5 People Who Died During Sex: And 100 Other Terribly Tasteless Lists Paperback (11 page)

Controversially, his gold medal went to Thomas Hicks, whose trainers had given him a mixture of brandy and strychnine to keep him going.

1904:

The Tour de France reaches an all-time low amid widespread skullduggery and outright cheating.

Spectators leave nails in the road in front of their favorites’ rivals, while riders take car trips and even
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[Ten Great Sporting Scandals]

train rides. The first four riders are disqualified, including one who had been pulled along by the car in front by means of a wire attached to a cork in his mouth. Although he finishes three hours behind the first-place rider and with two flat tires, race officials declare Henri Cornet the winner.

1919:

Disbelieving American sports fans discover that everything has its price when eight members of the Chicago White Sox, one of the most talented but worst-paid teams in baseball history, are charged with taking a bribe to throw the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. When the trial begins in 1921, most of the records from the grand jury including the records of the players’ testimony have “disappeared.”

The trial lasts for several weeks, but the jury eventually finds all eight not guilty. However,

“Shoeless” Joe Jackson and seven accomplices—

pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Claude “Lefty” Williams, third baseman George “Buck” Weaver, first baseman Arnold “Chick” Gandil, utility man Fred McMullin, shortstop Charles “Swede” Risberg, and centerfielder Oscar “Happy” Felsch—are banned from professional baseball for life.

1932:

Stella Walsh dominates the Olympic 100-meter sprint, confirming her status as the top female sprinter of the 1930s. Forty-three years later, after becoming an American citizen and being inducted into the U.S.

Track and Field Hall of Fame, she is killed by a stray bullet in a Cleveland robbery. The autopsy reveals that
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[Ten Great Sporting Scandals]

“she” is a he. Ironically, when Walsh lost her title in Berlin in 1936 to her bitter rival Helen Stephens, her teammates hinted that Stephens was too fast to be a woman. (Doctors examined the new champion and confirmed that she was female.) Four years later, another Olympic gender-bender, Hitler Youth member Hermann Ratjen, dreams of glory for the Fatherland when he tapes up his genitalia and enters the Berlin Olympics as “Dora.” Disappointingly, he just misses out on the medals when he finishes in fourth place in the women’s high jump.

1972:

Sports’ most inventive cheat may have been Boris Onischenko, a Red Army major from Ukraine. A veteran of the modern pentathlon—a five-discipline event including fencing—Onischenko arrives at the Montreal Olympics as a hot favorite for the gold, having won two silvers and a bronze in three previous Olympiads. Britain’s epée No. 1, Sergeant Jim Fox, is outclassed and easily outpointed by Onischenko, but complains that his opponent has been scoring without actually hitting anyone. Upon examination of the Soviet athlete’s sword, it is revealed to be wired up so he can trigger the electronic scoring system with his hand and register a hit at will. “Boris the Cheat”

exits the Olympics in disgrace as a new career in the Siberian salt mines beckons.

1964:

The track and field medals fly Moscow’s way as the statuesque Soviet sisters Tamara and Irina Press add to their impressive haul of twenty-six world records and
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[Ten Great Sporting Scandals]

five Olympic golds. Their bulging biceps, deep voices, and prominent Adam’s apples raise eyebrows, however, and two years later, under pressure from America, gender testing is introduced for the first time. The Press sisters go into immediate retirement, allegedly to care for their sick mother.

1986:

With the score goalless in the 52nd minute of the 1986

World Cup quarterfinal soccer match between England and Argentina, the 5' 4'' Argentinean Diego Maradona miraculously outjumps England’s goalkeeper, Peter Shilton, who is almost a foot taller, to head the ball into the England net. Tunisian referee Ali Bennaceur is the only person in the stadium who has failed to notice that Maradona used his left hand to guide the ball home. “It was partly the hand of Maradona, partly the hand of God,” the Argentine captain explains later. After this divine intervention, Argentina wins the game and goes on to win the World Cup.

1990:

Jockey Sylvester Carmouche emerges from thick fog at the Delta Downs racetrack in Vinton, Louisiana, to finish in first place on 23–1 long shot Landing Officer, a suspicious twenty-four lengths ahead of his nearest rival and barely a second outside the course record. Race officials become even more suspicious when they discover that none of the other jockeys can actually recall seeing Carmouche at all during the race.

