole engineers.

So the next time someone says, “I’m only honest at night,” you can gently consider an alternate theory:

Maybe they’re not more honest.
Maybe they’re just… out of battery.

Kouchaki, M., & Smith, I. H. (2014). The Morning Morality Effect: The Influence of Time of Day on Unethical Behavior. Psychological Science.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797613498099

The National Basketball Association (NBA) logo is a symbol of a deep-rooted legacy, the pursuit of excellence, and relentless determination. The NBA logo, instantly recognizable worldwide, has a simple yet striking design. It is built from the colors of the U.S. flag, a figure widely believed to be based on the silhouette of Jerry West, one of its most iconic players, and a straightforward league abbreviation. Introduced in 1969, this “vertical emblem” can also be linked to the NBA’s need, during a period of intensified league-to-league competition, to position itself as more corporate and more distinctive.

The First Logo

The NBA’s first logo, used in the early 1950s, consisted of a white circle representing a basketball. It featured the text “national basketball association” and, at the top, the year’s date. Especially because of its red and white colors and the placement of the lettering, this logo was often mistaken for a baseball logo.

First NBA Logo 

The 2nd Logo Used Between 1953–1962

The organization decided a change was needed a few years after the original logo was created. They redesigned it and produced a red basketball symbol with white lettering. This time, the text was shortened to “NBA” and placed slightly diagonally. The letters were positioned near the lower part of the basketball, in a clean and orderly font, still written in all capitals. The basketball emblem was placed on a white background, making the colors and lettering stand out boldly.

With the redesign in 1962, the ball became white again, but the seams and letters gained a new color: black. The word “NBA” was written in a sturdy serif typeface, all in uppercase, and placed diagonally across the basketball’s middle segment, from the upper left to the lower right. This emblem remained with the organization for seven years.

1969 is Recorded as The Year The Famous Vertical NBA Emblem Was Introduced

This iconic change completely renewed the previous logo, and the organization decided it was time for a new look. The new design introduced different elements and colors, forming a rounded-rectangle emblem. The left side of the symbol was designed in blue, the right side in red, with a white silhouette in the center. The white silhouette represented a figure widely believed to be based on a stylized image of Jerry West. In the lower-left corner of the logo, the letters “NBA” appeared in white, uppercase form, giving the design a cohesive and stylish look. This emblem remained the brand’s main identity until 2017, with its core composition preserved; while small standardizations appeared over the years in typography and color tones, the central idea did not change.

Jerry West and NBA Logo

David Stern passed away without ever officially confirming that the NBA logo’s inspiration was Jerry West. However, West—who died on June 12, 2024, at the age of 86—certainly knew he was “the logo,” and he wasn’t very pleased, especially when it was emphasized in capital letters.

In 2017, After 48 Years, The Logo Was Updated

The core logo introduced in 1969 essentially stayed the same; the main changes came in the form of minor updates to typography and color. The 2017 update, too, was less a “completely new logo” and more a refresh of the existing identity. A modified version of the league’s customized Action font was used for the N-B-A letters on the main logo. The taller, slimmer typography reflected the NBA game and its players. The logo’s colors were also adjusted to richer red and blue tones for better visibility across all NBA assets.

It’s easy to assume the people who “change the world” look the part. But history loves the opposite: ordinary shifts, factory floors, and a camera passing through the wrong corridor at the right moment.

It’s June 1945. World War II is in its final stretch. On one side, thousands of soldiers dying at the front. On the other, officers asking a colder question: How do we train and improve anti-aircraft fire without risking pilots?

Mini Box: Drones Are Older Than You Think

The idea of pilotless aircraft isn’t new. As early as 1918, there were experimental “pilotless strike” concepts like the Kettering Bug. But the story you’re reading here belongs to the era of practical use and mass production.

Prototype Kettering Bug

1) The Unlikely “Drone Guy”: Reginald Denny

The first main character isn’t a general or a scientist in a lab coat. He’s a working actor with a serious obsession: radio-controlled model aircraft.

Reginald Denny helps build a company that would become a foundational chapter in early American drone history: Radioplane. At first, the military reaction is basically: You want to fight wars with toys? Then someone connects the dots: These small aircraft can be used as moving targets for anti-aircraft training.

Orders start pouring in, and the factory goes into high gear. Out of that assembly line comes a small aircraft that matters more than it looks: the OQ-2 target drone.

Reginald Denny

Mini Box: The First Job Wasn’t to Attack, but to Get Shot

Here’s the irony that makes this whole story perfect: early “drones” like this weren’t designed to strike anything. They were designed to be shot at. A lot of the technology is built around being launched, flown as a target, then recovered—meaning the drone begins its life as a flying victim.

OQ2 - Target Drone  

2) The Moment: A Norma Jeane on the Factory Floor

Wartime morale and propaganda matter. A photographer is sent to the Radioplane plant to capture women assembly workers for the war effort story.

That photographer is David Conover.

He walks through the plant with a camera and notices one worker in particular: a young woman doing precision assembly, covered in the grime of real work, holding parts that look like pure industry. She isn’t “Marilyn Monroe” yet. She’s simply Norma Jeane Dougherty.

If she’d been late that day, assigned to another section, or if the photographer had taken a different corridor, pop culture history might look weirdly different.

Mini Box: The Ronald Reagan Connection

The detail that makes the whole chain feel almost scripted: the photographer’s visit to Radioplane is often linked to USAAF Captain Ronald Reagan—yes, the future U.S. President. A target-drone factory, a future President in the background, and a future movie icon on the line.

Captain Ronald Reagan, United States Army Air Forces - 1945

3) Marilyn’s First Husband: Who Was James?

People tell this story like a clean fairy tale. It wasn’t.

