THANKS!
Lost Item: A gold ring
The Story: In 1945 the mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey, gave the sheriff a gift: a gold ring, inscribed “From Mayor Frank Hague to Sheriff Teddy Fleming 1945.” Years later Fleming passed the ring on to his son, the historian Thomas Fleming. In 1968 Fleming was visiting the famous French battlefield, the Argonne, on the 50th anniversary of his father’s service there during World War I. While climbing a steep hill, he slipped and fell—and lost the ring.
In 1985 Frenchman Gil Malmasson was metal-detecting in the Argonne and found it. He immediately contacted the American embassy, but couldn’t track down the Flemings. Thirteen more years passed. Then in 1998 Malmasson was surfing the Internet and found the website for Jersey City…and the name “Mayor Frank Hague.” He got in touch with the current mayor, Bret Schundler, who made some phone calls and located Fleming within hours. Fleming flew to Paris and met Malmasson—who happily put the ring back on his finger.
Not as fragile as you thought: Egg shells are proportionately as strong as bone.
JUST PLANE WEIRD
Close calls, close encounters, and other strange events in the sky.
GOT JUICE?
During the landing phase of Aeroflot Flight #2315 on May 9, 1994, over Arkhangelsk, Russia, loss of hydraulic fluid caused the landing gear system to fail; the right leg of the plane would not come down. In desperation, the crew poured every beverage they could find into the hydraulic system—soda, water, wine, milk, juice, and liquor. That made it possible for the crew to lower the gear, but only partway. When the plane landed, it veered to the right and went off the side of the runway, but a serious crash had been avoided. (According to experts, in an emergency any fluid will help—even urine.)
YOU SNOOZE, YOU LOSE (ALTITUDE)
On February 17, 1994, the pilot of a private Piper PA-34 fell asleep at the controls as he was flying from Springfield, Kentucky, to Crossville, Tennessee. This was normally a short flight, but five hours later he woke up over the Gulf of Mexico, with only 20 minutes of fuel remaining. Lucky break: He was able to reach the Coast Guard by radio just as he ran out of fuel. A helicopter pulled him out of the water 70 miles west of St. Petersburg, Florida.
BLINDED BY THE LIGHT
On October 30, 1995, a Southwest Airlines flight was climbing after takeoff from McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas when a blinding beam of light swept into the cockpit. The first officer, who was piloting the aircraft, was completely blinded for 30 seconds. For another two minutes he suffered flash blindness in the right eye and after-image effects in his left eye. He was unable to focus or interpret any of the instrument readings and was “completely disoriented.”
The source of the beam: an outdoor laser light show at one of the Vegas hotels. But because so many hotels entertain guests with nightly light shows, it was impossible to determine which one was responsible. The captain (who was not affected) took over the controls until the first officer recovered.
Looney law: In Oklahoma, you can be fined for making funny faces at dogs.
BETTER LATE THAN STUPID
America West Flight #6361 had been in the air less than two minutes one day in 2003, when the pilot received a call from the tower: there was a bomb onboard. The pilot immediately returned to the Medford, Oregon, airport where the passengers and crew were evacuated. A bomb squad searched the plane and luggage, but found nothing.
A little while later, when a man arrived at the check-in counter and insisted that he be allowed to board the delayed flight, America West clerks became suspicious. It turned out that the man had been on his way to the airport when he realized he was going to miss the flight. Brilliant solution: He called in the bomb threat on his cell phone, hoping to delay the plane a few minutes. The police were notified, the call was traced, and the man was promptly arrested. (The plane took off without him…again.)
WHERE THERE’S SMOKE…
While taxiing for takeoff in Detroit, Michigan, on April 17, 1986, a TWA passenger saw some mist coming out of the plane’s air vents. It was nothing abnormal, just condensation from an overheated air conditioner pack. But the passenger, believing that the plane was on fire, panicked and shouted, “Open the door!” The lead flight attendant responded to the emergency orders (which she thought came from the cockpit) and opened an exit door. Passengers sitting near exit doors also prepared for evacuation by opening their doors. Fortunately, the plane was still on the ground—21 passengers jumped off before the captain could intervene.
* * *
“IT WAS MY CADDY…REALLY”
“At the 1959 Memphis Invitational Open, pro golfer Tommy Bolt was assessed one of the strangest fines in PGA tour history. Just when his playing partner was about to putt, Bolt loudly passed gas. Officials were not amused and fined him $250 for unsportsmanlike behavior.”
—Dubious Achievements in Golf’s History
According to a poll by Progressive Insurance, 63% of Americans talk to their cars.
MANAGEMENT EXPECTS…
JoAnn Padgett of the Bathroom Readers’ Hysterical Society sent us this page from an old almanac with a note: “And you guys think you’ve got it bad.” (No, we don’t.)
In 1870, after the government passed new, “liberal” labor laws, one business released the following manifesto to its employees.
NOTICE
1. Staff members must be present between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. on weekdays and only until noon on Saturday.
