Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Zipper Accidents (11 page)

Mitsubishi marketed its rugged, terrain-punishing Montero sport utility vehicle in Spain under the name
Pajero.
That word means “self-abusing” in Spanish, with Mitsubishi’s marketing department thinking it implied a car that can take a beating from the elements. In Spain, the word’s meaning is more akin to “self-pleasuring.”

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In 2011 Elmer’s Glue debuted an all-in-one caulking gun and caulk: the
Squeez ‘N’ Caulk.

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The name of a plastic contraption that saves half-smoked cigarettes for later? The
Butt Buddy.

The Nintendo DS is a handheld, touch-screen video game unit. In 2005 a Korean software company released an interactive DS dictionary program for kids called
Touch Dic.

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The Swedish furniture chain IKEA names most of its products after Swedish words. For example, the
FARTFULL
workbench.

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If insects are a bother on your visit to Australia, just buy a bottle of
Wack Off!
repellent.

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When a Nigerian staterun oil company started a joint venture with the Russian energy company Gazprom, they merged the words “Nigeria” with “Gazprom” and unfortunately got…
Nigaz.

In the late 1970s, one of the leading diet products was a “reducing system” consisting of vitamins and an appetite suppressant candy. It’s name:
AYDS.
(Once the AIDS health crisis hit, AYDS was done for.)

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Like most grocery stores, Australia’s Golden Circle chain has a line of store-brand products. One of those is a root beer-like, sarsaparilla beverage, which it calls
SARS.
That’s also the name of a virus that killed nearly 800 people in a 2003 outbreak.

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Belgian chocolatier Meurisse sells a nut-filled chocolate bar called
Big Nuts.

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A
BC got into the late-night comedy talk show game in February 2003. Competing with well-established comics Jay Leno on NBC and David Letterman on CBS, ABC offered Jimmy Kimmel, a radio veteran and host of
The Man Show
and
Win Ben Stein’s Money
on Comedy Central. Producers planned a variety of ways to make
Jimmy Kimmel Live
different from the other guys, such as having a new guest co-host every week, airing the show live, and, to encourage a party atmosphere, serving alcohol to the studio audience, just as had been done on
The Man Show
.

Jimmy Kimmel Live
debuted in the plum post–Super Bowl slot in January 2003. One woman in the audience apparently had a little bit too much to drink, because she threw up on her chair, just a few seats over from a network executive. After only one episode serving booze to the audience, ABC pulled
Jimmy Kimmel Live
’s liquor license. (Which is to say nothing of some other first-episode highlights, such as guest Snoop Dogg repeatedly flipping the bird to the camera, and guest George Clooney passing around a bottle of vodka onstage.)

I
t had already been snowing for more than a week when the University of Connecticut basketball team beat Massachusetts 56–49 at the Hartford Civic Center Coliseum on January 18, 1978. After the game, while 5,000 fans piled out into the snow, the coliseum’s roof, a marvel of steel-truss engineering, was holding up 10 days’ worth of accumulated snow and ice. Five hours later, it collapsed.

The roof, one of the first designed with computer-aided software, had a flaw. But it wasn’t the computer’s fault. The error came when the coliseum’s architects had to transcribe the calculations into blueprints for the builders. At the time of the collapse, sections of the roof were overloaded by 852 percent. Amazingly, no one was hurt.

Rebuilding the coliseum—it reopened two years later and is now the XL Center—cost $75 million, not counting the millions lost by nearby businesses who relied on revenue from basketball and hockey fans.

I
n February 2008, a ground crew was preparing a B-2 stealth bomber for takeoff at a U.S. Air Force base in Guam. They noticed odd readings coming from three sensors that relay information to the flight computer. Unfortunately, this particular crew hadn’t heard about an “unofficial fix” for the problem: sending a blast of hot air through the system to evaporate any moisture on the sensors. Instead, they recalibrated the sensors and cleared the plane for takeoff. But as it sped down the runway, the moisture evaporated.

Result:
The sensors sent incorrect data to the computer. “The pressure differences were miniscule,” said Maj. Gen. Floyd Carpenter, “but they were enough to confuse the flight control system.” As the plane lifted off, the pilots thought they were traveling at 158 knots but were actually only going about 124 knots.

The plane immediately stalled; the pilots ejected as the left wing dragged against the ground…right before the $1.2 billion bomber erupted in a huge fireball.

•
  
“I was driving along the motorway when the police pulled me over onto the hard shoulder. Unfortunately I was in the middle lane and there was another car in the way.”

•
  
“The accident happened because I had one eye on the lorry in front, one eye on the pedestrian, and the other on the car behind.”

•
  
“I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law, and headed over the embankment.”

•
  
“I saw a slow-moving, sad-faced old gentleman as he bounced off the roof of my car.”

•
  
“In an attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.”

•
  
“I was thrown from my car as it left the road. I was later found in a ditch by some stray cows.”

•
  
“Going to work this morning I drove out of my drive straight into a bus. The bus was five minutes early.”

•
  
“The accident was caused by me waving to the man I hit last week.”

•
  
“The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.”

D
arkest desert.
In 2006 Amir Peretz was appointed defense minister of Israel, a controversial and unpopular choice, as Peretz didn’t have a military background. Suspicions about his lack of expertise were confirmed decisively in February 2007. On a surveying trip with his chief of staff, the chief kept pointing out things for Peretz to look at. Photographers captured Peretz nodding as he acknowledged whatever he saw when he looked out of a pair of binoculars, which would have been hard, because the lens caps were still on.

Drawing a blank.
During the 2005 election, leaders of the UK’s Liberal Party sent out a letter to members of Parliament (MPs) in closely contested districts, playing up the achievements of the party’s recent achievements. It was a form letter that MPs were supposed to personalize before sending out to their constituents. Instead, nine MP offices simply copied the letter whole and sent it out to thousands of homes, without inserting their town names, as per instructions. One excerpt: “And nowhere can we be more proud than here in.”