25 is the sum of the first five odd numbers: 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 9 = 25.
25 is the number of the U.S. Interstate highway that runs from I-90 in Wyoming south to I-10 in New Mexico. Along the way it runs through Cheyenne, Denver, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque.
25 was the age of death of poet John Keats (1821), R&B crooner Johnny Ace (1954), rapper Tupac Shakur (1996), and actor Brad Renfro (2008).
All in one basket: Ostriches lay their eggs in communal nests.
EXTREME SPORT: BASE JUMPING
“Extreme” equals “dangerous.” You might want to think twice before taking up this pastime.
WAY OFF BASE
In 1783 Louis-Sébastien Lenormand climbed to the top of a tower in Montpellier, France…and jumped. The people down below probably thought he was nuts, but thanks to the contraption on his back, he landed without a scratch—it was the first parachute (it looked like a large umbrella), and Lenormand’s jump was a precursor to a modern extreme sport: BASE jumping.
If Lenormand’s jump had been filmed, he might be called the father of modern BASE jumping. Instead, the title goes to filmmaker Carl Boenish. On August 18, 1978, Boenish and three other expert skydivers put on their parachutes and went “hucking,” an extreme sports term meaning recklessly throwing oneself into the air from a launching pad. For their launching pad, Boenish and his buddies used the 3,198-foot granite monolith El Capitan, in California’s Yosemite National Park. They filmed their jumps and transformed a crazy stunt into a crazy sport that has, to date, claimed at least 186 lives.
BASE-ICALLY INSANE
BASE stands for Building, Antenna, Span (like bridges), and Earth (like cliffs)—the launching pads from which the jumpers jump. To receive an “official” BASE number, a jumper has to complete a jump from all four categories. Dangerous? Some cynics say the acronym should stand for “Bones And S@*! Everywhere.” During a BASE jump, anything can go wrong and probably will. The jumpers smash into cliffs, collide with guy wires, go down in deep water, or hit the ground headfirst. And even though many fall victim to parachute malfunctions, BASE jumpers don’t use reserve chutes. Why not? Because the relatively low heights from which they plummet give them about six seconds to reach the ground: If a chute doesn’t work, there’s no time to deploy a backup. It should come as no surprise, then, that Boenish died in 1984 while BASE jumping from Trollveggen, Europe’s highest vertical rock face at 3,600 feet. What went wrong? His chute didn’t open.
First non-documentary ever to film in Mecca: Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992).
FATAL ATTRACTION
Because BASE jumping is so dangerous, it’s illegal in almost every American city and national park. West Virginia allows it, but only on a single day each year—New River Gorge Bridge Day. Before you go, consider a few facts from the Bridge Day FAQ page:
• Some of the smartest BASE jumpers in the world have been injured or killed BASE jumping.
• It’s not “if” but “when” you get busted up in this sport, so get good medical insurance.
• It’s a good idea to let your family know what you’re doing so they won’t be surprised if something happens.
One BASE jump instructor puts it like this, “If you are not ready to die BASE jumping, you are not ready to go BASE jumping.” Since 1979 four people have died doing a Bridge Day jump.
HIGH JUMPER
While the number-one requirement for BASE jumping is obvious—guts—the number-two requirement might not be: superb free-fall skills. Knowing how to free-fall helps insure that the first jump isn’t the last. In 1996, when Felix Baumgartner made his first jump, he was prepared. He’d learned about targeted skydiving as a special-forces parachutist with the Austrian military. (That was before he was labeled a troublemaker and kicked out.) For his first jump, Baumgartner headed to the New River Gorge Bridge—and survived.
As for illegal jumps, Baumgartner thrives on them, and he doesn’t mind a bit of troublemaking if it will help him accomplish his goals. In 1999 he spent two months scoping out one of the world’s tallest buildings—Kuala Lumpur’s 1,483-foot Petronas Twin Towers. For days he watched security guards patrolling the towers and paid close attention to the businessmen who frequented the building. Then he walked into the building disguised in an expensive suit with a briefcase and phony I.D. card. He took an elevator to the 88th floor, where he opened his briefcase and pulled out a parachute and camcorder. After readying his gear, he climbed up a window-washing crane…and jumped—for eight seconds of free fall. The leap earned Baumgartner the record for world’s highest building jump.
