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  CSI: OOPS

  Police in southern Germany feared that a female serial killer was running loose. After comparing evidence gathered over a period of 15 years, they noticed the same woman’s DNA was present at 40 crime scenes, linking her to dozens of robberies and three murders. It wasn’t until 2009 that police made a major breakthrough in the case: The matching DNA samples didn’t come from the evidence, they came from the cotton swabs that had been used to collect it. They concluded that a batch of cotton had been accidentally contaminated by a female worker at the factory many years earlier. The crimes remain unsolved.

  LOWER EDUCATION

  At the end of the 2008–09 school year, a fifth-grade teacher in California (her name was not released to the press) decided to make a present for her students: a DVD featuring the year’s best class moments. When some of the kids (and their parents) watched it at home, they were shocked when footage of a class field trip suddenly cut to a very naughty scene featuring the teacher and a man in one of their best moments. The teacher was mortified when she found out; she apologized profusely and got all of the DVDs back. Because the teacher is otherwise well respected, school officials called it an “honest mistake” and let her keep her job.

  MAN VS. DRYER

  In 2009, 42-year-old Dave Chapman was doing a load of laundry at a friend’s house in Waipopo, New Zealand. That evening, thinking his friend had put his laundry in the dryer earlier, Chapman went to the laundry room to change. “By then, I’d had a fair bit to drink,” he later said. Chapman removed all his clothes except his T-shirt, and then looked inside the front-loading dryer for a clean pair of underwear. He couldn’t find any, so he stuck his head inside. Still no underwear. So he climbed in even farther, past his shoulders…and got stuck. And the dryer was still hot. Chapman started thrashing about but couldn’t get out. He did manage to dislodge the dryer from on top of the washer, however, and dryer and drunken man crashed down onto the floor. His friends rushed in but were unable to free him (or stop laughing). So they called for help. A few minutes later, rescue personnel arrived to free the half-naked man, whom they described as “agitated.” It took two firefighters to hold onto the dryer and two more to pull Chapman out by his legs. He was bruised and had mild burns, but was otherwise okay. Only then did he find out that his underwear was still in the washing machine.

  TECH SUPPORT

  Believe it or not, all of these calls are real.

  Caller: I’m having a problem with my mouse. It’s squeaking.

  Tech: I’m sorry, did you say squeaking?

  Caller: That’s right. The faster

  I move it across the screen, the louder it squeaks.

  Tech: Are you pressing your mouse up against the screen?

  Caller: Well, sure! The message says, “Click here to continue.”

  Caller: My computer has locked up, and no matter how many times I type “eleven,” it won’t unfreeze.

  Tech: What do you mean, “type eleven?”

  Caller: The message on my screen says, “Error Type 11.”

  Tech: Type “fix,” with an “f.”

  Caller: Is that “f,” as in “fix”?

  Tech: Click on “cancel.”

  Caller: Capital?

  Tech: “Cancel.”

  Caller: Sorry, it only says “OK” and “cancel.”

  Caller: I was printing something.

  Tech: From before you called? Caller: No, from Microsoft Word.

  Tech: I need you to right-click on the Desktop.

  Caller: Okay.

  Tech: Did you get a pop-up menu?

  Caller: No.

  Tech: Okay. Right click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?

  Caller: No.

  Tech: Sir, can you tell me what you have done up until this point?

  Caller: Sure. You told me to write “click” and I wrote “click.”

  Tech: Okay ma’am, do you see the button on the right-hand side of your mouse?

  Caller: No, there’s a printer and a phone on the right-hand side of my mouse.

  Caller: Now what do I do?

  Tech: What is the prompt on the screen?

  Caller: It’s asking for “Enter Your Last Name.”

  Tech: Okay, so type in your last name.

  Caller: How do you spell that?

  Tech: Tell me, is the cursor still there?

  Caller: No, I’m alone right now.

  FOOD ORIGINS

  History that’s good enough to eat (or drink) .

  LATTE

  If you ordered a caffe latte in Italy, you’d get a cup of coffee with some milk in it. (In Italian, it literally means “coffee with milk.”) You wouldn’t get espresso combined with steamed milk. That’s an American latte, a variation on cappuccino that was created in 1959 in Berkeley, California. Lino Meiorin, owner of Caffe Mediterraneum, came up with it when customers who were unfamiliar with Italian coffee drinks ordered a cappuccino and, disliking the strong taste, asked for extra milk. Meiorin served his first lattes in bowls and pint glasses.

  FAST FOOD KIDS’ MEAL

  The first fast-food chain to offer a combo meal of kid-size portions (with a free toy) was Salt Lake City-based Arctic Circle, a burger joint popular on the West Coast from the 1960s to the ’80s. Introduced in 1961, the Arctic Circle Kids’ Meal consisted of a hamburger, fries, soda, and a toy prize, all inside a brightly colored box with games and puzzles on it. The format became a standard part of every fast-food restaurant’s menu. Examples: Burger King’s Kids Club Meal, McDonald’s Happy Meal, and Sonic’s Wacky Pack.