2. Daily prayers will be held each morning in the main office with the clerical staff in attendance.
3. The staff will not disport themselves in raiment of bright colors, nor will they wear hose “unless in good repair.”
4. A stove is provided for the clerical staff. Coal and wood must be kept in the locker. Each member of the staff should bring four pounds of coal each day during cold weather.
5. No member of the staff may leave the room without permission. Calls of nature are permitted and the staff may use the garden below the second gate. This area must be kept in good order.
6. Now that business hours have been reduced drastically, the partaking of food is allowed between 11:30 and noon, but work will not, on any account, cease.
7. A new pencil sharpener is available on application to Mr. Rogers.
8. Trainees will report 40 minutes before prayer and will report to Mr. Rogers after closing hours to clean private offices with brushes, brooms, and scrubbers provided by the management.
9. Management recognizes the generosity of the new labor laws, but will expect a much greater work output to compensate for these near utopian conditions.
Bozo the Clown wore size 83AAA shoes.
UNSCRIPTED
When actors have to come up with their own lines…
“I have no experience, but I guess they’re different from dogs and horses.”
—Bo Derek, on children
“If I’m androgynous, I’d say I lean toward macho-androgynous.”
—John Travolta
“I loved making the movie Rising Sun. I got into the psychology of why she liked to get tied up in plastic bags. It has to do with low self-esteem.”
—Tatjana Patitz
“The only happy artist is a dead artist, because only then you can’t change. After I die, I’ll probably come back as a paintbrush.”
—Sylvester Stallone
“Good looking people turn me off. Myself included.”
—Patrick Swayze
“There is no capital of Uruguay, you dummy—it’s a country.”
—Lorenzo Lamas, to Jon
Stewart on The Daily Show
“I feel my best when I’m happy.”
—Winona Ryder
“Sure the body count in this movie (Die Harder) bothers me, but it’s what everybody likes. At least it’s not an awful body count—it’s a fun body count.”
—Bonnie Bedelia
“In an action film you act in the action, in a dram
a film you act in the drama.”
—Jean-Claude Van Damme
“You can hardly tell where the computer models finish and the real dinosaurs begin.”
—Laura Dern, on
Jurassic Park
“I think that the film Clueless was very deep. I think it was deep in the way that it was very light. I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if it’s true lightness.”
—Alicia Silverstone
“He’s the chief, right? What else is there to say? It’s not bad sleeping with Einstein.”
—Lara Flynn Boyle on then-
boyfriend Jack Nicholson
“My main hope for myself is to be where I am.”
—Woody Harrelson
Scientists say: Gesturing with your hands while speaking improves your memory.
THE FEDERAL WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM
If you’ve ever wondered what being in the federal government’s witness protection program is like, check out the book WITSEC: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program, by Pete Earley and Gerald Shur. It will tell you everything you ever wanted to know…and more.
DOUBLE CROSS
In 1967 a Mafia hitman named Joe “The Animal” Barboza was arrested on minor charges and thrown in jail. His boss, Massachusetts mobster Raymond Patriarca, was supposed to bail him out, but Patriarca turned on Barboza instead, having three of Barboza’s friends assassinated.
Barboza figured he was next and decided he wasn’t going to just sit around and wait for someone to kill him. He immediately contacted the FBI and offered to testify against Patriarca…on one condition: the government had to protect Barboza, his wife, and their daughter against retaliation from the Mafia. For the rest of their lives. Breaking the Mafia’s code of silence was an automatic death sentence, not just for Barboza but for his family as well. The FBI agreed and handed the job over to the U.S. Marshals Service, the federal agency charged with overseeing the security of the federal courts.
ON THE MOVE
Once the deal was made, deputies transferred Barboza to a new jail and registered him under a false name, so that nobody would know who he was. Another team of deputies set up a 24-hour guard at his house, an arrangement that lasted until Patriarca took out a $300,000 “contract” on Barboza. Fearing for the family’s safety, the marshals moved the Barbozas to an abandoned lightkeeper’s house on a small island off the coast of Massachusetts and stationed 16 armed guards there to protect them 24 hours a day. They stayed on the island until a Boston newspaper found out and revealed where they were hiding. Then they moved again.
Ernest Hemingway rewrote the final page of A Farewell To Arms 39 times.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK
Barboza and his family remained in hiding and under round-the-clock protection for more than a year before Barboza testified against Patriarca in court. In the months that followed, he testified against more than a dozen other mobsters as well. By the time all the trials were over, Patriarca was behind bars and his criminal organization had been crippled.
It was an impressive victory for the Justice Department, but protecting Barboza had cost a fortune—more than 300 deputies had rotated in and out of two-week shifts guarding the family, and now that the trials were over, a way had to be found to protect the Barbozas for the rest of their lives.
But how? For now the Barbozas were hiding out in military housing at Fort Knox, Kentucky, but they couldn’t stay there forever. A lifetime of 24-hour guards was out of the question: It cost too much money, consumed too much manpower, and put too many lives at risk. There had to be a better way.
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
Gerald Shur, an attorney with the Justice Department’s organized crime division, had been thinking about the problem for several years and came up with an answer: Why not just give the witnesses new identities and move them to a new part of the country?
