What happened to the rest of Cromwell’s body? It’s either still in the pit where it was dumped in 1661, or was retrieved by Cromwell’s daughter Mary and interred in a family crypt. No one knows for sure except, perhaps, the family: For more than 300 years, Cromwell’s descendants have refused all requests to open the crypt to find out if the headless body is in there.
SIMON DE MONTFORT (1208–65)
Claim to Fame: An English nobleman who in A.D. 1264 led a rebellion against his brother-in-law, King Henry III, and then called the first elected parliament in English history. Because of this he’s known as “the father of the (British) House of Commons.” Unlike Oliver Cromwell, de Montfort did not execute the King or his son, Prince Edward, after capturing them in the battle of Lewes in 1264. He lived to regret it the following year, when Edward escaped from imprisonment, raised an army, and slew de Montfort and his son Henry (named after the King) in the battle of Evesham on August 4, 1265.
Human tears have three layers: an oily layer, a liquid layer, and a mucus layer.
After the Funeral: The dead body of Montfort was decapitated, emasculated (that’s the polite way of putting it), and otherwise cut into pieces, with the noblemen who defeated him taking the choicest parts home as souvenirs. (The first Baron Wigmore, Roger de Mortimer, got the head; he gave it to his wife, Baroness Maud, as a gift.) Afterward the parts that nobody wanted were buried beneath the altar of nearby Evesham Abbey, which soon became a popular pilgrimage site. When King Henry learned of this, he ordered de Montfort removed from the abbey and buried under a tree, the precise location of which has long been forgotten. Even the abbey is gone; it was destroyed during the reign of King Henry VIII (1491–1547). Today all that remains is a memorial stone where the altar once stood.
BENNY HILL (1924–92)
Claim to Fame: Bawdy British comedian and host of The Benny Hill Show, which aired from 1951 to 1989 in 140 countries around the world.
After the Funeral: Despite having a fortune estimated at $15 million, Hill was famously frugal. He lived simply, residing in a rented flat within walking distance of the TV studio where he taped his show. He never married and never even owned a car. So when he was found dead of a heart attack in his flat in April 1992, people couldn’t help but wonder whatever happened to all that money.
Hill kept his millions in the bank, and when he died it all passed to his closest relatives. But that didn’t stop rumors from spreading that Hill was buried with a large amount of gold jewelry, and one night in October 1992, thieves tried to dig up his body, apparently to steal the rumored jewelry. The thieves managed to dig all the way down to Hill’s coffin, but were unable to get it open before daybreak, when they had to flee. A passerby discovered the desecrated grave soon after sunup, and within hours cemetery workers filled in the hole and covered the grave with a half-ton slab of concrete. Hill has rested undisturbed ever since.
Japan’s Hanshin Expressway passes through the 5th, 6th, and 7th floors of an office building.
BEFORE YOU GO
Overcome with wanderlust? Enjoy these random facts about travel.
• World’s two busiest international airports: Atlanta, with 36 million passengers per year, and Beijing, with 31 million.
• Country most visited by vacationers: France, with 77 million visitors annually.
• Since 2007, the U.S. has issued e-passports. They’re like regular passports but with a computer chip that enables face recognition, fingerprints, and iris scans at international borders. (Can you get yours without the chip? No.)
• Most common travel injury: a stubbed or broken toe incurred from walking barefoot in a poorly lit hotel room.
• Weird hotel: the eight-room Salt Palace in Bolivia, which sits atop a 12,500-foot high salt flat. The building, tables, chairs, and beds are all carved out of salt. Guests are warned not to lick the walls. (But they are encouraged to sample the barbecued llama meat.)
• Average weight gain on a week-long cruise: 8 pounds.
• Before flying, avoid onions, cauliflower, cabbage, baked beans, and other foods that cause bloating. At cruising altitude the air in your digestive tract expands by up to 30 percent, which may cause you (and your neighbors) distress.
• World’s most visited tourist attraction: Times Square in New York, with 35 million out-of-towners each year.
