Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (11 page)

Update:
Want to visit the museum? You can’t. Tragedy struck in 1996, when Buddy Hough died. His wife auctioned off the museum’s contents two years later. (The ambulance sold for $17,500, Bonnie and Clyde’s car went for $1,900, and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Museum bought Lee Harvey Oswald’s furniture for $6,000.)

FUTURE BIRTHPLACE OF CAPTAIN KIRK

Location:
Riverside, Iowa

Background:
Boldly going beyond a single building, the entire town is a
Star Trek
museum. According to the TV series, Captain Kirk will be born here on March 22, 2233. The town wanted to erect a statue of William Shatner as Kirk, but Paramount Pictures, which owns
Star Trek
, wanted a $40,000 licensing fee. So instead, docked in the town square is the
U.S.S. Riverside
, which bears a striking (but not copyright infringing) resemblance to the
U.S.S. Enterprise
.

Be Sure to See:
The annual Kirk Birthday celebration in March. Souvenirs are available. The bestseller: Kirk Dirt, a $3 vial of soil dug from the fictional space captain’s future birth site.

Good strategy? Costa Rica has no army.

These days, it seems that people will sue each other over practically anything. Here are some real-life examples of unusual legal battles
.

T
HE PLAINTIFFS:
Sixteen violinists

THE DEFENDANT:
The city of Bonn, Germany

THE LAWSUIT:
In March 2004, violinists from the Beethoven Orchestra sued for a pay raise on the grounds that they play more notes than musicians in the woodwind or brass sections. They demanded an extra $123 per rehearsal (or performance) for the “extra notes” they have to play, adding that they were actually being generous by not asking for more. “We could have calculated the surcharge per eighth note, but we chose to take an easier course,” one violinist said. Orchestra director Laurentius Bonitz said, “The suit is absurd.”

THE VERDICT:
The violinists changed their tune and took an even easier course: they dropped the suit.

THE PLAINTIFF:
Isabel Barros of Santiago, Chile

THE DEFENDANT:
A bank

THE LAWSUIT:
Barros was making a withdrawal when one of the cashiers loudly asked, “Who is the lady for the £9,000?” When Barros left the bank with the money ($16,000), she was robbed, so she filed a lawsuit to get the money back, saying it was the clerk’s fault. “Why I was so stupid to answer him when he asked who was the £9,000 lady I don’t know, but it was his unsubtlety that drew attention to me. Plus he counted the money out loud so everyone could hear.” The bank denied that the clerk shouted, and said they have video footage to prove it.

THE VERDICT:
Pending.

THE PLAINTIFF:
Donald Johnson of West Palm Beach, Florida

THE DEFENDANT:
Shoney’s Restaurant

THE LAWSUIT:
Johnson ordered potato soup from the restaurant and they gave him clam chowder by mistake. He’s allergic to clams, but he ate the whole bowl. He had an allergic reaction that required a visit to the emergency room and sued the restaurant for giving him “psychological sleep disorders” when they served the wrong soup.

A mirage can be photographed.

THE VERDICT:
He won, but didn’t get the $4,070 he wanted to cover his medical bills. The jury said that Shoney’s was 10% responsible for serving the wrong soup—but that Johnson was 90% responsible for eating it, and awarded him $407.

THE PLAINTIFF:
Will Wright

THE DEFENDANTS:
Producers of
Wheel of Fortune

THE LAWSUIT:
In 2003 Wright won a $48,000 jackpot on the game show. It was a big moment for everybody, but Wright claims host Pat Sajak got too carried away. “I stick out my hand thinking he’s going to shake it,” Wright said. “Instead he jumps onto me.” Wright sued the show for $2 million, claiming that Sajak’s assault resulted in his needing back surgery. “They say I signed a release,” he said, “but that was for things like if you hurt yourself spinning the wheel. It doesn’t cover the host jumping on a contestant.”

VERDICT:
Pending.

THE PLAINTIFFS:
Lance and Misty Westmoreland

THE DEFENDANT:
Scenic Igloo Village, Cordova, Alaska

THE LAWSUIT:
The Westmorelands visited the tourist site in 1997 with their six-year-old son Cody, who “wanted to see Eskimos.” There were no Eskimos, but they did see John “Chico” Williams, 47, an actor at the village, dressed as a woman. “I don’t know what you call it up there,” Lance Westmoreland later said from his Texas home, “but down here it’s just plain sick.” Igloo Village manager Dave Moka said, “I tried my best to placate them. I told them they were lucky—Chico once came to work dressed as the Madonna. Another time he showed up wearing only a bagel. I refunded their money, and thought that would be the end of it.” It wasn’t: the couple sued for $600,000 in damages, claiming the “cross-dressing Eskimo” traumatized their son. “Eskimos are supposed to be normal Eskimos,” Misty Westmoreland said. “You go to a tourist igloo village, you want to see whale blubber and mukluks and stuff like that.” Williams kept a sense of humor about the incident. “I am an Aleut, not an Eskimo,” he said.

THE VERDICT:
None. The trial ended in a hung jury.

A giant panda consumes about 120 pounds of bamboo a day.

Are humans really the smartest primates?

T
HE BALLAD OF KEN ALLEN

As a baby at the San Diego Zoo, an orangutan named Ken Allen taught himself to take his crib apart and to unscrew lightbulbs. By adulthood, he was breaking other orangutans out of their cages and leading them on covert trips around the zoo. During the 1980s, Ken broke out nine times, delighting zoo visitors and frustrating zoo workers. How’d he do it? Keepers discovered dozens of makeshift finger and foot holds in the artificial rock walls of Ken’s pen. The holes were smoothed over, ending Ken’s escapes, but he’d already become a media hero, with magazine profiles, a fan club, T-shirts, and even a country song: “The Ballad of Ken Allen.”

