Uncle John’s Briefs (16 page)

Update:
Leech needn’t have worried about his boss—he not only kept his job, in January 2002 England’s National Dairymen’s Association named him the “Hero Milkman of the Millennium.”

FIRST-RATE THIRD GRADER

Local Hero:
Austin Rosedale, a third-grader at Sunny Hills Elementary School in Issaquah, Washington

Heroic Deed:
Saving his teacher from choking

The Story:
Austin was in the computer lab one day in November 2001 when his teacher, Mrs. Precht, started choking on a cough drop. She was just about to pass out when he sprang into action.

Luckily for Precht, Austin’s parents had given him a Day Planner organizer that happened to have an instructional diagram of the Heimlich maneuver printed on the cover. Austin had read it so many times that
helping Mrs. Precht was a snap. With two thrusts to her abdomen, he dislodged the cough drop. “I just visualized the pictures,” he says, “and remembered what I’d read.”

Surgeons who play video games have 37% fewer operating room errors than those who don’t.

BLUE’S BROTHER

Local Hero:
Art Aylesworth, a Montana insurance agent

Heroic Deed:
Helping to save the mountain bluebird and the western bluebird from extinction

The Story:
A longtime conservationist, Aylesworth had worked on a few wildlife habitat restoration projects. But in the mid-1970s he became alarmed when he learned that extensive logging in the state was pushing the bluebirds—which nest in the cavities of old trees—toward extinction. So he got some scrap lumber and built some nest boxes for the birds; then he founded an organization called the Mountain Bluebird Trails Group and recruited hundreds of volunteers to do the same thing.

The organization gave the boxes to anyone willing to put them up and keep an eye on them; it estimates that over the next 25 years, it gave away more than 35,000 boxes. Did it work? Yes—when Aylesworth started handing out the boxes in 1974, only a handful of the bluebirds were thought to still exist; by 1998 the count had grown to more than 17,000.

GUN CONTROL

Local Hero:
Dale Rooks, a crossing guard at Suter Elementary School in Pensacola, Florida

Heroic Deed:
Finding a unique way to get speeding motorists to slow down in front of the elementary school

The Story:
For years Rooks had tried everything he could think of to get drivers to slow down in front of the school—including waving his hands and yelling—but nothing worked. Then inspiration struck him—he got an old hair dryer and covered it with gray duct tape so that it looked like a radar gun, and started pointing it at speeders. That did the trick. “People are slowing down, raising their hands at me apologetically,” he says. “It’s amazing how well it works.”

Update:
Inspired by his example, fifth-graders at the school set up a lemonade stand and raised $93 to buy Rooks a
rea
l radar gun. “I don’t mean it to be funny,” he says, “but it looks just like a hair dryer.”

A
klaxon
is an electric horn. The name comes from a German word meaning “shriek.”

THE ICEMAN
COMETH

Not all mummies are wrapped in bandages. Here’s one who was buried in ice, fully clothed, for 5,000 years
.

S
URPRISE ENCOUNTER
On September 19, 1991, some people hiking in the Alps along the Austrian/Italian border spotted a body sticking out of a glacier. The corpse was brown and dried out and looked like it had been there for a long time. But neither the hikers nor the Austrian officials who recovered it four days later had any idea
how
long.

When scientists carbon-dated the remains, the “Iceman” (as he was dubbed in the press) turned out to be more than 5,300 years old. It was the world’s oldest fully preserved human body, and the first prehistoric human ever found with “everyday clothing and equipment”—including an axe, dagger, and bow and arrows. Other bodies that have been found were either buried following funerals or sacrificed in religious ceremonies…which means they had ceremonial objects and clothing that didn’t shed much light on what everyday life was like.

CLOSE CALL

Because no one realized how old or valuable the Iceman was until five days after he was discovered, no one took any precautions to ensure he wasn’t damaged during removal and shipment to the morgue. In fact, it seems they did just about everything they could to
damage
him. An Austrian police officer tried to free the Iceman from the ice by using a jackhammer—shredding his garments and gashing his left hip to the bone. He probably would have done more damage, except that he ran out of compressed air for the jackhammer and had to quit.

Next, as word of the unusual discovery spread, locals and gawkers traveled to the site to view the remains. Many pocketed the Iceman’s tools and shreds of garment as souvenirs. And when forensics experts finally removed the body from the ice, they did so using clumsy pickaxes, destroying the archaeological value of the site in the process.

Longest distance ever traveled in a hang glider: 437 miles, by Manfred Ruhmer (2001).

By now the Iceman, clothed from the waist down when initially discovered, was buck naked save for pieces of a boot on his right foot and shards of clothing strewn around the body. Even worse, his private parts were missing, perhaps stolen by one of the visitors to the site. They were never recovered.

MODERN PROBLEMS

When scientists did get around to studying him, they found a dark-skinned male between the ages of 25 and 40 who stood 5'2" tall. The Iceman surprised archaeologists with his shaved face, recently cut hair, and tattoos; experts thought that humans did not “invent” shaves, haircuts, and tattoos until thousands of years later.

He also suffered from some surprisingly modern ailments. A body-scan revealed smoke-blackened lungs—probably from sitting around open fires, but definitely not from smoking—as well as hardening of the arteries and blood vessels. He also had arthritis in the neck, lower back, and hip. But he didn’t die from any of them.

