Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader (14 page)

 

SAMUEL ISRAEL III.
As owner of Bayou Group LLC, a phony hedge fund based in Stamford, Connecticut, Israel bilked investors out of $450 million. He was arrested in 2005 and eventually sentenced to 20 years in prison. But on June 9, 2008, the day he was supposed to begin his sentence at a federal prison hospital (he had severe back problems and was addicted to painkillers), the 49-year-old Israel disappeared. His RV was found abandoned near the Bear Mountain Bridge in New York with the words “Suicide is painless” written in the dust on the windshield. Investigators looked for his body in the Hudson River, but found nothing. A month later, Israel resurfaced when he drove a motor scooter to a Massachusetts police station and gave himself up. He was returned to New York, where the judge who had originally sentenced him said, “Welcome back, Mr. Israel,” ordered his $500,000 bail forfeited…and added two more years to his sentence.

What was it that caused Adolf Hitler’s physical and mental health to collapse
in the closing days of World War II? He
was
losing the war, of course—
surely that had a great deal to do with it. But for more than 60 years,
historians have wondered if there was more to it than that.

On April 21, 1945, an SS physician named Ernst-Günther

Schenck was summoned to Adolf Hitler’s bunker in Berlin and ordered to stock it with food. By that time Germany’s war was hopelessly lost—most of the country was already in Allied hands. Soviet troops had almost completely circled Berlin and were battling their way into the center of the city. Rather than flee, Hitler had decided to make his final stand in his
führerbunker
in the heart of the Nazi capital. He would remain there until the end, which for him was just nine days away.

Like all Germans, Dr. Schenck had been fed a steady diet of photographs, films, and propaganda posters of Hitler since the dictator had come to power in 1933. But the man he saw in the bunker looked nothing like those images. The 56-year-old Hitler “was a living corpse, a dead soul,” Schenck remembered in a 1985 interview. “His spine was hunched, his shoulder blades protruded from his bent back, and he collapsed his shoulders like a turtle.… I was looking into the eye of death.”

Even more shocking than the way Hitler looked was the way he moved about the bunker. He walked with the slow, halting shuffle of a man 30 years older, dragging his left leg behind him as he went. He couldn’t go more than a few steps without grabbing onto something for support.

Hitler’s head, arms, and entire left side trembled and jerked uncontrollably. No longer able to write his own name, he signed important documents with a rubber stamp. He had always insisted on shaving himself—this murderer of millions could not bear the thought of another man holding a razor to his throat—but his trembling hands made that impossible, too. He could not lift food
to his mouth without spilling it down the front of his uniform and could not take a seat without help—after he shuffled up to a table, an aide pushed a chair behind him, and he plopped down onto it.

Hitler’s mental state had deteriorated as well. His thinking was muddled, his memory was failing, and his emotions whipsawed back and forth between long bouts of irrational euphoria (especially irrational considering how close Germany was to defeat) and fits of screaming, uncontrollable rage that lasted for hours.

Schenck remained in Berlin until the end. On April 29, Hitler married his longtime mistress, Eva Braun, and the following day the pair committed suicide in the führerbunker. Germany surrendered unconditionally on May 7.

After the war, Schenck spent a decade in Soviet prison camps. He never forgot what he saw at the führerbunker, and after his release he spent years poring over Hitler’s medical records in an attempt to discover just what had caused the dictator’s health to decline so rapidly in the final years and months of his life.

He was not alone in this effort—in the more than 60 years since the end of the war, many historians, physicians, and World War II buffs have done the same thing. What caused Hitler’s collapse—was it Parkinson’s disease? Tertiary syphilis? Giant cell arteritis? Countless theories have been advanced to explain Hitler’s physical and mental decline, and after all this time the experts are no closer to agreeing than they were on the day he died.

One of the most bizarre theories was advanced by some of Hitler’s own doctors in July 1944. The diagnosis came about by chance, after a visiting ear, nose, and throat specialist named Dr. Erwin Giesing happened to notice six tiny black pills—“Doctor Koester’s Anti-Gas Pills”—sitting on the Führer’s breakfast tray next to his porridge, dry bread, and orange juice. After spotting the pills, Giesing did something that Hitler’s own personal physician, an eccentric quack named Dr. Theodor Morell, had apparently never bothered to do: He examined the tin the pills came in and actually
read the label
to see what was in them. Giesing was stunned by what he read. Could it be? Was the Führer was being poisoned by
the pills he took to control his
meteorism—
powerful attacks of uncontrollable farting?

Hitler had suffered from digestive problems his entire life. Since childhood he’d been prone to crippling, painful stomach cramps during times of emotional distress. By the time he reached his early 40s, the cramping had become more frequent, often accompanied by violent attacks of farting, along with alternating bouts of constipation and diarrhea.

The farting attacks are one of the reasons Hitler became a vegetarian in the early 1930s: He didn’t trust doctors, so rather than seek professional help for his condition he tried to treat it himself by eliminating meat, rich foods, milk, and butter from his diet in favor of raw and cooked vegetables and whole grains.

Increasing the fiber in his diet did not improve Hitler’s condition; if anything it made him even gassier than he’d been before. (But the vegetarian diet may have made his farts less smelly, and he may have been willing to settle for
that.
) By the mid-1930s, Hitler was the ruler of Germany…and still farting like a horse. His attacks were most severe right after meals; during dinner parties it was common for him to suddenly leap up from the table and disappear into his private quarters, leaving stunned guests to wonder why the Führer had gone and when he might be back. On many nights he did not return at all.

