The Half-Safe putt-putted its way across the Atlantic at an average speed of 3 knots (3.5 mph) for the first week. Then engine trouble forced the Carlins to reduce their speed. Several times they had to shut the engine off entirely so that Ben could perform repairs. As a result, their voyage to the Azores, which was supposed to take a little over two weeks, dragged on for 32 days. They were out of radio contact for much of the trip, and when they failed to arrive in port, many people gave them up for dead. But on August 19, 1950, they finally spotted Flores, the westernmost island in the Azores chain, and limped into the harbor a few hours later. Unlike everyone else who has ever visited Flores, they arrived by car.
For part II of the story, float over to page 395.
Egg storage tip: If you want them to last longer, store them toward the back of the fridge, not on the door. (They’re vulnerable to changes in temperature.)
REMEMBER ME
Lots of animals are loved, but only a select few are ever memorialized with statues.
Animal: Old Bet, the first circus elephant brought to the United States
Honored With: A statue in Somers, New York, a town famous for being “the cradle of the American circus”
Details: Old Bet isn’t just the first American circus elephant, she actually inspired the creation of the first American circus. She was living in a menagerie in 1808 when a cattle dealer named Hachaliah Bailey bought her with the intention of putting her to work on his farm. So many townspeople dropped by to see the elephant at work that Bailey realized he could make more money with a traveling animal act than he could with the farm. So he bought more animals, including pigs and a dog that did tricks, and began touring. The Bailey Circus—later to become part of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus—was born.
On July 24, 1816, the Bailey Circus was touring near Alfred, Maine, when a local farmer named Daniel Davis brought his rifle to the circus and shot Old Bet, apparently in the belief that circuses were a sinful waste of the public’s money. Old Bet was dead, but Bailey wasn’t done cashing in: nine years later he built the Elephant Hotel in Somers, where he lived. In front of the hotel he erected a tall granite pedestal and placed a wooden statue of an elephant on top of it. Both the building and the monument are still there, but today the Elephant Hotel serves as the Somers Town Hall.
Animal: Tombili (“Tubby”), a stray cat who lived in the Kadiköy district of Istanbul, Turkey
Honored With: A piece of bronze sidewalk art
Details: The chubby, friendly stray was popular with the residents of Kadiköy, and he had a favorite spot on a step next to the street where he would sit for much of the day. But unlike most cats, he sat upright on his rump, while reclining against a raised brick and resting on it with one elbow (or whatever you call an elbow on a cat). It was a remarkably human pose, and when someone snapped a photo and posted it on social media, Tombili shot to worldwide fame.
In the summer of 2016, Tombili fell ill; he died on August 1. Not long afterward, his admirers started circulating a petition asking the city to memorialize him with a life-size bronze statue of the cat slouching on his favorite step. After the petition collected 17,000 signatures, the city agreed, and in October 2016 the statue was installed in Tombili’s favorite spot in a ceremony presided over by Istanbul’s deputy mayor and witnessed by hundreds of the cat’s admirers. If you ever get a chance to visit Kadiköy, be sure and look for the statue. It won’t be hard to find, since it’s usually surrounded by candles, cat food, and other offerings left by fans.
From the time it was discovered in 1930 to the time it was “demoted” to the status of dwarf planet, Pluto never fully orbited the Sun.
Animal: Macaco Tião (“Tiao the Monkey”), a cranky chimpanzee who lived at the Rio De Janeiro Zoo in Brazil
Honored With: A life-size bronze statue
Details: The Rio Zoo has had lots of primates over the years, but only Macaco Tião has his own memorial. It’s not because he was nice—it’s because he was nasty, and in a way that was very entertaining to the people, especially children, who came to see him: He liked to hurl his poop at visitors. And the more important the visitor, it seemed, the more angrily he threw his poop. He seemed to have a special hatred for politicians, and in 1988 that prompted a Brazilian magazine, Casseta Popular, to suggest him as a candidate for mayor of the city.
The more important the visitor, the more angrily he threw his poop. He seemed to have a special hatred for politicians.
The magazine was joking, but some 400,000 people wrote in Macaco Tião’s name on their ballots, enough that he came in third out of a field of twelve. When he died in 1996 at the age of 34, the zoo lowered its flags to half-staff, the city government declared a three-day mourning period, and the bronze memorial was installed at the zoo. Sadly, it doesn’t hurl poop, but it has become a popular attraction to visitors who remember Macaco Tião.
Animal: Mrs. Chippy, a cat aboard the sailing ship Endurance during the ill-fated Shackleton 1914 expedition to the South Pole
Honored With: A memorial on her owner’s grave
Details: Mrs. Chippy belonged to Harry “Chippy” McNish, a carpenter on the Shackleton expedition, which ran into trouble when the Endurance was crushed by pack ice, stranding the crew on Elephant Island off the coast of Antarctica. Shackleton, McNish, and four other crew members made a daring journey by small boat over nearly 800 miles of open sea to South Georgia Island to summon help from whaling ships. Their voyage was a success, and all of the crew members on Elephant Island were rescued. But Mrs. Chippy was not: soon after the Endurance was crushed, Sir Ernest Shackleton, believing the cat would not survive the harsh conditions on Antarctica, gave orders for her to be shot. McNish never forgave him. McNish died in 1930 and was buried in Karori Cemetery in Wellington, New Zealand. In 2004 a bronze sculpture of Mrs. Chippy was added to his grave so that the two could be reunited in death as they had not been in life.
