Today in History - April 19: Bank robber stunned lemon juice didn't stop him being identified

A surveillance photo of a bank robber was broadcast on the 11pm television news in the United States on April 19, 1995.

Then, less than an hour later, the man responsible was arrested.

Police were stunned McArthur Wheeler had robbed a bank at gunpoint making no effort to cover his face.

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Wheeler's masterplan to avoid being identified had a remarkably stupid logic.

If you can use lemon juice to make invisible ink, then surely lemon juice would make your own face invisible.

"But I wore the lemon juice. I wore the lemon juice," Wheeler exclaimed as he was arrested.

Before the robbery, Wheeler and his accomplice Clifton Earl Johnson had tested the theory with a Polaroid camera.

When Wheeler did not show up in the photograph, they were convinced it had worked.

Police theorised the photo test was flawed because Wheeler may have unintentionally pointed the camera at the ceiling.

Johnson received a five-year prison sentence. Wheeler was handed a 24 and-a-half-year prison term.

The sheer stupidity of the robbery attempt inspired psychologists David Dunning and Jim Kruger to define a type of cognitive bias.

The Dunning-Kruger effect argued that people with a low capacity to do something well would also have bad judgement in their own ability.

Or in other words, if you are too stupid to rob a bank, you are also too stupid to know you are too stupid to rob a bank.

Dunning and Kruger's research was published in 1999. The following year they would be awarded the Ig Nobel Prize. 

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