Uncle John’s 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader® Read online

A group calling itself “The Perforating Mexicans” later claimed responsibility for the theater. “There are a dozen more where that one came from,” said Patrick Saletta, a photographer who documents the urban underground. “You guys have no idea what’s down there.” Perhaps not, but here’s something they do know: Inspector Guillaumot’s 18th-century warning is still valid. In 1961 the maze swallowed an entire southside neighborhood. Small collapses happen every year, yet Parisians seem unconcerned. They have the IGC—still vigilant more than 200 years after its founding—to keep the City of Lights from falling into the gruyère.

  Reel money: About 1.5 billion movie tickets are sold in the U.S. every year.

  BLOW IT LIKE BUCKNER

  The 1986 Boston Red Sox were one out away from winning the World Series...until a ball rolled through first baseman Bill Buckner’s legs. The NY Mets won the game, forcing a decisive game 7, which they also won. Buckner became a sports pariah, but he’s not the only athlete ever to screw up.

  NICE GOING, SPIKE

  In one of his first NFL games in 2008, Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson caught a long pass from quarterback Donovan McNabb. Running it in for his first pro touchdown, Jackson spiked the ball and started celebrating. Then the other team, the Dallas Cowboys, called foul: A videotape review showed that Jackson had thrown the ball down on the one-yard line, before he crossed into the end zone. Result: The touchdown was taken away. Amazingly, Jackson had lost a touchdown the same way in a high-school football game six years earlier.

  NO TIME FOR YOU

  In the 1993 men’s college basketball national title game, Michigan trailed North Carolina by just two points, 73–71, with less than 30 seconds to go. After North Carolina missed a free throw, Michigan’s Chris Webber got the rebound and hustled the ball down to the other end of the court. With 20 seconds left, Webber called a time-out to reset the play. Except that Michigan didn’t have any time-outs left. For the mistake, Webber was issued a technical foul, which gave North Carolina a couple more free throws, securing them the win.

  A VERY BIG OOPS

  Colombia was one of the pre-tournament favorites to win soccer’s 1994 World Cup. But in the opening rounds, the team surprisingly lost to the United States 2–1, with the second goal for the U.S. coming when star Colombian defender Andres Escobar accidentally scored a goal on his own net. Colombia was eliminated from the tournament. (Sad ending: When the 27-year-old athlete returned home to Medellin, Colombia, he was murdered, reportedly by someone related to angry members of a gambling syndicate.)

  There are more than 3,700 World War II shipwrecks at the bottom of the world’s oceans.

  LETTDOWN

  Just minutes into the 1993 Super Bowl, the Buffalo Bills fumbled the ball on their own 45-yard line, where it was recovered by Dallas Cowboys lineman Leon Lett. He then did what few line-men ever do: He ran it all the way to the other end for a touchdown. As he was about to cross the goal line, he slowed down to celebrate the moment, raising the ball in triumph...and it was knocked out of his hands by Bills receiver Don Beebe. Lett had no idea Beebe was on his tail. Instead of Dallas getting a touchdown, the Bills got the ball (although the Cowboys won the game anyway).

  ERROR PRONE

  Tommy John pitched for more than 20 years and won 200 games, but he’s best known for two things: 1) for being one of the first to undergo arm-strengthening elbow surgery (“Tommy John surgery,” as it’s now known) and 2) for making three errors in a single play. John was on the mound for the Yankees in 1988 when Milwaukee’s Jeffrey Leonard hit an easy ground ball to him. John bobbled it (error #1), and Leonard made it to first base. John threw the ball to first base anyway, but the throw was wild and wound up in right field (error #2). The right fielder then threw it back to the catcher in an attempt to tag a runner at home plate. John intercepted it and threw it to the catcher himself—again, his throw was wild (error #3, which tied the Major League record).

  FRIEND OR FOE?

