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Comment by galleywest200 | Hacker News Reader

> Have you ever seen anybody slip on a banana peel? I, personally, have not. But if you watch old movies and cartoons, it seems like everybody was sliding around on discarded banana peels.

This actually happened to me once in Capitol Hill in Seattle. I slipped, looked down, and it was a banana peel. One of the few times I wish someone saw me make a mistake so I could have had a witness.

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I think what old movies left out was how much litter was on streets and sidewalks, so slipping on a peel may actually have been more common

Another explanation I once heard was that that slipping on horse manure was actually the more common experience, and a banana was a polite substitute for movies.

This never occurred to me and seems entirely plausible given that horse manure was constant annoyance in higher traffic areas. The problem was so serious early auto advocates cited the reduction in manure as a major benefit.

Happened to me as well. My guess is it's more the absence of banana peels on the ground that makes it rare, not that they aren't slippery.

I'm a little surprised no one's mentioned the root source of banana-peel-slipping: fraud.

https://sundaymagazine.org/2010/11/26/the-woman-the-banana-p...

TL;DR - At the turn of last century, suing for personal damages experienced a peak where people would fake an injury. It's literally where the trope in the old moves came from.

The reason banana peels had so much mindshare in the late 1800s was that they were the only thing the rats wouldn't drag away and eat, so you'd see them everywhere. People weren't going to slip on pizza slices.

Interesting! I'm still waiting to hear about a car slipping on a banana peel though (a la Mario Kart).

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