Uncle John’s Impossible Questions & Astounding Answers Read online

  Uncle John’s

  IMPOSSIBLE

  QUESTIONS

  & Astounding Answers

  By the

  Bathroom Readers’

  Institute

  Bathroom Readers’ Press

  Ashland, Oregon

  UNCLE JOHN’S

  IMPOSSIBLE QUESTIONS

  & ASTOUNDING ANSWERS

  Copyright © 2011 by the Bathroom Readers’ Press (a division of Portable Press). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. “Bathroom Reader” and “Bathroom Readers’ Institute” are registered trademarks of Baker & Taylor. All rights reserved.

  For information, write:

  The Bathroom Readers’ Institute, P.O. Box 1117, Ashland, OR 97520

  www.bathroomreader.com • 888-488-4642

  Cover design by Michael Brunsfeld, San Rafael, CA

  ([email protected])

  Escher duckie pattern by Rob Davis ([email protected])

  eISBN: 978-1-60710-676-0

  E-Book edition: September 2012

  CONTENTS

  Origins

  Busy Bodies

  Public Lives

  Down the Hatch

  American History

  Where in the World?

  Flora & Fauna

  Page, Stage & Screen

  Gorvern-mental

  It’s Science!

  Words and Stuff

  Games People Play

  History of the World

  THANK YOU!

  The Bathroom Readers’ Institute sincerely

  thanks the people whose advice and

  assistance made this book possible.

  Gordon Javna

  Jay Newman

  Amy Miller

  Jack Mingo

  Michael Kerr

  Brian Boone

  Jeff Altemus

  Angela Kern

  Claire Breen

  Melinda Allman

  Kim Griswell

  John Dollison

  Thom Little

  Michael Brunsfeld

  Rob Davis

  Mustard Press

  Monica Maestas

  JoAnn Padgett

  Amy Ly

  Annie Lam

  Ginger Winters

  Jennifer Frederick

  Sydney Stanley

  R.R. Donnelley,

  who always do

  the impossible

  Publishers Group West

  Raincoast Books

  Jack Barry

  Art Fleming

  Loaf Newman

  Madison

  (the radio star, not the

  mermaid from Splash)

  Question Mark &

  the Mysterians

  Eddie Deezen

  Thomas Crapper

  IMPOSSIBLE?

  Okay, we lied.

  Now that we’ve got your attention, we should let you know that not all of the questions in Impossible Questions are necessarily “impossible.” As Uncle John’s mom used to tell him, nothing’s impossible. And some readers might be familiar with a few of these astounding answers. But unless you happen to be 1) ________ (Jeopardy!’s all-time highest earner), 2) ________ (the brilliant scientist/violinist who bequeathed the rights to his name to a foreign university), or 3) ________ (the book publisher whom party guests always find annoying), most of these questions will probably stump you.

  How do we know? Because most of them stumped us. And that’s why we wrote this book—because the writers at the Bathroom Readers’ Institute are always trying to stump each other with weird and obscure trivia questions, so now we’re letting you in on the fun.

  Here’s how we do it at the BRI: We find little-known aspects of well-known information and turn them into Q&A’s. For example, most people know that the Pilgrims boarded the Mayflower in 1620 and sailed to the New World, but how many people know what the ship smelled like? Another example: You probably know that an airplane was the first machine to break the sound barrier, but what was the first man-made object that surpassed the speed of sound? Here’s one more: What do you have 100 more of now than you did when you were a baby? You’ll find the answers to these and hundreds more in the pages of this book.

  In the making of Impossible Questions, we did what we’ve been doing in Bathroom Readers for 25 years: Telling brief stories that will inform, surprise, and entertain you. Bonus: When you’re done reading, you can stump your friends!

  So have fun.

  And as aways,

  Go with the Flow!

  —Uncle John and the BRI staff

  p.s. We’re already gathering ideas for Impossible Questions 2, so if you think you can stump Uncle John, send your questions and answers to us by logging on to www.bathroomreader.com.

  Answers to the three blanks on the previous page:

  1) Brad Rutter, with total earnings of $3,370,102.

  (Ken Jennings holds the record for most consecutive wins—74.)

  2) Albert Einstein. He left his name to Hebrew University

  of Jerusalem, who trademarked it and reportedly makes

  $10 million from licensing fees annually.

  3) Uncle John.

  ORIGINS

  Everything has to begin somewhere. So let’s get started!

  Say That Ten Times Fast

  When Kleinkinderbeschäftigungsanstalt didn’t catch on, its inventor changed its name to…what?

  Family Affair

  Al, Alf, Charles, Henry, and John are better known by their last name. What is it?

  Say That Ten Times Fast

  German educator Friedrich Froebel changed it to Kindergarten, which means “children’s garden.” His original term, Kleinkinderbeschäftigungsanstalt, meant “institute of care, playing, and activity for small children.” The idea dates to 1837, when Froebel opened the first Kindergarten in Germany as a way to prepare children for later grades. Froebel believed young kids learned faster if they participated in educational activities, so his innovative curriculum combined artwork and play with formal instruction. Froebel’s idea was so good that his “children’s gardens” are still going strong today.

