You're forgetting the key point that the other girl wasn't just being annoying - she was physically hurting OP. She was basically doing the same as what OP ended up doing, except for longer... and less visibly. And we haven't even begun to address the bullying aspect of it yet.

I agree with you that a punch to the face was taking things too far, but what the other girl did was also taking things too far in the first place. There's often not enough room to move the chair out of reach from someone sitting directly behind you, so that's not necessarily an option. And anyone who's ever dealt with bullying in school knows that if you take it to the teacher, a few things are going to happen: First of all, the bullying will only get worse - you 'snitched', so in the bullies' mind, you've shown you deserve it. Second, the teacher is more than likely going to either not do anything, or take the bully's side. There isn't necessarily a good way out of the situation OP was in.

All that being said - you're absolutely right that OP shouldn't have punched the other girl.

The more accurate claim would be that he paid 'youngsters' a quarter for "live cats and dogs", and didn't ask any questions in regards to where they came from. He may very well have intended for them to catch strays, but the youngsters probably only went "oooh, a quarter", and sold him any animals they could get their hands on. This is backed by several sources, including the "secretary of of historical research" at the Thomas A. Edison laboratory in West Orange, who had direct access to the research papers, and wrote a book that covered it. According to what I've been reading for the past while, I get the impression that this is stuff Edison and his team did, themselves - not this campaign I mentioned previously. So he might've been more involved than I thought!

As for the elephant: Yes, it's true that Edison hadn't been personally involved in this for a while when it happened. Which I have agreed with several times. Hence why I stated that he was only indirectly involved; having a film crew from his company dedicate the film of an animals execution to him personally is absolutely indirect involvement, whether or not he was in charge of the company at the time.

That is an excellent question, and I was wondering the same thing when I read it! The article didn't specify.

I specified in a different comment, which you seemingly didn't read. I believed this to be true, but read up on it after my initial comment, and found out a bit more about what actually happened.

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The elephant thing was only indirectly related to him - not false, but not completely true either. The elephant was indeed electocuted, and someone from Edison's company was invited as essentially "guests of honor" to watch the electrocution. They filmed the event, which I believe is considered the first filmed execution of an animal, and the film was dedicated to Thomas Edison - which, you know, even that is a pretty messed up thing to do.

As for the pets: He didn't personally electrocute them, but he actively backed and supported a campaign that paid kids a quarter for pets and small animals - "coinciding" with a streak of missing pets in the area - only to use DC power to torture them, then AC power to kill them. Again: He didn't personally flip the switch... but he provided the equipment and the resources needed, and actively supported what they were doing.

Yes, after reading up on it over the last couple of hours, just for fun, I found out something similar. The elephant was apparently already scheduled for "execution", and the method of using electrocution to kill it was only decided after they received backlash for planning to hang it (somehow?). The event was, however, filmed by the Edison company, and the film was credited to Edison himself - which is still a pretty messed up thing to do! Either way, the Topsy song from Bob's Burgers is incredibly catchy :)

The part about pets is still factual, though; he actively backed and supported a campaign which paid kids a quarter for pets - be it their own or ones they'd stolen from their neighbourhoods - and then used them as a demonstration to 'prove' the dangers of AC power. In fact, they would first use DC power to torture the animals, only to then switch to AC power to kill them. Still barely scratches the surface of the messed up stuff he did, of course.

He also used other people's inventions to electrocute and kill children's pets, as well as a freaking elephant, to 'prove' said inventions were dangerous (forgetting to mention that mostly anything can be dangerous if you specifically set out to make it dangerous).