SOLD: $65,000
ITEM: Grilled cheese sandwich.
STORY: This sandwich was saved in a refrigerator for ten years because it appeared to bear the image of the Virgin Mary.
SOLD: $28,000
ITEM: Leftover french toast
STORY: It’s Justin Timberlake’s partially eaten french toast (with extra syrup) plus the fork and plate he used when he was appearing on the Z100 morning radio show.
SOLD: $3,154
ITEM: “Stuff Found in Couch”
STORY: Found while looking for TV remote: three pieces of Big Red chewing gum, a screw, 80¢, two rubber bands, a peppermint candy, a paper clip, a red cap from a Bic pen, a wrapper from a Starburst candy, a partial box of matches, the edge of a piece of paper from a spiral bound notebook, a few shards from a pecan shell, and a third of a pretzel.
SOLD: $3.06 (plus $3.20 shipping)
ITEM: A piece of Nutri-Grain cereal with the image of E.T.
STORY: The E.T. grain was rescued from a bowl of cereal seconds before the milk was poured on it.
SOLD: $1,035
A-TISKET, A-TASKET
Some strange and scary caskets!
CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? Want to talk to a deceased loved one but feel silly muttering at a mound of dirt? Now you can call directly into their casket with the new Telephonic Angel. The system has a loudspeaker that was designed by Juergen Broether as a way to talk to his mother who died in 1998.
PROFESSIONAL BOXERS. In Ghana, clients of Isaac Sowah and other fantasy coffin makers like to go out in style. Some choose a coffin that reflects their line of business: a shoemaker may want to be buried in a large shoe or a fisherman in a big fish. Others choose elephants, eagles, airplanes, or even mobile phones. Sowah says cars are very popular, especially Mercedes and Cadillacs.
DUMB CROOKS
These guys are one taco short of a “combo plate.”
IT’S IN THE BAG...OR NOT
In Portland, Oregon, a man attempted to rob a bank by slipping a note to the teller. The note read: “This is a holdup, and I’ve got a gun. Put all the money in a paper bag.” The teller refused to give him the money and wrote this note back to the man: “I don’t have a paper bag.”
GET A GRIP
If you’re going to steal groceries there’s one thing you should remember: don’t stuff a lobster in your underwear. That’s what Winston Treadway did, and was he sorry! He had already crammed a number of food items in his clothes and was sneaking toward the exit when a giant claw clamped down on his private parts. His cries of pain attracted the grocery clerks, who immediately called the police. The police arrested Winston, who was still in the lobster’s grip. They finally had to use a set of pliers to pry open the angry lobster’s claw.
RING-A-DING-DING
When a guy in Michigan tried to rob a Burger King, the clerk at the counter told him he couldn’t open the cash register without a food order. So the would-be robber ordered onion rings. When the clerk told him that it was still breakfast time and onion rings were not yet available, the guy gave up and went home.
PICK ME!
When Los Angeles detectives asked each man in a police lineup to repeat the words, “Give me all your money or I’ll shoot,” the real robber shouted, “That’s not what I said!” He was promptly thrown in jail.
FILL 'ER UP
When two gas station attendants in Iona, Michigan, refused to give a drunken robber any money, the drunk threatened to call the cops. They still refused, so the tipsy thief called the police, who came…and arrested him.
SIGN IN PLEASE
In 1987 five teenagers were arrested for spray painting graffiti all over the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. How did the police know who did it? The culprits spray painted their names on the monument.
ALPHABET SOUP
Ready for some wordplay? Letter rip!
• If the English alphabet was lined up in the order of most commonly used letters to the least used, it would look like this: E T A I S O N H R D L U C M F W Y P G V B K J Q X Z
• The first word spoken on the moon was “Okay.”
• No words rhyme with orange, purple, or month.
• Taphephobia is the fear of being buried alive.
• Q is the only letter in the alphabet that doesn’t appear in any of the names of the 50 United States.
• The most common name in the world: Muhammad.
• Smokey the Bear’s original name was “Hot Foot Teddy.”
• Set has more definitions than any other word.
• Compulsive nose picking is called rhinotillexomania.
• Pants was considered a dirty word in England in the 1880s.
• The world’s longest place name is in New Zealand. Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu is Maori and means, “The brow of the hill where Tamatea—the man with the big knees who slid down, climbed up, and swallowed mountains, traveled the land and is known as the Land Eater—played his nose flute to his loved one.”
WEIRD WORLD OF SPORTS
Beyond baseball, basketball, and football.
EXTREME CROQUET
It’s more than just using mallets to hit balls through wickets—extreme croquet involves trees, cliffs, water hazards, mud, vines, and great distances. Started in the 1920s, a group of Swedish students perfected it in 1975. Now it has mallets that look more like sledgehammers, two-story-tall wickets, and balls that are able to withstand a good strong thwack in the deep, dark woods. (Cheating is encouraged.)
SHIN KICKING
Also known as “purring” in Wales, here’s how it’s played: Two men stand face to face with their hands on each other’s shoulders. They wear reinforced shoes. At the signal, they start kicking each other’s shins until one loses his grip on his opponent. (This sport has failed to catch on in other nations.)