CAUSE OF DEATH

The fact that the Iceman’s body survived so long may provide a clue about how he died. Most bodies recovered from glaciers have literally been torn to pieces by slow-moving ice. But the Iceman’s wasn’t. He was found in a small protective basin, 10 to 15 feet deep, that sheltered him as glaciers passed overhead. This leads archaeologists to speculate that he sought shelter in the basin when a surprise winter storm hit. “He was in a state of exhaustion perhaps as a consequence of adverse weather conditions,” a team of experts theorized in
Science
magazine in 1992. “He therefore may have lain down, fallen asleep, and frozen to death.” Snow covered the body, the glacier eventually flowed over it…and the body remained completely preserved and undisturbed for the next 53 centuries.

FINAL RESTING PLACE

The Iceman now resides in a freezer in Austria’s Innsbruck University, kept at 98% humidity and 21°F, the same conditions that preserved him for more than 5,000 years. Scientists only examine the body for 20 minutes every two weeks—anything more than that would cause the mummy to deteriorate.

House dust can vary in composition from room to room.

FAMOUS TIGHTWADS

For some bizarre reason, really rich people are often the most uptight about spending money. Here are a few examples of people who’ve gone over the deep end about loose change
.

MARGE SCHOTT, former
owner of the Cincinnati Reds.
Told her staff in 1995 that she couldn’t afford Christmas bonuses and gave out candies instead. They turned out to be free samples from a baseball-card company…and they came with coupons inviting consumers to “win a trip to the 1991 Grammys.”

CARY GRANT.
Nicknamed “El Squeako” by Hollywood friends, he counted the number of firewood logs in his mansion’s garage and used a red pen to mark the level of milk in the milk bottles in his refrigerator, both to make sure his servants weren’t taking them.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT.
Mooched dollar bills off of his presidential valet to drop in the collection plate at church.

GROUCHO MARX.
Wore a beret, which became one of his trademarks, “so he wouldn’t have to pay to check his hat.”

CORNELIUS VANDERBILT, American financier.
When his doctor told him on his deathbed that a glass of champagne a day would moderate his suffering, Vanderbilt —then the wealthiest man in America—replied, “Dammit, I tell you Doc, I can’t afford it. Won’t sodywater do?”

J. PAUL GETTY, oil baron.
Installed a pay phone in his mansion to keep visitors from running up his long-distance bill, and put locks on all the other phones. “When you get some fellow talking for ten or fifteen minutes,” the billionaire explained, “well, it all adds up.”

LEE IACOCCA, former head of Chrysler Corp.
Threw himself lavish holiday parties and charged the gifts to underlings. Popular saying at Chrysler: “If you have lunch with someone who looks like Iacocca and sounds like Iacocca, rest assured—if he offers to pick up the check, it’s not Iacocca.”

The red maple leaf on Canada’s flag has 11 points. (The number has no national significance.)

UNDERWORLD LINGO

Every profession has its own jargon—even the criminal world. These terms were compiled by someone else. We stole them fair and square… and we’re not giving them back, and no copper’s gonna make us!

Walk the plank.
Appear in a police lineup.

Barber a joint.
Rob a bedroom while the occupant is asleep.

Chop a hoosier.
Stop someone from betting because they’ve been continuously winning.

Dingoes.
Vagrants who refuse to work even though they claim to be looking for a job.

California blankets.
Newspapers used to sleep on or under.

Wise money.
Money to be wagered on a sure thing.

Ride the lightning.
Be electrocuted.

Rolling orphan.
Stolen vehicle with no license plates.

Put [someone] in the garden.
Swindle someone out of their fair share of money or property.

Swallow the sours.
Hide counterfeit money from the police.

Frozen blood.
Rubies.

Square the beef.
Get off with a lighter sentence than expected.

Toadskin.
Paper money—either good or counterfeit.

Vinegar boy.
Someone who passes worthless checks.

Trojan.
A professional gambler.

White soup.
Stolen silver melted down so it won’t be discovered.

Grease one’s duke.
Put money into someone’s hand.

Irish favorites.
Emeralds.

Fairy grapes.
Pearls.

High pillow.
The top man in an organization.

Nest with a hen on.
Promising prospect for a robbery.

Trigging the jigger.
Placing a piece of paper (the trig) in the keyhole of a door to a house that is suspected to be uninhabited. If the trig is still there the next day, a gang can rob the house later that night.

NFL statistic: Americans consume 8 million pounds of guacamole on Super Bowl Sunday.

HOW TO READ
A DOLLAR BILL

Looking for emergency bathroom reading the next time you’re without this book? Try a dollar bill. It’s packed with info, from the obvious to the symbolic
.

FIRST, THE BACK OF THE BILL…

• The pyramid stands for permanence and strength. It’s unfinished to represent the country’s future growth.

• The eye over the pyramid represents the overseeing eye of God.

• The Latin phrase
Annuit Coeptis
above the pyramid means “He Has Favored Our Undertakings.”

• The Roman numeral MDCCLXXVI on the bottom of the pyramid is the number 1776 (the year the U.S. was founded).

One in five Americans cannot say which president is on the $1 bill without looking.

•
E Pluribus Unum
is a Latin phrase meaning “Out of Many, One” (50 states united into one nation).

• The eagle’s head turns toward peace (symbolized by an olive branch); it turns away from war (represented by arrows). Check out how many olive leaves and arrows there are.