Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (16 page)

75% of all men’s underwear is purchased by women
.

Date:
July 18, 2008

Victim:
Rosemary Neal, 65, of Mudgee, New South Wales
Attack!
As Neal was walking through a horse pasture on her farm about 160 miles northeast of Sydney, a 6 ½-foot-tall kangaroo “just jumped up and launched straight at her,” according to her son, Darren. The Neals’ dog was able to chase the kangaroo off, but not before Rosemary suffered extensive cuts as well as a concussion. The attack brought a heated response from residents of the area, who called for the police to find and kill the offending ’roo. “How do you propose we do that?” Mudgee Police Inspector Greg Spinks asked. “By doing some kind of kangaroo lineup?” A hunt for the animal was not attempted.

Date:
July 3, 2004

Victim:
Christine Canham of Canberra, New South Wales
Attack!
Canham was watching her four dogs swim in a pond in a city park one day when a large kangaroo appeared on the shore. Then it jumped into the water, swam up to one of her Golden Retrievers (kangaroos are excellent swimmers), and, as Canham watched in horror from the shore, held the dog underwater until it was dead. “The kangaroo just stared back at us,” Canham told the
Canberra Times
. “I will never forget that.” Surprisingly, reports of kangaroos trying to drown dogs and other perceived predators are not uncommon.

“You have to run as fast as you can just to stay where you are. If you want to get anywhere, you’ll have to run much faster.”

—Lewis Carroll

1st U.S. church to open a fast-food franchise: True Bethel Baptist Church in NY. (It was a Subway.)

YOU’RE SICK?
I’M
SICK!

What do you call a panic that causes an imagined illness to spread over a population? Mass hysteria
.

T
HE SWEET SMELL OF PANIC
In 2009 a worker sprayed herself with perfume at the Bank of America corporate office in Fort Worth, Texas. Apparently, two people nearby were allergic to it, reported feeling dizzy, and went home. Soon after, a public-address announcement instructed that any worker who was also feeling dizzy should go outside for some fresh air. Within a few hours, more than 140 people reported feeling ill, with symptoms including dizziness, shortness of breath, and hallucinations—the symptoms of carbon-monoxide poisoning. As the news spread throughout the building, more than 30 people rushed to the hospital, while others were treated at the scene. The fire department sent in a hazardous materials unit, but they never detected any carbon monoxide—only perfume.

SOAP SICKNESS

Morangos com Açúcar
is a popular Portuguese soap opera. On a May 2006 episode, all of the characters were stricken with a mysterious disease whose symptoms included dizziness, difficulty breathing, and a rash. A few days later, more than 300 students at 14 high schools throughout Portugal suddenly came down with the exact same symptoms. All of the kids quickly recovered, and the federal health department dismissed the outbreak as mass hysteria.

ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER

In 1999 large quantities of animal feed in Belgium were found to be tainted with the poisonous compound dioxin. The reports set off fears over contamination of the food supply, although scientists reassured the public that it was “unlikely” to be a threat to humans. A few weeks later, 26 children at a Belgian school were hospitalized with severe fatigue and upset stomachs after having consumed Coca-Cola. Soon, hundreds of people claimed that they’d felt sick after drinking Coke, and they blamed dioxin. The Belgian Health Council briefly banned the sale of Coca-Cola, but never found dioxin in any samples. The scare was attributed to mass hysteria.

No joke: Studies show that 80% of adult laughter is unconnected to any joke or funny situation
.

THE ONE MILLION
GUESSES QUIZ, PART I

Here’s how it works: We’ll tell you an actual news story and leave out one important piece of information—and you have to guess what it is. And we’ll give you one million guesses, because you’ll need at least that many to get it. Good luck!

S
TORY:
27-year-old Jens Wilhelms of Frankfurt, Germany, was climbing the stairs to his top-floor apartment one night in April 2008 when he noticed that the door to an elevator was open. The elevator had been broken for some time, and he peered in through the door to see if it was finally being worked on. Then he slipped—and fell 25 feet to the floor of the shaft. But he wasn’t injured, because he landed on something. What?