Post it, but don’t copy it: The shade of yellow on Post-it Notes is trademarked by 3M.
JESUS SAVES
Baumgartner also holds the record for the world’s shortest BASE jump. His target: the famous Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. In 2009 Baumgartner and his team managed to hide out in the security area at the base of the statue. At 4:00 a.m., they crept outside so the daredevil could shoot an arrow carrying a steel cable over the outstretched arm of the giant Jesus. He attached ropes to the cable and climbed to his perch—the right hand of Christ—and then vaulted 95 feet to the ground. The amount of time Baumgartner had to get his parachute open (and say his prayers): 1.5 seconds. “Every one of us has to die at some point,” Baumgartner says, “so there’s no point living in fear of it. Unfortunately, it’s easier said than done when you’re waiting for the ideal conditions to make the jump—and thinking about the twelve colleagues who died last year.”
Not had your fill of deadly thrills? There’s more. Check out our story of the second most dangerous sport: free-solo climbing. It falls on page 366.
* * *
SUPERHEROES’ RELIGIOUS AFFILIATIONS
Based on actual references in comic books.
• Superman—Methodist
• Batman—Episcopalian
• The Hulk—Catholic
• Wonder Twins—Mormon
• The Thing (Fantastic Four)—Jewish
• Wolverine (X–Men)—Buddhist
• Ghost Rider—Baptist
• The Human Torch (Fantastic Four)—Episcopalian
• Thor—Norse pantheon (of which he is a member)
The human population of the world inhales more than 6 billion tons of oxygen annually.
MUCH ADO ABOUT JUGS AND SCREWS
Freedom of speech does have limits. You can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater, for example. Many governments place greater restrictions on free speech than the U.S. does…or at least they try to.
NAUGHTY OR NICE
In 2011 the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), which regulates that country’s mobile phone industry, announced a plan to prevent Pakistanis from sending text messages it deemed offensive, sexually explicit, or counter to “the glory of Islam” (97% of Pakistanis are Muslim). PTA bureaucrats drew up a list of 1,500 naughty English and Urdu words and gave it to cell-phone service providers, ordering them to block any text messages that included those words. It gave cell-phone companies just a week to put the program in place.
The list of banned words soon found its way onto the Internet, where it was protested by free-speech activists…and mocked by ordinary Pakistanis, who were baffled by some of the words on the list. A few were genuinely obscene; others were simply medical terms. But most of the banned words were completely innocuous, perhaps with suggestive connotations, but only if used in a slangy context. Why they ended up on the list remains a mystery.
EXPLETIVES DELETED
Here are some of the words and phrases on the PTA’s English list:
Athlete’s Foot
Back Door
Barf
Bite Me
Budweiser
Cocktail
Condom
Creamy
Crotch Rot
Cumquat
Deeper
Deposit
Dipstick
Dome
Dope
Drunk
/> Fairy
Fart
Finger Food
Flasher
Fondle
Four Twenty
Genital
Glazed Donut
Harder
Harem
Headlights
Henhouse
Herpes
Hobo
Hole
Honkey
Hoser
Hostage
Hussy
Hustler
Idiot
In the Buff
Interracial
Jack the Ripper
Jug
Kmart
Knocker
Lactate
Lavender
Lolita
Lotion
Lowlife
Lube Job
Mango
Mary Jane
Murder
Oui
Period
Poor White Trash
Premature
Prime Time
Pussycat
Quickie
Rear End
Sucker
Red Light
Ribbed
Roach
Robber
Satan
Screw
Shag
Showtime
Six Six Six
Slant
Sleazeball
Slime
Snatch
Sniper
Spit
Stagg
Stroke
Stupid
Sucker
Suicide
Syphilis
Tampon
Testicle
The Trots
Tongue
Trailer Trash
Tramp
Trojan
Tunnel of Love
XXX
In Spain, rolls of fat around a person’s waist are called michelines. (After Michelin tires.)
