Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  TIN-FOIL HATS: ON

  As more evidence has come to light, three theories have been proposed to explain what happened on Kholat Syakhl, now called Dyatlov Pass.

  • Secret military tests: Recent discoveries of scrap metal near Kholat Syakhl suggest that the Russians were using the area for secret military tests. Low levels of alpha radiation found on some of the victims’ clothes suggest that the testing may have been nuclear. So perhaps the nine adventurers wandered into the middle of some kind of experiment. The Soviet government denied this, and the search team found no evidence of any type of explosion.

  • Alien attack: Hikers about 30 miles south of the pass reported seeing orange spheres in the sky the night the expedition met its end. Similar sightings were recorded throughout February and March. During the open-casket funeral for four of the members who froze to death, their relatives noticed that the victims’ hair had turned gray and there was a strange, orange cast to their skin. So perhaps the orange lights scared the first five out of their tents, where they died of exposure, and the four others who searched for them were then attacked by those same orange lights.

  • Avalanche: Brian Dunning, author of Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena, looks for a more plausible explanation: “Sometime during the night, a loud noise, either from a nearby avalanche, a jet aircraft, or military ordnance, convinced at least five members of the group that an avalanche was bearing down on them. They burst out of the tent wearing whatever they happened to be sleeping in and ran.” Then, says Dunning, they got lost trying to get back to the camp. And when the other four went to look for them, they got caught in a real avalanche—which might explain the internal injuries and the woman’s missing tongue.

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  In 1995 a San Diego man sued the city for $5.2 million for “emotional trauma” after he saw women using the men’s restroom at an Elton John/Billy Joel concert.

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  Dunning also points out that the radiation found on the clothes may have actually come from their camp lanterns, which contained a radioactive substance called thorium (the lanterns even had a radioactive symbol on them). So what about the orange skin and gray hair? “Their bodies had been exposed outdoors for weeks,” said Dunning. “Of course they looked terrible.”

  CASE (NOT) CLOSED

  Still, many lingering questions about the Dyatlov Pass Incident keep the conspiracy theories alive: Why did the searchers find so many sets of footprints? An avalanche would have covered them all up, along with the camp. And if it was a simple avalanche that killed the group, why would the Russian government try to cover it up? Why say the skiers were killed by an “unknown compelling force”? Nearly 30 years after the case was officially put to rest, the chief investigator, Lev Ivanov, made this statement: “I suspected at the time and am almost sure now that these bright flying spheres had a direct connection to the group’s death.” But just what were those spheres? Strange weapons, UFOs, or something else?

  “If I could ask God just one question,” said Yuri Yudin, the skier who had to turn back, “It would be, ‘What really happened to my friends that night?’”

  OWW! OWW!

  Sometimes life slaps you upside the head…twice.

  OWW! Ralph Needs, 80, of Groveport, Ohio, was hospitalized in 2009 after three robbers broke into his home, tied him up, and pistol-whipped him. They broke Needs’s nose and stole his truck, computer, and credit cards.

  OWW! OWW! Four days later, Needs’s son was giving his dad a lesson in self-defense when he loaded up a 9mm pistol—and accidentally shot Needs in the hand. Needs was treated at a nearby (and familiar) hospital and released. His son was not charged with a crime.

  OWW! A San Diego, California, Wells Fargo bank was robbed in September 2008. The robber escaped with an undisclosed amount of cash.

  OWW! OWW! The same Wells Fargo bank was robbed—on the same day, three hours later—by another bank robber. An FBI spokesman said the robbers were, in order, “The Hard-Hat Bandit,” known for wearing a yellow hard hat during his robberies, and “The Chatty Bandit,” known for talking on a cell phone as he entered the banks he was about to rob. The two were not working together, the spokesman said. Both of the bandits were later arrested and sent to federal prison.

  OWW! Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians lost their jobs during the recent economic crisis.

  OWW! OWW! In July 2009, the Associated Press reported that people seeking information about their unemployment benefits on the Brazilian Labor Ministry’s Web site were given passwords such as “bum” and “shameless.” Labor Minister Carlos Lupi apologized, and blamed the prank on the private company that handles the Web site’s security system.

  OWW! Stephanie Martinez was working in the Pizza Patron restaurant in Denton, Texas, in July 2008 when a man in sunglasses and a bushy wig walked in, pointed a gun at her, and demanded money. She started getting cash out of the register—when fellow employee Rudy Sandoval jumped on the man and started punching him. In the melee, the robber’s wig and glasses flew off.

  * * *

  Brazilian soccer star Ramalho reportedly had to spend 3 days in bed after taking a suppository orally.

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  OWW! OWW! When the wig and glasses flew off, Martinez recognized the robber: It was her father. “I dropped the money,” Ms. Martinez said afterward. “I said, ‘Don’t hit him again! That’s my dad!’” Her father ran out of the store and to a getaway car—in which, it turned out, Martinez’s husband and mother were waiting. They were all in on the plot, though police later determined that Stephanie Martinez knew nothing about it. Her father, husband, and mother were captured and arrested.

