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  Country farthest from any ocean: Kyrgyzstan, in central Asia.

  LOU GEHRIG,

  RECONSIDERED

  Even people who know nothing about baseball know that baseball legend Lou Gehrig died from “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.” Or did he?

  THAT SINKING FEELING

  In June 1939, New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig checked into the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for a series of tests that he hoped would tell him why playing baseball had suddenly become so difficult. After 14 seasons with the Yankees and a record 2,130 consecutive games played, Gehrig was having difficulty running, fielding balls, even holding the bat. When he began to have trouble even tying his shoes, he knew that whatever was wrong with him, it was serious.

  The rest of the story is well known: Doctors diagnosed Gehrig with , an incurable motor neuron disease that destroys the nerves that control muscles, causing paralysis and eventual death. The cause is unknown. Gehrig retired from baseball and lived with the disease for two years before passing away in 1941. Before Gehrig’s illness, few people had heard of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and even afterward the name was difficult to remember, so it was probably inevitable that ALS would become known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS

  A NEW THEORY

  The story didn’t change much over the next 70 years. Then in August 2010, researchers with the Boston University School of Medicine and the Department of Veterans Affairs published a study that, while it didn’t address Gehrig’s case directly, called into question whether he ever really had ALS at all.

  The researchers studied brain and spinal-cord samples from 12 deceased professional athletes who’d suffered a deterioration of brain function late in life. Three had been diagnosed with ALS; the other nine had suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a condition believed to be caused by repeated concussions or other head trauma. Symptoms of CTE include depression, impaired memory, and emotional instability. It often progresses to a full-blown dementia similar to Alzheimer’s disease.

  Lou Gehrig’s nickname during the 1920s: “Biscuit Pants.”

  SIMILAR, BUT NOT THE SAME

  People who suffer from CTE have abnormal deposits of a protein called tau in their brains. The researchers looked for, and found, abnormal tau deposits in all 12 athletes.

  What was unusual about this finding was that ALS sufferers typically do not have tau deposits in their brains. When the researchers looked further, they found that the three athletes diagnosed with ALS also had the abnormal tau deposits in their spinal cords. Again, this is not something usually found in ALS patients.

  The researchers also found that 10 of the 12 athletes had abnormal deposits of a second protein (called TDP-43) in their brains. Of these 10, only 3, the athletes diagnosed with ALS, also had deposits of TDP-43 in their spinal cords.

  People who suffer from ALS can have abnormal deposits of TDP-43, but they typically are not as extensive as those found in the 12 athletes in this study. And ALS patients don’t have abnormal deposits of tau. This led the authors to conclude that they had discovered a new disease, one with symptoms similar to ALS but with a different cause: abnormal tau and TDP-43 deposits in the brain and spinal cord, the result of repeated head trauma over many years. The researchers named the new disease chronic traumatic encephalomyopathy, or CTEM.

  THE IRON HORSE

  Gehrig may very well have suffered from CTEM, not ALS. During his 14 years with the Yankees, he sustained at least five serious concussions, the worst in 1934 when he was hit in the head by a fastball and knocked out cold for five minutes. He famously never missed a game during his years with the Yankees, and he routinely played through his injuries, which may have made matters worse. We can’t test to see if Gehrig really did die from CTEM, because his remains were cremated. But the possibility is certainly intriguing. “Here he is, the face of his disease,” lead researcher Dr. Ann McKee told the N.Y. Times, “and as a result of his athletic experience he may have had a completely different disease.”

  Stoners: Men are four times more likely than women to get kidney stones.

  COME ON DOWN!

  The Price Is Right has been around longer than Uncle John has. Here are some random facts about America’s longest-running game show.

  BACKGROUND

  The Price is Right debuted on American television in 1956 on NBC, in both prime-time and daytime versions. Both were hosted by former radio announcer Bill Cullen, and they were huge hits—in the top 10 from 1959 to 1961, making it the most popular game show on TV. In 1963 the show moved to ABC, then was canceled after two years. CBS revived the show for its daytime schedule in 1972, bringing in former Truth or Consequences host Bob Barker and retitling it The New Price is Right. And it was a hit again. The “New” was dropped after a couple of years, and today it’s one of only two network-produced game shows on the air.