POTTY MOUTHS
The ban backfired badly. The number of obscene texts originating in Pakistan soared after the list was published, as millions of Pakistanis tested the system to see which dirty words got through and which ones didn’t. Instead of protecting children—one of the ban’s stated goals—it gave them a state-sponsored education in obscenity. “Well done!” one Pakistani posted to his Twitter account. “The banned list has made it all over Pakistan, and kids are swearing more elaborately and frequently than ever.” Less than a week after the list was made public, the PTA scrapped it and announced it was beginning “consultations” to pare the list down to as few as a dozen words.
End Note: The original list included 26 expressions containing the word “butt,” but not the word “butt” itself. Why? Butt is a common last name in Pakistan, a relic of the British colonial period when officials spelled the Kashmiri surname Bhat as you-know-what.
If you read this sentence aloud, you’ll use about 100 muscles.
CITY NICKNAMES
Where would you rather live: Naptown or the Big Tomato?
TERRE HAUTE, INDIANA: “Pittsburgh of the West” A curious nickname, because Indiana isn’t really in the west, and Terra Haute is only 400 miles from Pittsburgh. The nickname stems from Terra Haute’s status as, like Pittsburgh, a center of steel production during the Industrial Revolution.
BRAHAM, MINNESOTA: “Pie Capital of Minnesota”
Braham is between the major cities of Duluth and Minneapolis. In the 1930s and ’40s, travelers made a popular destination out of the city’s Park Café, which offered many homemade pies. In 1990 the town made the first Friday in August “Pie Day,” when residents gather to consume pie and ice cream and raise money for charities. On the first Pie Day, Minnesota governor Rudy Perpich declared Braham the Homemade Pie Capital of Minnesota.
INDIANAPOLIS: “Naptown”
Because city ordinances made businesses close early, Indianapolis became something of a social ghost town, or sleepy, leading traveling jazz musicians to nickname it “Naptown.” It’s also a play on words, because “nap” is in the middle of “Indianapolis.”
ANTHONY, TEXAS: “Leap Year Capital of the World”
Anthony resident Mary Ann Brown was born on February 29—Leap Day. In 1988 she proposed that the Chamber of Commerce host a festival on that day every four years. Anthony is the first city in the world to host such an event. It’s also the home of the Worldwide Leap Year Birthday Club, an organization of people with a birthday on February 29.
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE: “The Protestant Vatican”
Besides being the home of the country-music industry, Nashville is also a center of Christian thought, educational institutions, and religious industries. Bible publisher Thomas Nelson is headquartered there, as is the Southern Baptist Convention and the United Methodist Church. Nashville is also the location of half a dozen major Christian colleges and more than 700 churches.
Who’s gonna stop ’em? Crocodiles have been observed walking across the backs of hippos.
WACO, TEXAS: “Buckle of the Bible Belt”
If you picture the Bible Belt as a long swath that stretches across the South and west to Arizona, then Waco would be roughly where the buckle on that belt would sit. (Large decorative belt buckles are also very popular in the Bible Belt.)
YAKIMA, WASHINGTON: “Palm Springs of Washington”
Most of Washington has a rainy climate. Not so in south-central Washington, which is dry and arid, much like Palm Springs, California.
SACRAMENTO: “The Big Tomato”
A play on New York City’s nickname, “The Big Apple,” this nickname dating to the 1970s refers to Sacramento valley’s many tomato farms and canneries.
RUMNEY, NEW HAMPSHIRE: “Crutch Capital of the World”
At one point, during and immediately after World War I, when demand was especially high, Rumney really was the world’s top producer of crutches. The Loveland Company made more than 3,000 pairs a week.