In 1936 Hitler happened to meet Dr. Morell at a Christmas party. After pulling the doctor aside Hitler poured out his problems, describing his intestinal distress and his eczema: itchy, inflamed skin on his shins, so painful that he could not put on his boots. By now Hitler had given up trying to cure himself and allowed Germany’s best doctors to examine him. They put him on a diet of tea and dry toast, but all that did was leave him feeling weak and exhausted. Morell listened attentively…and then promised to cure both problems within a year. Hitler decided to give him a try.

You’ve probably heard stories about singers insuring their voices for large sums of money. It’s for real. Technically, it’s known as the “surplus lines” market, which covers any strange or specific risks not normally covered by life or disability insurance. It’s also extremely expensive, and available only after all other insurance policies have been maxed out. So although anybody can get a policy, it’s usually only the rich and famous who do.

Few American insurers deal in surplus lines, but foreign companies do—it’s what made the British firm Lloyd’s of London famous. Their first celebrity client: silent-film star Douglas Fairbanks Sr., who feared physical disfigurement that would end his career as a matinee idol. Fairbanks asked Lloyd’s to write a “scar policy” for him.

Here are some other celebrities with highly specific insurance.

 

•
Ben Turpin.
He is believed to have been the first celebrity to insure a trademark feature. Turpin was a vaudeville and silent film performer who had crossed eyes. Should they ever have straightened, he would have received a $20,000 payout.

 

•
David Beckham.
The English soccer star has insured his legs for $70 million.

 

•
Rod Stewart.
His singing voice is insured for $6 million. (He can’t make a claim unless he loses it completely, so he can’t collect yet—it’s
supposed
to sound that gravelly.)

 

•
America Ferrera.
The star of
Ugly Betty
was hired by Aquafresh to promote teeth-whitening products. To protect the investment, the company insured Ferrera’s smile for $10 million.

 

•
Tom Jones.
He’s as famous for his machismo and sex appeal as
for his songs “It’s Not Unusual” and “What’s New, Pussycat?” He will collect $7 million if an accidental, catastrophic occurrence ever destroys his most notable and macho asset—his chest hair.

 

•
Mariah Carey.
She has a five-octave singing range and she’s one of the most successful solo recording artists of all time, with 18 #1 hit singles. But her image is apparently more important to her than her voice: Her legs, not her voice, are insured for $1 billion. Other stars with insured legs: Betty Grable (for $1 million in the 1940s), Angie Dickinson, Brooke Shields, Mary Hart, and Tina Turner (for $3.2 million).

 

•
Michael Flatley.
After starring in the touring Irish dance troupe Riverdance, he went on to start his own show, called
Lord of the Dance
. To ensure his livelihood, he bought a $39 million policy for his dancing feet.

 

•
Jimmy Durante.
In the 1940s, he had his highly recognizable nose insured for $50,000.

 

•
Keith Richards.
Should he ever accidentally cut off one of his guitar-playing fingers, he will receive $1.8 million.

Less-famous people who have taken out specific insurance policies:

• Food critic Egon Ronay has a $400,000 policy for his taste buds.

• In 1959 the 40 members of the Derbyshire Whiskers Club, a British “beard appreciation group,” paid £20 each to insure their facial hair against fire and theft.

•
A British soccer fan insured himself against “psychic trauma” in case England lost the 2006 World Cup. They didn’t win—no word on whether the man had a mental breakdown or received a payout.

•
Harvey Lowe, who won a national yo-yo contest in 1932 when he was 13, insured his hands for $150,000.

• In 2007 Florida woman Domitila Hunnicutt won a Most Valuable Legs contest sponsored by the maker of Jergens Lotion. Her prize: a one-year $2 million insurance policy for her legs. (After one year, she was on her own.)

Alaska has been inhabited since about 12000 B.C., when nomadic tribes from Siberia first crossed over the Bering Land Bridge—now covered in water and called the Bering Sea—into Alaska. All natives who live there, including the Inuits and Aleuts, are descended from those nomads. Despite being just a few miles away (three miles at the closest point), white settlers from Russia didn’t come to Alaska until the 1730s, when the area became known as “Russian America.”

 

• 1859:
After losing the Crimean War in 1856, Russia needs money, so it offers to sell the territory to the United States. The U.S., however, is more concerned with trying to avert the impending Civil War, and declines the offer.

 

• 1867:
Russia offers Alaska to the U.S. again, and this time it accepts. Secretary of State William Seward agrees to purchase the 586,000-mile area parcel of land for $7.2 million, supposedly for use as a strategic point on the Pacific Rim. The purchase is widely criticized as “Seward’s Folly” because Alaska is perceived as a useless, frozen wasteland. It’s classified as the Department of Alaska and placed under the control of the War Department.

 

• 1884:
With a total population of about 30,000 people (natives and white settlers), a civic infrastructure to keep the peace becomes necessary, so the federal government appoints judges, clerks, and marshals to serve in Alaska. In order to have a body of laws to enforce, this coalition—a mere 13 people—adopts the legal code of Oregon.

 

• 1896:
Gold is discovered in Alaska. About 30,000
more
people move there. Along with the economy, crime in Alaska grows, so in 1900 Congress sends more judges…and enacts a tax code.

 

• 1912:
Congress creates a territorial legislature of eight senators
and 16 representatives, and one non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives for the newly renamed Alaska Territory.

 

• 1916:
Alaska’s House delegate, a former territorial judge named James Wickersham, proposes the first bill to make Alaska a state. Congress doesn’t need to rule on it because Alaskans themselves aren’t interested—the majority of Alaska’s 58,000 people feel no tangible connection to the United States.