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David Harcourt
Administrator
| Joined: | 31 Dec 1969 |
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| Posts: | 1127 |
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Posted: 9 Jul 2010 06:56 am |
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I find that my 15-year-old son, who knows absolutely everything there is to know, has never heard of two of my very favourite people, Lisa Nowak and Tonya Harding.
How sad is this, I hear you cry. But, just in case anyone reading this has never heard of either or both of these people, here's exactly who they are.
Lisa Nowak was a mother of three children, 43-year-old Navy captain and NASA astronaut (I list these attributes in descending order of complexity) who flew aboard the Space Shuttle "Discovery" in July 2006. In February 2007 she was arrested in Orlando, Florida, whence she had driven for 900 miles, dressed in a wig and a trench coat, and armed with a BB-gun, pepper spray, a steel mallet and a folding knife. She also had in her possession 69 orange pills, some lengths of rubber tubing, and 15 photographs of an unknown woman in various stages of undress. Her objective was to kidnap a competitor for the affections of a fellow (male) astronaut, and she actually made an attempt to do this. The attempt failed, and she was arrested.
What captured the imagination of the American public and, of course, me was that Ms Nowak had sought to ensure that she could travel to Orlando with the smallest number of interruptions to her journey by donning a NASA space nappy before setting off. Nowak's lawyer would later vigorously deny that it was an official NASA nappy which the lady had been wearing on her strange terrestrial mission, as if that was an important point. The point was happily conceded by the prosecution as the Orlando Police had discarded the nappy worn by Ms Nowak because it was viewed as "a biohazard", a description which some might say would closely fit Ms Nowak herself.
Naturally, the Nowak episode attracted a lot of attention from chat show hosts. David Letterman described it as "one giant step for man, one giant leap to the nuthouse" and remarked that he had thought that "the only space traveler who wore a wig and an adult diaper was William Shatner".
Jay Leno reported that Ms Nowak "went to court yesterday and was released on her own incontinence", and in a later show said "she drove 900 miles wearing diapers, thus breaking the old record set by Larry King".
Craig Ferguson said "NASA hasn't had this much press since they faked that moon-landing thing in 1969".
And so on and on and on. Inside NASA, one imagines, there was much gnashing of hair and wailing of teeth.
Lisa Nowak, with nappy but sans BB-gun:
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David Harcourt
Administrator
| Joined: | 31 Dec 1969 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 1127 |
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Posted: 9 Jul 2010 06:58 am |
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So far so haha. But our second heroine, Tonya Harding, is even more amazing.
On 6 January 1994 figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was attacked while training for the US Figure Skating Championships. The assailants struck her in the knee with a metal baton, leaving her injured and unable to compete. With Nancy on the sidelines, her biggest rival, Tonya Harding, skated to victory. As both women prepared to compete in the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, rumors began circulating that Tonya was involved in the assault.
These rumours were well founded. Harding had been involved in the attack, which had been carried out by someone hired by her ex-husband. The US Olympic Committee tried to have Harding removed from the US Olympic team but Harding managed to retain her place after threats of legal action. Harding finished eighth in Lillehammer; Nancy Kerrigan won the silver medal.
On 16 March 1994 Harding avoided further prosection and a possible gaol sentence by pleading to conspiring to cover up the attack on Kerrigan. She received three years' probabtion, was ordered to work 500 hours of community service, and was fined $160,000. She was also forced to withdraw from the 1994 World Figure Skating Championships, stripped of her 1994 title, and banned for life from participating in USFSA-run events. Harding went on to become a boxer and particpant in commerical pornographic videos. She was, one hopes, one of a kind.[size=]
Tonya Harding (left) and Nancy Kerrigan:
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