Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader
Page 15
LONG SHOT
In 1893 Henry Ziegland of Texas jilted his fiancé, and she killed herself over it. Her brother swore revenge. He took his gun and went after Ziegland, shot him in the face and then turned the gun on himself. But the bullet only grazed Ziegland and then got lodged in a tree. Twenty years later, Ziegland was removing the tree that had the bullet buried in it, using dynamite to make the job easier. The explosion blasted the bullet out of the tree…striking Ziegland in the head and killing him.
The city of Edinburgh, Scotland, is built on top of an extinct volcano.
BANK ON IT
In 1977 Vincent Johnson and Frazier Black broke into the Austin, Texas, home of Mr. and Mrs. David Conner and stole two TVs and a checkbook. A few hours later, the two men showed up at a local bank with a check made out to themselves for $200. When they asked the teller to cash it for them, she asked them to wait a minute, and then called security. Why? The bank teller was Mrs. David Conner.
OTHERWISE ENGAGED
Brenda Rawson became engaged to Christopher Firth in 1961. He gave her a diamond ring, but she lost it while they were on vacation in Lancashire, England. In 1979 she was talking to her husband’s cousin, John. For some reason the conversation turned to metal detectors and John mentioned that 18 years earlier, one of his kids had discovered a diamond ring near Lancashire. It was her ring.
SPARE ME
In 1971 Mrs. Willard Lovell of Berkeley, California, accidentally locked herself out of the house. She had spent 10 minutes trying to find a way in again when the postman arrived with a letter for her from her brother, who’d been staying with her a few weeks earlier. The letter contained a spare key to the house, which he had borrowed and forgotten to return.
EAT YOUR WORDS
• Zucchini comes from an Italian word meaning “sweetest.”
• The Sanskrit word naranga, meaning “fragrant,” gives us our orange.
• Tangerines were named after the city of Tangier, Morocco, which was well known for the fruit.
Lions and tigers can’t purr. Cougars can.
CELEBRITY LAWSUITS
These days, it seems that people will sue each other over practically anything. Here are a few real-life examples of unusual legal battles involving celebrities.
THE PLAINTIFF: Singer/composer Tom Waits
THE DEFENDANT: Frito-Lay
THE LAWSUIT: In 1988 Frito-Lay ran radio commercials featuring a singer with a raspy, gravelly voice that sounded amazingly like Waits. He had already been approached to do commercials by the same ad agency…and refused. So they used an impersonator. Waits sued for “voice misappropriation,” claiming the idea that he would use his music to sell Doritos sullied his reputation with his fans. THE VERDICT: Waits won. In 1992 he collected $2.4 million, the first-ever punitive award involving a celebrity soundalike.
THE PLAINTIFF: John Hartman, former Doobie Brother
THE DEFENDANT: Petaluma, California, Police Department
THE LAWSUIT: He left the band to join the force, then left the force to rejoin the band. When he wanted to get back on the force in 1994, the former drummer was turned down. So he sued for discrimination, claiming that he should be classified as disabled because he’d done so many drugs in the early 1970s.
THE VERDICT: He lost. The judge ruled that Hartman hadn’t done enough drugs to qualify as disabled.
THE PLAINTIFFS: James and Laurie Ryan
THE DEFENDANTS: MTV, Las Vegas’s Hard Rock Hotel, and actor Ashton Kutcher
THE LAWSUIT: Mr. and Mrs. Ryan walked into their room at the Hard Rock Hotel and discovered a mutilated corpse in the bathroom. Horrified, they tried to flee, but two “security guards” and a “paramedic” forced them back into the room. After some time, Kutcher came in and told them the whole thing was a joke, a prank staged for the MTV series Harassment. The Ryans didn’t think it was funny and sued for $10 million in damages.
THE VERDICT: Pending.
Why is the first vertebra of your neck called the atlas? Because it holds up your head.
