Uncle John’s 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader® Read online

  STRANDED

  In November 2010, a 69-year-old woman living in a second-floor apartment in the Paris suburb of Epinay-sous-Senart got stuck in her bathroom when the lock on the door broke. There was no window in the bathroom for her to call for help, so she banged on the pipes instead, making a racket that could be heard throughout the building. No one investigated the sounds. The woman spent three weeks in her bathroom before worried neighbors, still ignoring the incessant banging, noticed she was missing and called the police. They broke into the apartment and found the woman, still locked in her bathroom, still banging away. For three weeks she had lived on tap water and toothpaste. So why did none of the other tenants investigate the noise? They assumed it was caused by someone doing repairs and were actually circulating a petition to get it stopped when the woman was finally rescued. (She made a full recovery.)

  Walt Disney was “Head of Pageantry” for the 1960 Winter Olympic Games.

  THE MANY FACES

  OF SANTA CLAUS

  You probably think of Santa as a jolly guy in a red suit who hangs out with elves and reindeer. But that’s only the American view. Saint Nick, it turns out, is a man of the world, and other countries have their own wildly varying versions.

  KYRGYZSTAN

  In this former Soviet republic, Santa is known as Ayaz Ata (“Snow Father”) and he delivers presents on New Year’s Eve, not Christmas Eve. Schools host “Christmas Tree Parties” in the week leading up to December 31 to help prepare for Ayaz’s arrival. The celebration is part Christmas and part Halloween, as children dress in costumes. Ayaz doesn’t have reindeer and elves—he walks with a staff and is assisted by his adopted daughter, Aksha Kar. According to legend, Aksha was once made out of snow, but she began to melt in the spring after Ayaz and his wife adopted her. Then she underwent a magical Pinocchio-like transformation and now serves as his helper.

  ITALY

  In Italy, Santa goes by Babbo Natale (“Father Christmas”), but he typically leaves the gift giving to a witch named La Befana. Italian children place their shoes by the front door of their homes in the hope that she’ll stop by and place gifts in them on the night before Epiphany, a holiday that celebrates the 12th day of Christmas (January 5), the day the Three Wise Men arrived in Bethlehem. The legend says that as the Three Wise Men made their way to Bethlehem to greet the baby Jesus, they asked La Befana for directions and invited her to come along...but she declined because she was preoccupied with household chores. Later that night, she spotted a “great, white light” on the horizon, immediately regretted her decision to stay home, and flew off on her broomstick to join them. (She is a witch, after all.) But she got lost, so now she spends every Epiphany Eve searching for Baby Jesus, scattering gifts for kids along the way.

  In the Dominican Republic, members of the armed forces and police are not allowed to vote.

  JAPAN

  Fewer than 1 percent of Japan’s residents are Christian, so Christmas isn’t considered a major holiday there, but many people enjoy it as a secular annual tradition. Children receive presents under their pillows from a Santa dubbed Santakukoru, who has taken on the characteristics of Hotei-osho, a mythological Buddhist monk who, according to legend, was once known for carrying gifts around in a large red bag. And it’s become commonplace for couples (and families) to dine at Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas Day. The tradition started in the 1980s when Americans living in Japan couldn’t find restaurants that served turkey dinners, so they got the next best thing: KFC. Result: Tables for Christmas meals at Japanese KFCs have to be booked months in advance.

  TURKEY

  Santa goes by Noel Baba (“Father Christmas”) in Turkey, and his story is similar to the Turkish tales about St. Nicholas, who was born in the town of Patara around A.D. 270. The story goes that Nicholas inherited a large fortune from his father and decided to give it away to the poor, especially needy children. One night, Nicholas encountered a nobleman and three daughters, who had all fallen on hard times. Because their father couldn’t provide dowries, the girls had no shot at marriage. One night Nicholas intervened and tossed a sack of gold coins through their window for the first daughter. He returned the following night and tossed in another sack for the second daughter. On the third night, the window was closed. Undaunted, Nicholas climbed onto the roof and dropped more gold down the chimney. The next morning, the daughters found the coins in the stockings they had hung to dry over the fireplace. (Sound familiar?) Now, every Christmas Eve, Noel Baba flies around Turkey delivering more presents via chimneys.

