Uncle John’s Impossible Questions & Astounding Answers Read online

  Go West, Young Man

  In 1865 Stetson was diagnosed with tuberculosis—his doctor gave him only six months to live. Longing to see the Wild West before he died, Stetson quit his father’s hat business in New Jersey and took a train to the plains. He was awestruck by the open spaces and the rugged cowboys, but not by their hats. Stetson knew he could make something better than those tattered coonskin caps, sombreros, and sailor hats.

  Six months later (and still not dead), Stetson moved to Philadelphia and opened a hat factory. His first product: the “Boss of the Plains,” made out of beaver pelts. One cowboy raved, “It keeps the sun out of your eyes and off your neck. It’s an umbrella, a bucket to water your horse, and a cup for yourself!” Despite costing more than most cowboys made in a month, millions of Bosses were sold every year in the late 1800s. Stetson lived until the ripe old age of 76.

  Novelty Act

  A white supremacist invented two of the most popular mail-order toys of the 20th century. Who was he, and what were the toys?

  Novelty Act

  Harold von Braunhut. He invented and marketed dozens of mail-order toys, including two of the most famous: Amazing Sea-Monkeys and X-Ray Specs.

  Born in Tennessee in 1926, his given name was Harold Braunhut. Raised Jewish in New York City, he later abandoned his upbringing and added “von” to his name to make it sound more German. In addition to holding 195 patents, von Braunhut once raced motorcycles under the name “The Green Hornet,” and later managed novelty stage acts—including a guy who jumped from a 40-foot platform into a kiddie pool.

  Always looking to make a quick buck, von Braunhut earned his fortune selling cheap toys to impressionable kids (like Uncle John) in the back of comic books. Most popular in the 1960s and ’70s, and still sold today, Amazing Sea-Monkeys are actually brine shrimp. But X-Ray Specs really do let you see through bones and clothes! Actually, they don’t—they simply diffract light, causing the viewer to see a sort of aura around the object. Von Braunhut’s toys were junk, but his marketing skills were priceless. “So eager to please, they can even be trained!” he boasted on the Amazing Sea-Monkeys box.

  For years, a rumor circulated that von Braunhut was a white supremacist. Turns out, it’s true: He sent a portion of his profits to the Aryan Nations organization, and was often quoted as saying, “Hitler wasn’t a bad guy. He just received bad press.”

  Check Marks the Spot

  Graphic designer Carolyn Davidson’s second-most famous design is for the wallpaper in a Yakima, Washington, motel. What’s her most famous design?

  Check Marks the Spot

  The Nike Swoosh. In 1971 the young design student was doodling in her accounting class at Oregon’s Portland State University. Impressed by her drawing skills, Davidson’s professor asked her if she could put together a few ideas for a symbol to be printed on his new line of running shoes.

  That professor was Phil Knight. Seven years earlier, he and track-and-field coach Bill Bowerman had started an athletic shoe distribution company called Blue Ribbon Sports. Now they wanted to create a new kind of running shoe that could compete with the German brands adidas and Puma.

  Davidson came up with a few ideas for the symbol. Knight wasn’t that impressed with any of them, but he chose one that resembled a curvy check mark. “I don’t love it,” Knight said, “but it will grow on me.” (He was right.) How much did Davidson charge him for the design? $35. Knight soon renamed the company after Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, who sat by Zeus’s side as he presided over the Olympics. Within a few years, Nike was among the premiere athletic shoe companies in the world, and the Swoosh has since become one of the most recognizable symbols.

  In 1983 Knight gave Davidson a thank-you gift: 500 shares of Nike stock worth more than $1 million. At last report, she still hasn’t cashed them in, but is retired and happily volunteering her time at the Ronald McDonald House in Portland, Oregon. “I have a blessed life,” she said. “And there’s so much hurt in the world, I just thought I should give back.”

  BUSY BODIES

  Do you have any idea how many things are happening inside you right now—churning, pumping, flowing, absorbing? It’s amazing…and at the same time, it’s kind of gross. Here are some questions about what makes us tick.

  Just Like Tiny Drunkards

  Why do toddlers wobble?

  Some Nerve

  What’s the largest unprotected nerve in your body?

  Just Like Tiny Drunkards

  You’d wobble too if your head were roughly a quarter the weight of the rest of your body. By the time you’re fully grown, your head will weigh only about one-eighth as much as the rest of your body, and therefore be a lot easier to hold up…unless you happen to have an abnormally large head, like Uncle John, who still sometimes wobbles when he walks.

  Some Nerve

  The ulnar nerve is the medical term for the funny bone, which is neither bone nor funny, although you may find it “humerus” to see your friend writhe in agony after a bump to the elbow.