THE PLAINTIFF: Hollywood producer Steve Bing
THE DEFENDANT: Movie-studio mogul Kirk Kerkorian
THE LAWSUIT: Kerkorian’s ex-wife, Lisa Bonder, sued for $320,000 a month in child support for their four-year-old daughter. Billionaire Kerkorian claimed he couldn’t possibly be the father—he was sterile. He also said he had proof that the real father was Bonder’s ex-boyfriend, multimillionaire Bing. How did he know? His private detectives had collected DNA evidence—they went through Bing’s garbage and found some used dental floss. Probability that Bing’s the dad: 99.993%. Bing sued for invasion of privacy, asking a staggering $1 billion in damages.
THE VERDICT: They settled quietly and the suit was dropped.
THE PLAINTIFF: Florence Henderson
THE DEFENDANT: Serial Killer Inc.
THE LAWSUIT: Henderson, the actress who played Carol Brady on the TV show The Brady Bunch, sued clothing maker Serial Killer Inc. in 1999 when they put out a T-shirt that showed her picture with the caption “Porn Queen.” The suit called the caption “highly offensive…and false.”
THE VERDICT: Serial Killer pulled all the offending merchandise out of stores the day after the suit was filed. No word on the outcome of the suit.
THE PLAINTIFFS: Anna Kournikova, Judith Soltesz-Benetton
THE DEFENDANT: Penthouse magazine
THE LAWSUIT: Penthouse published photos it claimed were of the famous Russian tennis player bathing topless. Kournikova denied it was her and threatened to sue. But the magazine’s editors said they had studied the photos in “painstaking detail” and refused to back down. It seemed Penthouse might win until Soltesz-Benetton (of the Benetton clothing family) came forward and said she was the woman in the photos…and then filed a $10 million lawsuit.
THE VERDICT: Penthouse settled with Soltesz-Benetton out of court. But that’s not the end: Kournikova’s suing, too. Will that put the struggling magazine out of business for good? Verdict pending.
Remember him? Time magazine’s Man of the Decade for the 1980s was Mikhail Gorbachev.
SMELLS LIKE…MURDER
Premature death seems almost like an occupational hazard among rock stars. But that doesn’t make fans—or conspiracy theorists—any less suspicious, particularly in the case of suicide. And this one seems more suspicious than most.
The Deceased: Kurt Cobain, leader of Seattle grunge band Nirvana. Gained notoriety with the 1991 angst-filled anthem “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
How He Died: On April 8, 1994, an electrician spotted Cobain’s dead body lying on the floor of a greenhouse room above the detached garage at the musician’s Seattle residence. Police determined that Cobain had injected himself with heroin, then stuck a shotgun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. Near the body they found a “suicide note.” According to media reports, Cobain’s wallet, open to his driver’s license, was next to the body, ostensibly to make identification easier after the blast to the head.
To the police (and most of the media), it looked like a clear case of another rock star destroyed by his demons. But did the police overlook evidence that might point to a different conclusion?
SUSPICIOUS FACTS
• At the time Cobain was shot, he had three times the lethal dose of heroin in his blood. According to experts, even an addict like Cobain would be comatose with that level of the drug in his body, incapable of positioning a gun and pulling the trigger. Cobain had two fresh needle marks, one on each arm. Did he inject himself twice? If he was intent on committing suicide, why didn’t he just let the overdose do its work? Or were the second injection and the shotgun blast the work of someone else?
• There were no legible fingerprints on the shotgun that killed Cobain. (The gun wasn’t even tested for fingerprints until nearly a month after his death.) Fingerprints can be wiped off a gun, but is that what happened here? If so, who wiped the gun clean, and why?
• Only part of the “suicide note” found by Cobain
’s body sounds like he planned to kill himself—the last four lines—and some experts question whether those lines are in his handwriting.
So that’s why we bail water: The handle of a bucket or a kettle is called the bail.