First book sold on Amazon: Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies by Douglas Hofstadter (April 3, 1995). It’s still listed in the purchaser’s Amazon order history.
THE OCCUPATIONAL
NAME QUIZ
Can you guess the names of these famous people if we give you a clue about their lives…and the lives they could lead if they took on the job or hobby that correlates to their last name? (Answers are on page 501.)
1. He starred in The Hangover…and he can also build you a nice barrel, if you need one.
2. She played drums and sang easy-listening tunes in the 1970s with her brother…when she wasn’t making furniture, that is.
3. He created King of the Hill and Beavis and Butt-head…and he decides whether criminals go to jail or go free.
4. She was the prime minister of a major western European nation…and could also fix your rustic, old-fashioned roof.
5. He starred in four Lethal Weapon movies…and he also kept the crew’s hands warm.
6. He ground up politicians and celebrities as a talk show host and Weekend Update anchor…and then ground grain into flour.
7. He can tell you what hot new gadgets Apple has in development…and then he can whip up a batch of applesauce.
8. He was a star NFL running back… and now he can take a little off the top and give you a shave.
9. She’s an actress from The Last Picture Show and Moonlighting…and she also moonlights as a steward of sheep.
10. He made his legacy by finding hundreds of uses for peanuts…but he could also craft a statue, if need be.
11. He portrayed a villainous Scottish professional wrestler in the 1980s… and he could also play the traditional instrument of his “homeland.”
12. Perhaps the most glamorous movie star in Hollywood history, she won two Oscars, had violet-colored eyes…and could make a suit for you, too.
13. He’s an R&B superstar…who will show you to your seat.
14. She’s best known for Raising Arizona, The Piano…and tracking down deer in the wilderness.
&n
bsp; 15. He played the coach on Friday Night Lights. “Clear eyes, full hearts”…and expertly made candles.
16. Along with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, he was part of the famous “Rat Pack”…and he came in handy when it came time to absolve everyone’s sins.
Cold cash: The flu virus can live on a dollar bill for as long as two weeks.
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON,
RECONSIDERED
President William Henry Harrison lives on in trivia contests across the United States: His 31 days in office is the shortest presidency in American history—supposedly cut short by a cold that he caught on a frigid Inauguration Day. But is that really what killed him? Some historians have their doubts.
LONG AND SHORT
William Henry Harrison (1773–1841) is the rare example of a president whose inauguration is better remembered than the things he did in office. Inauguration Day, March 4, 1841, was a miserably cold and wet day, and the 68-year-old Harrison was, at the time, the oldest person inaugurated as president. (Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump later beat that record.) Nevertheless, Harrison declined the offer of a closed carriage and instead rode to his inauguration on his horse. He delivered a nearly two-hour inaugural address, the longest in U.S. history, outdoors in the freezing cold, without putting on a hat, gloves, or overcoat. Afterward, he climbed back on his horse and rode in the inaugural parade. The hours spent outdoors in cold, wet clothing, the story goes, gave him a chill that turned into a cold and then pneumonia, killing him a month after he took office.
Historians have accepted that version of events because Harrison’s physician, Thomas Miller, cited the cause of death as “pneumonia of the lower lobe of the right lung, complicated by congestion of the liver.” But Miller himself admitted that he chose a pneumonia diagnosis as a matter of expediency as much as anything else. “As this was the most palpable affection, the term pneumonia afforded a succinct and intelligible answer to the innumerable questions as to the nature of the attack,” he wrote.
A NEW THEORY
Not everyone believes that Harrison was killed by the cold. In 2014 Jane McHugh, a writer, and Dr. Philip A. Mackowiak, a physician on the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, published an article in the medical journal Clinical Infectious Diseases that reexamined the case with a modern scientific eye.
Dr. Miller left a detailed account of Harrison’s final illness. He reported that the president first complained of anxiety and fatigue, not a cold, on March 26, 1841, three weeks after his inauguration—likely too late for bad weather on Inauguration Day to have played any part in his illness. Miller told the president to go to bed; then when he checked on him later that evening, Harrison reported feeling much better. But the next day he complained that he had a severe chill and constipation. The doctor prescribed laxatives and other treatments, including a medicine called Mars Hydrarg, which contained mercury.
Baboons have been known to kidnap dogs.
Over the next several days, Harrison’s condition deteriorated. He became feverish, he developed severe gastrointestinal pain, and he developed breathing problems made worse by a cough that was sometimes wet, sometimes dry. Miller prescribed enemas, more laxatives, and opium to control Harrison’s pain, but nothing seemed to work.
By April 3, Dr. Miller noted, Harrison was near death, his “pulse sinking; extremities blue and cold.” He lingered throughout the day, then at half an hour past midnight on the morning of April 4, “without a groan or a struggle, he ceased to breathe.”
