Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (18 page)

…and other weird achievements that rhyme with “-apper.”

C
LAPPER
. Kent French has beaten his own hand-clapping speed record several times. It’s currently 721 claps in one minute—about 12 per second. Navneet Singh of India set the record for clapping with
one
hand in 2007. Number of single-handed claps: 284 in one minute.

SNAPPER
. Scott Woodson, a teenager from Mountville, Pennsylvania, developed a way to manipulate his joints so that every finger snap becomes three snaps. Woodson holds the record for finger-snapping, with 162 snaps in 10 seconds.

SLAPPER
. At a 2009 event for the World Record Appreciation Society (an organization whose members set mundane records), a man named Lawson Clarke took a record 46 slaps to the face, from 46 different people, in one minute.

RED SNAPPER
. In 1996 Doc Kennedy was fishing in Port Fourchon, Louisiana when he caught a 50 lb., 4 oz., 41-inch red snapper—the largest one on record.

GIFT WRAPPER
. Ann Erickson of Utah won the 2009 “Scotch Brand Most Gifted Wrapper” contest for her speed and accuracy in wrapping a toy helicopter, jigsaw puzzle, bicycle, and sailboat.

RAPPER
. Twista, who had a #1 hit in 2004 with the rapid-fire rap song “Slow Jamz,” made
Guinness World Records
in 1992 for fastest rapper, able to enunciate 11.2 syllables per second.

CRAPPER
. Avant-garde artist Michelle Hines decided in 1995 that she wanted to produce the largest poop possible. Working with nutritionists at the University of Michigan, Hines ate a fiber-rich diet and took fiber supplements for a week before finally producing—on a bowling alley that donated its floor for the event—a turd measuring 26 feet long, the entire length of Hines’ digestive tract. (To prevent any premature evacuations, Hines wore a “plug.”)

Poll results: 53% of women would dump their boyfriend if they didn’t get a Valentine’s Day gift
.

11 GREAT MOMENTS
IN THE HISTORY
OF MADNESS

The world didn’t become crazy in a day. It took eons of war, famine, plague, and board meetings to get this way. Here are a few milestones of insanity through the ages
.

5
th century B.C.:
The Greek physician Hippocrates (460–370) believed that the human body contained four types of fluids called
humors
: blood (“sanguine humor”), yellow bile (“choleric humor”), black bile (“melancholic humor”), and phlegm (“phlegmatic humor”). Hippocrates considered these humors to be the source of moods and behavior, making him the first recorded doctor to reject the idea that mental illness was caused by supernatural forces. Instead, he considered it the result of environmental factors such as diet and lifestyle. Treatment consisted of trying to restore the balance of the four humors—for example, using citrus to elevate the sanguine humor (blood) when there was thought to be too much phlegm.

A.D. 705:
The first psychiatric hospital was founded in Baghdad, followed by other such asylums in Morocco, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey. In the Muslim world, sufferers of mental illness were treated much more humanely than in Europe. Instead of chains and isolation, patients were prescribed baths, drugs, music, and recreational activities.

9th century:
The Muslim physician Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari (838–870) became the world’s first known psychotherapist. He believed that mental illness was caused by delusions and imagination, and should be treated by “wise counseling” from physicians who first build a rapport with their patients.

11th century:
In one of the first documented cases of a mentally ill patient being cured, a psychotherapist named Avicenna (980–1037) treated a Persian prince who believed he was a cow. The prince refused to eat and begged to be slaughtered. So Avicenna approached the prince with a knife, pretending to be a butcher, but stopped short, saying the cow was too lean and not ready to be killed. The prince was offered food and began eating again, until he gradually regained his strength and overcame his delusion.

Roughly half of all North Americans with a genius IQ (140 or higher) never graduate from high school
.

The Middle Ages:
In Medieval Europe, the idea that mental disorders were caused by an imbalance in the four humors was steadily being replaced by the idea that they were the result of sin, evil spirits, and Satan. Many “cures” were attempted: bloodletting, purging the bowels, whipping, fasting, prayer, and exorcism. In extreme cases,
trepanning
—drilling a hole in the top of the skull to allow the demons and excess humors to escape—was recommended.

1200:
England’s King John sent his royal messengers to the village of Gotham to scout locations for a new hunting lodge. When the king’s men rode into town, the townsfolk were acting strange: Some were attempting to drown an eel (which is impossible); others had joined hands and formed a circle around a thorny shrub to “keep trapped the cuckoo bird hiding within.” The messengers informed King John that the townspeople were mad. At the time, many believed that insanity was contagious, so the king decided to build his hunting lodge elsewhere, far away from the “Fools of Gotham.” But it was the king and his men who were the fools—the Gothamites had known in advance about John’s plan and didn’t want to pony up the taxes to build the hunting lodge. So they feigned madness. (Also works on IRS auditors.)

