Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  “A few minutes later they returned and announced their intention of robbing the bank, but none of the bank employees believed them. When they demanded £5,000, the head cashier laughed at them, convinced that it was a practical joke.

  “Disheartened, the gang leader reduced his demand first to £500, then to £50 and ultimately to 50 pence. By this stage the cashier could barely control her laughter.

  “Then one of the men jumped over the counter and fell awkwardly on the floor, clutching at his ankle. The other two attempted a getaway, but got trapped in the revolving doors for a second time, desperately pushing the wrong way.”

  —The Incomplete Book of Failures

  SMILE

  “A Mexico City mugger known to police as ‘Teeth’ stopped a news photographer at gunpoint, demanding everything the photographer was carrying, including his camera. But first, Teeth wanted his picture taken. The lensman clicked away…and then ran. The next day his newspaper, Reforma, ran the ‘mug shot’ on page one.”

  —Christian Science Monitor

  PHOTO FINISH

  “Sheriff’s detectives arrested 28-year-old Einetta Denise Brown of Tampa, Florida, on identity theft charges. They said Brown, who is unemployed, has made her living since 1996 off credit card scams worth tens of thousands of dollars, leaving behind scores of angry victims.

  “Detective Skip Pask said he first learned of Brown in 1998, but he was unable to catch up with her until December 2000, when she foolishly used a stolen credit card to pay for Christmas portraits of herself and her two young daughters.

  Q: What is a bilateral periorbital hematoma? A: A black eye.

  “ ‘She had been doing it for so long, she got comfortable,’ Pask said. ‘And careless.’”

  —St. Petersburg Times

  “I AM A CROOK”

  “William Nixon did not know he had carried out a robbery—he was drunk at the time. Then he saw himself on a security video tape on television. Nixon, 36, immediately surrendered himself to police and admitted robbing the Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, filling station several weeks earlier. He pled guilty to the robbery of about £250 ($400) from two women assistants, using an imitation firearm. Nixon had already spent the full amount from his welfare check on drink and could be seen staggering during the robbery. The proceeds of the robbery also went to alcohol.

  “After the hold-up, he left the shop with a cigarette in his hand saying: ‘All the best,’ to the women, and sauntered off down the road.”

  —Belfast News Letter

  TRY ACTING SMART

  “Actor Brad Renfro (The Client and Sleepers) and a pal were charged with grand theft after trying to take a $175,000 yacht on a joy ride. Catching them might have been harder if they hadn’t forgotten to untie the boat, causing it to smash back into the dock.”

  —Stuff magazine

  BOOK HIM

  “Gregory Roberts, 43, of Las Cruces, New Mexico, was arrested at the public library shortly after 2 a.m. Tuesday, for breaking and entering. Officers found his shoeprints on broken glass where he allegedly entered by kicking in a windowpane.

  “Once inside the library, Roberts got himself trapped between the outer and inner doors of the foyer. He couldn’t get back in, and he couldn’t get back out. What could he do? He called police from a pay phone in the foyer. They got him out, but now Roberts is trapped behind another door: a jail door.”

  —Albuquerque Journal

  A flea can jump 30,000 times in a row without taking a break.

  FAMOUS CLOSE CALLS

  Too many world leaders—Gandhi, JFK, and Anwar Sadat to name a few—have lost their lives to assassins. But the death toll would be even higher if fate hadn’t thwarted a few assassination plots. Here are some intriguing examples.

  GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT (1822–1885)

  THE ATTEMPT: On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln invited General Grant and his wife, Julia, to accompany him and Mrs. Lincoln to Ford’s Theatre. The Grants declined. That night, of course, Lincoln was assassinated. “Had his assassination plot gone according to plan,” Carl Sifakis writes in The Encyclopedia of Assassinations, John Wilkes Booth “would have killed not only the president, but a future president as well, General Ulysses S. Grant.”

  WHAT HAPPENED: Why didn’t the Grants go? Because Julia Grant detested Mary Lincoln. A few weeks earlier while touring Grant’s headquarters together, Mary snubbed Julia so many times in front of so many important people that she refused to spend another night in her company. Grant, biographer William S. McFeely writes, “was left to make to the president the most classic—and limp—of excuses: He couldn’t go because of the children.”

