Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader Read online

  There are roughly 1,300 kernels in a pound of corn.

  LICORICE ALLSORTS

  You might not recognize these candies by name, but you’d know them by sight—they’re the variety of licorice candies that are sold as a mixture of colors, shapes, and sizes. The candies were created by the Bassetts company of England in the late 1800s. The original plan was to sell each shape separately, but that plan was foiled in 1899 when a salesman named Charlie Thompson spilled a carefully arranged tray of the pieces during a sales call. The buyer actually preferred the candies all mixed up…and as it turned out, so did everyone else: The candies sold better as a mixture than they ever did individually.

  WISH-BONE SALAD DRESSING

  When Phillip Sollomi returned from fighting in World War II in 1945, he opened a restaurant in Kansas City, Missouri. The house specialty was fried chicken, so he named the restaurant “The Wish-bone.” In 1948 he started serving his mother’s Sicilian salad dressing; it was so popular that customers asked for bottles to take home. So he started bottling it…and soon demand was so strong that he had to make it in batches of 50 gallons at a time. In 1957 he sold the salad dressing business to the Lipton Tea Company, and today Wish-Bone is the bestselling Italian dressing in the United States.

  CORN DOGS

  Even if he wasn’t the very first person to dip a hot dog in corn meal batter and deep fry it, Neil Fletcher was the guy who popularized the dish when he began selling it at the Texas State Fair in 1942. Those early dogs were served on plates; it wasn’t until four years later that Ed Waldmire, a soldier stationed at the Amarillo Airfield, became the first person to put the corn dog on a “stick” (the first ones were actually metal cocktail forks, later replaced by wooden sticks).

  * * *

  Alternative energy: A 2006 study found that the average American walks about 900 miles a year. Another study found that Americans drink an average of 22 gallons of beer a year. That means that, on average, Americans get about 41 miles per gallon.

  Mark Twain received a patent for “improved suspenders” in 1871.

  LOST ATTRACTIONS

  As a kid growing up in New Jersey, Uncle John often went to Palisades Amusement Park. Then one day they announced they were tearing it down to build an apartment complex. Many areas have an attraction like that—it’s an important part of the cultural landscape for decades…and then it’s gone.

  ATTRACTION: The Hippodrome

  LOCATION: New York City

  STORY: When it opened in 1905, it was called “the largest theater in the world.” With a seating capacity of 5,300, only the biggest acts—in both size and popularity—performed there: Harry Houdini, diving horses, the circus, 500-person choirs. But the daily upkeep for such a mammoth theater, coupled with the cost of staging huge shows, forced a change. In 1923 it became a vaudeville theater and then, in 1928, it was sold to RKO and turned into a movie theater. It then became an opera house. Then a sports arena. The Hippodrome was finally torn down in 1939.

  WHAT’S THERE NOW: An office building and parking garage.

  ATTRACTION: Aquatarium

  LOCATION: St. Petersburg, Florida

  STORY: Housed in a 160-foot-tall transparent geodesic dome, the 17-acre Aquatarium opened in 1964. Tourists came from far and wide to visit this aquarium, which overlooked the Gulf of Mexico and was home to porpoises, sea lions, and pilot whales. But it rapidly started losing customers—and money—when the bigger and better Walt Disney World opened in nearby Orlando in 1971. In 1976 sharks were brought in and the site was renamed Shark World to capitalize on the popularity of Jaws, but it didn’t help.

  WHAT’S THERE NOW: Condominiums.

  ATTRACTION: Pink and White Terraces

  LOCATION: Lake Rotomahana, New Zealand

  STORY: Called the eighth wonder of the world, the Terraces were once New Zealand’s most popular and famous tourist attraction. They were two naturally occurring “staircases” of silica shelves that looked like pink and white marble. Each terrace (they were two miles apart) was formed over thousands of years. Geysers spouted silica-laden hot water which flowed downhill and then crystallized into terraces as it cooled. But on June 10, 1886, a nearby volcano—Mount Tarawera—erupted, spewing lava, hot mud, and boulders. The eruption destroyed the village of Te Wairoa, killing 153 people, and the hot magma completely destroyed the terraces.

