Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (79 page)

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Even though the goal of the coup was to restore Anglo-Iranian’s concession, the company was so despised that after the shah regained the throne he could not risk it. Instead, an international consortium of foreign oil companies was set up to administer the concession together. Anglo-Iranian was reduced to a 40% stake, and the remaining 60% of the consortium’s shares were split between five American oil companies, one French oil company, and Royal Dutch/Shell.

In a final slap at Mossadegh, the foreign-owned, foreign-controlled consortium took the name of the company that he had created when Anglo-Iranian’s assets were nationalized in 1951: the National Iranian Oil Company.

So how Iranian was the new National Iranian Oil Company? Not very—from now on profits would be split with Iran on a 50/50 basis, but just like before, Iranians were not allowed on the board of directors and were not allowed to audit company books.

Mohammed Reza Shah returned to the throne determined never to let anyone threaten his power again. He abolished opposition parties and set up a one-party state, and reinforced his rule by beefing up the military and police. With the help of the CIA, he also established his own secret police force, SAVAK. As the years passed, his rule became more autocratic and corrupt, causing opposition to grow steadily in the 1960s and 1970s. In January 1979, he was swept from power by Islamic fundamentalists.

On average, it would take 18 hummingbirds to weigh in at an ounce.

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

How would Iran be different today, had Mossadegh not been overthrown in 1953? Well, the country might have gradually evolved into a full-fledged democracy, perhaps even becoming a model of freedom for other nations in the Middle East. Then again, Iran was an unstable, oil-rich nation that bordered the USSR. It had an active, growing Communist party with strong ties to the Soviet Union, which had a history of setting up puppet governments in other countries around the world. Joseph Stalin died in March 1953 and was replaced by Nikita Khrushchev, the man who triggered the Cuban missile crisis with the United States in 1962. Would he have been content to leave a weak, unstable oil-rich neighbor alone?

By overthrowing Mossadegh, the United States may have prevented Iran from developing into a democracy...or it may only have set up a U.S.-sponsored dictatorship in place of a Soviet-sponsored dictatorship, which might have turned out to be even worse. We’ll never know.

AFTERMATH

It may not have seemed like it at the time, but the United States was as profoundly affected by the 1953 coup as Iran:

The CIA

The CIA was only six years old in 1953, and the coup in Iran was its very first attempt to overthrow a foreign government from behind the scenes. The coup’s astonishing success inspired the CIA to attempt similar coups in other countries, including Guatemala in 1954, the Congo in 1960, Cuba (the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion) in 1961, and Chile in 1973.

Foreign Policy

In the early 1950s the United States was seen in many parts of the world as opposing colonialism and supporting the nationalist ambitions of developing countries. (The United States had fought for its independence from England, after all.) But the CIA coups, along with the Vietnam War, gradually turned world opinion against the United States. America came to be seen as a country that would support oppressive dictatorships over democracy whenever dictatorships suited its interests.

The cornea is the only body part with no blood supply. It gets oxygen directly from the air.

Middle East Conflicts

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After 1953 the United States replaced Great Britain as the shah’s most important sponsor. Result: Opponents of the shah’s regime turned against the United States. The shah was deposed in January 1979, and when he traveled to the United States for cancer treatment the following October, Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, seized the Americans inside, and held them hostage for 444 days. Whatever hope there was for an improvement in relations between America and revolutionary Iran evaporated when Iran’s new leader, Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, refused to release the hostages until the shah returned to Iran.

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Iran’s neighbor, Iraq, tried to capitalize on the chaos that followed the Iranian revolution by invading in 1980. The United States sided with Saddam Hussein, providing weapons, intelligence, and economic assistance.

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The war raged for eight years, devastating the economies of both countries, before it finally ended in a stalemate. Hussein borrowed more than $14 billion from Kuwait to help finance the war, and a dispute over repayment was one of the major pretexts for his invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, in turn, led to the Gulf War between the United States and Iraq in 1991.

9/11

The Islamic fundamentalist state that was set up in Iran following the revolution of 1979 supported Islamic terrorist groups around the world. It also served as an inspiration to Muslim extremists all over the world, including Afghanistan, where Muslim fundamentalists known as the Taliban established a similar theocratic state in 1996.

The Taliban, in turn, hosted Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden as he planned his attack on the United States that took place on September 11, 2001. “It is not far-fetched,” historian Stephen Kinzer writes in
All the Shah’s Men
, “to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the shah’s repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York.”

“There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.”

—President Harry S Truman

At last count, there are more than 100 known planets outside of our solar system.

Here it is—our feature based on Andy Warhol’s prophetic remark that “in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” Here’s how a few people have used up their allotted quarter hour
.

T
HE STARS:
Tom Anderson, 24, a bartender and his fiancée, Sabrina Root, 33, a hair stylist

THE HEADLINE:
Here Comes the Bride...Inc
.