TOE WRESTLING
The World Championships are held each year in a pub in Wetton, England. The contestants sit on the floor with their right foot down and left foot in the air. They lock toes and attempt to press their opponent’s foot to the floor. (If a player is in too much pain, he is allowed to stop the proceedings by yelling “Toe much!”)
WIFE CARRYING
It’s the extreme sport of choice in Finland. A man carries his wife over a 780-foot course, through water, sand, and grass and over fences. Dropping your wife results in a 15-second penalty. The prize? The wife’s weight in lemonade.
AMAZING COINCIDENCES
Strange things are happening!
LUCK OF THE IRISH. For years, Mrs. Coyle of Glasgow, Scotland, carried a lucky sixpence with her initials on it. The day before she went to Ireland she accidentally spent it. She was heartbroken…until two days later when, while shopping in a small Irish village, the coin with her initials was given back to her in change.
LOTS OF STOTTS. In 1985 John Stott crashed his car. The accident was witnessed by Bernard Stott. The investigator on the scene was Tina Stott. All three Stotts went to the police station where they met desk sergeant Walter Stott. None of the Stotts were related.
BETTER LATE THAN DEAD. On March 1, 1950, a church choir in Beatrice, Nebraska, cheated death by an amazing stroke of luck. The 15 singers met at the same time every week for practice—7:15 p.m.—but that night everyone was late. One had car trouble, another wanted to hear the end of a radio show, another had to finish some chores at home. That’s why no one was inside the church when a gas leak caused an explosion at 7:25.
HAIL TO THE CHIEFS. Three of the first five presidents of the United States—John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe—all died on the same day of the year: July 4th.
THE TRAVELING PANTS
The gift that kept on giving.
Larry Kunkel didn’t like the pants his mother gave him for Christmas in 1964. So the next Christmas, Kunkel wrapped them and gave them to his brother-in-law, Roy Collette. But Collette didn’t want them either. So he gave the pants back to Kunkel the follow
ing year. The men continued this friendly back and forth gift exchange for the next 10 years…and then the rules changed.
In 1974 Collette stuffed the pants into a three-foot-long, one-inch pipe, and gave the pipe to Kunkel, who accepted the challenge. The two men traded the pants back and forth for another 15 years, each time finding more clever ways to deliver them. They were delivered in a four-ton concrete Rubik’s Cube, locked inside a 600-pound safe, cemented into a monster tire, and put in the backseat of a car that was then crushed into a three-foot cube.
There was only one rule to Collette and Kunkel’s gift exchange: if the pants were damaged, the game would stop. In 1989 the pants caught fire and burned when Collette tried to encase them in 10,000 pounds of glass. That year Kunkel received a brass urn filled with ashes and a note.
Sorry, Old Man, here lies the pants...
An attempt to cast the pants in glass
Brought about their demise at last.
The urn now graces Larry Kunkel’s fireplace mantel.
DUMB JOCKS
“Sure I’ve got one. It’s a perfect 20–20.”
—Duane Thomas, Dallas Cowboys running back, on his IQ
“He’s a guy who gets up at six o’clock in the morning regardless of what time it is.”
—Lou Duva, boxing trainer, on heavyweight Andrew Golota
“Better make it six—I can’t eat eight.”
—Dan Osinski, pitcher, when asked if he wanted his pizza cut into six or eight slices
“The doctors X-rayed my head and found nothing.”
—Dizzy Dean, Hall of Fame pitcher, after getting beaned
“My grandmother told me it was good for colds.”
—Kevin Mitchell, outfielder, on why he eats Vicks VapoRub
“Are you any relation to your brother Marv?”
—Leon Wood, basketball player, to announcer Steve Albert
“Left hand, right hand, it doesn’t matter. I’m amphibious.”
—Charles Shackleford, North Carolina State basketball player
POTTY MOUTH
The city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands has toilets that actually talk.
Artist Leonard van Munster has created a toilet that gives advice, warns of germs, and makes fun of you for not washing your hands. It’s been installed in the Café de Balie bathroom…and anyone who makes a pit stop there will get an earful. The toilet, which is wired with sensors connected to a computer, senses what’s happening in the room and responds accordingly. One reporter heard a female voice tell him, “You might consider sitting down next time.” The next person was given this warning: “The last visitor did not take heed of basic rules of hygiene.” Those who think they can sneak off to the bathroom for a cigarette get a big surprise when the toilet suddenly starts coughing and warns them of the hazards of smoking.
EXTREME IRONING
A strange new sport is born.
One sunny afternoon in 1997 Englishman Phil Shaw looked at his pile of wrinkled clothes and wondered how could he stay inside ironing on such a beautiful day. That’s when he decided to combine his least favorite chore with his favorite pastime, rock climbing.
Not long after his first ironing adventure, Phil, known in extreme ironing circles as “Steam,” convinced his roommate, “Spray,” to join him. While the two ironers practiced their sport, they refined the rules of competition and recruited new athletes for ironing while rock climbing, sailing, and even scuba diving. And it took off: In 2002, 80 different teams from 10 different countries competed in the Extreme Ironing World Championship.
