Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (68 page)

Bonus:
Click on “Production Notes,” then “In the Beginning,” and then “Still Galleries.” If you click on the sleds, you’ll get two more bonus features: an interview with editor Robert Wise, and one with film critic Roger Ebert.

THE SIXTH SENSE (1999)

Easter Egg:
From the main menu, choose “Bonus Materials,” then click all the way down and choose “More.” At the bottom of this page is a jewelry box. Click down to it—the lid will open, and you’ll see an image of a videotape that says “Night’s First Horror Film.”

What You’ll Get:
A 1-1/2 minute horror film that director M. Night Shyamalan made when he was 11 years old

THE SIMPSONS: SEASON 1 BOX SET (1989)

Easter Egg:
Insert the third disc. From the main menu, choose “Extra Features” and go to the second page. Click on “‘Some Enchanted Evening’ Script,” press the left arrow key, then press Enter.

What You Get:
Remember how controversial
The Simpsons
was when it first went on the air? This genuine 1990 TV news report will refresh your memory.

First known musical recording: “Yankee Doodle.”

AUSTIN POWERS: THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME (1999)

Easter Egg:
From the main menu, choose “Special Features.” Wait about 30 seconds until Dr. Evil’s spaceship appears at the bottom of the screen and flies up to the top, leaving a big E in its wake. Click over to the E, and when it turns red, press Enter.

What You Get:
A page called “Dr. Evil’s Special Features” lets you view four hidden features, including a mock documentary called “The Dr. Evil Story”

THE GODFATHER (1972)—DVD COLLECTION

Easter Egg:
Insert the fourth disc, the one labeled “Bonus Materials.” From the main menu, choose “Setup,” then press the right arrow. When the globe appears, press Enter.

What You Get:
A few classic scenes dubbed into foreign languages

Bonus:
Ever wondered what prompted author Mario Puzo to write the novel
The Godfather
? From the main menu, select “Film-makers,” and then select “Mario Puzo.” Press the left arrow button twice—a dollar sign will appear, and when it does, press Enter. Puzo will answer the question while shooting a game of pool with Francis Ford Coppola.

PLANET OF THE APES (2001)

Easter Egg:
Insert the first disc. From the main menu, choose “Special Features,” and then click on “Commentaries.” Press the down arrow two times, then press Enter.

What You Get:
A film commentary—in ape language

CAST AWAY (2000)

Easter Egg:
Pop in the second disc. From the main menu, choose “Video and Stills Galleries” and click down to “Raft Escape.”
Don’t
press Enter—instead, press the left arrow button. That will cause yellow and blue wings to appear on the left of the screen. Press Enter.

What You Get:
Did you ever wonder what was in the FedEx package that Tom Hanks’s character has with him the entire film? Press Play, and director Robert Zemeckis will give you the answer.

Bye-bye VHS: Since 1997, more than 2 billion DVDs have been sold in the U.S. alone.

We love dumb crooks, but lately we’ve discovered another variety: nice ones
.

T
HE SINGING DETECTIVE

In May 2004, an off-duty police detective named Dave Wishnowsky noticed Willie Mitford sitting in a karaoke bar in Palmerston North, New Zealand. Wishnowsky had worked a case that resulted in theft charges against Mitford, and Mitford had already beaten one of the charges. The detective went over to Mitford, and the two started chatting over a few beers. Before long, Mitford made a surprise offer: “You get up there and sing a song, and if you’re good, I will go guilty.” So Wishnowsky, who—unbeknownst to Mitford—was a former singer in a pub band, got up and started belting out “Better Man” by Robbie Williams. “I had only sung two lines,” he said later, “and he came over to me and said ‘I’m guilty.’” Mitford lived up to his word and changed his plea to guilty later that month because, he said, the singing cop was so good.

