When people enter the federal government’s Witness Protection Program, they’re supposed to hide, right?

1. WISEGUY: Henry Hill, a member of New York’s Lucchese crime family and participant in the $5.8 million Lufthansa heist from New York’s Kennedy Airport in 1978, the largest cash theft in U.S. history.

IN THE PROGRAM: The Witness Protection program relocated him to Redmond, Washington, in 1980, and Hill, who’s changed his name to Martin Lewis, was supposed to keep a low profile and stay out of trouble. He wasn’t very good at either -in 1985 he and writer Nicholas Pileggi turned his mob exploits into the bestselling book Wiseguy, which became the hit move Goodfellas.

WHAT HAPPENED: When the book became a bestseller, “Martin Lewis” couldn’t resist telling friends and neighbors who he really was. Even worse, he reverted to his life of crime. Since 1980 Hill has racked up a string of arrests for crimes ranging from drunk driving to burglary and assault. In 1987 he tried to sell a pound of cocaine to two undercover Drug Enforcement officers, which got him thrown out of the Witness Protection Program for good.

“Henry couldn’t go straight,” says Deputy Marshal Bud McPherson. “He loved being a wiseguy. He didn’t want to be anything else.”

2. WISEGUY: Aladena “Jimmy the Weasel” Fratianno, mafia hit man and acting head of the Los Angeles mob. When he entered the Witness Protection program in 1977, Fratianno was the highest-ranking mobster ever to turn informer.

IN THE PROGRAM: Fratianno had another claim to fame: he is also the highest-paid witness in the history of the program. Between 1977 and 1987, he managed to get the feds to pay for his auto insurance, gas, telephone bills, real-estate taxes, monthly check to his mother-in-law, and his wife’s facelift and breast implants.

WHAT HAPPENED: The Justice Department feared the payments made the program look “like a pension fund for aging mobsters,” so he was thrown out of the program in 1987. But by that time, Fratianno had already soaked U.S. taxpayers for an estimated $951,326. “He was an expert at manipulating the system,” McPherson said. Fratianno died in 1993.

3. WISEGUY: James Cardinali, a five-time murderer who testified against Gambino crime boss John Gotti at his 1987 murder trial. Gotti, nicknamed the “Teflon Don,” beat the rap, but Cardinali still got to enter the Witness Protection Program after serving a reduced sentence for his own crimes. After his release, federal marshals gave him a new identity and relocated him to Oklahoma.

IN THE PROGRAM: Witnesses who get new identities aren’t supposed to tell anyone who they really are, and when Cardinali slipped up and told his girlfriend in 1989, the program put him on a bus to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and told him to get lost.

But Cardinali wouldn’t leave quietly. When he got to Albuquerque, he made signs that said, “Mob Star Witness” and “Marked to Die by the Justice Department.” Then wearing the signs as a sandwich board, he marched back and forth in front of the federal courthouse, telling reporters he would continue his protest until he was let back into the program or murdered by mobsters, whichever came first. “If I get killed,” Cardinali told reporters, “I want everybody to see what they do to you.”

WHAT HAPPENED: Cardinali flew to Washington, D.C. to appear on CNN’s Larry King Live. But leaving the state violated his parole, so when he got back to New Mexico, he was arrested …and released into the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service. Then he vanished. Did he embarrass the Witness Protection Program into letting him back in? The Marshals Service will “neither confirm nor deny” that he did.

(Image source: Historic LOLs)

4. WISEGUY: John Patrick Tully, convicted murderer and member of the Campisi crime family of Newark, New Jersey.

IN THE PROGRAM: Tully served a reduced sentence for murder and entered the Witness Protection Program in the mid 1970s. By the early 1980s, he was living in Austin, Texas, where, as “Jack Johnson,” he worked as a hot dog and fajita vendor. (It was a “nostalgic” choice -years earlier, he’d robbed a bank and used the money to buy a hot dog cart.)

Tully’s business thrived, but he had repeated run-ins with the police and was arrested numerous times for public intoxication and drunk driving. At some point the police figured out who “Mr. Johnson” really was and then, Tully alleges, they started harassing him.

WHAT HAPPENED: Tully fought back by publicly revealing his true identity.He wrapped himself -literally- in the American flag, and, standing on the steps of city hall with his seven-page rap sheet in one hand and a beer in the other, announced his entry in the 1991 race for mayor. His reasons for running: 1) As a reformed criminal he was a better candidate than typical politicians who “get into office and then start crooking,” and 2) “If the police are going to hit me, then they’ll have to hit me in the limelight.”