  • Prizes on the early version were often outlandish, like a chauffeured Rolls Royce, a Ferris wheel, or an island. A 1994 episode of The Simpsons in which Bart wins a contest and refuses the cash prize in favor of the “gag” prize—an elephant—is based on a Price Is Right incident in 1956 where a contestant demanded the real elephant he’d won instead of its $4,000 cash value. Producers finally acquiesced and flew one in from Kenya.

  • Four men have sat in the announcer’s chair of the current version. First was Johnny Olsen (1972–85), who was also the announcer for Jeopardy!, The Match Game, Play Your Hunch, and many other game shows. Rod Roddy and his sparkly suits replaced Olsen in 1985 and encouraged contestants to “Come on down!” until his death in 2003. Rich Fields followed, turning things over to Junkyard Wars host George Gray in 2011. Only two men have hosted the current incarnation of the show: Bob Barker, from 1972 to 2007, when he retired at age 83, and the current host, comedian Drew Carey.

  • To honor Barker’s 5,000th episode in 1998, the show’s soundstage, Stage 33 at CBS Television City, was renamed Bob Barker Studio.

  • As of the 7,000th episode, taped in November 2009, $250 million in prizes had been given out to nearly 62,000 contestants. The phrase “a new car!” had been shouted over 15,000 times; 7,000 contestants had actually managed to win one.

  Besides orange, pumpkins can also be tan, white, yellow, red, blue, or green.

  • In addition to other versions that have aired in syndication and during prime time in the United States, international editions have appeared on every continent except Antarctica. The show has also been licensed for slot machines, board games, scratch-off lottery tickets, and numerous video games.

  • The most controversial of “Barker’s Beauties,” the models who introduced products on the show, was Dian Parkinson. She posed nude in Playboy twice in the early 1990s, and while CBS frowned on the pictorials, they couldn’t fire her because they couldn’t cross the powerful Barker...who was having an affair with Parkinson at the time. Parkinson’s 18-year stint on the show came to end in 1994 when she filed a sexual-harassment lawsuit against Barker. She later dropped the charges, claiming the case was having a negative impact on her health.

  • Debuting in 1976, “Cliff Hangers” is one of The Price Is Right’s oldest and most popular games. Contestants attempt to guess the prices of various products in order to prevent a miniature mountain climber dressed in lederhosen from falling off a cliff. The climber has no official name, but in 1977, guest host Dennis James (one of only four episodes Barker missed) called the climber “Fritz,” unaware that Barker’s Beauty Janice Pennington’s husband, Fritz Stammberger, had recently disappeared in a mountain-climbing accident. After the game’s tiny climber fell victim to a contestant’s lousy guesses, James yelled, “There goes Fritz!” Pennington fled backstage, where she cried through the rest of the taping. Stammberger was never seen again; he was declared legally dead in 1984.

  • During a Showcase (the show’s final round) in 2007, a contestant named José bid $250,000 on a selection of prizes clearly worth a fracti
on of that amount (the show never gives out anything that valuable). Barker persuaded José to lower his bid, and he did...to $60,000, which ended up still being roughly $40,000 too high.

  • Contestant who holds the record for netting the most cash and prizes on the show: Vickyann Sadowski. In 2006 she walked away with $147,517 in winnings—including...a new car!

  Can you name the world’s 50 tallest mountains? Neither can we. (But they’re all in Asia.)

  HARDWARE STORE

  ORIGINS

  Why get started on that home-improvement project when you can procrastinate and read these?

  CHAIN-LINK FENCING

  Chain link is made of long strands of wire bent into a zigzag pattern and woven together like cloth. It was invented in 1844 by Charles Barnard, one of the owners of “Barnard, Bishop and Barnard,” in Norwich, England. The company originally produced cloth, and Barnard developed a machine fashioned after a textile weaver to make the fencing. (He used steel wire—still the most common material for chain-link fencing.) It was first made in the United States in 1891 by the Anchor Fence Company of Daly City, California. Chain-link fencing is relatively inexpensive and easy to install, as well as very strong. You can tell by looking around any town, virtually anywhere in the entire world today, to see that it became one of the most popular types of fencing—if not the most popular—in history.

