Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader
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Who’s on the $500 bill? William McKinley. The $1,000 bill? Grover Cleveland.
•1959: Bank of America introduces BankAmericard. In 1977 the card will change its name to VISA, and go on to become the world’s largest credit card company.
•1969: 16% of American households regularly use credit cards.
•1972: BankAmericard introduces the world’s first electronic card authorization system, BASE I, and credit cards with magnetic strips that hold simple account information. Authorization is now available 24 hours a day. Other cards will soon follow.
•1977: Fifty banks control more than 80% of the credit-card market. This will soon change.
•1990: The Consumer Federation of America estimates that 122 million Americans have at least one charge card.
•2001: Amount of Americans that use credit cards: 157 million. Average household credit card debt: $8,123. Revenue to credit card companies from late fees: $7,300,000,000 (Priceless?).
•2004: There are more than one billion credit cards in use—in the U.S. alone. The average American family pays between $1,000 and $1,500 in interest every year. Ten banks now control more than 80% of the credit card market.
THE FUTURE: Data storage devices get smaller and smaller. Examples: Keychain credit cards; credit cards with display screens built into them to view transactions, balances, or currency exchange rates; and cell phones that are also credit cards. Wave your phone over a wireless sensor and pay for your movie, gas, meal...(Futuristic? Not everywhere. They’re already common in Korea and Japan.)
BE RIGHT BACK
“A pair of waiters in Shanghai, China, were arrested after taking a customer’s credit card and using it to buy cell phones—while he sat in their restaurant. The diner, identified only as Mr. Zhu, had just finished lunch when his credit card company called. Had he just spent 25,000 yuan ($3,100) on new cell phones? Waiters Ling Hong and Wang Luole had told Zhu there was a problem with his card and asked him to wait for a few minutes, then took the card to a nearby electronics mart.” (Associated Press)
Most frequently broken bone: the clavicle (collar bone).
LIVING A LIE
Make-believe can be fun. But some people don’t know when to quit. Here are some folks who took pretending a little too far.
TRUST ME—I’M HIM
George Schira, head of Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Center, was fired in 1987 for spending Carter Center funds on personal items (clothes and home furnishings). Impersonating Carter’s voice, Schira called George Paraskevaides, a wealthy benefactor of the Carter Center, and asked him for $150,000. Paraskevaides sent the money, per “Carter’s” request, to a London bank. A few weeks later, Schira called Paraskevaides again, this time posing as a Saudi prince acting on behalf of Carter, saying they desperately needed $500,000—immediately. Schira didn’t even use a fake accent this time, but Paraskevaides again sent the money, which Schira promptly deposited in a personal Swiss bank account. Schira called one more time—as Carter—to thank Paraskevaides for his donations. A few months later Schira was indicted for 17 counts of fraud, but evaded capture for five years, at which point, facing 85 years in prison, he pleaded guilty and spent 28 months in jail.
TRUST ME—I’M A DOCTOR
Arthur Osborne Phillips wanted to study medicine, but when his family couldn’t afford college, he enlisted in the army, working as an orderly in World War I. He was a fast learner and picked up some medical knowledge by shadowing his supervisor, Dr. James Phillips (no relation). After the war, he landed various low-level hospital jobs until his habit of writing bad checks landed him in prison.
Somehow Phillips convinced prison authorities that his hospital jobs had actually been medical positions, and they made him head of surgery. Released from prison in 1921, Phillips heard that his old boss, Dr. Phillips, had been committed to a mental institution, so he visited the doctor’s family and stole his medical diploma right off the wall. Credentials now in hand, “Dr.” Phillips worked for a while as a surgeon in West Virginia, but couldn’t stay in one place for long. Later he made his living as a country doctor in small towns in the Southwest, where he also posed as a dentist and a veterinarian. Phillips was arrested for medical fraud a few times but was never convicted.
Q: What was the original name of The Beach Boys? A: Carl and the Passions.
Then, while in Kansas in 1949, Phillips got in a car accident. He had gotten away with fraudulently practicing medicine for 24 years, but it was the fender bender that proved to be his undoing.