  PRESIDENT CHARLES DE GAULLE (1890–1970)

  THE ATTEMPT(S): De Gaulle, president of France from 1959 to 1969, may have set a record as the modern world leader with the most attempts on his life—31. Some examples:

  • September 1961. Assassins planted plastic explosives and napalm at the side of a road and set the bomb to go off when de Gaulle’s car approached. But they detonated it too soon. De Gaulle’s driver sped the undamaged car straight through the flames to safety.

  • August 1962. A team of assassins, using submachine guns and hand grenades, planned to attack de Gaulle’s motorcade. But the lookout failed to spot the cars until they were already speeding by. The killers only managed to shoot out a window and a tire on de Gaulle’s car, and de Gaulle escaped unharmed…except for a cut on his finger that he got brushing broken glass off his clothes.

  In 1910 about 32 million Americans lived on farms. Today, less than 5 million do.

  • July 1966. The last attempt made on de Gaulle’s life and perhaps his luckiest break. Would-be assassins packed more than a ton of dynamite into a car and parked it on the road to Orly Airport. They made plans to set it off as de Gaulle was driven to the airport for a flight to the USSR.

  WHAT HAPPENED: At the appointed time, de Gaulle’s car drove past the car bomb…and nothing happened. Why not? The night before the attack was to take place, the “assassins” decided to commit a robbery to raise the money they would need to make their getaway. But they got caught—and were sitting in jail, unable to trigger the bomb.

  KING HASSAN II (1929–1999)

  THE ATTEMPT: On August 16, 1972, King Hassan of Morocco was flying home from France aboard his private Boeing 727. As the plane approached the airport in the capital city of Rabat, it was attacked by four jet fighters of the Royal Moroccan Air Force.

  WHAT HAPPENED: In the middle of the attack, someone claiming to be a mechanic on the royal plane radioed to the attackers, “Stop firing! The tyrant is dead!” The fighters backed off, and the royal 727 was allowed to land.

  The “mechanic” turned out to be the king himself. Unharmed, he exited the plane and then participated in the scheduled welcoming ceremonies as if nothing had happened. When the plotters realized they’d been fooled, eight more fighter planes attacked the ceremonies with machine gun fire, killing 8 people and wounding more than 40…but missing the king (he hid under some trees). Later that day still more fighters attacked a guest house next to the royal palace, where it was thought the king was hiding. Hassan survived all three attempts, executed the general behind the plot, and remained on the throne until July 1999, when he died from a heart attack at age 70.

  CZAR ALEXANDER II (1818–1881)

  THE ATTEMPT: In 1879 a violent anarchist group called Will of the People tried to bomb the czar’s train outside Moscow.

  WHAT HAPPENED: It was common for the czar’s entourage to consist of two trains—one in front to test the rails and a second in back to carry the czar. So when the first train rolled by, the attackers let it go and blew up the second train…only to learn later that Alexander had been riding on the first train. The second one was a decoy.

  The country of Tonga once issued a stamp shaped like a banana.

  AFTERMATH: In 1881 Will of the People made another attempt, as Alexander was returning by carriage to the Winter Palace. They
tunneled under a road along the czar’s intended route and packed the space with explosives. But they were thwarted at the last minute when the czar’s guards changed the route.

  This time, however, there were backup bombers, and as the czar passed by, one of them tossed a bomb at the imperial carriage, blowing it apart and killing two of the czar’s guards. Alexander somehow escaped unscathed and might well have survived the entire attack had he not lingered at the scene to tend to the wounded. But moments later a second bomb killed him.

  So in murdering Alexander II, did the anarchists get the revolution they were hoping for? No—the czar, a reformer by czarist standards, was succeeded by his son Alexander III, considered one of the most repressive czars of the 19th century.

  PRIME MINISTER MARGARET THATCHER (1925– )

  THE ATTEMPT: Four weeks before a scheduled meeting of Thatcher’s Conservative Party in the seaside town of Brighton, an Irish Republican Army bomber named Patrick Magee checked into the Grand Hotel, where Thatcher and numerous other high government officials would be staying. He then rented a room five stories above Thatcher’s and planted 30 pounds of explosives.