  AUSTRIA

  St. Nicholas is the Christmas icon here, and he isn’t nearly as forgiving or jolly as the American Santa. Instead of Rudolph, he travels with Krampus, a hairy, demon-like monster with horns and sharp teeth. During the holiday season, children are encouraged to behave themselves: If they do, they get presents. If they don’t, Krampus will beat them with his rusty chains. And what happens if the creature finds children still awake on Christmas Eve when Nicholas shows up to deliver gifts? He will toss them into a sack and cart them away. Every December 5, the Austrian town of Schladming hosts an annual “Krampus Karnaval,” which features volunteers who dress up as Krampus and march through the streets in a parade, threatening children along the route with tree branches and plastic chains.

  There are more known reptile species in Australia than in all other countries combined.

  THE NETHERLANDS

  The tales surrounding the Dutch version of Santa may be the strangest of all. Here he goes by Sinterklaas, and he’s taller, thinner, and more regal than the American version. He delivers presents on December 5 as part of a holiday called Sinterklaasavond (“Santa Claus Evening”) or Pakjesavond (“Presents Evening”). But before that, on a Saturday in November, Sinkterklaas’s “arrival pageant” is staged and televised across the country. Mounted atop a white horse, an actor dressed as Sinterklaas rides through a randomly selected Dutch city before he makes his deliveries. (Sinterklaas lives not at the North Pole, but in the distant, exotic land of...Madrid.) Accompanying him on his journey (via steamboat, not sleigh) is a group of African servants called the Zwarte Pieten, or “Black Peters.” During the televised event, white Dutch actors wear black makeup and bright red lipstick to portray the Black Peters. They march alongside Sinterklaas, performing pratfalls while handing out candy to good children. Bad children are threatened with brooms, and according to Dutch legend, really bad kids are carted in sacks back to Spain to make the toys that Sinterklaas delivers to the good children. To keep up with the “politically correct” times, many Dutch parents now tell their children that the Pieten aren’t really black—they’re just covered in soot from sliding up and down so many chimneys. In 2006 the Dutch Program Foundation went even farther and attempted to replace Sinterklaas’s helpers with rainbow-colored Pieten. It proved so unpopular that they reverted back to the traditional, all-black Pieten for the 2007 celebration.

  “The one thing women don’t want to find in their stockings on Christmas morning is their husband.”

  —Joan Rivers

  Keiko the killer whale, star of Free Willy, was once shipped from Mexico to Oregon via UPS.

  CELEBRITY CHECK-OUTS

  We’ve all checked into hotel rooms that left us cold: bad room service, grungy sinks, bedspreads that haven’t been washed—since the ’80s. But at least we made it out alive. These famous folks didn’t.

  Celebrity: Irish writer and poet Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

  Where he died: Room 16, Hôtel d’Alsace, Paris

  Story: At the height of his fame, Wilde was arrested for what he called “Uranian love.” Victorian England had a less literary view of homosexuality: Wilde was convicted of “gross indecency” and sentenced to two years of hard labor. The years in prison destroyed his health and reputation, and forced him into bankruptcy, but he never lost his fabled wit. At age 46, as he lay dying of cerebral meningitis in his Paris hotel room, he raised a glass of champagne and gave his final toast: “
I’m dying,” he said, “as I have lived, beyond my means.” It was true: Wilde left behind a very large—and unpaid—hotel bill.

  Celebrity: Scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla (1856–1943)

  Where he died: Room 3327, Hotel New Yorker, New York City

  Story: This pioneering inventor contributed as much to the development of electricity as Thomas Edison did. In 1934 Tesla, who became increasingly eccentric late in life, claimed to have perfected a particle-beam ray that could bring down enemy planes from 250 miles away or drop a million men dead in their tracks. His ideas were so far-fetched that the first Superman cartoon, in 1941, featured a mad scientist, based on Tesla, terrorizing New York City with his death ray. But was he mad? When Tesla died in the hotel suite he’d occupied for 10 years, the U.S. Alien Property Custodian office—the only agency authorized to seize “enemy assets” without a court order—hauled away truckloads of paper, furniture, and artifacts, and sealed them away. What became of his effects is unknown, but the FBI reportedly feared there might be a working death ray among them. (There wasn’t.)