The other driver sued for $600 in damages, but rather than just pay up (and avoid going to court), Phillips countersued for $40,000. His claim: the broken arm he sustained in the accident prevented him from practicing medicine (apparently he forgot that he wasn’t a real doctor). Attorneys for the other driver quickly discovered Phillips’s true identity and criminal record. Not only did he lose the suit, he subsequently served 20 years in prison.
TRUST ME—IT’S SHAKESPEARE
Born in 1777, William Henry Ireland was a Shakespeare buff. Ireland’s father, also a Shakespeare fan, collected Shakespeare memorabilia. The one item he dreamed of owning was a document bearing the Bard’s signature, so Ireland decided to make his dad a gift.
While apprenticing as a lawyer in 1794, 17-year-old Ireland had access to old contracts and deeds, so he collected blank pieces of parchment from the early 1600s and, using specially treated ink, forged a promissory note “signed” by Shakespeare. Unaware that it was a fake, his father was elated. Ireland then forged love letters to Shakespeare’s wife, a profession of his Protestant faith, and even portions of the original manuscripts of Hamlet and King Lear. Like the promissory note, the documents were certified to be real by handwriting experts.
Ireland became more ambitious. In 1795 he concocted a complete script of a “previously unknown” Shakespeare play: Vortigern and Rowena. It was the literary find of the century and was set to be performed at London’s Drury Lane Theatre. But two days before the opening, scholar Edmond Malone published An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments, calling all of Ireland’s Shakespeare documents phonies. When the play opened (to a packed house), it was so bad that everyone knew it couldn’t have been written by Shakespeare. Ireland was forced to confess his fabrications. Over the next 30 years, he attempted to become a novelist and playwright (he even tried to revive Vortigern and Rowena) using his own name. He flopped.
Kangaroos cannot back up.
JAIL FOOD FOLLIES
Are you sick of the cafeteria? Tired of the same old fast food? Then maybe you’d like to sample the cuisine at your local prison. Bon apétit!
PRISON: Rockwood Institution, Winnipeg, Canada
FOOD: Lobster and liquor
STORY: In August 2002, prison officials reported that a “well-connected” inmate had managed to make prison a four-star dining experience for his fellow inmates. They said that Ronald Hickey, 48, who was serving a nine-year sentence for drug convictions, had somehow smuggled over a ton of gourmet seafood and liquor into the prison. The officials couldn’t prove it, though: the accusations were based solely on tips from inmate informants—any actual evidence is believed to have been eaten.
PRISON: Pozo Almonte jail in Santiago, Chile
FOOD: French bread sticks
STORY: Prison officials couldn’t figure out why prisoners were suddenly so fond of French baguettes, prompting a huge rise in deliveries from certain local bakeries. But a November 2002 search of one of the bakeries discovered the secret ingredient: the bread sticks were being hollowed out and filled with marijuana.
PRISON: Caledonia County Work Camp, Vermont
FOOD: Beer and cigarettes
STORY: In December 2001, Mark Delude, a prisoner at this work camp for nonviolent offenders, crawled under the fence surrounding the site, and took off. How far did he get? About a mile and a half, to the nearest convenience store. Delude wasn’t trying to escape, he just wanted some beer
and smokes. He bought a case of beer and a carton of cigarettes, and had a few of both before trying to sneak back into prison with the rest of his booty. Guards caught the slightly inebriated Delude standing outside his tent...and shipped him off to a more secure facility. “I don’t remember ever trying to catch people trying to break back in before,” said State Police Officer George Hacking. “But nothing surprises me.”
Longest jump by a monster truck: 141 feet, 10 inches.
WHERE THERE’S A WILL
More proof that a little thing like death doesn’t have to stop you from being creative.
The 1820 will of Colonel William H. Jackson made a bequest...to a white oak tree. “In consideration of the great love I bear this tree,” Jackson wrote, “I give it entire possession of itself and of all land within 8 feet of the tree on all sides.” The original “Tree that Owns Itself” died in 1942, but a second generation of the tree continues to own itself and the land around it.
•Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596) instructed that he be buried at sea, and that two of his favorite ships be burned and sunk at the same spot. (They were.)
•Martin van Butchell (1735–1812) was a British dentist. When his wife Mary died in 1775, he preserved her body, dressed it in a lace dress, put it in a glass-topped coffin—and displayed it in a window in his home. Why? A clause in his wife’s will stipulated that he be provided income from her fortune after her death...as long as he kept her body above ground. The body eventually wound up in the Royal College of Surgeons in London, where it was destroyed in a German bombing raid in 1941.
•Tom Halley of Memphis, Tennessee, bequeathed $5,000 each to “the nurse who removed a pink monkey from the foot of my bed, and to the cook at the hospital who removed snakes from my soup.”
•When Sandra West of San Antonio, Texas, died in 1977 she was buried, according to her will’s instructions, “next to my husband, in my lace nightgown, in my Ferrari, with the seat slanted comfortably.” It was a 1964 Ferrari 250 GTO Series II, and the grave was covered in concrete to stop grave-robbers from stealing it.
•When Ernest Digweed of Portsmouth, England, died in 1976, he left his entire estate, £26,000 (about $47,000)—to Jesus Christ, in the case that he arrived for his second coming. “If during the next 80 years,” reads his will, “the Lord Jesus Christ shall come to reign on Earth, then the Public Trustee, upon obtaining proof which shall satisfy Him of His identity, shall pay to the Lord Jesus Christ all the property He holds on His behalf.” (No takers so far.)
Vermont’s Panache restaurant offers hippo, lion, and giraffe dishes on its menu.
HOW THE WEST WAS LOST
BRI stalwart Jeff Cheek—a proud Texan with a love of forgotten history—uncovered this fascinating nugget of Americana.
THE PLOT
In the spring of 1861, while politicians from the North and South were in Washington, D.C., debating about whether a state had the right to secede from the Union, clandestine meetings of a far less diplomatic nature were taking place in Richmond, Virginia. The Confederate government was plotting to conquer the Union-held territory of New Mexico—which included the future states of New Mexico and Arizona—then push on to southern California, all the way to the Pacific. Not only would they be creating an ocean-to-ocean slave empire, the Confederate State Department was certain that this bold gesture would also insure recognition of the Confederacy by France and England.
Although grandiose, the plan wasn’t far-fetched. The Union had weakened their frontier garrisons by transferring troops east to guard Washington. The outposts were further weakened by the defection of Southern-born officers who resigned their commissions and joined the Confederate Army. And southern California, they reported, was a hotbed of Confederate sympathizers. The rebel army would be welcomed.
GO WEST, YOUNG MAN
Though supposedly waiting for a political solution, the southern government quickly put their plan in motion. Colonel John Baylor was ordered to deploy his 300-man cavalry unit to El Paso, on the extreme western edge of Confederate Texas. Three days after the first shots were fired at the Battle of Bull Run (the first major battle of the Civil War) in July 1861, Baylor and his 300 Texans invaded New Mexico, crossing the border near El Paso. They continued to advance north until they were blocked by a larger Yankee detachment commanded by Major Isaac Lynde. But being outnumbered didn’t stop Baylor—he attacked. Lynde’s troops tried to retreat to nearby Fort Stanton, but heat and exhaustion did them in before they made it, and they surrendered. Baylor marched on.
The man who invented Jell-O was originally looking for a way to make a palatable laxative.
GAINING GROUND
Baylor now held only a tiny slice of southern New Mexico, but he claimed the entire territory as part of the Confederate States of America. When word of the victory got back to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, he promoted Baylor to military governor and gave Brigadier General Henry Sibley command of the Confederate Army of New Mexico. In late December, Sibley led his troops north from El Paso. His objective: take Fort Craig, a Union bastion in south-central New Mexico and headquarters of Colonel Edward Canby, the ranking Union officer in the territory.