Tully actually won 496 votes …but lost the race.

5. WISEGUY: Joseph “Joe Dogs” Iannuzzi, bookie, loan shark, and member of New York’s Gambino crime family from 1974 to 1982.

IN THE PROGRAM: Joe Dogs had a reputation for being an excellent cook -even in the mob. After turning state’s evidence in 1982, he supported himself by opening a bagel shop in Florida.

Then in 1993 he wrote The Mafia Cookbook. How can someone in the Program promote a book? They can’t -witnesses are forbidden contact with the media, and Joe Dogs had to pass on several offers to appear on TV. But he was a huge fan of David Letterman, so when he was asked t appear on The Late Show, he agreed, even though he risked being thrown out of the program. Why would he take the chance? “Dave was my idol,” Iannuzzi explained.

WHAT HAPPENED: It finally dawned on somebody at The Late Show that that bringing a man marked for death by the mob into New York City and putting him on TV with Dave in front of a live studio audience might not be such a good idea. At the last minute, just as Joe Dogs was getting ready to cook Veal Marsala, show staffers told him his segment had been canceled.

Iannuzzi was furious -according to some accounts he even threatened to “whack” Letterman. And although he never actually went on the show, the U.S. Marshals Service kicked him out of the Witness Protection program anyway.

“What am I going to do now? Well,” he told reporters, “I can always cook.”

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Got some time? Here’s at least a day’s worth of time travel flicks.

Holly wood loves time travel -they’re always punting people forward in time or backward in time, or just plopping them into a feedback loop where they relive the same day over and over again. Even though time travel is scientifically impossible (sorry to disappoint), it doesn’t keep people from making or going to movies about it.

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Army of Darkness: Technically the third part of director Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series, but it’s not like you need a road map for this plot, which features a one-handed discount store salesman (the impossibly lantern-jawed Bruce Campbell) hurled back into the Middle Ages to fight zombies and skeletons and a creepy, man-eating flying book. It’s kind of dumb, but all horror freaks love it (and you know how high their standards are). It’s pretty funny, in a stupid comic-book way. Besides, any movie in which a minimum wage-earner from the future can condescendingly call a castle full of medieval types a bunch of “monkeys” can’t be all that bad.

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Back to the Future: Michael J. Fox goes back to the 1950s and is called “Calvin” because that’s the name sewn into his underwear (Calvin Klein underwear -can’t believe we need to explain this). The film’s still funny in it’s own right (especially with freaky Crispin Glover as Fox’s loser dad), but now it’s like two time travel movies in on. First you get the 1950s, which Fox goes back to, then you get the 1980s, which is the “present”‘ for this film. It’s enough to give you a shiver (look for the Huey Lewis cameo). There were two more Back to the Future films, but unless you’ve got a thing for Michael J., you needn’t bother.

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Groundhog Day: Bill Murray goes back in time -exactly one day, over and over again. In the process he turns from obnoxious twit to the perfect man (or at least the perfect man for Andie McDowell, and who wouldn’t want to be that kind of man?). It’s a fine, fine film, and in addition to being funny, it’s actually sweet and a little serious, and it proved that Murray was a little better of an actor than anyone ever gave him credit for before. But let’s not kid ourselves: If you had to live Groundhog Day over and over again, you’d become a little zen yourself to keep from going utterly freakin’ insane.

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Planet of the Apes: Charleton Heston lands on what he thinks is an alien planet and finds it populated by talking apes who think he’s a savage (mind you, this was before he became the NRA’s alpha male). Ol’ Charlie is awesome in this -he grunts, he snarls, he chews scenery like a silverback confronted with a particularly choice bunch of bananas (“Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!”). They remade this one, but the newer version is -how do the French say? Ah, yes -un lame-o stinkeroo. Stick with Charlie, baby.

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Sleeper: This is the movie people are thinking of when they say they liked Woody Allen’s movies when he was funny. Freakily enough, many of the wacky things Allen posited about the future in this movie have already come true, like robotic pets and TV with millions of channels. We still don’t have an orgasmatron, alas. Something yet to look forward to.

