Free Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader by Michael Brunsfeld Page A

explanation to Irish customs: Heavy fog in New York had forced him to navigate using only his compass. The fog continued all that day and into the night; there was never good visibility. When the sun rose the next morning—26 hours into his flight—he was surprised to find himself over an ocean. Taking a closer look at his compass, Corrigan realized he’d been following the wrong end of the needle—heading due east instead of west! But by now he was almost out of fuel; he couldn’t turn around. His only hope was to continue east and hope to reach land before he ran out of gas. Two hours later he saw fishing boats off a rocky coast and knew he was safe. From there, he made his way to Baldonnel Airport in Dublin. His first words upon exiting the plane were “Just got in from New York. Where am I?”
    …AND I’M STICKING TO IT!
    He repeated the story to the American ambassador and then to Ireland’s prime minister. By this third telling—to the Irish cabinet—the European and American press had got wind of the story and ran with it. When he got to the part about misreading his compass, the cabinet ministers all laughed and Corrigan knew that things would work out. Ireland graciously sent him home without penalty.
J. Edgar Hoover once gave his mother a canary bred by the “Birdman of Alcatraz.”
    When he got back to New York, Corrigan was amazed to find out he’d become a folk hero. In the bleak days of the Great Depression, Corrigan’s achievement and amusing explanation lifted people’s spirits. Over a million well-wishers turned out for a ticker-tape parade in his honor (more than had turned out to honor Charles Lindbergh after his transatlantic flight). The New York Post even ran a backward headline that read “!NAGIRROC YAW GNORW OT LIAH!” (“Hail To Wrong Way Corrigan!”).
    THE TRUTH
    So what really happened? It’s no secret that Corrigan’s dream was to fly solo across the Atlantic. He got his start in the airplane business in 1927 working for the company that built Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis . Corrigan helped assemble the wing and install the instrument panel on the famous plane. His greatest honor was meeting Lindbergh. (“Even more than if I had met Abraham Lincoln himself!”) After Lindbergh made the first solo transatlantic flight in 1927, Corrigan vowed to follow in his footsteps.
    He spent the early 1930s barnstorming the country, landing near small towns and charging for airplane rides to pay for gas. In 1933 he bought a secondhand Curtiss Robin J-6 monoplane for $310, which he named Sunshine , and began overhauling it for a trip across the ocean. In 1936 and again in 1937, Federal Aviation officials denied Corrigan’s requests to attempt the Atlantic flight.
    So it’s unlikely that when Corrigan took off from New York in 1938, he didn’t know where he was going. Not only was he an accomplished pilot and navigator who had a history of flying without the proper paperwork, but he’d been working 10 straight years toward his dream of flying nonstop to Europe. Wrong Way Corrigan knew one end of a compass from the other.
    COME ON, JUST ADMIT IT
    For the rest of his life (he died in 1995), people tried to get Corrigan to come clean—but he never did, not even in his autobiography. In 1988 Corrigan took Sunshine on a national tour to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his famous flight. He was continually asked the same question: “Were you really trying to fly to California?” “Sure,” he answered. “Well, at least I’ve told that story so many times that now I believe it myself.”
In the Middle Ages, dead bodies were often used as ammunition in catapults.

UNSUNG HEROES
You may not recognize their names, but you’ve heard their music more times than you know. These teams of studio musicians have played on hundreds of hit records over the last 50 years .
    T HE WRECKING CREW
That’s the nickname these musicians from the 1960s gave themselves after the old line studio players,