Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader (5 page)

CANCER-BOT.
Enterix, an Australian medical technology company, has built a robot named Grace that can detect bowel cancer faster than conventional methods and at a 98% accuracy rate. It analyzes tissue samples in five seconds, reducing the need for invasive colonoscopies. Enterix estimates that if Grace were run 24 hours a day, Australia’s entire population could be screened for bowel cancer in just one year.

A lion’s roar is louder than a jackhammer.

SAVIOR-BOT.
While filming
The Passion of the Christ
, actor Jim Caviezel (playing Jesus) risked hypothermia enduring 15-hour days hanging on a cross wearing only a loincloth. So filmmakers constructed a body double: a $220,000 robot that looked like Caviezel and was able to move its head and limbs convincingly.

BEER-BOT.
Students at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Holland built a robot that can pour the perfect glass of beer. It takes the small, table-top robotic arm—“Hermann”—one minute, 11 seconds to pour, at the perfect angle, a proper mix of beer and froth. Amazingly, it cost less than $100 to build.

DIET-BOT.
Researchers at MIT created a nuclear-powered robot dog to help dieters. It monitors a pedometer worn by the dieter, counting calories (based on a programmed meal plan) and recording how much the person has walked. At the end of the day, the user asks the robot, “How am I doing?” If the dieter ate well and exercised, the dog wags its tail and jumps up and down. If not, the dog whines and lays down.

BOTS GONE WILD

•
In 1942 science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov proposed three “laws of robotics” to ensure the safety of humankind. The first law: “A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” In 2006 Japan made Asimov’s law an
actual
law. The country that gave us
Godzilla
is developing robot nurses (for elder care), but they fear robot rebellion. So all robots must now have sensors to prevent them from running into people, be made of soft materials, and include emergency shut-off buttons.

•
Robot researchers at the Magna Science Center in Rotherham, England, were alarmed when one of their experiments, a robot that can “think” and act on its own, tried to escape the laboratory. Professor Noel Sharkey left the robot, “Gaak,” alone for 15 minutes in a small closet. Gaak apparently forced its way out, went down an access ramp and out the front door of the center, and made it into the parking garage before being struck by a car. “There’s no need to worry,” Sharkey said. “Although they can escape they are perfectly harmless and won’t be taking over just yet.”

James Polk’s 1845 presidential inauguration was the first to be reported by telegraph.

“BUNGA BUNGA!”

Sophomoric clown or a brilliant satirist of British imperialism? Either way, Horace de Vere Cole was responsible for one of the best pranks in history
.

H
IS MAJESTY REQUESTS…

In the years before World War I, Britain had the most powerful navy in the world. And the HMS
Dreadnought
, armed with 10 large guns and powered by a steam engine, was the pride of the fleet. Considered the superweapon of its day, the huge battleship lay anchored under the tightest security in Weymouth. Few outside the Navy’s top officers had ever stepped on board, much less toured its “top-secret” state-of-the-art weaponry.

On February 10, 1910, Sir William May, the ship’s captain, received a telegram from the Foreign Office, signed by Under-Secretary Sir Charles Hardinge, announcing the impending arrival of the emperor of Abyssinia and his court in England. The emperor was to receive the royal treatment, including a tour of the HMS
Dreadnought
. The captain immediately ordered his officers and crew to prepare to greet the emperor with all due pomp and circumstance. Guns were polished, decks swabbed, and uniforms washed and pressed in anticipation of the royal tour.

V.I.P. TREATMENT

But the telegram was a fake—it was sent by a practical joker named Horace de Vere Cole. A few days later, he and five co-conspirators (including author Virginia Woolf and her brother) blackened their faces and hands with burnt cork, glued false beards to their chins, donned long red robes topped with makeshift turbans (all rented), and took a cab to London’s Paddington Station. Brazenly declaring that he was a state official named “Herbert Cholmondley,” Cole talked the stationmaster into giving them a VIP train to Weymouth, where the delegation was met with a full honor guard and a brass band.

