In early 1983, a man from the Los Angeles area had a great idea. Why not fly instead of drive to his girlfriend's house? The logistics of how he would accomplish this were ingeniously simple. He would get a lightweight pool lounge chair. He would attach helium weather balloons all around the chair. Then he would simply sit in the chair and float upward into the sky. Besides a beer, he would bring a small air pistol, to shoot and pop the balloons one by one when he wanted to lose altitude or return to earth. On the day of the flight, things went off without a hitch... during the first few minutes. The balloons rose according to plan, carrying the man and his lounge chair up into the sky. As the man achieved his desired altitude, he got ready to shoot a few balloons to stabilize his altitude. He took aim... and then dropped the air pistol. And now the lounge chair kept rising. At ten thousand feet, the winds took him out near the skies of LAX--Los Angeles International Airport. The radio tower chatter from airline pilots reported the unusual sight of a man in a lounge chair loafing in the air lanes. One pilot reported a UFO, under the somewhat logical reasoning that he couldn't be seeing a man in a lounge chair with a beer at what was now fifteen thousand feet above the earth. Finally the winds blew the man and lounge chair back toward suburbia. And as the helium slowly leaked out of the balloons, the lounge chair gradually began to descend, and then, fittingly, landed right by the side of a backyard swimming pool. Christine Powers, the mother of a young man accused of committing a drive-by shooting in New Orleans, was outraged. The police were trying to frame her son. She was positive he was innocent. "The facts are black-and-white," she said. "Steve couldn't possibly have been involved because, at exactly ten-thirty, when this shooting took place, he was over the other side of town in a housing project, murdering someone who owed us money." The South Shields Museum in England was sponsoring an exhibition of Roman artifacts found nearby. Proudly displayed in one case was a vintage Roman sesterius coin. It was identified by museum experts as having been minted almost two thousand years before, somewhere around A.D. 135. However, one visiting expert disagreed. Little Fiona Gordon, age nine, identified the coin as a plastic token given away by a local soda bottler. Museum experts were amused, and asked her to prove this cute idea. So Fiona pointed out the soda bottler's trademark on the back of the coin. Embarrassed museum officials started explaining. According to a spokesperson, "The token was designed as a Roman replica. The trouble was that we construed the letter 'R' on the coin to mean 'Roma.' In fact, it stood for 'Robinson's,' the soft drink manufacturers." The museum promised to view with "great suspicion" any coins donated in the future. Charles Barkley, the famous outspoken basketball player, was furious. He had been badly, badly misquoted in a book about his life and career, titled Outrageous. There was one thing to do. The outraged basketball player immediately tried to stop the publishers from putting out the offending book. There was one little problem. The book Outrageous was Barkley's own book--his autobiography. On April 17, 1993, the Baltimore Orioles were playing the California Angels--and wound up getting cited by Sports Illustrated for making the stupidest play of the year. The Orioles had the bases loaded and only one man out. Oriole Mike Devereaux was up. The second he hit the ball, the runner at third, Jeff Tackett, headed for home. But Devereaux's line drive wasn't deep enough. The ball was caught by the Angel center fielder. Keeping his cool, Tackett headed back to third. But when he got there, he also found Brady Anderson, the runner from second, on the bag--and Chito Martinez, the runner from first as well. California catcher John Orton tagged all three--and two were called out for an inning-ending double play. The California third baseman summed it up: "It wouldn't have been the stupidest play until Chito arrived at third. I think he thought there was a fight, so he ran across the field to get in it." If you want to lose basketball games, you might want a coach like the Friendsville Academy Foxes basketball team had. From 1967 to 1973, the team chalked up 128 consecutive losses. They lost one game 71 to 0. They came closest to victory once when they lost 2 to 0--but the winning basket was scored by a Friendsville player who erroneously shot the ball into the wrong hoop. The coach decided not to give pep talks because he believed they made his players nervous. But if there is any doubt that this coach deserves special mention, the clincher comes in 1970. That year the coach named one player--a player who had never scored a single point--the team's most outstanding player. When reporter