UGLY IS BEAUTIFUL
Gurning: the art of making ugly faces.
Every year since 1267, the town of Egremont, England, has hosted the World Gurning Championship. Men, women, and children cross their eyes, blow out their cheeks, suck in their noses, or twist their mouths to make the grossest face possible. Ugly is beautiful at the World Gurning Championship. But gurning’s not about coming into the contest ugly. Being naturally ugly won’t make a competitor an automatic winner. Champion gurners know how to transform their faces into grotesque masks without the help of their hands or artificial aids. (Hint: It helps to be toothless.)
PACKRATS
Who are the most infamous hoarders in history?
NORMAL BEGINNINGS Homer and Langley Collyer were born into a wealthy New York family in the 1880s. Their father was a well-known doctor and their mother an opera singer. Both boys were raised to be gentlemen and scholars. Homer became an engineer and musician, while Langley was a lawyer. They lived and prospered together in a luxurious three-story mansion in Harlem. And then something snapped.
By 1910 Harlem was becoming a rough, crime-ridden neighborhood. And the worse it got, the more the Collyer brothers retreated into their home. They boarded up the windows, booby-trapped the doors, and shut off their utilities. Then they stopped going out in the daytime and started wandering the neighborhood after midnight. They dug through trash cans for food, gathered water from a pipe four blocks from their home, and began collecting strange stuff—car parts, sewing machines, mannequins, rusted bicycles, broken baby carriages, and junk for their boobytraps. (Langley built a system of booby traps that would dump mountains of trash on top of any intruder.)
HERMIT HIDEOUT
For 33 years, the hermits of Harlem lived behind closed doors, never letting anyone into their lives. Even when Homer became blind and paralyzed from a stroke, they stayed hidden inside their fortress. Langley, convinced Homer’s sight would return if he just ate enough oranges, began stockpiling newspapers—thousands and thousands of them—for Homer to read when he regained his sight.
OPEN SESAME
On March 21, 1947, the police received a call that there was a dead man in the Collyer home. It took them more than 24 hours to dig through the trash to get in—every door and window they pried open was fortified by mountains of magazines, broken furniture, suitcases, chandeliers, and trash. They finally found Homer, dead in his chair (he had died of starvation). But where was Langley?
The search began. Every room in the house was crammed floor to ceiling with an outrageous collection of rubbish that included an X-ray machine, dressmakers’ dummies, medical specimens in jars, a horse buggy, two pipe organs, a cache of weapons, and 14 grand pianos. Tunnels and crawlspaces were carved into the mountains of junk. Finally, after 18 days of searching, the police found Langley, only a few feet from his brother, buried under a ton of trash—a victim of one of his booby traps. He had died trying to deliver his brother’s dinner.
THE STUFF
In the end, 136 tons of trash were hauled away. The Collyer mansion was torn down and turned into a parking lot, but the Collyer legend lives on. Even today, New York City firefighters who get an emergency call to a junk-jammed apartment say, “We got another Collyer.”
FASHION POLICE
You can’t wear that! It’s too weird!
CRIME: In 1750 Jonas Hanway was one of the first men to carry an umbrella in London. Before that time only women carried them.
PUNISHMENT: People on the streets jeered at him.
CRIME: John Hetherington wore the world’s very first top hat (also on the streets of London) in the 1800s.
PUNISHMENT: He was arrested for “frightening the public” and fined £50 (today’s equivalent: $2,500).
CRIME: In 1907 Australian swimming star Annette Kellerman wore a one-piece bathing suit that revealed her knees and exposed her elbows.
PUNISHMENT: She was arrested for indecent exposure.
THE ELEPHANT MAN
He’s been called the saddest man who ever lived. A hundred years after his death, his memory lives on.
Joseph Merrick was born in Leicester, England, in August 1862. At two, the tumors that would disfigure him began to grow. A hunk of flesh that hung from his forehead resembled an elephant’s trunk, which gave him his nickname—the Elephant Man. He had a deformed nose and a hand that looked like a fin, and his body was hung with sacs of wrinkled skin. People
called him a monster, but Merrick was an intelligent, gentle person who loved to read and write poetry.
When a popular surgeon named Frederick Treves gave him a home at Whitechapel Hospital in London, Merrick became famous. The toast of London society came to visit him, marveling at the beautiful soul that lived beneath the hideous face. The Elephant Man, whose spine was so twisted he could barely walk, died in his sleep in 1890. He was 27 years old.
SCARY JOKES
These jokes are monstrous!
Q: What do you call a haunted chicken?
A: A poultry-geist
Q: What’s a ghost’s favorite road?
A: A dead end
Q: Why do vampires brush their teeth?
A: To get rid of bat breath
Q: What do you call a ghost’s mom and dad?
A: Transparents
Q: Who should you call when a pumpkin dies?
A: The next of pump–kin
Q: Where do ghosts play tennis?
A: On a tennis corpse
Q: What would you call the ghost of a door-to-door salesman?
Uncle John's Creature Feature Bathroom Reader For Kids Only! Page 17