An Abyssinian flag couldn’t be found (no one knew what one looked like), so one from Zanzibar was used instead. And the band played the Zanzibar national anthem, since that was the only African anthem they knew. (The pranksters didn’t know the difference.) The Navy had no translator either: fortunately, the delegation supplied their own, and his translations were so eloquent that none of the navy officers noticed that the language spoken by the “Abyssinians” bore a striking resemblance to fractured Latin. And as they were shown all of the ship’s accoutrements, they shouted “Bunga Bunga!” in approval at everything they saw.

There are over 60,000 acres of shopping malls in the U.S.

There were a few anxious moments. One was when the pranksters realized one of the Navy officers knew Woolf. But the officer never caught on. Another came when their “interpreter” sneezed and almost blew off his whiskers. Again, no one noticed. Weather almost sank the prank, too: Rain began to fall as the delegation arrived at the
Dreadnought
; Cole managed to talk their way onto a lower deck just as their makeup started to run.

Finally, Cole decided it was time to get out. They refused lunch (they weren’t sure what dietary restrictions might go along with their made-up religion) and left quickly on the excuse that there were no prayer mats for their daily devotionals.

The delegation was given a military escort back to their train. Still in disguise and under Naval supervision, the “Abyssinians” requested that waiters serving them dinner wear white gloves. (The train stopped and was held up in Reading to purchase the gloves.)

SHIP OF FOOLS

Five days later a photograph appeared in the
Daily Mirror
, showing the “Abyssinian” delegation with their Naval hosts. In the accompanying article, Cole exposed the hoax and ridiculed the Navy for being so gullible. All over London, sailors were harassed with cries of “Bunga Bunga!” The Admiralty was furious, but its attempt to charge Cole and his party with treason (the delegation had seen top-secret areas of the ship) was hooted down in Parliament and the press. After all, as people pointed out, the only “treasonous” thing they’d done was make the Admiralty and its officers look like fools. Besides, the only actual crime committed was sending a telegram under a fake name.

The Navy decided to not press charges, but still felt that somebody had to be punished. As the pranksters were all upper class, they could get away with a symbolic act to settle the dispute as gentlemen. Naval officers visited Cole and gave him six symbolic taps on the buttocks with a cane. Cole insisted he be allowed to do the same to the officers. Amazingly, the officers agreed.

Meat Loaf is a vegetarian.

TOO RISKY FOR
GUINNESS

Some world records are amazing, some are funny, some are ridiculous. Here’s a look at some folks who risked life and limb to make it into
Guinness World Records…
only to get tossed back out again
.

B
ACKGROUND

When Ross and Norris McWhirter started keeping track of world records for the Guinness Brewing Company in 1955, they had to come up with guidelines for what kinds of records they’d allow in their book. Sex was out. So was anything having to do with crime or hard liquor (the book was sponsored by a brewery, so some beer-related records were permitted). They did allow many categories that were inherently dangerous, such as sword swallowing and fire eating, but as people attempted to break those records, the McWhirters became concerned that people might actually kill themselves in the attempt…and Guinness would be to blame. So in the late 1970s they started to “retire” (and later revive) some of the more dangerous categories. Here are a few examples:

HOT-WATER-BOTTLE BURSTING

Record Holder:
Italian actor and bodybuilder Franco Columbu
Details:
Using only his lung power, in August 1979, Columbu inflated a rubber hot-water bottle to the bursting point (28.5 pounds per square inch of air pressure) in 23 seconds.

What Happened:
Columbu’s name and record made it into the 1980 edition, but by the 1981 edition they were gone, replaced with the following notice: “Contests involving the bursting of hot-water bottles with sheer lung power are regarded as medically most inadvisable, and the category has been discontinued.”