Douglas S. Looney from the National Observer questioned the coach, the coach had a succinct reply: "You don't think scoring is everything, do you?" The absurd conversation continued. "Is there anything this team does well?" asked the reporter. "Not really," replied the coach. "Are you making progress?" "I couldn't truthfully say that we are." "Do you like coaching?" "I don't care that much for basketball." A black bear was stuck in a pine tree in Keithville Louisiana. And everybody wanted to help rescue it. People began gathering under the tree, peering up at the large bear and trying to help lure it down. But even the efforts of the game warden and a veterinarian armed with tranquilizing darts failed. They had been trying for about eight hours, when the local sheriff was called. About eight hundred people were gathered under the tree, and the sheriff was needed to control the huge mob. When he arrived, though, his presence wasn't needed anymore. The eight hundred people were beginning to disperse. The rescue effort had succeeded. They had managed to rescue the large black garbage bag that had gotten caught in the tree. A man was fishing in the Amazon's Rio Negro when his line got stuck in a tree. He began pulling and tugging at the line to free it, when the line hit a bees' nest. The infuriated bees went for him. He swatted, jumped, ran, but the bees kept attacking. Desperate to get away, he finally leaped into the river. He was promptly eaten by piranhas. A devoted birdwatcher decided that the only way to band the swans living on a nearby lake in upstate New York was to disguise himself. A conscientious fellow, he decided to do things properly. He decided to approach the swans--as a swan. So he put the hollowed-out and dried body of a swan over his head and waded out onto the lake. Unfortunately, it was midnight, he couldn't swim, and he drowned. It was an important bout for boxer Danny Osnato--and his trainer told him exactly how to play it. His advice: Dance the first round out. If Osnato kept dancing, the other guy wouldn't be able to lay a glove on him. Then, in the second round, Osnato should start swinging. The obedient boxer did just what his trainer said. And it worked. Osnato's footwork was phenomenal. The opponent didn't hit him once. But after forty-seven seconds of intense dancing, Osnato dropped to the canvas, unconscious. His opponent won on a TKO. LaVerie Williams of Beaumont, Texas was thrilled with her new car and wanted to test every aspect of it--including the capacity of the car's trunk. So she had family members shut her inside the trunk. That's when she realized she had the keys clutched in her hand. A janitor at the Marriot Hotel in Bristol, England was asked to clean and elevator. The job took him four full days. His confused supervisor asked him why it had taken so long. Replied the janitor, "Well, there are twelve of them, one on each floor, and sometimes some of them aren't there." Apparently, the man had thought that each floor had a different elevator--so he went to each floor and cleaned the same elevator twelve seperate times. The question of who owned a certain sago palm tree in Haraku, Indonesia was the cause of a dispute between two men, a certain Mr. Djambi and a Mr. Hasnuddin. Rather than fight or go to court, they decided to go back to traditional Indonesian ways and have a little contest. The winner would get the palm tree. The contest rules were simple: Whoever could hold his breath underwater the longest would win. Watched by their fellow villagers, Mr. Djambi and Mr. Hasnuddin weighted themselves down with stones, took two deep breaths, jumped into the water, and then held their breaths. Unfortunately, it was a tie... they both drowned. A convenience store clerk in Abilene, Texas, was passed a counterfeit $100 bill--and accepted it without question... even though it was a foot long and five inches wide. Marcel Valjean and his new wife were spending a wonderful honeymoon on the lovely tropical island of Reunion in June 1977. On the night of June 7, Valjean was returning from a midnight stroll while his wife was softly slumbering in their beautiful honeymoon cottage. As he came to the fence surrounding their tropical love nest, Valjean had an amusing idea. Why not vault over the fence into the cottage and surprise his slumbering bride? Unfortunately, the night was dark and what Valjean thought was the fence near his honeymoon cottage was not the fence in question. Valjean instead vaulted over a fence surrounding the deadly crater of a nearby volcano--and died. Federal flight regulations in Canada make no bones about it: No one, by law, can enter a Canadian aircraft while it is in flight. The law does not specify how one could do this in the first place. In addition, no one may legally leave an airplane that is flying, except to make a parachute jump. Jump from an