Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@
Page 48
INVENTOR: George William Manby (1765–1854)
STORY: In 1807 Manby was an army captain serving on the east coast of England when he witnessed a ship sinking in a storm just 60 yards offshore. Many people died as Manby and others looked on helplessly. He went on a mission after the event, it seems, because over the next 15 years he developed several lifesaving devices, including a way to shoot a rope to distressed ships via cannonball; a device for catching people jumping from burning buildings; and yet another device for rescuing people who’d fallen through ice. But he invented his most famous lifesaver by far in 1819. It was a capped copper cylinder filled with compressed air and potassium carbonate, a fine white powder known as “pearl-ash.” The pearl-ash could be shot from the “Extincteur,” as it was named, through a narrow hose at a fire, smothering the flames in the process. Manby’s creation: the first portable fire extinguisher.
According to Guinness, each year 200,000 pints of beer are lost to beards and mustaches.
INVENTOR: James Henry Atkinson (1849–1942)
STORY: Atkinson was an ironmonger, meaning he sold goods made from iron, in a shop in Leeds in the north of England. In 1897 he received a patent for what he called the “Little Nipper.” Today it’s known as the common mousetrap.
INVENTOR: Frank Pantridge (1916–2004)
STORY: Pantridge was a cardiologist at a hospital in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1961, when he started working on a problem: Too many heart attack victims arrived at the hospital dead. If they had made it to the hospital sooner, a defibrillator might have saved them. (Defibrillators are the “paddles” that deliver an electric shock to people having ventricular fibrillations, or rapid, uncontrolled heart contractions, the most deadly heart attack symptom. The electricity causes the contractions to cease.) But what if a defibrillator could be brought to the victims? Pantridge received little support from his colleagues, who believed that only doctors like themselves were qualified to operate a defibrillator—not lowly emergency personnel. He kept at it anyway, and finally tested a device of his own design in 1965. It weighed 150 pounds and was powered by car batteries. Pantridge had it installed in an ambulance—and over the next 15 months successfully defibrillated 10 people. It took several years for the device to catch on, but today there are portable defibrillators in ambulances worldwide, not to mention at fire stations, on airplanes, and in many other public places. The number of people saved by Pantridge’s invention may literally number in the millions.
Survey says: 57% of British kids think Germany is the most boring country in Europe.
(M)AD MEN
These quotes about advertising will leave you feeling fresh and clean.
“It is unnecessary to advertise food to hungry people, fuel to cold people, or houses to the homeless.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith
“A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.”
—David Ogilvy
“Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.”
—George Santayana
“Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.”
—George Orwell
“Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.”
—Marshall McLuhan
“When executing advertising, think of yourself as an uninvited guest in the living room of a prospect who has the magical power to make you disappear instantly.”
—John O’Toole
“You can fool all the people all the time if the advertising is right and the budget is big enough.”
—Joseph E. Levine
“Advertising nourishes the consuming power of men. It sets up the goal of a better home, better clothing, better food for himself and his family. It spurs individual exertion and greater production.”
—Winston Churchill
“An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15 percent commission.”
—Fred Allen
“Advertising is selling Twinkies to adults.”
—Donald R. Vance
“Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.”
—Leo Burnett
“Marketing is what you do when your product is no good.”
—Edwin Land
Pop quiz: How many spikes of hair are on Bart Simpson’s head? A. Nine.
OOPS!
More tales of outrageous blunders.
UNFRIENDLY FIRE
In July 2009, a French Foreign Legion commander ordered his troops to engage in target practice on a field near Marseille, in southern France. Bad idea: It was a hot, dry, and windy day, and the guns fired tracer rounds—which burn, so the soldiers can see where their shots land. Each round started a little fire…and all the little fires became one big fire (France’s largest in three years, forcing the evacuation of 300 homes in a nearby neighborhood). The Foreign Legion apologized and explained that there are rules in place not to use incendiary devices on hot days, but for some reason, the commander ignored that rule. (Reportedly, the same thing nearly happened the year before.) Said one homeowner: “I’ve lost my home, my car, and all my possessions. My family is now living in a gym, and it’s all because of these ridiculous soldiers.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT!
In the November 2, 2009, edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Macy’s ran a ¾-page ad in big, bold type: “Congratulations Phillies! Back-to-Back Champs!” Below the banner was a photo of a Phillies World Series Championship T-shirt, “on sale now at Macy’s!” Only problem: When the ad ran, the Phillies and the New York Yankees were still playing the Series—and the Phils were down three games to one. After they lost the next game, ending the Series, the Inquirer ran an apology for the mixup. And even though Macy’s received hundreds of requests for the erroneous shirts (thousands were printed), none ever went on sale. Instead, they were all donated to disaster relief efforts in Indonesia.
IT’S AS GOOD AS GUANO
Several times over the course of five years, a British doctoral student named Daniel Bennett traveled to Indonesia to search for an endangered tree-dwelling lizard called a Butaan. (They’re so hard to find that they were thought to be extinct.) Unable to locate any actual lizards, Bennett collected their droppings from the jungle floor and brought them back to his lab at Leeds University. One day in early 2009, he returned to the school to find that all 70 pounds of the poop was gone—and with it the only dietary record of the species in existence. What happened? A lab technician thought it was garbage and incinerated it. Bennett was livid—he refused the £500 ($756) the university offered him as compensation, saying, “I will see them in court.”
