The Place: On April 15, 1931, Luciano invited Joe the Boss to a meeting at the Nuova Villa Tammaro Restaurant, a cheap “spaghetti house” in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. They ate, played some cards, and then Luciano went to the bathroom. The Hit: According to eyewitnesses, while Luciano was in the bathroom, two unknown men strolled into the restaurant, fired 20 shots at Masseria, and strolled out again. Luciano took over Masseria’s crime family. The Nuova Villa Tammaro’s owner, an Italian immigrant named Gerardo Scarpato, shut down the restaurant and moved back to Italy. Six months later he returned to New York and was murdered. No one was ever convicted.
JOSEPH “CRAZY JOEY” GALLO
Background: After Gallo and his two brothers split off from the Profaci Family in 1950s, they were involved in several high-profile mafia battles in New York City. The wars were put on hold in 1961 when Gallo was convicted of extortion and sent up the river. (In prison, he reportedly amused himself by trying to poison his fellow convicts with strychnine-laced Italian food.) When he got out in 1971, Gallo resumed his war against Joe Colombo, whom he had never forgiven for murdering one of his men. After Colombo was gunned down that June as he was walking to the podium to deliver a speech at the Italian-American Civil Rights League’s Italian Unity Day, the heads of the Five Families surmised that it was Gallo who had ordered the hit, even though they had no proof. They put out a contract on Gallo’s life.
The Place: In the wee hours of the morning of April 7, 1972, Gallo was winding down after celebrating his 43rd birthday at the Copa Cabana (Don Rickles was performing). He and his friends wanted something to eat. They went to Chinatown, but everything was closed, so they went to nearby Little Italy. The only place that was open: Umberto’s Clam House—the newest restaurant in the “old neighborhood,” owned by another mobster, “Matty the Horse” Ianniello.
The Hit: Two (or possibly more) gunmen were waiting at Umberto’s. They opened fire. Gallo was hit five times and still managed to stagger out into the street, where he collapsed and died. No one was ever charged with Crazy Joey’s murder.
LITTLE THINGS MEAN A LOT
“The devil’s in the details,” says an old proverb. It’s true—one seemingly tiny goof can cause major headaches down the road.
ONE INCH
New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority officials were left red-faced in January 2009 when the opening of a new subway station had to be postponed. Reason: The gap between the platform and the train car was four inches wide. Although that distance wouldn’t pose a danger to most abled people, it violates the Americans With Disabilities Act, which specifies that the gap can be no longer than three inches. The goof was blamed on engineers, who failed to take into account the slight curve of the platform. Cost of the extra inch: a two-month delay in opening the station and $200,000 to extend the platform.
A DATA-ENTRY ERROR
In late 2007, two Maryland state assessment workers, both new to the job, were entering data into all of the counties’ proposed budgets for 2008. At one point, one of them accidentally entered the estimated taxable real estate for Montgomery County in 2008, instead of the actual 2007 numbers. That single incorrect number created a domino effect that threw off several other county budget estimates. Once officials realized something was wrong, it took eight months and a small army of number-crunchers to find the error. In all, it threw off budget estimates by $16 billion and cost taxpayers more than $31 million to correct.
A MOIST SENSOR
In February 2008, a ground crew was preparing a B2 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” to send 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 before the $1.4 billion bomber erupted into a huge fireball. (Update: Removing moisture from the sensors pre-takeoff is now an official fix.)
A SOFTWARE GLITCH
In 2001 Marguerite Nunn intended to donate a $130 check to Zoo To You, a nonprofit wildlife education program. But due to what was later deemed a “software error” on her computer, her zip code was entered into the amount box on the check. Result: She donated $93,447. When Nunn, an innkeeper from Paso Robles, California, realized the error two weeks later, she asked for Zoo To You to return her money. But they’d already spent more than half of it (the check had cleared the bank because Nunn and her husband Tom had recently sold some property). The nonprofit paid back $30,000, and then a little more over the next few years, but nothing came after 2006. Seeing no other choice, the Nunns sued. In 2009, eight years after the initial goof, they were awarded a settlement reported as “somewhere in the middle.” When all was said and done, the error cost the couple tens of thousands of dollars.
A KEY AND A PAIR OF BINOCULARS
David Blair, the original second officer of the Titanic, was relieved of duty shortly before the ship set off for New York on April 10, 1912. In Blair’s haste to leave, he forgot to turn over all of his equipment to his replacement. One of the forgotten items was the key to the crow’s nest telephone. Blair had also left the crow’s nest binoculars in his cabin. According to crew survivor testimony, if the lookouts had been given the binoculars, they would have seen the iceberg sooner. And if they’d had access to the phone, they could have alerted the bridge sooner. Either scenario might well have given the Titanic enough time to get out of the way.
DYING WORDS
Help Uncle John save them from the brink of exuviation!
