Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (23 page)

The Bible doesn't say when Jesus was born, but many historians think it was in April. So why is Christmas celebrated on December 25? One possible reason:
Mithras
. Mithras was a Persian diety known as The Conquering Sun, and his birthday was traditionally celebrated at the winter solstice in late December. Mithraism and Christianity were both becoming popular in the Mediterranean region at about the same time. But early Christians were determined to prevail, so they adopted December 25 as the date of the Nativity. By the third or fourth century A.D., the already popular day was firmly entrenched as Christmas.

In April 2002, a Veterans of Foreign Wars group in Utah issued a resolution demanding that the date of Earth Day be changed. Why? April 22 is former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin's birthdate. The group refused to celebrate on the birthday of “the godless master of manipulation, misinformation, and murder.”

Not only that, members claim the day was chosen intentionally and that former Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day, is a communist sympathizer. “He voted against funding the Vietnam War,” said one post commander.

The 86-year-old Nelson says it was a coincidence. “Several million people were born on any day of the year. Does the VFW want to change it to another day on which, undoubtedly, some really evil person was born? Hitler? Mussolini? Genghis Khan?”

Another April 22 birthday: St. Francis of Assisi.

We're constantly finding stories about amazing coincidences, so in this
Bathroom Reader,
Uncle John listed a few of his favorites.

While eating dinner at Notting Hill Gate restaurant in 1992, a London publisher had her car broken into. One of the things taken from the car was a manuscript she had been reading and found extremely promising. Apparently the thieves weren't interested in literature, though—they threw the manuscript over a fence while driving away. On Monday morning she was desperately trying to come up with a way to explain how she lost the manuscript when the author called. Before she got a chance to apologize, the author asked, “Why did you have my manuscript thrown over my front fence?”

During the 1988 Olympic games in Seoul, South Korea, Karen Lord of Australia and Manuella Carosi of Italy swam in different heats of the women's 100-meter backstroke. Both finished with times of exactly one minute 4.69 seconds, tying them for 16th place. Only one swimmer could hold a lane in the consolation final, so Lord and Carosi were forced to swim again. Amazingly, after the swim-off the officials reported the times were exactly the same, one minute 5.05 seconds. Officials decided that the two had to swim yet one more time. At the end of the unprecedented third consecutive race Carosi was declared the winner. Her time: one minute 4.62 seconds. Lord's time: one minute 4.75 seconds—13 hundredths of a second behind.

In 1893 Henry Ziegland of Texas jilted his fiancé, and she killed herself over it. Her brother swore revenge. He took his gun and went after Ziegland, shot him in the face and then turned the gun on himself. But the bullet only grazed Ziegland and then got
lodged in a tree. Twenty years later, Ziegland was removing the tree that had the bullet buried in it, using dynamite to make the job easier. The explosion blasted the bullet out of the tree…striking Ziegland in the head and killing him.

In 1977 Vincent Johnson and Frazier Black broke into the Austin, Texas, home of Mr. and Mrs. David Conner and stole two TVs and a checkbook. A few hours later, the two men showed up at a local bank with a check made out to themselves for $200. When they asked the teller to cash it for them, she asked them to wait a minute, and then called security. Why? The bank teller was Mrs. David Conner.

Brenda Rawson became engaged to Christopher Firth in 1961. He gave her a diamond ring, but she lost it while they were on vacation in Lancashire, England. In 1979 she was talking to her husband's cousin, John. For some reason the conversation turned to metal detectors and John mentioned that 18 years earlier, one of his kids had discovered a diamond ring near Lancashire. It was her ring.

In 1971 Mrs. Willard Lovell of Berkeley, California, accidentally locked herself out of the house. She had spent 10 minutes trying to find a way in again when the postman arrived with a letter for her from her brother, who'd been staying with her a few weeks earlier. The letter contained a spare key to the house, which he had borrowed and forgotten to return.

•
Zucchini
comes from an Italian word meaning “sweetest.”

• The Sanskrit word
naranga
, meaning “fragrant,” gives us our
orange
.

•
Tangerines
were named after the city of Tangier, Morocco, which was well known for the fruit.

These days, it seems that people will sue each other over practically anything. Here are a few real-life examples of unusual legal battles involving celebrities.

T
HE PLAINTIFF:
Singer/composer Tom Waits

THE DEFENDANT:
Frito-Lay

THE LAWSUIT:
In 1988 Frito-Lay ran radio commercials featuring a singer with a raspy, gravelly voice that sounded amazingly like Waits. He had already been approached to do commercials by the same ad agency…and refused. So they used an impersonator. Waits sued for “voice misappropriation,” claiming the idea that he would use his music to sell Doritos sullied his reputation with his fans.
THE VERDICT:
Waits won. In 1992 he collected $2.4 million, the first-ever punitive award involving a celebrity soundalike.