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek: First Contact: The crews of the various Star Trek series travel in time so much and with so much blatant disregard for the Prime Directive that it’s entirely possible that Jean-Luc Picard is in your shower stall right this very instant. For all that, the two best Star Trek movies rely on time travel as plot points: In Star Trek IV, the original crew saves the universe by saving the whales, and that means going back to 1980s San Francisco to find some. This features some nice moments with Spock being taken for a hippie burnout, and Kirk being taken for a fatuous windbag (oh -right). First Contact has Picard’s crew going back in time (but still to our future) to keep the evil Borg from assimilating humanity. There are some good action scenes and a disturbingly sexy Borg Queen (Alice Krige) who wants to assimilate (heh heh heh) Data, the friendly android. Speaking of going where no man has gone before!

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The Terminator Series: The film series that turned Arnold Schwarzenegger’s inability to act human into a good thing. In the first film (The Terminator), Ah-nold is a killing robot sent from the future to ventilate hapless waitress Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton); in the second one (T2) Arnie helps the now-buff-but-a-bit-insane Sarah battle an advanced shape-shifting Terminator model. The first one was made for roughly the same amount of money it took to cater the second film, but both are superior examples of the action genre, with smart scripting and well-designed mayhem.

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Time Bandits: Thieving dwarves steal a map from God and blitz through history causing havoc.This one plays like a Monty Python time travel film (right down to the distinctly nasty-yet-funny ending: “Mom! Dad! Don’t touch that! It’s evil!”) and there’s a good reason for that: It’s directed by Python’s Terry Gilliam and features several of his Monty mates, as well as Sean Connery as Agamemnon (presumably before he left for Troy, since when he got back, he was murdered by his wife. Hey, it’s ancient Greece.) Kind of freaky, but a real visual feast, and a lot smarter than most.

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The Time Machine: Well, duh. How can you not include this one? Or these two, actually, since you have your choice: the classic 1960 George Pal version, with Rod Taylor as H. G. Wells, traveling far into the future to find humans divided between the twee, pale Eloi and the brutish, cannibalistic Morlocks, or the 2002 version that features Guy Pearce and a lot of really expensive-looking special effects. (Fun fact: The 2002 version is directed by Simon Wells, H. G. Wells’ distant relative.) Neither version quite picks up that the novel The Time Machine was a socialist allegory about British class divisions, but, hey, like any of that’s gonna play at the drive-ins.

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12 Monkeys: Hey, look, Terry Gilliam’s back again, and this time he’s sending Bruce Willis hurtling through history, from a depressing stink hole of a future to stop a group of bioterrorists from unleashing a plague that wipes out most of humanity. Willis is damn fine as a disoriented, slightly nutty time traveler who can’t quite remember if he’s sane or not, and check out Brad Pitt, who plays a cross-eyed scuzzball and ended up picking up an Oscar nomination for it. Overall, really depressing, but in a good way, not unlike Gilliam’s Brazil or Blade Runner (with which this movie shares a screenwriter).

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

The final episode of M*A*S*H aired on February 28, 1983. It wasn’t just a “TV event” …it was the most-watched episode in scripted TV history.

WAR IS SWELL

M*A*S*H was a sitcom based on a cynical movie inspired by a cynical book about an unpopular war. It was also one of the most successful TV shows of all time. Chronicling the doctors and nurses of the 4077TH Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War (1950-1953), the first season in 1972 drew such low ratings that CBS nearly canceled it. But they gave it a chance, and by season two, M*A*S*H was a top 10 show. For the remainder of its 11-year run, it never fell out of the top 20.

Until 1983, M*A*S*H was a fixture on Monday night at 9:00 PM on CBS. But by the time it ended, it had evolved into a much different show than it had been at the start.

FROM SILLY TO SERIOUS

The biggest reason for M*A*S*H‘s change in tone was Alan Alda, who starred as Captain “Hawkeye” Pierce, the unit’s chief surgeon. After series creator Larry Gelbart left the show in 1976, Alda took over as head writer. He, along with executive producer Burt Metcalfe, convinced CBS to phase out the laugh track and focus less on the doctors’ womanizing and pranks and more on character development and honest depictions of the horrors of war.

Result: M*A*S*H was no longer a comedy with occasional drama, but a drama with occasional comedy. “We’re recreating a time of suffering and joy and revelation that happened to real people at a real time,” said Alda. “We know what they went through. We can’t be casual in the face of that.”

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

M*A*S*H remained popular through all the changes, but after 10 seasons, Alda and company were running out of stories to tell about a three-year war. CBS wasn’t willing to call it a day, though, and convinced Metcalfe and Alda to return for a final season that would conclude in February 1983 with a movie-length finale.