• Travel tip: If stranded on a desert island and desperate for water, eat animal eyes (including fish eyes). They’re a good source of pure water.
• A survey by a New York City hotel found that 70 percent of room lockouts and 65 percent of guests found wandering the halls in some state of undress were women. They also used twice as many towels as male guests.
• If you’re traveling to Spain, consider visiting the town of San Pablo de Los Montes, which holds an annual Skirt-lifting Festival in January. For one day only, men can lift women’s skirts without getting arrested (or clobbered).
Most-used mode of vacation transportation in the U.S.: the family car.
FELINE FACTS
I tawt I taw a page of kitty facts. I did! I did taw a page of kitty facts!
• The only cats that hold their tails upright when they walk: domestic cats. All other cat species—lions, tigers, etc.—dangle their tails or hold them parallel to the ground.
• World’s loudest domestic cat: Smokey, a 12-year-old tabby from Northampton, England. In 2011 Smokey’s purr was recorded at 67.7 decibels—about the same volume as an electric shaver.
• Unlike dogs, most cat breeds are roughly the same size and body shape. Reason? They were all developed for the same job: catching rodents.
• In ancient Egypt, it was customary to mourn the death of a household cat by shaving your eyebrows.
• On average, outdoor cats “go” twice as often as indoor cats: They poop twice a day, and pee four times.
• When grooming, most cats clean their mouths and faces first, then the front legs and midsection. They usually clean their hindquarters and tail last. (Wouldn’t you?)
• A cat rubs up against other cats to mingle its smell and reinforce its membership in the “pack.” The lower a cat is in the pecking order, the more it rubs against other cats.
• Cats have scent glands in the pads of their paws that release a marking scent when they knead a blanket, a pillow...or you.
• The word “tabby” comes from the Arabic al-Attabiyya, a section of Baghdad where striped silk fabric was manufactured in the 16th century.
• Active ingredient in many allergy shots: pet dander (dead skin that clings to fur). Where do pharmaceutical companies get the dander? From pet groomers, who sell “leftover” fur for as much as $110 per pound.
• In 2004 a Pennsylvania cat named Colby Nolan was awarded an MBA from Trinity Southern University, an online college. It was part of a sting operation—Colby’s owner, an attorney, enrolled him to expose the “university” as an Internet scam.
In 2004 the FDA approved maggots for use as “medical devices.”
THE TUPPERWARE STORY
Today the word Tupperware is a generic term for any plastic food container with a sealable lid. That’s thanks to two people: Earl Tupper, inventor of the product that bears his name, and Brownie Wise, who has been all but erased from the company’s history.
BLACK GOLD
In the fall of 1945, a plastics manufacturer named Earl Tupper tried to place an order for plastic resin, one of the key ingredients in plastic, with the Bakelite Corporation. But the material was in short supply, and Bakelite couldn’t fill his order. When Tupper asked if they had anything else for him to work with, the company gave him a black, oily lump of polyethylene slag, a rubbery by-product of the petroleum refining process that collected at the bottom of oil barrels. Bakelite, makers of an early plastic by the same name, couldn’t find a use for the waste product, and neither could the chemical giant DuPont. Both companies had plenty of the stuff lying around. They told Tupper he could have as much as he wanted.
Tupper spent months experimenting with different blends of polyethylene—“Poly-T,” as he called it—and molding them at different pressures and temperatures. He eventually came up with a process for forming it into brightly colored cups, bowls, and other household items. A year later he patented the idea that he’s most famous for: the “Tupperware seal,” which provided a spill-proof, airtight seal between Tupperware containers and their lids. (He borrowed the idea from paint-can lids.) Tupper called his first sealable container the “Wonderbowl.”
