It wasn’t until 1788, when an anti-slavery movement was sweeping England, that Newton finally turned against slavery, condemning it in a pamphlet titled “Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade.” In it, Newton makes a “confession, which comes too late,” adding that “it will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.”
Newton is often credited with devoting the remainder of his life to ending slavery, but that isn’t true either. He published his pamphlet in 1788 and testified against slavery in Parliament the following year, but after that he dropped the subject. Though he lived until 1807 (the year that slavery was abolished throughout the British empire) and continued delivering sermons at a prodigious rate, he rarely mentioned slavery again. And he never wrote an anti-slavery hymn.
Joan Crawford’s contract with MGM included a stipulated bedtime.
THE POLITICALLY CORRECT QUIZ #2
Here are more real-life examples of “politically correct” and “incorrect” behavior. How sensitive are you? The “correct” answers are on page 515.
1. What computer term was banned by the Los Angeles County purchasing department in 2003?
a) Hard drive (too suggestive)
b) Floppy disc (too suggestive)
c) Master/Slave drives (an offensive term that “violates the region’s cultural diversity”)
2. What longtime Paris strip club came under fire in 2004 for having an offensive name?
a) The Ugly American (Open since 1967)
b) Crazy Horse Paris (Open since 1951)
c) Tres Chicks (Open since 1972)
3. In February 2005, Kraft Foods Inc. agreed to stop making which candy, on grounds that some people were offended by it?
a) Galtoids—pink “curiously strong mints for women” that came in a metal tin shaped like a woman’s purse (“Sexist, stereotypical and demeaning to women.”)
b) Pimp-O-Mints—inspired by the hit TV show Pimp My Ride (The term pimp is “racist and offensive.”)
c) Road Kill Gummi Candy, similar to Gummi bears except the candy snakes, chickens, and squirrels were flattened and covered with tread marks (Encourages children to be cruel to animals.)
4. In 2005 Mercedes-Benz began offering which of the following options on its entire line of luxury cars?
a) “Leather free.” Fabric and fake leather are offered as substitutes.
b) “Wood free.” Sustainable bamboo is offered as a substitute for endangered rain forest hardwoods.
c) “Fragrance free.” The new car smell is removed for asthmatics and allergy sufferers who find it irritating.
How about you? One in every four Americans has appeared on TV.
5. The organization that regulates sumo wrestling in Japan has rejected which of the following reforms:
a) Bouts with American professional wrestlers—it’s an insult to the art of sumo.
b) “Sumo pants” for young boys who are too shy to wear the traditional mawashi garment, which leaves them feeling next to naked. The move was proposed to reverse the declining number of boys who take up the sport.
c) Instant replays (“Too western.”)
6. In 2005 Great Britain’s BBC TV network ruled that which of the following pieces of footage should not have been shown on the TV’s Greatest Moments comedy show:
a) Narcolepsy sufferers nodding off in the middle of a narcolepsy self-help group. (“Insensitive.”)
b) Prince Charles slipping on an icy sidewalk and falling on his bum. (“Disrespectful to the royal family and the future king.”)
c) A drunken vicar passing out while trying to deliver a sermon. (“Offensive to the faithful.”)
7. In June 2004 the State of New Jersey’s Civil Rights Division ruled that bars and taverns can no longer engage in which of the following “discriminatory” business practices:
a) Buy one, get one free (favors heavy drinkers over moderates)
b) Ladies’ night (favors women over men)
c) Unisex restrooms (favors men over women)
8. Sweden’s IKEA furniture company recently agreed to change its furniture assembly instructions. From now on they’ll show:
a) More non-Swedes—people of color—in the diagrams that show people how to put their furniture together.
b) More women assembling furniture.
c) More middle- and low-income people assembling furniture.
Food for thought: A diet of only dry food is called xerophagy.
POLICE SQUAD
Having a badge doesn’t make cops any less flawed than the rest of us. Sometimes they do boneheaded things. Here are some examples from the news.