airplane without a parachute in Canada and you're in major trouble--from the police. By law, anyone wanting to make a parachute jump must have a parachute or face federal prosecution. A Great Britain law makes it illegal for trucks to drive under bridges that are too low for them to drive under. In January 1982, a new prison opened in Baltimore County, Maryland. It was touted as "the most modern jail in the United States." Virtually escape-proof. Costing $11.2 million, it was a high-tech wonder: It was computer controlled, with remote control cameras panning the building, solar panels to produce the only active solar heating system in a United States detention center. There were a few bugs, however. The computer system would periodically go crazy and every so often trap people in different parts of the building. The remote-control cameras apparently got tired easily. As it was, they could run for only half an hour, then had to be shut down for two hours--or the motors would burn out. And the environmentally correct solar panels didn't work in the winter. Instead, they froze solid. Some of the less-high-tech things in the prison didn't work so well either. Many locks wouldn't lock or, if they could lock, wouldn't open. For some reason, the guardposts were designed so that the guards couldn't see into the cells from them. The microphones used to speak to prisoners were virtually unusable. So it comes as no surprise to learn that less than three months after it opened, nine prisoners escaped. How did they do it? Easy. They kicked out one of the unbreakable glass-and-plastic-reinforced windows. "Don't blame me," the warden said. "I didn't plan this building."
In the late 1970s, NATO was all set for White Fox. This was a military exercise to see how the alpine commandos, the elite of the NATO fighting forces, would perform under bad weather conditions. Then the weather got foggy. The White Fox exercise was canceled. Why? Bad weather. A candidate in a local election in a small town in Poland was a class-act type of guy. To show his respect and his professional courtesy for the candidate running against him, he cast his vote for his opponent. The problem was, his was the only vote cast out of 595 eligible voters. A man called the phone company to get an unlisted number. He was given one and went on to ask the representative on the phone about several features of phone company service. Just as he was about to hang up, he realized he had forgotten his new unlisted number. He asked the phone company representative to repeat the number to him. "I'm sorry," she said, "I can't. That's an unlisted number." A twenty-two-year-old man was convinced he had mastered the powers of his mind. Through his superior control of his thoughts, he believed he could cause things to happen--or not to happen. The key, of course, was putting his theory to a test. So he stood on a railroad track near Shanghai and applied his thoughts to a speeding train coming right at him. If his theory was correct, he could force the train to stop. His theory was incorrect. Alcoentre Prison, near Lisbon, Portugal, is the world's worst maximum security prison--unless you're an inmate. In July 1978, prison guards noticed that attendance was down at the nightly film shows. They also happened to notice that over two hundred knives were missing from prison storerooms--as well as electric cables, spades, chisels, water hoses, and drills. In the immortal words of one guard: "We were planning to look for them, but we never got around to it." It was too bad they hadn't. Over half of the inmate population used the tools to escape from the prison one night. But the guards didn't notice that, either. At roll call, when fewer than half the prisoners showed up, lackadaisical guards didn't sound the alarm. They just assumed prisoners were hiding somewhere in the prison--something they often did. There happened to be huge holes in the prison walls, but somehow the guards overlooked them as well. They later explained that the holes were difficult to see because they had been covered by posters and, besides, the searchlights were so bright they often blinded the guard's eyes. In fact, the guards didn't "discover" the breakout until the next morning. How did they finally find out? One of the prisoners told them. The guards weren't in too much trouble, however, judging from the attitude of their supreme boss. The Portuguese Justice Minister called the escape "normal" and said it was due to the "legitimate desire of the prisoner to regain his liberty." The editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica contacted the head of a major Western university history department. They sent him a historical article that had been in the encyclopedia for years and asked him if he would be interested in revising it. The professor promptly sent the article back with a biting