Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Golden Plunger Awards (28 page)

Reuben died shortly after that, at the age of 81 in 1994. Rose lived to 90 and passed away in late 2006. Their legacy lives on in a technology center they funded in Herzliya, Israel, just north of Tel Aviv. The Mattuses may have invented a fake Danish brand, but they definitely found their true flavor in the lives they lived.

Murals by Hans Holbein and Diego Rivera

Back in the mid-16th century, England’s Henry VIII—infamous for his wives, for his break with the Roman Catholic Church, and for establishing himself as the head of the new Church of England—desperately needed what a modern PR guy would call “rebranding.” He needed a new (and better) image to maintain his supremacy over England. His brandmaster? The great Flemish painter Hans Holbein the Younger.

Holbein created “The Whitehall Mural”—a painting of Henry, his wife Jane Seymour, and his parents King Henry VII and Queen Elizabeth of York. In the mural, Henry stood in the foreground, dwarfing his father and looking directly at the viewer. Karel van Mander, writing in the early 17th century, described the painting: “[Henry] stood there, majestic in his splendour, [he] was so lifelike that the spectator felt abashed, annihilated in his presence.”

The center panel of the mural contained a Latin verse that debated whether Henry was greater than his father and includes the following lines:

The painting hung in England’s Whitehall Palace until 1698, when a maid left some laundry drying in front of a fire and the clothes ignited. The resulting blaze destroyed the palace—and the
mural. However, only the original was lost. In 1667, a Flemish artist named Remigius van Leemput had made a copy of the Whitehall Mural, and that one is still around today.

By 1930, Mexican artist (and communist) Diego Rivera had achieved international recognition for his murals, and when the Rockefellers asked him to paint a mural for their new Rockefeller Center in New York City, he readily agreed. Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse had been offered the commission first, but were unavailable.

The mural was to appear on the interior wall facing the plaza entrance of the RCA Building. Rivera proposed a 63-foot mural called “Man at the Crossroads Looking with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a New and Better Future,” and he worked feverishly on panels featuring two opposing views of society—capitalism on one side, and socialism on the other.

But in May 1933, Nelson Rockefeller (grandson of John D.) was taken aback by an unexpected addition to the mural: a May Day parade of red-banner-waving socialists led by an unmistakable likeness of Vladimir Lenin. “The piece is beautifully painted,” Rockefeller wrote to the artist, “But it seems to me that [Lenin’s] portrait appearing in this mural might very seriously offend a great many people . . . As much as I dislike to do so, I am afraid we must ask you to substitute the face of some unknown man where Lenin’s face now appears.”

Although the figure of Lenin had not appeared in his original sketches, Rivera refused to budge: “Therefore, I wrote, never expecting that a presumably cultured man like Rockefeller would act upon my words so literally and so savagely, ‘rather than mutilate the conception, I should prefer the physical destruction of the conception in its entirety, but preserving, at least, its integrity.’”

The Rockefeller Center management team, which never had felt comfortable about Rivera’s involvement, reacted swiftly to his dare. He was ordered to stop work and paid his fee in full. Soon, demonstrations and letters of protest poured in, blaming the Rockefellers for an act of “cultural vandalism,” as Diego Rivera put it.
Then, one night in February 1934, two of Rivera’s assistants noticed a dozen 50-gallon oil drums near the entrance to the RCA building. When they looked inside, they recognized the smashed-up shards of Rivera’s mural. The piece had been hammered off the walls on orders from the center’s management team. Rivera, who had returned home, retaliated by painting a replica of the mural at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City—and in it, he included both Lenin and Leon Trotsky.

The incident marked the end of Rivera’s career as an international muralist. But over the next 25 years, he created a body of work that established him as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. Artistic integrity: Rivera—1. Rockefellers—0.

In the early 1990s, even though he was enjoying stardom on the sitcom
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
, Will Smith was ready to move into motion pictures. For his movie debut he chose the small flick,
Six Degrees of Separation
. An adaptation of a hit play, the film was based on the true story of a con man who earned the trust of several wealthy New Yorkers in the 1980s by claiming he was the son of actor Sidney Poitier. A talented group of actors, including Stockard Channing, Donald Sutherland, and Ian McKellan, starred in the movie. Smith played Paul, a young gay man who deceived his targets by displaying a vast knowledge about art, film, books, and culture.

Smith had a problem with one of the scenes in the script: he didn’t want to kiss Anthony Michael Hall onscreen. His reluctance came from a conversation with Denzel Washington, who told him, “Don’t be kissing no man.” Smith took the advice.

