O’Keefe spelled out every detail to the police—except where the rest of the money was hidden. He had no idea. (Neither did the police—they had exaggerated the loot-recovery story as a ruse to get O’Keefe to talk.)
TRIED AND CONVICTED
Police rounded up all of the remaining members. They were arrested and tried amid a media circus. More than 1,000 prospective jurors had to be excused because they admitted they were sympathetic to the robbers. In the end, a jury found all of them guilty. Each man was sentenced to life in prison. Some died there—others were later released on parole.
For turning state’s evidence, O’Keefe was given a reduced sentence. After prison, he changed his name, moved to California, and reportedly worked as Cary Grant’s chauffeur.
The Brinks gang stole $2.7 million in cash and securities. The government spent $29 million trying to catch them and bring them to justice. But in the end, only 2% of the loot—$51,906—was recovered. What happened to the remaining 98% is a mystery.
Southernmost state capital in the continental United States: Honolulu.
RETURN OF THE MAN FROM C.R.A.P.
More odd acronyms. Submit any complaints to C.R.A.P.—the Committee to Resist Acronym Proliferation.
GHOST
Stands For: Graffiti Habitual Offenders Suppression Team (Undercover LAPD cops who bust graffiti artists)
POETS
Stands For: Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday (British slang for “TGIF”)
SCAM
Stands For: Southern California Auto Mart
CACA
Stands For: Canadian Agricultural Chemicals Association
FIB
Stands For: Fishermen’s Information Bureau (It was this big…really.)
SAP
Stands For: Society for American Philosophy
EATM
Stands For: Exotic Animal Training Management
SWIFT ANSWER
Stands For: Special Word Indexed Full-Text Alpha-Numeric Storage With Easy Retrieval (The longest true acronym in English…so far)
BARRF
Stands For: Bay Area Resource Recovery Facility
NAPS
Stands For: National Alliance of Postal Supervisors
RUIN
Stands For: Regional Urban Information Network
SLUTS
Stands For: School of Librarianship Urban Transportation System
GORK
Stands For: God Only Really Knows (How doctors refer to patients they can’t diagnose)
WUNY
Stands For: Wait Until Next Year (Said after a losing season)
Waaah! December 26th is National Whiner’s Day.
ANIMAL SUPERSTITIONS
Uncle John is so superstitious, he only works on this page when his one-eyed, three-legged dog, “Lucky,” is resting at his right foot. (Resting at Uncle John’s left foot is bad luck—everybody knows that!)
Bees must be made aware of a death in your family or they will leave the hive and make no more honey. Hang something black upon the hive.
A butterfly inside the home is a sign that a wedding is near.
If you buy a horse and change its name, you will have bad luck.
When it’s time to separate a calf from its mother, if you take the calf out of the barn backward the mother will not mourn the loss.
If a rabbit crosses your path from left to right, it is a sign of good luck. From right to left is a sign of bad luck.
If you eat a coyote, you will become a coward.
Feeding mistletoe to the first calf born in the new year brings good luck to the entire herd.
If you see a white cow or a white horse, spit three times or you will suffer bad luck.
Snakes travel in pairs. If you kill one, kill both or the snake that survives will seek revenge.
A bird tapping on the window is an omen of death.
Bats playing in the early evening is a sign of good weather to come. A bat hitting the side of a building is a sign of rain.
Bulls cannot be struck by lightning.
Keeping a chameleon as a pet will ward off evil.
If a cat jumps over a corpse, the corpse will become a vampire.
A black poodle appears on the graves of clergymen who have broken their vows.
If a pregnant woman sees a donkey, her child will grow up well behaved and wise.
If you are bitten by a fox, you will not live longer than seven years.
Las Vegas gets an average of only 4 inches of rainfall annually.
SWEET SUCCESS!
It’s hard to get to the top and harder to stay there. Here are some thoughts on the subject from people who should know.
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
—Albert Schweitzer
“There is no success without hardship.”
—Sophocles
“The road to success is always under construction.”
—Lily Tomlin
“You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.”
—Warren Buffett
“If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z.
X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.”
—Albert Einstein
“I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work.”
—Thomas Edison
“Losing is simply learning how to win.”
—Ted Turner
“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
—Bill Cosby
“It is not the going out of port, but coming back in, that determines the success of a voyage.”
—Henry Ward Beecher
“Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.”
—T. S. Eliot
“Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.”
—Dale Carnegie
“I don’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.”
—General George S. Patton
“People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don’t know when to quit. They succeed because they are determined to.”
—George Allen
The kid on the Cracker Jack box is named Robert.
THE MAD BOMBER, PT. II
When we left the case of the Mad Bomber (page 110), Dr. James Brussel, the original “profiler,” had just released his theories to the press, setting the game afoot. Here’s how it played out.
FOUND OUT
The Mad Bomber’s response to his case being made public: he took his terror a step further. The bombs kept coming and the letters got more brazen. “F. P.” even called Brussel on the telephone and told him to lay off or he would “be sorry.” Brussel had him exactly where he wanted him.