not, turning down the request and commenting that the article was "inaccurate... badly disorganized and full of errors." At this point the editors wondered who had written such a weak article. They went through their files and came up with a name--it had been written by the professor himself, many years before. Pierre Beaumard was a nervous Frenchman who just couldn't communicate well with others. He also had obsessional fears and complexes. His therapist thought he had an answer. It was a bit unconventional, but it would work. He put Beaumard between two mattresses, and got four participants from the therapy group to walk on the mattresses, helping to "stamp out" Beaumard's obsessions. The cure worked. When the top mattress was removed, Beaumard had no complexes to speak of. He was dead of suffocation. The Smoky Mountain Raceway ambulance happened to be a reconditioned hearse. And, as one race driver discovered, its initial use may have been a bad omen. In 1968, during a race at the Smoky Mountain Raceway, near Maryville, Tennessee, driver Buddy Baker's car blew a tire. the Dodge spun out of control, and at the first turn, slammed into a cement wall. Baker was alive--but badly hurt. The raceway ambulance sped onto the track to help the injured driver. The medics got out, carefully lifted Baker onto a wheeled stretcher, loaded him into the back of the hearse, and slammed the door. Unfortunately, the medics didn't latch the door. When the driver hit the gas to quickly get away, the door flew open, and Baker zoomed onto the track, strapped to his gurney. The speeding gurney kept moving, making its way to the straightaway. And the panicking Baker could see all the other race cars, still driving under the yellow caution flag, headed right for him. Don Namen, the driver of the pace car that led the field, noticed Baker on the runaway gurney just ahead of him. He motioned the cars behind him to drive as close to the wall as possible, and they all watched as Baker sped past them on the stretcher, closely followed by the ambulance crew. But it still wasn't over. The hapless ambulance crew finally caught up to Baker and wheeled him back to the hearse, but this time he refused to go in the back--instead he rode on the front seat alongside the driver. Bad move. From this vantage point, Baker could see just what was going on. The driver ran a red light, and another car pulled out in front of them. The hearse managed to swerve to miss the car, but it wound up on the sidewalk, where it skidded into a group of garbage cans. Finally the hearse made it to the hospital--with a flat tire and almost no brakes. Baker said that after he was treated, the ambulance crew offered to drive him back. "I told them, 'Never mind. I'll find another ride.'" The average Californian must love animals--or so it seemed when a stray puppy wandered onto the Harbor Freeway during rush hour. Traffic slowed to a standstill, as anxious drivers tried to avoid a frantic little dog panicked by the bewildering maze of cars. Concerned motorists began backing up their cars, trying to create a path for the dog. To no avail. The puppy was still stuck in the middle of a traffic snarl. So dog lovers were relieved when the California Highway Patrol appeared on the scene to take charge of the situation. The problem was solved in a jiffy by the efficient officers. The Highway Patrol squad car pulled up and promptly ran over the dog. During a fireman's stike in 1978, the British Army took over the normal duties of firemen. And typically, one cold January day, they were called by a little old lady to rescue her cat, stuck high in a tree. The Army accomplished its mission quickly and efficiently. The cat came down and the thankful little old lady invited the soldiers in for tea. Afterward, full of tea and cookies, the soldiers waved good-bye--and ran over the cat. A man was out hunting in Arizona when he accidentally shot himself in the leg. Keeping his head about him, he realized that the best way to get help would be to alert other hunters in the area--so he fired his gun again to attract attention. Unfortunately, he shot himself in the other leg. A British governmental committee needed a definitive ruling on when winter begins and when it ends--so they turned to the Meteorological Office in Bracknell. The scientific reply: "Winter begins when all the leaves have fallen off the trees. And it ends when the bulbs start coming up again." A study at the Royal University of Stockholm, Sweden found that old people move their legs with greater speed when they are in a hurry. Most people eat lunch because they are hungry. This finding was "revealed" from a study done by Taiwan's Council for Agricultural Planning and Development. The study also found that other people ate lunch because they like to eat three meals a day, and lunch was one of the three meals. An earth-shattering