While Norma Jeane was working at the factory, she was married to James Dougherty. He was away on wartime service. The marriage carried a very ordinary expectation of “normal life.” But once the camera arrives, once modeling begins, once the momentum starts rolling, that ordinary timeline doesn’t survive.

In a very real sense, the Radioplane factory doesn’t just “create” Marilyn Monroe. It also becomes the place where Norma Jeane’s ordinary marriage life quietly breaks apart.

James Edward Dougherty with then-wife Norma Jeane Mortenson (later known as Marilyn Monroe)

4) From Propeller to Spotlight

Conover doesn’t just take a documentary shot and leave. He has Norma Jeane pose. The photos lead to modeling work. Modeling becomes a door into Hollywood. And that door eventually becomes a name the world can’t forget: Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn Monroe with a RP-5 (Kodachrome photo) in 1944

Look at how ridiculous the chain is:

If the U.S. military hadn’t needed target drones
If Denny hadn’t built Radioplane at scale
If Conover hadn’t walked down that corridor
Then Marilyn might have simply retired as a factory worker, and cinema history would have a different face.

 Marilyn Monroe with a RP-5 prop (Kodachrome photo) in 1944

5) The Factory’s Afterlife: From Radioplane to Northrop Grumman

Radioplane doesn’t remain a quirky wartime shop forever. It gets absorbed into the aerospace world that keeps evolving after WWII.

That’s where the second “invention” twist lands: the small target-drone lineage doesn’t die. It gets folded into the ecosystem that later produces some of the most advanced unmanned systems on Earth—think Northrop Grumman, and modern platforms like the Global Hawk.

So yes: the workshop where Norma Jeane once worked on aircraft parts ends up connected—through corporate and technological lineage—to the era of massive, high-altitude unmanned aircraft.

Conclusion: When Technology Collides with Accident

This is why the story sticks.

Early drones aren’t born as sleek sci-fi predators. In this chapter, they start as targets. Meanwhile, a future icon isn’t discovered on a red carpet, but in a work jumpsuit, in the middle of wartime manufacturing.

History doesn’t always move like a straight line. Sometimes it moves like a camera passing through a factory.

Trivia Box (End-of-Post)

That famous factory moment also fits the visual language of WWII’s “working woman” mythos—the same cultural atmosphere that produced Rosie the Riveter. Norma Jeane entered the frame as a morale narrative without knowing the frame would eventually rename her.

For someone who lives in Istanbul, visiting Hagia Sophia isn’t really a “tourist activity.” It feels more like checking in on an ancient relative. The city is a time machine on every corner, but some details are so absurd they almost feel personal. The other day I went up to the famous upper level again, slipped through the crowd, leaned in close to those marble balustrades, and looked at that infamous “signature.”

If you don’t know about it, this isn’t some secret. Guides have been telling the story for years. Still, seeing those little gouged lines up close (touching is forbidden, so let’s say “really seeing” it) drops you straight into a thousand-year-old moment that’s intensely ordinary and strangely empty.

And there it is, on the marble of the upper gallery: the trace of a Varangian, one of the Scandinavian guards who served the Byzantine emperors, leaving a mark in the middle of the world.

Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque

What Does the “Crack” Actually Say?

On the upper gallery’s marble railing, there’s a set of scratches that look, at first, like nothing more than the marble’s natural texture. But it’s runic writing. Runes, as in the angular, carved-looking alphabet used in Scandinavia before Latin letters became dominant. That’s exactly why it could pass as a stone vein for so long.

Here’s the crucial part: people often repeat it as “Halfdan was here,” but the inscription is heavily worn today. What’s typically said in more careful accounts is that what remains clearly legible is mostly the tail end, something like “-ftan,” which is commonly linked to the name Halfdan. In other words, instead of a neat full sentence, what survives is probably the fragment of a standard formula along the lines of “(Name) carved these runes.”

And honestly, that makes it funnier. The logic is identical to someone scratching their name into a bus seat or a school desk today. The only thing that changes is the surface. Plastic versus the marble of one of the most monumental buildings on earth.

The Most Successful Camouflage in History

The reason this survived is almost comedic: for centuries, many people simply didn’t read it as writing. It was easy to dismiss as a crack, a vein, or normal wear. And it’s not some massive, bold piece of graffiti either. It’s thin, shallow, almost timid in the stone.

What hits me is how we usually read “history” through grandeur. But sometimes history is just the afterimage of boredom. A tiny act, left unnoticed long enough to become immortal.

Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque

Why This Viking Trace Feels So Real

Because it doesn’t come from a “great narrative.” It comes from the most basic impulse imaginable:

I was here.

And there’s another layer that makes it even more interesting. These runic traces are generally associated with the Varangian Guard, and the timeframe often cited is roughly the 9th to 11th centuries. So this isn’t “some fantasy Viking thing.” It’s tied to a very real Byzantine institution where Scandinavians served in the heart of the empire.

There’s also the detail people miss: it’s not necessarily just one mark. A second runic inscription on the upper level was reportedly identified later, and its reading can vary depending on the source. So the more accurate picture isn’t “one random signature,” but a small cluster of traces that hint at a repeated human behavior in a place that’s supposed to be too sacred for something so petty.

Conclusion: Ideology, or Reflex?

When you look at that marble, you’re not just seeing “history.” You’re seeing the reflex: the need to say, anywhere, even here, that you existed.

Halfdan’s boredom that day somehow became one of our favorite historical incidents.

An Istanbul note: next time you’re in Hagia Sophia, don’t look at that railing only as an “artifact.” Try to feel the presence of someone who probably just wanted the moment to be over, already thinking about where they’d unwind later, and still couldn’t resist leaving a small, stubborn proof behind.