  2,200 people are quoted in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Only 164 are women.

  WHAT’S THERE NOW: Shapeless rock.

  ATTRACTION: Jantzen Beach

  LOCATION: Portland, Oregon

  STORY: When it opened in 1928, this 123-acre amusement park on an island in the middle of the Columbia River was the largest in the United States. It housed a merry-go-round from the 1904 World’s Fair, four swimming pools, a fun house, a train, and the Big Dipper—a huge wooden roller coaster. More than 30 million people visited “the Coney Island of the West” over its lifetime. But after World War II, attendance started to decline and continued steadily downward until the park finally closed in 1970.

  WHAT’S THERE NOW: A shopping mall.

  ATTRACTION: Palisades Amusement Park

  LOCATION: Cliffside Park and Fort Lee, New Jersey

  STORY: Built on steep cliffs on the west side of the Hudson River, it began in 1898 as a grassy park for picnics and recreation. In 1908 it was renamed Palisades Amusement Park and rides and attractions were added. It boasted a 400-by-600-foot saltwater pool (“world’s largest”); the Cyclone, one of the biggest roller coasters in the country; and then in the 1950s, rock ’n’ roll shows. Attendance grew during that period because of heavy advertising on TV and in comic books. (There was a hole in the fence behind the music stage kept open to let kids sneak in to avoid paying the 25-cent admission fee.) By 1967, the park had gotten too popular. The city of Cliffside Park was tired of park-related traffic, litter, and parking problems, so it rezoned the site for housing (it has great views of Manhattan). The park was shut down for good in 1971. Plans to retain the saltwater pool were scrapped when vandals destroyed it.

  WHAT’S THERE NOW: High-rise apartment buildings.

  It cost $3 million to build the Titanic…and $100 million to make the movie.

  ATTRACTION: Crystal Palace

  LOCATION: London, England

  STORY: This massive 750,000 square foot structure originally housed the Great Exhibition of 1851, then was moved from Hyde Park to south London in 1854. Designed to evoke ancient Greek structures, the Crystal Palace featured dozens of columns, girders, and arches made of iron, and 900,000 square feet of glass. The building and surrounding grounds housed artwork and treasures from all over the world, including 250-foot-high fountains (requiring two water towers), gardens, and life-size replicas of dinosaurs. The coronation of King George V was held there, as was the annual English soccer championship. But after 1900, attendance started to dwindle. The Palace was closed on Sundays, the only day most Londoners had off from work. Then, in 1936, the Palace caught fire. The blaze was visible for miles. The building wasn’t properly insured, so there wasn’t enough to pay for rebuilding. All that was left were the water towers, later demolished during World War II out of fear Germany could use them to more easily locate London.

  WHAT’S THERE NOW: A sports-arena complex.

  ATTRACTION: Old Man of the Mountain

  LOCATION: Cannon Mountain, New Hampshire

  STORY: In 1805 surveyors Francis Whitcomb and Luke Brooks discovered this rock formation in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Viewed from the correct angle, it had the appearance of a man’s face. It jutted out 1,200 feet above Profile Lake and was estimated to be 40 feet tall and 25 feet wide. Nineteenth-century politician Daniel Webster and novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about the Old Man and helped make it a state icon. The Old Man graces New Hampshire’s state quarter and a postage stamp. Signs of deterioration were first noted in 1906, and ever since, various methods—including cables and spikes—have been used to keep the face in place. Bu
t they didn’t work. In 2003, the Old Man finally collapsed and crumbled.

  WHAT’S THERE NOW: A rocky cliff. Viewfinders looking at the former landmark superimpose an image of the Old Man when it was intact to show visitors what it looked like.

  The main cluster of riders in a bicycle race is called a peloton.

