Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader (23 page)

WHAT HAPPENED:
The bomb was programmed to explode at 3:00 a.m. on the last night of the conference. It was assumed that Thatcher would be in bed. She might have been, too, had her speechwriters done a better job preparing the speech she was to deliver the next day. But at 3:00 a.m. she was still working on it. Just moments after she left of her room, the powerful bomb ripped through the hotel, destroying much of the building…including part of Thatcher’s suite. By then, however, she was in another part of the hotel, unharmed.

Five people, including a member of Parliament, were killed in the blast and 30 more were injured. Authorities speculated that the death toll would have been much higher had so many officials not been downstairs in the hotel bar.

Hostess Twinkies are 68% air.

WEIRD CANADA

Canada: land of beautiful mountains, clear lakes, bustling cities…and some really weird news reports. Here are some of the oddest entries from the BRI news file.

W
HO WOULD HAVE SUSPECTED?

In April 2001, police in Vancouver, British Columbia, ended a three-year crime spree when they arrested 64-year-old Eugene Mah and his 32-year-old son, Avery. The Mahs had been stealing assorted lawn and garden items from homes in their neighborhood, including garbage cans, lawn decorations, recycling boxes, and realty signs. Why did they steal them? Nobody knows. Eugene Mah is a real estate tycoon worth a reported $13 million. One local psychiatrist said the thefts may be due to an obsessive-compulsive hoarding disorder. They reportedly stole a neighbor’s doormat…and each of the 14 other doormats the neighbor bought as replacements.

BEAVER FEVER!

In June 2003, two disc jockeys in Toronto caused a SARS panic—in the Dominican Republic. Z103.5 Morning Show hosts Scott Fox and Dave Blezard thought it would be funny to call the resort where their co-worker, Melanie Martin, was vacationing. They told the desk clerk that Martin had smuggled a “rare Canadian beaver” into their country. But the desk clerk, who didn’t speak much English, thought he’d heard the word “fever.” With SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) being big news at the time and Toronto being one of the cities where the disease had spread, the clerk panicked—and locked the woman in her room. The entire hotel wasn’t quarantined, according to the station’s news manager, but staff were at the point of contacting medical authorities when the disc jockeys finally convinced them that it was all a misunderstanding. Martin was released from her room that afternoon.

COMING IN FOR A LANDING

Lucette St. Louis, a 66-year-old woman from Corbeil, Ontario, was rounding up three runaway pigs owned by her son, Marc, when she became the victim of a bizarre accident. One of the 180-pound pigs had wandered into the road and a passing car hit it. The impact sent the pig airborne, landing on top of Mrs. St. Louis and breaking her leg in two places. “Well, at least,” she said, “I can tell my grandchildren that pigs really do fly.”

Ale to thee: The ancient Sumerians had a goddess of beer.

DEATH MERCHANT

Roman Panchyshyn, a 47-year-old Winnipeg retailer, upset some of his fellow residents when he started selling $65 sweatshirts that read “Winnipeg, Murder Capital of Canada—Escape The Fear” in his store. The shirts showed the city skyline dripping in blood. “We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly to promote Winnipeg to the world,” complained City Councillor Harry Lazarenko, “and I don’t want this to give us a black eye.” So he contacted the premier to see if Panchyshyn could be stopped. He couldn’t—the shirts are accurate. Winnipeg has the highest murder rate in Canada. Said the unapologetic Panchyshyn, “The truth hurts.”

WEIRD CANADIAN RECORDS

• On August 30, 1995, Sean Shannon of Canada recited Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy in 23.8 seconds—an average of 655 words a minute.

• On August 17, 1991, 512 dancers of the Royal Scottish Dance Society (Toronto branch) set the record for the largest genuine Scottish country dance (a reel).

• In 1988 Palm Dairies of Edmonton created the world’s largest ice cream sundae—24,900 kg. (54,895 lbs.).

• In 1993 the Kitchener-Waterloo Hospital Auxiliary filled a bowl with 2,390 kg (5,269 lbs.) of strawberries.

• Four hundred mothers in Vancouver broke the record for mass breast feeding in 2002.

• In Feb. 2000, 1,588 couples at the Sarnia Sports Centre broke the record for most kissing in one place at one time.

• Dave Pearson holds the record for clearing all 15 balls from a standard pool table in 26.5 seconds at Pepper’s Bar in Windsor, Ontario, in 1997.

• In 1998 1,000 University of Guelph students formed the longest human conveyor belt, laying down in a row and rolling a surfboard over their bodies. In 1999 they set the record for simultaneous soap-bubble blowing.

A regulation tennis ball must weigh between 2 and 2
ounces.

FILE UNDER “UNDERWEAR”

Here at the BRI, we believe it’s important to keep up with world events…especially when they involve underpants.

G
ERMANY

• BERLIN—In July 2003, a group of naked men riding in a van on the autobahn caused a traffic accident. One of the men tossed his underpants out of the window of the van, striking the driver of a Volkswagen Passat in the face. The underpants blocked the Passat driver’s view, causing him to slam into the truck in front of him. There were no injuries. At last report, “police were hunting the owner of the underpants for leaving the scene of an accident.”

• MUNICH—In June 1999, a policeman was severely disciplined for stripping off his clothes at work and exercising in his underwear late in the day when he thought he was alone in the station. Wrong—a female officer saw him and reported him for sexual harassment. “I had no idea anybody else was still in the office,” the man explained, telling the court that he stripped out of his clothes because he sweats a lot. The court docked his pay 12.5% for the next
five years.
Total amount of the fine: about $53,000.

MALAYSIA

KUALA LUMPUR—Malaysian police arrested Doomsday cult leader Petrus Ratu Doren, self-described “holiest of them all,” after he predicted that the end of the world would come in October 1995 and that his followers could protect themselves by wearing their underpants on their heads. In custody, Doren admitted that he made the whole thing up “because he wanted fame and power.”