The final clue came when police received a letter revealing the date that began the Mad Bomber’s misery: September 5, 1931—almost 10 years before the first bomb was found. Brussel immediately ordered a search of Con Ed’s personnel files from that era. An office assistant named Alice Kelly found a neatly written letter from a former employee named George Metesky who had promised that Con Edison would pay for their “DASTARDLY DEEDS.”
The police traced Metesky to what neighborhood children called the “crazy house” on Fourth Street in Waterbury, Connecticut, just beyond Westchester County, New York. When they arrived, George Metesky was wearing…pajamas. He greeted them warmly and freely admitted to being the Mad Bomber. He even showed them his bomb-making workshop in the garage.
They told him to get dressed for his trip to the station. He returned wearing…a double-breasted suit, buttoned.
Misnomer? Judo translates to “the gentle way.”<
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DEDUCTIVE REASONING
So how was Dr. Brussel able to provide such an accurate description?
• It was pretty evident that the Mad Bomber was a man. In those days, very few women would have had the knowledge necessary to make bombs. Bomb-making is, moreover, a classic behavior of paranoid males.
• Because 85% of known paranoids had stocky, muscular builds, Brussel added it to the profile. Metesky had a stocky, muscular build.
• Male paranoiacs have difficulty relating to other people, especially women, and usually live with an older, matriarchal-type woman who will “mother” them. Metesky lived with his two older sisters.
• Another clue to Metesky’s sexual inadequacy, Brussel claimed, was his lettering. His script was perfect except for the “W”s—instead of connecting “V”s that would have been consistent with the rest of the letters, Metesky connected two “U”s, which Brussel saw as representing women’s breasts.
• Brussel concluded that Metesky was between 40 and 50 years old because paranoia takes years to develop, and based on when the first bomb was found, Metesky had to have already been well down the road. Brussel was close—Metesky was 54.
• What led Brussel to believe that Metesky did not live in New York City was his use of the term “Con Edison”—New Yorkers call it “Con Ed.”
• Metesky’s language identified him as middle European, too. His use of “dastardly deeds,” as well as some other phrases, was a sign of someone with Slavic roots. There was a high concentration of Poles in southern Connecticut, and Brussel connected the dots.
• Paranoids believe that the world conspires against them, so Brussel knew that something traumatic must have happened to Metesky. He was right. On September 5, 1931, Metesky was injured in a boiler explosion at a Con Ed plant. He complained of headaches, but doctors could find no sign of injury. After a year of sick pay and medical benefits, Metesky was fired. A failed lawsuit sent him over the edge, and he began plotting his revenge.
One species of moth lives entirely on cow tears.
• Brussel also predicted that the Bomber would have a debilitating heart disease. He was close: Metesky suffered from a tubercular lung.
• How did Brussel know what kind of suit Metesky would be wearing when he was arrested? Simple: Paranoids are neat freaks, as was apparent in his letters and bombs. He would wear nothing less than the most impeccable outfit of the day—a double-breasted suit, buttoned.
AFTERMATH
George Metesky proudly explained everything to the police. In all, he had planted more than 30 bombs, but miraculously, no one was killed. Metesky said that that was never his intention. “F. P.”, he explained, stood for “Fair Play.”
On April 18, 1957, George Metesky was found mentally unfit to stand trial and was committed to the Matteawan Hospital for the Criminally Insane. In 1973 he was deemed cured and was released. Metesky lived out the remainder of his days in his Waterbury home, where he died in 1994 at the age of 90. Dr. Brussel gained celebrity status for his role in the case; today he’s considered the father of modern psychological profiling in criminal investigations.
TRAGIC LEGACY
Although Metesky’s bombs never killed anybody, it was more because of strange luck than “Fair Play.” (Police called it a “miracle” that his theater bombs—planted inside the seats—never took any lives.) Even worse, Metesky may have helped pave the way for others who were more successful in their terrible exploits. According to investigators, both the “Zodiac Killer,” who killed at least six people—some with bombs—in the San Francisco area in the 1970s, and Ted “Unabomber” Kaczynski, who killed three people in the 1980s and 1990s with package bombs, were inspired by George Metesky, New York City’s Mad Bomber.
* * *
“One thing I can’t understand is why the newspapers labeled me the Mad Bomber. That was unkind.”
—George Metesky
U.S. city that consumes the most ketchup per capita: New Orleans.
IRONIC, ISN’T IT?
There’s nothing like a good dose of irony to put the problems of day-to-day life in proper perspective.
THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
• The crow population of Woodstock, Ontario, grew so large that residents started complaining to the city council about the noise. The council’s solution: frequent bursts of fireworks to scare the crows away.
• Bill Pettit Jr. of Southampton, New Jersey, recently opened his 335-acre farm to bird hunters. Pettit is a veterinarian.
