THE SPORTS ILLUSTRATED COVER CURSE
Appearing on the front cover of Sports Illustrated ought to have been a blessing, but for hundreds of sports stars it became a curse.
The list of season-ending injuries, fatal car crashes, family tragedies, divorces, batting slumps, and losing streaks suffered by individuals and teams featured on the cover is long and puzzling.
The curse began back in 1954 when, a week after appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated, Major League Baseball player Eddie Mathews suffered a hand injury that forced him to sit out seven games. It wasn’t long before sporting professionals, sports journalists, and readers were making more connections between incidents of misfortune and appearances on the front cover of the magazine. Other notable cover coincidences include:
• January 31, 1955—In the week her picture appeared on the front cover, skier Jill Kinmont struck a tree during a practice run and was paralyzed from the neck down.
• May 26, 1958—Sport Illustrated’s 1958 Indianapolis 500 preview issue featured Pat O’Connor, who was killed in a fifteen-car pileup during the first lap of the race.
• February 13, 1961—Laurence Owen was billed as “America’s Most Exciting Girl Skater.” Two days after appearing on the cover, Owen and the rest of the United States figure skating team died in a plane crash.
• December 14, 1970—The University of Texas, 10–0 and enjoying a thirty-game winning streak, fumbled nine times in its next game, sustaining a 24–11 loss to Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl.
• September 4, 1989—Major League Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti died of a heart attack the week after he was quoted on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
• June 5, 1995—Three days after his cover appearance, San Francisco Giants third baseman Matt Williams, the National League leader in home runs, fouled a pitch off his right foot, breaking it, sidelining him for nearly three months.
Sports Illustrated conducted its own investigation into the alleged curse and found that in 2,456 editions there had been 913 examples of “jinxes” in the form of a substantial misfortune or decline in performance involving an athlete featured on the cover. That represented a 37.2 percent rate of misfortune for cover stars. The investigation also revealed that the jinx affected some kinds of sportspeople more than others. Golfers, for example, were “jinxed” almost 70 percent of the time. Tennis players suffered misfortune in 50 percent of cases. But boxers seem comparatively immune, suffering bad luck after a mere 16 percent of appearances on the front cover of the magazine.
THE CURSE OF THE BAMBINO
In 1918 the Boston Red Sox became the most successful baseball team of all time when they won their fifth World Series. One of the stars of the team was a young pitcher by the name of George Herman Ruth—also know as Babe Ruth, or The Bambino.
But two years later, on January 3, 1920, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee made what appears to have been a catastrophic mistake. He sold Ruth to the New York Yankees for $125,000 in cash and a $300,000 loan, so he could finance a play called No, No, Nanette.
The Yankees, who had never won a World Championship before acquiring Ruth, went on to win twenty-six, becoming one of the greatest success stories in the history of sport. Meanwhile, the Boston Red Sox appeared in only four World Series after 1918, losing each one in game seven. Many consider Boston’s poor performances after the departure of Babe Ruth to be attributable to “The Curse of the Bambino.”
The story has a happy ending. In 2004, after eighty-six years in the wilderness, the Boston Red Sox finally became World Series Champions again, beating the St. Louis Cardinals. The god of baseball, it seems, had finally lifted the curse.
THE MUMMY’S CURSE
The Fifth Earl of Carnarvon and archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of the boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun on November 26, 1923, after years of searching.
Lord Carnarvon did not have long to enjoy his fame. In fact he didn’t live long enough to even set eyes on the fabulous treasures hidden within the tomb. Just four months after finding the hidden entrance, he died from blood poisoning caused by an infected mosquito bite. He was fifty-three.
It is said that at the time of his death, lights went out all over Cairo. The local power company could not explain it. Some reports also claim that at precisely the same moment, Lord Carnarvon’s dog, back in England, suddenly howled and dropped down dead.