  The 1982 men’s college basketball championship game was a fight to the finish, with 15 lead changes and neither Georgetown nor North Carolina ever ahead by more than three points. Georgetown was leading 62–61 with under a minute left to play, when North Carolina freshman Michael Jordan hit a jump shot to make the score 63–62. Georgetown’s Fred Brown quickly rebounded the ball and ran to the other end, where he confidently passed it to an open player, James Worthy. Only problem: Worthy played for North Carolina. Georgetown quickly fouled Worthy to stop the clock. He missed both foul shots, but it didn’t matter—there wasn’t enough time left for Georgetown to score, so North Carolina won the game.

  Hula hoops were once banned in Japan for causing “obscene movements.”

  EDITED FOR AIRLINES

  Plane crashes, gruesome stabbings, what’s beneath Mel Gibson’s kilt...if you’re hurtling through the sky at 30,000 feet, there are some things you might not want to see in a movie. Airlines rely on movie editors for special cuts, but some of what they sliced out of these Hollywood blockbusters may surprise you.

  Movie: The Queen (2006)

  Edit: Delta Airlines passengers thought something was wrong with the movie soundtrack. It kept “bleeping.” It turned out that a newly hired editor had been told to bleep out all “profanities” and “blasphemies.” The editor’s overzealous response: He cut every incidence of the word “God” from the film, including a scene that left a character saying to Queen Elizabeth (Helen Mirren), “Bleeep bless you, ma’am.”

  Movie: Hellboy (2004)

  Edit: A scene in which a hideous-looking man rises from a pool of blood was deemed too gory for captive airline audiences, so editors tinted the color of the blood. They made it blue. So instead of rising from a pool of blood, the hideous man appeared to be stepping out of a puddle of what looks like blue cake batter.

  Movie: Little Black Book (2004)

  Edit: One character in this romantic comedy is a gynecologist named Dr. Rachel Keyes (Rashida Jones) and, like many MDs in search of fame and fortune, she’s written a book. The title of the book, Keyes to Your Vagina, was deemed too titillating for airline viewing, so when Dr. Keyes holds up the book, audiences see an altered title: Keyes to Your Fertility.

  Movie: Casino Royale (2006)

  Edit: In the theatrical version of this James Bond film, Virgin Airlines chairman Sir Richard Branson has a cameo role as a passenger going through security at a Miami airport. But in the British Airways version, Sir Richard ended up on the cutting-room floor. According to a spokesman for British Airways, they had a very good reason for editing out their biggest competitor: “We want to ensure movies contain no material that might upset our customers.”

  Largest cyclone on record: Typhoon Tip (1979). Diameter: half the size of the continental US.

  Movie: Last Holiday (2005)

  Edit: During an airplane scene in this comedy, when the passenger sitting in front of Georgia Byrd (Queen Latifah) reclines his seat-back, it hits her knees. The two passengers argue, and Byrd goes into a tirade about the greedy airline putting the seats so close together in the economy-class section. In the Qantas version of the film, the entire seat argument is deleted, including the part where everyone in economy class cheers Byrd’s tirade.

  Movie: Up in the Air (2009)

  Edit: In this romantic comedy, corporate downsizing expert Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) has trainee Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) in tow while going through airport security. His advice for getting through quickly: “Never get behind old people. Their bodies are littered with hidden metal and they never seem to appreciate how little time they have left. Bingo, Asians. They pack light, travel efficiently, and they have a thing for slip-on shoes.” And then Natalie says, “That’s racist.” In the United Airlines version instead of “Bingo, Asians,” a Clooneyesque voice says, “Business people.” To which Natalie replies, “That’s racist.”

  Movie: Speed (1994)

  Edit: The plot is all about keeping a bus moving at 50 mph or greater so that t
he bomb planted on it doesn’t blow up. In the film’s climactic scene, the bus plows into a cargo plane. Result: The bus and plane both explode in a gigantic fireball. The cargo plane was being towed across a runway—it wasn’t flying, taxiing, taking off, or landing when the bus hit. Still, any frames showing the plane were cut from the airline version; all viewers saw was the fireball. As the movie’s producer Mark Gordon said, “The audience was just left figuring, geez, I guess the bus must have crashed into...something.”

  Fire escapes, laser printers, and bulletproof vests were all invented by women.

  CALCULATOR WORDS

  When calculators became cheap in the 1970s, millions of kids discovered that they could spell out words using numbers that look like letters and flipping the screen upside down. Can you guess these? (Answers on page 536.)

