Toiletpaper | Volume II by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari

1

2

3

15

which is open to the public and is advertised or announced in a newspaper...

66

By Stephen G. Bloom

By James Raymond Simmons

Man eats queen-size waterbed

24

ALBINOS I HAVE KNOWN

NEW YORK—“They’re all nuts,” said a man who has heard it all.

David Boehm is editor and publisher of the North American edition of the Guinness Book of World Records.

The most recent nut, Boehm says, is a French man who ate a waterbed, piece by piece, in an Amarillo, Texas, department store this summer.

Michel Lotito, a Grenoble stuntman who goes under the name of Monsieur Mangetout (“Mr. EatAll,” in French), ate a queen-sized waterbed by taking it apart and filing down the bedboards and cutting the mattress into thin strips. His act was a promotional gimmick sponsored by a store called Lifestyles Bedrooms, for which he received $5,000...

By Nikolai Gogol

20 A Law Regarding Frog Jumping and What TO do Should a Frog Die during said Contest (CALIFORNIA) 6880. As used in this article, “frog-jumping contest” means a contest generally and popularly known as a frog-jumping contest

THE NOSE On the 25th March, 18—, a very strange occurrence took place in St Petersburg. On the Ascension Avenue there lived a barber of the name of Ivan Jakovlevitch.

He had lost his family name, and on his sign-board, on which was depicted the head of a gentleman with one cheek soaped, the only inscription to be read was, “Blood-

Among all the bird skins and mounts in my private collection there is not a single albino.

Complete albinism is fairly rare, and therefore only by...

70

By Charles Dickens

EATABLE GHOSTS

48

Among the many supernatural annoyances which disturb the comfort of the Eibo-folk that is to say the population of Swedish origin that inhabits the northern coast and the islands of the Gulf of Riga—may be mentioned a formidable leg ion of...

By One Who is In the Secret

SPIRIT-RAPPING MADE EASY; OR, HOW TO COME OUT AS A MEDIUM The writer of the present paper is induced to proffer his explanation of the phenomena produced by the so-called Spirit Mediums, from two or three circumstances peculiar to his own experience.

He is disposed to look at the...

82 FLESH DESCENDING IN A SHOWER

LOUISVILLE, March 9. —The Bath County (Ky.) News of this date says: “ On last Friday a shower of meat fell near the house of Allen Crouch, who lives some two or three miles from the Olympian Springs in the southern portion of the county, covering a strip of ground about one hundred yards in length and fifty wide...

86

94

By James Edward Smith

Some Observations on the Irritability of Vegetables Having often heard that the stamina of the Barberry, Berberis communis, were endued with a considerable degree of irritability, I made the experiment in...

By Marshall Saunders

PUSSY BLACK FACE My name is Pussy Black-Face, and I am a naughty young kitten.

I wish I were good like my mother.

She is the best cat that I ever saw. I try to be like her, and sometimes I succeed, but most times be bad all the time, and not worry about it..

91

104 ATHEISM PLUS Atheism Plus (also rendered Atheism+) was a movement proposed in 2012 by blogger Jen McCreight.

Its original definition was rather nebulous, but...

By Myriam Ben Salah

GANGS OF TP TOILETPAPER is like an indie rock band: beginning as a completely unscripted noncommercial project, it released long-awaited homespun albums made in the intimacy of one member’s teenage-like postercovered bedroom...

Advice columnist Ann Landers (Eppie Lederer) was once asked which way toilet paper should hang.

She answered under, prompting thousands of letters in protest...

122 TOILETPAPER ORIENTATION

130 Dangerous Pranks with the Mouth The mouth is not to be played pranks with, buti t often is so.

The needless practice of...

140

By Hampton L. Carson

THE TRIALS OF ANIMALS AND INSECTS In the open square of the old Norman city of Falaise, in the year 1386, a vast and motley crowd had gathered to witness the execution of a criminal convicted of the crime...

149

By Edward Charles

THE MAN WITH THE IRON EYEBROWS SUPPOSITION credits each of us with having a double somewhere on earth, but although it is a bold thing to declare against a popular belief, I do so in this instance, and dare say that the perfect counterpart of M. Gregor Olivos, “the man with the iron eyebrows,” has yet to be created.

There are many so-called strong men, but none of the past or present have developed such unique strength nor displayed...

The Great Stink was an event in central London in July and August 1858 during which the hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent that was present on the banks of...

188 TUDOR TENNIS BALLS

158 Behavioral sink

A.E. Crawley, writing in the Observer, says: —Every educated enthusiast of a game might be expected to take an interest in its history and evolution. But I find very few lawn tennis players who do.

A man once said to me, “I don’t give a damn for this antiquarian business. I don’t care why we score by fifteens.” Even “champion William T. Tilden, 2nd” (as he would by styled in the States), goes so far in the iconoclastic...

he ethologist John B. Calhoun coined the term “behavioral sink” to describe the collapse in behavior which resulted from...

192 162 Great Stink

are sometimes referred to as petit mal seizures (from the French for “little illness”, a term dating from the late 18th century).[1] Absence seizures are characterized by...

202 List of inventors killed by their own inventions This is a list of inventors whose deaths were in some manner caused by or related to a product, process, procedure, or other innovation that they invented or designed...

