Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader (61 page)

In Sheffield, England, in the late 1820s, James Chesterman manufactured long steel bands that were rolled into continuous loops for use as frames in hoop skirts. But when the hoop skirt fashion fell out of favor, Chesterman was left with a lot of light-weight, bendable steel bands. Solution: He put notches into them at incremental distances and sold them to surveyors as “Steel Band Measuring Chains.” He even built a special casing with a spring inside that would roll up the band. In New Haven, Connecticut, in 1868, Alvin Fellows improved on Chesterman’s design by adding a clip that locked the tape in any desired position. Tape measures have changed little since then.

In 1783 Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler devised what he called a “Latin Square,” a 9 x 9-square grid in which every number appears once in each row and column. In the late 1970s, a U.S. puzzle maker named Howard Garnes turned Euler’s squares into a game by removing some of the numbers from the grid. Called “Number Squares,” they first appeared in a Dell puzzle magazine. The game caught the eye of Maki Kaji, president of the Japanese puzzle company, Nikoli, Inc., and in the mid-1980s, he altered it—making it more difficult by restricting the amount of given numbers to 30 and making each pattern symmetrical. Maki also thought the game should have a more Japanese-sounding name, so he combined the words
Su
, meaning “number,” and
Doku
, meaning “single.” In 1997 a New Zealander named Wayne Gould discovered Sudoku in Japan, and set out to create a computer program that could generate new puzzles. Seven years later, in 2004, Gould’s puzzles began appearing in London’s
The Times
, and were so popular that soon other newspapers in Europe and the United States started running them. Today, Sudoku books outsell all other puzzle books combined by 10 to 1.

 

GRAHAM CARDWELL.
In 1998 the belongings of 46-year-old Cardwell, an assistant dockmaster, were found on the mud flats near Immingham, England. Air and sea search teams did all they could to find him, but his wife and three children had to give him up for dead, assuming he’d drowned in the nearby Humber Estuary. But he hadn’t drowned—he had begun a new life 200 miles away in the West Midlands of England as a bachelor with a new name, new job, and new apartment. After his secret was found out, Cardwell claimed he took off because he was depressed, convinced he was dying of cancer, and didn’t want to distress his family. The police declined to prosecute, and his family declined to have anything more to do with him.

 

ALLEN KIRK WOLFORD.
In 2006 Wolford, a Colorado funeral director, tried to forge his own death certificate, hoping it would get him out of paying $42,000 in overdue child support and $7,000 in student loans. But before the certificate was officially registered at the state Department of Public Health, authorities pegged it as fake. Wolford’s first mistake: He listed the Evergreen Funeral Home, his workplace, as his home address—which looked odd to state officials. Second mistake: He listed the Nolan Funeral Home as the facility that cremated his body. When officials called to check with owner Neva Nolan, she said she’d never heard of him. Wolford was arrested and convicted of fraud, but he skipped out on his court date. He surfaced in New Zealand in 2007—applying for a job as a funeral director.

 

KARL HACKETT.
In 1987 Hackett, an Englishman, served a one-year prison sentence for assault. When he got out of prison, he assumed the name of a dead friend, Lee Simm, who had committed suicide. For more than a decade, the new “Lee Simm” lived
a perfectly respectable life as a computer consultant with a (false) driver’s license and (false) passport to prove his (false) identity. Then, in 1999, came London’s infamous Paddington train crash, which killed 31 people and injured 520. It seemed to “Simm” that this was the ideal opportunity to kill off his real identity. On the day of the crash, he called the police to report his concern that his “lodger,” Karl Hackett, was missing and might have been on the train. A day later, the police got another call, this time from someone claiming to be Hackett’s brother, confirming that Hackett was on the train. Hackett’s father and sister got the news and attended a memorial service for the Paddington victims, assuming that Karl, whom they hadn’t seen in years, was among the dead. But suspicious police took one of Hackett’s relatives to “Simm’s” house…and the jig was up. In England it’s not illegal to disappear and adopt a new identity, but it is illegal to waste police time: The local magistrate gave Hackett/Simm a suspended sentence and urged him to get help for his “psychological problems.”

 

JOHN DARWIN.
On March 21, 2002, Darwin took his canoe out onto the calm North Sea, half a mile from his home on the east coast of England. Later, the smashed-up remains of the canoe washed onto shore, and the 57-year-old ex-teacher was presumed drowned. His wife, Anne, watched the massive search operations from the window of their five-story home and accepted the condolences of friends and family. “All I want is to bury my husband,” she said. After the inquest, a death certificate was issued and the life insurance money—a whopping £250,000 ($400,000)—was paid to the grieving widow. She also collected death benefits and a widow’s pension. The real story? Less than a year after his “death,” Darwin showed up at Anne’s door and quietly moved back into their home. They also owned the house next door, and for the next three years, whenever friends came calling he’d slip through the interior door that connected the two residences and hide until they left. In 2006 Anne sold the two houses for nearly £500,000, and she and John moved to Panama. But a few weeks later, John started complaining that he didn’t want to live in hiding for the rest of his life. On December 1, 2007, he walked into a London police station, looking tanned and healthy, and claimed he’d had amnesia for the past five years. Both Darwins were arrested for insurance fraud. (They didn’t even bother asking their friends for bail money.)

The Setup:
Texan Kyle Sandoval told his girlfriend, Shannon McCarthy, that they were going to San Diego to see his brother and maybe visit the San Diego Natural History Museum. But Sandoval had more planned. He arranged with the museum to place an engagement ring inside one of the exhibits.