  OWW! In the middle of an October night in 2005, a mugger pulled a handgun on a man in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and demanded money. The victim gave the mugger all the cash he had. A pickup truck, which police believe was the getaway car, then rushed up in reverse…and crashed into the robber and the victim. The driver of the truck then fled the scene, leaving the injured robber there.

  OWW! OWW! OWW! OWW! OWW! The robber tried to get away with the cash by limping into the street…and was hit by a woman driving a Lexus. The woman in the Lexus backed up…and ran into him again. Them she backed up again…and ran into him one more time. After the third strike, the robber reached into his pocket for his gun…and shot himself in the leg. The woman ran into him again and drove off. Police showed up and arrested the robber, who was taken to the hospital with serious injuries. The victim was treated for minor injuries.

  PAINFUL ACTIVISM

  In 2008 Hollywood star and environmentalist Harrison Ford wanted to call attention to deforestation, so he had his chest hair waxed on live TV. “Every little bit of rainforest that gets ripped out,” he cringed during the procedure, “it hurts!”

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  A Dutch company has devised technology to make lamps and other household items “float” in the air.

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  DON’T DO DRUGS. REALLY.

  Or you might end up doing something very stupid. Like these people did.

  • In 2009 Jonathan James Sweat, 18, drove his SUV through the front window of the state attorney’s office in Gainesville, Florida. When the police arrived, he told them they couldn’t arrest him on DUI charges because he hadn’t been drinking—he’d been smoking pot. He was arrested.

  • In 2008 an 18-year-old Seattle woman made an ATM deposit into her bank account. But she put the wrong envelope into the machine—instead of one filled with money, she accidentally “deposited” one that was full of methamphetamine. A bank employee found the meth the next morning. The woman was arrested.

  • A 40-year-old Silverdale, Washington, man was pulled over for erratic driving in 2008. When he handed the officer his wallet, some white powder fell out of it. The man told the officer it was cocaine, but it was okay because he only used it when he was with prostitutes, and he’d been with one that evening. He was arrested.

  • Police raided the house of a suspected
drug dealer in Joliet, Illinois, in 2009 and found three marijuana plants in his back yard. The man’s explanation: The plants were for his dog, who was learning to sniff out marijuana for law-enforcement officers. He was arrested. (The dog was not.)

  • A man flagged down a police car on a Philadelphia street late one night in 2009 and told the officers that he’d lost his car…while he was trying to buy drugs. To compound the problem, his six-year-old stepson was in the car. The boy was found two hours later and taken to his mother. And though the man scored points for helping the police find his son, he was arrested.

  • A police officer in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, was in a convenience store when he noticed something odd about 29-year-old Cesar Lopez. What caught his eye? Lopez had a baseball cap in his hand, and a small plastic bag of marijuana stuck to his forehead. He was arrested.

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  A strand of spider silk the width of a pencil could stop a Boeing 747 airplane in flight.

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  REAL FRANKENSTEINS

  Mary Shelley’s fictional doctor who screamed “It’s alive, it’s alive!” wasn’t purely an imaginary figure. Lots of scientists over the years have attempted to bring the dead back to life.

  JOHANN DIPPEL (1673–1734)

  This theologian, alchemist, and natural-born troublemaker was born in the real Castle Frankenstein in Germany, and may have served as the inspiration for Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein. He dabbled in many disciplines—and his religious views got him imprisoned for heresy. Why was he so controversial? Working in his lab, Dippel whipped up a concoction of human bones, blood, and bodily fluids that he called the “Elixir of Life”—the drinker, he claimed, would live forever. (He also discovered that his elixir, when combined with potassium carbonate, made a useful dye known today as Prussian blue.) There’s no evidence that Dippel tried to stitch body parts together, but he was fond of putting legs, arms, heads, and torsos—both animal and human—into huge vats and boiling them down in the hope of, as he called it, “engendering life in the dead.” According to some accounts, the resulting stench caused the townspeople to demand that he end the grotesque experiments or risk being expelled from the country. Dippel wouldn’t give in, so he was exiled. He was rumored to have been later poisoned in Sweden.

  LAZZARO SPALLANZANI (1729–1799)

  Another possible inspiration for Shelley’s mad doctor was this well-respected 18th-century Italian scientist, who decapitated snails to see if their heads would grow back and blinded bats to prove that they navigated by echolocation. While a professor at Pavia University, Spallanzani reported to the Royal Society in London that he had attained “resurrection after death” by sprinkling water on seemingly dead microbes. One of his contemporaries, the writer Voltaire, wrote, “When a man like him announces that he has brought the dead back to life, we have to believe him.” But Voltaire was wrong—Spallanzani later realized the organisms were merely dehydrated, which led him to conduct further experiments proving that microbes could be killed by boiling (information that Louis Pasteur later put to great use). Italian researcher Paolo Mazzarello claims that Spallanzani was the inspiration for “Der Sandmann,” a short story written in 1815 by E.T.A. Hoffman about a scientist who builds an artificial human. Written a year before Mary Shelley started Frankenstein, the story was a huge success in Europe and could well have planted the seed for Shelley’s book.

  * * *

  Highest rate of homosexuality of any mammal: male bats.

