Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (64 page)

WATERSPORTSCAR

A car is meant for driving on land; a boat is meant for water. And the equipment inside each is specifically designed for its purpose. But that didn’t stop Marco Amoretti and Marcolino De Candia from trying to modify their pink Maserati sports car—nicknamed “Miriam”—for sea travel. It stayed afloat, too. Filled with plastic floatation aids, it moved through the water slowly, propelled by an outboard motor. After the two had traveled five miles from the port of Bocca di Magra, Italian coastal police caught up with them and ended the car’s planned trip around the entire coast of Italy. (It wasn’t Amoretti and De Candia’s first voyage: In 1999 they traveled from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean, a distance of 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, in a modified Ford Taurus.)

IT’S MORE THAN I CAN BEAR

Marty Descoteaux left his motorboat idling for just a minute on Elliott Lake in Ontario in July 2006. While his back was turned, a bear emerged from the adjacent forest and climbed into the boat. The lumbering animal then bumped the boat’s throttle, suddenly sending it into a rapid spin. Descoteaux bailed, jumping into the lake. The bear wasn’t as smart: He remained on the boat as it spun wildly. After a few minutes, the boat hit a rock, sending the bear flying off the boat and into the lake.

In India’s traditional Gotmar festival, participants throw rocks at each other. (It was banned in 2009.)

NUTTY NUPTIALS

Four weird weddings, one brief marriage, and one deadly proposal. All in the name of love
.

F
OREVER MINE
In December 2006, 10 couples, all dressed in traditional Chinese wedding attire, descended 1,000 feet underground to get married in the dust-ridden pitshaft of a coal mine in Shanxi Province, China. The Datong Coal Group held the mass ceremony to show the public that the country’s coal mines weren’t as dismal and dangerous as recent news stories had made them out to be (at the time, a miner fatality occurred nearly every day in China).

WHITE WEDDING, BLACK FRIDAY

On Thanksgiving night in 2009, hundreds of bargain-hunters were lined up in the rain outside of a Best Buy store in Allen Park, Michigan, waiting for the doors to open the next morning for “Black Friday,” the biggest sale of the year. Among the tents and other makeshift shelters was a white RV. Under its awning, Edward Burbo (wearing dress pants and a black tuxedo T-Shirt) married Jennifer Dykstra (wearing a white sweater and skirt with brown snow boots). The couple had decided to get married there because camping out for the sale was an annual tradition for them. “Everyone said, ‘You’re getting married at Best Buy? In line? For real?’” said Burbo. The newlyweds found some great deals the next morning.

STRONG ROOTS

In December 2006, hundreds of well-wishers traveled to the remote Indian city of Malda to celebrate the marriage of two banyan trees, the trunks of which had grown wrapped around each other in a “loving embrace.” The “wedding” took place after a rash of deaths and burglaries in the region; people hoped that if the two trees were married, they might ward off evil spirits. “The trees can save us,” said one attendee. The bride and groom were decked out in garlands and cloth.

Sesame Street’s
Bert & Ernie have been questioned about their sexual preference in interviews
.

SEE THAT TRAIN A-COMIN’

In August 2009, a bride named Lin Rong, from China’s Jilin Province, walked down the aisle…in a wedding dress whose train was 1.4 miles long. The lengthy train, which took three hours to unroll in a large city park, was the idea of the groom, Zhao Peng, who’d heard about a similar bridal train in Romania that was nine-tenths of a mile long. Zhao was determined to set a new world record. “I do not want a cliché wedding,” he said, so he spent 40,000 yuan ($5,800) on the train. And although Zhao’s bride was delighted with his gesture, his family wasn’t. “It is a waste of money,” said his mom.

POOR LITTLE GUYS

One night in 2009 on a moonlit beach in Hilton Head, South Carolina, a young man proposed to his girlfriend by placing 150 candles inside waxed bags that were arranged in the shape of a heart. She said yes, they kissed, and then they walked arm-in-arm to their rental home…and left the candles burning. Meanwhile, 60 newly hatched loggerhead sea turtles had just emerged from their nest on the beach. Driven by instinct, they began their scramble down to the moonlit ocean. But the candles were brighter than the water, so the hatchlings were drawn to them instead. Those that didn’t die of exhaustion were eaten by crabs. The next day, authorities tracked down the lovebirds and informed them that during the threatened turtles’ hatching season, it’s illegal to use any artificial light on or near the beach after 10:00 p.m. The couple didn’t know, and were reportedly “remorseful.” No charges were filed.

KEEPING UP WITH HARDY

In 2009 Kristin Georgi, 22, married 84-year-old Joe Hardy, a wealthy—and very busy—owner of a successful lumber company. Their marriage lasted only a few months. Why? “He was very hard for me to keep up with,” complained Georgi. “When you climb onto your own jet for the tenth time in four days…ugh! And we were only in each place for a day and a half. It was a bit too fast-paced for me.” Hardy eventually filed for divorce and is now looking for a new bride who can keep up with his busy lifestyle.