USE IT OR LOSE IT
The English language is like a living organism—always growing in some areas while shrinking in others. Those in charge of tracking this change are called lexicographers. Their mission: To scour new books, articles, and other media to determine which new words are taking hold and which old ones are being used less and less. Then, about every 10 years or so, they update official dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster’s and The Oxford English Dictionary. So, as “rightsize” and “phat” nudge their way into the lexicon (the vocabulary of a language), archaic words like “oppugnant” and “pantdress” find themselves on the chopping block. If you, like us, are sad to see “oppugnant” go, then start working it into your daily conversation, along with the rest of these little-used words…before they’re gone forever.
THE CADUCITY LIST
Caducity: Transitory; the state of being impermanent or perishable
Embrangle: To confuse; make more complicated
Mansuetude: Gentleness of manner
Compossible: Able to exist with another thing; consistent
Agrestic: Rural; rustic
Hither: To this place
Long play: A phonograph record that plays at 33⅓ revolutions per minute
Muliebrity: The condition of being a woman
Retirant: Retiree
Exuviate: To shed; cast off
Impudicity: Immodesty; shamelessness
Olid: Foul-smelling
Abstergent: Cleansing
Frutescent: Resembling or assuming the form of a shrub
Ten-cent store: A shop for low-cost items
Caliginosity: Dim; misty; dark
Fatidical: Prophetic
Snollygoster: A shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician
Skedaddle: To leave a place suddenly
Vaticinate: To prophesize or foretell
Nigh: Nearly; almost
Skirr:
A whirring sound, as of the wings of birds in flight
Mimeograph: A duplicating printer that presses ink through a stencil
Vilipend: To vilify; treat with contempt
Oppugnant: Combative; opposing; antagonistic
Roborant: Tending to fortify
Recrement: Waste material
Vitamin G: It is now known as riboflavin
Malison: A curse
Pantdress: A one-piece ladies’ garment, where the lower part is pants instead of a skirt
Griseous: Having a light grayish color
Apodeictic: Unquestionably true by virtue of demonstration
Periapt: An amulet
Nitid: Bright with a steady but subdued shining
Fubsy: Chubby or squat
Hootenanny: An informal gathering featuring folk singing and often dancing
Zounds: An exclamation of anger or wonder (a contraction of “God’s wounds”)
KID TALK
In 2009 the editors of the Oxford Junior Dictionary decided to remove a few hundred words from their newest edition to make room for new ones. Out: “bishop,” “disciple,” “pew,” “devil,” “cheetah,” “porcupine,” “almond,” and “fern.” In: “blog,” “MP3 player,” “endangered,” “tolerant,” and “negotiate.” Conservation groups and religious advocates, not to mention linguists, were upset by the replacements. Defending the changes, Vineeta Gupta, the head of children’s dictionaries at Oxford University Press, said, “We are limited by how big the dictionary can be. Little hands must be able to handle it.” He also maintained that the kids’ dictionaries must reflect the lexicon of the times. “The decision to remove nature words is due to the reduced presence of nature in children’s lives,” he said. And the religious omissions? “People don’t go to church as often as before.”
BATHROOM NEWS
The latest from the news stream.
SEAT-SEEKING MISSILE
In 2009 a man was hunting for geese outside the Swedish village of Hökerum and took aim at one a few dozen yards away. He shot and missed, but the bullet kept going. And going. And going. It traveled nearly a mile, over a lake, into a cottage, past the three people who lived in the cottage, and into the outhouse, where it struck and destroyed the toilet seat. The angry homeowners called police, who arrested the hunter on charges of “endangering human life.”
DEARLY DE-POTTED
A man was pulling up his pants after using the toilet at a Center-ville, Utah, Carl’s Jr. restaurant when the gun he was carrying fell out of its holster and hit the floor. The gun went off, which instantly shattered the toilet (no one was harmed). Criminal charges weren’t filed, but the Carl’s Jr. staff decided to hold a mock funeral for the toilet, which they named “John.” Bottles of John’s favorite toilet cleanser (Kaboom Bowl Blaster) were given away to mourners. “He was survived by the men’s urinal and wash sink,” restaurant manager Christian Martinez said.
RING AROUND THE DRAIN
In 2009 Allison Berry was flushing the toilet in the Black Bear Diner in Phoenix, Arizona, when her seven-carat $70,000 wedding ring slipped off her finger, fell into the bowl, and went down the drain. The diner called the city, who sent workers to open a sewer line outside the restaurant. They flushed the toilet continuously, hoping the ring would be forced out. It didn’t work, so they called Mr. Rooter, a local plumbing service. Mr. Rooter’s Mike Roberts snaked a miniature video camera with an attached infrared light into the pipe, where he found the ring in the plumbing system just a few feet below the bathroom. After five hours of searching, and then 90 minutes of jackhammering and pipe removal—at a cost of $6,500—Berry was finally reunited with her ring.