  DUMB JOCKS

  Heinrich Heine once said, “There are more fools in the world than there are people.” We don’t exactly know what he meant by that. And chances are, neither do these sports stars.

  “I have nothing to say, and I’ll only say it once.”

  —Floyd Smith, Buffalo Sabres coach

  “I’ve had to overcome a lot of diversity.”

  —Drew Gooden, Cleveland Cavaliers player

  “If the NBA was on channel five and a bunch of frogs making love were on channel four, I’d watch the frogs, even if they were coming in fuzzy.”

  —Bobby Knight, college basketball coach

  “Play some Picasso.”

  —Chris Morris, New Jersey Nets player, to a pianist while trying to impress a date

  “Most of my clichés aren’t original.”

  —Chuck Knox, NFL coach

  “If I go down, I’m going down standing up.”

  —Chuck Person, San Antonio Spurs player

  “The only thing that keeps this organization from being recognized as one of the finest in baseball is wins and losses at the Major League level.”

  —Chuck LaMar, Tampa Bay Devil Rays GM

  “I was in a no-win situation, so I’m glad that I won rather than lost.”

  —Frank Bruno, heavyweight boxer

  “We can’t have stupidity in our locker room and we can’t have stupidity on the ice. The stupidity has all been used up, plus some, in the NHL this year. The stupidity meter is broken.”

  —Jeremy Roenick, Philadelphia Flyers player

  “Therapy can be a good thing. It can be therapeutic.”

  —Alex Rodriguez, New York Yankees player

  “Surprise me.”

  —Yogi Berra, when asked by his wife where he wanted to be buried

  In Canada, milk is sold in plastic bags as well as in jugs.

  AAAAH! ROBOTS!

  If you think robots are a thing of the future, think again. Scientists have been coming up with new uses for robots for years and…they’re here.

  WHAT IS A ROBOT?

  The word “robot” conjures up images of the human-looking machines in sci-fi movies and TV shows, but it simply refers to “a machine that can perform physical tasks.” Although robots are programmed to do specific things or to react to their surroundings, which may give the impression of intelligence, they are always controlled by humans, either by programming or by direct control. And they seldom look human—they can look like almost anything, from a mechanical arm to a box on wheels. But robot technology is changing rapidly, and the “droids” and “replicants” of science-fiction may someday become reality. Until then, scientists are still on the lookout for new and inventive ways to use robots…like these:

  TREASURE-BOT. In 1993 Chilean inventor Manuel Salinas built Arturito, a robot made up of a metal body on all-terrain wheels, with a probe and a tiny radar dish. Salinas planned to use the robot to get government work locating and destroying landmines—leftovers from border disputes with Bolivia and Peru. But since then, he’s used Arturito (a Spanish take on R2-D2 from Star Wars) in many other ways. In July 2005, Arturito led Chilean police to the missing body of a man under 12 feet of cement. Later that year, the robot found a stash of weapons and bombs hidden by a criminal gang, and then found buried treasure on an island off the Chilean coast. Arturito can also detect deposits of copper, water, and petroleum as deep as 600 feet underground.

  CANCER-BOT. Enterix, an Australian medical technology company, has built a robot named Grace that can detect bowel cancer faster than conventional methods and at a 98% accuracy rate. It analyzes tissue samples in five seconds, reducing the need for invasive colonoscopies. Enterix estimates that if Grace were run 24 hours a day, Australia’s entire population could be screened for bowel cancer in just one year.

  A lion’s roar is louder than a jackhammer.

  SAVIOR-BOT. While filming The Passion of the Christ, actor Jim Caviezel (playing Jesus) risked hypothermia enduring 15-hour days hanging on a cross wearing only a loincloth. So filmmakers constructed a body double: a $220,000 robot that looked like Caviezel and was able to move its head and limbs convincingly.

  BEER-BOT. Students at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Holland built a robot that can pour the perfect glass of beer. It takes the small, table-top robotic arm—“Hermann”—one minute, 11 seconds to pour, at the perfect angle, a proper mix of beer and froth. Amazingly, it cost less than $100 to build.

