Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (30 page)

D
ream House:
In 1998 John and Mary Jones found theirs in South Carolina.

From Bad...
They didn’t get a home inspection before closing. Result: Right after they moved in, problems started. The kitchen sink backed up, the washing machine overflowed, and when the plumber came to fix the leaks, the bathroom floor caved in.

...To Nightmare!
Then the air conditioner stopped working. The repairman figured the system was missing a filter, so he went into the attic to explore. But instead of a filter, he found bats—thousands of them. Even worse, over the years hundreds of gallons of bat guano had soaked into the insulation and wood of the structure, rendering the home a health hazard and completely uninhabitable. (Mary Jones developed a rare disease due to exposure from bat guano.)

Dream House:
Bill Barnes of southern Maryland was trying to sell his house. Ari Ozman, who claimed to be a traveling salesman who was moving his family into the area, didn’t want to buy—he wanted to rent. The market was a little slow, so when Ozman offered six months’ rent in advance, Barnes jumped at it.

From Bad...
Ozman wasn’t a traveling salesman—he was a scam artist. He put an ad in the local paper, offering Barnes’ house for sale at a bargain price and—no surprise—had more than 100 calls. And when buyers saw the space, they couldn’t resist the deal. Ozman’s terms: he’d reserve the house—for a $2,000 cash deposit.

...To Nightmare!
He repeated the scam 30 times, collected $60,000, and then took off. Barnes was left with nothing except Ozman’s security deposit and 30 angry “buyers.”

Dream House:
Jack Newman purchased his in Virginia in 2001.

From Bad...
A few nights later, Newman was asleep in bed when a squadron of fighter jets tore across the sky. He practically jumped out of his skin. It turned out that there was a military base nearby and flight training took place 15 nights a month. Still, Newman decided to tough it out. Until the house started to smell.

1957 was the first year Americans ate more margarine than butter.

...To Nightmare!
Newman couldn’t locate the source of the odor, so he called the Department of Environmental Quality, which found the cadaver of a rotting animal in the foundation (the foul smell was filtering in through cracks in the concrete). What else could go wrong? Plenty—the roof structure was caving in; the chimney was disconnected from the house; and the ground under the house was shifting. Newman’s recourse: He had none—the builder had long since filed for bankruptcy and disappeared.

Dream House:
Alan and Susan Sykes moved into theirs in West Yorkshire, England, in 2000.

From Bad...
One evening a few months after moving in, the couple was watching a TV documentary about Dr. Samson Perera, a dental biologist who murdered his 13-year-old daughter and hid her dismembered body throughout his home and garden. Suddenly they recognized the house on TV: it was
their
house. When they got to the part that said the child’s body—which had been cut into more than 100 pieces—was never fully recovered, the Sykeses packed their bags, moved out that same night...and never went back.

...To Nightmare!
They sold the house (at a loss) and filed suit against the former owners, James and Alison Taylor-Rose, for withholding the house’s history. The judge said that since the Taylor-Roses were unaware of the murder when
they
bought the house in 1998 (they only placed it on the market after a neighbor told them about it), they were not liable, so the Sykeses lost the suit.

Dream House:
Cathie Kunkel found hers in Ontario, California.

From Bad...
In August 2001, four months after she moved in, Kunkel had a pond dug in her backyard. After removing only a foot of earth, workers discovered something putrid. “We thought it was a dead chicken,” said Kunkel. “The smell was horrendous.” The contractor filled in the shallow grave, but the odor lingered. Kunkel and her three children had to move out.

...To Nightmare!
It wasn’t a chicken—it was a dead cow wrapped in plastic. The development was built on 18,000 acres of former dairy land...and they still don’t know how many dead cows are buried there.

North America has about 700 species of butterfly and 8,000 species of moths.

If you’re Canadian you’ve probably already heard of Terry Fox. If you haven’t, here’s his incredible story
.

D
ETERMINATION

Terry Fox was born in 1958 and grew up in British Columbia. He was an average kid, with the exception of being very athletic—in high school he played hockey, basketball, lacrosse, and ran track. Then in 1976, shortly after graduating from high school, he was diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma: bone cancer. A few months later, his right leg had to be amputated and Fox didn’t think he’d ever be able to run or play sports again.

The night before the surgery, Fox’s former basketball coach brought him a magazine article about an amputee who’d run in the New York Marathon. The story inspired Fox. He determined then and there not to let having an artificial leg prevent him from living the life he wanted to live. Fox decided to raise awareness about cancer and raise money for research by doing something nobody had ever done before: he would run across Canada.

THE RACE IS ON

For nearly two years, Fox prepared for his “Marathon of Hope.” First he learned to walk with an artificial leg, then he learned to run, then he built up his endurance. Finally, on April 12, 1980, he flew to St. John’s, Newfoundland, dipped his prosthetic leg in the Atlantic Ocean, and began his trek west, expecting that in a few months he’d dip it into the Pacific Ocean on the other side of the country.

The run began with almost no fanfare, but then the press picked up the story. They started detailing Fox’s daily progress and suddenly all of Canada was rooting for him and bombarding his family with letters and donations. Fox’s pace was staggering: every day he ran an average of 26 miles—the length of an entire marathon. Marathon runners typically train for months and spend weeks afterward recuperating. Fox was essentially running a marathon every day for months on end—with an artificial leg. Had anyone ever done something similar? No. The
Guinness Book of World Records
lists Rick Worley as the marathon record holder: he ran 200 straight marathons, but he did it over 159 consecutive weekends, not over days as Fox was trying to do.

