Uncle John’s Impossible Questions & Astounding Answers Read online

  The girl turned around and asked, “Can it be that you have come from outer space?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have!” Gagarin replied. Then he asked to use a phone so he could call Moscow and get someone to come out and pick him up.

  Upstairs, Downstairs

  Six-foot-five-inch Tim Robbins is the tallest. He won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the 2003 drama Mystic River. Measuring 3'5", the shortest Oscar winner was Shirley Temple, who won a special Academy Award in 1934 at the age of six. Temple later went into politics, serving as a foreign ambassador for Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, and the first Bush.

  What a Hunk

  That hunky student was Ronald Reagan, who went on to costar with a chimpanzee in Bedtime for Bonzo.

  Trendsetter

  1920s silent film star Mae Murray accidentally dropped something…and started a national craze. What did she drop?

  Trendsetter

  Her doughnut. Murray was an early Hollywood sex symbol known as “the girl with the bee-stung lips.” She’s also known as the first person to dunk a doughnut into a cup of coffee. It happened one day in 1925. Murray, who’d recently starred in The Merry Widow, was eating in a New York City deli when she accidentally dropped her doughnut into her cup of joe. A hush fell over the table. Murray wasn’t fazed, though. Surprising everyone, she extracted the soggy pastry and actually took a bite out of it! Then she raved about how delicious it was.

  Word of Murray’s happy accident quickly spread throughout the entertainment community. Over the next few years, anybody who was anybody was dunking their doughnuts. Groucho Marx dunked his in Duck Soup. Clark Gable taught Claudette Colbert how to dunk hers in It Happened One Night. There was even a “National Dunking Association” with such esteemed members as Red Skelton, Jimmy Durante, Pearl Buck, and a young comedian named Johnny Carson. Dunking doughnuts became such a part of popular culture that it inspired the fast-food chain, Dunkin’ Donuts, which opened its doors in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1950.

  Whatever happened to Mae Murray? She’d probably be more popular today had she not angered movie mogul Louis B. Mayer by quitting MGM in 1927. He had her blacklisted from the other studios, and she appeared in only three more films. (Doughnuts, however, appear in millions of coffee cups every day.)

  DOWN THE HATCH

  Now we tempt your palate with a few culinary delights, along with a few culinary disasters you wouldn’t feed your dog. First up—two questions about beer.

  Pewter to the People

  Why do German beer steins come with hinged lids?

  Measure for Measure

  How many pints in a firkin?

  Pewter to the People

  To keep the flies out. In the Middle Ages, Germany experienced several massive fly swarms at the same time Europe was suffering from the “Black Death,” in which millions of people were killed by the bubonic plague. Believing the flies were responsible for the disease, German rulers passed a law that all food and drink containers be fitted with a hinged lid. Although the law didn’t stop the plague—which was actually caused by fleas that hopped from rats to humans—it did mark the beginning of a more sanitary age in Europe. Most food and beverage containers lost their lids after the plague subsided, but lidded German beer steins remained in vogue for three more centuries…and still exist today.

  Measure for Measure

  In merry old England, a firkin was a unit of measurement used by brewers. Whenever someone was going to throw a big party, they had to first pick up a firkin or two.

  The word itself derives from the Middle Dutch word vierdekijn, or “fourth.” Hence, a firkin is equal to one quarter of a barrel, or 72 pints of beer. But wait, there’s more: A firkin is equal to nine imperial gallons (English) as well as half of a kilderkid (Old English), about 41 liters (metric), and roughly half a keg (American). Pretty firkin confusing, isn’t it?

  A Safari in Your Mouth

  Frog legs supposedly taste like chicken. There are several other “exotic food tastes like…” comparisons, such as lion and boa constrictor taste like ________; armadillo, wombat, beaver, and human taste like ________; zebra and hippo taste like ________; and wasp larvae taste like ________.

  Chunky Style

  How many insect parts and rat hairs does the FDA allow in a jar of peanut butter? And why do they allow any of these gross things in your food?

  A Safari in Your Mouth

  Exotic-food buffs claim that lion and boa constrictor meat tastes like veal. Armadillo—called “Hoover hog” by the people who ate it to survive during the Great Depression (when Herbert Hoover was president)—is said to taste like pork. Also tasting like pork: wombats, beavers, and people. Zebra and hippo meat are often compared to beef. In both taste and texture, eating wasp larvae is supposedly a lot like eating scrambled eggs.

  Chunky Style

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration allows for an average of “30 or more insect fragments and one or more rodent hairs per 100 grams of peanut butter.” Why not ban them outright? The FDA considers these beastly additives to be a natural byproduct of making processed foods. The government agency’s booklet “Food Defect Action Levels” explains, “It is economically impractical to grow, harvest, or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects.” What, then, is your actual insect and rodent-hair intake? Recent studies have reported that Americans consume about a pound of them per year. Good news: According to entomologists, the protein from the bugs is actually healthier than the pesticides used to keep them out. The rat hairs, however, have no health benefit…but they don’t harm you, either.

