Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (53 page)

•
1914:
Western Union issues charge plates—rectangular pieces of embossed metal (kind of like dog tags)—to its preferred customers. They allow the deferment of payment on their telegraph services (with no interest or added charges)...and the concept of a pocket “credit card” is born.

•
1924:
General Petroleum of California issues the world’s first gas card. It’s originally only for employees, but is later issued to the general public. Other gasoline companies soon follow suit.

•
1930:
AT&T offers the “Bell System Credit Card” which allows monthly payments on telephone services.

•
1946:
Flatbush National Bank in New York develops the “Charge-It” card, allowing customers to charge purchases at select local businesses. The bank collects payments from the customer and reimburses the merchants. It’s the first bank-issued credit card.

•
1950:
The Diner’s Club Card is established at 27 restaurants; by 1952 it can be used at thousands of stores (not just restaurants) in the United States, Canada, France, and Cuba. Customers pay a yearly fee for the cardboard card and can make monthly payments.

•
1951:
Post-war prosperity is making the concept of credit more acceptable—and banks begin to see new possibilities. The Franklin Bank of New York extends the normal 90-day pay-in-full period—and begins charging interest. The modern credit card is born.

•
Late 1950s:
Revolving credit begins: credit which remains available as long as regular payments are being made on the debt. From this point on, interest charges on credit cards will be a major source of profit for banks.

•
1958:
The American Express card is introduced. By the end of the year over 250,000 people have agreed to pay a $6 per-year fee to have one. The following year “plastic money” is born when they became the first company to issue plastic credit cards.

Who’s on the $500 bill? William McKinley. The $1,000 bill? Grover Cleveland.

•
1959:
Bank of America introduces BankAmericard. In 1977 the card will change its name to VISA, and go on to become the world’s largest credit card company.

•
1969:
16% of American households regularly use credit cards.

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1972:
BankAmericard introduces the world’s first electronic card authorization system, BASE I, and credit cards with magnetic strips that hold simple account information. Authorization is now available 24 hours a day. Other cards will soon follow.

•
1977:
Fifty banks control more than 80% of the credit-card market. This will soon change.

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1990:
The Consumer Federation of America estimates that 122 million Americans have at least one charge card.

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2001:
Amount of Americans that use credit cards: 157 million. Average household credit card debt: $8,123. Revenue to credit card companies from late fees: $7,300,000,000 (Priceless?).

•
2004:
There are more than one billion credit cards in use—in the U.S. alone. The average American family pays between $1,000 and $1,500 in interest every year. Ten banks now control more than 80% of the credit card market.

THE FUTURE:
Data storage devices get smaller and smaller. Examples: Keychain credit cards; credit cards with display screens built into them to view transactions, balances, or currency exchange rates; and cell phones that are also credit cards. Wave your phone over a wireless sensor and pay for your movie, gas, meal...(Futuristic? Not everywhere. They’re already common in Korea and Japan.)

BE RIGHT BACK

“A pair of waiters in Shanghai, China, were arrested after taking a customer’s credit card and using it to buy cell phones—while he sat in their restaurant. The diner, identified only as Mr. Zhu, had just finished lunch when his credit card company called. Had he just spent 25,000 yuan ($3,100) on new cell phones? Waiters Ling Hong and Wang Luole had told Zhu there was a problem with his card and asked him to wait for a few minutes, then took the card to a nearby electronics mart.” (Associated Press)

Most frequently broken bone: the
clavicle
(collar bone).

Make-believe can be fun. But some people don’t know when to quit. Here are some folks who took pretending a little too far
.

T
RUST ME—I’M HIM

George Schira, head of Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Center, was fired in 1987 for spending Carter Center funds on personal items (clothes and home furnishings). Impersonating Carter’s voice, Schira called George Paraskevaides, a wealthy benefactor of the Carter Center, and asked him for $150,000. Paraskevaides sent the money, per “Carter’s” request, to a London bank. A few weeks later, Schira called Paraskevaides again, this time posing as a Saudi prince acting on
behalf
of Carter, saying they desperately needed $500,000—immediately. Schira didn’t even use a fake accent this time, but Paraskevaides again sent the money, which Schira promptly deposited in a personal Swiss bank account. Schira called one more time—as Carter—to thank Paraskevaides for his donations. A few months later Schira was indicted for 17 counts of fraud, but evaded capture for five years, at which point, facing 85 years in prison, he pleaded guilty and spent 28 months in jail.

TRUST ME—I’M A DOCTOR

Arthur Osborne Phillips wanted to study medicine, but when his family couldn’t afford college, he enlisted in the army, working as an orderly in World War I. He was a fast learner and picked up some medical knowledge by shadowing his supervisor, Dr. James Phillips (no relation). After the war, he landed various low-level hospital jobs until his habit of writing bad checks landed him in prison.

Somehow Phillips convinced prison authorities that his hospital jobs had actually been medical positions, and they made him head of surgery. Released from prison in 1921, Phillips heard that his old boss, Dr. Phillips, had been committed to a mental institution, so he visited the doctor’s family and stole his medical diploma right off the wall. Credentials now in hand, “Dr.” Phillips worked for a while as a surgeon in West Virginia, but couldn’t stay in one place for long. Later he made his living as a country doctor in small towns in the Southwest, where he also posed as a dentist and a veterinarian. Phillips was arrested for medical fraud a few times but was never convicted.

