Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader (62 page)

•
Dieter Warnecke
, 45, wasn’t directly associated with the Iceman, but he was the leader of the search team that found Helmut Simon’s body. Warnecke dropped dead of a heart attack within an hour of Simon’s funeral.

•
Konrad Spindler
, the Innsbruck University archaeologist who headed the Iceman investigation team, was asked if he believed in the curse. “It is all media hype,” he answered. “The next thing the media will be saying is that I am next on the list.” He was. Five months later, Spindler died of complications from multiple sclerosis.

Makes sense: Venice is the most frequently flooded city on Earth.

FINAL THOUGHT

Even if the Iceman does have a beef with the people who disturbed his rest and poked and prodded his mummified remains, he doesn’t seem to mind visitors. When Oetzi was moved to the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy, the local tourist trade shot up by an estimated 4 million euros per year. If anything, the “curse” has helped business, not hurt it.

Today tens of thousands of people visit the museum and file past the Iceman’s refrigerated chamber for a quick peek. And as far as anyone can tell, he hasn’t bothered any of them.

*        *        *

UNCLE JOHN’S STALL OF SHAME

Honoree:
Bob Apple, a city councilman and bar owner in Spokane, Washington

Dubious Achievement:
Removing the toilet paper from the restrooms of his bar

True Story:
In August 2005, citing cost-cutting measures, patrons at Bob Apple’s Comet restaurant who needed to use the facilities were told to “check out a roll” from the bartender, leaving their driver’s license as collateral. Councilman Apple blamed his customers’ “continuous thefts of toilet paper products” as the reason for the rash move.

Concerned citizens didn’t take the new rule sitting down. Doug Clark, a columnist for the
Spokesman-Review
and patron of the Comet, went to a local Costco and bought a bundle of bathroom tissue. “We’re talking 45 rolls of two-ply,” he wrote. “Five hundred sheets per roll. That’s 45,000 total squares—enough quality wipeage to handle a Comet crowd even on chili dog night.”

He wrapped the bundle in a red, white, and blue ribbon, marched down to city hall, and put the rolls on Apple’s desk. Clark also gave the councilman a card that was signed with: “Here’s hoping everything comes out all right in the end.”

That helped convince Apple to change the rule—that and the fact that the Washington Health Department threatened to shut down the Comet if he didn’t restock his stalls.

Going bearfoot? Some Native Americans wore boots made from the legs of bears.

HIPPOS IN THE NEWS

Take a walk on the wild side—with hippos
.

T
HE TORTOISE AND THE HIPPO
In January 2005 a dehydrated baby hippo was found on the coast of Kenya by wildlife rangers. Flooding caused by the Indian Ocean tsunamis of 2004 had separated it from its mother. The one-year-old calf, nicknamed “Owen” by the rangers, was taken to a wildlife sanctuary—where he quickly befriended a 100-year-old male tortoise named “Mzee.” Park officials said the baby hippo had adopted the tortoise as its mother and that the two “had become inseparable.” Park manager Paula Kahumbu said, “Owen follows Mzee around and licks his face.”

HIPP-O BEHAVE, BABY!

Zookeepers at the Berlin Zoo announced in 2005 that Europe’s oldest hippo needed medication…contraceptive medication. The 53-year-old hippo, Bullette, had already birthed 20 calves in her life and had been observed “energetically mating” with her longtime mate, Ede. The zookeepers were afraid that having another calf could kill Bullette, so they started giving the 6,000-pound hippo “bread-roll size” birth-control pills. They also said it was very uncommon for a hippo of such an age to still show any interest in sex.

HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPO

In 1998 Thailand’s
Pattaya Mail
newspaper reported that a “circus dwarf” named Od had died in a bizarre hippo-related accident. The longtime performer apparently bounced sideways off a trampoline and landed right in the mouth of a yawning hippopotamus. Hilda the Hippo, the story said, instinctively swallowed, and the unfortunate Od came to an odd end. The 1,000-plus spectators on hand thought it was part of the act and applauded wildly…until they realized that a tragedy had occurred.

