QUICKSAND
Bayly MacArthur, playing in a 1931 tournament in Australia, hit a ball into what he thought was a sand trap. It wasn’t—it was quicksand. And unfortunately, MacArthur found out the hard way when he stepped into the quicksand to play the ball. It took four other golfers to pull him out.
A SPECTATOR’S BRA
At the 1973 Sea Pines Heritage Classic in South Carolina, Hale Irwin’s worst shot of the match (and perhaps his career) hit a woman’s chest and lodged in her bra. She was relieved when Irwin decided to forgo the shot, taking a two-stroke penalty instead.
THREE SPECTATORS
In 1971 Vice President Spiro Agnew played in the Pro-Am portion of the Bob Hope Desert Classic. After his first two shots injured three members of the crowd, Agnew made the wise choice and became a spectator himself.
AN OPPONENT’S ARM
Why hit someone with a golf ball when you’ve got a golf club? In 1980 at the final round of the Boone Golf Club Championship in North Carolina, Margaret McNeil and Earlena Adams were tied for the lead after 18 holes. They had to play one sudden-death hole to decide the match. At the tee, McNeil was practicing her stroke when she accidentally smacked Adams on the arm with her backswing. Result for Adams: Her arm was broken; she couldn’t play the hole. Result for McNeil: She was awarded first place.
A regulation hole in golf is 4.25 inches in diameter, and “no less than 4 inches deep.”
REVENGE!
We all have fantasies of getting even with people who annoy us…but we seldom actually go through with them. Here are some examples of what could happen if we did.
REVENGE OF THE PHONE CLERK
Background: In early 2002, New Zealander James Storrie called New Zealand Telecom Corporation to complain that his cell phone had been disconnected. When the representative informed him that the phone had been reported stolen, Storrie insisted that he still had the phone and that he had not reported its theft. The mistake was cleared up, but the representative (identity unknown) was apparently offended by Storrie’s attitude.
Revenge Gone Wild! When Storrie received his next phone bill, he found that he’d been charged an extra $140. What for? The explanation was printed right on the bill: “penalty for being an arrogant bastard.” N.Z. Telecom apologized profusely, offered Storrie some undisclosed financial compensation, and promised to investigate the vengeful billing.
REVENGE OF THE BAD WAITER
Background: One evening in June 2003, Wayne and Darlene Keller of Corona, California, took their two children to a Sizzler’s restaurant. Mrs. Keller requested vegetables with her dinner, instead of potatoes. According to the family, the waiter, Jonathan Voletner, rudely told her that she had to choose between French fries or a baked potato. “When I told him my wife can’t eat potatoes,” said Mr. Keller, “he brought back a really small salad, practically threw it at her, and told her to go get the dressing herself.” After the meal, the Kellers left—and they didn’t leave a tip.
Revenge Gone Wild! Voletner had his girlfriend follow the Kellers home to get their address. When he got off work, he, his girlfriend, and his brother went to the Keller home, waited until 1 a.m., and then doused their house, yard, and mailbox with a gallon of maple syrup, smashed eggs, toilet paper, duct tape, and plastic wrap. They might have gotten away with it, but in a state of heightened stupidity, Voletner rang the doorbell. Then he hid in the bushes and waited to see their reaction. Their reaction: They called the police.
What’s your sign? Mickey Mouse is a Scorpio (born November 18, 1928).
Officers found Voletner in the bushes and his co-conspirators in a nearby car. When they presented the suspects to the Kellers, Mrs. Keller said, “Oh my God! It’s the waiter from the restaurant!” They were all charged with vandalism, with Voletner receiving an extra charge of child endangerment because his girlfriend was a minor. He was also fired by Sizzler’s. “The company doesn’t allow this sort of thing,” the manager said.
REVENGE OF THE POSTMASTER
Background: On October 17, 2001, 62-year-old James Beal was fired from his job as relief postmaster in Empire, Michigan.
