Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader by Bathroom Readers’ Institute Page B

waiting for them in the street. A hail of bullets followed, killing every member except Emmett Dalton, who spent the next 15 years in prison. He emerged from the penitentiary to discover that the Dalton Gang’s story had indeed been immortalized, but not as legendary outlaws…only as hapless screwups.
Thomas Edison proposed to his second wife by Morse code.

LUCKY FINDS
Have you ever found something valuable? It’s one of the best feelings in the world. Here’s another installment of a regular Bathroom Reader feature—a look at some folks who found really valuable stuff…and got to keep it .
    I T MAY BE UGLY, BUT IT’S MINE
The Find: Painting by Jackson Pollack
Where It Was Found: In a thrift shop
The Story: Retired truckdriver Teri Horton, 70, of Costa Mesa, California, bought an abstract painting for a friend at a local thrift shop. The price was $8, but Horton thought it was ugly and told the store owner, “I ain’t paying eight dollars for this thing.” She got it for $5. As it turned out, the painting wouldn’t fit through her friend’s front door, so Horton kept it. When another friend, an art professor, saw the painting, he told her it might actually be an original work by the 20th-century master Jackson Pollack. He was right: in July 2003, forensic specialists found one of Pollack’s fingerprints on it—making it worth $20 million. “I still think it’s ugly,” Horton said, “but now I see dollar signs.”
    SHELL SHOCK
    The Find: 40-carat emerald
    Where It Was Found: In a conch shell
    The Story: An elementary school teacher and part-time salvage diver was searching the wreck of a Spanish galleon that had sunk off the coast of Florida during a hurricane 380 years ago. Finding nothing of value, the diver collected a bucketful of seashells for his students instead. Later, as he was washing the shells, a 40-carat emerald estimated to be worth millions rolled out of a queen conch shell. According to Doug Pope, president of Amelia Research & Recovery, the man didn’t even know what he’d found. “He thought it might be a piece of a Heineken bottle.”
    PRICEY WATERHOUSE
    The Find: Victorian masterpiece painting
    Where It Was Found: In an old farmhouse
Q: What animal has the longest tail in the world? A: The male giraffe—it can be up to 8 feet.
    The Story: In 1973 a British couple bought a run-down farmhouse in Canada. They requested that an old painting in the house be included in the sale—because they thought it looked nice on the wall. Nineteen years later, they decided to have the painting appraised by Odon Wagner, an art dealer in Toronto. “Odon nearly fell off his chair,” said a spokesman for Christie’s auction house. It was Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May , a 1909 work by the Victorian master John William Waterhouse that had been missing for almost a century. “Nobody knew where it was,” he said, “and we still don’t know how it got to Canada.” It was expected to sell for about $5 million. He said the couple was “very, very pleased.”
    YEAH! YEAH! YEAH!
    The Find: More than 500 unknown photos of the Beatles
    Where They Were Found: At a university in Scotland
    The Story: Dundee University in Scotland was working to digitize its archives in 2002 when someone came across a cache of 130,000 photos by the late Hungarian photographer Michael Peto. Peto’s son had given the collection to the university in 1971. Included were hundreds of black and whites of the Beatles from 1965, including candid shots of the band eating, drinking tea, and relaxing between takes on the set of the movie Help! Many of the images had never been seen by the public before. A spokesperson for Christie’s auction house wouldn’t put a dollar figure on the photos, but expected them to be worth a “significant” amount.
    *        *        *
    IT’S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS
    Joe Purkey of Knoxville, Tennessee, lost his high school ring in 1964. Then he got a phone call about it…37 years