MBA Cat: The Curious Case of Colby Nolan's Degree

A cat named Colby Nolan was awarded a Master of Business Administration in 2014. I'm not kidding, Admin, an actual MBA. Last week, in "Versailles by Candlelight," we talked about how 357 mirrors turned a hallway into a massive statement of power—how an object can create a spectacle. Well, today is about the opposite. It's about what happens when you look at the most mundane, the most absurd things... and they reveal a story that's even bigger. So, Colby Nolan. The cat. How does this even happen? It turns out there's a Wikipedia page for "Animals with fraudulent academic degrees," which is, you know, a thing. Colby's "owner" was a paralegal investigating a suspected diploma mill.

So she filled out an application for the cat, paid the fee, and a few weeks later, a diploma for Colby Nolan, MBA, showed up in the mail. Complete with a 3.5 GPA. Now, you could stop there and just have a funny story. A great party anecdote. But here's the turn. This wasn't just a prank. It was EVIDENCE. The story got out, and the Pennsylvania attorney general's office used it to file a lawsuit against the diploma mill for deceptive business practices. That one, ridiculous degree exposed the entire fraudulent system. And this pattern is everywhere once you look for it. A small, almost laughable event that acts as a stress test on a much bigger system.

It's the jester who's allowed to speak truth to the king. It's the canary in the coal mine. A cat getting an MBA isn't the story. The story is that our systems are sometimes so broken that a cat CAN get an MBA. And it takes something that absurd to make us finally pay attention. Okay, so that's uncovering fraud. But what about just... everyday life? Take the tea bag. You probably used one this morning. Did you know it was invented by ACCIDENT? In 1908, a tea merchant named Thomas Sullivan was trying to save money. He sent out samples of his tea in little hand-sewn silk pouches. His plan was for customers to open the pouches and use the loose tea.

But his customers didn't. They just assumed the little bags were meant to be dropped straight into hot water. They were easier, they were cleaner. And just like that, an entire industry was born from a misunderstanding. Sullivan didn't invent the tea bag. His CUSTOMERS did. He just created the conditions for the accident to happen. And this is where it gets bigger than just trivia. So much of history is like that tea bag. It’s not the grand, deliberate plan we read about in textbooks. It's accidents, misunderstandings, and most of all... it's stories that have been completely overlooked. The Smithsonian is doing this incredible project right now, digging through their archives to find the stories of women in science.

They found this biochemist, Ruby Hirose. In 1940, the American Chemical Society named her one of the top ten chemists in the country. She went on to do foundational work on vaccines for infantile paralysis. A genuine hero. And yet, her story was basically a footnote. A catalog entry. Effie Kapsalis at the Smithsonian says their goal is to get THOUSANDS more women recognized. Because their contributions are there. They’ve always been there. They just weren't the story we were telling. They were hidden in plain sight, just like the genius of the tea bag, or the fraud revealed by a cat. So where does that leave us? With the fork. I'm serious. For centuries in Europe, using a fork was seen as suspicious.

An affront to God. You had fingers, why would you need this weird metal contraption? It was unnatural. Today, that's obviously absurd. But it shows how even the most basic objects in our lives are loaded with history—with arguments, with fashion, with danger, with change. What the cat, and the tea bag, and the fork all have in common is that they aren't just passive objects. They are archives. They hold stories. The American Historical Association talks about this, how a single bead or musket from the 1700s can unlock these huge global histories. But you have to ask. You have to be curious enough to look at a tea bag and wonder, "huh." That's the whole thing.

History isn't a static collection of facts. It's a practice. It's the act of looking at something ordinary—something you've seen a thousand times—and asking a new question. And when you do that, you don't just find a surprising story. You find a richer, deeper, and more honest version of the world.