That wasn’t Alda’s first choice. He wanted the last M*A*S*H to be a regular 30-minute episode. At the end of his version, the audience would hear the director yell “Cut!” and the camera would move back to reveal the crew. Alda would take off his surgical mask and address the viewers with a short, heartfelt tribute to veterans.

CBS nixed that plan, so Alda and eight other writers began penning “Goodby, Farewell, and Amen.”

THE WAR AT HOME

When M*A*S*H‘s end date was announced in the fall of 1982, it became the biggest story in entertainment. Many fans mourned the show’s end. “The general viewing audience will feel a tremendous disappointment when M*A*S*H finally goes off the air,” reported Dr. Robert London, a psychiatrist at the NYU Medical Center, adding that viewers might even suffer withdrawal symptoms. (CBS mourned the end of its hit show by 30-second advertising spots on its finale for $450,000 each -about a millions dollars in today’s money.)

In fact, M*A*S*H fans were so eager to find out what would become of Hawkeye, B.J., Col. Potter, Charles, Margaret, Klinger, and Father Mulcahy that a Fall 1982 edition of the National Enquirer promising exclusive scoops on the final episode sold out: “One character goes crazy, one is wounded in action, one leaves early, and one remains in Korea!” (They were right.)

PLAYING CHICKEN

While the final episode was being filmed, a forest fire swept through the outdoor set in the hills outside Malibu, leaving only a burned-out Jeep and the “Best Care Anywhere” sign standing. And only half of the scenes had been shot. Undeterred, Alda wrote the fire into the story: North Koreans had set off incendiary devices, causing a blaze and the evacuation of the 4077th.

(Image credit: Flickr user Danielle Directo-Meston)

On February 28, 1983, “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen” aired on CBS. Directed by Alda, it was unlike any other M*A*S*H episode. It opens with Hawkeye in a mental institution, recalling a horrific experience to Dr. Sidney Freedman (Alan Arbus), M*A*S*H‘s psychiatrist. Over the course of the first hour, Hawkeye reveals a horrific ordeal he experienced while hiding in a bus with some Korean refugees. (A chicken was making noise, putting them all in danger of being captured by the Chinese, so Hawkeye told the woman to “shut the chicken up!” Hawkeye soon remembers that it wasn’t a chicken but a baby, and that the mother had smothered it.) Later, he’s deemed fit to return to duty, but it’s obvious that he’s damaged -especially when he risks his life to drive an abandoned tank out of camp to draw enemy fire away from the hospital.

That took up the first hour; the second hour and a half was about the cease-fire ending the Korean War, and saying goodbye. In the iconic final scene, Hawkeye boards a helicopter and looks down at the camp from above. He sees someone had written “GOODBYE” in rocks on the ground. The helicopter flies away.

THE AFTERM*A*T*H

Even now, 28 years later, “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen” still holds the record for the most-watched scripted TV episode. (The previous record holder was 1980′s “Who Shot J.R?” episode of Dallas.) It’s estimated that between 105 million and 121 million people tuned in, more than half of the U.S. population at the time. No single American TV broadcast surpassed the finale until the 2010 Super Bowl. And it’s likely that M*A*S*H will hold on to this record for a long time, perhaps forever. Why? In the early 1980s, network television was the biggest thing going in home entertainment. But today, audiences are divided among hundreds of cable channels, DVDs, video games, and the Internet.

The M*A*S*H finale was such an event that it affected everyday life. Newspapers reported that more than a million New Yorkers all flushed their toilets at once immediately after the show ended (they’d all waited until the end). According to “The Straight Dope’s” Cecil Adams, it nearly brought on a plumbing catastrophe: “The resultant pressure drop caused a pronounced surge in the two huge tunnels that bring water into New York each day.” And according to New York Magazine, classical radio stations across the country were inundated with requests for a Mozart piece called “Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, K 581″ just after the show. The music figured into a poignant subplot where the snooty Major Charles Emerson Winchester II (David Ogden Stiers) teaches a group of Chinese prisoners of war how to play it.

F*A*C*T*S

* Each main characters exits the show in a different form of vehicle: Hawkeye in a helicopter, B.J. on a motorcycle, Col. Potter (Harry Morgan) on his horse, Charles in a garbage truck, Margaret in a Jeep, Father Mulcahy (William Christopher) in an ambulance, and Corporal Kinger (Jamie Farr) in the back of an oxcart.