Carnarvon’s death came just a couple of weeks after a public warning by novelist Marie Corelli that there would be dire consequences for anyone who entered the sealed tomb. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes and a believer in the occult, announced that Carnarvon’s death could have been the result of a “Pharaoh’s curse.”
One newspaper even printed a curse supposed to have been written in hieroglyphs at the entrance of the tomb, the translation being:
They who enter this sacred tomb shall swift be visited by wings of death.
A complete fiction as it turned out, though one inscription found within the tomb did say:
It is I who hinder the sand from choking the secret chamber. I am for the protection of the deceased.
However, an imaginative reporter added:
… and I will kill all those who cross this threshold into the sacred precincts of the Royal King who lives forever.
Journalists determined to fuel the story of the Mummy’s Curse reported other deaths attributed to the desecration of the pharaoh’s tomb.
Five months after the death of Lord Carnarvon, his younger brother died suddenly. Another “casualty” was the pet canary of the tomb’s discoverer, Howard Carter. The bird was apparently swallowed by a cobra on the day the tomb was opened. It was pointed out that the cobra was a traditional symbol of the pharaoh’s power.
According to one list, of the twenty-six individuals present at the official opening of the tomb, six had died within a decade. However, many of the key individuals associated with the discovery and work on the tomb lived to a ripe old age.
As discoverer of the tomb, Howard Carter might have been considered a prime target for the curse. He had spent nearly a decade working inside it. But Carter didn’t die until March 1939, just short of his sixty-fifth birthday and nearly seventeen years after first entering the tomb.
Even when some of the treasures of Tutankhamun went on tour overseas in the 1970s, some people still believed the curse might be at work. In September 1979, security guard George LaBrash had a stroke while watching over the mask of Tutankhamun at a San Francisco museum. He sued the city authorities for disability pay, claiming that the stroke was a job-related injury caused by a curse placed on anyone associated with the desecration of the tomb. The judge dismissed the claim.
THE CURSE OF PAPA DOC
Was retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel Robert Debs Heinl the victim of a voodoo curse?
From 1958 to 1963 Heinl served on Haiti as chief of the U.S. naval mission, while his wife, Nancy, studied the voodoo religion. Later, back in the United States, they began writing Written in Blood—The Story of the Haitian People, a history of the island. The book was widely expected to be openly critical of the ruling dynasty of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier. Some time later, after the death of Papa Doc, the Heinls learned from a newspaper published by Haitian exiles that a curse had been placed on the book by Papa Doc’s widow, Simone.
Initial amusement turned to concern when a series of mishaps began to befall the book. First, the manuscript was lost on the way to the publishers. The Heinls prepared another copy and sent it off for binding and stitching, but the machine promptly broke down. A Washington Post reporter sent to interview the authors was struck down with acute appendicitis. Then Colonel Heinl fell through a stage when he was delivering a speech, injuring a leg. While walking near his home he was attacked and severely bitten by a dog.
On May 5, 1979, the Heinls were on holiday on St. Barthelemy Island near Haiti when the colonel dropped dead from a heart attack. His widow Nancy is reported as saying, “There is a
belief that the closer you get to Haiti the more powerful the magic becomes.”
ON THE ROCKS
A very powerful curse seems to hang over the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa.
Visitors to the beautiful island are warned by locals that the removal of volcanic rocks is likely to anger the goddess of the volcano, Pele, who is said to appear to warn of imminent eruptions. But it seems that some people simply won’t be told.
During the summer of 1977 airline vice president Ralph Loffert of Buffalo, New York, his wife, and four children visited the volcano. Ignoring advice, they decided to take home a number of rocks as souvenirs.
Shortly after they returned home, Mauna Loa erupted. Within a few months one of the Loffert boys, Todd, developed appendicitis, had knee surgery, and broke his wrist. Another son, Mark, sprained an ankle and broke his arm; another son, Dan, caught an eye infection and had to wear glasses; and the daughter, Rebecca, lost two front teeth in a fall. In July 1978 the Lofferts sent the stones to a friend in Hawaii who was asked to return them to the volcano. But the disasters continued. Mark hurt his knee, Rebecca broke three more teeth, Dan fractured a bone in his hand and Todd dislocated an elbow and fractured his wrist again. Mark then confessed that he still had three stones. They were returned and the run of bad luck ended.