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  GIOVANNI ALDINI (1762–1834)

  At the turn of the 19th century, scientists first experimented with galvanism—using electrical currents to stimulate nerves and muscles. The pioneer was Luigi Galvani, who discovered that a dead frog’s legs would kick when zapped with electricity. His nephew, Giovanni Aldini, took that work to a new level by galvanizing larger creatures. Huge crowds turned out to see the mad puppeteer manipulate the dead. According to a witness account:

  Aldini, after having cut off the head of a dog, makes the current of a strong battery go through it: the mere contact triggers terrible convulsions. The jaws open, the teeth chatter, the eyes roll in their sockets; and if reason did not stop the fired imagination, one would almost believe that the animal is suffering and alive again!

  In 1803 Aldini released the book An Account of the Late Improvements in Galvanism, full of illustrations showing the results of his experiments in graphic detail. He was also the first person to apply the use of electrical impulses to treat the mentally ill—a procedure later known as electroshock therapy.

  ANDREW URE (1778–1857)

  This Scottish scientist was convinced that electrical stimulation of the phrenic nerve, a nerve that runs between the neck and the abdomen, could restore the dead to life. In 1818 he caused a sensation in Glasgow when he attempted to prove his theory by zapping the body of murderer John Clydesdale shortly after he was hanged. Although Ure was able to make the dead man appear to breathe and kick his legs, as well as open his eyes and make horrific faces, he was unable to resuscitate the corpse. However, the event is notable for what Ure suggested afterward: Successful resuscitation might have been achieved, he said, if the body had been shocked by two “moistened brass knobs” placed over the phrenic nerve and diaphragm—an early description of what we now know as a defibrillator.

  * * *

  In 2003 a British fan who claimed Paul McCartney gave him the flu tried to sell his germs on eBay.

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  ROBERT E. CORNISH (1894–1963)

  In 1932 this scientific wunderkind (he graduated from the University of California at age 18 and earned his Ph.D. by 22) became obsessed with the idea that he could bring the dead back to life, not be electricity but through the use of a teeter-totter, or seesaw. Inspired by the work of George Washington Crile on blood transfusion, Cornish believed that placing a recently deceased patient on a seesaw and moving him or her up and down rapidly, combined with an injection of epinephrine and oxygen, would get the blood circulating again. For over a year, he tried to revive victims of heart attack, drowning, and other sudden deaths with his seesaw therapy but had no success. Then, in 1934, Cornish was able to resurrect two dogs, Lazarus IV and V, for a short time (no word on the fates of Lazauruses I through III). He later played himself in the 1935 movie Life Returns, about a doctor who attempts to revive the dead.

  VLADIMIR DEMIKHOV (1916–1998)

  Russian physician Demikhov is credited with groundbreaking work in organ transplant surgery. However, his notoriety stems from some grotesque experiments with dogs. A surgeon in the Red Army in World War II, Demikhov honed his surgical technique while amputating the shattered limbs of wounded soldiers, skills he put to use later when he grafted the head of one dog onto the body of another. Demikhov made 20 of these two-headed creatures, none of which survived more than a month after surgery. His work was reported by National Geographic and Time magazine in the 1950s as part of a bizarre Cold War race between the United States and the U.S.S.R. to be the first to successfully transplant a human brain. So far, no one has been able to accomplish that feat.

  But all of these men were nothing more than mad scientists from a bygone area. Right? Surely modern scientists don’t try the same kinds of experiments…like creating part-human, part-animal creatures. Actually, they do. Turn to page 376 for “Manimals.”

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  On a roll: Americans use five times more paper for wiping body parts than for writing.

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  SITTIN’ IN A TREE, PART I

  On December 10, 1997, Julia “Butterfly” Hill climbed to a platform 180 feet above the ground in a giant redwood tree she called “Luna.” She didn’t come down for two years. Here’s why she did it.

  THE GOOD

  For 118 years, the Pacific Lumber Company logged the largest privately owned old-growth redwood grove in the United States, a stand of ancient trees up to 360 feet tall, 15 feet in diameter and up to 2,000 years old. P.L., as the locals in Scotia, Californi
a, called the company, began in 1863 with 6,000 acres of timberland. By the 1920s, the company had 65,000 acres and, with 1,500 employees, was the biggest employer in Humboldt County. By the time Stanwood Murphy became company president in 1931, the Save the Redwoods League of San Francisco was already very vocal about the need for preserving the ancient redwoods. Murphy listened and made a revolutionary change to his business: P.L. would no longer clear-cut its holdings (standard practice at the time), but would adopt a “selective-cut” system of logging. This meant that the company would cut no more than 70 percent of the mature trees in a stand, leaving enough younger trees to hold the soil and to seed a new generation. Murphy never allowed more trees to be cut than the forest could replace in a year.

  Murphy and his heirs were hailed for their sustainable logging practices, as well as for their treatment of P.L. employees. The company provided the loggers affordable housing, health and life insurance, a pension plan, and, by the 1960s, scholarships for their children. According to Warren Murphy, the last Murphy to run Pacific Lumber Company, “We were the good guys. It was fun, it was easy—it was a great life.”