In fact, he had dropped out of the mile-long race and rejoined it just before the end. Carmouche protests his innocence but is handed a ten-year ban.

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[Ten Great Sporting Scandals]

2000: The intellectually disabled Spanish Paralympics basketball team storms to victory, beating Russia in the men’s final. The euphoria of winning a gold medal is soon obliterated when it becomes clear that ten of the team’s twelve members have no mental deficiency at all.

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Ten Relia 10

ble Tudor Remedies

1

Asthma: Swallow young frogs or live spiders coated in butter.

2

Gout: Boil a red-haired dog in oil, then add worms and the marrow from pig bones; apply the mixture.

3

Headache: Rub the forehead with a rope used to hang a criminal.

4

Rheumatism: Wear the skin of a donkey.

5

Jaundice: Drink a pint of ale containing nine drowned head lice every morning for a week.

6

Bubonic plague: Hold a live chicken against the sores until the bird dies.

7

Whooping cough: Find a ferret, feed it with milk, then give the leftover milk to the sick child.

8

Warts: Lay half a mouse on the wart for half an hour and then bury it in the ground. As the mouse rots, the wart will vanish.

9

Baldness: Rub dog or horse urine into the scalp.

10

Deafness: Mix the gallstone of a hare and the grease of a fox, warm the result, and place it in the ear.

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12

Read ’Em and Wipe:

Twelve Magic Moments

in Toilet Paper History

1400: The first toilet paper is made for the Emperor of China.

It is available in one size 2'-by-3' sheets.

1509: King Henry VIII appoints a Groom of the Stool, whose sole function is to clean the royal anus by hand. It becomes a highly respected and coveted position.

1725: The French author François Rabelais, in his book
Gargantua
, recommends wiping with nettles, velvet, handkerchiefs, carpets, or, for added comfort, the neck of a goose.

1750: Mussel shells and corncobs are widely used for cleaning purposes. Hawaiian islanders, however, prefer to use coconut husks.

1880: Publishers of
The Old Farmer’s Almanac
improve circulation by punching a hole in the corner of their respected organ so it can be hung on a nail in the outhouse.

1890: The Scott Paper Company manufactures the first perforated toilet roll, but is reluctant to put its name on its groundbreaking product. It is demurely described in their advertisements as “curl papers for hairdressing.”

1930: Sears customers are enraged when their catalog, another popular outhouse choice, is produced on glossy, nonabsorbent paper.

1942: Britain’s first soft two-ply toilet paper, advertised as

“splinter-free,” is available only from Harrods.

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[Twelve Magic Moments in Toilet Paper History]

Meanwhile, the country’s best-selling novelty toilet paper is single-ply printed with images of Adolf Hitler.

1967: During recording sessions for
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club Band
, Beatle George Harrison complains to EMI about the studio’s hard, scratchy toilet paper. An executive decision is taken at boardroom level to replace it with the softer variety.

1984: A Christian group, the World Reformed Alliance, sends twenty thousand free Bibles to Romania, where dictator Nicolae Ceau¸sescu has promised to distribute them. The Bibles arrive, but Ceau¸sescu confiscates the lot and has them pulped to ease a national toilet paper shortage. The quality of Romanian pulping is so poor, however, that words such as “God” and “Jeremiah” are still clearly visible.

1994: A severe national toilet paper shortage in Cuba leads to the ransacking of a library, where rare books are stolen and torn apart. An official explains that most Cubans have long since used up their telephone books.

1999: Japanese inventors unveil the paperless toilet, a device that washes, rinses, and blow-dries the user’s bottom with a heating element.

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Histor 10

y’s Ten Greatest

Fashion Mistakes

1

SEE-THROUGH TOGAS
De rigueur
in Emperor Nero’s Rome, these diaphanous garments, exposing both the breasts and the genitals, left nothing to the imagination. Complained the Roman philosopher Seneca,

“Our women have nothing left to reveal to their lovers in the bedroom that they have not already shown on the street.”

2

THE CODPIECE In 1482, King Edward IV introduced a law that forbade persons below the rank of lord to expose their private parts in public. The answer was the essential fashion accessory for Renaissance men, cut to fit snugly around the male member like the finger of a glove.