MAKE IT SO
“One of the police chiefs in charge of national policy on firearms has said he would like a gun for officers which can ‘temporarily switch people’s brains off.’ Ian Arundale, assistant chief constable of West Mercia and head of the Association of Chief Police Officers’ firearms unit, said a ‘phaser’ would be an ideal type of less-lethal weapon. ‘What we would like in the future is a Star Trek–style phaser that, perfectly safely, temporarily switches someone’s brain off so that officers can move in,’ he told Jane’s Police Review Magazine. ‘We know we’re not going to get that, probably not in my lifetime anyway, but we will look at anything that takes us in that direction.’”
—The Guardian (U.K.)
OFF THE CUFF
“French Justice Minister Dominique Perben criticized prison guards who handcuffed an inmate to her hospital bed while she gave birth on New Year’s Day. ‘It should not happen again,’ Perben told RMC radio. ‘Things should be handled differently, it’s absurd.’ The Paris-based International Prison Observatory said the prisoner had been handcuffed—despite vociferous protests from medical staff—after she had refused to allow a member of the prison escort to attend the birth.”
—Reuters
NAKED CITY
“A suspended Illinois State Police trooper was arrested yesterday in Lake County and charged with two counts of official misconduct. Police say Officer Jeremy Dozier spotted a parked car behind a hotel in Gurnee and ordered the vehicle’s occupants, a 17-year-old woman and a 20-year-old man, to get out of the car. Authorities allege the trooper then told the couple to undress and run around a nearby construction site. Dozier was also charged with official misconduct earlier over accusations that he forced another young couple to strip to their underwear during a traffic stop.”
—Associated Press
In India, milk is sold in frozen blocks; in Denmark, it’s sold in dehydrated sheets.
CHIEF SLEAZY
“Police in the U.S. were shocked when they raided a brothel, only to discover that their chief was one of its customers. Police Chief James Leason has been suspended without pay after allegedly being caught in the bust in New Jersey. The top cop apparently did not know his officers had the brothel under surveillance. He was arrested as he left the building after engaging in various sex acts with one of the two female employees, authorities said. Leason, 56, was charged with promoting prostitution and misconduct in office. He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.”
—Sydney Morning Herald
PRIORITIES
“Chicago police detective Janice Govern was scheduled for a dismissal hearing based on a 2001 incident in which, allegedly, she nonchalantly continued to shop in a Dominick’s store even after a customer told her that the bank branch inside the store was being held up. According to a witness, she told the fellow customer to call 911 but that she resumed shopping and in fact was waiting in a checkout line when uniformed officers arrived at the store.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
DIAPERED AND DANGEROUS!
“Police in the town of Puerto Progreso, in the Mexican state of Yucatán, arrested a one-year-old baby on the charge that it was an accomplice to a robbery at a supermarket. The baby’s father, Roger Segundo, 28, had hidden six bottles of vodka in the baby’s stroller and
attempted to leave without paying for them. A police spokesperson said: ‘The policeman who got there first thought it was the right thing to do to list the baby as an accomplice, because the bottles were in his stroller.’ He said the baby was turned over to its mother in the morning when other officers realized the ‘accomplice’ was a baby.”
—Mexico.com
Sharks are the only fish that can blink.
JUST PLANE AMAZING
How two American bombers piggybacked their way into German legend.
LOOK OUT…BELOW
On New Year’s Eve, 1944, one of the most remarkable events in the history of aviation took place in northern Germany. The end of World War II was near; Allied planes were pounding German cities with continuous bombing runs. U.S. Air Force Captain Glenn Rojohn was piloting one of those planes, a B17 Flying Fortress. The 22-year-old, already on his 22nd mission, and his squadron were heading back to England after a bombing raid on Hamburg. After crossing the German coastline, the group of 37 bombers was suddenly attacked by German fighter planes. “They were having a field day with us,” Rojohn said later. “We lost plane after plane.” Only 25 of those planes would make it home from the mission, and Rojohn’s wasn’t one of them.