Mrs. Allison Raymond of Ontario, Canada, and her family also took some stones away from the volcano. She told reporters, “My husband was killed in a head-on car crash, and my mother died of cancer. My younger son was rushed to hospital with a pancreas condition that’s slowly getting worse. Then he broke his leg. My daughter’s marriage nearly broke up and it was only when I posted the rocks back that our luck improved.”
Nixon Morris, a hardwood dealer from El Paso, Texas, was another who, in 1989, ignored warnings and took a Mauna Loa stone home. He promptly fell off his roof, his house was struck by lightning, and his wife fell ill with a mysterious infection that left her knee swollen. Morris then broke a hip and thigh when he fought with a burglar in their house, and his granddaughter fell and broke her arm in two places.
Morris had broken the Mauna Loa rock in two and given half to a friend. He said, “He brought the rock back to me after he wrecked four cars in less than two years and he’d never before had a wreck in his life.”
In March 1981 Morris sent the rocks back to Hawaii.
John Erickson, a naturalist at the Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii, said he receives up to forty packages of rock a day from tourists who have returned home and experienced strange sequences of bad luck.
FRIDAY AFTERNOON CAR
James Dean died in 1955 when his Porsche Spyder sports car ran off the road. The car was taken to a garage, where it fell on a mechanic, breaking his leg. The engine was sold to a doctor who put it in his racing car, crashed, and died. In the same race, a car using the drive shaft from Dean’s car crashed, and that driver was killed, too. When the car’s shell was put on display, the car showroom burned down. It was exhibited again in Sacramento and fell off its stand onto a spectator, breaking his hip. The car was transported to Oregon, where it broke its mountings and smashed a shop window. In 1959 it is said to have broken into nine pieces while sitting on steel supports.
BABY CHAIR
Nine women working at a supermarket in Kent, UK, became pregnant over a ten-month period. They had all worked at checkout number 13.
THE KIMONO THAT BURNED DOWN TOKYO
A kimono successively owned by three teenage girls, each of whom died before she had a chance to wear it, was believed to be so unlucky it was cremated by a Japanese priest in February 1657. But as the garment was being burned a violent wind sprang up, fanning the flames and spreading them beyond control. The ensuing fire destroyed three-quarters of Tokyo, leveling 300 temples, 500 palaces, 9,000 shops, and 61 bridges, and killing 100,000 people.
MARTHA THE BOLT
Being married to Martha Martika had its positive and negative sides. The woman’s first husband, Randolph, was struck down by lightning during a storm. Martha was devastated, but married again—to a young man called Charles Martaux. He, too, was killed by a lightning bolt. Martha fell into deep depression and sought help from a doctor. They fell in love and married. But he completed Martha’s hat trick of electrifying bereavements when he stepped out into a thunderstorm and was struck and killed by lightning.
LIGHTNING STRIKES AGAIN
British cavalry officer Major Summerford was fighting in the fields of Flanders in the last year of the First World War when he was knocked off his horse by a flash of lightning. He was paralyzed from the waist down. He moved to Vancouver in Canada where, six years later, while fishing in a river, lightning struck him again, paralyzing his right side.
Two years later, he was sufficiently recovered to take walks in a local park. One summer’s day in 1930, lightning sought him out again, this time permanently paralyzing him. He died two years later.
Zeus still hadn’t had enough of Major Summerford. Four years later, lightning destroyed his tomb.
LIGHTNING LIKES ME
Kenny MacDonald could be forgiven for believing that lightning has developed a taste for him. During his thirty-four years working as a telephone line repairer, he was struck by lightning no fewer than three times.