Q: What was the original name of The Beach Boys? A: Carl and the Passions.

Then, while in Kansas in 1949, Phillips got in a car accident. He had gotten away with fraudulently practicing medicine for 24 years, but it was the fender bender that proved to be his undoing.

The other driver sued for $600 in damages, but rather than just pay up (and avoid going to court), Phillips countersued for $40,000. His claim: the broken arm he sustained in the accident prevented him from practicing medicine (apparently he forgot that he wasn’t a real doctor). Attorneys for the other driver quickly discovered Phillips’s true identity and criminal record. Not only did he lose the suit, he subsequently served 20 years in prison.

TRUST ME—IT’S SHAKESPEARE

Born in 1777, William Henry Ireland was a Shakespeare buff. Ireland’s father, also a Shakespeare fan, collected Shakespeare memorabilia. The one item he dreamed of owning was a document bearing the Bard’s signature, so Ireland decided to make his dad a gift.

While apprenticing as a lawyer in 1794, 17-year-old Ireland had access to old contracts and deeds, so he collected blank pieces of parchment from the early 1600s and, using specially treated ink, forged a promissory note “signed” by Shakespeare. Unaware that it was a fake, his father was elated. Ireland then forged love letters to Shakespeare’s wife, a profession of his Protestant faith, and even portions of the original manuscripts of
Hamlet
and
King Lear
. Like the promissory note, the documents were certified to be real by handwriting experts.

Ireland became more ambitious. In 1795 he concocted a complete script of a “previously unknown” Shakespeare play:
Vortigern and Rowena
. It was the literary find of the century and was set to be performed at London’s Drury Lane Theatre. But two days before the opening, scholar Edmond Malone published
An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments
, calling all of Ireland’s Shakespeare documents phonies. When the play opened (to a packed house), it was so bad that everyone knew it couldn’t have been written by Shakespeare. Ireland was forced to confess his fabrications. Over the next 30 years, he attempted to become a novelist and playwright (he even tried to revive
Vortigern and Rowena)
using his own name. He flopped.

Kangaroos cannot back up.

Are you sick of the cafeteria? Tired of the same old fast food? Then maybe you’d like to sample the cuisine at your local prison. Bon apétit!

P
RISON:
Rockwood Institution, Winnipeg, Canada

FOOD:
Lobster and liquor

STORY:
In August 2002, prison officials reported that a “well-connected” inmate had managed to make prison a four-star dining experience for his fellow inmates. They said that Ronald Hickey, 48, who was serving a nine-year sentence for drug convictions, had somehow smuggled over a ton of gourmet seafood and liquor into the prison. The officials couldn’t prove it, though: the accusations were based solely on tips from inmate informants—any actual evidence is believed to have been eaten.

PRISON:
Pozo Almonte jail in Santiago, Chile

FOOD:
French bread sticks

STORY:
Prison officials couldn’t figure out why prisoners were suddenly so fond of French baguettes, prompting a huge rise in deliveries from certain local bakeries. But a November 2002 search of one of the bakeries discovered the secret ingredient: the bread sticks were being hollowed out and filled with marijuana.

PRISON:
Caledonia County Work Camp, Vermont

FOOD:
Beer and cigarettes

STORY:
In December 2001, Mark Delude, a prisoner at this work camp for nonviolent offenders, crawled under the fence surrounding the site, and took off. How far did he get? About a mile and a half, to the nearest convenience store. Delude wasn’t trying to escape, he just wanted some beer and smokes. He bought a case of beer and a carton of cigarettes, and had a few of both before trying to sneak back into prison with the rest of his booty. Guards caught the slightly inebriated Delude standing outside his tent...and shipped him off to a more secure facility. “I don’t remember ever trying to catch people trying to break back in before,” said State Police Officer George Hacking. “But nothing surprises me.”

Longest jump by a monster truck: 141 feet, 10 inches.

More proof that a little thing like death doesn’t have to stop you from being creative
.

T
he 1820 will of Colonel William H. Jackson made a bequest...to a white oak tree. “In consideration of the great love I bear this tree,” Jackson wrote, “I give it entire possession of itself and of all land within 8 feet of the tree on all sides.” The original “Tree that Owns Itself” died in 1942, but a second generation of the tree continues to own itself and the land around it.

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Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596) instructed that he be buried at sea, and that two of his favorite ships be burned and sunk at the same spot. (They were.)

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Martin van Butchell (1735–1812) was a British dentist. When his wife Mary died in 1775, he preserved her body, dressed it in a lace dress, put it in a glass-topped coffin—and displayed it in a window in his home. Why? A clause in his wife’s will stipulated that he be provided income from her fortune after her death...as long as he kept her body above ground. The body eventually wound up in the Royal College of Surgeons in London, where it was destroyed in a German bombing raid in 1941.

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Tom Halley of Memphis, Tennessee, bequeathed $5,000 each to “the nurse who removed a pink monkey from the foot of my bed, and to the cook at the hospital who removed snakes from my soup.”

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When Sandra West of San Antonio, Texas, died in 1977 she was buried, according to her will’s instructions, “next to my husband, in my lace nightgown, in my Ferrari, with the seat slanted comfortably.” It was a 1964 Ferrari 250 GTO Series II, and the grave was covered in concrete to stop grave-robbers from stealing it.