On arriving at Fort Craig, Sibley changed his plan, deciding not to attack—the position was too well fortified. Instead he retreated south to Valverde, New Mexico, taking up a defensive position along the banks of the Rio Grande River. Canby left a token force to guard the fort and set out in pursuit with 3,700 men, outnumbering Sibley’s troops by more than a thousand.
The two armies clashed on February 21, l862, in what proved to be the bloodiest battle in the west. And despite being outnumbered, the rebels fought the better battle. After losing more than 200 men, Colonel Canby was forced to make a strategic retreat while waiting for reinforcements. A few weeks later, the Confederates took Albuquerque and then Santa Fe, the high-water mark of the Confederate Army of New Mexico.
SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT
By this time the Union army had been reinforced by several New Mexican militia units and 600 volunteers from Colorado, under the command of Major John Chivington, known as the “Fighting Parson.” (He was a deacon in the Presbyterian Church, and fighting slavery, he preached to his troops, was “doing God’s work.”)
The two armies met at Glorieta Pass, 50 miles southeast of Santa Fe. Canby engaged the main rebel force, while Chivington outflanked them. When they located the rebel supply dump eight miles in the rear, the Fighting Parson launched an attack, killing or capturing the guards. The Confederates’ supplies were destroyed, every wagon burned, and all the mules driven off.
Alexander the Great enjoyed leading parades dressed as the goddess Artemis.
Casualties were relatively light (Confederates 189, Union 142), but the loss of the supplies guaranteed a Union victory. With no cannonballs for their artillery, no cartridges for their rifles, and no food other than what they could forage from the countryside, the Army of New Mexico disintegrated, and was forced to retreat to San Antonio. Of the original 2,700 rebel soldiers, only 1,500 made it back to Texas. The Confederate dream of a coast-to-coast empire was over.
HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE: THE DONKEY BOMB
The night before the Confederate victory at Valverde, a sneak attack that might have given the Yankees a victory failed. Captain “Paddy” Graydon, commanding a company of Union volunteers, came up with a novel idea. He asked for two old mules and a few boxes of howitzer shells and then rigged them up with fuses, turning them into “donkey bombs.” The two armies were encamped on opposite sides of the Rio Grande, and the idea was that Graydon and a few volunteers would swim the river, infiltrate the enemy camp, and set the bomb-carrying mules free near the rebel corral. The Union mules would mix in with the Confederate mules, and the shells would explode, inflicting casualties, and destroying the enemy’s supplies. Graydon’s request was approved.
That night the raiders swam the river. They came within 150 yards of the enemy corral. They could smell the rebel mules. They lit t
he fuses on the howitzer shells, slapped the mules on the rump, and began their retreat. But they had forgotten one important detail: they hadn’t briefed the mules on their part of the operation. Seeing their masters leaving, the mules turned and trotted toward them.
Paddy and his men took off, running barefoot through cactus and catclaw bushes. Naturally, the mules also sped up. The men were running, the fuses were burning, and the mules were gaining (one of nature’s laws is that a four-legged mule can run faster than a two-legged man) when KABOOM!, a dozen 24-pound shells exploded, scattering mule parts over a large chunk of New Mexico and scaring the hell out of the soldiers in both camps. Paddy and his footsore Commandos limped back to camp at daybreak.
Salmon comes from the Latin word salmo, for “leaper.”
THE NUMBER OF...
Just in case you’re not inundated with enough numbers in your life.
•Times, on average, a person swallows during a meal: 295
•Countries that joined the United Nations when it was formed in 1945: 51
•Points scored by basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar over his entire career: 38,387
•Bones in the human wrist: 8
•Bones in a chimpanzee’s wrist: 8
•Yards a healthy slug can travel in a day: 50
•Banana slugs that were eaten in a California slug-eating contest in 2002: 50
•Chromosomes the average human has: 46 (the average cabbage has 18)
•Pounds of fish a pelican can hold in its beak: 25
•Pumpkins grown in Floydada, Texas, every year: 1,000,000
•People booked for “offensive gestures” in Germany in 2003: 164,848
•Steps to the top of the Empire State Building: 1,860
•Industrial robots in Japan: 350,000