study by Dr. Norris Thompson has found that people who don't go to the doctor much don't go because they aren't sick. William Michini was an ex-Philadelphia fireman with a point to prove. He had been fired for having long hair--which the fire deparment claimed was a safety threat. Michini decided not to take his dismissal sitting down. Instead, he took his case to federal court. In court, he argued that his hair didn't interfere with his duties. It wasn't unsafe at all. In fact, he claimed, hair couldn't burn. It was self-extinguishing. To demonstrate his claim, he confidently struck a match and held it to his head. He set his head on fire. Cesar de Mana, a Brazilian fisherman, was a happy man. After some not-so-blissful wedded years, his wife had finally agreed to a separation. So the newly freed de Mana invited three women over for a festive dinner--which he would cook himself. It was time for a real bang-up celebration--and that's just what de Mana got. The wine flowed, and de Mana and friends became cheerfully drunk, and hungry. So the slightly sodden de Mana went into the kitchen to cook his specialty--sausages. he grabbed four of them, tossed them in the pan, and began frying. A split second later, the kitchen--in fact, the entire house--blew up. He and his guests wound up the celebration by staying in the hospital. He had thrown four sticks of dynamite into the frying pan by mistake. An English aristocrat was sitting in a box next to Lord North and started a conversation with him. He noticed two women walk into the box directly opposite and chose it as a topic of conversation. "Who is that ugly woman who just came in?" Lord North smiled. "Oh, that is my wife," he said pointedly. His companion grew flustered. "Sir, I beg your pardon. I do not mean her. I mean that shocking monster who is along with her." "That," replied Lord North, "is my daughter." It was the early days of the space race and Zambia wasn't going to be left out of the running. In fact, Minister of Space Nkoloso confidently announced that Zambia would soon have a man on the moon. No matter that Zambia didn't have quite the technical expertise or the money to support programs like those in the United States and Soviet Union. They would make do with what they had. And that's just what they did. The Zambian government got the program up and running. Proud of their achievement, they invited reporters to see the different aspects of the Zambian space program. To simulate the effects of orbital flight, the Zambians rigged up their won noncomputerized version: A future astronaut would curl up in a barrel that was attached to a tree by a rope. Assistants would then whirl the barrel around the tree. In another low-tech, nonscientific touch, future astronauts were being trained to walk on their hands--"the only way humans can walk on the moon," as the Space Minister asserted. To date, they haven't gotten a man on the moon. Mrs. Richard Harding Davis, a socially prominent woman, was traveling on the Long Island Rail Road when another woman approached her. It was wonderful to see her again, the woman said. It had been too long! During the niceties, Mrs. Davis desperately tried to remember who this stranger was. The face was familiar, but she drew a blank when it came to the woman's name. Oblivious to the fact that Mrs. Davis didn't remember her, the second woman went on talking. Then Mrs. Davis thought she might have found a way out of the predicament, when her unknown companion mentioned her brother. "Your brother," Mrs. Davis said eagerly. "Of course, I couldn't forget your brother. And what is he doing now?" Her companion looked at her oddly. "My brother," she--Mrs. Douglas Robinson, sister of Teddy Roosevelt--said, "is still President of the United States." In New York City back in 1980, a woman married to a dentist decided to end it all. Hesitating before actually killing herself, she called a suicide hotline and told the hotline operator of her despair. At the end of it all, the operator said, "Go right ahead. It will be one less mouth to feed." He then hung up. The woman told a neighbor, who told her that she had had the same experience, and had been told to "drop dead." The two then decided to check out the hotline one more time, and called the number. This time they got a new reply: "Call back tomorrow. I'm tired. I want to sleep." That did it. As the woman explained, "I found my husband's gun, went to the address given in the telephone book, and shot the man dead." It was a hot day at the La Brea Tar Pits. An employee got himself into a sticky situation when he noticed a traffic cone that had been tossed into a pit. He tried to retrieve the cone, but wound up getting himself stuck in the tar instead. He was struggling desperately to free himself, when a man and a child walked by and saw him. Did they help? Of course not. Instead, the