Fifteenth-century fashion critics were not impressed.

Michel de Montaigne sniffed, “What is the purpose of that monstrosity that we to this day have fixed to our trousers, and often which is worse, it is beyond its natural size, through falseness and imposture?”

3

EXPOSED GENITALS The best-dressed gentleman around medieval England exposed his naked genitals below a short-fitting tunic. If the genitals didn’t hang low enough, a chap could wear padded flesh-colored falsies, called “braquettes.”

4

FLEA CRAVATS These were designed to catch
Pulex
irritans
, also called the human flea, and were worn for about two hundred years from the fourteenth century onward by Renaissance ladies. The furry human flea-collars were removed and shaken out to lessen the chance
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[History’s Ten Greatest Fashion Mistakes]

of fleas coming into contact with the rest of their clothing.

5

FALSE EYEBROWS These became highly desirable among eighteenth-century men and women, who wore sets of eyebrows, cut from mouse skin and stuck on with fish glue, to make them appear fashionably surprised.

6

BOUND FEET According to one of several versions of the story, the Chinese fetish for foot-binding, designed literally to keep women in their place, dates from the thirteenth century with the Empress Taki, who was born with a clubfoot. Her courtiers took to binding their own feet in cloth in imitation, and soon small, tightly bound designer feet became highly desirable in Chinese women, even though bound toes were likely to become gangrenous. Chinese husbands, meanwhile, encouraged foot-binding because their crippled wives were less likely to run off. Foot-binding was officially abolished by Chairman Mao in 1949.

7

THE PRINCE ALBERT Queen Victoria’s consort gave his name to a form of body piercing, once popular amongst Victorian gentlemen. In order to maintain a perfectly smooth trouser line of the tight trousers that were fashionable at the time, Albert allegedly wore a ring through his penis, which was then strapped to his thigh.

8

SOLIMAN’S WATER This was the sixteenth-century facelift, guaranteed to eliminate spots, freckles, and
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[History’s Ten Greatest Fashion Mistakes]

warts. Unfortunately, the application of a blowtorch to your face would have had similar consequences, as the chief ingredient of this top-selling lotion was mercury, which burned away the outer layers of skin and corroded the flesh underneath. Another side effect was that teeth fell out even more quickly than was usual at the time.

9

HAIR REMOVAL BY IRRADIATION An

indispensable item in the best North American beauty parlors in the 1920s was the recently invented X-ray machine, employed to remove unwanted facial and body hair. Other treatments available included radioactive face creams to lighten the skin and radioactive toothpaste for whiter teeth and better digestion, after which the customer could enjoy a radium-laced chocolate bar. As recently as 1953, a company in Denver was promoting a radium-based contraceptive jelly.

10

COLORED TEETH Sixteenth-century Italian ladies colored their teeth red or green. Russian women, however, always dyed theirs black.

118

Twe12

lve Phobias

1

Apotemnophobia—fear of amputees

2

Bolshephobia—fear of Bolsheviks

3

Bromidrosiphobia (or bromidrophobia)—fear of body odor

4

Defecaloesiophobia—fear of painful bowel movements 5

Eurotophobia—fear of female genitalia

6

Geniophobia—fear of chins

7

Medomalacuphobia—fear of losing an erection 8

Papaphobia—fear of the pope

9

Peladophobia—fear of bald people

10

Taeniophobia—fear of tapeworms

11

Venustraphobia—fear of beautiful women

12

Zemmiphobia—fear of the great mole rat

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Ten

10

Phobias of the Famous

1

Augustus Caesar, King Henry III of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler: aliurophobia (fear of cats)

2

Harriet Martineau, Edmund Yates, Wilkie Collins, and Giacomo Mayerbeer: taphophobia (fear of premature burial). The writer Harriet Martineau left her doctor $35

with instructions that he should make sure she was well and truly deceased before her burial by cutting her head off. The novelist Edmund Yates similarly left a fee for any surgeon kind enough to slit his jugular vein before interment. The novelist Wilkie Collins always carried a letter with him imploring anyone finding him “dead” to contact the nearest doctor for a second opinion.