* Klinger, Potter, and Mulcahy reunited in the CBS spinoff series AfterMASH, which lasted two seasons (1983-1985). In 1984, CBS aired a pilot called W*A*L*T*E*R about Radar (Gary Burghoff), the camp’s original company clerk, but the show was not picked up.

* During the filming of the finale, the Smithsonian Institution requested that set pieces, props, and costumes be set aside for the Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Later, the M*A*S*H exhibit broke so many attendance records that it was extended for six months, and a few items are still on display today. And if you go to Malibu Creek State Park, about 25 miles north of Los Angeles, you can touch a piece of TV history -a burned-out Jeep carcass from the old 4077th.

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Tunes Into TV.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

The following is an article from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.

Dance marathons started out as innocent fun but wound up as grim as the Depression that ended them.

Post-World War I America was in a mood to break all records: popular events included endurance kissing and hand-holding contests, eating marathons, and flagpole sitting. A guy named Shipwreck Kelly became  national celebrity after sitting atop a flagpole for 7 days, 13 hours, and 13 minutes. When someone challenged Bill Williams to push a peanut up Pike’s Peak with his nose, he agreed. It took him 30 days, and he won $500 (415 euros) for the feat. It all had to do with the mood of the day. But nothing caught the public’s fancy as much as dance marathons.

A CRAZE IS BORN

The birth of U.S. dance marathons can be traced to early 1923 when, inspired by a record  set in Britain a few weeks earlier, Miss Alma Cummings took to the floor of the first American dance marathon, which was held in New York City’s somewhat seedy Audobon Ballroom. Cummings wore out six males partners over the next 27 hours and won a world record. Within a week, a French college student broke that record. A few days later, Cummings retook the title, which was soon broken again, this time by a Cleveland, Ohio, salesgirl. The challenge was on.

A few weeks after Cummings’ win,  a Texas dance hall owner got the brilliant idea of charging spectators admission (25¢ during the day, $1 at night). He gave his first winner -Miss Magdalene Williams- a prize of $50 (42 euros). On April 16, Cleveland’s Madeline Gottschick beat William’s record with a time of 66 hours. Within days, that record was broken three times. On June 10, Bernie Brand danced for 217 hours (more than 9 days) and went home with $5,000 (4,151 euros) in prizes.

In just a few months in 1923, the dance marathon had swept the nation and the world. And so it continued throughout the 1920s.

THE DOWNBEAT

The deaths of a few supposedly healthy young people -including 27-year-old Homer Morehouse from heart failure after 87 hours of dancing- brought some unwelcome attention. Officials banded together with church groups (who saw the marathons as immoral) and movie theater owners (who saw the marathons as competition) to try to stomp out the fad. Critics called the contestants “dangerous, useless, and disgraceful,” and they even likened them to the dancing manias of 14th-century Europe.

TAKE A LOAD OFF

In an effort to save their golden goose, promoters added rest periods during which the dancers could lie down on cots, take hot showers, or have their injuries seen to. Some even let dancers take a short walk outside, but eating was still done while dancing, at chest-high buffet tables set up mid-floor. The length and spacing of rest periods varied from contest to contest: 15 minutes every hour, 11 minutes out of every 90 minutes, and so on. Another change was that couples versus individual contestants became the norm. But a dancer wasn’t stuck with one partner for the duration. If your partner gave out, you could dance solo for a set amount of time while seeking another, healthier partner in the group.  Now, thanks to rest periods and partners who could hold you up while you slept, a marathon could last for weeks. But watching a dance floor full of droopy couples wasn’t going to hold the crowd’s attention, so vaudeville skits were added. So were professional dancers, who worked the crowd and posed as good guys and bad guys, like modern day pro wrestlers.

A marathon that started with 100 contestants would dwindle to the hard core after a week or two. The remaining couple would drag themselves across the floor, but at specific times the emcee would make an announcement, and the dancers would be expected to run a ten-minute footrace or perform an all-out foxtrot or tango -the losers of which would be eliminated.

TALK ABOUT DEPRESSING

Marathons were well established by the arrival of the Depression in 1929, and they became the prefect escape. If you could scrape together the admission, you could come in out of the weather and be entertained; if you were young and strong enough, you could enter and try to win a few thousand dollars. Even if you lost, you’d be well taken care of  while you lasted: three square meals, snacks, and medical teams to treat your injuries and give you rubdowns.

