Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Zipper Accidents Read online

  On a roll. In 1991 Edward Juchniewicz, 76, had a doctor’s appointment in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. An ambulance brought him from his nursing home to the appointment. But the paramedics left him in the parking lot on a gurney while they went inside to make sure the doc was ready. The unattended gurney started rolling away. It hit a curb, flipped over, and sent Juchniewicz onto the pavement. He died from severe head injuries.

  Breathless. The problem with getting naked, putting a condom over your head, and then suffocating to death in bed is that when your body is found, the newspapers will all say you were found naked in bed with a condom over your head. That bizarre end came to Gary Ashbrook, who was also found with three empty nitrous oxide cartridges.

  That sucks. On April 28, 1988, Clarabelle “C.B.” Lansing was dutifully performing her routine as a flight attendant on Aloha Airlines Flight 243 when a small portion of the plane’s bulkhead came off. One second, Lansing was standing in the aisle collecting empty drink cups; the next second, she got sucked out through the hole. Dozens more people were hurt, but the pilots were able to safely land the compromised aircraft. The only fatality was Lansing.

  Just dessert. In 1995 an exotic dancer from Italy named Gina Lalapola was hired to jump out of a cake at a stag party. After climbing inside, the cake was sealed. But then it took an hour to get to the cake-jumping-out portion of the party. When Lalapola’s cue arrived, she did not. The men waited. Still no stripper. So they opened up the cake and found her inside. She’d run out of air and died. Party over.

  Woodn’t you know? Famed playwright Sherwood Anderson was eating appetizers and hors d’oeuvres on a cruise ship in 1941. He didn’t take the toothpick out of one of those treats, swallowed it, developed peritonitis from it, and died.

  THE DEAN OF ERRORS

  In August 2006, legendary Australian cricket player Dean Jones was covering a tournament in Colombo, Sri Lanka, for Australian TV network Ten Sport when he said, “The terrorist has got another wicket.” By “got another wicket,” Jones was saying that someone had gotten a player out. By “terrorist,” Jones was referring to South African player Hashim Amla, the first Muslim ever to play for the South African national team. Jones had thought he had said the remark quietly enough to not be picked up by the mic—but he was wrong. The public outcry was so immediate and so immense that Jones was on a plane out of Sri Lanka—and fired from his job with Ten Sport—within hours. Jones issued a contrite public apology, saying the comment had simply been a stupid attempt at humor.

  A year later, Jones received a Father of the Year award from his Australian home state of Victoria. In 2010 that became another source of awkwardness when it was discovered that Jones, a married father of two, had been having an affair with a flight attendant for the previous nine years and had even had a child with her—a child he had never met. The state of Victoria took his Father of the Year Award back.

  POORLY NAMED PRODUCTS

  Vergatorio is a derivative of a Spanish slang term for the male genitalia. It’s used throughout Latin America, except in Venezuela, where it means “reliable,” which is why it’s used as the name of a cell phone model issued by a state-run mobile phone company.

  At one time, “gay” meant the same thing as “happy,” whereas today its most prominent usage is as a synonym for “homosexual.” Nevertheless, Golden Gaytime is a popular ice cream brand in Australia. Four-pack boxes promise “four delicious chances to have a gay time!”

  Mitsubishi marketed its rugged, terrain-punishing Montero sport utility vehicle in Spain under the name Pajero. That word means “self-abusing” in Spanish, with Mitsubishi’s marketing department thinking it implied a car that can take a beating from the elements. In Spain, the word’s meaning is more akin to “self-pleasuring.”

  In 2011 Elmer’s Glue debuted an all-in-one caulking gun and caulk: the Squeez ‘N’ Caulk.

  The name of a plastic contraption that saves half-smoked cigarettes for later? The Butt Buddy.

  The Nintendo DS is a handheld, touch-screen video game unit. In 2005 a Korean software company released an interactive DS dictionary program for kids called Touch Dic.

  The Swedish furniture chain IKEA names most of its products after Swedish words. For example, the FARTFULL workbench.

  If insects are a bother on your visit to Australia, just buy a bottle of Wack Off! repellent.

  When a Nigerian staterun oil company started a joint venture with the Russian energy company Gazprom, they merged the words “Nigeria” with “Gazprom” and unfortunately got… Nigaz.

  In the late 1970s, one of the leading diet products was a “reducing system” consisting of vitamins and an appetite suppressant candy. It’s name: AYDS. (Once the AIDS health crisis hit, AYDS was done for.)

  Like most grocery stores, Australia’s Golden Circle chain has a line of store-brand products. One of those is a root beer-like, sarsaparilla beverage, which it calls SARS. That’s also the name of a virus that killed nearly 800 people in a 2003 outbreak.

  Belgian chocolatier Meurisse sells a nut-filled chocolate bar called Big Nuts.

  JIMMY KIMMEL, FAR TOO LIVE

  ABC got into the late-night comedy talk show game in February 2003. Competing with well-established comics Jay Leno on NBC and David Letterman on CBS, ABC offered Jimmy Kimmel, a radio veteran and host of The Man Show and Win Ben Stein’s Money on Comedy Central. Producers planned a variety of ways to make Jimmy Kimmel Live different from the other guys, such as having a new guest co-host every week, airing the show live, and, to encourage a party atmosphere, serving alcohol to the studio audience, just as had been done on The Man Show.