What is the only type of cheese that is made backward? Edam. (It’s “made” backward.)
(NOT) HOME ALONE
A family in Israel was moving to France in 2010. Gathering all five kids and their luggage put them behind schedule, but they made it to the airport in Tel Aviv on time. Although Mom and Dad had to sit in different sections of the plane, they were happy to finally have all of their children on the plane…or so they thought. Back at the airport, a police officer discovered a three-year-old girl crying in a gift shop. Luckily, the toddler was able to say her name. A quick check revealed that the rest of her family was halfway to France. Neither parent knew the other didn’t have their youngest daughter until the pilot told them. The little girl was put on a later flight (with supervision) and her relieved parents retrieved her in Paris.
A CLOSE SHAVE
In March 2010, a Ford Thunderbird rear-ended a pickup truck on Highway 1 in the Florida Keys and then sped off. When Highway Patrol officers pulled over the Ford, Megan Barnes, 37, was sitting in the passenger seat; her ex-husband was in the driver’s seat. But when trooper Gary Dunick noticed that the man’s face had injuries consistent with the passenger-side airbag, he pressed the pair for the truth. Barnes reluctantly admitted that she’d been d
riving when the accident happened, and they’d switched seats afterward because she didn’t have a license. (She’d lost it the day before due to a DUI conviction.) What caused the wreck? “She said she was meeting her boyfriend in Key West and wanted to be ‘ready for the visit,’” said Dunick. So while her ex-husband steered from the passenger seat, Barnes was shaving her bikini line…and never even saw the slow pickup truck ahead of her.
1 x 2 + 3 x 4 x 5 + 6 - 7 - 8 + 9 = 100
THE ANTHRAX
ATTACKS,
PART III
Here’s the next installment of our story on the 2001 anthrax scare. (Part II is on page 267.)
THE ROAD TO TERROR
Anthrax entered the modern era of bioterrorism in 1993, just two years after the Persian Gulf War, via an unexpected—and very scary—source: That year the Japanese religious cult Aum Shinrikyo secretly paid scientists to produce thousands of gallons of anthrax bacteria in liquid aerosol form…and over the course of several months released it from a chimney atop their headquarters in a Tokyo neighborhood. (The plan was to cause a global war and, in the ensuing mayhem, to take over the world.) Fortunately, they didn’t hire very good scientists: The strain of anthrax they were using was very weak, and the aerosol spray they attempted to release turned out to be more of a goop that dribbled down the side of their building. Nobody was killed, though several people were sickened. In any case, it’s the first known time in history that anthrax was a used as a weapon of terror.
The second time came eight years later.
DEADLY STRIKE
On October 2, 2001, Bob Stevens, a 63-year-old photo editor for American Media, a publisher of supermarket tabloids based in Boca Raton, Florida, was hospitalized with a high fever and severe lung infection. Infectious disease specialists in Florida believed they recognized the rod-shaped anthrax bacteria in Stevens’s spinal fluid, and sent samples to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. On October 4, the CDC publicly confirmed that Stevens had inhalation anthrax. A day later, he was dead.
Coming so soon after 9–11, the news set off a media firestorm. Officials tried to allay fears, saying it was a one-off event unrelated to terrorism. Health and Human Services Director Tommy Thompson told reporters that Stevens may have contracted the disease by drinking from a stream on a recent visit to North Carolina. (The problem with this explanation: You cannot contract inhalation anthrax by drinking water.) But all efforts to quell people’s fears were useless.
The Harry Potter and Twilight Saga books are in the prisoners’ library at Guantanamo Bay.
ATTACK!
Two days after Stevens’s death, one of his coworkers, Ernesto Blanco, 73, who had been in the hospital with “pneumonia-like” symptoms for days, was diagnosed with inhalation anthrax. (He was treated and survived.) American Media’s building was immediately quarantined; more than 1,000 employees and regular visitors were tested and given antibiotics. On October 10, a third employee, 36-year-old Stephanie Dailey, tested positive for exposure to the spores, though she did not become ill. The Justice Department announced that a criminal investigation had begun…and that they believed the anthrax spores had been sent to American Media through the mail. The “anthrax attacks” were now a reality.
Investigators had a real challenge on their hands: How many people were sick and, like Blanco, already hospitalized without knowing that they had anthrax? And should they check for possible attacks at other media companies? They got their answers in a hurry: On October 12, Erin O’Connor, Tom Brokaw’s assistant at NBC News in New York, tested positive for cutaneous anthrax, the less dangerous, skin-based form of the disease. (O’Connor had been in the hospital several days earlier with a rash and a fever.) And this time they had evidence.