  Sweet Explorer

  On his two-year trip to the South Pole in the 1930s, Admiral Robert Byrd carried 2.5 tons of what candy? On which holiday are you most likely to see these candies?

  Carnivore’s Dream

  In what single meal might you eat a camel, lion, monkey, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, zebra, bison, gorilla, cougar, elephant, giraffe, hyena, kangaroo, seal, sheep, tiger, bear, polar bear, and koala?

  Sweet Explorer

  Necco Wafers. Rear Admiral Byrd was a World War I fighter pilot who later became the U.S. Navy’s most trusted explorer, leading expeditions to both poles. For his journey to Antarctica, Byrd allotted a daily ration of one pack of Neccos per crew member. Why Necco Wafers? First, because they were cheap; second, because they were an efficient way of adding needed calories to his crew’s diet. Plus, the chalky wafers weren’t affected by extremes of heat and cold and didn’t spoil over long periods of time. It was these same characteristics that prompted the U.S. military to requisition the bulk of Necco’s production runs during World War II.

  On what holiday are you most likely to be given a Necco Wafer? Valentine’s Day. Every February, Necco’s parent company, the New England Confectionery Company, sells about eight billion heart-shaped Necco Wafers stamped with loving messages, such as “Be mine” and “U R A 10.” Called “Sweethearts,” they’ve been a Valentine’s Day tradition for more than a century.

  Carnivore’s Dream

  In a box of Barnum’s Animals, commonly referred to as animal crackers. Invented in England in the 1800s, they’ve been distributed in the U.S. by Nabisco since 1902. The two most recent additions—both in the 21st century—are the koala and the polar bear.

  Food Fight

  What food do you blow up and then drown?

  Morning Tropic Thunder

  Worldwide, coffee is grown in more than 50 countries, including the United States. How many U.S. states grow coffee commercially?

  Food Fight

  Popcorn. This staple snack is made from dried corn kernels. There’s water on the inside, but it’s sealed in. When the kernels are heated, that water turns to steam. The pressure builds…and builds…and builds…and then—BOOM! The hard shell explodes and propels the now-softened internal starch outward, which immediately hardens as the superheated water evaporates. Then all you have to do is throw the popco
rn into a bowl and drown it in butter.

  Morning Tropic Thunder

  Two. Hawaii used to be the only U.S. state that grew coffee, but recently, small-scale organic coffee growers have popped up in the coastal areas near Santa Barbara, California. (It’s also grown in Puerto Rico, but that’s not a state…yet.) Why so few? Although coffee is the second most traded product in the world (petroleum is the first), the ideal climate conditions for growing it are rare. The small evergreen tree that produces coffee beans—which are actually the bitter pit of the tree’s fruit—can grow only in regions that have a cool, mostly dry tropical winter, interrupted occasionally by rains that increase in frequency as the crop matures. Largest coffee grower: Brazil, responsible for 30 percent of the world’s output.

  Footnote: Instant coffee was invented by George Washington. Not the president, but George Constant Louis Washington, a Belgian-born American inventor who lived in Guatemala in the early 1900s.

  Sweet Scholarship

  Which private school for children is widely considered to be one of the wealthiest in the world? Two hints:

  1) It’s in Pennsylvania.

  2) You’re in the food category.

  Sweet Scholarship

  The Milton Hershey School, located in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It owns 56 percent of the chocolate company’s stock, with assets worth nearly $6 billion, making it one of the richest schools in the world. Serving nearly 2,000 low-income students, the K–12 institution is located on the same land as the Hershey family farm, where Milton Snavely Hershey was born in 1857. In the 1860s, his parents moved so often that he’d attended seven schools by the time he reached the fourth grade…and he never made it to the fifth grade. (Good thing that candy-making apprenticeship paid off.)

  In the early 1900s, Hershey, by then a millionaire, and his wife, Kitty, tried to start a family, but Kitty was unable to bear children. The Hersheys decided that if they couldn’t have their own family, they’d help children who didn’t have families—or, like Milton, were too poor to attend school. So in 1909 the couple opened the Hershey Industrial School, a boarding academy for “poor, healthy, white, male orphans between the ages of 8 and 18.” After Kitty died in 1915, Hershey decided to keep her legacy alive by transferring the majority of his assets, including control of the company, into the school’s trust fund. Now known as the Milton Hershey School, it’s changed with the times, allowing children of color (1968) and girls (1977). And because it’s located on the site of the family farm, until 1989 milking cows was part of the curriculum. Of course, chocolate milk is still served in the cafeteria.

  The More, the Berrier

  Who invented the loganberry, the youngberry, and the boysenberry? And which of these berries later inspired a famous amusement park?

  The More, the Berrier

  Logan, Young, and Boysen.

  • In 1883 James Harvey Logan of Santa Cruz, California, attempted to cross-breed two blackberry varieties, but they were planted too close to a vintage raspberry, which added its pollen to the mix. Of the 50 seeds Logan planted from this accidental union, one produced a plant with berries tasty enough that he reproduced the results, thus creating the loganberry.