  Jimmy Kimmel Live debuted in the plum post–Super Bowl slot in January 2003. One woman in the audience apparently had a little bit too much to drink, because she threw up on her chair, just a few seats over from a network executive. After only one episode serving booze to the audience, ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live’s liquor license. (Which is to say nothing of some other first-episode highlights, such as guest Snoop Dogg repeatedly flipping the bird to the camera, and guest George Clooney passing around a bottle of vodka onstage.)

  THE HARTFORD COLISEUM COLLAPSE

  It had already been snowing for more than a week when the University of Connecticut basketball team beat Massachusetts 56–49 at the Hartford Civic Center Coliseum on January 18, 1978. After the game, while 5,000 fans piled out into the snow, the coliseum’s roof, a marvel of steel-truss engineering, was holding up 10 days’ worth of accumulated snow and ice. Five hours later, it collapsed.

  The roof, one of the first designed with computer-aided software, had a flaw. But it wasn’t the computer’s fault. The error came when the coliseum’s architects had to transcribe the calculations into blueprints for the builders. At the time of the collapse, sections of the roof were overloaded by 852 percent. Amazingly, no one was hurt.

  Rebuilding the coliseum—it reopened two years later and is now the XL Center—cost $75 million, not counting the millions lost by nearby businesses who relied on revenue from basketball and hockey fans.

  TO B-2, OR NOT TO B-2

  In February 2008, a ground crew was preparing a B-2 stealth bomber for takeoff at a U.S. Air Force base in Guam. They noticed odd readings coming from three sensors that relay information to the flight computer. Unfortunately, this particular crew hadn’t heard about an “unofficial fix” for the problem: sending a blast of hot air through the system to evaporate any moisture on the sensors. Instead, they recalibrated the sensors and cleared the plane for takeoff. But as it sped down the runway, the moisture evaporated.

  Result: The sensors sent incorrect data to the computer. “The pressure differences were miniscule,” said Maj. Gen. Floyd Carpenter, “but they were enough to confuse the flight control system.” As the plane lifted off, the pilots thought they were traveling at 158 knots but were actually only going about 124 knots.

  The plane immediately stalled; the pilots ejected as the left wing dragged against the ground…right befor
e the $1.2 billion bomber erupted in a huge fireball.

  “THE PRESSURE DIFFERENCES WERE MINISCULE, BUT THEY WERE ENOUGH TO CONFUSE THE FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEM..”

  EXCERPTS FROM ACTUAL INSURANCE CLAIMS

  •“I was driving along the motorway when the police pulled me over onto the hard shoulder. Unfortunately I was in the middle lane and there was another car in the way.”

  •“The accident happened because I had one eye on the lorry in front, one eye on the pedestrian, and the other on the car behind.”

  •“I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law, and headed over the embankment.”

  •“I saw a slow-moving, sad-faced old gentleman as he bounced off the roof of my car.”

  •“In an attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.”

  •“I was thrown from my car as it left the road. I was later found in a ditch by some stray cows.”

  •“Going to work this morning I drove out of my drive straight into a bus. The bus was five minutes early.”

  •“The accident was caused by me waving to the man I hit last week.”

  •“The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.”

  POLITICAL GAFFES

  Darkest desert. In 2006 Amir Peretz was appointed defense minister of Israel, a controversial and unpopular choice, as Peretz didn’t have a military background. Suspicions about his lack of expertise were confirmed decisively in February 2007. On a surveying trip with his chief of staff, the chief kept pointing out things for Peretz to look at. Photographers captured Peretz nodding as he acknowledged whatever he saw when he looked out of a pair of binoculars, which would have been hard, because the lens caps were still on.

  Drawing a blank. During the 2005 election, leaders of the UK’s Liberal Party sent out a letter to members of Parliament (MPs) in closely contested districts, playing up the achievements of the party’s recent achievements. It was a form letter that MPs were supposed to personalize before sending out to their constituents. Instead, nine MP offices simply copied the letter whole and sent it out to thousands of homes, without inserting their town names, as per instructions. One excerpt: “And nowhere can we be more proud than here in.”

  Aye, Spy! Spy magazine decided to call out politicians on what it hypothesized was common: They have no idea what they’re talking about and will tell reporters what they want to hear. A member of the Spy staff, impersonating a radio host, called members of the newly elected 1993 Congress. Among serious questions, they threw in, “Do you approve of what we’re doing to stop the ethnic cleansing in Freedonia?” “It’s very, very sad. We need to take action to assist the people.”—Corrine Brown, Florida. “Anything we can do to use the good offices of the U.S. government to assist stopping the killing over there, we should do.”—James Talent, Missouri. Jay Dickey of Arkansas blamed the newly elected President Clinton. Steve Buyer of Indiana said that “it’s a different situation than the Middle East.” Indeed, it is. Because Freedonia is a fictional country from the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup. There is no such place.