  LAMINATE FLOORING

  In 1979 Perstorp, a Swedish company that had been making laminated surfaces for counters and tabletops since the 1950s, released Perstorp Golv GL80, a type of relatively cheap but attractive laminate flooring. It was a breakthrough, because the flooring, which came in pieces that could be fitted together easily, could be installed by nonprofessionals. It started a do-it-yourself flooring craze in Sweden, and in the late 1980s did the same for the rest of Europe. In 1989 Perstorp Golv (golv is Swedish for “floor”) was shortened to “Pergo.” A few years later, Pergo flooring was released in the United States and then worldwide. Today laminate flooring is one of the most popular styles of flooring in the world, and Pergo is still the most popular brand—so much so that in America all laminate flooring, even if it’s not made by Perstorp, is referred to as “pergo.”

  Nothing to cry about: Your eyes produce about a teaspoon of tears every hour.

  EMERY BOARDS

  People have been using materials like pumice stone to smooth their fingernails since at least the 1500s, but the modern emery board—a piece of cardboard with abrasive powder affixed to it—was patented by J. Parker Pray on June 3, 1883. (Emery is a kind of rock that, because of its extreme hardness, makes an excellent abrasive when crushed into powder. Its primary source: the Greek island of Naxos.) Pray, who ran the “Dr. J. Parker Pray Co. Manicure & Chiropodist Parlour” on East 23rd Street in New York City, was one of America’s first manicurists.

  ROTATING CASTERS

  In the early 1870s, David A. Fisher Jr. noticed that workers in his Washington, D.C., furniture factory had a hard time safely moving large pieces of furniture around the shop. “Casters,” wheels fixed to the bottom of furniture, had been around since the 1700s, but they were simply fixed wheels, meaning you could only roll in one direction. Result: Large pieces of furniture still had to be lifted to maneuver them through a crowded room. Inspired by his workers’ complaints, Fisher developed a free-turning wheel that could rotate in all directions, so furniture could easily be moved around obstacles. He received a patent for the idea on March 14, 1876, and casters quickly made their way out of furniture shops and onto furniture in homes. (“Caster” derives from cast, an old term for “turn.”)

  TOILET TANK FLAPS

  This, as you might guess, is our favorite. Joseph Bramah was a cabinet maker in London, England, in the 18th century. Always a tinkerer, in 1778 he decided that English “water closets” needed to be improved. The valve that controlled the water level in the tank was prone to freezing, so Bramah designed a simple hinged leather flap that sealed the hole in the bottom of the tank and could be easily pulled open with a chain when the water was needed for flushing. He patented the device in 1778 and began selling toilets equipped with his patented flaps out of his shop. They were a huge success. (Some of Bramah’s originals can still be found in working order in the U.K. today.) And the “flap”—now made of plastic—remains a standard part of toilets around the world today.

  January is Bath Safety Month. (And January 8 is Bubble Bath Day.)

  ROAD TRIP!

  The idea of Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, and Marlon Brando fleeing New York in a rental car after 9/11 and driving cross-country sounds absurd, but it was widely reported as fact after Taylor died in 2011. Unfortunately, when things sound too weird to be true...they usually are. Here’s the story (and the real story).

  LAST TANGO IN NEW YORK

  On September 7 and September 10, 2001, Michael Jackson played Madison Square Garden as part of a “30 Years in Show Business” celebration. He brought two of his close friends along to see the shows: screen legends Marlon Brando, who gave a speech praising Jackson’s efforts to help the world’s children at the first concert, and Elizabeth Taylor, who introduced Jackson at the second concert.

  A day after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Jackson reportedly received a call from a well-connected friend in Saudi Arabia telling him that that was just the beginning—New York would continue to be bombarded by terrorist assaults. Jackson believed his friend and sprang into action. Yelling down the hall of his hotel (he’d rented out the entire floor), he ordered everybody out, including his entire entourage and Brando.