• While driving through Versailles, New York, Wendy Maines saw five dogs attacking a cat. She stopped the car, honked the horn, and scared the dogs away. Then she accidentally ran over the cat.
UP AND AWAY
Hours after Michael Antinori miraculously walked away from a helicopter crash on June 3, 2002, he climbed into his single-engine plane and took off. Shortly thereafter, the plane went down. He died on impact.
SEW TOUGH
At Albion State Prison, a new class is being offered to inmates. Guards say it has become so popular among the most violent criminals that there is a waiting list to sign up. What’s the subject of the class? Quilting.
LAW AND ORDER
• Chris Axworthy, Saskatchewan’s justice minister, was getting fed up with the car-theft problem in his hometown of Regina so he called a committee meeting to announce a government crack-down on car thieves. When he left his home to go to the meeting, he found that his Chrysler Intrepid had been stolen.
• Two plainclothes German police officers were making their way through a crowd of protesters to meet up with some uniformed cops. But the uniforms met them halfway and beat the two with nightsticks. The bruised officers are suing the department.
Q: What color are Green Cards (U.S. permanent resident I.D.’s)? A: Surprise! They’re yellow.
• Love Your Neighbor Corp. of Michigan recently sued Love Thy Neighbor Fund of Florida for trademark infringement.
OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD
Robert Young Pelton wrote a book called The World’s Most Dangerous Places. In chapter 23 he states that “the most likely place to be kidnapped is Colombia.” After the book was released, Pelton traveled to the South American country on a writing assignment for Adventure magazine…and was abducted by a paramilitary group. (He was later released.)
ROCK AND ROLE
Some Hawaiians are questioning the decision to cast wrestler/actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in the lead role for a new movie about Hawaiian king Kamehameha I. What’s wrong with that? It turns out The Rock is part Samoan, and historically, Samoans are fierce enemies of the Hawaiians.
LADIES’ MAN
Johnny Hamilton gives $400,000 a year to women’s shelters, scholarships, and feminist charities in Michigan. He is the owner of a topless bar in Detroit.
LOVE AND MARRIAGE
• A 21-year-old man from Rockville, Maryland, was arrested for peeping into a ladies’ restroom stall while he was at the county courthouse. He was there to pick up his new marriage license.
• Anne Jonsson of Stockholm, Sweden, viciously attacked her husband, Lars. She fractured his skull, broke his nose, and gave him various cuts and bruises. What did Lars do to deserve all this? He refused to take her to a rally against domestic violence.
FALSE ADVERTISING
After falling short of its projected profits, Success magazine declared bankruptcy in 1999.
* * *
“My mother never saw the irony of calling me a son-of-a-bitch.”
—Richard Jeni
Prior to 1953, the slogan of L&M cigarettes was “just what the doctor ordered.”
SORRY (NOT REALLY)
Uncle John once called the BRI researcher who worked on this article “a big dummy.” He now regrets making that remark. Here are some other insincere apologies the big dummy dug up for us.
BUSH LEAGUE
Who Said It: Presidential candidate George W. Bush
Slip of the Lip: Just before a speech in Illinois during
the 2000 campaign, then-Governor Bush leaned over to his running mate, Dick Cheney. “There’s Adam Clymer,” he said, “major league a**hole from The New York Times.” Cheney responded, “Big time.” Problem: They were speaking near a live microphone. Members of the press heard the slur, and soon most of the world did, too.
Insincere Apology: When questioned about it, Cheney refused to comment. Asked later that day whether he would be apologizing, Governor Bush said, “I regret people heard the comments.”
YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN’T HYDE
Who Said It: Alec Baldwin
Slip of the Lip: In 1998 on NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Baldwin was asked about the ongoing impeachment trial of President Clinton. Speaking about one of the leaders of the impeachment movement, Rep. Henry Hyde, Baldwin went on a rant. “If we were in another country we would stone Henry Hyde to death! We would stone him to death!” He added that, “We would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and we’d kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families.”
Insincere Apology: Baldwin’s publicist denied it was anything more than a big joke. The tirade was just “a parody on the hysteria in this country coming from right-wing fanatics.”
SETTING AN EXAMPLE
Who Said It: Reverend Jerry Falwell
Slip of the Lip: On CBS’s 60 Minutes in October 2002, he said, “I think Muhammad was a terrorist,” adding, “Jesus set the example for love, as did Moses. Muhammad set an opposite example.” Outraged religious leaders around the world demanded an apology.
Emily Warner of Frontier Airlines was the first woman to pilot a commercial jet in 1973.
Insincere Apology: “I sincerely apologize that certain statements of mine were hurtful to the feelings of many Muslims,” he said. “I intended no disrespect to any sincere, law-abiding Muslim.”
THE DOCTOR IS OUT
Who Said It: Talk show host “Dr. Laura” Schlessinger
Slip of the Lip: She called homosexuals “deviants” and “biological errors” numerous times on her radio show.
Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader Page 36