ONE MILLION GUESSES LATER:
He fell on a woman who had fallen down the same shaft a day earlier. The unidentified 57-year-old woman was unconscious and bleeding internally, and Wilhelms managed to climb out of the shaft and call emergency services. And although he made her injuries worse by falling on her, police said she was lucky—because she almost certainly would have died if Wilhelms had not landed on her and then gotten help.

STORY:
A woman pulled into a Winona, Minnesota, auto repair shop in August 2009 with a broken fan belt. The mechanic told her it would take an hour to fix, and the woman let him in on a secret: She had something special in her trunk. What was it?

ONE MILLION GUESSES LATER:
Did you guess “a live goat that had been painted purple and gold, the colors of the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings, with the number 4, the number of new Vikings quarterback Brett Favre, shaved into each of its sides”? Then you were right. She told the mechanic that she planned to butcher it later. The mechanic called animal control, and police arrived shortly afterward to arrest the woman on animal-cruelty charges. The goat was saved and was eventually given a new home on a Wisconsin farm. Its new owners named it Brett.

Experts say: The best badminton shuttlecocks are made of the feathers from a goose’s left wing
.

STORY:
In April 2009, Artyom Sidorenko, 28, of Izhevsk, Russia, started coughing up blood and having seizures. He was admitted to a hospital, where doctors told him that he had a cancerous tumor in his lung and would need surgery to remove it. He was operated on—and doctors discovered that the growth in his lung wasn’t a tumor. What was it?

ONE MILLION GUESSES LATER:
Hopefully one of your guesses was “A piece of a fir tree.” Dr. Vladimir Kamashev opened Sidorenko’s chest and, he said later, was about to remove most of the lung but decided to analyze the growth first. He cut into it and found what looked like a needle from a pine tree. “At first I thought that I was seeing an illusion,” he said. “I asked my assistant to check it out, and he confirmed it. There was a fir tree in his lung.” They removed the approximately two-inch-long piece—complete with several needles—and were able to save Sidorenko’s lung. Even stranger, the doctors actually believe that it was a tiny tree
growing
in his lung. Kamashev said that Sidorenko must have inhaled a fir tree seed or bud, and that it had somehow germinated and started growing. Botanists said that that’s not possible because trees, like all plants, need light to grow. Sidorenko, they say, must have somehow inhaled the tiny branch as it was. (The question is: Wouldn’t he have noticed that?)

STORY:
In September 2009, Tatiata Kozhevnikova, a 42-year-old housewife and fitness enthusiast from the Russian city of Novosibirsk, made it into
Guinness World Records
. What was her world record?

ONE MILLION GUESSES LATER:
Kozhevnikova set the record for having “the world’s strongest vagina muscles.” Fifteen years after she had children, she explained to reporters, she developed an exercise for what she called her “intimate muscles.” It involved a specially designed device that she clamps down on with—well, you get the idea. The other end of the device is attached to a set of weights. Her record lift: 14 kilograms (just over 30 pounds).

If you’ve got a few more million guesses in you, we’ve got some more quiz questions on
page 313
.

Why sue? Only 3% of all legal cases in the U.S. ever make it to the courtroom
.

MADOFF WITH
THE GOODS

Here’s a news item from the future: “June 29, 2159: 231-year-old former stockbroker Bernard Madoff was released today after his 150-year prison sentence ended. His first words to reporters: ‘I want my stuff back.’”

E
VERYTHING MUST GO
Over a career of more than two decades, stockbroker—and scam artist—Bernie Madoff bilked thousands of investors out of nearly $20 billion in what is considered the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. He was arrested in December 2008, and pleaded guilty to securities fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, perjury, theft, and six other charges four months later. In November 2009, while Madoff was beginning a 150-year prison term, the U.S. Marshals Service attempted to return some of that money to his victims by holding a series of auctions. The first one was held at the Sheraton Hotel in New York City. Purses, ashtrays, dishes, jewelry, golf clubs, stationery, duck decoys, and a Wayne Gretzky action figure were among the 200 items stacked on folding tables or leaned against walls, ready to go to the highest bidder. What did these things all have in common? They belonged to Madoff and his family, and were seized from their Manhattan penthouse and Montauk, Long Island, vacation home.