Update:
For a while
Guinness
replaced hot-water-bottle bursting with weather-balloon blowing, but today the hot-water bottles are back in. The current record holder is George Christen, who, in 2000, inflated a hot-water bottle to the bursting point in 52.68 seconds—almost 30 seconds
slower
than Columbu’s record.

Foreign rulers: French revolutionaries invented the metric system.

BURIAL ALIVE (VOLUNTARY)

Record Holder:
Hendrick Luypaerts of Hechtel, Belgium

Details:
In April 1974, Luypaerts climbed into a coffin 6'6" long, 33½" wide, and 25" deep, and was buried alive beneath almost 10 feet of dirt. He stayed there for 101 days and 37 minutes, with only a small tube for air, water, food, and…uh…bathroom needs connecting him to the surface. (
Guinness
says the record for
involuntary
burial alive is six years and five months, set by two Polish men who were trapped in a demolished World War II bunker from January 1945 until June 1951.)

What Happened:
In 1979 the
Guinness
referees announced that future claims would be inadmissable “unless the depth of the coffin is a minimum two meters below ground with a maximum length of two meters, width of 70 centimeters, height of 100 centimeters, and a maximum aperture of 10 centimeters for feeding and communication.” Then the following year they dumped the category altogether.

Update:
In 1998 a British man named Geoff Smith broke the record by staying underground for 147 days in honor of his deceased mother, who had set the European record of being buried alive for 101 days. But
Guinness
refused to recognize Smith’s attempt, saying the category was too dangerous. Smith had to settle for recognition from
Ripley’s Believe It or Not
, but says he doesn’t mind. “Although the feat is not recognized by
Guinness
, everyone in the world knows who I am now after what I’ve done,” he says.

Related Note:
The category “Most Cockroaches in a Coffin” is still open. Any takers? (You have to get in the coffin with the cockroaches.) Current record: 20,050 cockroaches.

SWORD SWALLOWING

Record Holder:
“Count Desmond” of Binghamton, New York

Details:
Desmond set the record in 1981 by swallowing thirteen 23" swords, but injured himself in the process.

What Happened:
Guinness
officials acknowledged the attempt …then retired the category. “We don’t want Count Desmond trying any more, saying he cut his guts out for
Guinness
,” the book’s American editor, David Boehm, explained.

Frightening fact:
Phobatrivaphobia
is a fear of trivia about phobias.

Update:
As of 1999, sword swallowing is back in, with a twist—literally. The new category is called “Most Swords Swallowed and Twisted.” Current record holder: Brad Byers of Moscow, Idaho. On August 13, 1999, he swallowed ten 27" swords and rotated them a full 180° in his esophagus. But, according to
Guinness, “
Brad says he once cut his epiglottis so badly that he couldn’t eat or drink for 48 hours.”

BICYCLE EATING

Record Holder:
French entertainer Michel Lotito, also known as
Monsieur Mangetout
(“Mr. Eat All”)

Details:
Between March 17, 1977, and April 2, 1977, Mangetout devoured one entire bicycle, including the tires, which he consumed by cutting them into strips and making a “stew.”

What Happened:
Monsieur Mangetout’s category was closed, but unlike some other discontinued dangerous categories,
Guinness
continued to print the record in subsequent editions. Why? “The ultimate in stupidity—the eating of a bicycle—has been recorded since it is unlikely to attract competition,” the
Guinness
people wrote.

Update:
Mangetout, who claims to devour two pounds of metal in a typical day, has blown past his old record: Since 1977 he has consumed a Cessna 150 aircraft, several televisions, shopping carts, and 17 more items. Today he’s listed under the category “strangest diet.” Is there anything Lotito won’t eat? “I don’t eat hard-boiled eggs or bananas,” he says. “They make me sick.”

NEW CATEGORIES

• Fastest Car Driven While Blindfolded:
144.75 mph, by Mike Newman at North Yorkshire, U.K., in August 2003.

• Scorpion Eating:
35,000 by Rene Alvarenga of El Salvador. He averages 25 venomous scorpions a day.