In those days, mobsters were pretty territorial—they rarely left the cities where they lived. A witness from the New York City mob was a dead man if he stayed in New York, but if he moved to Portland, Oregon, he’d probably be safe—nobody there would know who he was. And if he changed his name and avoided contact with friends and relatives back home, nobody would be able to track him down. Round-the-clock armed guards would be unnecessary.
Shur was convinced that this was the best way to protect government witnesses like Barboza. He knew it could work because some deputies in the Marshals Service were already beginning to move mobsters around the country on their own initiative. But Shur wanted to put an official program in place. He figured that if potential witnesses knew that such a program existed, they were more likely to cooperate with prosecutors.
Not many people agreed with Shur. But when President Lyndon Johnson’s political opponents accused Johnson of being soft on crime, a presidential commission on law enforcement started looking for new ways to nab criminals. In 1967 Shur pitched his witness protection idea to the commission. They recommended it to President Johnson, but it didn’t become law until President Nixon signed the Witness Security Program (WITSEC) as part of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970.
Glenn Burke of the L.A. Dodgers is credited with inventing the “high-five” in 1977.
WITSEC BY THE NUMBERS
Initially Shur figured that no more than a few dozen new witnesses would enter the program each year. His guess was way off. For one thing, government prosecutors were eager to use witness testimony to win convictions. But just as importantly, every time a mob witness was able to break omertà—the Mafia’s code of silence—and survive, it became more likely that other disgruntled or imprisoned mobsters would agree to rat out their crime bosses. By 1972 witnesses were entering the program at a rate of 200 a year; two years later the number had doubled.
To date, WITSEC has relocated more than 7,000 government witnesses and 9,000 of their family members. The Marshals Service estimates that more than 10,000 convictions have been obtained with the help of WITSEC witnesses. So far none of the witnesses in the program have been murdered in retaliation for their testimony, although 30 witnesses who left the program have been murdered…including the mobster who helped to start it all: In February 1976, Joe “The Animal” Barboza left the program and returned to a life of drug dealing, extortion, and murder. He was gunned down in San Francisco, California, in a drive-by shooting that police believe was a mob hit.
Though WITSEC was originally set up to battle the Mafia, today more than half of the people who enter the program are witnesses in drug trials; fewer than one in six are connected to the Mafia.
STARTING OVER
• Any relatives or loved ones of a witness are eligible to enter the program if they are potential targets. This includes grandparents, in-laws, girlfriends, boyfriends, even mistresses.
• When a witness enters WITSEC, they get a new name, assistance moving to a new city, and help with rent and other expenses until they find a job. They also get a new birth certificate, social security card, and driver’s license, but that’s about it. The Marshals Service doesn’t create elaborate fake pasts or phony job histories, and it doesn’t provide fake credit histories, either.
Have you heard? According to experts, a dog can’t hear the lowest key on a piano.
GETTING A JOB
• It’s not easy finding a job without a résumé or job history. “You go to get a job, you got no references and they’re not going to lie for you,” says former mobster Joseph “Joe Dogs” Iannuzzi. “They don’t help you get references for an apartment. You have to go and muscle it for yourself.”
• But the Marshals Service does what it can to help. It has compiled a list of companies whose CEOs have agreed to provide jobs to government witnesses.
• When a witness is placed with a company only the CEO or some other high corporate official knows that the employee is a government witness, and even they are not told the person’s true identity. They are, however, given details of the employee’s criminal history. �
��You go to the head of the corporation,” says retired deputy marshal Donald McPherson, “and you tell him the crimes. You have that obligation. You’re not going to help a bank robber get a job as a bank teller.”
STAYING IN TOUCH
• Witnesses are strictly forbidden from revealing their new identities, addresses, or even the region of the country they live in to friends and loved ones back home. If family members don’t know the names and whereabouts of their relatives in the program, the mob is less likely to come after them and try to get the information.
• It’s a myth that when witnesses enter the program they are forbidden from ever contacting loved ones outside the program again. They’re only forbidden from making direct contact—letters and phone calls can be forwarded through the Marshals Service. In-person meetings can be arranged at safe, neutral sites, such as federal buildings or safehouses.
• Does the program work? It’s estimated that as many as one in five return to a life of crime after entering the witness protection program. That’s about half the recidivism rate of convicts released from prison.
Don’t be cruel! On an average day, 4 people call Graceland and ask to speak to Elvis.
FABULOUS FLOPS
Some folks have an eye for business, and some businesses have an “i” for idiot.
YOU SAY TO-MA-TO, I SAY TO-BLAH-TO
In 1994 a small biotech company called Calgene got FDA approval for the first genetically engineered whole food to hit the stores in the United States—the Flavr Savr tomato. It was genetically altered to delay ripening, which allowed growers to keep the plant on the vine longer, shippers to keep it in the trucks longer, and grocers to keep it on shelves longer. It sounds good, but the tomatoes had problems: they didn’t taste very good; crop yields were below expectations; and the machines used for packing them, built for still-green and firm tomatoes, mashed the Flavr Savrs to mush. After two years on the market, the original “Frankenfood” was pulled from stores. Calgene’s loss: an estimated $150 million.
Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader Page 20