Even without the kiss, the film was a critical success—Channing received an Oscar nomination. Smith has done all right since then, too, but he recently said that he regretted not doing the kiss. In 2004, he told
Biography
magazine, “My eyes weren’t open enough to see that this is a piece of work. This is not me, this is Paul Poitier. I think that I’m more mature now. I wish I had another shot at it.”

Lewis Gordon Pugh

Pugh was born in England in 1969, but he grew up in South Africa, the scene of some of his earliest long-distance swimming feats. In May 1987, he was the first person to swim from Robben Island, South Africa, to Cape Town, a distance of 7.46 miles. In 1991, he broke the record for the fastest swimming time around Robben Island—the 6.21-mile swim took him only 3 hours and 42 minutes. Still, he was just warming up. Pugh returned to England to complete a maritime law degree and, while there, found time to swim the English Channel.

Some of Pugh’s other swimming accomplishments include:

It was his focus on cold-water swimming that brought Pugh the most attention—and earned him the nickname the “Human Polar Bear.” In July 2007, he became the first person to complete a long-distance swim at the North Pole. He swam almost a mile (actually 0.62 mile) in 18 minutes and 50 seconds in the coldest water a human being has ever dived into on purpose—the temperatures ranged from just 29° to 32° F.

The average person has a 50 percent chance of surviving a 50-yard swim in 50° F water. Hypothermia will set in almost immediately, and after just minutes, the person’s hands and feet should lose circulation and become virtually useless. So, during his North Pole dip, Pugh should’ve been incapacitated almost immediately—especially since he followed the Channel Swimming Association regulations (for swimming the English Channel). Those rules dictate what a swimmer can wear for his immersion in the water to be registered: a swimsuit, goggles, ear plugs, a nose clip, and a cap. That’s it.

So how does Pugh do it? How can he immerse himself in such cold water for such long periods of time and survive? No one’s sure exactly how, but scientists who have studied him know that his body definitely prepares for the swims. In fact, they coined a new term for what Pugh’s body is capable of: “anticipatory thermogenesis.”

Actually, Tim Noakes, a professor of exercise and sports science at the University of Cape Town, is the one who coined the term anticipatory thermogenesis, which means the body creates heat prior to an event. Pugh seems to elevate his body temperature mentally—by standing near the water and getting himself ready for a swim. Pugh won’t put even a toe in the water first, because
the extreme cold will make him not want to go in. Instead, when he’s ready, he dives in and tells himself that the only way to get out of the water is to reach his goal.

In 2005, Pugh swam in Antarctica and allowed scientists to study his internal body temperature. Before getting in the water, his body prepared for the shock of it by rising to 101°F, a temperature most people experience only when they have a fever. He began to sweat, despite the cold outside. Then he dove in, and when he ended the swim, his internal temperature had dropped to 96.8°F.

The body’s natural reaction to extreme cold is to protect vital organs by collecting blood in key areas (around the heart and lungs, for example). When Pugh got out of the water, his body started to send blood back throughout his extremities. The result was that within seconds of leaving the water, Pugh’s body temperature had plummeted to 91.4°F. And the temperature of his muscles was measured at 86°F—life-threatening for most people.

For Pugh, though, it was no problem. He just took a long, hot shower—his typical post-swim routine. After the shower, he put on shorts and a T-shirt and was back to normal.

In fact, it seems that only one thing really worries Pugh: leopard seals. Although he’s swum in waters with sharks, hippos, jellyfish, and polar bears, Pugh really watches out for leopard seals. In 2006, he told
National Geographic
, “They’re killers. If my team spots one, they’ll pull me out of the water.”

Pugh is famous for being a long-distance swimmer, but he’s also a maritime lawyer and avid environmentalist. He typically uses his swims to show the world what goes on at the extreme reaches of the planet. He said,

DNA Property Rights

Iceland’s population of about 300,000 people still has the DNA of the Vikings, and the population remains remarkably homogeneous. Iceland is geographically isolated and the country is methodical about record-keeping and genealogy. Detailed medical records have been kept since 1915, and about 80 percent of the Icelanders who ever lived can be traced on family trees.

Considering that Iceland is one of the most developed countries in the world—with a prolific economy, progressive government, and a proud cultural heritage—it’s hard to believe that its genetic heritage is more pure than that of many isolated indigenous tribes. Yet because of its relatively slow settlement, the population has remained stable and almost entirely Nordic. (The island was not officially settled until the 9th century.)