Departures of note

Plennie L. Wingo, a former diner owner from Abilene, Texas, lost his business when the Great Depression hit. In 1931, overhearing children claim that everything had been done, he spontaneously declared that no one had ever walked around the world backwards. The idea stuck, and he saw it as a way to earn money. On April 15, 1931, wearing mirrored glasses, he set out east from Santa Monica, California, walking backwards.

Over the next 18 months, Wingo covered roughly 8,000 miles, reaching Istanbul, Turkey, on October 24, 1932. He financed the trip by selling signed postcards for twenty-five cents and relying on strangers' kindness. He faced numerous stops by police, but carried newspaper clippings to prove his mission. In New York City, he was robbed after agreeing to walk a building's ledge, but he found the thief, beat him up, and was jailed—only to be released by a sympathetic judge. He later worked his passage to Germany, where a cruel chief steward overworked him, then walked through Germany to Turkey, where authorities urged him to leave for his own safety. A wealthy Italian paid his return to California, and he walked backwards to Abilene, having worn out 13 pairs of shoes.

Though he made local news during the journey, his fame faded. In 1966, he published a memoir, Around the World Backwards, which sold poorly but was reissued in 1982. In July 1976, at age 81, he walked across California, selling postcards for a dollar, and appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, earning $342. He died at home on October 2, 1993, at age 98, and was buried in Wichita Falls, Texas. His record for the greatest extent of reverse pedestrianism remains in the Guinness World Records.