MMMM...PASTRIES

In 2001 a gorilla in the Pittsburgh Zoo leapt eight feet over a moat and grabbed onto an inch-wide bamboo stem leaning against the enclosure wall. Then she climbed the bamboo like a rope, all the way up the 16-foot wall. Easily hopping over a short retaining wall, the gorilla began foraging...for junk food. She raided a concession stand, consuming muffins, pastries, and orange soda. Some resourceful zookeepers finally figured out how to lure her back into captivity: they used Hershey’s Kisses as bait. The gorilla was tranquilized and returned to her habitat, and the bamboo was immediately trimmed.

TARZAN THE APE APE

The Los Angeles Zoo assumed an area designed to hold bears would be sufficient to house gorillas. Wrong. In October 2000, a gorilla named Evelyn took a running jump, grabbed a hanging vine, and vaulted over a 15-foot-wide moat. For the next hour, Evelyn leisurely wandered around the zoo, visiting the orangutan, giraffe, and elephant houses. She also played in flower gardens, rummaged through garbage cans, and played hide-and-seek with the frantic zookeepers trying to catch her. Evelyn broke out several more times, even after the walls of her enclosure were raised. The Los Angeles Zoo finally gave up and sent her to a new home in the Denver Zoo, from which she continues to escape.

The word “galaxy” comes from the Greek
gala
, for “milk.”

PLANT A TREE, SAVE A PRIMATE

After Jonathan the orangutan escaped from his enclosure numerous times, the Los Angeles Zoo designed a state-of-the-art, escape-proof outdoor habitat. They were so sure it would hold Jonathan, they arranged for local officials and reporters to witness him enter his new home for the first time. Bad idea: as zookeepers, dignitaries, visitors, and the media watched in disbelief, the ape went straight to a tree, uprooted it, leaned it against a wall, and climbed out.

BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WIRES

After the headaches Jonathan caused in Los Angeles, the Kansas City Zoo didn’t take any chances with Jonathan’s son, Joseph. Keepers lined the ground around Joseph’s enclosure with electrified wires, which would give Joseph a potent jolt should he ever try to break out. It didn’t work. He took an old rubber tire he’d been given as a toy, laid it across the wires, and simply walked to freedom. Nobody even noticed that he was gone until visitors found him in the petting zoo playing with the sheep.

GREEN THUMBS

An orangutan in a Texas zoo figured out how to overcome the electric fence around his cage. He ripped out big chunks of grass from the ground and held them in his hands and feet. Using them as insulating mittens, he climbed over the electrified wires without getting zapped.

GIMME A “C,” GIMME AN “H,” GIMME AN “I”...

Resembling a cheerleading squad, chimpanzees at the Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands formed a pyramid to collectively escape from their pen. They stacked on top of each other until they were high enough to scale the walls. The first one to the top then reached down and helped the others get out.

Zoologist Ben Beck once said that if you give a screwdriver to a chimpanzee, it will use the tool for everything except its intended purpose. A gorilla will first be scared of it, then try to eat it, and finally forget about it. An orangutan, however, will hide it and then, when the coast is clear, use it to dismantle the cage.

There are no rhymes in the English language for orange, silver, or purple.

One of the nice things about living in anonymity is that if you make a mess of your private life, the whole world doesn’t have to find out about it. Here’s what can happen when your private life is made public
.

J
ACQUES COUSTEAU

Claim to Fame:
Oceanographer, inventor of the aqualung, and host of TV’s
The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau
from 1968 to 1976.

Secret Life:
Not long after Cousteau’s wife of 50 years, Simone, passed away in 1990, the famous oceanographer revealed to his son, Jean-Michel, that he’d been carrying on a 13-year affair with a former flight attendant named Francine Triplet, and had fathered two children by her. Cousteau married Triplet in 1991, and his relationship with Jean-Michel, already tense, soon got worse.

A year later, Cousteau transferred control of his nonprofit Cousteau Society to his new wife, prompting Jean-Michel to resign in protest. When Cousteau passed away in 1997, Francine Cousteau seized full control of the Cousteau Society, appointing herself president and chairwoman and reserving for herself “the exclusive use of the Cousteau name.” Cousteau’s children and grandchildren from his marriage to Simone were forbidden from using their last names to promote their own oceanographic ventures. Soon the entire family was in court, battling it out to see which Cousteaus had the right to use the family name.

Update:
Francine won. In a 2003 settlement, Cousteau’s grandchildren won the limited right to use the family name on a Web site, but amazingly, Francine was awarded sole ownership of “Cousteau” as a trademark.

THE REVEREND HENRY LYONS

Claim to Fame:
From 1994 to 1999, leader of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., the largest organization of black churches in the United States, with 8.5 million members.

Secret Life:
The first sign that something was amiss in Lyons’s life came in 1997 when his wife was arrested and charged with setting fire to a waterfront mansion in St. Petersburg, Florida. The mansion turned out to be owned by the reverend and a church employee, Bernice Edwards, whom Lyons described as his “business partner.” Mrs. Lyons hadn’t known about the house until she found the deed in her husband’s briefcase. So she drove to the house to look around and discovered some of her husband’s clothing hanging in the “business partner’s” bedroom closet. Drawing her own conclusions, she set fire to the house.

What do Cary Grant and Billy Joel have in common? Neither graduated from high school.

Update:
The fire touched off an investigation into National Baptist Convention’s finances, which culminated in Lyons being charged with grand theft, racketeering, tax evasion, money laundering, and bank fraud. In 1999 he was convicted of swindling companies that did business with his organization out of more than $4 million and was sentenced to five years in prison.