Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (57 page)

In 1994 Alexandra Sergeyev and several of her co-workers chipped in to buy three tickets in a lottery to win an automobile. Mrs. Sergeyev gave one to her husband to put in a safe place; soon afterward he dropped dead from a heart attack. It wasn't until after the funeral that she realized that

1) the ticket she gave her husband was the winning ticket

2) he put it in the pocket of his best suit

3) that was the suit he was buried in

Mrs. Sergeyev consented to have Ivan's body exhumed, but when the authorities went to dig him up, they discovered the grave was empty…and that someone had already cashed in the winning ticket.

Police discovered that a ring of grave robbers had looted the grave, sold the casket back to an undertaker, and sold Sergeyev's suit to a thrift shop. Someone apparently bought the suit, found the lottery ticket still in the pocket, and cashed it in. Mrs. Sergeyev was eventually awarded the automobile, but she never recovered her husband's body—the thieves had sold it for animal feed.

Think the experts and authorities have all of the answers? Well, they do…but they often have the wrong ones
.

“Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of the atom is talking moonshine.”

—Lord Rutherford,
scientist and Nobel laureate, 1933

“No woman will in my time be prime minister.”

—Margaret Thatcher,
1969, 10 years before being elected prime minister

“I applaud President Nixon's comprehensive statement, which clearly demonstrates again that the president was not involved with the Watergate matter.”

—George Bush,
1974

“No matter what happens, the U.S. Navy is not going to be caught napping.”

—Frank Knox,
Secretary of the Navy, Dec. 4, 1941, 3 days before Pearl Harbor

“We're going to make everybody forget The Beatles.”

—Bee Gee Barry Gibb,
on his group's 1976 movie, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which flopped

“No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris.”

—Orville Wright,
1908

“Novelty is always welcome, but talking pictures are just a fad.”

—Irving Thalberg,
MGM movie producer, 1927

“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.”

—Maréchal Foch,
French military strategist, 1911

“I cannot conceive of anything more ridiculous, more absurd, and more affrontive to all sober judgment than the cry that we are profiting by the acquisition of New Mexico and California. I hold that they are not worth a dollar.”

—Daniel Webster,
senator of Massachusetts, 1848

“It will be gone by June.”

—Variety,
referring to rock 'n' roll, 1955

“Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.”

—President Grover Cleveland,
1900

Elvis may have left the building, but his memory lives on… and on…and on. Here are tidbits from the BRI Elvis file
.

Five Foods Served at Elvis'

Wedding Breakfast:

1
. Suckling pig

2
. Fried chicken

3
. Oysters Rockefeller

4
. Champagne

5
. Wedding cake

Nine Songs Elvis Recorded But Never Released:

1
. “Also Sprach Zarathustra”

2
. “Fool, Fool, Fool”

3
. “Funky Fingers”

4
. “Love Will Keep Us Together”

5
. “Mexican Joe”

6
. “Nine-Pound Hammer”

7
. “Oakie Boogie”

8
. “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”

9
. “You Are My Sunshine”

Seven Dogs Elvis Owned:

1
. Baba (Collie)

2
. Getlo (Chow)

3
. Muffin (Great Pyrenees)

4
. Sherlock (Basset Hound)

5
. Snoopy (Great Dane)

6
. Stuff (Poodle)

7
. Teddy Bear of Zixi Pom-Pom (Poodle)

Thirteen Songs Elvis Sang in Concert, but for Which There Is No Known Recording:

1
. “Bad Moon Rising”

2
. “Blowin' in the Wind”

3
. “Chain Gang”

4
. “Happy Birthday to You”

5
. “House of the Rising Sun”

6
. “I Can See Clearly Now”

7
. “I Write the Songs”

8
. “It Ain't Me Babe”

9
. “Jingle Bells”

10
. “Lodi”

11
. “Mr. Tambourine Man”

12
. “Susie Q”

13
. “That's Amore”

The King's Four Favorite Reading Materials:

1
. The Bible

2
.
The Prophet
, by Kahlil Gibran

3
.
Captain Marvel
comics

4
.
Mad
magazine

Three Elvis Aliases:

1
. John Burrows

2
. Dr. John Carpenter

3
. Tiger (his karate name in tae kwon do)

Look around you. What do you see? A toothbrush, some deodorant, a digital watch, an
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
They may look like everyday items to you, but to an archaeologist in the distant future, they'll tell a fascinating story of what life was like at the beginning of the third millennium. They're perfect for a time capsule
.

The modern craze of saving things began when scientists opened the Egyptian pyramids in the 1920s. Dr. Thorn-well Jacobs, president of Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, was inspired by all of the valuable information society learned. He decided to create a similar vault of records and items to be opened by “any future inhabitants or visitors to the planet Earth.”