  • Byrnes M. Young, a Louisiana businessman who dabbled in horticulture on the side, crossed a blackberry with a dewberry (a cousin of the blackberry) in 1905 and got the youngberry.

  • In 1923 horticulturist Rudolf Boysen crossed several varieties of blackberries, raspberries, and loganberries near Napa, California. His berries didn’t sell well, so he gave up and moved south to Orange County.

  Another California grower—Walter Knott—had heard about Boysen’s unusual berries, so he went to the old fields and, among the weeds, found a few plants that were barely clinging to life. Knott was able to rescue the berries, which he named after Boysen. He later sold boysenberries from a roadside stand in Buena Park. In order to entice travelers to stop, Knott built cheesy tourist attractions, including a steaming volcano and a full-scale ghost town. Before long, Knott’s Berry Farm became more of an amusement park than a berry farm, and so it is today, thanks in no small part to Rudolf Boysen and his boysenberry.

  The Heat Is On

  At what time of day are you most likely to witness the Maillard reaction?

  Two in the Oven

  What’s the difference between baking and roasting?

  The Heat Is On

  During breakfast. Have you ever wondered why a piece of bread tastes different after you toast it? This is because of the Maillard reaction, first noted in 1912 by a French chemist and physician named Louis-Camille Maillard. Simply put, it involves a chemical reaction between sugars and amino acids that occurs when certain foods are browned by heating. The process creates a complex mixture of toasty flavors consisting of hundreds of compounds that change into other flavor compounds as they break down in your mouth. Every toasted food item has its own distinctive set of compounds, some of which are responsible for the difference between, for example, the taste of a toasted bagel and a toasted marshmallow. Other foods that get tastier thanks to the Maillard reaction: malted barley (used in beer and whiskey), roasted coffee, and roasted meat.

  Two in the Oven

  According to some chefs, roasting starts at a higher temperature, to brown the surface of the food. But other chefs disagree, and the terms “bake” and “roast” are often used interchangeably. Though roasting once meant “cooking on a spit over an open flame,” both terms technically mean “to dry cook with convection heat.” And while some ovens feature baking and roasting settings, for all intents and purposes, they’re the same thing (although most people wouldn’t “roast” a cake).

  Grub Time

  Customer: “Waiter, what is this? My cheese is writhing with maggots!”

  Waiter: “Please lower your voice; the maggots are supposed to be there.”

  What kind of cheese are they talking about?

  Prehistoric Hot Plate

  How long do anthropologists think humans have been cooking their food? And what may have been the first cooked meal?

  Grub Time

  Casu marzu, or “rotten cheese,” which comes from the island of Sardinia off the west coast of Italy. Processing this sheep’s milk cheese, also known as formaggio marcio, is sped up by the larvae of Piophila casei—the cheese fly. Cheese-makers bore holes into the cheese and store it outside; female flies fly inside the holes and lay their eggs (up to 500 of them). Once hatched, the maggots begin to eat their way out, fermenting the cheese into a soupy goo. When it arrives on your table, the writhing maggots tell you that it’s fresh and ready to eat. (Dead maggots mean spoiled cheese, so don’t eat that.) You can either remove the tiny grubs or just eat them along with the rest of the cheese. But be forewarned: When disturbed, the maggots begin jumping about.

  Casu marzu has been outlawed due to sanitation concerns, but can still be found if you know where to look. Cheese lovers swear it’s well worth the search.

  Prehistoric Hot Plate

  Cooking food may go back as far as 1.9 million years. Based on tools and other evidence found at archaeological sites on the African plains, the first known barbecue consisted of root vegetables, beans, seeds, and strips of carrion meat. According to the lead researcher, British anthropologist Richard Wrangham, “Cooking had a widespread effect on all aspects of life—including nutrition, ecology, energy production, and social relationships. In effect, humanity began with cooking.”

  What a Rush!

  On January 16, 1919, the 18th amendment of the U.S. Constitution was ratified, beginning Prohibition. Coincidentally, what alcoholic beverage ingredient killed 21 people in New England the day before?

  What a Rush!

  Molasses, the sugar byproduct used to make rum. And while a little molasses is good, 2.3 million gallons of it rushing toward you isn’t.

  On that fateful afternoon in 1919, the sticky goo was stored in a massive steel tank on Commercial Street at the Purity Distilling Company in the North End dist
rict of Boston. Six stories high and perched on a hill, the tank was nearly full, having received a shipment from Puerto Rico a few days earlier. It was an unseasonably warm January day, about 40°F, and shortly after noon, factory workers heard what sounded like machine guns firing—a noise that turned out to be the tank’s metal rivets popping loose. Before anyone had time to react, a massive steel plate careened off the side of the tank and leveled a nearby building. Then the molasses burst out, sending a 15-foot-high wave speeding down the hill at 35 miles per hour. The brown goo covered factory walls, houses, wagons, automobiles, and freight cars, and even destroyed a railroad bridge. Dozens of horses, dogs, and people got trapped in the flood of molasses. Many didn’t make it out alive.