Revenge Gone Wild! The next day, Beal showed up at the post office carrying two five-gallon buckets full of worms, grubs, and porcupine poop. He proceeded to splatter several of his former coworkers with the putrid concoction, completely saturating two of them. He was on his way to his car for another bucket when police arrived. For his bizarre act of revenge, he was charged with four counts of assaulting a federal worker. “I let my anger sort of overrule my judgments,” Beal told the court. He was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.
REVENGE OF THE NON-WITNESS
Background: Jane White was upset that Jehovah’s Witnesses had come to her house once a month, every month, for 12 years. At first, she politely told them that she wasn’t interested. Finally, after a visit on a Saturday in January 2002, she had had enough.
Revenge Gone Wild! White went to the group’s local Kingdom Hall in Peacehaven, England, the following morning, carefully timing her visit for the middle of the Sunday service. She banged on the door loudly, again and again, until someone answered, and then proceeded to offer members of the congregation religious literature that she had brought along. “I tried to hand out free magazines just like the Jehovah’s Witnesses hand out,” she said. “Nobody seemed to want them, though.” She continued her “mission” for 30 minutes until the police showed up and asked her to leave.
REVENGE OF THE SPAM HATERS
Background: In November 2002, Detroit Free Press columnist Mike Wendland wrote a story about a man named Alan Ralsky. Ralsky had become a multimillionaire through marketing spam on the Internet. How much spam? His company sent up to 250 million e-mails a day. The story told readers about Ralsky’s new 8,000-square-foot, $740,000 home. The spammer bragged that one entire wing of the house was paid for by a single weight-loss e-mail.
Revenge Gone Wild! A group of spam haters decided to give Ralsky a dose of his own medicine. They posted his home address on hundreds of websites, and Ralsky started getting tons—literally—of junk mail. Then they posted his e-mail address and his phone number, and the mega-junkmailer got inundated with the very thing he had made his millions from—spam. And, no surprise: He was annoyed! Ralsky later complained, “They’ve signed me up for every advertising campaign and mailing list there is. These people are out of their minds! They’re harassing me!”
The Mayflower was dismantled by the Pilgrims and turned into a barn.
* * *
THE WORLD’S LARGEST…
• Roanoke, Virginia, has the “World’s Largest Man-Made Illuminated Star,” an 88-foot electric wonder set atop a mountain.
• Artichoke-growing region Castroville, California, proudly trumpets its “World’s Largest Artichoke.”
• Vegreville, Alberta, is home to the world’s largest egg sculpture, a Ukranian Easter egg that stands 25.7 feet tall.
• The owner of a Magnolia, Arkansas, grill store constructed a working 70-foot “World’s Largest Charcoal Grill.”
• “The World’s Largest Wind Chime” has been removed from Lakeside, California, because locals said it was too loud.
• Though many towns claim they’re home to the “World’s Largest Peanut,” only Ashburn, Georgia, has constructed a towering 10-foot peanut atop a 15-foot brick stack, leaving the lesser peanuts of Pearsall and Floresville, Texas; Durant, Oklahoma; and Dothan, Alabama, behind. Those wishing for an all-peanut day of tourism can see the Ashburn peanut and then check out the nearby bigtoothed 13-foot “Jimmy Carter Peanut” of Plains, Georgia.
The black widow spider’s bite has a 1% fatality rate.
GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL
Four stories of dumb crooks who saved us all a lot of trouble.
SELF HELP
“A 22-year-old Green Bay man led police on a chase that moved as slowly as 20 mph and ended in the Brown County Jail’s parking lot. The man parked his pickup in the jail’s lot, smoke
d a cigarette, got out of the truck, and lay face-down on the ground to be arrested, police said. He told the officers he knew he was drunk and was going to be sent to jail, so he just drove himself there.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
SUPPLY-SIDE ECONOMICS
“Sylvain Boucher of Quebec was spotted by prison guards standing between the prison wall and an outer fence. Assuming he was trying to escape, they grabbed him, but soon discovered he was not an inmate…and he was carrying a large amount of illegal drugs. Boucher was trying to break in, thinking the prison would be a good market for his drugs. He’ll get to find out. Before he had the supply, but no market. Now he has the market, but no supply.”
