Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® (4 page)

Famous Name:
Sears advertised for a watchmaker; the ad was answered by Alva Curtis Roebuck. Within two years they were partners, selling their wares via a mail-order catalog under the name…Sears, Roebuck & Co.

Background:
After graduating from the University of California at Santa Barbara, Orfalea opened a small copy shop next to a taco stand in nearby Isla Vista, starting with a single copy machine.

Famous Name:
Business was brisk. He soon expanded the store, then branched out to the rest of California, and then all over the country. And all the stores bore his name, the nickname he got in college because of his curly red hair…Kinko’s.

Background:
Beam was running the distillery founded by his great-grandfather, Jacob Beam, until 1920, when the Volstead Act made the sale of alcoholic beverages illegal and he had to close the place down.

Famous Name:
When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, he celebrated by building a new distillery and introducing a new bourbon, which he named for himself…Jim Beam.

A bird’s eyes, unlike human eyes, keep everything in focus at all times.

Everyone enjoys reading about someone else’s blunders. So go ahead and feel superior for a few minutes.

“Twenty-year-old Mie Larsen was enjoying a Sunday tennis match with her boyfriend in Guildford, Surrey, when a British Army parachutist accidentally landed on her and knocked out her teeth. Parachutist Sgt. Gary Bird of the Royal Artillery display team was supposed to land a quarter of a mile away. ‘I was in the middle of a game when I suddenly heard somebody shout, “Watch out!”’ said Larsen. ‘I saw this man coming straight at me, feet first, at high speed.’ She tried to run out of the way but became trapped in the net, and Sergeant Bird landed on her back. Larsen, who suffered a fractured wrist, cuts, and bruises in addition to the broken teeth, plans to sue the Ministry of Defense.”

—
“The Edge,”
The Oregonian

BIRCHINGTON, England—“A 31-year-old woman had to be rescued by firemen after getting stuck in a dog flap. She and a friend were coming back from a late-night party and stopped at a friend’s house where the pair were supposed to be dog-sitting. After discovering that the house keys were lost, she attempted to get in the house via the doggie door. She managed to squeeze the top half of her body through the opening, but her bottom half proved to be more tricky.

“According to Officer Dave Coker, ‘We tried pushing on her backside and pulling her by the thighs but we couldn’t budge her. In the end we had to take out the complete plastic frame and cut her free.’ After the rescue, the woman explained she was desperate to get into the house because the dogs inside were barking loudly.”

—
Bizarre
News

LITTLETON, Colo.—“Mamileti Lakshmihart put himself in ‘double jeopardy’ after he backed his truck into the same patrol car that had pulled him over. After being given a warning, the 36-year-old became confused when he went to pull away and put his truck into reverse. The vehicle jerked backward and smashed the front of the patrol car, doing more than $1,000 in damage. Lakshmihart received a summons for careless driving.”

—Bizarre News

The average car has 15,000 parts.

NEW YORK—“The money came from all over—Italy, France, Turkey—intended for a United Nations environmental fund. But the $700,000 ended up in the account of a Brooklyn woman, who quit her job and spent much of the extra money before the bank noticed the error and froze the account.

“Now Susan Madakor, 40, a single mother who lives in public housing, is fighting to get the money back. She went to court last week to ask a judge to grant her the money instead of the U.N.

“The windfall showed up as 13 wire transfers from various countries between February and October 1998. Chase Manhattan Bank said the foreign governments used an account number with one incorrect digit. Madakor quit her $23,000-a-year job at a textile company and bought a laundry business for $100,000, set up a college fund for her 10-year-old son, paid off $30,000 in credit card debt, furnished a new apartment, and leased a van. She was negotiating to buy a liquor store when Chase discovered the mistake.”

—
Anchorage Daily News

KALAMAZOO, Mich.—“Frank S. is the proud owner of a 1958 Edsel Corsair. However, this automobile’s most unique feature, the push-button transmission, is also its most dangerous. Frank was about to take his dog, Buddy, to the store with him when he got out of the car to get something from the house. As he walked around the car, the dog stood up against the dashboard and hit the push button, putting the car in drive and pinning Frank’s legs between the bumper and garage door. He was trapped for 20 minutes until his wife came home and heard him yelling for help. Amazingly, Frank suffered only bruising on both legs. The dog is no longer allowed in the car.”

—
Bizarre News

A stack of one trillion new dollar bills would be 69,000 miles high.

Thinking of visiting Hawaii? Make sure that photos and memories are all you take home with you. Pele’s watching…

Thousands of tourists visit Hawaii’s scenic Volcanoes National Park every year, and every year a little bit of the park leaves with them. Many visitors can’t resist taking a few of the park’s unique lava rocks or a handful of dark black sand as a reminder of their visit to the island. No harm done, right?

Try telling that to Timothy Murray, one of many who have suffered terrible luck since taking home a memento from the park. “My life literally fell apart,” says Murray, 32, who naively scooped black sand into a pop bottle during a 1997 trip.