  Why is it so agonizing? It’s a case of poor placement. The ulnar is one of the three main nerves that run from the collarbone to the hand. This particular nerve provides sensation in the pinky and the adjacent half of the ring finger. It also happens to be unprotected, meaning that there’s very little bone or muscle tissue to shield it from trauma. Result: It takes only a slight tap in just the right spot near the elbow to send your entire arm into a tingling frenzy. Interestingly, the temporary discomfort is very similar to the permanent discomfort experienced by sufferers of carpal tunnel syndrome, which affects the ulnar nerve where it passes through the base of the hand.

  No, It’s Not the Brain

  Which mostly useless body part is named after the beak of a bird?

  No, It’s Not the Brain

  The coccyx, also known as your tailbone. The word comes from an ancient Greek word for “cuckoo bird” because the bone looks like the bird’s beak.

  It’s a strange fusion of bones, the coccyx. Your spine is probably the most important sets of bones in your body (it holds up your head, after all), but at the base of the spine, right above your bottom, the fusion of bones that makes up your coccyx doesn’t really do much for stability (except for when you’re sitting). It’s not entirely useless, though—the coccyx connects several important muscles and ligaments.

  In most mammals, the coccyx is very important: That’s where the tail begins—hence its other name, the tailbone. In humans and some other primates, the coccyx is nearly identical to that of other mammals; there’s just no tail. So could we conceivably grow tails? Yes, except that the gene that instructs a tail to grow is not turned on. What would it take to turn on that gene? A genetic mutation—which could possibly lead to a small group of isolated humans growing tails.

  That reminds us of one of the weirdest quotations of all time. Actor Christopher Walken once opined: “How great it would be if actors had tails! Because a tail is so expressive. On a cat you can tell everything. You can tell if they’re annoyed. You can tell whether they’re scared. I wish I had a tail.”

  Wrap Stars

  What’s the main ingredient in the old-fashioned cure-all known as “Mummy Powder”?

  The Host with the Most

  How many organisms are living on and inside you right now?

  Wrap Stars

  Mummies…as in, the remains of dead people. By the 12th century, many doctors in Europe and Asia were grinding mummies into powder and using it as medicine. Not unlike other quack remedies, mummy powder was prescribed to heal all sorts of ailments: epilepsy, migraines, nausea, sore throat, fractures, and even paralysis. Used as a tea or a poultice, it remained popular through the 1800s (even Abraham Lincoln supposedly drank it). There are, however, no known healing properties of mummy powder, and the fad died out at the end of the 19th century. Unfortunately for archaeologists, the practice of grinding the remains into powder destroyed several thousand mummies—along with whatever information they c
ould have provided about how ancient people lived and died.

  The Host with the Most

  As many as two quadrillion bacteria microbes. We are made up of cells, approximately 100 trillion of them. Moving within, on, under, and between those cells are an incredible number of uninvited guests. In fact, for every one cell in the human body, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 20 times as many microbes, both healthy and unhealthy. That totals roughly 2,000,000,000,000,000 bacteria, concentrated in the places where microbial communities prosper: the nose, mouth, skin, digestive tract—and in females, the urogenital tract. Your skin alone is host to upwards of 500 different species of bacteria.

  Baby Got Back

  When you were a baby, what did you have 100 more of than you do now?

  He Had a Gut Feeling

  Why did Australian doctor Barry Marshall’s experiments give him an ulcer?

  Baby Got Back

  Bones. You were born with around 350 of them. Over time, many of the bones—mostly in your spine—fused together into single, larger bones, reducing the number by nearly a third to 206 bones in an average adult. That doesn’t mean that you definitely have 206 bones. Not everyone’s baby bones all fuse together, so you may actually have a few more.

  He Had a Gut Feeling

  Dr. Marshall gave himself the ulcer…on purpose. Until the 1980s, the prevailing notion was that ulcers are caused by stress. Marshall believed otherwise. He hypothesized that ulcers are caused by corkscrew-shaped bacteria known as Helicobacter pylori. When he announced his theory in 1982, the medical community laughed at him. Every doctor worth his diploma knew that bacteria can’t survive in stomach acid. Marshall was convinced they could but was having trouble proving that to his peers. Why? The usual test subjects—pigs and rats—aren’t affected by H. pylori. So Marshall cooked up a batch of the bacteria and drank it himself. Result: He got a raging ulcer, which proved his theory and changed the way ulcers are treated.

  Footnote: Back in 1899, a Polish doctor named Walery Jaworski discovered H. pylori and even suggested that it might cause some stomach ills. However, his theory remained unknown outside of Poland until Marshall’s discovery.

  Mover

  What are the three parts of the small intestine?

  Floater

  The hip bone may be connected to the thigh bone, but there’s one bone that’s not connected to any other bone. Do you know what it is? (A forensic investigator sure does.)

  Pumper

  How many gallons of blood will your heart pump today?

  Mover

  The duodenum, jejunum, and ileum make up the small intestine, which is about 18 feet long and an inch in diameter. After leaving the stomach, partially digested food enters the C-shaped duodenum, which is about a foot long. Next, it goes into the jejunum and then to the ileum, both of which twist and turn upon themselves. The inner linings of these two sections contain tiny finger-like bumps called villi; their job is to absorb nutrients into the bloodstream. What’s left of your meal then goes to the large intestine. Although it’s only five feet long, it’s much wider—about three inches in diameter (which is why it’s referred to as “large”). The entire journey takes several hours…and ends with a flush.