When the bomber in front of his was hit and went down in flames, Rojohn instinctively gunned forward to fill the gap. Keeping formation was paramount to defense. But then he felt a terrible impact. The plane had been hit, and not by German bullets. It was a collision with another bomber…from below. Not only that, the two planes were now stuck together. The lower plane’s upper gun turret had punctured the top plane’s belly, and the top plane’s lower turret had punctured the lower plane’s roof. The planes were almost perfectly aligned, nose to nose and tail to tail, according to Rojohn’s copilot, 2nd Lt. William Leek Jr., like two “breeding dragonflies.”
PIGGYBACK BOMBERS
What caused the planes to collide? It could have been the fact that the formation was flying into an 80-knot headwind, and all the planes were bouncing up and down. Or it could have been that the pilot and copilot of the lower bomber, 1st Lt. William G. MacNab and 2nd Lt. Nelson B. Vaughn, had been disabled by enemy fire and lost control of the aircraft. (Both men were seen slumped over in their seats after the collision and neither survived, so the cause of the collision remains unknown.)
Sore feet? Sea urchins walk on their teeth.
Staff Sgt. Edward L. Woodall Jr., the gunner in the lower plane’s bottom gun turret, did survive. “At the time of impact,” he said, “we lost all power.” The lower gun turret, or “ball” turret, was a small, rotatable compartment on the belly of the plane. Without power, Woodall had to rotate the turret with a hand crank to get it to the “exit” position so he could crawl up into the plane’s fuselage. When he finally did, he was surprised to see his counterpart from the other plane above his head. Staff Sgt. Joseph Russo was in the ball turret from the upper plane. He wasn’t badly injured, but neither he nor his crewmates could get his turret to the exit position. There was no way to get him out. Realizing that he wasn’t going to have a chance to bail out of the plane, Russo began reciting Hail Marys, probably unaware that his radio mike was on and that his voice could be heard by the entire crew.
BAILOUT
Rojohn cut his engines to prevent them from exploding. Then, using the three functioning engines of the pilotless craft below for power, Rojohn and Leeks muscled the two planes into turning south toward the German coast. With their feet on the instrument panel and holding the controls with all their might, the two pilots fought to keep the planes from going into a spiral. Rojohn then ordered his men to bail out, and one by one the top turret gunner, radio operator, navigator, waist gunner, tail gunner, and bombardier parachuted out of the rear exit of the plane. Russo, the ball-turret gunner, was still stuck. “I could hear him saying his Hail Marys over the intercom,” Leek said. “I felt that I was somehow invading his right to be alone. This was the hardest part of the ride for me.”
They crossed the coast at 10,000 feet and were going down fast. Rojohn ordered his copilot to bail out. Leek knew that Rojohn wouldn’t be able to keep the plane from going into a spiral or have time to bail out by himself, so he disobeyed orders. “I knew one man left in the wreck could not have survived,” he said, “so I stayed to go along for the ride.”
At 12:47 p.m., a German anti-aircraft commander on the island of Wangerooge, off the German coast, wrote in his diary: “Two fortresses collided in a formation in the NE. The planes flew hooked together. The two planes were unable to fight anymore. The crash could be awaited so I stopped the firing at them.” Bewildered German civilians wondered if the Americans had a strange new double-deckered bomber, as Rojohn and Leek screamed over the island and then over the north German countryside. “The ground came up faster and faster,” Leek said. “Praying was allowed. We gave it one last effort and slammed into the ground.”
Ptuey to you too: Masai tribesmen spit on each other in greeting.