  1. What bacon does when it hits a hot pan: 372215

  2. If you make an omelet, you’ll end up with a lot of these: 577345663

  3. Central American nation: 321738

  4. Where caged creatures live:0.02

  5. Turtle hut: 77345

  6. A traditional Inuit home:0.0761

  7. Norwegian city: 0.750

  8. He has no home but the rails: 0.804

  9. Similar to a clarinet, but with two reeds instead of one: 3080

  10. Cowboys wear it instead of a tie: 0.708

  11. The capital of Idaho: 35108

  12. Emmy Award-winning TV show: 3376

  13. Search me: 376006

  14. If the tide doesn’t flow, it...: 5883

  15. Immigrant island: 51773

  16. A paid male “companion”: 0.70616

  17. They’re alive, with the sound of music: 57714

  18. Black gold! Texas tea! 710

  19. What black gold (or Texas tea) does when it emerges from the ground: 53200

  20. Building block: 0.637

  21. Where your boss might tell you to go: 7734

  22. Letter-cube board game: 376608

  23. Some people collect stamps, others go birdwatching: 5318804

  24. Russian ballet company: 1045708

  25. Uncle John’s handwriting: 378163771

  Caterpillars have mouths; butterflies don’t. (They have a proboscis instead.)

  STUNG!

  In police lingo, a “sting” is a covert operation in which deception is used to catch a person committing a crime. Sometimes they’re scary, sometimes they’re ingenious, and sometimes they’re just plain dumb. Here are a few examples.

  THE RUSE: In 2001 two representatives from a London-based defense contractor met with government officials in India. They wanted to sell night-vision cameras, binoculars, and similar items to the Indian military, they said.

  THE HOOK: Without having to show a single sample of their products, over the next few months the men secured several large contracts...in exchange for bribes.

  GOTCHA! Later in 2001, the Indian political magazine Tehelka broke a blockbuster story: They had video of Indian government and army officials taking cash payments from a bogus British defense contractor. The “contractors” were actually journalists with the magazine. In all, 34 members of the Indian military and government were videotaped accepting bribes. They included colonels and generals and also Bangaru Laxman, the president of the Indian People’s Party—the ruling party in the country at the time. Most of the people who took payoffs were forced to resign, but even though they were seen on videotape accepting bribes, not a single one went to prison. A few were finally arrested in 2006, but their cases are still unresolved.

  THE RUSE: In November 2007, hundreds of people around Fargo, North Dakota, received letters containing invitations to a party. The invitations were printed on purple stationery, had images of spider webs and skulls on them, and were from an outfit called “PDL Productions.”

  THE HOOK: They weren’t your average party invitations. They were for a party at a Fargo nightclub...with British rock legend Ozzy Osbourne. Osbourne was performing at the Fargodome later that night, so the invitees were also promised backstage passes to the show.

  GOTCHA! Forty-four invitees showed up at the club...and were arrested on the spot. It was all part of a sting set up by Fargo Sheriff Paul D. Laney (that’s what “PDL” stood for), who had the specially made invitations sent to hundreds of people who had outstanding-arrest warrants. When Osbourne heard about the stunt, he was not amused. “This sheriff should be ashamed of himself for using my celebrity to arrest these criminals,” he said in a statement. Laney said he “meant no disrespect toward Mr. Osbourne” and added that several of his deputies had gone to his show after the busts.

  A single NASA space suit costs about $10 million.

  THE RUSE: In February 2011, a friend of Jennifer Green, 28, of Washington, D.C., told her he knew about a house that had drugs and cash in it, and that the owners of the house were out of town.

  THE HOOK: If Green sat lookout for him, the man said, he’d burglarize the house and split the loot with her. Green agreed, so the two drove to the house, and she waited in the car while the man broke into the home with a crowbar. He came back with $1,050 in cash and what looked like crack cocaine in a Ziploc bag. Green took $600 and said she didn’t want any drugs.

