Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Zipper Accidents (22 page)

HUGH JASSMAN.
Australian-born Hollywood star Hugh Jackman was visiting his home country in April 2009 when he tweeted, “Having lunch on the harbor across from the Opera Center. Loving life!” Several of Jackman’s Australian fans called foul: “Harbor” is spelled “harbour” in Australia, and “center” is spelled “centre.” Jackman initially made things worse by blaming the mistakes on his smartphone’s auto-correct spelling function—but his fans called foul again: Even if he had spelled “centre” correctly, it’s not called the Opera Centre—it’s the Opera House. Jackman finally admitted that he hadn’t made the tweets—a staffer back in Los Angeles had. He apologized for lying.

YOU’RE HIRED! YOU’RE FIRED!
In February 2009, someone with the Twitter handle “@theconnor” posted a tweet celebrating—sort of—a new job: “Cisco just offered me a job!” @theconnor wrote. “Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.” A short while later Tim Lavad—a Cisco employee—responded: “Who is the hiring manager? I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work.” The exchange went viral, and the person Twitter users dubbed “Cisco Fatty” was mocked mercilessly by thousands of twitterers before the tweet was finally deleted and the account made private. “Cisco Fatty” was later revealed to be 22-year-old Connor Riley, a student at the University of California, Berkeley. She admitted that Cisco had indeed learned about her errant tweet—and had rescinded the job offer. “I should have been a little bit more careful,” she said.

WHAT A BOOB!
In November 2011, Dean McDermott, husband of actress Tori Spelling, took a photo of the couple’s five-year-old son with a silly sticker on his face and posted it for his 80,000 Twitter followers. And they started retweeting the photo like crazy. Why? McDermott had failed to notice that his wife’s naked breasts were plainly visible in the photo’s background. McDermott deleted the tweet not much later, but it was too late. An embarrassed Spelling later told CNN that it had been an honest accident: “I am a mom, I was nursing my baby,” she said. (The couple had just had their third child a month earlier.)

M
ower riding:
Floyd Malacek tried to jump the Lac qui Parle River in Minnesota while riding on lawn mower. It’s a 40-foot jump. Malacek missed…by 35 feet.

Live burial:
On April 1, 1977, Robert Mannah had himself buried in a box underground, intending to stay for 102 days in order to claim the world record for a live burial. On day 102 he emerged, only to find out that he made a miscalculation— the record was 217 days, not 101. He also found out that Guinness had long since discontinued the live-burial category because it was too dangerous.

Assembly of Smurfs:
In 2008, 395 Croatians gathered together, painted their faces blue, and donned long-sleeved blue shirts, white pants, and white caps to set the record for “most Smurfs gathered together at one time.” Official photos were taken and sent to Guinness for inclusion and certification in the next book of world records. After all, they had smashed the previous record (it existed) of 291 human-Smurfs. However, they hadn’t done very good research, because in late 2007, students at Warwick University in England had also smashed the record, as well as the Croatians’ attempt: 451 Smurfs. “We read on the Internet that the record was 290 people held by a group of Americans, and decided to beat it. We could easily have got more Smurfs, but we thought that over a hundred more than the American record would be enough,” said a dejected, or downright blue, Croatian Smurf.

Staying awake:
Tony Wright of Cornwell set what he thought was a world record for sleeplessness by a two-hour margin, when in 2007, he stayed awake for 266 hours. Then he found out that his research had been wrong, and someone else had set a record of 276 hours. And then he found out that Guinness no longer lists records for sleep deprivation.

Coconut smashing:
In 2008, a Danish man wanted to set the world record for opening coconuts with his bare hands. He planned a public record-breaking ceremony in Copenhagen, and invited a TV crew and representatives from Guinness. The man stood in front of a table stocked with a row of 20 coconuts. The timer went off and off he went, chopping at the coconuts with only his hand. He missed the first one completely. The second one he hit, and it didn’t crack. Same thing with the next eight coconuts. At that point, the man gave up, fairly certain he’d broken his hand. Number of coconuts busted open: zero.

I
n late 17th-century France, Jean-Baptiste Lully was King Louis XIV’s favorite dancer and composer…until he “baroque” his foot. Lully was one of the first composers to lead an orchestra with a baton. But this wasn’t like today’s tiny batons, waved all about. A baton back then was a really big stick—six feet long with a brass point on the bottom, more like a staff—that the conductor would pound on the floor to help the musicians keep time.

One night in 1687, during a celebratory performance (the king had just recovered from a long illness), Lully was exuberantly banging his big stick on the floor over and over while the orchestra played. He got so caught up in the moment that he stabbed his big toe with the baton. Lully screamed in pain as the crowd recoiled in horror. The performance came to an abrupt end. But not Lully: His wound was bad, but survivable. The king’s doctors, noting that gangrene would soon spread upward from the abscess, attempted to amputate Lully’s toe. But the composer protested (he was a dancer, too, after all), and fought off the doctors and their saws. The gangrene spread, and Lully died a slow, painful death.

C
ocaine, a powdered extract of the coca leaf, has been used as a recreational drug for more than a century. It makes users incredibly alert, but it also makes their hearts beat faster, potentially leading to stroke, heart attack, or sudden death. In the 1970s and ’80s, it gained popularity as a sexual-enhancement drug—people wouldn’t just ingest it, they would rub it on or inject it into their genitals to concentrate the drug’s powerful effects.

In a report in a 1988 issue of the
Journal of the American Medical Association
, three doctors wrote about an (unnamed) man who experienced the worst cocaine side effects imaginable (death may or may not be worse). The 34-year-old New York City man told doctors that on occasion, he injected a cocaine solution directly into his urethra through the tip of his penis. It had no ill effects, until he did it before a romantic encounter in June 1987. Afterward, his erection didn’t go away for three days (a medical condition called priapism). He sought medical attention, and doctors were able to drain his penis of blood.

The problem was that the blood went inward, not outward. The blood, full of cocaine and bacteria, coursed throughout his body. From there it coagulated under the man’s skin, leading to blood clots in his genitals, arms, legs, back, and chest, and gangrene in his legs, fingers, and penis. Twelve days later, doctors had to amputate both of the man’s legs, nine fingers…and his penis.

I
t’s one of the most famous parts of one of the most popular movies of all time. In the 1982 blockbuster
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,
Elliott (Henry Thomas) lures the alien out of a hiding place with a trail of bite-size Reese’s candies.

It wasn’t the first-ever instance of “product placement,” but it’s certainly among the most high-profile, and it put the practice on the radar of the general public. What’s more is that it worked—in June 1982, shortly after the release of the movie, sales of Reese’s Pieces went up by 65 percent.

The loser in the story: Mars candy company. Producers of
E.T.
went to Mars first, wanting Elliott’s candy of choice to be M&M’s. Despite the fact that the movie looked like it was going to be a hit—and Steven Spielberg was directing it—Mars turned down the chance to pay to put M&M’s in the film. Why? The company had already allocated its entire advertising budget for the year.