  Celebrity: Singer-songwriter Janis Joplin (1943–70)

  Where she died: Room 105, Landmark Hotel, Los Angeles

  “Flap-dragon”: a 16th-century game of trying to eat hot raisins from a bowl of burning brandy.

  Story: Joplin once said, “People like their blues singers miserable. They like their blues singers to die.” On the evening of October 3, after a long day in the recording studio, Joplin shot up her final fix of heroin, went down to the hotel lobby for change, bought some cigarettes, and returned to her room. She was found dead the next day, wedged against a bedside table with a cigarette in her hand. Joplin had been finishing up the final songs for Pearl. The album was to include the song “Buried Alive in the Blues,” but it remained an instrumental. Joplin died before recording the vocal track.

  Celebrity: Playwright Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953)

  Where he died: Suite 401, Shelton Hotel, Boston

  Story: Because his father was a successful touring actor, O’Neill was born in a hotel and spent part of his childhood living in hotel rooms. He hated his early years and blamed his father’s touring for his mother’s morphine addiction. If nothing else, these hardships served him well as a playwright. O’Neill went on to garner Nobel and Pulitzer prizes for such works as Strange Interlude (1928) and Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1941). But tragedy was never far away—he contracted a progressive nervous disorder that left him unable to write. He spent his final days in a hotel room overlooking the Charles River, grim, frustrated, and waiting for death. Among his final words: “I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room—and g**damn it—died in a hotel room.”

  Celebrity: Bass guitarist John Entwistle (1944–2002)

  Where he died: Room 658, Hard Rock Hotel, Las Vegas

  Story: When the Who made it big, band members were finally able to quit their crappy day jobs and embrace the rock-star life. For Entwistle, that meant spending money—far more than he made. By 2002 the 57-year-old bassist owed a string of debts, including back taxes. “That 2002 tour was the last I ever intended to do with the band,” said guitarist Pete Townshend. “My mission was to make enough money for John so that he could get out of debt.” The night before the tour began, Entwistle snorted some cocaine and went to bed with a groupie. The next morning he was dead of a cocaine-induced heart attack. Entwistle’s estate—including his beloved guitar collection—had to be auctioned off to pay the tax man. As for the crappy day job Entwistle quit back in 1963: He worked for the Inland Revenue Service, England’s I.R.S.

  The lemon shark grows about 24,000 new teeth every year.

  ALTERED STATES

  Think it’s hard to remember the names of all 50 states? If lawmakers had had their way, there could have been even more.

  CCUBA

  When the U.S. won the Spanish-American War in 1898, Spain ceded control of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and Cuba. The first three were considered to be in the developing-colony stage, so they became U.S. territories. Cuba was far more established and was granted independence (although the United States reserved the right to intervene in Cuban affairs at any time). Things were fine until 1906, when opponents of Cuban president Tomas Estrada Palma accused him of voter fraud in his successful re-election. The protests that erupted created an instability that made the U.S. government nervous, and a small congressional delegation proposed annexing Cuba and making it a state—the easiest way to quell any uprisings. Ultimately, the cultural differences between the two nations were seen as too great, or, as Rep. John Sharp Williams of Mississippi said, “We have enough people of the Negro race.”

  GREENLAND

  In 1945 Secretary of State James Byrnes offered Denmark $100 million for the gigantic, ice-covered Arctic island. Why? For its strategic location. This was at the very beginning of the Cold War, and Greenland was situated much closer to the Soviet Union’s major cities than any current U.S. land, making it an ideal place for a missile-defense system. The Danish government did not entertain the offer.