Most of the note is an anguished apology to his fans for his lack of enthusiasm and seems more about his resignation from the music industry than suicide. (Shortly before his death he decided not to headline the Lollapalooza tour.) Only the last four lines are addressed to his wife and daughter. Was suicide an afterthought, or did he actually have no intention of killing himself?
• The driver’s license by the body wasn’t left there by Cobain—the first police officer on the scene found Cobain’s wallet nearby and displayed the license by the body for photographs.
• Someone attempted to use Cobain’s credit card until just hours before the body was discovered, even though, according to the coroner’s report, Cobain had died four days earlier. Cobain himself had last used the card to buy a plane ticket from Los Angeles to Seattle on April 1. The card was not found in his wallet.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?
If suicide seems unlikely, accidental death looks next to impossible. How could Cobain, a hardened addict, so seriously misjudge his heroin dose? After such a dose, could he have accidentally positioned the shotgun on his chest and pulled the trigger? And if suicide and accident are ruled out, that leaves only…murder. But who would have wanted to kill Cobain and make it appear a suicide?
THE LOVE CONNECTION
Cobain’s wife, rock star Courtney Love, was in the L.A. area at the time Cobain’s body was discovered. But according to Tom Grant, an L.A. private investigator, Love may have been involved in a conspiracy to kill her husband, possibly with the aid of Michael Dewitt, the male nanny who lived at the Cobain residence. Possible motives according to Grant:
Cobain may have told Love he was leaving her; if the pair divorced, Love would get half of Cobain’s estate. With a suicide she would get it all.
Cobain’s record sales would increase after a suicide, giving Love even more money.
Her own career would benefit. (Love’s band, Hole, headlined the Lollapalooza tour in place of Cobain and Nirvana.)
Gossip: Why did young Courtney Love do time in juvenile hall? For shoplifting a Kiss T-shirt.
IS THIS LOVE?
Grant has a unique perspective—Love hired him to find Cobain after Cobain escaped from a drug rehab center just a few days before he died. Grant continued his investigation after the body was found and was disturbed by the inconsistencies and contradictions in Love’s behavior:
Love phoned in a missing persons report on April 4, the day Cobain died, according to the coroner’s report. Claiming she was Cobain’s mother, Love told Seattle police he had bought a shotgun and was suicidal. But a receipt found on Cobain’s body showed that his best friend Dylan Carlson bought the gun for him almost a week earlier, before Cobain entered rehab. According to Carlson, Cobain wanted the gun for protection, not suicide. By phoning in the report, was Love trying to plant the idea that Cobain was suicidal?
Love directed Grant to look for Cobain in a number of Seattle hotels and to check out his drug dealers. Even though Dewitt, the nanny, had told Love he’d talked with Cobain at their residence on April 2, Love did not tell Grant he’d been seen there. Was Love trying to keep Grant from finding Cobain too soon?
When Grant visited the Cobain residence with Carlson the day before Cobain’s body was found, there was evidence that Dewitt had been there recently. (Neither Grant nor Carlson looked in the greenhouse.) Later that day Dewitt told friends he was leaving for Los Angeles. Grant says he had the feeling Dewitt was avoiding him.
The electrician who found Cobain’s body was hired by Love to check the security system at the residence and, according to Rosemary Carroll, Love’s entertainment lawyer, she specifically told him to check the greenhouse. Was she setting him up to find the body?
FADE AWAY
In the note found beside Kurt Cobain’s body, his last words, before the disputed last four lines, were “…it’s better to burn out than to fade away.” Did he think shooting himself was the only way out of his apathetic malaise, or did he simply plan to leave the music scene near the peak of his popularity to avoid becoming just another mass-marketed rock star, ultimately drifting into irrelevance? The police investigation is closed…so we’ll probably never know.
Study: Surgeons who listen to music during operations perform better than those who don’t.
DUMB CROOKS
Here’s proof that crime doesn’t pay.
PSSST!