  THE SHIRLEY TEMPLE

  In the 1930s, child actress Shirley Temple was the biggest star in Hollywood and she frequently went to dinner at Chasen’s, a restaurant popular with the film industry. In 1938, on the occasion of her 10th birthday, the bartenders at Chasen’s concocted a drink just for her—alcohol-free and caffeine-free. The original recipe: two parts ginger ale, one part orange juice, a tablespoon of grenadine syrup, and a maraschino cherry garnish. Today, the drink is more commonly made with 7-Up instead of ginger ale, and without orange juice. Temple was such a big star that the drink caught on. Today there are alcoholic variations, such as the Shirley Temple Black, which adds Johnnie Walker Black Whiskey or Kahlua and plays on the star’s married name.

  WHY ARE THEY CALLED “TANKS”?

  And other interesting word origins to read on the tank.

  TERM: Jerky

  MEANING: Dried or cured meat

  ORIGIN: It comes from the Quechua language, spoken in the Andes region of South America since before the time of the Incas. Their word ch’arki means “dried flesh.” Spanish explorers, possibly as early as the 1500s, borrowed it and it became the Spanish word charqui. That migrated to English, and by the 1840s it had become “jerky.”

  TERM: Tank

  MEANING: An armored, heavily armed military vehicle that moves on tracks

  ORIGIN: During World War I, the British military started working on a new specialized combat vehicle. The project was so top-secret that the workers who were making the vehicles didn’t even know what they were—the government told them that they’d be used to carry water during desert operations. The workers called them “water-carriers”…until someone pointed out that the name could be abbreviated to “WC”—meaning “water-closet” or “toilet.” So they started calling them “water tanks,” and then “tanks.” (Tanks made their combat debut at the Battle of the Somme in Northern France in September 1916.)

  TERM: Hush puppies

  MEANING: A classic food from the American South

  ORIGIN: Hush puppies are deep-fried balls of cornmeal batter, often seasoned with onions or pepper. The most common explanation for the name says that they were originally made around campfires (the story often has the campers being Confederate soldiers), where they were tossed to hungry, yelping dogs with the command “Hush, puppies!” Over time that became the name of the food. The oldest documented use of the term goes back to a 1918 publication on America
n English called Dialect Notes.

  TERM: Chestnut

  MEANING: The nut from a chestnut tree, or the tree itself

  ORIGIN: The Ancient Greek word for chestnut was kastanea. That could have meant either “nut from Castanea,” a city in Turkey, or “nut from Castana,” a city in central Greece. Both regions were (and still are) renowned for their chestnuts. Kastanea passed into Latin as castanea, which became chastaigne in Old French. That went to Middle English as chasteine, and around 1570 became chestnut.

  TERM: Urban legend

  MEANING: Modern folktales often thought to be factual

  ORIGIN: Why are they called “urban” when they often don’t involve cities in any way? Because they’re named after Jeffrey Jack Urban, a farmer from Yankton, South Dakota. He was a notorious teller of wild, almost-believable stories in the 1930s. Local people started calling any such tales “Urban legends” after Jeffrey Jack. (Just kidding. We made that up.)

  The truth is that in the 1940s and ’50s, folklorists started collecting modern American legends and noticed that they had different characteristics than older, rural-based legends did. They called these legends “urban belief tales” or “city tales,” the words “urban” and “city” indicating their darker, more modern themes, even though the stories weren’t necessarily based in cities. The name evolved to become “urban legend” in the 1960s. The first recorded use is usually credited to folklorist Richard Dorson in the 1968 book, Our Living Traditions. (Dorson is also credited with popularizing the term “fakelore.” For more on that, see page 435.)

  “Of course I can keep secrets. It’s the people I tell them to that can’t keep them.”

  —Anthony Haden-Guest

  EVERYDAY HEROES

  Here’s something to think about: Every time you walk out your door, you could be faced with an opportunity to save someone’s life.

  Are you ready for it? These people were.

  STEERED RIGHT

  Nearly every weekday for 30 years, John Beatty drove his pickup truck across San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge on his way to and from work. One morning in late 2007, the 50-year-old electrician suddenly came up on a slow-moving Jeep Grand Cherokee. He hit the brakes and went to pass the Jeep, only to see the driver slumped over the steering wheel. “It began to cross into the fast lane, and people were using that lane to pass her,” Beatty later said. “On the other side of the road, traffic was flying northbound. I thought, ‘I’m not letting this happen.’” He drove in front of the Jeep and let it hit his pickup. Displaying some impressive driving skills, Beatty was able to steer the SUV toward the right lane. At first, other drivers honked impatiently at the slow procession, but once they understood what was happening, they gave Beatty the space he needed to get the Jeep safely off the road. Sadly, the unconscious driver later died from her condition, but California Highway Patrol officers credit Beatty with preventing what could have been a deadly collision into oncoming highway traffic. “I lead a kind of low-key life,” admitted Beatty. “Excitement’s not my bag.”