Upon returning home to Florida, Murray’s luck took a sharp turn for the worse: He lost his job. His fiancée dumped him without warning. He began hitting the bottle. His pet died. FBI agents—who had received a tip from someone
in Hawaii
—arrested him for a minor computer copyright infringement violation. “The FBI agents said they never arrest people for what I did,” says Murray. “They told me, ‘You really must have pissed someone off.’ After some research, I figured out who it was.”

It was Pele.

Here’s the legend: Of all the deities in Hawaiian lore, the most well known—and most feared—is Pele, the fiery-tempered volcano goddess who Hawaiians believe created their islands. Pele is the daughter of the Earth goddess Haumea. According to myth, Pele spent most of her youth learning to make and control fire. But she was wild and the sea goddess, Namaka, was the one who had to put out her mistakes. Haumea knew that Namaka would hunt Pele down and punish her, so she sent Pele to find a secluded home, where she could make as much fire as she pleased without disturbing anyone. Pele chose Hawaii—then only a tiny atoll—which she made to rise out of the sea in a storm of volcanic activity. But Namaka tracked Pele down and confronted her. Fire and water clashed in a violent brawl. Namaka got the upper hand and banished Pele to Hawaii’s volcanoes forever.

Q: What was the first tropical storm named after a male? A: Bud.

The hot-tempered goddess jealously guards her domain and takes out her anger at Namaka on the hapless humans who dare cross her. Hawaiians say that before every major eruption, Pele appears as a withered old woman walking along remote back roads. Those who pass her by find their homes destroyed by hot magma. However, those who offer her a ride find that a river of molten lava has stopped inches from their property. Many park visitors have reported meeting an old woman who asks for a cigarette, lights it with a snap of her fingers, and then vanishes mysteriously. Though Pele may like to tease humans playfully at times, she is dead serious about one thing: don’t steal her property, or else.

The stories of Pele’s revenge on the tourists who make off with her rocks are many. Since pinching a few rocks, Denver business owner Larry Bell has needed emergency heart surgery, had his marriage nearly fall apart, seen his daughter plagued by mysterious health problems, and had to relocate his business. One Los Angeles lava thief who was building a house watched helplessly as her basement floor caved in, her interior walls bent peculiarly, a worker drove a nail through his wrist, and her father-in-law fell off the roof and broke several ribs—all in the weeks following her return from the park.

According to such “victims,” Pele in her wrath has made cars break down, brought down stock prices, torn Achilles tendons, and even steered lawnmowers over toes.

Can this horrible luck be reversed? Every day, shipments of contraband lava rocks, shells, and even old shoes filled with sand are delivered anonymously to the post offices and park stations around Volcanoes National Park. The packages come from all over the world, sometimes containing debris taken from the park decades earlier. Some former visitors are so terrified of Pele’s curse that they return to the park in person just to make sure that their rocks are put back in the exact spot they were taken from. One letter contained a single grain of sand, which the writer found in the cuff of a pair of pants he had worn while walking on the beach. In another letter, addressed to “Queen Pele, Hawaii,” the writer’s plea was simple: “Oh, please stop punishing me!”

What do Mr. Rogers and Paul Newman have in common? They’re both color blind.

Most park rangers insist that there is no curse of Pele, that it’s only natural that a small percentage of the many people who go through the park every year will suffer some misfortune after leaving. The rangers claim that the practice of returning rocks is culturally insensitive and a waste of their time.

But there’s no fooling Timothy Murray. “You may have your doubts about Pele,” he says. “But let me tell you, when these things happen, you are willing to be on your knees in front of anyone or anything. Since I sent the sand back, I’ve started getting my life back. That’s all I know.” Murray’s message to future park visitors: Beware Pele’s wrath. Leave the rocks alone.

In 1829, four days out of Sydney, Australia, a heavy storm struck the vessel
Mermaid,
and drove it into a reef. All 22 on board jumped ship and swam to a large rock. After three days of waiting, another ship, the
Swiftsure,
found and rescued them. Five days later another storm struck. The
Swiftsure
was swept into a ridge and wrecked. Both crews escaped and waited for rescue on some nearby rocks. They were soon picked up by the schooner
Governor Ready,
which caught fire three hours later. Once again they abandoned ship, this time in lifeboats. Along came the cutter
Comet,
which had been blown off course by a storm. The crew of the
Comet
loaded the crews and passengers of all three vessels on board. Five days later a storm snapped the Comet’s mast, ripped her sails, and ruined her rudder. The Comet’s crew loaded into the longboat, leaving the passengers to cling to floating bits of wreckage. After 18 hours passed the mail boat
Jupiter
came along and rescued everyone, only to hit a reef and sink two days later. Fortunately, the passenger vessel City
of Leeds
was nearby and picked up everyone, finally delivering them back to Sydney. The doomed voyage sank five ships, but incredibly not a single life was lost.

A New Yorker could eat out every night of their life and never eat at the same restaurant twice.

When signs in a foreign country are in English, any combination of words is possible. Here are some real-life examples.

On the grass in a Paris park:
“Please do not be a dog.”

Outside a Hong Kong dress shop:
“Ladies have fits upstairs.”

A sign posted in Germany’s Black Forest:
“It is strictly forbidden on our Black Forest camping site that people of different gender, for instance men and women, live together in one tent unless they are married with each other for that purpose.”