man saw fit to use the incident as a compelling reenactment of ancient history. "See?" he told the child. "That's what happened to the dumb animals." Passengers in the English county of Staffordshire were angry. The buses on the route from the town of Hanley to Bagnall weren't stopping at bus stops to pick them up. A bus company official heard their complaints. Yes, it was true, he said. But he had a clear explanation. If the buses stopped, the timetable wouldn't be accurate. A player for the University of California, Roy Reigals, recovered a Georgia Tech fumble. California fans went crazy, since Reigals was in great position--only thirty yards from the goal line. Four Georgia Tech tacklers moved to block his path. Reigels swerved sharply. That's when he saw a clear route to the goal and started sprinting toward it. Reigels was a center, a position not usually known for the swiftness of its runners. But today Reigels was giving it his all, running as if his life depended on it. While his running was incredible, his sense of direction wasn't. After he had recovered the ball and evaded his pursuers, he had somehow turned completely around and began a sixty-nine-and-a-half-yard dash toward the other goal line. Some of his teammates were equally confused, throwing blocks for him as he ran. The crowd was stunned; even broadcaster Graham McNamee couldn't figure out what was going on. "What's the matter with me!" he yelled into his mike as Reigels crossed the fifty-yard line. "Am I crazy?" One of his teammates, Benny Lom, began running after him, but Reigels was unstoppable. "Get away from me!" he yelled at Lom, convinced that Lom was trying to steal his great play. "This is my touchdown!" Then at the two-yard line, Lom managed to pull him down. The ball was only six inches from the enemy goal--and Reigel earned the unfortunate nickname Roy "Wrong-Way" Reigels. California lost the game. But Reigels was famous. His play was written about in over 4,500 feature stories--and took up about 250,000 column inches in sports columns around the country the next day. It was a moment that still lives in the annals of college football history. The West Virginia Mountaineers were playing the Rutgers Scarlet Knights in 1922. It was near the end of the second quarter, and Rutgers was being pummeled by the Mountaineers. There was a Scarlet Knights pileup at the Rutgers forty-three-yard line. A Rutgers defensive player, Bob Dickenson, dove into the pileup and suddenly saw his golden opportunity: The ball popped out of the hands of the Mountaineer running back. It was Rutger's chance for scoring. Dickenson got his hands on the ball, tucked his head down, and started charging for the goal line. One tackler hit him, but he kept on running. Then another tackler hit him at the Mountaineers thirty-five-yard line. And still Dickenson kept running--oblivious to the fact that the second tackle had completely spun him around. He was now running downfield toward his own goal line. The field ahead was empty. It looked like a clear shot for a touchdown for the Mountaineers. But then Joe Setron and Charley Howard, two West Virginia players, looked at the empty field, saw their opponent running with the ball, and got a little confused. "Let's get him," one of them yelled, and both took off after Dickenson. "No, don't!" yelled their teammates, seeing their chances for a touchdown--or at least a safety--dim. So they started running after the two Mountaineers... who were still running after the Scarlet Knight... who was still running toward the wrong goal. Twenty-five yards later, Setron and Howard finally caught up with Dickenson, tackled him at the Rutgers thirty-two-yard line, and lay there congratulating themselves on their run--until their furious teammates ran over and chewed them out royally. Finally they realized they had blown it. Adding insult to injury, Dickenson, the player who had started the whole mess, had the last word. "Thanks for helping me out," he told his two hapless opponents. "I would have really looked like a fool if I had made it to the end zone. But you guys were even bigger fools for tackling me." On British Rail, Professor Sir Roland Smith complained about fleas in a sleeping car. He got a "personal" letter of apology from the chief of British Rail, Sir Bob Reid, along with an attached memo that said: "Sent standard flea letter." Passengers waiting for the train at Hamble Station in England saw their train pull in--but instead of letting them on, they heard an announcement. "You are not to board this train which has only stopped to let you know that it does not stop here on Sundays." Unbelievably, the train then pulled out. A British Rail spokesman explained that this was an "economy measure" to save power. Passengers walked to the next station, where they were let on.
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