DON’T FORGET TO SAY “THANK YOU”

In January 2004, a man went into a Wells Fargo branch in Phoenix, Arizona, waited his turn in line, and walked up to the counter. “This is a robbery,” he told the teller. “I need $1,500 in fifties, please.” He made no threats and had no weapon. The teller gave him what she had and he strolled out the door. “It was like Emily Post does a bank robbery,” said Officer Rick Tamburo.

CHECKING OUT

Nazareno Rodriguez and Sebastian Gallardo, two prisoners in Argentina who had been accused of robbery, were able to unscrew their jail cell door and make a middle-of-the-night escape. Police were surprised when they later found a note in the empty cell. “We love our freedom and can’t live locked in,” it read. “We’re sorry for any inconvenience we might have caused you.” “They were so cheeky,” a police officer said. “We couldn’t believe they left a note. But we’ll find them!”

BAG MAN

In Jack the Ripper’s day, many blamed the growing crime rate on violence in the theaters.

A thief stole more than $207,000 from a London ATM machine ...and seven days later returned $187,000 of it. Barclays bank employees found it in a garbage bag just inside their door. A bank spokesperson told
The Sun
, “We do offer cashback facilities but we didn’t expect anything quite like this.”

U R 2 NICE

Lee Alaban’s car was stolen from outside her workplace in Port Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia. Later that night she realized that her son’s cell phone was in the car, so she called the thief. He answered, but then quickly hung up. So she text-messaged him. She explained that the car was a gift from her now-deceased father, and that gifts for her 13-year-old son’s birthday (which was the next day) were in the trunk. “Next thing I get this text saying he’ll return the car,” Alaban told news reporters. “I raced around to the carpark where he said he’d left it, and couldn’t believe my eyes.” The thief had returned her car (but kept the phone) and then text-messaged an apology. “I’m so sorry I was very desperate I didn’t want 2 cause damage or pain in any way,” he wrote. Alaban sent the man a final message: “Thanks 4 your apology. If I ever lock myself out of my car I’ll send you a message. Ha ha ha.”

AN ANNIVERSARY PRESENT

In May 2004, Lonnie and Tammy Crawford had just left a restaurant in Crestview, Florida, where they celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary, when an armed man appeared and demanded their money. They gave him the $8 they had on them and their cell phone, then noticed that the man seemed uneasy with the crime. “I could tell just by looking at him that he was having second thoughts,” said Lonnie Crawford. The thief told them he had never robbed anybody before, he was just broke and wanted to get to his home in Georgia. Before long he had put the gun away, apologized, and given them back the phone and the money, but the couple refused to take the cash. They said he needed it more than they did. Restaurant employees called police, but they couldn’t persuade the victims to press charges. “You could tell he was a nice person that had just made a mistake,” they said.

Burrito
is Spanish for “little donkey.”

More examples of some folks who prove that age doesn’t matter
.

BASEBALL PLAYER

Youngest:
Joe Nuxhall played one game for the Cincinnati Reds in 1944, just shy of his 16th birthday.

Oldest:
Satchel Paige pitched for the Kansas City Athletics in 1965 at age 59.

MOTHER

Youngest:
Lina Medina of Peru bore a child in 1939 at age 5.

Oldest:
Satyabhama Mahapatra of India gave birth to a son in 2003 at the age of 65.

PERSON TO CLIMB MOUNT EVEREST

Youngest:
Temba Tsheri of Nepal did it in 2001 at age 15.

Oldest:
Yuichiro Miura of Japan did it in 2003 at age 70.

SCREENWRITER

Youngest:
Nikki Reed co-wrote
thirteen
when she was 15.

Oldest:
Arthur Miller wrote
The Crucible
at age 80.

OLYMPIAN

Youngest:
Marjorie Gestring, a diver in the 1936 Olympics, was 13. (She won a gold medal.)

Oldest:
Oscar Swahn, a shooter in the 1912 Olympics, was age 64. (He won one, too.)

COLLEGE GRADUATE

Youngest:
Michael Kearney earned a degree from the University of South Alabama at the age of 10 years, 4 months.

Oldest:
Ocie Tune King graduated from West Virginia University at 94.

