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THE LOST EXPLORERS:
PERCY FAWCETT
The second in a series on explorers who strode bravely into the face of the unknown—and never came back.
MAD DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN
Percival Harrison Fawcett (1867–1925) was a man who believed in manifest destiny—specifically, his own—and that he was born to make history. Tall and athletic, he possessed a steely will that allowed him to endure hardships that would kill most people. Among his friends were adventure writer H. Rider Haggard (King Solomon’s Mines) and Arthur Conan Doyle, who used Fawcett’s journals as inspiration for The Lost World. Between 1906 and 1924, Fawcett made seven expeditions to the Texas-sized unexplored region of the Amazon Basin known as the Mato Grosso. Most European expeditions into the Amazon were massive affairs—explorers venturing in at the head of small armies of bearers, guards, and heavy equipment. They stuck to navigable rivers, and rarely trekked into the jungle itself. If they encountered natives, it was considered prudent to shoot first and ask questions later. Fawcett rejected this approach. He traveled light, with only a handful of trusted men, on the assumption that natives would be less threatened by a few solitary travelers. Rather than drive the tribespeople off, Fawcett risked his life again and again by approaching them and trying to communicate (a brilliant linguist, Fawcett learned over 60 tribal languages).
THE HUNT FOR “Z”
By the early 1920s, Fawcett had become convinced that an ancient city, which he called “Z,” lay buried in the Brazilian jungle. Locals had told him legends of a vanished civilization, and these reports, combined with information he gleaned from colonial archives in Peru, Bolivia, and Spain, convinced him that the ruins of “Z” were out there somewhere. This notion went completely against accepted scientific belief of the day, which held that the Amazon was too hostile an environment to support any social organization larger than the scattered villages that had already been found. Fawcett’s theory was ridiculed, and soon he was considered more of a crackpot than a scientist. But Fawcett was nothing if not stubborn, and in 1925 he was able to scrape together enough money for another expedition. True to form, he decided to take only two people with him: his son Jack and Jack’s best friend, Raleigh Rimell. Both were in their early 20s, athletic, adventurous, and, most important to Fawcett, trustworthy. They landed in Brazil and made their way by riverboat and mule train to the headwaters of the Upper Xingu River, in present-day Bolivia, which marked the border of the unexplored region of the Amazon. On May 29, 1925, Fawcett telegraphed his wife that they were setting off into the uncharted area and it might be some time before she heard from them again.
Sean Connery turned down the role of Morpheus in The Matrix.
SWALLOWED BY THE JUNGLE
Months, then years, passed, with no word of the expedition. Finally it was assumed that either natives or disease had killed them. Whatever the cause of the trio’s disappearance, it triggered a bizarre obsession to find Fawcett that lasted for decades, often with disastrous consequences. More than 100 explorers died trying to find him. Pieces of Fawcett’s personal effects cropped up from time to time—a nameplate from a carrying case in 1927, an engraved compass in 1934—and every so often someone would claim to have found his bones, only to have the evidence debunked after closer examination. His fate remains a mystery.
VINDICATED
Ironically, Percy Fawcett may not have been as mad as his rivals thought. Recent excavations in the Amazon Basin, led by Michael Heckenberger of the University of Florida, have uncovered tantalizing evidence of massive earthworks believed to be the remnants of a vast irrigation system capable of sustaining a population of 50,000 or more people. Causeways, spanning hundreds of square miles, connect raised mounds containing shards of finely wrought pottery. The site, named Kuhikugu, appears to have been inhabited for 1,000 years and abandoned about 400 years ago. Heckenberger is convinced this is evidence of an advanced Amazonian civilization that rivaled “anything happening in Europe at the time.” Wherever he is, Percy Fawcett must be smiling.
President Lyndon B. Johnson’s favorite soft drink: Fresca.
CYBER COWBOYS
On virtual steeds they ride into the abyss of the information superhighway—some want to lay down the law, and some want to break break it.
BACKGROUND
The term “hacker” dates back to 1960, when students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spent long hours “hacking” away at their keyboards in their Artificial Intelligence class, trying to make the computer do something it hadn’t been programmed to do. Over the years, as hackers discovered they could break into all sorts of “secure” systems, they had a choice to make: Should they hack for the good of others…or for themselves? Like cowboys in Western movies, they had to choose whether they’d wear the black hat or the white hat.
