Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Zipper Accidents (35 page)

U
p on the housetop.
When Santa grew that beard of his all those centuries ago, he didn’t think about how it would affect his rappelling. But he learned the hard way one warm November night in 2007. At a Christmas tree–lighting ceremony in front of a Conroe, Texas, shopping mall, Santa was all set to emerge from the top of the 80-foot-high sign and rappel down the brick wall. The dozens of revelers chanted, “Santa! Santa! Santa!” And then Santa (aka rock climber James Bosson) emerged and started his descent. But his beard got stuck in a latch. Try as he might, Santa couldn’t free himself. The kids were getting anxious. Finally, someone tossed a knife up to Santa and he started cutting. As white, fluffy bits and pieces of beard fell to the ground, it almost seemed as if it was snowing in Texas. But try as he might, the beardless Santa couldn’t get the hair out of the latch; he wasn’t going anywhere. Eventually, the fire department came and freed him. And Santa learned a valuable lesson about beards and rappelling.

Here comes Santa Claus.
It happened again in 2011 at a shopping mall in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Throngs of children were awaiting Santa’s grand
entrance from the three-story-high ceiling. “Here he is!” said the mall announcer over the intercom. The kids cheered when a harnessed St. Nick began rappelling down. Then his beard got tangled in the ropes. As he was struggling and wiggling, the announcer tried to get everyone to join her in a rendition of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” but the kids were transfixed on the dangling Santa. “Magic can happen,” she said. “Magic can happen if you guys sing!” Magic didn’t happen. Quite the opposite, actually, when Santa had to remove his hat—revealing a head of brown hair. Some of the children screamed. Santa finally got down, but by that point, the magic was all gone.

Christmas wrapping.
Santa did it again a year later at the Broad Street Mall in Reading, England. This time, Father Christmas (as they call him in the UK) was played by British soldier Steve Chessell. On his way down to the floor, his beard got impossibly stuck. After it became clear that Chessell wasn’t going anywhere, the jovial mall announcer asked, “Father Christmas, are you going to stay up there, Father Christmas?” Father Christmas gave a sheepish wave. “Well,” said the announcer to laughter, “shall we go on and switch on the lights anyway?” So they did, and everyone enjoyed themselves while Santa and his tangled beard hung over them like a Christmas ornament. Forty minutes later, another soldier (in camo, so he was hard to see) rappelled down and freed Santa.

Santa baby.
Christmas Day 2007 ended badly for one Santa. He got drunk and decided to take a joyride through Hollywood. When police arrested him in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, he was wearing a Santa hat, plus “a wig, a red lace camisole, and a purple G-string.” Quipped one deputy: “We’re pretty sure this isn’t the real Santa.”

It must be Santa.
In 1999, during an otherwise ho-ho-ho-hum afternoon of kids demanding stuff from St. Nick, a mom named Kelley Fornatoro placed her baby on the big man’s lap at a Woodland Hills, California, shopping mall. The baby started crying. “Why don’t you put your arm around him to calm him down?” Fornatoro suggested. Santa (whose name wasn’t released) grudgingly sat for the photo. When Fornatoro went to retrieve her baby, Santa asked, “Was it worth it? Was it worth it for you to torture your child for a picture? You must be an evil person!” Fornatoro called him rude. “You shouldn’t be around children,” she added. She then threatened to file a complaint with the mall manager. “You can complain about me if you want, but I am Santa Claus!” replied the man who was not Santa Claus. “I am the best person in the world! I am good!” He then started pulling off his Santa garb—hat, wig, beard, coat, belt—piece by piece, flinging them this way and that. Then—as parents covered their traumatized children’s eyes—mall cops arrived and escorted the tank-top-clad former Santa away.

L
ate on the night of October 25, 1962,
a guard at an Air Force base in Minnesota spotted a dark figure climbing the fence surrounding the base. The guard shot and killed the mysterious figure. The fence was wired to detect intruders, and the culprit’s fall set off the alarm. But the fence was incorrectly wired, and the alarm set off a second alarm hundreds of miles away at an Air National Guard base in Wisconsin. F-106 fighter jets armed with nuclear missiles immediately prepared to take off toward the Soviet Union in response to the intrusion. But the nuclear strike was quickly called off after an investigation determined the identity of the fence-climbing spy: It was a bear.

On January 25, 1995,
a team of Norwegian and American scientists launched a research rocket off the northwest coast of Norway. It contained equipment to collect data on the aurora borealis, or northern lights. The rocket was noticed by radar operators at the Olengorsk early-warning station in Russia, who mistakenly identified the small, unarmed rocket as a submarine-launched nuclear Trident missile headed for Moscow. The news was sent to Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who, for a moment, was ready to hit the “launch nukes” button. Fortunately, minutes later, the radar
operators noticed that the “missile” was heading away from Russia, and determined that it wasn’t really a threat. The rocket collected its data and landed safely on an Arctic island a half hour later. Ironically, the scientists had notified the Russian government of the rocket launch weeks in advance, but the information had not made its way to the early-warning radar operators or Yeltsin.

On November 9, 1979,
computers at three American military control centers all displayed the same grim news: Soviet nuclear missiles were on their way. Officers immediately put missile launch sites on alert, and 10 fighter jets took off to shoot down anything suspicious. However, before launching a counterstrike, officers at the three bases decided to back up the information they’d received. Satellite data across the country showed no signs of Soviet missiles in the air. It turns out that a training tape of attack scenarios had been placed into the computer running the military’s early-warning system.

O
n a clear Sunday morning in Perris, California, in 1991, bungee jumping instructor Hal Irish went up in a hot-air balloon to do a demonstration jump for his students. He secured one end of the cord to the basket, the other end to his harness. Then he took the plunge. The cord extended to its full length before gently pulling Irish back up in the air, but somehow the harness became disconnected from the cord… and Irish kept sailing up into the air before he fell back down 70 feet to his death—the first fatality in bungee jumping.

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Erin Langworthy, an Australian college student, and her friend were backpacking through Africa on New Year’s Eve 2011 when they decided to go whitewater rafting and then bungee jumping at Victoria Falls in Zambia. Langworthy was secured to the cord on a bridge 365 feet above the Zambezi River. She jumped off and spread her arms like she was supposed to, and then the cord snapped and Langworthy hit the water hard. She was able to shield her head with her arms just before impact. Next thing she knew, she was caught in the rapids with 20 feet of the cord still attached to her ankles…which were also attached to each
other. Remembering a lesson from that morning’s rafting trip, Langworthy put her feet in front of her to avoid hitting the rocks. She tried to get to the riverbank, but the cord became snagged on something—she actually had to swim under the water to free it, twice. She then made her way to the riverbank, where rescuers treated for severe bruises, a broken collarbone, and damaged lungs. “I felt like I’d been slapped all over,” said Langworthy. She said she’s not in any hurry to try a second bungee jump. The icing on the cake: Langworthy landed in “crocodile-infested waters” (even though no crocs had been spotted that day).

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In May 2002, Alberto Galletti and his girlfriend, Tiziana Accorra, arrived at Lorenzo Illuminati’s Umbria, Italy, bungee-jumping park, but it was late and Illuminati had closed for the day. The couple begged him to reopen; Galletti, a member of Italy’s elite Folgore army parachute regiment, really wanted to take Accorra, a college student, on her first bungee jump. Illuminati agreed, but only if the couple paid an extra fee. They paid up and got strapped in for a tandem bungee jump off a bridge that had seen thousands of jumps without incident…until this one. Tragically, not one but both snap hooks opened when the cord reached full length, and the lovebirds died together.