  Family Affair

  Ringling. The five original Ringling brothers—Al, Alf, Charles, Henry, and John—formed a traveling performance troupe in 1884 and were soon outgrossing all the other small circuses in the midwestern United States. Advertising themselves as “Ringling Bros. United Monster Shows, Great Double Circus, Royal European Menagerie, Museum, Caravan, and Congress of Trained Animals,” they became so successful that in 1907 they bought out their biggest competitor—Barnum & Bailey—to create what they called the “Greatest Show on Earth.” There were seven Ringling brothers in all—the five who founded the circus, and two who joined later, Gus and Otto. (They also had a sister named Ida.)

  Cash Cows

  What well-known maker of fun stuff began as the Schwarzschild & Sulzberger meat-packing company? (And what does it have to do with Tom Hanks?)

  Ahead of Her Time

  19th-century stage actress Sarah Bernhardt popularized what women’s fashion item? (And what does it have to do with Harrison Ford?)

  Cash Cows

  In 1915 an executive named Thomas E. Wilson was tasked by a division of Schwarzschild & Sulzberger, a meat-packing company, to solve a problem: Find a way to sell useless byproducts from their slaughterhouses (lips, intestines, and so on) that couldn’t be made into sausage or pet food. When Wilson arrived, the plant was already us
ing sheep intestines to make surgical sutures and violin strings, but the excess animal parts were piling up. So what did he do to turn it around? He focused on sporting goods and changed the name to Wilson. His first big contract: the Chicago Cubs.

  Wilson Sporting Goods has since changed hands several times. In 2000 the company achieved Hollywood immortality when one of its volleyballs co-starred alongside Tom Hanks in Cast Away.

  Ahead of Her Time

  The “divine Sarah,” as Bernhardt was called, had an acting career that spanned from 1862 to 1922. Her worldwide celebrity and “silver voice” turned everything she touched into gold—including the creased, brimmed hat she wore in the 1882 French play Fédora. Through the 1920s, the fedora hat was a staple of women’s fashion; it became popular with men in the 1930s.

  In 1981 Harrison Ford gave the fedora new life as the hat of choice for Nazi-fighting archaeologists.

  Das Boots

  Two brothers.

  Two Nazis.

  Two rival shoe companies.

  Who were the brothers?

  And what were their shoes?

  Das Boots

  Not long after World War I, two cobbler brothers, Adolf and Rudolf Dassler, started Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik (Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory) in the town of Herzogenaurach, Bavaria. In 1933 the brothers joined Hitler’s Nazi party. Of the two, Rudolph, who went by Rudi, was the more ardent Nazi, and a rift began to form between them. When World War II broke out, Rudi joined the military, while Adolf, who went by Adi, stayed behind to manufacture boots and weapons for the German army.

  After the war, tensions between the brothers grew worse. Rudi was arrested by American occupation forces, and he believed that Adi had reported him as a member of the SS. Adi denied it, but after Rudi was released, he quit the company and opened his own shoe factory across town.

  Adi Dassler combined his first and last names to name his shoe company “adidas” (all lowercase); Rudi did the same and named his company Ruda (later changed to Puma). The brothers never spoke again, and their bitter rivalry split the town into competing factions separated by the Aurach River. Said one local resident: “You’d always tend to look at the shoes a person is wearing before you strike up a conversation.”

  Footnote: Although the Dassler brothers were Nazis, they provided running shoes for African-American track star Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics. Owens won four gold medals that year…and put the Dasslers on the map as expert athletic shoemakers.

  It’s Watching You Right Now

  A California man named David Hampton was unimpressed with the Tamagotchi. “You can’t pet it,” he complained. So he invented his own version, which ended up getting banned from the National Security Agency’s headquarters. What did he invent?

  Toy Story

  What fictional version of a real toy—first released in 1938—suddenly became popular in 1983?

  It’s Watching You Right Now

  Hampton invented the Furby, an interactive toy robot that’s part owl, part penguin, and part cat. Released in 1998, Furbies became the biggest toy fad of the new millennium; millions were sold.

  Hampton, a lifelong tinkerer, got the idea for an interactive toy at the 1997 International Toy Fair, where he played with a Tamagotchi, a digital pet from Japan that existed only on a small LCD screen. The Tamagotchi’s key feature: It would “die” if you didn’t feed it. But Hampton sensed that kids wanted more than a screen to play with, so he created the Furby. When you turned the toy on, it spoke only “Furbish,” a language invented by Hampton. But as you kept talking to it, it “learned” preprogrammed English words.

  The Furby also recorded your voice and played it back at random…which is why it was banned by the National Security Agency. What’s the use of a bugproof room in a spy agency if there’s a Furby sitting there, recording everything you’re saying, ready to blab state secrets to the highest Russian bidder?