  GOTCHA! Little did the man know that Jennifer Green was a cop! Oh, wait—yes, he did. The Internal Affairs Department of the D.C. police department had sent the man (a confidential informant) to see if Green, whom they suspected of criminal activity, would go along with the burglary plot, which she did. She was arrested, eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree burglary, and was sentenced to seven months in prison and two years’ probation.

  THE RUSE: In November 2006, two men knocked on the door of a home in Weymouth, Dorset, England. The people inside didn’t let them in because 1) they didn’t know the two men; 2) the men appeared to be very drunk; and 3) the men were dressed in Batman and Robin costumes. The two eventually went away.

  THE HOOK: A short time later, a group of policemen showed up at the same house. The people inside willingly let the officers in, telling them about the masked and drunk visitors.

  GOTCHA! When the officers entered the house, one of the people inside ran out the back door, and...POW!...was nabbed by the Dynamic Duo. Officers Tony Smith and Mike Holman had set up the bizarre costumed sting operation in an attempt to get the man who’d just run out the back door. (He was wanted on drug charges.) “The Batman costume was quite comfortable and not too restricting,” said Smith afterwards.

  Longest Morse code telegram: the Nevada state constitution, in 1864. It took two days to transmit it to the War Department in Washington, D.C...and cost $4,313.27.

  THE RUSE: In 2009 some “consumers” in Maryland ordered milk from an Amish Farm in Pennsylvania over the Internet.

  THE HOOK: The owner of the Amish farm, Daniel Allgyer, delivered the milk to the people in Maryland.

  GOTCHA! Busted, Amish milk farmer! Those guys in Maryland weren’t milk drinkers—they were FDA agents, and they’d been investigating Allgyer’s farm for more than a year. Why? Because he was selling raw, unpasteurized, milk, which the FDA says “should not be consumed under any circumstances,” as it can contain dangerous bacteria—and he was transporting it across state lines, which made it “illegal interstate commerce.” Result: In April 2010, U.S. marshals and FDA inspectors staged a surprise early-morning raid on Allgyer’s farm, during which they took pictures and notes. The next day, Allgyer got a letter from the FDA telling him to stop selling raw milk. He didn’t. The FDA filed suit against him. That suit is still in court.

  THE RUSE: In 1978 two wealthy Arab sheiks started inviting U.S. government officials to meetings. The purpose of the meetings: The sheiks had a ton of money, and they wanted help making “investments” in the United States.

  THE HOOK: Several of the government officials happily took the sheiks’ money and “invested” it into their own pockets, in exchange for helping the sheiks secure purchases of casinos, mining companies, and other Amer
ican businesses.

  GOTCHA! The sheiks weren’t sheiks—they were undercover FBI agents. It was all part of the agency’s “Abscam” operation (from “Abdul,” the name of the fictitious company the “sheiks” owned, and “scam”). And the government officials? They included eight members of Congress. Five members of the House of Representatives went to federal prison, as did Senator Harrison Williams of New Jersey, who was videotaped promising the “sheiks” he’d secure them contracts to open a titanium mine in exchange for shares in the company. Williams remains one of only two U.S. senators in history who went to prison for crimes committed while in office.

  THE AMAZING ZEER POT

  In parts of the world without electricity, the cooling properties of the simple zeer pot help fight hunger by preventing food from spoiling in hot weather. Now, thanks to the BRI’s Technology Department, you can build one, too.

  WHAT YOU NEED

  •Two clay flowerpots—a large one and a small one. The small pot must be able to fit inside the large pot. The large pot must be unglazed; the small pot can be glazed or unglazed.

  • Sand. You need enough to fill the space between the small pot and the large pot when one is placed inside the other.

  • Water. You need enough to saturate the sand between the pots.

  • A towel, large enough to cover the top of the pots.

  • A stand for the large pot, so that air can circulate underneath.

  WHAT TO DO

  •Plug the drain holes in the pots, if they have them, so that the large pot can hold water in, and the small pot can keep water out.

  • Put the large pot on the stand and fill it with enough sand so that the tops of the pots are level with each other.

  • Fill the space between the two pots with the sand, all the way to the top. Then pour the water into the sand until it’s saturated.

  • Put some food or drinks in the small pot, then soak the towel in water and use it to cover the pots.