1330:
The oldest continuously operated hospital for the mentally ill, London’s Bethlem Royal Hospital—better known as Bedlam—was founded in 1247 as a
priory
, or monks’ residence. It became a hospital in 1330, and soon after, a hospital for the insane. The facility was basically a prison where inmates were cruelly restrained with manacles and chains. The screams and moans coming from inside were so loud that “bedlam” entered the English language as a word meaning uproar or confusion. It took several centuries for conditions to improve (in the 1700s, visitors paid a penny to stare at the “freaks” and poke them with long sticks), but Bedlam still functions today as a mental-health facility, more than 750 years after its founding.

David Smith Sr. has been shot out of a cannon 9,000 times without breaking any bones
.

1494:
The phrase “ship of fools” dates back to the medieval practice of herding people considered insane or depraved onto boats, putting them out to sea, and abandoning them. In 1494 French satirist Sebastian Brant wrote a poem on the subject, depicting a happy crew wasting time pursuing idle pleasures—drinking wine, eating fruit, singing, and playing the lute—while no one was steering the ship. The poem, in turn, was the inspiration for a famous painting by Hieronymus Bosch.

15th-17th centuries:
The persecution of people accused of witchcraft led to as many as 100,000 executions in Europe and the New World. This deadly example of “mass hysteria” mostly occurred in rural areas without a strong central government, where townspeople believed wild stories of witches killing and eating babies and conspiring to overthrow Christianity. The accused were put on trial and subjected to various forms of torture (hot pincers, thumbscrews, immersion in water) until they confessed…or died. Those fortunate enough to survive the trial were burned at the stake, hanged, or decapitated. By the time the famous witch trials occurred in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, the European witch hunts had nearly become a thing of the past.

1600s:
One of Bedlam’s most famous inmates was Moll Cutpurse (1584–1659). Born Mary Frith, Cutpurse got her nickname from her prowess as a London pickpocket. But her clothing, speech, and mannerisms brought accusations—mostly from men—that she was insane. Instead of wearing conventional women’s clothing—constricting bodices, petticoats, and puffy gowns—Cutpurse wore trousers. She also smoked a pipe, swore in public, and sang risqué songs on stage—something only men were allowed to do. By the 1620s, she was working as a pimp—not only supplying female prostitutes to men but also procuring handsome young men for middle-class housewives. Cutpurse was eventually arrested and confined to Bedlam. She was released in 1644 after being “cured” and went on to live another 15 years.

Of the 17% of people who regret getting a tattoo, Republicans are more likely to regret it than Dems
.

Early 1800s:
King George III (1738–1820) is best remembered in the U.S. as the tyrant who imposed unfair taxes that led to the American Revolution. Throughout much of his life, George suffered from mental illness. In 1788 he had a particularly bad episode, causing him to rant nonsensically for hours until he was foaming at the mouth. He addressed his court as “my lords and peacocks,” and it was even rumored that he shook hands with a tree, believing it to be the King of Prussia. Many theories have been put forward as to the cause of King George’s madness. Some suggest it was a result of the genetic disease
porphyria
, which is known to run in the royal family. But a 2005 study of a sample of his hair revealed high levels of arsenic, a common component of medicine and cosmetics in that era, which may have caused the king and countless others to suffer bouts of insanity.

TWO DUMB CRIMINALS, ONE FUNNY GUY

In 2005 two English crooks, Kenneth Speight and Craig Reeves, convinced a friend who worked at a bank to access an account belonging to Ricky Gervais (who is extremely famous in England ever since he starred as David Brent, the obnoxious boss on the hit comedy series
The Office
). Speight and Reeves then transferred about $320,000 of Gervais’s money to an account at another bank and used it to buy a large amount of gold bullion. When the men attempted to pick up the bullion, one of them showed his passport—in Gervais’s name—as identification. The clerk noticed that the man didn’t look much like Ricky Gervais, and that the passport photo was obviously a cut-out of David Brent from the sitcom’s DVD sleeve. The clerk immediately called authorities; Speight and Reeves were arrested and later sentenced to prison terms. Perhaps no one found the scam more humorous than Gervais himself: “It’s a picture of David Brent sitting at his desk with that little smug look on his face! I tell you what, I was laughing for 10 minutes!”

Roughly $700 worth of transactions are made on eBay every second
.

JAPAN GONE CRAZY

If you ever decide to make a trip to the weirdest places on Earth, don’t forget Japan. Here are just a few reasons why
.

B
IG BABIES
In April 2009, more than 80 Japanese sumo wrestlers and 80 Japanese babies born in 2008 (along with their parents) showed up at the Sensoji temple in Tokyo for the annual “Baby Cry Sumo Festival.” Two at a time, the sumo giants, dressed in their traditional loincloths, sit on a stage facing each other, each holding a baby. A Shinto priest then approaches and, by making loud noises and scary faces, frightens the babies until they cry. The sumo wrestlers then hold the babies up to make them cry louder—while hundreds of people clap and laugh and cheer. According to Japanese tradition, this is good for infants—their wails are regarded as prayers for health. The baby who cries the loudest is deemed the “winner,” and that baby, so the tradition goes, will lead a long and healthy life (and, presumably, will have a lifelong terror of priests and sumo wrestlers).