TASTELESS TOYS
Some playthings that make us ask, “What were they thinking?”
THE TITANIC SLIDE. Measuring 33’ high and 50’ long, this inflatable slide (available for party rentals) depicts the doomed ship’s aft end sticking up out of the water. Just like the passengers who slid to their deaths, kids can slide into…fun. From the description: “Adding to the realism are the famed triple-screw propellers and rudder. One could almost believe the ship is sinking! Who will survive the slide down?”
DALLAS COWBOYS CHEERLEADER BARBIE. Named “Worst Toy of the Year” in 2009 by the Boston consumer advocacy group Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. Their reason: Even though this Barbie doll was rated for children as young as six years old, “She comes with the shortest of short shorts, stiletto boots, and a revealing halter top.”
GOD*JESUS. A plastic robot from Japan in the 1980s. It had glowing red eyes and held up a big cross. But was it a religious toy? Not exactly—the robot was more of a fortune-teller: It answered yes-or-no questions just like a Magic 8-Ball.
THE SWEENEY TODD RAZOR. “Your friends will think you’re really sharp when you flash this authentic prop replica of the murderous singing barber’s straight razor! Fashioned from real metal, the realistic reproduction is intricately detailed and arrives in a red-velour, drawstring pouch, ready for more musical mayhem in your hands!”
A SCARY THING HAPPENED. This coloring book, designed to help kids deal with disasters, used to be available for download on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Web site but was removed in 2009. Why? Because parents complained about the disturbing drawings—tornadoes ripping houses apart, planes crashing into burning buildings—as well as the morbid instruc-tions‚ such as, “Draw a picture of yourself before the disaster.”
TAP, TAP, TAP!
As a kid, Uncle John spent many a Sunday morning watching old
movies, many of which featured tap dancing. Even then,
he wondered—where’d that dancing come from?
BACKGROUND
Tap dance is one of the true American art forms. It combines elements of the Irish jig and English clog dances with the step dancing and rhythmic drumming of West Africans, brought to the American colonies as slaves. Here are the elements that led to the development of tap dancing as we know it today.
• Drumming. It was actually a form of direct communication (like Morse code), which amounted to secret messages sent among slaves—and a way to subjugate authority. Result: Most plantation owners had banned drumming by the 1750s, forcing the slaves to turn to other forms of percussion, such as beating out rhythms with hands, feet, and even bones. Over generations the “language” of drumming was lost, and the rhythmic beating grew to be more about music and entertainment—both for the slaves and for the plantation owners, who taught the slaves clog dances and jigs to go along with the percussion.
• Buck-and-Wing. The most popular form of entertainment in the U.S. in the 1840s was the minstrel show. White performers in “blackface” makeup sang songs, performed comedy sketches, and spoke in “Negro” dialects, all in a crude parody of black people. Parodying black dance was also included, especially one called “buck-and-wing”—a slow, shuffling dance in which balance is shifted from the heel to the tip of the foot, which is emphatically and loudly tapped on the ground. After the Civil War, as black performers joined minstrel shows, buck-and-wing was developed into a precise, lightning-fast dance, with the best dancers tapping their toes and heels many times a second. Also gaining popularity in minstrel shows: challenge dances, in which two performers tried to outdo each other with faster steps and more-intricate moves.
• Soft Shoe. By the early 1900s, “vaudeville” variety shows were the dominant entertainment across the United States, and dance was part of it. In addition to buck-and-wing, performed in wooden-soled shoes, a slower, smoother style called “soft shoe” developed, performed in shoes with leather soles. Eventually the two styles blended, and to make the tapping sound more prominent, around 1920 dancers started to nail blocks of cheap metal to the heels of their shoes, marking the invention of metal taps and the birth of modern tap dancing. Perhaps the best challenge dancer of all was Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who never lost a face-off on the black vaudeville circuit. (He wouldn’t get to perform before a white audie
nce until he was 50 years old, in the film Blackbirds of 1928.)
• Flash. As jazz music took hold in the 1920s, jazz tap dance grew with it. The footwork was fast and worked with the complex syncopated rhythms of jazz. Broadway shows began to incorporate chorus lines doing complicated tap routines, and a style of acrobatic tap dancing called “flash” became popular. Most notable “flash” dancers: the Nicholas Brothers, who jumped from platforms, leaped into the air, slid down ramps, and just kept tapping.
• Tap in the movies. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, tap reached its widest audience yet. Director Busby Berkeley’s lavish musicals (such as 42nd Street and Footlight Parade) featured hordes of showgirls tap dancing in complicated patterns. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers brought another kind of tap dance to audiences with films like Top Hat, Swing Time, and Shall We Dance. They had glamour, grace, and an elegance that made them the most popular dancing pair in movie history. Secret weapon: a stationary camera filming each dance number in a (usually) single unbroken shot while keeping the dancers in full view in the frame. This made it possible for fans to focus on the perfection of the dancing.
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