WHAT HAPPENED:
Anderson and Root wanted a big wedding, but couldn’t afford to pay for it. At the time Anderson was trying to start an animation company. “It occurred to me that a startup company and a startup couple both need launch money,” he said. So Anderson devised a marketing plan and hit the bricks, asking 80 different companies to sponsor his wedding. In return, he offered to plug their businesses six times: 1) in the invitation, 2) in a newspaper ad, 3) at the buffet table, 4) at each dinner table, 5) in a speech after the toast, and 6) in the thank-you cards the couple would send to their guests. “I made them realize that for the few hundred dollars they were putting in, they were going to get a ton of exposure,” Anderson said.

Of the 80 companies he approached, 24 said yes. In all, they chipped in $30,000 worth of goods and services, while Anderson and his fiancée only paid about $4,000 out of their own pockets.

AFTERMATH:
The story was picked up by news wire services and even got them invited onto
The Oprah Winfrey Show
. The publicity inspired cash-strapped couples in Ohio, Florida, and other states to copy the idea, and at least one company has sprung up to advise engaged couples on corporate sponsorship. (
Note:
They don’t donate their services—you have to pay for it.)

THE STAR:
Ashley Revell, 32, a professional poker player

THE HEADLINE:
High-Stakes High Jinks: Batty Brit Bets It All

WHAT HAPPENED:
In early 2004, Revell decided to sell all of his possessions and bet all the money he made on a single spin of a Las Vegas roulette wheel. Over the next several weeks, Revell sold everything—his car, furniture, jewelry, and clothes—and raised more than $135,000. Then he flew to Las Vegas, went up to the roulette wheel at the Plaza Hotel and Casino, bet it all on red...and won! He walked out of the casino $135,000 richer. (Had he lost, he would have owned nothing, not even the clothes on his back—he was wearing a rented tuxedo.)

Termite mounds can grow to up to 20 feet high.

AFTERMATH:
Revell became a celebrity in England when British TV made his story into a documentary called
Double or Nothing
. About the only thing he didn’t accomplish was winning his father’s respect. “He’s a naughty boy,” Revell’s dad told a London newspaper. “I tell my kids they shouldn’t gamble. I’ve got four others, and now they’re all going to want to go the same way.”

THE STAR:
Norman Hutchins, 53, of York, England

THE HEADLINE:
Masked Man Makes Hospital History

WHAT HAPPENED:
In January 2004, Hutchins walked into a hospital and explained to a staffer that he was going to a costume party dressed as a doctor. Could he borrow a surgical gown, a mask, and some rubber gloves? The staffer was cooperative at first, but when Hutchins asked her to accompany him into the restroom, she became suspicious and called police.

The staffer’s suspicions were quickly confirmed. Hutchins was a fetishist with an obsession for surgical clothing. For 15 years, he’d been visiting various English and Welsh hospitals with invented excuses like costume parties, stage plays, animal experiments, and charity “fun runs,” hoping to con hospital staff into giving him masks, gloves, and other attire.

AFTERMATH:
Hutchins had managed to avoid the notice of the National Health Service...until they set up a new computer system and began compiling statistics nationwide. In the first five months alone, Hutchins racked up 47 different incidents at hospitals all over England. That’s when he made British medical history: in June 2004, he became the first person ever to be banned from every public and private hospital, medical office, and dental office in the country. (He can still get treated for a genuine medical emergency, but if he fakes it, he faces five years in prison.)

THE STAR:
Kimberly Mays, 9, from Florida

THE HEADLINE:
Girl, Switched at Birth, Wants to Stay Switched

Bestselling video games of all time:
Super Mario Bros
. (40 million) and
Tetris
(33 million).

WHAT HAPPENED:
In 1988 a 9-year-old girl named Arlena Twigg died from a heart defect. Tissue samples taken from Arlena revealed something astonishing: she wasn’t related to her biological parents, Ernest and Regina Twigg. How was that possible? The Twiggs began looking for an answer, and their search led them to Kimberly Mays, who’d been born at the same hospital as Arlena, within a few days of Arlena. Genetic test results proved the unthinkable—Arlena and Kimberly had been switched at birth.

The story made headlines worldwide but probably would have died out quickly if the Mayses and the Twiggs could have come to an agreement on custody and visitation rights. Kimberly’s father, Bob Mays, agreed to give the Twiggs visitation rights at first, but when, after five visits, Kimberly became depressed and her grades started slipping, he reneged. The Twiggs sued and the fight for Kimberly dragged on for five years. Finally a judge ruled that although they were her biological parents, the Twiggs had no parental rights whatsoever.

AFTERMATH:
The long public tug of war between two sets of parents took its toll on Kimberly Mays. Six months after the court decision, she ran away from the Mayses and went to live with the Twiggs. Then she ran away from them. At 18 she got married and gave birth to a son. But she wasn’t taking a chance that what happened to her might happen to him. “I had him right beside me in the hospital,” she says. “All the time.”