The Proposal:
As they browsed the museum’s rocks and gems exhibit, McCarthy noticed something unusual among the samples of calcite and gypsum: a diamond ring. Next to it was a small sign that read “Shannon’s diamond, on loan from the Sandoval collection.” (She said yes.)

 

The Setup:
Aaron Weisinger and Erica Breder had bonded over the fact that both had great-grandparents who’d come to America via the immigrant processing center at Ellis Island, New York, and the Statue of Liberty had deep personal meaning for both of them. So when the monument was scheduled to reopen for the first time after 9/11 on July 4, 2009, Weisinger entered a lottery for the 240 available tickets. He won, and he and Breder flew from their home in San Francisco to New York City.

The Proposal:
They climbed the 354 steps up the steep, spiral case to the statue’s crown. That’s where Weisinger got down on one knee and presented a ring. (She said yes.)

 

The Setup:
One of the biggest hit songs of 2009 was Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It),” advising men to marry their girlfriends before they lose them, or else “if you like it, then you should’ve put a ring on it.”

The Proposal:
During a show in Florida in June 2009, halfway through “Single Ladies,” the music stopped and the lights went out. A single spotlight came on. “Lindell has something he wants to say,” said Beyoncé, as she handed her microphone to a man in the front row. “Beyoncé told me if I like it, I need to put a ring on it,” Lindell said as he got down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend. It’s unclear exactly how he contacted Beyoncé and got her to agree to pause her concert…but his girlfriend said yes.

Society for Barefoot Living.
“We are a group of people who
love
going barefoot pretty much
everywhere
.” (They also love bolding certain
words
on their Web site.) Founded in 1994, the SBL’s mission is to remind the shoe-wearing public that it’s a lot healthier and more fun to let your soles touch the ground than to keep them covered up. They also dispel the myths about going bare-footed, such as the likelihood of catching athlete’s foot (it’s less than with shoes); that it’s illegal to walk into a restaurant without shoes (it isn’t); and that it’s gross to go into a public restroom in bare feet (“Urine is
not
a toxic waste product and this has been scientifically
proven
!”).

 

National Coalition for the Advancement of Baton Twirling.
Don’t think spinning around a metal stick is a sport? The NCABT says, “Try it.” Not only is baton twirling a sport, but a very difficult one to master, and therefore should get the respect it deserves. The NCABT, formed by a group of coaches, is lobbying the NCAA to make it an officially sanctioned college sport. Meanwhile, another organization, the U.S. Twirling Association, is working tirelessly to make baton twirling an Olympic event.

 

Society for Creative Anachronism.
If you don’t feel at all weird referring to your friends as “Milord” and “Milady,” then you may be stout-hearted enough to join the SCA. Formed in 1966 by a group of history buffs in Berkeley, California, members dress up as
Medieval knights, damsels, royalty, and villains. The SCA has 30,000 members all over the world, which they’ve broken up into 19 “kingdoms,” such as “Calontir” (the U.S. Midwest) and “Drachenwald” (Europe, Africa, the Middle East). SCA members hold local events and attend renaissance fairs, where they compete in tournaments of jousting, archery, and axe-throwing. After the last foe has been waylaid, they feast merrily and pay tribute to the guy who’s dressed up as the king.

 

The Skeptics Society:
Do you believe in ghosts, aliens, Bigfoot, or ESP? Then this isn’t the organization for you. “Some people think we are a bunch of grumpy curmudgeons unwilling to accept any claim that challenges the status quo, but this is not so,” says scientist Michael Shermer, who founded the Society in 1992. Its 55,000 members simply maintain that “seeing is believing.”

And for the kids, they offer the Junior Skeptic Club. Their hero: Scooby-Doo. Why? Because at the end of every cartoon, the dog (and those meddling kids) prove that the ghost isn’t real.

 

National Coalition for Men.
Is today’s man still supposed to open a door for a woman? Is it okay for guys to talk about their feelings? What specifically
is
the role of the male in this increasingly complex society? The NCFM—born in 1977 at the height of the Women’s Liberation Movement—aims to help “emotionally adrift” men. They hold workshops and conduct support groups in an effort to help guys gain their freedom from male stereotyping, conditioned competitiveness, fear of sharing their feelings, getting their sense of identity from their jobs, thinking that violence is manly, having distant emotional relationships with their children, and a host of other issues. (And it’s still okay to open the door for a woman.)

 

The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.
Founded in 1957, this nonprofit organization consists of more than 1,000 educators, doctors, psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and biologists who share theories and findings with each other. They operate under the assumption that science illuminates sexuality, and sexuality enhances the quality of our lives. The 2009 SSSS Annual Congress was held at a spa in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

“The trouble with being me is that at this point, nobody gives a damn what my problem is. I could literally have a tumor on the side of my head and they’d be like, ‘Yeah, big deal. I’d eat a tumor every morning for the kind of money you’re pulling down.’”

—
Jim Carrey

 

“With my sunglasses on, I’m Jack Nicholson. Without them, I’m fat and 60.”

—
Jack Nicholson

 

“I have a lust for diamonds, almost like a disease.”

—
Elizabeth Taylor

 

“I used to make appearances at cocktail parties in Florida, pretending that I was an old friend of the host.”

—
Mickey Rooney

 

“I feel cheated never knowing what it’s like to get pregnant, carry a baby, and breast-feed.”

—
Dustin Hoffman

 

“It’s pretty sad when a person has to lose weight to play Babe Ruth.”

—
John Goodman

 

“Fame can be just so annoying because people are always so critical of you. You can’t just say, ‘Hi.’ You say hi and people whisper, ‘Man, did you see the way she said hi? What an attitude.’”

—
Juliette Lewis