BLACK HATS are the “bad guys” who break into corporate computer systems, stealing credit card numbers, bank accounts, identities, and e-mail addresses. They either use them for their own benefit or to sell or trade to other Black Hat hackers. Because of the criminal nature of their activities, the ethical hackers often call them crackers. Whatever you call them, they’re up to no good.
WHITE HATS are the “good guys” (also known as ethical hackers or penetration testers)—security experts hired to protect companies from the Black Hats. In the era before computers, military intelligence called these experts sneakers and utilized them to test security systems, working in groups called Tiger Teams. The sneakers would break into a defense installation and, in prankster style, leave a cardboard sign with the word “BOMB” printed on it in an office and another with “Your codebooks have been stolen” inside the safe, then sneak away undetected. White Hat Tiger Teams do the same thing in cyberspace, only now their calling cards are virtual. They find a hole in a company’s security system and show the company how to fix it. In the White Hat community there’s an ethical code, inspired by the “net cowboys” of William Gibson’s cyberpunk novels (Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive) and Japan’s Samurai warriors: They are loyal to their employers and sneer at the greed, theft, and vandalism of Black Hats.
Longest-running jingle in advertising history: “It’s Slinky, it’s Slinky…”
BLUE HATS are an offshoot of the White Hats. They’re ethical hackers, but they operate outside of computer security firms and are often contracted to bug-test a system before it launches. The concept was created by Microsoft to find vulnerabilities in Windows.
GRAY HATS follow their own code of ethics. Originally coined in 1998 by a hacker group called LoPht, Gray Hats are a little bit white and a little bit black. They don’t actually steal assets—they find a hole or a bug in a company’s security system (through illegal means), but often report their findings to the company. A recent example of Gray Hat behavior occurred in 2010 when a group known as Goatse Security found a flaw in AT&T’s security system that allowed e-mail addresses of iPad users to be exposed to the public. Goatse informed AT&T of the problem first, and then let the media know about their discovery. Sometimes Gray Hats aren’t so altruistic. They’ll alert a company to the bug in their system and offer to fix it…for a hefty fee. Or a Gray Hat might release the bug he or she’s found to the public, just to embarrass a company. And then there are those Gray Hats who lean toward the Dark Side, offering to sell their knowledge of the bug to Black Hats or White Hats on the “Bug Market,” an online network where computer bugs, vulnerabilities, and personal information are sold and traded.
HAT TRICKS
At the 2010 Black Hat Security Conference, security researcher Barnaby Jack wowed his audience by hacking into two different ATMs right from the stage. He used a remote connection for one and a USB port on the ATM for the other and made them both spit out money like a Las Vegas slot machine. How’d he do it? He wouldn’t go into detail (otherwise we’d all become Black Hats looking for a jackpot), but he made it clear that it wasn’t just ATMs that were vulnerable. Every piece of equipment that uses a s
tandard computer, like the kind inside an ATM, can be easily hacked: cars, medical devices, televisions, you name it. Jack also pointed out that once he hacked a bank ATM, the machine’s data gave him access to anyone who’d ever used it. He found that the stand-alone ATMs at convenience stores were the easiest to hack (something to think about the next time you go to an ATM).
It costs $100 to make a Pulitzer Prize (a gold medal), and $500 to make an Oscar statuette.
EJECTED FROM
THE OLYMPICS
If you’re a fan of the Olympics, you probably know that plenty of athletes have been disqualified for “doping”—using banned performance-enhancing drugs. Here are some of the more unusual reasons athletes have been shown the door.
Athlete: Arash Miresmaeili of Iran, a two-time world judo champion competing in the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, Greece
Reason for Expulsion: Too fat to fight
Details: At the weigh-in for his first-round bout with Ehud Yaks of Israel, Miresmaeili, who was favored to win the gold, was more than 11 pounds over the weight limit. He was disqualified. (Another Israeli, Gal Fridman, went on to win the gold.)