Can you type? You’re 5 times more likely to write a
NY Times
bestseller than date a supermodel
.

THINGS YOU
DIDN’T KNOW

Or at least we’re pretty sure you didn’t
.

T
hing You Didn’t Know:
When you’re having surgery performed on your buttocks, you should definitely not fart.
Story:
In April 2008, 30-year-old Jorgen Olsen of Hammershoj, Denmark, was anesthetized and on the operating table, having a growth removed from his buttocks with a device known as an electric knife—an instrument that cuts tissue with a superheated spark. The surgery was under way…when, in his sleep, Olsen farted. The knife ignited the fart. And even worse, Olsen was lying on a surgery cloth laced with disinfectant
—flammable
disinfectant—which quickly burst into flames. When Olsen awoke, he was being treated for burns on his buttocks and surrounding areas. He missed nearly two months of work…and sued the hospital for an undisclosed amount of money.

Thing You Didn’t Know:
Gardening is bad for your eyes.
Story:
A 66-year-old woman was digging in her garden in suburban Sydney, Australia, in April 2009 when she accidentally flicked some soil into her eye—along with a small leech. The quarter-inch-long creature wriggled up under her eyelid and did what leeches do best—it attached itself to the inside of her eye and began sucking blood from it. After the woman’s husband was unable to remove it, they rushed to a hospital. Doctors were concerned that if they pulled the leech out, its head might remain in the woman’s eyeball, so they rinsed the eye with saline water (leeches don’t like salt). It worked, and the leech detached itself, but not before it had tripled in size. As a souvenir, the doctors gave the leech to the woman before she left.

Thing You Didn’t Know:
You should never, ever throw away your mother’s old mattress.

Story:
In July 2009, a woman in Tel Aviv, Israel, identified only as Annat, decided to do her mother a favor and throw out her old, tattered mattress and buy her a new one. When her mother found out what she’d done, she told her daughter that for decades, she’d been stuffing her life savings inside the mattress—there was more than $1 million in cash in it. The two women notified authorities, and a massive search of the city’s dumps began—complete with security guards to keep treasure hunters away. But after weeks of digging through garbage, the old mattress was never found. Annat told reporters, “Mom said, ‘The heart is crying, but, you know, we could have been in a car accident or had a terminal disease.’”

Not so crazy after all? The insanity plea is used in less than 1% of all U.S. criminal cases
.

Thing You Didn’t Know:
If you’ve been unlucky enough to lose a large part of your skull, don’t worry—it may grow back.

Story:
In the 1950s, Gordon Moore of Hexham, England, was in a horrific car crash in which the front of his skull was crushed from just above his eyes to nearly the top of his head. The damaged portion of his skull had to be removed, and doctors replaced it with a large titanium plate. In 2009, more than 50 years later, doctors removed the plate to treat an infection—and were astounded to find that his skull had regrown underneath it. “They took the infected plate out,” Mr. Moore told the BBC, “and found I had grown a completely new skull underneath, so they just stitched me up.” Doctors said that such a thing is so rare that they could find only one similar occurrence in history. Bonus: The new skull bone even had a crease where the metal plate was dented in a minor car accident years earlier.

Thing You Didn’t Know:
Fatty foods can clog a lot more than just your arteries.
Story:
Officials in Seattle, Washington, reported in 2009 that fatty foods are also clogging up the city’s sewer pipes. Just as it does inside human arteries, the glop hardens, builds up, and then backs up—causing stinky bubbles to infiltrate residents’ sinks and toilets. Most of these deposits come from restaurants, which collectively wash thousands of greasy dishes every day. However, according to Seattle’s pollution-prevention coordinator, Julie Howell, “One thing that has been a real surprise is that there is much bigger residential component than people might think”—meaning much of the grease comes from households.

Odds of Earth having a catastrophic collision with an asteroid in the next 100 years: 1 in 5,000
.

THE WORLD’S
GONE LAZY

These actual products are for people so lazy they can’t even fini

P
ROBLEM:
Pancakes are
so
hard to make. First you have to read the directions on the box. Then you have to mix the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients. Then you have to grease a pan. Then you have to fry the pancakes. That’s seven minutes of your life…gone!

SOLUTION:
The Chefstack Automatic Pancake Machine does all the work for you. Simply pour in a “batter pouch,” turn it on, and the machine makes and stacks pancakes in 30 seconds. But it’s only for
real
pancake lovers—it costs $3,500.

PROBLEM:
When you use a pair of scissors, you have to move your thumb and forefinger slightly apart and then back together again, and then again, and again, and again…
SOLUTION:
Try Whizzers! Perfect for the 21st-century lifestyle, they’re battery-operated, automatic scissors that cut while you guide. (It’s actually a motorized knife.)