  Toy Story

  The Daisy company started selling Red Ryder BB guns in 1938, but never a “carbine-action, 200-shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock and a thing which tells time!” Yet that’s how A Christmas Story author Jean Shepherd remembered the rifle he had when he was a kid, so Daisy built one especially for the 1983 movie adaptation.

  Figure It Out

  What board game was designed to pass time during World War II air raids?

  Figure It Out

  Colonel Mustard could answer this question, but he’s otherwise occupied in the ballroom with a lead pipe. The game, of course, is Clue.

  During World War II, England was under constant threat of German attacks. Hiding in cellars for hours during air raids was both terrifying and boring. So, looking for a way to pass the time, Anthony Pratt, a Birmingham, England, law clerk, created a mystery game called Murder. He later patented the game, which proved to be such a big hit that Parker Brothers released it in the United States as Clue. Waddingtons, a gaming company from Leeds, England, released it in the U.K. as Cluedo (a play on “clue” and ludo, Latin for “I play”).

  Pratt’s original design called for 10 suspects, one of whom would be designated at random as the murder victim. The published board game featured six suspects and a perpetual murder victim (Mr. Black in England, Mr. Boddy in the U.S.); the publishers eliminated Mr. Brown, Mr. Gold, Miss Grey, and Mrs. Silver, and changed Nurse White and Colonel Yellow to Miss White and Colonel Mustard. They also streamlined the number of weapons, eliminating the bomb, syringe, poison, fireplace poker, Pratt’s ax and—with a nod to the Irish—the shillelagh (a type of cudgel, or club). More than 100 million Clue games have sold.

  Dirty Young Man

  At what magazine did Hugh Hefner work while he raised the money to start Playboy?

  Mystery Meat

  Which clothing line got its name from a McDonald’s billboard?

  Dirty Young Man

  Children’s Activities. Hefner served as the magazine’s circulation manager while he raised money to start his “sophisticated” men’s magazine that would feature journalism, fiction, and nude women. Working title: Stag Party. (Hefner changed the name because another magazine—Stag—had threatened to sue.) Along with the cash he earned at Children’s Activities, Hefner took out a loan to start Playboy (putting up his furniture as collateral) and borrowed the rest from his mom. In December 1953, working from his Chicago apartment, Hefner put all $8,000 into printing the first edition of Playboy. The first cover girl: Marilyn Monroe.

  Mystery Meat

  See if you can GUESS the answer. In 1977 four French brothers—Armand, Georges, Maurice, and Paul Marciano—moved to California to make their fortune in fashion. Their first label, Marilyn Designer Jeans, sold poorly despite the pop-culture reference, so the Marcianos started searching for a new name. While driving to work one day, Georges saw a McDonald’s billboard. Displayed on it was a picture of a hamburger along with seven words, the first in all capital letters: “GUESS what’s in the new Big Mac!” So they named their new line of jeans GUESS. (On a side note: Did McDonald’s really think it was a good idea to make customers GUESS what’s in their food?)

  Screen Gem

  What does the gaming term “check” mean in Japanese? And what does it have to do with Chuck E. Cheese?

  Screen Gem

  The Japanese word for “check” is atari. It comes from a chess-like game called Go—one of the oldest board games in the world. An American computer engineer (and big fan of Go) named Nolan Bushnell decided to create a new generation of games.

  In 1972 Bushnell and his partner Ted Dabney released the first commercially available coin-operated arcade game: Computer Space. (It was modeled after the pioneering 1962 video game Spacewar!, which had made its way to only a few college campuses.) But Computer Space didn’t really catch on, either—the directions were too complicated. So Bushnell and Dabney came up with a table-tennis video game that didn’t require directions. They called it PONG. “It’s so simple,” said Bushnell, “that any drunk in any bar
could play it.” And millions of drunks did just that. However, few of them could pronounce the company’s name—Syzygy (although it might have been fun to hear them try). Besides, Syzygy (from the Latin for “conjunction”) was also being used by a hippie candlemaking company. Needing a new name for the company, Bushnell borrowed his favorite word from his favorite game…and Atari was born.

  What does this have to do with Chuck E. Cheese, the pizza restaurant chain that features that creepy animatronic mouse band? In 1977 Bushnell invented that, too.

  Low-Tar Education

  What private school was named after a brand of cigarettes?

  Go West, Young Man

  What sad news sent a 35-year-old man named John B. Stetson on a journey that would lead him to invent the cowboy hat?

  Low-Tar Education

  Waldorf Schools. In 1919 Emil Molt, the German manufacturer of the popular Waldorf cigarette brand, hired educational theorist Rudolf Steiner to create a new school for his factory workers’ children. Today, there are 998 Waldorf Schools in 60 countries.

  Interestingly, nearly everything named “Waldorf” has a common ancestor: The cigarettes were named after New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, which in turn was named after its founder, William Waldorf Astor. Astor, in turn, got his middle name from his grandfather’s birthplace—Waldorf, Germany.