What Happened: Miresmaeili may be the only athlete in Olympic history to deliberately eat his way out of a gold medal. He reportedly went on an eating binge before the event in order to force a disqualification on technical grounds. Real reason for the binge: Iran does not recognize the state of Israel and forbids its athletes from competing against Israelis. Iran’s official news agency quoted Miresmaeili as saying that he refused to fight Yaks “to sympathize with the suffering of the people of Palestine.” But Miresmaeili later disavowed the statement, so his disqualification was treated as a case of an athlete simply being over the weight limit, and he was not punished. (Iran later awarded Miresmaeili $125,000, the amount it pays to gold medal winners.)
Athletes: Ibragim Samadov, a Russian weightlifter competing in the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona, Spain
Reason for Expulsion: Awards-ceremony temper tantrum
Details: Samadov tied the silver-medal winner by lifting the same amount of weight of his closest competitor: 814 pounds. If you think that qualified him to share the silver medal, think again. Because Samadov weighed just one-tenth of a pound more than his opponent, he was considered to have had a strength advantage, and that bumped him down to the bronze for third place. How well would you have handled missing the silver by one-tenth of a pound? Samadov didn’t take it very well, either. At the awards ceremony, he insisted on being handed his medal instead of having it placed around his neck. Then he set the medal on the ground and stomped off in a huff.
2% of Wikipedia’s contributors are responsible for 73% of all edits.
What Happened: Did you know that refusing a medal at the Olympics is for keeps? Samadov didn’t: Though he apologized for his actions, he was stripped of his medal and disqualified. And because the disqualification wasn’t related to his performance in the actual events, the bronze medal wasn’t awarded to the fourth-place finisher. Samadov was later banned from his sport for life.
Athlete: Angel Matos, a Cuban tae kwon do athlete competing in the 2008 summer games in Beijing, China
Reason for Expulsion: Fighting his opponent and the referee
Details: According to the rules of tae kwon do, if you are injured during a match you can take a 60-second break called a kyeshi. Matos took such a break in the second round of his bronze-medal bout with Arman Chilmanov of Kazakhstan…but he went over the 60-second limit and was disqualified. When he realized what had happened, Matos flew into a rage, pushing a judge and then kicking referee Chakir Chelbat in the face. Chelbat needed stitches to close the wound on his lip.
What Happened: One good kick deserves another. Matos was kicked out of the Olympics, and all records of his participation were erased. The World tae kwon do Federation later banned him and his coach from all sanctioned bouts for life.
Athlete: Ben Johnson, a Canadian sprinter competing in the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona, Spain
Reason for Expulsion: Drugs and violence
Details: How many athletes have been thrown out of two different Games? In the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Johnson won the 100-meter sprint competition in world-record time, but three days later he was stripped of his gold medal and his world record after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Four years later in Barcelona, Johnson was back, but not for long: He washed out of the 100-meter race after stumbling out of the starting blocks in his semifinal heat and coming in last. That’s what knocked him out of medal contention, but it isn’t what got him thrown out of the Games. That indignity came when a volunteer at an Olympic Village security checkpoint misread Johnson’s credentials and refused him entry to a “restricted area”—the village restaurant. Johnson started shoving the volunteer and may have even kicked him before police broke up the scuffle.
Doctors don’t know what causes canker sores.
What Happened: Johnson wasn’t arrested, but his Olympic credentials were cancelled and he was thrown out of the Olympic Village. (When he tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs again in 1993, he was banned from competition for life.)
SEVEN DEADLY SPONGEBOBS
According to the show’s creator, Stephen Hillenburg, each of the seven main characters on the children’s cartoon show SpongeBob SquarePants is a personification of one of the seven deadly sins.
• Sloth: Patrick Starfish. He’s so lazy that in one episode he gets an award for “doing nothing the longest.”
• Wrath: Squidward. SpongeBob’s neighbor and co-worker, who hates SpongeBob, is always angry and dissatisfied with life.
• Greed: Mr. Krabs. SpongeBob’s boss at the Krusty Krab restaurant is obsessed with money and is always devising ways to get more.
• Gluttony: Gary. SpongeBob’s pet snail is shown doing little more than eating, or begging for food. At one point, he runs away when SpongeBob forgets to feed him his breakfast just once.
• Pride: Sandy the Squirrel. She constantly talks about how strong she is, and how proud she is to have been born in Texas.