UNDER COVER
Today plastic containers with airtight lids are so common that it’s easy to forget just how revolutionary Tupperware was when it was introduced in the late 1940s. In those days, if you wanted to preserve food in the refrigerator, you could cover a dish with wax paper or foil. (Plastic wrap was still a few years away.) If you wanted something that you didn’t have to throw away after a few uses, you could cover the dish with a shower cap or a damp cloth. Glass containers were available, but they weren’t cheap. They weren’t airtight, either, and if you dropped them, they shattered into tiny, razor-sharp pieces—not a good thing during the post-war Baby Boom, when lots of households had small children underfoot. None of these options were very satisfactory. It was difficult to keep food fresh for more than a day or two, or to keep everything in the fridge from smelling like everything else in the fridge.
A woman is more likely to be struck by lightning than to give birth to identical triplets.
BLACK SHEEP
And yet for all the advantages that Tupperware had to offer, it just sat on store shelves, even when Tupper promoted the launch with national advertising. Consumers just weren’t interested.
Part of the problem with Tupperware was that a lot of consumers couldn’t figure out how to work the lids. Some people even returned their Tupperware, complaining that the lids didn’t fit. But the real problem with Tupperware was that it was made of plastic. In those very early days of the plastics revolution, the stuff had a bad reputation: Many early plastics were oily; some were flammable. (They were smelly, too. One of the main ingredients in Bakelite was formaldehyde—the main ingredient in embalming fluid.) Some plastics were brittle and prone to chipping and cracking; others peeled, disintegrated, or “melted” and became deformed in hot water.
Tupperware didn’t have any of these problems—it was odorless, non-toxic, lightweight. It was sturdy yet flexible and kept its shape in hot water. And if you dropped it, it bounced without spilling its contents. But consumers didn’t know all that, and they were so turned off by earlier plastics that they didn’t bother to find out.
SILVER LINING
As Earl Tupper pored over the dismal sales figures, he noticed that Tupperware was popular with two types of customers: 1)mental hospitals, which preferred Tupperware cups and dishes to aluminum because they didn’t dent or make noise when patients threw them on the floor; and 2) independent salespeople who sold goods distributed by Stanley Home Products, one of the companies that pioneered the “party plan” sales method.
Out of every 2 to 5 million lobsters, 1 is blue.
Stanley salespeople hawked their wares by recruiting a housewife to host a party for her friends and acquaintances. At the party, the salesperson demonstrated Stanley products—mops, brushes, cleaning products, etc.—in the hopes of selling some to the guests. Quite a few companies still sell goods using the home party system, and if you’ve ever been invited to such a party, you probably know that they aren’t always the most pleasant of experiences. A lot of people attend only out of guilt or a sense of obligation to the host and buy just enough merchandise to avoid embarrassment. The same was true in the late 1940s: People could buy cleaning products anywhere, which made it kind of irritating to have to sit through a Stanley demonstration just because a friend had invited them. Even the Stanley salespeople knew it, and that was why growing numbers of them were adding Tupperware to their Stanley offerings.
LIFE OF THE PARTY
Tupperware was no mop or bottle of dish soap. It was something new, a big improvement over the products that had come before it. Once the salesperson explained its advantages and demonstrated how the lids worked—they had to be “burped” to expel excess air and form a proper seal—people were eager to buy it. They bought a lot of it, too: Tupperware sold so well at home parties that many Stanley salespeople were abandoning the company entirely and selling nothing but Tupperware.
One of the most successful of the ex-Stanley salespeople was a woman named Brownie Wise. By the early 1950s, she was ordering more than $150,000 worth of Tupperware a year for the sizable home party sales force she’d built up, this at a time when Earl Tupper couldn’t sell Tupperware in department stores no matter how hard he tried. In April 1951, he hired Wise and made her a vice president of a brand-new division called Tupperware Home Parties, headquartered in Kissimmee, Florida. (Tupper remained in Leominster, Massachusetts, overseeing the company’s manufacturing and product design.) Brownie’s new job was to build the company’s sales force, just as she’d been so successful building her own.
Tupper also pulled Tupperware from department stores. From then on, if you wanted to buy Tupperware (or any plastic container with an airtight lid, since Tupper controlled the patent), you had to buy it from a “Tupperware lady.”
For Part II of the story, turn to page 232.