THE PLAINTIFF:
John Hartman, former Doobie Brother

THE DEFENDANT:
Petaluma, California, Police Department

THE LAWSUIT:
He left the band to join the force, then left the force to rejoin the band. When he wanted to get back on the force in 1994, the former drummer was turned down. So he sued for discrimination, claiming that he should be classified as disabled because he'd done so many drugs in the early 1970s.

THE VERDICT:
He lost. The judge ruled that Hartman hadn't done enough drugs to qualify as disabled.

THE PLAINTIFFS:
James and Laurie Ryan

THE DEFENDANTS:
MTV, Las Vegas's Hard Rock Hotel, and actor Ashton Kutcher

THE LAWSUIT:
Mr. and Mrs. Ryan walked into their room at the Hard Rock Hotel and discovered a mutilated corpse in the bathroom. Horrified, they tried to flee, but two “security guards” and a “paramedic” forced them back into the room. After some time, Kutcher came in and told them the whole thing was a joke, a prank staged for the MTV series
Harassment
. The Ryans didn't think it was funny and sued for $10 million in damages.

THE VERDICT:
Pending.

THE PLAINTIFF:
Hollywood producer Steve Bing

THE DEFENDANT:
Movie-studio mogul Kirk Kerkorian

THE LAWSUIT:
Kerkorian's ex-wife, Lisa Bonder, sued for $320,000
a month
in child support for their four-year-old daughter. Billionaire Kerkorian claimed he couldn't possibly be the father—he was sterile. He also said he had proof that the real father was Bonder's ex-boyfriend, multimillionaire Bing. How did he know? His private detectives had collected DNA evidence—they went through Bing's garbage and found some used dental floss. Probability that Bing's the dad: 99.993%. Bing sued for invasion of privacy, asking a staggering $1 billion in damages.

THE VERDICT:
They settled quietly and the suit was dropped.

THE PLAINTIFF:
Florence Henderson

THE DEFENDANT:
Serial Killer Inc.

THE LAWSUIT:
Henderson, the actress who played Carol Brady on the TV show
The Brady Bunch,
sued clothing maker Serial Killer Inc. in 1999 when they put out a T-shirt that showed her picture with the caption “Porn Queen.” The suit called the caption “highly offensive…and false.”

THE VERDICT:
Serial Killer pulled all the offending merchandise out of stores the day after the suit was filed. No word on the outcome of the suit.

THE PLAINTIFFS:
Anna Kournikova, Judith Soltesz-Benetton

THE DEFENDANT:
Penthouse
magazine

THE LAWSUIT:
Penthouse
published photos it claimed were of the famous Russian tennis player bathing topless. Kournikova denied it was her and threatened to sue. But the magazine's editors said they had studied the photos in “painstaking detail” and refused to back down. It seemed
Penthouse
might win until Soltesz-Benetton (of the Benetton clothing family) came forward and said
she
was the woman in the photos…and then filed a $10 million lawsuit.

THE VERDICT:
Penthouse
settled with Soltesz-Benetton out of court. But that's not the end: Kournikova's suing, too. Will that put the struggling magazine out of business for good? Verdict pending.

Premature death seems almost like an occupational hazard among rock stars. But that doesn't make fans—or conspiracy theorists—any less suspicious, particularly in the case of suicide. And this one seems more suspicious than most.

T
he Deceased:
Kurt Cobain, leader of Seattle grunge band Nirvana. Gained notoriety with the 1991 angst-filled anthem “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

How He Died:
On April 8, 1994, an electrician spotted Cobain's dead body lying on the floor of a greenhouse room above the detached garage at the musician's Seattle residence. Police determined that Cobain had injected himself with heroin, then stuck a shotgun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. Near the body they found a “suicide note.” According to media reports, Cobain's wallet, open to his driver's license, was next to the body, ostensibly to make identification easier after the blast to the head.

To the police (and most of the media), it looked like a clear case of another rock star destroyed by his demons. But did the police overlook evidence that might point to a different conclusion?

• At the time Cobain was shot, he had three times the lethal dose of heroin in his blood. According to experts, even an addict like Cobain would be comatose with that level of the drug in his body, incapable of positioning a gun and pulling the trigger. Cobain had two fresh needle marks, one on each arm. Did he inject himself twice? If he was intent on committing suicide, why didn't he just let the overdose do its work? Or were the second injection and the shotgun blast the work of someone else?