And other weird ways to go…

THEY WENT THATAWAY

Some famous people aren’t just remarkable for how they lived,
but also for how they died. Take these folks, for example

JOHN A. ROEBLING (1806–69)
Claim to Fame: The engineer who designed the Brooklyn Bridge
Cause of Death: Killed by the Brooklyn Bridge
Details: On June 28, 1869 Roebling was standing on a dock surveying the location of the tower on the Brooklyn side. When an approaching ferry pressed up against the dock, Roebling got his right foot caught between the boat and the dock and his toes were badly crushed. They were amputated later that same day. Roebling refused further medical treatment, perhaps contributing to his developingtetanus, a disease caused when a wound is infected by a strain of bacteria commonly found in dirt. In the days before tetanus shots, the disease could be fatal, and in Roebling’s case it was. After a week of suffering terrible seizures he died on July 22.
Note: Roebling’s son Washington, who took over supervision of the project after his father’s death, was also nearly killed by the Brooklyn Bridge. Long hours spent in caissons, the pressurized underwater chambers used to construct the bridge’s foundation, left him severely disabled by decompression sickness, more commonly known as “the bends.” For the remaining decade that it took to finish the bridge, he supervised the project from his house via intermediaries, rarely returned to the job site, and did not attend the bridge’s opening in 1883.

KING ALEXANDER OF GREECE (1893–1920)
Claim to Fame: Alexander reigned from 1917 to 1920. He was a first cousin of Prince Philip of England
Cause of Death: Killed by his pet monkeys
Details: On October 2, 1920, the king was walking his dog through the Royal Garden in Athens—now called the National Garden—when one the monkeys that lived there attacked the dog. (Some sources claim it was the dog that attacked the mon- key.) When Alexander tried to separate them with a stick, a second monkey came to the defense of the first, and the King was badly bitten by both. He died from his wounds three weeks later.
Note: Alexander became king during World War I after his father, King Constantine I, was forced off the throne because of his pro-German sympathies. After Alexander’s death Constantine returned to the throne, making Alexander a rare example of a king who succeeded his father and was succeeded by him, as well. Constantine abdicated a second time in 1922, this time for good.

JASPER NEWTON “JACK” DANIEL (1846–1911)
Claim to Fame: The distiller who created Jack Daniel’s Whiskey
Cause of Death: A bad memory, exacerbated by a short temper
Details: Daniel had a terrible time remembering the combination to his office safe (no word on whether whiskey was a factor), and it was usually his nephew’s job to open it One morning, however, Daniel came in to work early and his nephew wasn’t there. Daniel tried to open the safe himself and got so frustrated in the attempt that he kicked the safe, striking it so hard that he broke his toe. The toe became infected, and he developed septicemia, or blood poisoning, which killed him on October 10, 1911. Daniel’s last words (according to the distillery): “One last drink, please.”

That’s another in our series of article excerpts from the brand new Uncle John’s 24-KARAT GOLD Bathroom Reader. Read about more weird deaths, and hundreds of other stories – at 30% off the usual price as part of our annual HOLIDAY SALE.

• Past excerpts can be found by hitting “Excerpts” in the tags blow this post.

This is always one of our favorite regular pages in the UJBR.

FLUBBED HEADLINES
Whether silly, naughty, obvious, or just plain bizarre, they’re all real:

Chick Accuses Some of Her Male Colleagues of Sexism

Westinghouse Gives Robot Rights to Firm

How to Combat That Feeling of Helplessness With Illegal Drugs

World’s Largest Stove Destroyed by Fire

Young Marines Make Tasty Christmas Treats

Students cook & serve grandparents

Hispanics ace Spanish tests

Academics to dissect Bob Dylan at NY conference

Experts: Fewer blows to head could reduce brain damage

Tiger Woods plays with own balls, Nike says

Mayor Parris to homeless: Go home

That’s another in our excerpt series from the brand spanking new Uncle John’s 24-KARAT GOLD Bathroom Reader! You can read more actual headlines, as well as hundreds of other stories – at 30% off the usual price as part of our annual HOLIDAY SALE! And that’s 30% of ALL our books.

• Past excerpts can be found by hitting “Excerpts” in the tags blow this post.

OBSCURE FADS OF THE ’60S

Sure, you’ve heard of lava lamps, Nehru jackets, yo-yos, pop art,
op art, paper dresses, and bell-bottoms. But here are a few
crazes of the 1960s that may have escaped you.

PIANO WRECKING (1963)
As part of his nightclub act in the 1930s, Jimmy Durante would play a few songs on a piano…then slowly rip it apart with his bare bands and throw the chunks out into the audience. It was a bizarre bit of performance art, and the audience loved it. More than three decades after Durante did it, wrecking pianos became a fad in the engineering department at Derby College of Technology in England. Six-man teams used tools such as axes, sledgehammers, and crowbars to break a piano into pieces so tiny that they could be passed through a 20-cm hole (that’s a little less than eight inches), competing to see who could do it fastest. The fad spread to Cal Tech in Pasadena, California, where the Piano Reduction Study Group deconstructed a piano in just 10 minutes, 44 seconds. Engineering students at Wayne State University in Detroit beat that record with a time of 4 minutes, 51 seconds. But why wreck a piano into tiny bits? Like earlier weird college fads like phone-booth stuffing or goldfish swallowing, it was probably to blow off steam incurred from the rigors of academia. Or, as Robert Diller of Cal Tech told Time in 1963, “It has psychological implications which are pretty clear to us. It’s a satire on the obso- lescence of today’s society.” The fad died out by the mid-’60s, replaced with a far more pressing college pastime: protesting the Vietnam War.

That’s another excerpt in our series of bits and pieces from the brand spanking new Uncle John’s 24-KARAT GOLD Bathroom Reader! You can about read more obscure 1960s fads, as well as hundreds of other stories – at 30% off the usual price as part of our annual HOLIDAY SALE! And that’s 30% of ALL our books.

• Past excerpts can be found by hitting “Excerpts” in the tags blow this post.