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE

Youngest:
Rudyard Kipling won it in 1907 at the age of 42.

Oldest:
Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen became a laureate in 1902 at age 84.

BRITISH MONARCH

Youngest:
King Henry VI was crowned in 1422, when he was 8 months old.

Oldest:
Queen Victoria died in 1901 at the age of 81.

EMMY WINNING ACTOR

Youngest:
Michael J. Fox won Best Lead Actor in a Comedy (
Family Ties)
in 1986 at age 25.

Oldest:
Ruth Gordon won Best Lead Actress in a Comedy (
Taxi
) in 1979 at age 82.

U.S. PRESIDENT (Elected)

Youngest:
John F. Kennedy was just 43 when he took office.

Oldest:
Ronald Reagan was 69.

Largest rodent in North America: the beaver. The porcupine is second.

Here’s the second installment of our story on the 13 American women with “the right stuff” to become astronauts in the early 1960s. (Part I is on
page 179
.)

F
LAT BROKE

By communicating its lack of interest in women astronauts, NASA effectively scuttled the FLAT program in 1962, at least for the time being. The official explanation was that the space agency would only consider military test pilots with extensive experience flying jet aircraft. And since women were excluded from flying jets in the military (not to mention the airlines), they couldn’t qualify. Experience, not gender, was the determining factor, NASA claimed.

In truth, however, NASA’s ban on women was motivated by a fear that the space program would be irreparably harmed if a woman died in space. “Had we lost a woman back then because we decided to fly a woman rather than a man, we would have been castrated,” Mercury Program flight director Chris Kraft admitted years later.

REFUSING TO QUIT

All of the Mercury 13 women had made tremendous sacrifices to get this far—Sarah Gorelick and Gene Nora Stumbough had quit their jobs, and Jerrie Sloan’s husband divorced her when she refused to drop out of the program. After all the trouble they’d been through, they didn’t want to take no for an answer.

Janey Hart, married to Senator Philip Hart of Michigan, decided that she could no longer keep her promise to Dr. Lovelace to remain silent. She started working her connections in Washington, D.C., writing letters to each member of the congressional space committees. She released a copy of the letter to the press and, with Jerrie Cobb, began giving interviews to reporters. Hart also managed to arrange a meeting with Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who was head of the President’s Space Council and the White House’s liaison with NASA. Johnson listened politely to Hart and Cobb, and then brushed them off by telling them that while he wanted to help, it was NASA’s responsibility to decide who became an astronaut, not his. With that, he ended the meeting and had the two women shown out of his office. After they left, Johnson scrawled a note to his staff: “Let’s Stop This Now!”

Early guns took so long to load and fire that a bow and arrow was 12 times more efficient.

LAST CHANCE

The meeting with LBJ had gone nowhere, but Hart and Cobb kept pushing. Result: In June 1962, the House of Representatives Committee on Science and Astronautics announced that it would hold three days of subcommittee hearings to investigate whether NASA discriminated against women. A total of six witnesses would be called—three representing the Mercury 13 and three representing NASA.

But that wasn’t quite how it worked out. Hart and Cobb were selected to be two of the witnesses for the Mercury 13. The third witness was an aviator named Jacqueline “Jackie” Cochran.

WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION

You’ve probably never heard of Jackie Cochran, but in the early 1960s, she was the most famous female pilot in the world. She’d broken more speed, distance, and altitude records than any female pilot alive, and was the first woman to break the sound barrier. Yet she opposed the continued testing of the Mercury 13.

Cochran had initially supported the FLAT project and even financed the first phase of testing at the Lovelace clinic. Since then, however, she had turned against the program. Why? One theory: She could never be an astronaut herself. Cochran was in her mid-50s and had tested poorly during her physical at the Lovelace clinic. That ruled her out as a potential candidate, and that’s when she began to oppose the Mercury 13. Perhaps the most famous female aviator since Amelia Earhart did not want to be overshadowed by the first women in space.