He Doesn’t Take Charity Work Lightly--It’s Uplifting

--Normally, pumping iron is right up Linc Gotshalk’s alley. He is after all a strength coach for Temple University’s football team. But Gotshalk’s latest feat with the barbells went beyond the mere building of muscle. Gotshalk, 33, dead-lifted 280 pounds 2,543 times in nearly 24 hours. That’s 712,040 pounds, apparently a world record for the most weight lifted by one person in a 24-hour period. The goal was to raise money for research of Lou Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which usually strikes adults between the ages of 35 and 70. There is no known cure for the disease, which normally cripples and then kills its victims within five years. Former New York Sen. Jacob K. Javits recently succumbed to the disease. Gotshalk said “several thousand dollars” were raised in the Philadelphia event, as hundreds of Temple students, faculty members and others pledged money for every pound lifted.

--Dave Bourland may have temporarily lost some credibility, but he’s not complaining. Bourland, a science teacher at Libbey High School in Toledo, Ohio, pulled a prank on his students--all in the name of education. He told his ninth-graders that they would have to send their watches and calendars to the state capital for conversion when the United States switches to a “metric time system,” which, he said, means that hours would have 100 minutes and there would be only 10 hours of daylight and 10 months in the year. He also said students born in July or August would have their birthdays canceled. “No one actually sat down with a pencil and tried to figure it out,” he said. “They don’t think.” The students may have been fooled but they told Bourland they learned a good lesson. Bourland has a thing about spoofing students. Once, he said that people did not have the ability to see colors until color television was invented.

--To master magician Doug Henning, the hand is not only quicker than the eye, it’s also quite a bit more precious. Lloyd’s of London said it will insure Henning’s hands for $3 million--that’s $300,000 a finger. “A magician is only as good as his hands,” Henning said. “Without them, there would be no illusions. I’d be like a dancer without feet.” Lloyd’s of London, which has issued a few unusual insurance policies in its day, once insured actress Betty Grable’s legs for $1 million. But the Henning policy, said Michael Levine, Henning’s spokesman, is the largest of its kind. Levine said that Henning, who received an Emmy for his “Doug Henning’s World of Magic” television show, practices finger exercises up to eight hours a day to keep his fingers nimble.