  WHAT HAPPENED: The bomb was programmed to explode at 3:00 a.m. on the last night of the conference. It was assumed that Thatcher would be in bed. She might have been, too, had her speechwriters done a better job preparing the speech she was to deliver the next day. But at 3:00 a.m. she was still working on it. Just moments after she left of her room, the powerful bomb ripped through the hotel, destroying much of the building…including part of Thatcher’s suite. By then, however, she was in another part of the hotel, unharmed.

  Five people, including a member of Parliament, were killed in the blast and 30 more were injured. Authorities speculated that the death toll would have been much higher had so many officials not been downstairs in the hotel bar.

  Hostess Twinkies are 68% air.

  WEIRD CANADA

  Canada: land of beautiful mountains, clear lakes, bustling cities…and some really weird news reports. Here are some of the oddest entries from the BRI news file.

  WHO WOULD HAVE SUSPECTED?

  In April 2001, police in Vancouver, British Columbia, ended a three-year crime spree when they arrested 64-year-old Eugene Mah and his 32-year-old son, Avery. The Mahs had been stealing assorted lawn and garden items from homes in their neighborhood, including garbage cans, lawn decorations, recycling boxes, and realty signs. Why did they steal them? Nobody knows. Eugene Mah is a real estate tycoon worth a reported $13 million. One local psychiatrist said the thefts may be due to an obsessive-compulsive hoarding disorder. They reportedly stole a neighbor’s doormat…and each of the 14 other doormats the neighbor bought as replacements.

  BEAVER FEVER!

  In June 2003, two disc jockeys in Toronto caused a SARS panic—in the Dominican Republic. Z103.5 Morning Show hosts Scott Fox and Dave Blezard thought it would be funny to call the resort where their co-worker, Melanie Martin, was vacationing. They told the desk clerk that Martin had smuggled a “rare Canadian beaver” into their country. But the desk clerk, who didn’t speak much English, thought he’d heard the word “fever.” With SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) being big news at the time and Toronto being one of the cities where the disease had spread, the clerk panicked—and locked the woman in her room. The entire hotel wasn’t quarantined, according to the station’s news manager, but staff were at the point of contacting medical authorities when the disc jockeys finally convinced them that it was all a misunderstanding. Martin was released from her room that afternoon.

  COMING IN FOR A LANDING

  Lucette St. Louis, a 66-year-old woman from Corbeil, Ontario, was rounding up three runaway pigs owned by her son, Marc, when she became the victim of a bizarre accident. One of the 180-pound pigs had wandered into the road and a passing car hit it. The impact sent the pig airborne, landing on top of Mrs. St. Louis and breaking her leg in two places. “Well, at least,” she said, “I can tell my grandchildren that pigs really do fly.”

  Ale to thee: The ancient Sumerians had a goddess of beer.

  DEATH MERCHANT

  Roman Panchyshyn, a 47-year-old Winnipeg retailer, upset some of his fellow residents when he started selling $65 sweatshirts that read “Winnipeg, Murder Capital of Canada—Escape The Fear” in his store. The shirts showed the city skyline dripping in blood. “We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly to promote Winnipeg to the world,” complained City Councillor Harry Lazarenko, “and I don’t want this to give us a black eye.” So he contacted the premier to see if Panchyshyn could be stopped. He couldn’t—the shirts are accurate. Winnipeg has the highest murder rate in Canada. Said the unapologetic Panchyshyn, “The truth hurts.”

  WEIRD CANADIAN RECORDS

  • On August 30, 1995, Sean Shannon of Canada recited Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy in 23.8 seconds—an average of 655 words a minute.

  • On August 17, 1991, 512 dancers of the Royal Scottish Dance Society (Toronto branch) set the record for the largest genuine Scottish country dance (a reel).

  • In 1988 Palm Dairies of Edmonton created the world’s largest ice cream sundae—24,900 kg. (54,895 lbs.).