“It wasn’t really so surprising,” he admits. “I was working in some pretty remote parts on telephone lines that were sometimes as much as thirty to forty miles long. Lines tended to come down in bad weather, and I would be sent out to repair the damage. People in remote communities rely on their telephones so perhaps I took some risks I shouldn’t have.
“If you’re up a pole at the end of a thirty-mile piece of wire in the middle of a thunderstorm, there is a real chance that lightning is going to find you. It was something of an occupational hazard. I was struck three, maybe four times in all those years, but the electricity passed straight through me and I have lived to tell the tale. If I’d been on the ground I would have been killed, but all I felt was a tickle and my hair stood on end. It leaves a coppery taste in the mouth.”
Kenny thought that when he retired a few years back, his brushes with the brutal electrical force of nature were over. He was wrong.
On one wild and windy day he got up early with his son and set off in his car to go fishing. As they got near to where they planned to fish, the weather deteriorated. The clouds grew thicker, hail began to fall, and a thunderstorm erupted.
“Without warning a huge bolt of lightning struck us,” says Kenny, who knows lightning when he sees it. “It blew a hole in the roof of the car. There was a huge bang, blue flames, and the smell and taste of copper. Our ears were ringing for twenty minutes.
“My son turned to me and said, ‘Dad, was that what I thought it was?’ I said yes and he said, ‘Wow.’”
Kenny says they were saved from injury because the car’s tires prevented the lightning from finding earth. If they’d had a flat tire they would almost certainly have been killed.
But Kenny wasn’t about to let a little thing like a lightning strike get in the way of him and his beloved fishing. They limped on in their damaged car and settled down for a day’s angling. Toward the end of the day Kenny managed to land a six-pound salmon. He caught it with a fly called “Thunder and Lightning.”
Looking back on the events Kenny says he can’t help but feel that lightning is following him around. He considers himself unlucky to have been struck so many times, but lucky to have walked away unscathed.
As for the future, he promises to be more careful around thunderstorms, particularly if he’s fishing. “These new carbon fishing rods make fantastic lightning conductors,” he says. “You can’t be too careful.”
And he has a word of comfort for those people who are frightened by the sound of thunder. “You never hear the lightning bolt that kills you,” he says.
THE SCOURGE OF LEO AND ME
In the late 1970s, actor Michael J. Fox starred in a Canadian sitcom named Leo and Me. In the years that followed,
Fox and three other colleagues from the series were diagnosed with the neurological disorder, early-onset Parkinson’s disease. Is the fact that four people associated with the same show contracted the same relatively rare disease more than just coincidence? If it is then it may be possible to find a cure.
Early-onset Parkinson’s disease has no universally recognized cause. “This is like a detective story,” says Dr. Donald Calne of Vancouver’s University of British Columbia Hospital, who treats Fox’s three former coworkers. “We have to find the culprit. We have to consider a virus or a toxin.”
Although he can’t think of any environmental links, Don S. Williams, a former director on Leo and Me who developed Parkinson’s in 1993, says the study of his case gives him hope. “I try not to get too excited,” he says, “but I want to see if this leads to a cure.”
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HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF
The case of the moped rider killed in a collision with the same taxi that had already knocked down his brother on the same moped exactly a year before shows us that history has a nasty habit of repeating itself.
Why does it seem to be the unpleasant things in life that tend to come around a second time?
MURDER MOST SIMILAR
Two girls of the same age were murdered on the same day of the year, in the same place, 157 years apart. Mary Ashford, twenty, was found dead on May 27, 1817. The strangled body of Barbara Forrest, also twenty was found at the same location on May 27, 1974.
The bodies were found at points four hundred yards apart. Both girls had visited a friend earlier in the evening and they had both changed in order to go on to a dance. Both girls were raped before they were murdered. The deaths had occurred at approximately the same time of day, and in both cases attempts appeared to have been made to hide the bodies.
The men arrested for the murders were both named Thornton—Abraham Thornton and Michael Thornton. Both men denied the charge and both men were acquitted.
Beyond Coincidence Page 16