Note:
It never happened. The story
did
appear in the Thai newspaper, just as it has in many other newspapers around the world since at least 1994, but it has been exposed as an urban legend.

Cool fact: NASA astronaut underwear is lined with tubes of water to prevent overheating.

OOPS!

More tales of outrageous blunders
.

R
ECIPE FOR DISASTER
“The April 2004 issue of
Southern Living
magazine had an unusually explosive feature: the icebox dinner roll. Step one of the recipe called for boiling one cup of water and a half-cup of shortening over high heat for five minutes. Obviously they hadn’t tested it themselves. The result was a bubbling concoction of melted fat that erupted on stovetops, injuring at least five
Southern Living
readers, including one who needed treatment for burns. John Olson, a food scientist at rival
Cook’s Illustrated
magazine, who tried the recipe, calls the mixture ‘like napalm.’ The magazine issued the first product recall in its nearly 40-year history, asking distributors to yank copies of the issue from newsstands.”

—Wall Street Journal

FINGER FOOD

“A woman from Saransk, Russia, almost lost her hand after putting it into a tank filled with piranhas. She was trying to clean the tank when the carnivorous fish attacked her in a feeding frenzy during which they stripped the flesh from two fingers. The predators only let go when the woman smashed them against the side of the tank. She thought the tank, which belonged to her son, contained goldfish. A neighbor said: ‘She had no idea the pet fish in the tank were predators.’”

—FemaleFirst

HOW DO YOU SPELL PRESIDANTIAL?

“The White House went all-out to showcase the advantages of President Bush’s ambitious financial agenda this week, but in the end the ‘challenges’ proved too much. The word ‘challenges’—a main theme of a two-day White House economic conference that ended on Thursday—was misspelled on a large television monitor that stood in front of Bush during a panel discussion. ‘Financial Challanges for Today and Tomorrow,’ the message proclaimed in dark blue capital letters against a bright yellow background.”

—Reuters

Safety first: A Japanese company has invented training wheels for high heels.

THE EYES HAVE IT

“Sunshine Coast great-grandmother Terry Horder got the fright of her life when she accidentally stuck her eyes shut with super glue. The 78-year-old was defrosting the fridge when her eyes started watering and she reached for a bottle of allergy eye drops. But instead of grabbing the medicated drops she got Loctite 401. Her husband of 57 years, Joe Horder, said his normally outspoken wife was suddenly very quiet. ‘Normally you can’t shut her up but she went very silent and I just heard this little voice say, “Dad, I think I’ve glued my eyes shut,”’ Mr. Horder said. Mr. Horder called Triple-0 (Australia’s 911) and paramedics soon arrived to take her to Caloundra Hospital’s emergency ward.

“‘They soaked my eyes for around five minutes and then pried the lashes apart, which wasn’t pleasant. But about 10 minutes later I was good as new,’ she said.”

—Queensland
[Australia]
Newspapers

ON THE WRONG TRACK

“Trains on a busy German route were delayed for hours after a train driver pulled the emergency brake fearing that a man next to the tracks was trying to kill himself. Authorities then closed the track, causing a chain reaction that delayed 11 trains for 4.5 hours. Police said the 70-year-old man was spotted as he leaned over the track near Cologne, but it turned out he was just trying to reach some blackberries.”

—USA Today

BRAINS NOT INCLUDED

“The state government’s computer networks shut down for 16 hours in a power failure earlier this week. Computers froze for an entire business day. Result: Many offices had to close and court-ordered child support payments were delayed to 516,000 children. The shutdown could have been prevented if officials had heeded a warning that the computers needed replacement batteries.”

—Atlanta Journal-Constitution

*        *        *

Chinese proverb:
“Don’t laugh at age. Pray to reach it.”

Artist Salvador Dalí once designed a telephone shaped like a lobster.

WHAT A DOLL

The people who came up with these dolls must have been as empty-headed as the dolls themselves
.