WAIT A MINUTE, MR. POSTMAN
O’Connor was confirmed to have handled a letter that was addressed to Brokaw, and luckily she still had it. It arrived at NBC on September 19 or 20, and was first opened by an entry-level employee named Casey Chamberlain. When Chamberlain opened it, Brokaw wrote later, “a lot of granular material spilled out of it. She swept it into a wastebasket with a plastic lining and then sent the letter on to my assistant.” Inside was a threatening note:
The world’s oldest wine was discovered in the country of Georgia. Age: 8,000 years old.
09-11-01
THIS IS NEXT
TAKE PENACILIN NOW
DEATH TO AMERICA
DEATH TO ISRAEL
ALLAH IS GREAT
The letter sat on O’Connor’s desk for days—Brokaw actually picked it up and looked at it once (threatening letters were not uncommon, he said). Then, in late September, both O’Connor and Chamberlain fell ill. After Stevens’s death on October 4, Brokaw became worried that the two women had contracted anthrax, but it took until October 12 to find out. When both O’Connor and Chamberlain tested positive for cutaneous anthrax, the letter was also tested—and it was confirmed to contain anthrax spores. Now things began to move very quickly:
October 15: A letter addressed to Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota was opened by an aide…roughly 20 feet from the Senate chamber in the United States Capitol. It contained a fine, powdery substance that tested positive for anthrax.
October 18: An assistant to Dan Rather at CBS News in New York and a postal worker in New Jersey were both diagnosed with cutaneous anthrax.
October 19: An employee at the New York Post and a second New Jersey postal worker were diagnosed with cutaneous anthrax.
October 21: A 63-year-old Washington, D.C., postal worker named Thomas Morris Jr. died. The next day his coworker, Joseph Curseen Jr., 47, also died. Tests confirmed that both had suffered inhalation anthrax.
October 25: A 59-year-old State Department mailroom worker in Sterling, Virginia, was diagnosed with inhalation anthrax.
October 31: Kathy Nguyen, 61, a New York City hospital worker, died of inhalation anthrax.
November 16: Hazardous-materials experts sorting through letters addressed to Capitol Hill found a letter containing anthrax spores intended for Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.
November 21: Ottilie Lundgren, 94, of Oxford, Connecticut, died of inhalation anthrax. Hers was the fifth and final death.
1,100 horses were used in the filming of Gone With the Wind.
November 23: A letter sent to a doctor in Santiago, Chile, from Zurich, Switzerland, was confirmed to contain anthrax spores. It was the last letter known to be linked to the anthrax attacks.
Roundup: In less than two months, 22 people contracted anthrax and five of them died. At least 31 more were exposed to spores but did not get sick, and more than 10,000 people were prescribed Cipro as a cautionary measure. Thirty-five post offices and commercial mail centers, 26 buildings around Capitol Hill, and several other sites, including the American Media building in Florida and the NBC and CBS offices in New York, were known to have been contaminated. Some of the facilities remained closed for years.
THE LETTERS
Investigators believe that a total of seven or eight letters containing anthrax spores were sent on two different dates, though only four of the letters were ever found.
• Two were addressed to NBC and the New York Post, and were postmarked September 18, 2001, in Trenton, New Jersey. Both contained photocopies of the same handwritten threatening note. Neither had return addresses. It is believed that three more letters were sent the same day to ABC and CBS in New York and American Media in Florida, but were later lost.
• The letters to the offices of Senators Daschle and Leahy were postmarked October 9, also in Trenton, New Jersey. Both had handwritten, fictitious return addresses—4th Grade, Greendale School, Franklin Park, NJ 08852—and both contained photocopies of a different message:
09-11-01
YOU CAN NOT STOP US.
WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX.
YOU DIE NOW.
ARE YOU AFRAID?
DEATH TO AMERICA.
DEATH TO ISRAEL.
ALLAH IS GREAT
.
• All the letters were later traced to a spore-contaminated sidewalk postal-service mailbox not far from Princeton University.
Totally Tattoos Barbie came with stick-on tattoos, including a lower-back “tramp stamp.”
THE ANTHRAX SPORES
The anthrax samples mailed on the two different dates were of very different quality. The first batch, which went to the media outlets in Florida and New York, was described as a brown “granular” substance, and was relatively weak, being made up of only about 10% anthrax spores—although it was still obviously very dangerous. The substance sent in October to the two senators was described as a fine white powder…and was nearly 100% pure. (Each of those letters contained trillions of spores, theoretically enough to kill millions of people.)
For investigators, one of the most fortunate pieces of the anthrax puzzle was that you can actually identify anthrax spores the same way you can identify people: via DNA. (Bacteria have DNA, too.) There are only 89 known genetic strains of anthrax bacteria in the world, and markers identifying each strain are on record. That meant investigators could test all the spore samples collected and compare them to the known strains. And from early on, investigators knew exactly what they were working with and exactly where it came from. The spores were cultured from what is called the “Ames strain,” which produces a particularly powerful form of the anthrax toxin. There were just 16 government, commercial, and university labs around the country that had Ames-strain bacteria, and further testing narrowed the spores used in the attacks to a particular batch known as RMR-1029.
That batch existed in only one place in the world: the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick in Maryland—the military’s primary biological weapons lab. The 2001 anthrax attacks, it seemed, came not only from inside the United States, it looked like they had been done by someone working for the government.