  Jackson then released his staff to find safety on their own. He and Brando, meanwhile, purportedly called Taylor, who was staying in a different hotel, and met up with her. That’s when things got weird. For some reason, the trio believed that it wasn’t America that was under attack—they thought that because they were internationally famous American icons, they were the targets.

  KENTUCKY-FRIED 8

  They hatched a plan to flee. They couldn’t fly—all planes were grounded in the days after 9/11, and not even these three could get permission for a private jet—so they decided to escape New York in a rental car. The plan: drive directly to Jackson’s home in Southern California. Three days later, they’d traveled 535 miles, as far as Ohio, and by that time, planes were flying again, so the road trip was called off. The lasting legacy, according to friends of Taylor: She and Jackson grew closer on the trip, bonding over their common irritation with Brando’s insistence on stopping at nearly every KFC and Burger King they passed on the highway.

  It takes 6 months to produce an episode of The Simpsons. An episode of South Park: 5 days.

  ON SECOND THOUGHT

  After Elizabeth Taylor died in 2011, this road trip story was relayed by hundreds of magazines and blogs after first being shared by Vanity Fair. It sounded extremely far-fetched, but it seemed like it could have been true. After all, weird things can occur in the wake of a tragedy. But the fact of the matter is that the road trip didn’t happen. Why? Vanity Fair’s sources for the story are highly suspect. While Taylor’s loyal personal assistant of 25 years, Tim Mendelson, shared the story with Vanity Fair, it was first told in the 2004 edition of J. Randy Taraborrelli’s book Michael Jackson—The Magic and the Madness. Taraborrelli was a close friend of Jackson’s...as well as his personal, authorized biographer. He was charged with spreading stories, whether true or not, that made his client look good.

  A HOLE-Y STORY

  There are several other factors that cast doubt on the likelihood of the adventure. For one, Jackson, Taylor, and Brando weren’t all that close. Brando didn’t introduce Jackson at the Madison Square Garden for free; he was paid $1 million to do it. As for Taylor, she and Jackson had been friends for years, but they’d had a rift in the late 1990s, reportedly over Taylor’s discomfort with Jackson’s “sleep-overs” with children. Still, Jackson wanted her at the shows, so he gave her what she asked for: a $660,000 diamond necklace.
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  It also would have been difficult for Taylor to be in Ohio in the days after 9/11 because she was repeatedly spotted in New York City during the post-9/11 recovery effort. Several media reports and photographs count Taylor among the celebrities who reported to Ground Zero to help out and talk with first responders. As for Jackson, he was accounted for, too: He and his children stayed with friends for two weeks in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. Then he chartered a flight home.

  Tough, but dumb: South African giant bullfrogs occasionally attack lions.

  STRANGE CELEBRITY

  LAWSUITS

  Step 1: Get famous. Step 2: Get a lawyer.

  THE PLAINTIFF: Richelle Olson, a charity organizer from Palmdale, California

  THE DEFENDANT: Sacha Baron Cohen, star of the movies Borat and Brüno

  THE LAWSUIT: In 2007 Cohen was filming Brüno, a mockumentary in which the British comic plays a gay Austrian fashion reporter and puts himself into real situations and interacts with real—and unwitting—people. Olson had never heard of Cohen or his alter-ego Brüno. She knew only that a celebrity was scheduled to call the numbers at a bingo game for the elderly she was organizing. Cohen, the celebrity bingo caller, arrived provocatively dressed as Brüno and “used profanity and sexual innuendo.” Aghast, Olson tried to take away his microphone. Cohen, claimed Olson, fought her, and in the scuffle she fell on the floor and hit her head. Cohen’s camera crew then attacked her “to intentionally create a dramatic emotional response,” from which she suffered two “brain bleeds” and lost the ability to walk. She sought $25,000. After the defense showed video of the incident that proved neither Cohen nor his crew ever touched Olson, she changed her story to say that she had been “emotionally attacked,” which is actually what caused her to fall and hit her head.