N
EEDIES (2005)
Manufactured by Codependent Designs, which says Needies are “like rain on a sunshiny day.” They’re depressed, emotionally fragile…and needy. Dannie, Mossie, and Brettie require constant hugging and squeezing, which they reward by dishing out flattering compliments. Stop hugging them and they cry. And if you’re hugging another Needie doll (which they can sense via an electronic hookup) they’ll bad-mouth the other doll. The company says these dolls are inspired by “codependent, high-maintenance relationships.”

C.B. MCHAUL (1977)

In the late 1970s, American pop culture had a brief obsession with truck drivers. There were the
Smokey and the Bandit
films and the hit song “Convoy,” about truckers communicating via another 1970s fad, the CB radio. Trying to cash in on the fad, Mego Toys released a line of eight truck driver dolls (the main character was C. B. McHaul, an obvious ripoff of C. W. McCall, who’d recorded the hit song “Convoy”). When the dolls flopped they were McHauled to the dump.

TYSON (1999)

Tyson was a 13-inch doll that looked a lot like Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken. But where Ken was available in different skin colors, Tyson came in only one version: African-American. That wasn’t the only difference: Tyson was muscular, anatomically correct, and homosexual. According to manufacturer Totem International, Tyson was “the world’s first Black gay doll.” Totem was promptly sued by boxer Mike Tyson and model Tyson Beckford, both of whom are African-American and bald—but not homosexual—and feared people might think the doll was based on them. So Totem took the doll off the market, right? Nope. Both lawsuits were withdrawn and the doll was released in 1999. (And it’s still available.)

The first U.S. coins were minted with silver from Martha Washington’s table settings.

CANOE PLANTS

Hawaii has some of the most lush, beautiful vegetation in the world. Visitors assume that all those plants are native to the islands…but they’re wrong. Almost all of them come from somewhere else
.

S
URVIVOR: SOUTH PACIFIC
If you were about to climb into a canoe and set out across the Pacific Ocean to find a new home, what items would you bring to ensure that 1) you didn’t starve or die of thirst as you spent weeks (or months) on the sea; and 2) when you finally landed on some unknown island, you’d have everything you needed to begin a new life? And what if you could only bring plants? Your food, clothing, and shelter would have to come from the seeds, roots, cuttings, and small plants you packed in your canoe. Could you do it?

The ancient Polynesians could…and did. Thousands of years ago, at a time when European sailors were unable to navigate beyond sight of shore, the Polynesians explored more than 12 million square miles of Pacific Ocean—an area larger than Canada, Mexico, and the United States combined. They travelled in 90-foot-long double-hulled canoes that could hold as many as 100 people on the large open platform that was built between the two canoes. And they brought their natural world with them.

Voyaging as far as 2,500 miles in a single stretch, the Polynesians populated the islands scattered across the South Pacific: Samoa, Fiji, Tahiti, Tonga, New Zealand, Easter Island, and the Hawaiian Islands, among many others. Because they never knew what they would find when they landed on a new island, they took what they’d need once they got there. And what they needed was the plants that they relied upon for survival and comfort.

SPREADING THE SEEDS

Around 1,700 years ago, they brought to the Hawaiian Islands many of the plants that seem so natural to the islands today, such as the coconut palm and Hawaiian bamboo. Because the Polynesians had no written language, archaeologists have studied oral tradition and scientific evidence to figure out just which plants they brought. They’ve come up with a list of about 32, known today as the “canoe plants.”

The word “soused” was originally a cooking term meaning “pickled in brine.”

One was the
kamani
tree, which grows up to 60 feet tall. The Polynesians used its wood to build canoes and huts, the oil from the seeds was used to make lamp oil, and the tree’s small orange blossoms were used for floral leis. They also brought the
maia
or banana tree with them. In addition to providing food, its large leaves were used for roofing, the peels were made into poultices to treat wounds, and the tree trunks were used as rollers to push heavy canoes into the sea.
Ko
, now called sugarcane, was used as a medicine and food, and the leaves were used as thatching for huts.