“In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Timothy E. Beach, 23, was arrested for allegedly robbing a Taco Bell restaurant that he used to manage. According to police, Beach could not resist identifying himself to a former co-worker during the heist, and briefly lifted his ski mask to say, ‘It’s me, Tim.’”
—Universal Press Syndicate
NAKED NIMROD
“Barry Darrell Freeman, 29, was convicted of attempted rape last year near Philadelphia. According to testimony, the victim asked Freeman to take off his own clothes and then taunted him until he did. With his clothes off, the woman saw that he wasn’t carrying a weapon and ran away, eventually outrunning him to safety. During the chase, according to the victim, she heard Freeman muttering something about not being able to trust a woman.”
—News of the Weird
WHAT’S HIS IQ?
“When a Des Moines, Iowa, convenience store clerk tried to tell police about a man who had just robbed his store, he got some unexpected help. ‘He’s about 5'10",’ Harpal Singh told police over the phone. Then the suspect, who had inexplicably returned to the store, corrected him. ‘I’m 6'2",’ the man said.
‘About 6'2",’ Mr. Singh told the police, ‘and about 38 years old.’
‘I’m 34,’ the man said, correcting Mr. Singh again. Moments later, a sheriff’s deputy arrived and arrested Steven Hebron, 34, who was charged with robbery.”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
NAUGHTY NANNY
“Twenty-five-year-old nanny Ildiko Varga, on the run and wanted for trashing an employer’s home and mistreating a toddler in a New York City suburb, was finally caught when she stopped a police officer on the street to show him the article the New York Post had written about the crime and to ask him if he thought she had a good case for a slander lawsuit.”
Only one state—California—is allowed by federal law to set its own air pollution regulations.
—Newsday
TAKE ME WITH YOU
“An Elgin, Illinois, man, wanted on an outstanding warrant, went down to his local police department to take part in the Ride Along program, which allows citizens to accompany police officers during patrols and see, among other things, criminals getting arrested, which he was.”
—“The Edge,” The Oregonian
CHECK IT OUT
“Gary Harvey has been jailed for trying to pay his back taxes with a phoney $1 million-dollar check…and then demanding a refund. Judge Ann Aiken gave Harvey ten months behind bars.”
—USA Today
PLUMB STUPID
“Advertising doesn’t always pay. Robert Peter Nelson III, a Washington County plumber, was arrested early Sunday and charged with robbery. Police said that Nelson had held up a Shop’n’Go at 2:30 am and a Uni-Mart at about 4:30 am. As he was driving away from a third store just minutes later, the clerk got a look at the van. Emblazoned on the side was a phone number and the name ‘Nelson Plumbing and Heating.’ Said Police Superintendent James Morton, ‘He made it pretty easy to solve.’”
—Pittsburgh Tribune Review
OLD DOG, NEW TRICKS
“Thieves in Essex, England, tried to snort a bag of powder they found in Dee Blythe’s living room—not realizing it was the ashes of her dead dog. As they made off with her TV, her VCR, and her stereo, they must have thought they’d hit the jackpot when they saw the powder marked ‘Charlie’—st
reet slang for cocaine—in a vase on the mantlepiece. ‘It was horrible knowing they were in my house,’ said Ms. Blythe, ‘but the idea of them trying to get high on a dead dog’s ashes certainly made me feel a bit better.’”
—The Sun
No wonder they’re f-a-a-a-t: Pound for pound, sheep out-eat cows by seven to one.
DEATH…IT’S A LIVING
In Uncle John’s Giant Bathroom Reader, we told the story of how Elvis Presley’s estate, which nearly went bankrupt after he died, went on to make more money than the King ever did when he was alive. It turns out that Elvis isn’t the only one who got rich too late…
PICTURE PERFECT
Not long after Mark Roesler graduated from law school in 1981, he was hired by the publisher of the Saturday Evening Post to protect the artwork of the late Norman Rockwell, who had painted more than 300 covers for the magazine.