Police rounded up more than 200 of Doren’s followers, who fled into the jungle with their weapons (and their underpants) to await the end of the world. “We want to get to the root of the matter about this guy who has used the name of God in vain,” police told reporters. “Especially that bit on underwear.”

Shhh! Great white sharks can hear sounds from over a mile away.

THAILAND

BANGKOK—In January 2003, fifty-eight college students were arrested at Bangkok’s Ramkhamhaeng University for hiding pagers in their underpants and using them to cheat on a final exam. The pagers were set to vibrate the correct answers on the multiple choice test: one buzz if the first choice was correct, two buzzes if the second choice was correct, etc. Four teachers were also arrested and charged with helping the students cheat. Illegal use of a pager is a serious crime in Thailand; if convicted, each of the conspirators faces two years in prison and a $2,300 fine.

CHINA

HONG KONG—In December 2002, a 45-year-old man was fined the equivalent of $128 for making hundreds of crank calls to the local fire station over a period of more than five years. According to court records, each time a firefighter answered the phone, the man—whose name was not released—asked him “if he’d put on his underpants.”

ENGLAND

LONDON—Police searching the apartment of an underwear thief in September 1998 discovered a cache of more than 10,000 stolen bras, underpants, and leotards piled four feet high in the man’s tiny one-room flat. Police arrested the man as he was stealing even more underwear from a clothesline. According to news reports, at the time of his arrest the 37-year-old suspect was wearing “a stolen swimsuit and someone else’s pants.”

MEXICO

MEXICO CITY—In June 2003, dozens of farmers from the province of Veracruz staged a protest by stripping down to their underpants in front of a national monument on one of Mexico City’s busiest streets. The farmers were protesting the policies of former Veracruz governor Patricio Chirinos, whom they accused of unjust land seizures. Why protest in underpants? “Stripping is the only way to get attention,” farmer Agustín Morales explained. “We don’t have money to buy an ad in the newspapers.”

Sing along: There are 158 verses in the Greek national anthem.

RISE OF THE MACHINES

We’re not saying they’re about to take over, but robots
are
becoming more integral to our world all the time. Here are some innovative ways they are being used today.

N
ame:
ROBOP

Profile:
Garry O’Hagan, manager of the Easter Roads Stadium in Scotland, was fed up with invading flocks of pigeons. They fouled the seats, annoyed the fans, and sometimes even disrupted play on the field. He wanted to find a humane way to get rid of the unwanted birds, so O’Hagan hired a pest-control expert who spent nine months developing Robop, an electronic robot peregrine falcon. But pigeons aren’t easily fooled by most fake falcons, so this one was designed to flap its wings, move its head, and utter a realistic screech. It works. Robop now stands guard over the stadium and scares the pigeons away.

Name:
ROBONAUT

Profile:
Still in the design stages at NASA, this humanoid figure looks like something out of
Star Wars
. Slated to take on the most dangerous extravehicular jobs on the International Space Station, Robonaut will be run by “telepresence,” a virtual-reality system controlled by astronauts in the station. How will they do it? They’ll don a special suit to maneuver the robots: every movement the astronaut makes, Robonaut will make, too.

Name:
ROBORAT

Profile:
Engineers have been trying to build small robots that can navigate through rubble to find disaster victims, without much success. Meanwhile, rats have shown that they have the brains and agility to perform search missions—but only in a laboratory setting. Let them outside the lab, and the rats do pretty much whatever they want.

So physiologists at the University of New York have combined the best of both worlds to create RoboRat, a cyborg (part animal, part machine) rodent that will go anywhere it’s told. A tiny backpack carries a miniature video camera; tiny electrodes go into its brain. A human controller can guide RoboRat with a laptop computer, sending signals directly to the pleasure center of the rat’s brain. The scientists are surprised how easily this is done—they’ve even been able to get them to climb trees, something most rats don’t do.

What is
ichthyosis
? A disease that gives human skin the appearance of fish scales.

Name:
THE MILKER

Profile:
Taking the farmer out of farming, all that this fully automatic machine requires is a cow. Once a cow gets to the milking station, she “spends a few minutes munching grain while the robot’s quietly moving parts prod at the animal’s udders.” First, a laser finds the cow’s teats, then a roller disinfects them. After that comes the “milking claw”—an apparatus with long, white suction cups. The robot is self-cleaning and will even call itself in for repairs.

Name:
MONROE

Profile:
It’s easy for humans, but tough for robots. What is it? Walking. It’s taken 30 years of experimentation—with a lot of trips and falls along the way—but the persistence has paid off: biped walking robots are here. One such leggy bot named Monroe (after Marilyn Monroe) has been developed by the Mechatronics Design Laboratory in Japan. Each of Monroe’s legs has a hip joint, a knee joint, an ankle joint, and a toe joint. A complex system of sensors and gyros helps it maintain balance. The lab is also working on robots that can run and jump. Their ultimate goal: an android—an autonomous robot that can walk, talk, see, and manipulate objects with its hands.

Name:
CYBERFLORA

Profile:
“So many robots are seen only as mechanical drones that do physical labor,” says Cynthia Breazeal, a professor of arts and sciences at the MIT Media Lab. “I wanted to communicate a more humane vision of technology.” So she created cyberflora. Her futuristic garden consists of “flowers” that are actually metal skeletons fitted with silicon and electronic sensors capable of reacting to light and body heat. To walk among them is a completely unique experience. These robotic blossoms change colors, sway in the wind, and open their buds to capture light. And in addition to producing sweet odors, some also emit soft, ambient music for those patient enough to stop and…listen to the flowers.