  RAIL BRAVE

  Veeramuthu Kalimuthu, known as Kali, stood on a subway platform during a busy New York City afternoon rush hour in 2008. A new train rolled in every three minutes, and Kali’s was about a minute away. That’s when he heard screams and saw that a man had fallen onto the tracks from the platform on the opposite side of the station. Kali watched and waited for someone to help, but no one did. Knowing time was running out, he jumped down from his own side onto the train tracks, and then jumped over the third rail, which carries 600 deadly volts of electricity. When he finally got across, Kali—at 5’5” and 150 pounds—realized the man was nearly twice his size…and unconscious (he’d been drinking). Kali tried to lift the man, but was unable to get him all the way up onto the platform. He did, however, lift him high enough so that people up on top could pull him to safety. Then, as bystanders applauded, Kali jumped back over the third rail and quickly scooted up to his own platform just in time to catch his train home. Kali’s humble explanation of his good deed: “People should help people.”

  IT CAME FROM ABOVE

  At around 11:00 a.m. on a Monday in April 2008, mail carrier Lisa Harrell walked into a front yard in Albany, New York, to deliver an Express Mail package. Harrell, a 13-year Postal Service veteran, stepped up onto the porch and rang the bell. All of a sudden, something brushed her shoulder. Without thinking, Harrell extended her arms and discovered that she was holding a baby. The one-year-old girl was crying but otherwise fine. Had Harrell not been there, the infant would have landed on the concrete. The mother ran outside, grabbed her daughter, thanked Harrell, and then ran off to her own mother’s house down the street. (It was later revealed that the baby had been sitting on a bed next to an open window when she rolled out.) Making the story even stranger, normally Harrell wouldn’t have been at that house until after 2:00 p.m., but because she was delivering an Express Mail package that day, she had to get there by noon. “I was pretty shaken up,” said Harrell. “I couldn’t finish the route.”

  DIDN’T SEE THAT ONE COMING

  In Fenton, Missouri, a man who was later identified only as “Jerry” heard some strange noises coming from his neighbor’s apartment. Aware that the woman who lived there wasn’t home, he had a gut feeling that it was an intruder. So Jerry went outside and kicked open his neighbor’s door. Whoever was inside slammed it shut again and locked it. So Jerry waited outside until his neighbor returned home. When she did, she told him that no one should have been inside her place. They called the police, who came and apprehended the intruder—later revealed to be an ex-con who’d planned to wait in the apartment and attack the woman when she arrived home. Police hailed Jerry as a hero. One other thing about him: He’s legally blind.

  BIONIC MEN

  Part man, part machine—and all real stories of people with robot parts.

  FINGER. Finnish computer programmer Jerry Jalava lost his ring finger in a motorcycle accident. He replaced it with a prosthetic finger of his own design—it’s also a computer flash drive. It looks like a normal finger (a shiny plastic one), but Jalava can pull back the nail, plug it into the USB slot on his computer, and store data files. (Ironically, these drives are sometimes called “thumb drives.”)

  KNEE. Brad Halling served in the Army’s Special Forces during the 1993 U.S. intervention in Somalia. A grenade hit his helicopter, and Halling lost his leg in the attack. In 2007 he received the most sophisticated joint replacement ever built: the Power Knee. Connected to two prosthetic leg parts, a microprocessor in the $100,000 device receives a signal from a small transmitter strapped to Halling’s other leg. The microprocessor senses how he’s moving and directs the robotic knee’s electric motor to copy the muscle movements. In short, he can walk normally. The downsides: It makes a loud whirring noise and has to be charged every night.

  EYE. Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence lost the use of his right eye in a childhood gun accident. So, inspired by the tiny camera on his cell phone, in 2009, Spence decided to make the ultimate first-person-POV film…by installing a prosthetic eye that is also a camera. A team from the University of Toronto is building the eye-camera (or “Eyeborg,” as Spence calls it), which will record video and send it wirelessly to a computer.

  BONES. Researchers in the U.S. military may have found a way to regenerate human limbs. They use a technique called nanoscaf-folding , in which tiny, cell-sized nets made of fiber optics hundreds of times thinner than a human hair are attached to the end of a missing limb. This structure acts as a framework where cells can congregate and bond into bones and tissue, growing through tiny holes in the scaffolding. The procedure isn’t quite ready to try out on humans yet, but scientists believe that one day it may also be used to generate new organs.

  CONFESSIONS!

  In their continuing quest to entertain us, today’s hottest celebrities divulge their innermost secrets!

  “I ate a bug once. It was flying around me. I was trying to get it away. It went ri
ght in my mouth. It was so gross!”

  —Hilary Duff

  “I used to think I actually was Batman.”

  —Justin Timberlake

  “I’d kiss a frog even if there was no promise of a Prince Charming popping out of it. I love frogs.”

  —Cameron Diaz

  “I always cry when I watch myself on-screen.”

  —Clint Eastwood

  “I like cars and basketball. But you know what I like more? Bananas.”

  —Frankie Muniz

  “What kills me is that everybody thinks I like jazz.”

  —Samuel L. Jackson

  “I’m horrible to live with. I forget to flush the toilet.”

  —Megan Fox

  “The kindest word to describe my performance in school was ‘sloth.’”

  —Harrison Ford