212 Pseudohistory

Absence seizure Absence seizures are one of several kinds of seizures. These seizures

Is a term applied to a type of historical revisionism. It purports to be history, and uses ostensiblyscholarly methods and techniques (which in fact depart from standard historiographical...

10

11

11

12

13

13

14

MAN EATS QUEENSIZE WATERBED

By Stephen G. Bloom The Medecine Hat News October 30, 1981

EW YORK—“They’re all nuts,” said a man who has heard it all.

David Boehm is editor and publisher of the North American edition of the Guinness Book of World Records.

The most recent nut, Boehm says, is a French man who ate a waterbed, piece by piece, in an Amarillo, Texas, department store this summer.

Michel Lotito, a Grenoble stuntman who goes under the name of Monsieur Mangetout (“Mr. Eat-All,” in French), ate a queen-sized waterbed by taking it apart and filing down the bedboards and cutting the mattress into thin strips. His act was a promotional gimmick sponsored by a store called Lifestyles Bedrooms, for which he received $5,000.

Lotito’s waterbed feat will be included in next year’s Guinness Book, Boehm says. Lotito is listed in this year’s volume for eating a bicycle over a 15-day period in 1977 by stewing the tires and grinding down the frame.

“The chain was the tastiest part and the grease made it slide down easier,” Lotito told a French newspaper reporter after he finished.

But Lotito’s most extraordinary achievement is to

take place soon in Tokyo: for $10,000, he intends to eat a helicopter.

Boehm says he receives 10,000 calls and letters a year, many of them from people who try to fool their way into the book. “After 26 years in the business, we get a sense of who’s for real and who’s trying to pull the wool over our eyes.”

Take, for example, the 1980 pogo stick jumping title of 120,715 times held by Jeff Kane of Oak Lawn, III., in 16 hours, 12 minutes.

“To verify that record,” says Boehm, “we called up local disinterested people to check out what happened. We also asked the boy how many rubber tips he went through while on the pogo stick. Then by calling up the manufacturer, we were able to find out if the record was possible.”

Boehm, a bespectacled man with white hair and a bushy goatee, works from a plush office on the 26th floor of a Park Avenue skyscraper with a panoramic view of midtown Manhattan. He had worked as a reporter for the New York Daily News before setting up his publishing company in 1955. Twenty-five years ago, he saw a booklet of odd facts put out by the Guinness Brewery in Dublin, Ireland, to settle barroom arguments.

15

The pocket-sized booklet was so popular among bar patrons that the Guinness Brewery hired twin brothers Ross and Norris McWhirter, who owned a fact-checking bureau in London, to expand it into a book. The brewery started a publishing subsidiary, and in 1956 joined forces with Boehm for the North American edition.

The annual compendium of facts is published in 23 languages and is distributed throughout the world, including Mainland China where it was sold for the first time this year.

It has set a record of its own: 43 million copies have been sold since 1956, making it the bestselling copyrighted book in the world. Last year, it surged past the World Almanac in the number of copies sold.

“I had no idea that the book would ever turn out to be such a huge success,” says Boehm. The volume has spawned other ventures. There are now five Guinness World Record Museums in the United States, as well as more than half a dozen in Europe. In September, Boehm started a bimonthly newsstand magazine of Guinness records, publishedin conjunction with Dell Publishers. And British personality David Frost hosts a television show licensed by Guinness, which is aired on ABC national television here.

Besides the waterbed and bicycle feats, the book lists some truly remarkable feats.

One record-holder whose name appears often in the volumn is Peter Dowdswell of England who holds eating records in 10 Guinness categories, including: beer (2 liters in 13.7 seconds); eels (1 pound in 13.7 seconds); hard-boiled eggs (14 in 58 seconds); prunes (144 in 53.5 seconds); and shrimp (3 pounds in 4 minutes, 8 seconds).

Then there is Jay Gwaltney, from Chicago, who ate a tree.

Responding to a local contest on radio station WKQX entitled “ What’s The Most Outrageous Thing You Would Do?” Gwaltney, 20, last year ate the branches, leaves and trunk of an 11-fobt birch tree over a period of 89 hours.

Boehm’s favorite record is held by a man who has been struck by lightning seven different times. The man, a forest ranger, once was hit on the head by a lightning bolt, which ripped a hole in his ranger hat and burned off his shoes.

William Fuqua, a professional manequin, holds the record for standing motionless for the longest time, five hours and 40 minutes.

16

17

18

19

19

A LAW REGARDING FROG JUMPING AND WHAT TO DO SHOULD A FROG DIE DURING SAID CONTEST (CALIFORNIA)

880. As used in this article, “frogjumping contest� means a contest generally and popularly known as a frog-jumping contest which is open to the public and is advertised or announced in a newspaper.

6881. Frogs to be used in frog-jumping contests shall be governed by this article only. Frogs to be so used may be taken at any time and without a license or permit.

6882. If the means used for taking such frogs can,

20

6885. The commission has no power to modify the provisions of this article by any order, rule, or regulation.

as normally used, seriously injure the frog, it shall be conclusively presumed the taking is not for the purposes of a frog-jumping contest.

6883. Any person may possess any number of live frogs to use in frog-jumping contests, but if such a frog dies or is killed, it must be destroyed as soon as possible, and may not be eaten or otherwise used for any purpose.

6884. A frog which is not kept in a manner which is reasonable to preserve its life is not within the coverage of this article.

21