SUDDEN IMPACT
When they hit ground, the lower plane exploded, sending the upper plane up, forward, and back to Earth. The Flying Fortress slid across the ground until its left wing hit a building and the plane came to a halt. Neither pilot could believe it: not only were they both alive, they were barely hurt. They climbed out of the wreck and looked at the plane in shock. “All that was left,” Rojohn said, “was the nose, the cockpit, and the seats we were sitting on.” The rest of the plane had disintegrated.
Two of the men who jumped from Rojohn’s plane didn’t survive, and the unfortunate Russo was believed to have been killed on impact. But four of the jumpers did survive, as well as four who had evacuated from the lower plane. Ten of the two planes’ sixteen crewmembers were saved by Rojohn and Leek’s determination. All ten were taken prisoner (one was interrogated by the Germans for two weeks about the new “secret weapon”), and all were released at war’s end five months later.
AFTERMATH
After the war, Captain Rojohn went home to Pennsylvania, got married, and had two children, but through the years he searched military and Social Security records to find his copilot. In 1986 his efforts finally paid off when he got the phone number of Leek’s mother in Washington state. When he called her, she said that her son, who had moved to California, happened to be in town for a visit and was standing right there. In 1987 the two pilots met for the first time in 43 years. The details of their conversation remained private; William Leek died a year later.
In 1994 the flight came back into Rojohn’s life when a German author sent him a book about the history of Wangerooge during the war years, including an entire chapter on the piggyback flight. Little did Rojohn know that it was part of northern German legend, and that some people even celebrated it every New Year’s Eve. The author was looking for survivors of the flight, hoping they could come to the 50th anniversary celebration.
One for the road: Errol Flynn was buried with six bottles of whiskey.
Rojohn received the letter too late for the anniversary, but he contacted the author and, in 1996, he and his wife, Janie, visited the island of Wangerooge and then went to the pasture on the German mainland where Rojohn and Leek had crash-landed 52 years earlier. They were interviewed by reporters from all over Germany, and a TV station even organized a reenactment of the flight. “They flew me out over the North Sea to where I had the midair collision,” he said. “Then they flew me over the exact route. It was a very emotional time. When we landed on the island, they told me to look up. I saw that they had hoisted the American flag for me. I can’t tell you how that made me feel.”
POSTSCRIPT
In 1997 Gordon Hildebrand, 70, of Wasco, Oregon, saw an article in World War II magazine about the piggyback flight. Hildebrand had grown up next door to the family of William MacNab, the pilot of the other plane. MacNab was just 19 when the crash occurred, and his parents had never found out how their son had died. They were only told that their son was missing in action. MacNab’s pare
nts were long dead, but Hildebrand called MacNab’s siblings, who, after 53 years, finally learned their brother’s fate.
The MacNab family contacted Rojohn. They invited him to Oregon, where he was welcomed as a hero, even serving as the grand marshal of Wasco’s Memorial Day parade. “It was almost like Bill came home,” Hildebrand said. Ann Phillips, one of MacNab’s surviving sisters, told the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, “I’ll never forget Glenn Rojohn. He was an answer to a prayer. He brought me closure after all those years waiting for news.” In 1999 Hildebrand and two of MacNab’s cousins flew to Pennsylvania to attend a regular luncheon held for Air Force veterans. They gave Rojohn a plaque that read: “You have filled a void in our lives with your presence and become a member of our family and a friend forever.” Glenn H. Rojohn died on August 9, 2003, at the age of 81. He was the last survivor of the flight.
Every year, about 43 million tons of dust settle over the United States.
THE ROBOTS ARE COMING!
In preparation for the inevitable day when robots rise up and take over the world, you may want to familiarize yourself with these recent advancements in robot technology.
CLONEBOTS
Scientists at Cornell University have built a small robot that can make copies of itself. The robot is made of several 10-centimeter-wide modules, each of which is fitted with electromagnets (so they can be attached to other modules) and a computerized replication program. Using the program, the robot can take single modules—the same ones of which it is made—and stack them, constructing a clone of itself. Scientists hope to use the technology to make self-repairing robots.
Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader Page 42