  FRANKLIN

  When the United States established its Constitution in 1787, the 13 former colonies became the new nation’s first states. There could have been 14. In 1785 a group of citizens in an isolated, sparsely populated mountainous region of western North Carolina proposed creating their own state, predicated on one idea: that doctors and lawyers were too highbrow, not representative of the common man, and thus unfit to serve in the legislature. Despite that weird premise for independence, 7 out of 13 states voted yes. Franklin was denied statehood, but by only two votes. Nevertheless, Franklin’s leading proponents acted like they had been granted statehood and proceeded to form a basic government: electing lawmakers (no doctors or lawyers), establishing a court system, and assembling a small militia. All that local power wasn’t enough to prevent attacks from local Indian tribes, who saw Franklin residents as easy targets. Because they’d behaved like a rogue state, North Carolina and the federal government left them to their own devices and offered no protection. In 1796 “Franklin” was absorbed into Tennessee.

  On average, Americans in 2001 bought seven times more fireworks than they did in 1976.

  JACINTO

  When the independent republic of Texas was annexed by the U.S. in 1845, it retained a right to split into as many as five separate states whenever and for whatever reason the state government saw fit. The Texas legislature entertained the idea in 1850, when the state’s congressional delegation introduced a bill to divide the state in two, right along the Brazos River. The western portion would still be called Texas, while the eastern part was to be named Jacinto, commemorating the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto, which was decisive in Texas gaining its independence from Mexico (and lasted only 18 minutes). The bill never got enough support to make it to a vote, but the idea of partitioning Texas wouldn’t go away—it resurfaced six more times over the 120 years.

  GREAT BRITAIN

  In the peacetime years that followed World War II, Senator Richard Russell Jr. of Georgia made a bizarre proposal to the news media: The United States should annex England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales—at the time, the whole of Great Britain—as four new states. Why? The British were ravaged by the war, and the U.S. needed some strategically located sites in Europe. Russell reasoned that the U.S. getting military bases and the U.K. receiving an influx of American revenue would be good for both countries. The British government quickly dismissed the idea, noting that Russell’s home state of Georgia still owed England money it had borrowed during the Civil War.

  Bugsy Siegel named his Las Vegas casino the Flamingo for his leggy girlfriend, Virginia Hill.

  THE BRIGHT SIDE

  OF THE MOON

  Unless you’re an astronomy buff (or a werewolf), you don’t keep track of full moons and you’ve probably never heard of a “waning gibbous.” But you might still wonder why sometimes you can see the whole moon, and other times you can’t see any of it.
/>   WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE

  It takes about a month—technically 29.5305882 days—for the moon to go through one synodic period, the cycle in which we see it go through its phases of full, half, crescent, and “new,” or invisible, and then back to full again. But the moon really doesn’t go anywhere—it’s always orbiting Earth, and always has the same side facing Earth, due to the powerful gravitational pull the planet has on its satellite. The lunar phases we see are created by the changing angles and positions of Earth, sun, and moon in relation to each other. Moonlight is really just reflected sunlight, so when the moon looks different, it’s only because part of it isn’t visible from Earth—that part is shrouded in the moon’s own shadow. (But even that dark part isn’t really invisible; you can often see it, dimly, through a telescope or good pair of binoculars.) Here’s a scientific look at where these celestial bodies have to be positioned to make the moon look the way it does on any given night.

  NEW MOON (DAY 1): In most cultures, the beginning of the moon’s cycle is marked by the new moon. You can tell it’s a new moon if you can’t find the moon anywhere in the sky, day or night. That’s because a new moon is virtually invisible—it hangs between Earth and the sun, with all three more or less in alignment, so the moon’s far side is illuminated and the dark side faces us. (On the rare occasions when all three are in exact alignment, the moon hangs directly between Earth and sun, causing a solar eclipse.)

  WAXING CRESCENT (DAY 5): In this “fingernail” phase, the moon appears as a small sliver, with the long curve toward the right-hand side. “Waxing” means growing, so this means the moon is emerging from shadow and the lighted part will become larger—less shrouded in darkness—in the coming nights.