Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (62 page)

PRESENTING…THE FEJEE MERMAID

Background:
In 1842 P.T. Bamum began displaying the body of what he claimed was an actual mermaid, which he said had been found by sailors near the faraway island of “Feejee.” (That’s how Barnum spelled Fiji.) He put the mermaid on display in August 1842, printing up more than 10,000 handbills, leading up to opening day.

What Happened:
The “mermaid,” one of the biggest hoaxes of Barnum’s long career, was actually “an ingenious sewing together of a large fish’s body and tail with the head, shoulders, arms, and rather pendulous breasts of a female orangutan and the head of a baboon.” But it did the trick—at the peak of New York’s “mermaid fever,” ticket sales at Barnum’s Museum hit nearly $1,000 a week. “In truth, by the close of 1843,” says a biographer, “with the help of…a dried up old mermaid, Barnum had become the most famous showman in America.”

Every sport has its own language. Here’s a bit of basketball lingo, inspired by the book
How to Talk Basketball,
by Sam Goldpaper and Arthur Pincus.

Aircraft carrier:
Big gun. Player you bring in to win the battle—a franchise center like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Belly up:
Play tight defense, right up against your opponent.

Brick:
Lousy shot, tossed up with no idea where it’s going. “Usually hits the backboard with a thunk.”

Curtain time:
Point at which there’s no way one of the teams can win. “No miracle is big enough to make it happen.”

East Cupcake:
Hometown of a team’s easiest possible opponent.

Fire the rock:
Shoot well, as in “John Stark can fire the rock.”

French pastry:
Making an easy shot look tough and a tough shot look tougher.

Garbage man:
Player who only seems to score when unguarded.

Garbage time:
End of the game, when players just toss the ball up “without any pattern, grace, or apparent skill.” (See
Curtain Time.)

Hatchet man:
Heavy fouler, often the one who goes after the opponent’s star player to take him out of the game.

Ice:
“Coolest player on the court,” one who is never fazed.

Kangaroo:
Player who’s such a good jumper you figure he or she must be related to one.

Leather breath:
What players have when a shot has been blocked right back in their face.

Nose bleeders:
Players who jump so high they “can suffer nose bleeds from the change in altitude.”

Shake and bake:
Taking it to the hoop using every move and fake imaginable.

Submarine:
Getting under players after they’ve left their feet for a shot to knock them off-balance.

Suburban jump shot:
Classic shot using perfect form. Used by players who grew up playing a less physical game in suburban gyms.

Three-sixty:
Showy move involving dunking the ball while spinning in a full circle.

Wheel and deal:
Making amazing offensive moves (wheel) and then passing the ball off (deal).

Wilson sandwich:
What players eat when a shot’s blocked back in their face. Other meals: a Spalding sandwich, a Rawlings sandwich, etc.

The Hope Diamond is probably the most famous jewel in the Western world…and it carries with it one of the most famous curses. How much of it is legend, and how much of it is fact? Even historians can’t agree.

B
ACKGROUND

In 1668, a French diamond merchant named Jean-Baptiste Tavernier returned from India with a magnificent 112.5-carat blue diamond. No one knew exactly where he’d found it…but rumors spread that it was stolen from the eye of a sacred Indian idol—and people said it was cursed.

Nonetheless, King Louis XIV bought the Great Blue and added it to his crown jewels. Four years later, he had it re-cut into the shape of a heart (which reduced it to 67.5 carats).

In 1774, the diamond was inherited by Louis XVI. His wife, Marie Antoinette, apparently wore it; she was also said to have loaned it on one occasion to the Princesse de Lamballe.

“When the French Revolution broke out, the Princesse de Lamballe was murdered by a mob and her head paraded under the window where Louis the XVI and his family awaited execution. Marie Antoinette herself was executed in October 1793.”

—The Book of Curses
, by Gordon Stuart

THE HOPE DIAMOND

In 1792, in the midst of the French Revolution, the Great Blue diamond was stolen. It was never seen whole again.

“Thirty years later it emerged in Holland, owned now by an Amsterdam lapidary named Fals. His son stole the diamond and left Fals to die in poverty. After giving it to a Frenchman, named Beaulieu, Fals’s son killed himself. Beaulieu brought it to London, where he died mysteriously.”

—The Book of Curses

In 1830, an oval-shaped blue diamond weighing 44.5 carats turned up in a London auction house. Experts recognized it as a piece of the Great Blue, re-cut to conceal its identity.

A wealthy banker named Henry Philip Hope bought the jewel for about $90,000, and it became known as the Hope Diamond.

WAS IT CURSED?

Hope was warned about the gem’s “sinister inflluence,” but owning it didn’t seem to have any effect on his life. He died peacefully.

However, in the early 1900s terrible things began happening again. Lord Francis Hope, a distant relative who’d inherited it, went bankrupt. Then his marriage fell apart. “His wife prophesied,” says Colin Wilson in
Unsolved Mysteries
, “that it would bring bad luck to all who owned it, and she died in poverty.”

She seemed to know what she was talking about. According to Colin Wilson, over the next few years:

•Lord Francis sold it to a French jewel dealer named Jacques Colot. He ultimately went insane and committed suicide.

•Colot sold it to a Russian prince. He lent it to his mistress, a dancer at the Folies Bergere. The first night she wore it, he shot her from his box in the theater. The prince was reportedly stabbed by Russian revolutionaries.