During the American Revolution, patriotic brides wore red dresses to symbolize rebellion.

Then, on September 1, 1980, the Marathon of Hope ended near Thunder Bay, Ontario. The cancer had come back and spread to Fox’s lungs. After running for 143 days straight, through Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Quebec, and Ontario—more than 3,300 miles—he had to abandon the quest and return home for treatment. Terry Fox died on June 28, 1981, just shy of his 23rd birthday, but his strength and determination remain beacons for an entire generation of Canadians.

FOX’S LEGACY

•
During the actual run, Fox raised $1.7 million for cancer research.

•
The day after the run ended, the Four Seasons hotel chain announced plans to sponsor an annual marathon in Fox’s honor.

•
That same week, a Terry Fox telethon raised $10 million.

•
Fox was awarded the Companion of the Order of Canada (similar to a knighthood or a Presidential Medal of Freedom) and the Order of the Dogwood, British Columbia’s highest civilian honor.

•
In 1980 the Canadian press named him Canadian of the Year.

•
An 8,700-foot Rocky Mountain peak was named Mount Terry Fox.

•
A stretch of highway near the end of Fox’s run was renamed the Terry Fox Courage Highway.

•
Fox was memorialized on two postage stamps, had a Canadian Coast Guard ship named after him, and was named Canadian Athlete of the Decade (beating out Wayne Gretzky).

•
In 1999 Terry Fox was voted Canada’s greatest national hero of all time in a magazine survey.

•
As of 2004, annual fund-raising Terry Fox Runs have donated more than $340 million to cancer research.

The Terry Fox Library in Port Coquitlam, B.C., houses 100,000 artifacts from Fox’s life and the Marathon of Hope. One room is stacked floor-to-ceiling with boxes of letters and get-well cards. All kinds of people from all walks of life are represented, showing just how far Terry Fox reached. He only made it halfway across Canada, but he touched every corner of the country.

A musk ox is actually a sheep.

If they were really nice, they probably wouldn’t be crooks to begin with. But what else would you call a thief who apologizes?

G
IMME TEN

At 5:00 a.m. on November 17, 2003, a man walked into a 7-Eleven in Santee, California, pulled out a gun, and told the clerk to give him $10. The clerk gave the man the money, and the man ran off. At 10:00 a.m. the same man returned to the store, put $10 on the counter, and apologized for the robbery. The clerk didn’t wait for the apology—he immediately pressed the “panic” button under the counter. The police arrived and arrested the thief, who explained that he had stolen the money to buy gas for his car.

BEER NUT

Twenty-one-year-old Nicholas Larson stole a cash register from the Bonnema Brewing Co. in the town of Atascadero, California. Apparently he couldn’t stand the guilt, because the next day he called the brewery to apologize. The kicker: He turned himself in for the theft—even though the register had been empty.

SHOOTING BLANKS

A man walked into a Kansas liquor store, pulled out a gun, and told the clerk, “Give me everything in the register.” The clerk told him that it was empty—there was no money. “That’s okay,” the robber responded. “There aren’t any bullets in the gun. I was just kidding.”

CHANGE OF HEART

In January 2002, Ronald Van Allen went into the Savings Bank of Manchester in Manchester, Connecticut, and handed the teller a note. “This is a robbery!!” it read. “All I want is the money from the cash drawer. No one has to get hurt or shot but me. Sorry for your inconvenience.” Van Allen left with $2,000, but four days later, he walked into the Manchester police department with a bag full of the money, apologized, and turned himself in. “I wish all of our cases were solved like this,” said Detective Joseph Morrissey.

What’s another word for
cellulite
? Fat.

Very little has changed about human nature in the last 2,500 years, which may be why these pearls of wisdom still hold up today
.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

—Lao-Tzu (5th century B.C.)

“Let him who would move the world, first move himself.”

—Socrates (469–399 B.C.)

“The birth of a man is the birth of his sorrow. The longer he lives, the more his anxiety to avoid unavoidable death. What bitterness! He lives for what is always out of reach! His thirst for survival in the future makes him incapable of living in the present.”

—Chuang–Tzu (369–286 B.C.)

“What you cannot enforce, do not command.”

—Sophocles (496–406 B.C.)

“The road up and the road down are one and the same.”

—Heraclitus (540–480 B.C.)

“Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.”

—Horace (65–8 B.C.)

“Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.”

—Hypatia (350–415 A.D.)

“Slight not what’s near, while aiming at what’s far.”

—Euripides (480–406 B.C.)

“To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.”

—Copernicus (1473–1543 A.D.)

“After I’m dead I’d rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.”

—Cato the Elder (234–149 B.C.)

“It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.”

—Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.)

“Men often applaud an imitation and hiss the real thing.”

—Aesop (620–560 B.C.)

“Remember: Upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.”

—Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.)

“We sit together, the mountain and I, until only the mountain remains.”

—Li Po (701–762 A.D.)

The adult literacy rate in Iceland is 100%.

If you’re interested in the history of space exploration, you’ve heard of the Mercury 7. But have you ever heard of their (unofficial) female counterparts, the Mercury 13? Here’s their story
.

T
HE RIGHT STUFF

On April 9, 1959, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) introduced the seven astronauts who would take part in the Mercury Program. The goal: To put an American into orbit. It was America’s first manned space program, and competition for the seven slots had been fierce. An original list of 508 military test pilots was winnowed down to 32 candidates, who were then subjected to a battery of intense medical, psychological, and spacecraft-simulator tests. Eighteen made the final cut, and from these the “Mercury 7”—Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Walter Schirra, Gordon Cooper, and Donald “Deke” Slayton—were chosen.