—Moreland’s Bozo of the Day
IS THIS WHY THEY CALL IT “DOPE”?
“Philomena A. Palestini, 18, of Portland, Maine, walked into Salem District Court to face one criminal charge, but walked out in handcuffs with two. Court Security Officer Ronald Lesperance found a hypodermic needle and two small bags of what police believe is heroin in her purse as she walked through the security checkpoint. ‘This doesn’t happen very often,’ said Lesperance.”
—Eagle Tribune
THE “IN” CROWD
“A man who tried to break into a Rideau correctional center with drugs and tobacco was sentenced to two years in prison yesterday. Shane Walker, 23, was believed to be bringing drugs to a jailed friend last week when he was foiled by corrections workers who heard bolt-cutters snapping the wire fence and apprehended him.”
—The National Post
Only country in the Middle East without a desert: Lebanon.
MOON SCAM?
Is nothing sacred? Those conspiracy nuts won’t leave anything alone. They attack our most sacred institutions. (On the other hand, they could be right.)
MOONSTRUCK
On July 20, 1969, millions of television viewers around the world watched as Neil Armstrong stepped down from a lunar landing module onto the surface of the moon and spoke the now famous words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
In western Australia a woman named Una Ronald watched. She saw the images of the moon landing in the early hours of the morning. But as the camera showed Armstrong’s fellow astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin demonstrating his moon walk technique, Ronald swears she saw something else. She swears she clearly saw a Coke bottle kicked into the picture from the side. The scene was edited out of later broadcasts, she says.
Was this alleged “blooper” evidence of a giant hoax?
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE
If Una Ronald was the first to suspect the moon landing wasn’t quite what it appeared to be, she certainly wasn’t the last. And there was a lot more than just the Coke bottle to excite skeptics.
Ten years before Apollo 11 supposedly went to the moon, Bill Kaysing was head of technical publications at Rocketdyne Systems, a division of Boeing that still makes rocket engines for the space program. In his book We Never Went to the Moon, Kaysing says that in 1959 Rocketdyne estimated that there was about a 14% chance we could safely send a man to the moon and back. According to Kaysing, there is no way the space program could have advanced enough in the following 10 years to send the three Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon, followed by five more moon landings in the next three years.
NASA experts recently admitted that they currently do not have the capability of sending manned missions to the moon. So how could they have done it more than 30 years ago? Even simulations these days require powerful computers, but the computer onboard the Columbia had a capacity smaller than many of today’s handheld calculators.
All the lakes in the world, fresh and saltwater combined equal only .01% of the Earth’s water resources.
Kaysing and others think they know the answer, and cite a number of anomalies that lead them to conclude that the Apollo missions were faked:
The Fluttering Flag: In 1990 a New Jersey man named Ralph Rene was reviewing old footage of the moon landing. As he watched the American flag fluttering in the airless atmosphere of the moon, it suddenly dawned on him: how can there be a breeze if there is no air?
Rene’s suspicions led him to research inconsistencies in the Moon landing story, and to publish a book called NASA Mooned America. The fluttering flag was just the beginning.
Phony Photos: A close look at the thousands of excellent still photos from the moon landings reveal some very odd features. For one thing, they are a little too good. The astronauts seem to be well lit on all sides, regardless of where the sunlight is coming from, almost as if there were some artificial light source.
• Defenders claim that light was reflected from the lunar surface, bouncing back to light the shadow side of the astronauts. Oddly, that same reflective light does not illuminate the dark side of lunar rocks, which are even closer to the ground.
• Shadows seem to fall in different directions and look to be different lengths even for objects of a similar height, such as the two astronauts. This leads some to conclude that there were multiple light sources—possibly some man-made ones.
• Even when everything else is in shadow, the American flag and the words “United States” are always well lit, and sometimes seem to be in a spotlight. Was someone trying to squeeze extra PR value out of fake photos?