  • In 1993 the Kitchener-Waterloo Hospital Auxiliary filled a bowl with 2,390 kg (5,269 lbs.) of strawberries.

  • Four hundred mothers in Vancouver broke the record for mass breast feeding in 2002.

  • In Feb. 2000, 1,588 couples at the Sarnia Sports Centre broke the record for most kissing in one place at one time.

  • Dave Pearson holds the record for clearing all 15 balls from a standard pool table in 26.5 seconds at Pepper’s Bar in Windsor, Ontario, in 1997.

  • In 1998 1,000 University of Guelph students formed the longest human conveyor belt, laying down in a row and rolling a surfboard over their bodies. In 1999 they set the record for simultaneous soap-bubble blowing.

  A regulation tennis ball must weigh between 2 and 2 ounces.

  FILE UNDER “UNDERWEAR”

  Here at the BRI, we believe it’s important to keep up with world events…especially when they involve underpants.

  GERMANY

  • BERLIN—In July 2003, a group of naked men riding in a van on the autobahn caused a traffic accident. One of the men tossed his underpants out of the window of the van, striking the driver of a Volkswagen Passat in the face. The underpants blocked the Passat driver’s view, causing him to slam into the truck in front of him. There were no injuries. At last report, “police were hunting the owner of the underpants for leaving the scene of an accident.”

  • MUNICH—In June 1999, a policeman was severely disciplined for stripping off his clothes at work and exercising in his underwear late in the day when he thought he was alone in the station. Wrong—a female officer saw him and reported him for sexual harassment. “I had no idea anybody else was still in the office,” the man explained, telling the court that he stripped out of his clothes because he sweats a lot. The court docked his pay 12.5% for the next five years. Total amount of the fine: about $53,000.

  MALAYSIA

  KUALA LUMPUR—Malaysian police arrested Doomsday cult leader Petrus Ratu Doren, self-described “holiest of them all,” after he predicted that the end of the world would come in October 1995 and that his followers could protect themselves by wearing their underpants on their heads. In custody, Doren admitted that he made the whole thing up “because he wanted fame and power.”

  Police rounded up more than 200 of Doren’s followers, who fled into the jungle with their weapons (and their underpants) to await the end of the world. “We want to get to the root of the matter about this guy who has used the name of God in vain,” police told reporters. “Especially that bit on underwear.”

  Shhh! Great white sharks can hear sounds from over a mile away.

  THAILAND

  BANGKOK—In January 2003, fifty-eight college students were arrested at Bangkok’s Ramkhamhaeng University for hiding pagers in their underpants and using them to
cheat on a final exam. The pagers were set to vibrate the correct answers on the multiple choice test: one buzz if the first choice was correct, two buzzes if the second choice was correct, etc. Four teachers were also arrested and charged with helping the students cheat. Illegal use of a pager is a serious crime in Thailand; if convicted, each of the conspirators faces two years in prison and a $2,300 fine.

  CHINA

  HONG KONG—In December 2002, a 45-year-old man was fined the equivalent of $128 for making hundreds of crank calls to the local fire station over a period of more than five years. According to court records, each time a firefighter answered the phone, the man—whose name was not released—asked him “if he’d put on his underpants.”

  ENGLAND

  LONDON—Police searching the apartment of an underwear thief in September 1998 discovered a cache of more than 10,000 stolen bras, underpants, and leotards piled four feet high in the man’s tiny one-room flat. Police arrested the man as he was stealing even more underwear from a clothesline. According to news reports, at the time of his arrest the 37-year-old suspect was wearing “a stolen swimsuit and someone else’s pants.”

  MEXICO

  MEXICO CITY—In June 2003, dozens of farmers from the province of Veracruz staged a protest by stripping down to their underpants in front of a national monument on one of Mexico City’s busiest streets. The farmers were protesting the policies of former Veracruz governor Patricio Chirinos, whom they accused of unjust land seizures. Why protest in underpants? “Stripping is the only way to get attention,” farmer Agustín Morales explained. “We don’t have money to buy an ad in the newspapers.”

  Sing along: There are 158 verses in the Greek national anthem.