Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Zipper Accidents (26 page)

French citizens were outraged that the king’s advisers allowed him to put himself in such danger, while others saw it as a sign that the monarchy had become too self-absorbed and decadent. To quell death threats against the king’s
couriers and other aristocrats and offset a possible revolt over the scandal, the royal court somberly marched through the streets of Paris all the way to Notre Dame Cathedral, where they paid penance for the disastrous prank.

Orléans received most of the blame for the tragedy, and his reputation, already tarnished by earlier accusations of sorcery (yup, sorcery), never recovered. The ball is also considered by many French historians to mark the beginning of Charles’s slide into madness and irrelevance. By the end of the century, his role as king had become purely ceremonial.

T
ruck driver Jabin Bogan, 27, made a pickup at a warehouse in El Paso, Texas, in April 2012 and set off for Phoenix, Arizona. Bogan made a wrong turn…and found himself at the Mexican border.

With no room to turn around, he crossed into Mexico, turned around just a minute or so later, and headed back to the States. When he got to the customs checkpoint, his truck was searched: Bogan was carrying 268,000 rounds of ammunition destined for a Phoenix gun shop. Mexican customs agents didn’t believe his story—and Bogan was arrested on arms-smuggling charges.

Bogan’s mother, employer, and several U.S. politicians lobbied the Mexican government on his behalf, and he was released…seven months later.

T
igered!
Norman Buwalda of Southwold, Ontario, kept a 650-pound Siberian tiger as a pet, despite the objections of his neighbors. In 2004 they complained to authorities after the big cat nearly killed a 10-year-old boy. (Buwalda allowed him to go into the cage to take pictures for a school project; the camera’s flash upset the tiger, who took his annoyance out on the boy.) But Buwalda, who was chairman of the Canadian Exotic Animal Owners’ Association, fought tooth and claw against a proposed bylaw that would have made it illegal for him to keep exotic pets. Good news: He won! Bad news: In 2010 one of Buwalda’s relatives discovered Norman Buwalda’s mutilated body inside the cage with the tiger.

Roached!
In October 2012, 32-year-old Edward Archbold entered a contest at a local pet store in Deerfield Beach, Florida: Whoever could eat the most live cockroaches and mealworms would win a python valued at $850! Archbold, who wanted to win the snake for a friend, wolfed down “60 grams of meal worms, 35 three-inch-long ‘super worms,’ and a bucket of discoid roaches.” He had to cover his mouth while chewing to keep the bugs from crawling out. Good news: Archbold
won! Bad news: A few minutes later, while standing in the parking lot, he started puking the bugs back up, and a few got stuck in his throat. He was rushed to the hospital, but died before he got there.

Swanned!
Employed by a company that uses swans to keep geese away from golf courses and condo complexes, Anthony Hensley was sent to a pond near Des Plaines, Illinois, in April 2012 to check on the swans there. He paddled his kayak across the water to get a closer look, and a large female swan became agitated by his presence. Then, according to witnesses, the big bird rushed Hensley. Not wanting to hurt the swan (who was protecting her nest), he didn’t fight back. His kayak flipped over and he fell into the water. By this time, several other swans had joined the melee—they brutally attacked Hensley as he tried to swim away. He went under and drowned.

Beed!
Jaam Singh Girdhan Barela was performing a cremation ritual at his wife’s funeral in India when the smoke upset a nearby beehive. The bees swarmed the funeral party and everyone fled… except Barela. He chose to stay and complete the ritual, but he wasn’t able to because the bees stung him so many times that he died.

Beared!
Most big-predator cages have two sections, one of which the animal can be kept in so the keeper can safely enter the other section for feeding and cleaning. Michael Walz of Ross
Township, Pennsylvania, kept his black bear in a single-section cage only 15 square feet. One day in 2009, his wife, Kelly Ann, entered the cage and threw a handful of dry dog food at the 350-pound beast to keep it occupied while she cleaned up. But the bear wasn’t interested in dog food. It attacked her. A neighbor ran and got his gun and killed the bear, but not in time to save Kelly Ann. “Why this woman chose to go in the same area that the bear was in is beyond me,” said Tim Conway of the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

Hippopotamussed!
In 2005 Marius Els, an army major from South Africa, took in a baby hippo that had been rescued from a flooded river near his farm. Els named his new pet Humphrey and tried to domesticate it. His neighbors warned him that hippos can’t be tamed, but Els ignored them and raised Humphrey “like a son.” (He even liked to take rides on his “son’s” back.) “There’s a relationship between me and Humphrey,” he told
The Guardian
in 2011, “and that’s what some people don’t understand.” Apparently, Els didn’t understand the relationship, either. Later that year, when Humphrey was six (and Els was 40), the one-ton beast’s savage side erupted: “Humphrey-Humphrey Hippo” bit Els repeatedly with his giant canines and then dragged his limp body into the same river from which the animal had been rescued…and drowned him.

I
n 1987 Kamjai Thavorn was sentenced to 20 years in an Indonesian prison for heroin possession. In 2007 Thavorn told the warden that his sentence had ended and he should be set free. But according to prison paperwork, Thavorn began serving in
1997
—not 1987—and still had a decade left to go. For the next three years, he pleaded to be set free…to no avail. He might still be behind bars today if not for a chance meeting in 2010 with Indonesia’s justice minister, who was touring the facility. Thavorn told the minister his situation, the matter was looked into, and Thavorn was finally freed.

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In late 2007, two Maryland state assessment workers, both new to the job, were entering data into all of the counties’ proposed budgets for 2008. At one point, one of them accidentally entered the estimated taxable real estate for Montgomery County in 2008 values, instead of the actual 2007 numbers. That single incorrect number created a domino effect that threw off several other county budget estimates. Once officials realized something was wrong, it took eight months and a small army of number-crunchers to find the error. In all, it threw off budget estimates by $16 billion and cost taxpayers more than $31 million to correct.

B
OMBS AWAY!

In November 2010‚ Patrick Gallagher’s friends bought him a “bachelor package” at the Penthouse Club, a Philadelphia strip joint, for his bachelor party. As part of the package he was invited onstage with the dancers, who made him lie down next to the stripper pole. That’s when a stripper climbed high up on the pole, slid down, landed on Gallagher—and ruptured his bladder. “From a great height, she launched herself down onto his abdomen,” his attorney, Neil T. Murray, told reporters. Gallagher needed surgery, and he sued the Penthouse Club for $50,000 for medical costs as well as “pain, humiliation, and mental anguish.”