• Envy: Plankton. As the villain, he runs a failed restaurant and is forever trying to steal the secret recipe of the Krusty Krab’s Krabby Patty.
• Lust: SpongeBob. He’s excitable, passionate, and demonstrates what Hillenburg calls “excessive love of others.”
All Africanized “killer” bees in North America are descended from 26 original queens.
AAMAZING AARDVARKS
You’ve got to love the aardvark. It’s the first animal in Webster’s Dictionary, beating “aardwolf” by a nose. And what a nose it is.
• Aardvarks are burrowing mammals native to sub-Saharan Africa. The name means “earth hog” in Afrikaans, but they’re unrelated to pigs.
• Adult aardvarks are about two feet high at the shoulder and six feet in length (including a two-foot-long tail). They can weigh up to 180 pounds, with long, tubular snouts, and long, rabbitlike ears.
• Aardvarks are very good swimmers.
• Their arched backs and powerful tails give them a kangaroo-like appearance. They sometimes even stand up and balance on their tails like kangaroos, but they’re unrelated to kangaroos.
• Aardvarks feed almost exclusively on termites and ants, but they’re unrelated to anteaters—they’re actually more closely related to elephants.
• Aardvarks hunt at night, clawing termite and ant mounds open, then catching the panicked insects with their foot-long, sticky tongues.
• Cucumis humifructus is a type of wild cucumber and is the only fruit eaten by aardvarks. In South Africa they’re called “aardvark pumpkins.”
• Aardvarks have powerful legs with large, spoon-shaped claws. One aardvark can out-dig several men with shovels.
• Aardvarks dig several shallow burrows throughout their home range. Once a year females dig breeding burrows that reach 40 feet in length, with several entrances.
• Several African mammal species,
including porcupines and hyenas, rely on old aardvark burrows for shelter.
• Adults have no front teeth, only molars at the rear of their jaws. The molars have no roots, and grow continuously throughout their lives. Aardvark teeth are considered lucky to some African tribes.
• Some tribes hunt aardvarks for their meat.
• An unusual aardvark habit: They bury their feces like cats.
Biggest NFL player: Aaron Gibson (6'6", 410 lbs). Smallest player: Reggie Smith (5'4", 160 lbs).
DUSTBIN OF (CARTOON) HISTORY
There are so many cartoon characters from TV, movies, comic books, and comic strips that they can’t all stay popular forever. Here are some favorites you may not have thought about in a while.
CHILLY WILLY was a cute little penguin with big cheeks and huge eyes who starred in 50 theatrical cartoons for the Walter Lantz Studio from 1953 to 1972. Real life penguins live at the South Pole, but Willy lives in Fairbanks, Alaska. Real-life penguins are also adapted to the cold, but the plot of Chilly Willy cartoons usually revolved around Willy trying to get warm. (Some of the cartoons: “I’m Cold,” “Operation Cold Feet,” and “Hot and Cold Penguin.”) Lantz Studios closed in 1972, effectively ending the runs of most of its characters, including Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda, and Chilly Willy. The cartoons were licensed out for TV syndication, but most local stations only wanted Woody Woodpecker. Result: Willy was unknown to an entire generation of cartoon-watching kids. Nevertheless, new Chilly Willy cartoons were a part of a Woody Woodpecker revival show that aired Saturday mornings on Fox from 1999 to 2002.
FIEVEL MOUSEKEWITZ debuted in the 1986 hit animated movie An American Tail. Walt Disney Studios held a virtual monopoly on mainstream animated films…until mega-producer/director Steven Spielberg teamed with Universal Pictures to make this one. The plot was decidedly non-Disney, too: Fievel’s family are Russian-Jewish mice who flee their homeland (cats destroy their village) and come to America. Fievel, an adorable toddler mouse in an oversize blue hat, gets lost and has many adventures before the happy ending. It looked like Universal’s mouse might topple the House of Mouse—An American Tail grossed $47 million, more than Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective and a re-release of Lady and the Tramp. Universal immediately commissioned a sequel (Fievel Goes West), but it didn’t come out until 1991. By then, Fievel was no longer a hot commodity—the sequel earned less than half as much as its predecessor, which ended the franchise.