Starlight, Star Bright: Some skeptics cite the absence of stars in photos of the lunar sky as evidence that they were not taken on the moon. After all, in the dark sky of the moon with no atmosphere, stars should be clearly visible.
• Experts agree—to the naked eye, stars in the sky of the moon should be magnificently clear. But, the experts say, stars wouldn’t show up on film that was set to expose the much brighter lunar surface.
• On the other hand, why were there no pictures taken of the stars in the lunar sky? Surely how the stars look from the moon would have interested many people. Was it because astronomers could spot the fake photos too easily?
Where’s the Dust? One of the most memorable images NASA released from Apollo 11 was the imprint of Buzz Aldrin’s boot in the lunar dust. But the lunar landing module apparently had less of an impact on the moon’s surface.
• Moon photos show no visible disturbance from the high-powered thrust engines the Eagle landing module used to land, nor is there any dust in the landing pads.
• If the Eagle blew away all the dust, as some speculate, how did Aldrin make such a nice footprint?
Deadly Radiation: In a recent press conference, a NASA spokesman said that radiation is one of the biggest obstacles to space travel. Wouldn’t it have been a problem 30 years ago?
• Two doughnut-shaped rings of charged particles, called the Van Allen Belts, encircle the Earth. To get to the moon, astronauts would have had to pass through the belts, exposing themselves to deadly radiation unless they had a lot more protection than the thin shield the Apollo spacecraft provided.
• Once outside the radiation belts and Earth’s protective atmosphere, astronauts would have been exposed to solar radiation. Expert opinions differ as to whether this exposure would have been life-threatening. But inexplicably, not one of the astronauts from the seven lunar missions got cancer, a well-known result of overexposure to radiation.
• Even more sensitive to radiation is photographic film. On all those beautiful moon photos there is absolutely no sign of radiation damage. Why not?
Follow the Bouncing Astronaut: What about the movie footage showing the astronauts demonstrating the moon’s low gravity by bouncing around the surface? Skeptics say that could have easily been faked. In the moon’s gravity—a sixth of Earth’s—the astronauts should have been able to leap 10 feet in the air. But they didn’t.
• In fact, in the movie footage they don’t get any farther off the ground than they could on Earth.
There are more than 90 different scientific theories on how dinosaurs became extinct.
• And if it looks like they are moving in slow motion, that is because they are—half speed t
o be exact. Bill Wood, a scientist who worked for the NASA subcontractor responsible for recording Apollo signals and sending them to NASA headquarters in Houston, explains that the original film footage, shot at 30 frames per second, was transferred to video, which runs at 60 frames per second. If the film of the astronauts walking on the surface of the moon is viewed at regular speed their movements look remarkably normal.
Moon Rocks: Besides the photos and film footage, the only physical evidence we have that astronauts actually went to the moon is lunar rocks.
• NASA points to the fact that scientists around the world have examined the rocks brought back by the Apollo missions and have no doubt that they originated on the moon. But the moon isn’t the only place to find such rocks.
• In the ice of Antarctica, scientists have found remnants of lunar rocks blasted off the moon by meteoric impacts. Numerous expeditions have explored the continent for rock samples from the moon, Mars, and comets.
• In 1967, two years before the Apollo mission, such a group visited Antarctica, including ex-Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, by then working for NASA. Why would a rocket scientist be sent to look for rocks? Was he collecting fake evidence?
WHY FAKE IT?
These anomalies in the “information” given to the public about the Apollo moon missions have caused many to question whether we really did send anyone to the moon. But if the moon landings were faked, how was it done, and why?
The why is fairly easy to understand. The 1960s were the height of the Cold War. The Space Race was on, and the Soviet Union had already beat the United States by launching the first satellite to orbit Earth, the first man—and woman—in space, and the first space walk, among other important achievements. The United States was clearly behind. In 1961 President Kennedy issued a challenge: “I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving a goal, before this decade is out, of sending a man to the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader Page 31