Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader (5 page)

Details:
Craig set his world record on March 6, 1977, in Chicago, when 1,642 ½ pounds of weights were piled on top of him while he was sandwiched between two beds of nails.

What Happened:
In the 1979 edition, Craig’s record appeared with the following note: “Now that weights in Bed-of-Nails contests have attained ¾ of a ton it is felt that this category should be retired. No further claims for publication will henceforth be examined.”

Update:
By 2000 the record was reopened for competition; today it’s held by Lee Graber of Tallmadge, Ohio, who beat Komar’s record by 16 ½ pounds, for a total of 1,659 pounds on June 24, 2000. According to
Guinness
, the hardest part of Graber’s attempt was controlling his breathing, “as he had a lot of weight on his chest and needed to relax to avoid bursting a blood vessel in his head.” (Komar retired his Iron Maiden act in 2000 at the age of 68).

THE LONG SHOWER

Record Holder:
Arron Marshall of Rockingham Park, Australia

Details:
On July 29, 1978, Marshall stepped into his shower, turned on the water, and did not leave again until August 12, setting a world showering record of 336 hours.

What Happened:
In the 1982 edition, his world record appeared with the following disclaimer: “Desquamination [skin peeling off in scales] can be a positive danger.”

Americans spend over 2 billion hours a year mowing their lawns.

Update:
The category was closed and unlike the Iron Maiden, as of 2005 it has not been reopened. (Apparently long showers are more dangerous than the Iron Maiden.)

CAR JUMPING OFF A RAMP

Record Holder:
Dusty Russell of Athens, Georgia

Details:
In April 1973, Russell climbed into his 1963 Ford Falcon, sped up a ramp, and jumped more than 176 feet.

What Happened:
The record was still there in the 1981 edition, but in 1982 it was gone.

Update:
By 1998 the category was back, but with a slight modification: now a car has to “land on its wheels and drive on afterwards.” On August 23, 1998, an Australian named Ray Baumann set a new record, jumping his car 237 feet.

FIRE-EATING

Record Holder:
Jean Chapman of Buckinghamshire, England

Details:
On August 25, 1979, Chapman extinguished 4,583 flaming torches using only her mouth. It took her two hours.

What Happened:
For the 1982 edition Chapman’s entry was followed with the disclaimer: “Fire-eating is potentially a highly dangerous activity.” The category was later dropped.

Update:
By 2004
Guinness
was accepting entries in a modified (and presumably safer) fire-eating category: most flaming torches extinguished in
one minute
. Current record holder: Robert Wolf, who extinguished 43 torches on July 30, 2004. According to press reports, Wolf “finished the very dangerous record attempt without any injury to others and sustained only minor burns to his mouth.”

*        *        *

SIX BALD ROCK STARS

• Rob Halford (Judas Priest)

• Fred Durst (Limp Bizkit)

• Moby

• Michael Stipe (R.E.M.)

• Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins)

• Sinead O’Connor

Hitler’s jawbone is reportedly kept in the Russian Federation Archives.

THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW

The syndicated TV show
Celebrity Justice
asked a slew of celebrities to finish this sentence: There oughta be a law
…

“…against people who scrape their silverware on plates. I hate that.”

—Rebecca Romijn

“…against people who get into the ‘10 items or less’ line with more than 10 items and use a credit card where it says ‘cash only.’”

—Samuel L. Jackson

“…against people who make jokes that aren’t jokes. Like when you say, ‘Is today Tuesday?’ And somebody says, ‘All day!’ That’s not a joke. Not funny. Don’t say it.”

—Hank Azaria

“…that if you are a good driver, and you have a reasonable IQ, you should be able to drive any speed you want.”

—Jenna Elfman

“…against honking your horn unless it’s absolutely necessary. Otherwise you’re going to drive everybody crazy, the stress level will come up, people will be fighting in the streets. Don’t honk your horn!”

—Dick Clark

“…against people coming into a meeting, in close quarters, with bad breath.”

—Coolio

“…against people that when they give you your change at the cash register, that they put the dollar down first, and then the change.”

—Elizabeth Perkins

“…that if a guy gets dumped by a woman on national TV, he should get half of everything she owns. I mean that’s how it works in the real world.”

—Charlie
,
The Bachelorette

“…and a serious fine for people who don’t pick up their dog turd, and I want them to be thrown in jail.”

—Marg Helgenberger
,
CSI

“…that the whole world sort of adopts Spain’s timetable, where you sort of take the whole day off to relax and have fun.”

—David Arquette

“…that people smile at at least three people every day.”

—Orlando Bloom

The Sun converts over 4,000,000 tons of matter into energy every second.

APRIL FOOLS!

It’s not unusual to find odd-but-true stories in the newspapers these days. But if the date on the paper is April 1…you might want to think twice before assuming it’s true
.

I
n 1998 Burger King ran a full-page advertisement in
USA Today
announcing the new Left-Handed Whopper. “The new left-handed sandwich will have all condiments rotated 180°, thereby reducing the amount of lettuce and other toppings from spilling out the right side of the burger.”

• In 1993 a group calling itself “The Arm the Homeless Coalition” announced that volunteers dressed as Santa would be stationed outside local malls collecting donations to buy guns and ammo for the homeless citizens of Columbus, Ohio. “There are organizations that deal with food and jobs, but none that train homeless people to use firearms,” a spokesperson told reporters. A few days later three Ohio State University students admitted they’d made the whole thing up.