QUINTER, KANSAS: “Half-Mile City”
Denver is the “Mile-High City” because its average official elevation is 5,280 feet—exactly one mile. Quinter (population: 981) has an average elevation of 2,681 feet, over half a mile.
ALGONA, IOWA: “Home of the World’s Largest Cheeto”
In 2003 Algona resident Mike Evans opened a bag of Cheetos and found one that was a round blob (rather than a long, thin curlicue) about the size of strawberry. That may not seem huge, but it is the biggest Cheeto on record, and the town is very proud of it—so proud that they celebrate the cheesy snack each year on March 13, “Giant Cheeto Day.”
The world population is growing by about a billion people every 12 years.
MARRIAGE FIRSTS
For better or for worse, we present for your reading pleasure this bevy of betrothals that, in one way or another, were the very first of their kind.
FIRST (ENGLISH) MARRIAGE IN THE NEW WORLD
John Laydon, 28, a carpenter, married Anne Burras, 14, a maid, in Jamestown, Virginia, in December 1608. Their oldest daughter was the first European child born in North America.
FIRST (ENGLISH) DIVORCE IN THE NEW WORLD
When James Luxford was revealed as a bigamist in 1639, the court in Plymouth Colony dissolved his second marriage, sentenced him to an hour in the stocks, and ordered him “sent away to England at the earliest opportunity.” His ex-wife got all his stuff. (Really.)
FIRST WEDDING BY TELEGRAPH
When a wealthy Boston merchant discovered that his daughter wanted to marry one of his clerks, he sent the young man away on business. He'd forgotten one thing: the telegraph. His daughter, on the other hand, had not. She headed to a Boston telegraph office and the man of her dreams hurried to a New York office with a magistrate in tow. In an "electric flash," they were wed.
FIRST ELOPEMENT BY AIRPLANE
Barnstorming pilot Art “The Smash-Up Kid” Smith, 19, wanted to marry 18-year-old Aimee Cour, but Indiana law required parental consent, and Aimee’s parents wouldn’t give it. Michigan laws were looser, so on October 26, 1912,
they flew the coop. (Art crashed the plane.) Art loved flying more than he loved Aimee, and they divorced in 1917. He died in a final plane crash in 1926.
FIRST WEDDING BY TELEPHONE
Bertil Clason of Flint, Michigan, planned to marry his sweetheart, Sigrid Carlson, in the United States, but strict immigration laws kept her in Sweden. So on December 2, 1933, Bertil and a pastor picked up telephones in Detroit and called Sigrid in Stockholm, 4,100 miles away. The wedding service took only seven minutes. (In those days, overseas calls cost $12 per minute—$200 today.)
First wedding aloft in a balloon: two performers in PT Barnum’s circus (Ohio, Oct. 1874).
TOWNS FOR SALE
What’s the easiest way to become mayor if you don’t want to run for office? Buy the town, of course! Here’s a look at a few burgs that have gone on the block in recent years.
HENRY RIVER MILL VILLAGE, NC (Population: 0)
Includes: Twenty-two abandoned buildings, including homes and commercial buildings, on 72 acres
Asking Price: $1.2 million
Details: If you’ve seen the hit film The Hunger Games, you’ve seen this town. In 1977 the Henry River textile mill burned down, and the town, built in the 1920s to house the mill workers, was abandoned. Three decades later it was so run down that when Hollywood scouts came to North Carolina looking for a location dilapidated enough to serve as the movie’s “District 12” (where the main characters live), the village was perfect for their needs. Soon after The Hunger Games hit theaters, fans began pouring into the village. That was more than 83-year-old Wade Shepherd, the owner of Henry River Mill Village, could handle. “I’m getting too many visitors. Day and night, they’re driving through, taking pictures, getting out and walking. I’m just bombarded with people,” he told the Associated Press in April 2012.
Sold! Fearful of being sued if a fan was injured on his property—which, after all, consists of abandoned buildings—Shepherd sold the village to an auction house called Profiles in History, which planned to auction it off in August 2012.
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