Black, green, and oolong teas all come from the same plant.
JUDGES GONE WILD
It’s kind of a given that judges should have good judgment. And most of them do. But as for these folks, well...judge for yourself.
Judge: William F. Singletary, who was elected to the Philadelphia Traffic Court in 2008
Background: While running for the judgeship, Singletary was caught on video promising favorable treatment to campaign contributors at a “Blessing of the Bikes” motorcycle club gathering in a Philadelphia park. “If you all can give me $20—you’re going to need me in traffic court, am I right about that?...Now you all want me to get there. You’re going to need my hook-up, right?” he told the assembled crowd over the PA system. The footage soon found its way to YouTube. (Singletary is also a church deacon and blessed the bikes.)
What Happened: Singletary was charged with four counts of misconduct and found guilty of all four, enough to cost him his judgeship. But the state Court of Judicial Discipline let him off with just a reprimand and probation.
Legal Footnote: Singletary was perhaps the only traffic court judge in the country who was legally barred from driving: In 2007 his license was suspended after he racked up more than $11,000 in unpaid traffic tickets and fines for reckless driving, driving without a license, driving without insurance, and other charges. His license was reinstated in 2011.
Judge: C. Hunter King of the Orleans Parish Civil District Court in New Orleans
Background: Louisiana public officials are prohibited from using on-the-clock government employees as campaign workers. But that didn’t stop King from suspending court for a week in October 2001 and ordering court employees to spend the week selling tickets to his $250-a-plate campaign fundraiser. When questioned under oath, Judge King denied everything...until he learned that his court reporter had recorded him threatening to fire any worker who didn’t sell at least 20 tickets. (King fired the court reporter when she didn’t sell her tickets.)
During the 20th century, more than a third of San Francisco Bay was deliberately filled in.
What Happened: Judge King pled guilty to conspiracy to commit public payroll fraud and received a six-month suspended prison sentence. He was also thrown off the bench and disbarred.
Judge: Elizabeth Halverson, a Clark County, Nevada, District Court judge
Background: Halverson may have set some kind of unprofessional-conduct land-speed record after taking the bench in January 2007. In her first four months on the job, the state’s Judicial Discipline Commission received more than a dozen complaints about her behavior. They alleged that Halverson abused court s
taff with racial and religious slurs, sexually harassed a bailiff and made him feel like a “houseboy” by assigning him menial personal chores, endangered courthouse security by hiring unqualified personnel as bodyguards and admitting them into secure areas of the courthouse, hired a computer technician to hack into courthouse e-mail accounts, made false statements to the media about three other judges she believed were conspiring against her, fell asleep on the bench during two criminal trials (and one civil trial), and ordered a clerk to swear in her husband so that she could question him under oath about whether he’d completed his chores at home. “Do you want to worship me from near or afar?” she reportedly asked one court employee.
What Happened: Halverson was suspended from the bench six months into her judgeship and charged with 14 counts of judicial misconduct. In 2008 she was removed from the bench for life. But by then she’d already lost her reelection campaign.
Judge: Timothy Blakely, a family court judge in Minnesota’s First Judicial District Court
Background: For a number of years Judge Blakely was in the habit of referring people who came before his court to a St. Paul attorney named Christine Stroemer for divorce mediation. There’s nothing particularly unusual about that, except that Stroemer had handled Blakely’s own divorce, and she knocked more than $60,000 off of his $108,000 legal bill after receiving the referrals. Blakely got caught when his ex-wife tipped off the state Board on Judicial Standards.
After Indonesia’s Krakatoa erupted in 1883, human skeletons floated on lava “rafts” all the way to Africa.
What Happened: The Board recommended that Blakely be removed from the bench, but the state Supreme Court let him off with a censure and a six-month suspension without pay in 2009. That made Dakota County prosecutor Larry Clark so angry that he ran against—and defeated—Blakely in 2010, winning 57 percent of the vote. (Blakely says that he didn’t realize at the time that his conduct had created the “appearance” of a conflict of interest.)
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