  Pay Moore attention. Tom Moore Jr. was working as a representative from Waco in the Texas Legislature in 1971 when he became worried that his fellow lawmakers didn’t fully read or even pay any attention to the bills and resolutions they were tasked with passing. So Moore introduced a motion honoring Albert DeSalvo for his work in population control, praising his “dedication and devotion to achieve and maintain a new degree of concern for the future.” The motion passed unanimously. DeSalvo, who is better known by his nickname the “Boston Strangler,” murdered 13 women in Boston in the 1960s.

  Free labor. Tommaso Coletti was president of Chieti, a province in southern Italy. In order to help promote employment assistance centers in the area in 2006, he approved an ad campaign with the slogan “Work makes you free.” “I don’t remember where I read this phrase but it was one of those quotes that have an instant impact on you because they tell an immense truth.” It should have been familiar. It was the slogan the Nazis used at the concentration camps during in World War II.

  Hardy, har-har. Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy during World War II, was very short. Thinking that short stature equated with weakness, he used a variety of tactics to look taller, including standing on hidden stools during speeches and sitting in a special extra-high chair. When he first came to power, he also wore a bowler hat, until advisors told him the British news media said it made him look like “the fat one” from Laurel and Hardy.

  You’re doing it wrong. In 1983 China’s health ministry conducted a massive population-control drive, as the country was rapidly outgrowing its resources (today China has more than a billion residents). TV ads, print ads, seminars, and home demonstrations were conducted to show people how to prevent the conception of children they didn’t want. Birth-control pills and condoms were distributed by the millions. After one year, there was no decline. The reasons were revealed in a survey of participants: 80 percent of men had taken the birth-control pills, which were intended for women, and a whopping 98 percent of the men wore the condoms on a finger—because that’s what the government instructors had done in their demonstrations.

  “THE GOVERNMENT LOST MILLIONS ON UNUSED GAS.”

  The heat is on. The government of Bangladesh introduced a plan to defeat national poverty in 1982, helping its citizens financially by subsidizing heating gas, charging only a flat fee of $1.60 a month. Then the government found out that most people just left their ovens on all the time, since the gas was cheap, and they didn’t have to buy matches to light the ovens. The government lost millions on unused gas.

  Let’s French! In 1890 the provincial government of Manitoba, Canada, passed a law declaring English to be the official language, contrary to Canada’s federal English/French rule, because most Manitobans were English speakers. In 1985 the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that such a law was unconstitutional, because the Canadian constitution mandates bilingualism. That, in effect, rendered all laws passed in Manitoba since 1890 invalid. Lawmakers had to translate into French about 4,500 laws and 30,000 regulations, then reenact them all. It took five years.

  GOOD ART, BAD BUSINESS

  Paradise Lost, lost. Written in the 17th century, John Milton’s Paradise Lost is one of the most important and widely read works in the history of the English language. Milton sold the rights to the first edition to a London bookstore for £10. After he died, his wife sold the rest of the rights for £8. Their financial loss? Immeasurable.

  He didn’t start the fire. It took English historian Thomas Carlyle most of 1834 to write the first volume of the three-part series The French Revolution: A History. Carlyle gave his only copy of the manuscript to a friend, economist John Stuart Mill, for critique. Mill never saw it—his maid thought it was wastepaper and used it to start a fire. Carlyle had to rewrite the entire book.

  Starving artist. Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani, like many artists, was unrecognized for his talent during his life and, also like many artists, his work skyrocketed in value after his death in 1920. Modigliani had routinely traded his work for drinks and food, and when he died, café owners who had kept the paintings could cash in. Except for the café owner whose wife had scraped the paint off of their Modigliani so as to use the canvas to reupholster a sofa.

  A CONVERSATION WITH “KEVIN SPACEY”

  In 2007 actor John Cusack agreed to do an interview with Take 5, a pop-culture show on the University of Southern California’s studentrun television station. Minutes before the interview was to begin, the student host told Cusack she was missing her film class to interview him, adding, “It’s so funny, because they’re watching American Beauty today!” Puzzled, Cusack asked, “American Beauty? What’s funny about that?” She answered, “You were in that!” For the record, Cusack was not in American Beauty. But Kevin Spacey, who, like Cusack, is a Caucasian, American, middle-aged film actor, did star in the film. But the student interviewer just kep
t pushing the issue. “American Beauty?” she said. Cusack said, “Nope.” “What’s the one with the rose petals?” she asked. “I’m not in that,” Cusack responded. “That’s not you?” she persisted. “No,” said Cusack. “Really?” Cusack said, again, “No.” She finally asked, “Am I just really confused?” To which Cusack responded, “I think you are.”

  The interview never aired. But the pre-interview described above ended up in a cringe-inducing video on YouTube, under the title “How NOT to start an interview.” It has since been viewed millions of times.

  LET’S PLAY HANGED-MAN!

  “It’s a fake noose, a prop noose!” insisted Joe McMahon, the owner of the Pink Punters nightclub in Buckinghamshire, England. The fake noose and gallows gets pulled out of storage every October for silly photo ops; it’s low to the floor and “doesn’t go tight ’round the neck.” No one had ever managed to hurt themselves on it.