•A Greek jewel dealer named Simon Manthadides bought it. He later fell (or was pushed) over a precipice.

•A Turkish sultan named Abdul Hamid bought it in 1908. He was forced into exile the following year and went insane.

TEMPTING FATE?

One wonders why anyone would want the diamond at this point. But French jeweler Jacques Cartier took possession. He quickly resold it to Edward McClean (owner of the
Washington Post)
and his wife, Evalyn. A fascinated public watched to see if the “curse” would affect them. Did it?

• According to some accounts, McLean’s mother and two servants in his household died soon after he purchased the jewel.

After her mother-in-law’s death, Evalyn McLean had a priest bless the gem. In her autobiography she writes about the experience: “Just as he blessed
it—without any
wind or rain—this tree right across the street was struck by lightning. My maid
Maggie fainted dead away. The old fellow was scared to death and my knees were shaking. By the time we got home the sun was out, bright as anything.”

—Vanity Fair
magazine

Over the next 30 years, Evalyn McLean’s family was decimated. Her father soon became an alcoholic and died. Her father-in-law went insane. The McLeans’ beloved 10-year-old son, Vinson, was hit and killed by a car in front of their house. Their marriage broke up and Edward McLean went insane; he died in a mental institution. McLean’s daughter Emily—who had worn the Hope Diamond at her wedding—committed suicide.

AFTERMATH

Through all the tragedy and even her own gradual financial ruin, Evalyn McLean scoffed at the “curse.” She continued to wear the Hope Diamond until her death in 1947. Two years later, her children sold it to the famous diamond dealer Harry Winston, to pay estate taxes. He kept it (with no apparent ill effect) until 1958, then decided to give it away. He put it in a box with $2.44 in postage, paid $155 for $1 million insurance, and sent it to the Smithsonian Institution via U.S. mail. “Letters of protest poured in to the museum,” writes Gary Cohen in
Vanity Fair.
“Some reasoned that the curse would be transferred to its new owners—the American people.”

“Within a year, James Todd, the mailman who had delivered the gem, had one of his legs crushed by a truck, injured his head in a car crash, and lost his wife and dog. Then his house burned down. When asked if he blamed his ill fortune on the diamond, he said, ‘I don’t believe any of that stuff.’”

—Vanity Fair
magazine

Today, the diamond is owned by the U.S. government. And we all know what kind of luck the United States has had since 1959.

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WHAT ABOUT LIZ?
It’s widely believed that Elizabeth Taylor once owned the Hope. Not true. She owns a larger diamond, often compared to the Hope, but now known as the Burton Diamond.

We’ve all heard the expression “Don’t believe everything you hear” Here are a few more reasons not to believe everything you read, either. Take a look at these newspaper hoaxes, for example:

B
RITISH SCIENTIST FINDS LIFE ON THE MOON!

(New York Sun,
1835)

The Story:
In 1835 the
Sun
reprinted a series of articles from the
Edinburgh Journal of Science,
based on reports sent in by Sir John Herschel, a respected astronomer. He was at the Cape of Good Hope at the time, trying out a powerful new telescope.

In the first three installments, Herschel wrote that with his super-telescope, he could see amazing things on the moon: lakes, fields of poppies, 38 species of forest trees, herds of buffalo with heavy eyelids, bears with horns, two-footed beavers, etc.

In the fourth installment (August 28,1835), he made the biggest revelation of all: he had seen furry, bat-winged people on the lunar surface. He wrote:

      
They averaged four feet in height, were covered, except in the face, with short and glossy copper colored hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs from the top of their shoulders to the calves of the legs.

He said their faces looked like baboons’ and officially named them “Verspertilio-homo,” or “bat-man.”

Reaction:
People were lined up at newsstands, waiting for the next issue. Rival newspapers claimed to have access to the original
Edinburgh Journal
articles and began reprinting the series. By the fourth installment, the
Sun’s
publisher announced his paper had the largest circulation in the world—about 20,000. A book about the moon discoveries sold more than 60,000 copies. A committee of scientists from Yale University arrived at the offices of the
Sun
to inspect the source writings by Herschel (they were given the runaround until they gave up). One group of society ladies even began raising money to send Christian missionaries there.

The Truth:
There was no
Edinburgh Journal of Science
…and the
Edinburgh Philosophical Journal
(which is what they meant to quote) had gone out of business two years earlier. The whole thing was concocted by a young reporter named Richard Adams Locke, who said later that he’d written it as a “satire on absurd scientific speculations that had gotten out of hand.” When the
Sun’s
editors realized how out of control their scheme had gotten, they admitted it was a fake…and scolded other newspapers for copying the story without giving them credit.

CIVIL WAR WOES: LINCOLN DRAFTS 400,000 MEN!

(Brooklyn Eagle
, May 18, 1864)

The Story:
On the morning of May 18th, two New York newspapers, the
World
and the
Journal of Commerce
, reprinted an Associated Press dispatch in which President Abraham Lincoln, lamenting recent Union setbacks in the Civil War, called for a national day of “fasting, humiliation, and prayer,” and announced the drafting of 400,000 additional troops to fight in the war.

Reaction:
Wall Street was rocked by the pessimistic proclamation: Stock prices plummeted, and gold prices soared as panicked investors looked for safe places to put their money. According to one Lincoln confidant, the story “angered Lincoln more than almost any other occurrence of the war period.”