  DIET-BOT. Researchers at MIT created a nuclear-powered robot dog to help dieters. It monitors a pedometer worn by the dieter, counting calories (based on a programmed meal plan) and recording how much the person has walked. At the end of the day, the user asks the robot, “How am I doing?” If the dieter ate well and exercised, the dog wags its tail and jumps up and down. If not, the dog whines and lays down.

  BOTS GONE WILD

  • In 1942 science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov proposed three “laws of robotics” to ensure the safety of humankind. The first law: “A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” In 2006 Japan made Asimov’s law an actual law. The country that gave us Godzilla is developing robot nurses (for elder care), but they fear robot rebellion. So all robots must now have sensors to prevent them from running into people, be made of soft materials, and include emergency shut-off buttons.

  • Robot researchers at the Magna Science Center in Rotherham, England, were alarmed when one of their experiments, a robot that can “think” and act on its own, tried to escape the laboratory. Professor Noel Sharkey left the robot, “Gaak,” alone for 15 minutes in a small closet. Gaak apparently forced its way out, went down an access ramp and out the front door of the center, and made it into the parking garage before being struck by a car. “There’s no need to worry,” Sharkey said. “Although they can escape they are perfectly harmless and won’t be taking over just yet.”

  James Polk’s 1845 presidential inauguration was the first to be reported by telegraph.

  “BUNGA BUNGA!”

  Sophomoric clown or a brilliant satirist of British imperialism? Either way, Horace de Vere Cole was responsible for one of the best pranks in history.

  HIS MAJESTY REQUESTS…

  In the years before World War I, Britain had the most powerful navy in the world. And the HMS Dreadnought, armed with 10 large guns and powered by a steam engine, was the pride of the fleet. Considered the superweapon of its day, the huge battleship lay anchored under the tightest security in Weymouth. Few outside the Navy’s top officers had ever stepped on board, much less toured its “top-secret” state-of-the-art weaponry.

  On February 10, 1910, Sir William May, the ship’s captain, received a telegram from the Foreign Office, signed by Under-Secretary Sir Charles Hardinge, announcing the impending arrival of the emperor of Abyssinia and his court in England. The emperor was to receive the royal treatment, including a tour of the HMS Dreadnought. The captain immediately ordered his officers and crew to prepare to greet the emperor with all due pomp and circumstance. Guns were polished, decks swabbed, and uniforms washed and pressed in anticipation of the royal tour.

  V.I.P. TREATMENT

  But the telegram was a fake—it was sent by a practical joker named Horace de Vere Cole. A few days later, he and five co-conspirators (including author Virginia Woolf and her brother) blackened their faces and hands with burnt cork, glued false beards to their chins, donned long red robes topped with makeshift turbans (all rented), and took a cab to London’s Paddington Station. Brazenly declaring that he was a state official named “Herbert Cholmondley,” Cole talked the stationmaster into giving them a VIP train
to Weymouth, where the delegation was met with a full honor guard and a brass band.

  An Abyssinian flag couldn’t be found (no one knew what one looked like), so one from Zanzibar was used instead. And the band played the Zanzibar national anthem, since that was the only African anthem they knew. (The pranksters didn’t know the difference.) The Navy had no translator either: fortunately, the delegation supplied their own, and his translations were so eloquent that none of the navy officers noticed that the language spoken by the “Abyssinians” bore a striking resemblance to fractured Latin. And as they were shown all of the ship’s accoutrements, they shouted “Bunga Bunga!” in approval at everything they saw.

  There are over 60,000 acres of shopping malls in the U.S.

  There were a few anxious moments. One was when the pranksters realized one of the Navy officers knew Woolf. But the officer never caught on. Another came when their “interpreter” sneezed and almost blew off his whiskers. Again, no one noticed. Weather almost sank the prank, too: Rain began to fall as the delegation arrived at the Dreadnought; Cole managed to talk their way onto a lower deck just as their makeup started to run.