Jacobs called his swimming pool–sized container the “Crypt of Civilization.” It was sealed on the campus on May 28, 1940, with instructions not to open it until the year 8113. Jacobs didn't just include a few everyday items in the crypt, but a collection he hoped would represent our entire civilization. There are over 640,000 pages of microfilmed material, hundreds of newsreels and recordings, a set of Lincoln logs, a Donald Duck doll, and thousands of other items. There is even a device designed to teach the English language to the crypt's finders.

Jacobs's idea, published in a 1936
Scientific American
article, created a new fad of “keeping time.” For the 1939 New York World's Fair, Westinghouse Electric filled a seven-foot-long cylindrical vault with modern amenities and sealed it with instructions that it not be opened for 5,000 years. A company executive named G. Edward Pendray came up with a name for the highly publicized promotion:
time capsule
. The term entered the English language almost overnight. (He also invented the word
laundromat
.)

Westinghouse designed a second capsule for the 1964 New York World's Fair. Here are just a few of the hundreds of included items:

• a bikini
  
• a Polaroid camera
  
• plastic wrap
  
• an electric toothbrush
  
• tranquilizers
  
• a ballpoint pen
  
• a 50-star American flag
  
• superconducting wire
  
• a box of detergent
  
• a transistor radio
  
• an electric watch
  
• antibiotics
  
• contact lenses
  
• reels of microfilm
  
• credit cards
  
• a ruby laser rod
  
• a ceramic magnet
  
• filter cigarettes
  
• a Beatles record
  
• irradiated seeds
  
• freeze-dried foods
  
• a rechargeable flashlight
  
• synthetic fibers
  
• the Bible
  
• a computer memory unit
  
• birth-control pills
  

Also included was a bound “Book of Records.” Many scientists and world leaders put messages in the book. Albert Einstein wrote, “I trust that posterity will read these statements with a feeling of proud and justified superiority.”

The International Time Capsule Society (ITCS) was formed in Atlanta in 1990. They believe that only a small fraction of time capsules will ever be recovered. Why? Partly because of thievery and partly because of secrecy. But mostly because of poor planning—people just plain forget where they buried it. The ITCS's mission is to document every time capsule to give it a better chance of being opened someday. “People often think that in the future people are going to be more efficient than we are,” said ITCS co-founder Knute Berger, adding that it's not so. “If we have incompetent bureaucracy, they will too. You have to plan for that.”

The ITCS has created a list of the 10 most-wanted time capsules. (Two have been found—here are the other eight.)

1. Bicentennial Wagon Train Time Capsule
. This holds the signatures of 22 million Americans. President Gerald Ford arrived for the sealing ceremony in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, on July 4,
1976, but someone had already stolen it from an unattended van.

2. MIT Cyclotron Time Capsule
. In 1939 a group of MIT engineers placed a brass time capsule beneath an 18-ton-magnet used in a brand-new, state-of-the-art cyclotron. It was supposed to be opened in 1989, but by then the cyclotron had been deactivated and the capsule all but forgotten. When the capsule's existence was discovered, the brains at MIT had no clue how to get a time capsule out from underneath a 36,000-pound lid. They still don't.

3. Corona, California, Time Capsules
. The citizens of Corona have lost not just 1, but 17 time capsules since the 1930s. In 1986 they tried, unsuccessfully, to recover them. “We just tore up a lot of concrete around the civic center,” said a spokesperson.

4.
M*A*S*H
Time Capsule
. In January 1983, the hit TV show wrapped for good. In a secret ceremony, the cast members buried a capsule containing props and costumes from the set. Where it was buried is a mystery—no one will say. But it's somewhere in the 20th Century Fox parking lot. The lot, however, has shrunk somewhat over the last 20 years, so the time capsule may be located underneath a Marriott Hotel.

5. George Washington's Cornerstone
. In 1793 George Washington, a Mason, performed the Masonic ritual of laying of the original cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol. Over the years, the Capitol has undergone extensive expansion, remodeling, and reconstruction, but the original George Washington cornerstone has never been found. It is unknown whether there is anything inside it.

6. Gramophone Company Time Capsule
. In 1907 in Hayes, Middlesex, England, sound recordings on disk were deposited behind the foundation stone of the new Gramophone Company factory by the opera singer Nellie Melba. During reconstruction work in the 1960s, the container was officially removed, but before it could be reburied, someone stole it.

7. Blackpool Tower
. In Blackpool, Lancashire, England, a foundation deposit was interred in the late 19th century with the customary ceremony. When a search was organized recently in preparation for new building work, not even remote sensing equipment or a clairvoyant could find the lost capsule.