• In 1959 the Indiana
Kokomo Tribune
announced that due to budget cuts, the city police department would now be closing each night from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Anyone who called the police after hours would have to leave a message on the answering machine, and in the morning a police officer would listen to the messages. “We will check the hospitals and the coroner, and if they don’t have any trouble, we will know that nothing happened,” the paper quoted a police department spokesperson as saying.

• In 1999, just four months after most of western Europe adopted the euro as a standard currency, England’s BBC radio service announced that England was scrapping the national anthem, “God Save the Queen,” in favor of a Euro anthem that would be sung in German. “There’s too much nationalism,” a spokesperson for the EU supposedly told the BBC. “We need to look for unity.”

• In March 1998, the newsletter
New Mexicans for Science and Reason
published a story claiming that the Alabama state legislature had passed a bill changing the mathematical value of pi from 3.14159 to the “Biblical value” of 3.0. On April 1 a physicist named Mark Boslough came forward and admitted he wrote the article to parody legislative attacks on the teaching of the theory of evolution.

An average water droplet contains 100 quintillion molecules of water.

• At about the same time that Pepsi made a worldwide change from its traditional white soda cans to blue ones in 1996, England’s Virgin Cola announced an “innovation” of its own: its red cans would turn blue when the cans passed their sell-by date. “Virgin strongly advises its customers to avoid ALL blue cans of cola,” the company said in an April 1 newspaper ad. “They are clearly out of date.”

• In 1996 America Online published a report that NASA’s
Galileo
spacecraft had found life on Jupiter. The following day they admitted they made it up. “Yes, it is a hoax,” an AOL representative told reporters, “but it’s a good one, don’t you think?”

• In 1993 the German radio station Westdeutsche Rundfunk in Cologne broadcast a report that the city had issued a new regulation requiring joggers to run no faster than 6 mph; running faster than that “could disturb the squirrels who were in the middle of their mating season.”

• In 1981 the
Herald-News
in Roscommon, Michigan, printed a warning that scientists were preparing to release 2,000 “freshwater sharks” into three area lakes as part of a government-funded study.

• In 1980 the BBC broadcast a report that London’s Big Ben was going to be remade into a digital clock and the clock hands would be offered for sale to the first listeners who called in. “Surprisingly, few people thought it was funny,” a BBC spokesman told reporters.

• In 1993 San Diego’s KGB-FM radio station announced that the space shuttle
Discovery
was being diverted from Edwards Air Force Base to a local airport called Montgomery Field. More than 1,000 people descended on the tiny airstrip, snarling traffic for miles. “I had to shoo them away with their video cameras,” airport manager Tom Raines told reporters. “A lot of them were really mad.”

• In 1981 England’s
Daily Mail
newspaper published a story about a Japanese entrant in the London Marathon named Kimo Nakajimi who, thanks to an error in translation, thought he had to run for 26
days
—not 26 miles. The paper reported that there had been several recent sightings of Nakajimi, but that all attempts to flag him down had failed.

Many residents of Troublesome Creek, Kentucky, have blue skin.

WORD ORIGINS

Ever wonder where words come from? Here are some interesting stories
.

E
XPLODE

Meaning:
Burst or shatter violently

Origin:
“This word has a history in the theater, where its meaning was once quite different than it is today. Originally ‘explode’ meant to drive an actor off the stage by means of clapping and hooting. It is made up of the Latin prefix
ex-
(out) and
plauder
(to applaud). The word still retains the sense of rejection, such as in the act of exploding a theory—exposing it as false—and, in general use, there is still noise associated with things which explode.” (From
Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, Volume II
, by William and Mary Morris)

FILIBUSTER

Meaning:
The use of prolonged speeches to obstruct legislative action

Origin:
“From the Spanish
filibustero
, meaning ‘freebooter’ (which is derived from the Dutch
vrijbuter)
. It was first used in English to designate a pirate or buccaneer in the Caribbean. In the 1850s, the word was used to signify adventurers who took part in illegal expeditions against Cuba, Mexico, and Central America to set up local governments that would apply to the United States for annexation. It was first used as a political term in the U.S. Senate in the late 1800s.” (From
An Avalanche of Anoraks
, by Robert White)

GOD

Meaning:
Deity; creator of the universe; supreme being

Origin:
“The term for the deity sometimes is said to derive from ‘good,’ and there is some overlap between the two words. The words have different Indo-European roots, however. God has been traced to
gheu-
, meaning ‘to call,’ ‘to invoke,’ or ‘to offer sacrifices to.’ Good derives from
ghedh-
and means ‘to unite,’ ‘to join,’ or ‘bring together.’” (From
Devious Derivations
, by Hugh Rawson)

Sweet smell of success: The smell of peppermint improves the concentration of office workers.

STRIKE

Meaning:
To stop working as a form of organized protest
Origin:
“First used to describe an event in 1768 when a group of angry British sailors demonstrated their refusal to work by ‘striking’ (taking down) their sails. As a labor term, it was first used in America in 1799 to describe a ten-week walkout by New York shoemakers.” (From
Once Upon a Word
, by Rob Kyff)

DOODLE

Meaning:
Scribble absentmindedly

Origin:
“Comes from the German word
dudeln
, meaning ‘to play the bagpipe.’ The notion seems to be that a person who spends his time playing bagpipes would be guilty of other frivolous time-wasting activities—like scribbling aimlessly on scraps of paper. Although the word has been around for several centuries, it did not come into widespread popularity in the United States until Gary Cooper used it in the famous film
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
in 1936.” (From
Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, Volume III
, by William and Mary Morris)