GUT INSTINCT
In their 2014 article, McHugh and Mackowiak note that while Harrison’s lungs were clearly impacted by whatever it was that afflicted him, “his pulmonary symptoms didn’t arise until the fifth day of his illness and were intermittent rather than progressive thereafter. His gastrointestinal complaints, by comparison, began on the third day of the illness and were relentless as well as progressive.” Based on this, they conclude that Harrison’s pneumonia was a “secondary diagnosis,” not his main affliction.
Their candidate for what killed Harrison: either typhoid fever or paratyphoid fever, both of which are caused by exposure to strains of salmonella bacteria in drinking water contaminated by human waste. Collectively, these diseases are known as enteric fevers because they cause tremendous gastrointestinal distress like that suffered by Harrison.
One of the tools that McHugh and Mackowiak used in their diagnosis was an 1846 street map of Washington, DC In those days, Washington had no sewage-treatment system whatsoever. The sewage pipes of some public buildings emptied their contents onto vacant land not far from the White House, where it stagnated in pools. Other buildings in the city were served by waste collectors, who carted what was called “night soil” to a dumping ground just seven city blocks from the natural springs that provided water to the White House. Seven blocks uphill from the natural springs, which meant that if any of the waste in the dumping ground contained the salmonella bacteria, it could easily have flowed downstream, either above or below ground, and contaminated the White House’s source of drinking water.
HEARTBURN
One way or another, McHugh and Mackowiak believe that President Harrison ingested contaminated water and fell ill. Ordinarily he might have escaped getting sick, because the body’s stomach acid acts as a “gastric barrier” that destroys the bacteria before it reaches the small intestine, which is where salmonella enters the system and sickens an infected person.
The technical term for pounding on a machine to get it to work is “percussive maintenance.”
But it happens that Harrison suffered from indigestion, and in those days one of the remedies was an antacid called “carbonated alkali,” which relieved the symptoms of indigestion by neutralizing stomach acid. In neutralizing the acid, however, it also impairs the body’s ability to destroy harmful bacteria. Instead of being destroyed in the stomach, the bacteria passes through to the small intestine, where it can infect the patient. Once stomach acid has been neutralized, it takes only a small amount of salmonella to make someone sick.
ADDING INSULT TO INJURY
Though Dr. Miller didn’t realize it at the time, some of the treatments he administered to Harrison may have made it more difficult for his body to fight off the infection. The opium he prescribed to ease Harrison’s pain has a side effect of impairing bowel function, which makes it hard for the body to expel the salmonella bacteria from the small intestine. And the longer the bacteria stays in the body, the greater the risk that it will be absorbed into the bloodstream.
Enteric fevers also cause inflammation in the lower intestine, placing it at greater risk of perforation. In such cases, enemas are not advised because the risk of perforation is too great. But Miller didn’t know this, and he prescribed one enema after another to his suffering patient. McHugh and Mackowiak believe that somehow, either naturally or through a perforated intestine, the salmonella bacteria spread to Harrison’s bloodstream, causing a condition called septic shock, which would explain the sinking pulse and cold, blue extremities that Dr. Miller noted in the hours before Harrison’s death.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE…
It’s possible that Harrison wasn’t the first U.S. president killed by enteric fever.
Zachary Taylor died just 16 months into his presidency in 1850, reportedly after consuming large amounts of raw fruit and iced milk on the Fourth of July. Afterward, he fell ill from an undetermined digestive ailment accompanied by a fever, and died five days later.
President James K. Polk suffered a similar gastrointestinal ailment during his term of office. He recovered and served out the remainder of his presidency, only to die from cholera, another disease caused by drinking contaminated water, in 1849.
“In all three cases,” write McHugh and Mackowiak, “the illnesses were likely a consequence of the unsanitary conditions that existed in the nation’s capital during most of the nineteenth century.”
In the years after Hurricane Katrina, the rate of babies named
Katrina dropped by 85%.
THE SOUND OF MOVIES
Here are some fun things to listen for the next time you see these movies.
Jaws (1975)
We Hear: At the end of the film, when (spoiler alert) the shark is blown up, it sinks to the bottom of the sea. Right before it lands, it lets out a high-pitched scream.
Actual Sound: It’s the scream sound effect from the 1954 horror classic Creature from the Black Lagoon. Jaws director Steven Spielberg first used the Black Lagoon scream in his 1971 thriller Duel, when a truck drives off a cliff. Then he used it again for the shark’s untimely end.
Fast & Furious 6 (2013)
We Hear: Car crashes—lots and lots of car crashes.
Actual Sounds: “We spent a lot of time abusing metal,” explains sound designer Peter Brown. “Everything from taking a crane and picking cars up about 80 feet in the air and dropping them onto other cars, to attaching weird pieces of metal (including washing machines and refrigerators) to the back of a truck and dragging them all around the airport on various roads and over dirt.” To record the crash sounds, the film crew rented an airport in the middle of the Mojave Desert, where they could make as much noise as they wanted and—more important—not have their recordings ruined by all the background noises you hear in more populated places.
Uncle John's Actual and Factual Bathroom Reader Page 38