  Floater

  It’s the hyoid bone, and it’s unique in that no other bone touches it. Located in the neck just above the larynx, the hyoid anchors the tongue muscles. This bone is well known to forensic investigators: If a deceased person’s hyoid is broken, it almost always means that the cause of death was strangulation.

  Pumper

  About 2,000 gallons, if you’re average. The heart has to pump that much because most adults have about 60,000 miles of blood vessels through which the blood must continually flow. How far is 60,000 miles? More than two trips around the equator.

  Workplace Hazards

  Inflamed tendons, dental injuries, erythema, scaling, cyst formation, scarring, and inflammatory pustules. These types of maladies are common among members of what profession?

  Workplace Hazards

  Were you thinking football players? Cops? Deep-sea fishermen? How about pro wrestlers? Wrong. The answer is classical musicians, who are prone to painful, sometimes career-ending, afflictions similar to those suffered by athletes. This isn’t surprising, considering that professional musicians perform repetitive motions for as many as six hours every day—which is how much you have to practice to get that good.

  Case in point: A cellist’s left hand, playing just the last movement of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, changes position on the strings roughly 6,400 times. Other examples of common injuries and maladies suffered by classical musicians:

  • Violinists can develop skin cysts and pustules on their necks. (It’s called “fiddler’s neck.”)

  • String players are also especially prone to chronic pain in their shoulders, arms, and neck.

  • Keyboard and woodwind players can suffer from wrist injuries to the point of becoming unable to use silverware or turn doorknobs.

  • Pressure from a brass instrument’s mouthpiece can cause dental, lip, and facial nerve damage.

  • And no matter where the musician sits in an orchestra, he or she will most likely be exposed to more than enough loud noises to cause at least some hearing loss. A study of classical musicians by a group of Finnish researchers reported that 15 percent of the musicians suffered from permanent tinnitus—a constant ringing in the ears. In contrast, that condition only affects 2 percent of the general population.

  Papers, Please

  If your body were a country, which organ would be considered the customs agent?

  Perchance to Dream

  Nearly everyone experiences typical REM sleep, except for one specific group of people. Who are they?

  Papers, Please

  Just like a customs agent who checks everything that enters a country, your liver checks the stuff that enters your body. That’s not all it does: The liver performs an estimated 500 different functions. Located just behind your rib cage, it’s is responsible for dealing with 99 percent of the chemicals you ingest, and it even manufactures chemicals of its own. Your liver also assists in digestion by converting most of the vitamins, carbohydrates, protein, and fat that you ingest into the nutrients your body needs. And as if that weren’t enough, it also works to keep all the toxins you ingest from spreading throughout your body, either by destroying them or sending them to the toilet.

  Perchance to Dream

  The only people who don’t experience typical REM sleep are people who were blind from birth. Short for “Rapid Eye Movement,” REM is what your eyes do when you dream—basically, they’re “looking around” at images created by your brain. That doesn’t mean that blind people don’t dream—just that they don’t see anything. Instead, they smell, touch, and hear things in their dreams, just as they do in life. Sighted people who become blind will still “see” in their dreams, although most report that as the years go by, sight in dreams diminishes and is gradually replaced by other senses.

  Patriotic Discharge

  What smelly affliction did Benjamin Franklin believe could be cured by ingesting turpentine?

  The Riddler

  I am a part of your body whose job it is to receive something that enters you and then convert it into something else. Only then will you know what that thing is. I was fully grown when you were only two. What am I?

  Patriotic Discharge

  Franklin was attempting to cure smelly asparagus pee. “A few stems of asparagus,” he wrote, “shall give our urine a disagreeable odor; a pill of turpentine no bigger than a pea shall bestow upon it the pleasing smell of violets.” Franklin was right about the odor—eating asparagus does cause the body to produce sulfur compounds that are then released in urine. Not everyone can detect it, but to those who can (including, apparently, Franklin) the smell can be quite offensive. (Warning: Uncle John doesn’t recommend taking the bizarre medical advice of Benjamin Franklin or any other forefather.)

/>   The Riddler

  The retinas. Like the sensor in a camera, the retinas’ job is to convert light waves that enter your eyes into electrical impulses. The impulses are then sent to your brain, where they’re converted into visual images.

  All mammalian eyes grow to full size faster than most of the rest of the body (which is why young mammals all look so cute—it’s those “big” eyes). The retinas, located in the back of the eyeballs, are the first to mature; the rest of the eyes become fully grown by puberty. In contrast, the brain doesn’t become fully mature until the late 30s to early 40s. (Or, in the case of some people we know, never.)

  Anyone for Ping-Pong?

  If you force your eyes to stay open when you sneeze, how far, in feet, will your eyeballs fly out of your head?