Of course, you could be mistreated, too, by “grinds,” show employees whose job it was to prod contestants who fell behind, or generally harass the dancers to keep things exciting. Promoters staged weddings and fights and it was hard to differentiate between what was staged or genuine. But there was plenty of real drama: sleep-deprived dancers suffered hallucinations and delusions, hysteria, and bouts of temporary amnesia.

THE DANCE IS ENDED

By the mid-1930s, the contests had lost their glitter. What had been lighthearted entertainment became a struggle for survival, and it showed. Dance marathons weren’t fun anymore. The country was in a Depression in more ways than one. The marathoners, once viewed a respectable and plucky, were now viewed as being no better than the vagrants who traveled the country looking for food or work. They became a reminder of the filed American dream; a symbol of just how low the country had fallen.

One by one, states and cities across the country banned dance marathons. The shows continued on a small scale until the mid-1940s, but their heyday had long passed. Danceathons gave way to walkathons, which gave way to skateathons, which birthed the roller derby. But that’s another story.

(YouTube link)

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.

The book is a compendium of entertaining information chock-full of facts on a plethora of history topics. Uncle John’s first plunge into history was a smash hit – over half a million copies sold! And this sequel gives you more colorful characters, cultural milestones, historical hindsight, groundbreaking events, and scintillating sagas.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute

Sending a sick person a thousand paper cranes, each one folded from a single square of paper, is a tradition that originated in Japan and has spread all over the world. Here’s the story of a little girl who helped turn it into an international phenomenon.

CHILDHOOD, INTERRUPTED

In the fall of 1954, an 11-year-old Japanese girl named Sadako Sasaki came down with what her family thought was a cold …until they found large lumps on her neck and behind her ears. That was enough to terrify any parent, but Sadako’s family had a special reason to worry: They lived in Hiroshima, and and were just a mile from ground zero on August 6, 1945, when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city in the closing days of World War II.

Sadako, two years old at the time of the bombing, had escaped the blast with only minor injuries. But she and her family were caught in the shower of “black rain” -radioactive fallout- as they fled the city. Now, nearly a decade later, as Sadako’s condition worsened her parent’s thoughts turned to “A-bomb disease,” the catchall name that many Japanese gave to radiation-induced illnesses. In early 1955, doctors confirmed the Sasaki’s worst fears: Sadako had leukemia, most likely caused by exposure to radiation. She had less than a year to live and needed to be hospitalized right away.

THE GIFT

Sadako’s parents could not bring themselves to tell her what was wrong or what her prognosis was. They just told her that she would have to stay in the hospital until her lumps went away.

While Sadako was living at the hospital, a group of high school students from Nagoya sent the patient a gift of senbazuru -a thousand folded paper cranes, strung together like beads on a necklace. In Japan and other Asian cultures, the crane is symbol of long life, and it is common to give paper cranes as gifts to newlyweds, to children, and to the sick. The high school students intended the cranes as a gift to the hibakusha (“bomb-affected people”) at the hospital, to give them strength.

A WISH UPON A CRANE

(Image credit: Flickr user Jonathan Moreau)

Tradition also has it that when a person folds a thousand paper cranes, the mythical crane of Japanese folklore will grant a wish. Inspired by the gift, Sadako began folding her own paper cranes in the hope that the crane would grant her wish for a cure.

Paper was scarce in postwar Japan, so Sadako used whatever she could get her hands on: wrapping paper from the gifts she received, envelopes from get-well cards, notebook paper that her classmates brought when they came to visit, and even the tiny pieces of waxed paper that many of her pills were wrapped in. She cut everything into squares and folded the squares into cranes. When the squares of paper were too tiny for her to fold with her fingers, she made the folds using a straight pin.

In the eight months that Sadako lived in the hospital, she folded more than 1,300 cranes in all. She went on folding them until the middle of October 1955, when she became too ill to continue. She passed away on October 25 at the age of 12.

JOURNEY’S END

Sadako’s death was expected, but it was still a shock to her classmates, a third of whom were also survivors of the Hiroshima blast. They wanted to remember Sadako in some meaningful way, and decided to rise funds for a monument that would memorialize not just her but every child who’d been killed by the atom bombs. When they passed out leaflets at an annual meeting of junior high school principals, their local campaign grew into a national one. Many of the principals brought the idea back to their own schools and encouraged their students to get involved. Japanese newspapers and radio stations got behind the effort, and soon Sadako’s classmates had more than enough money to pay for the memorial. On May 5, 1958, just two and a half years after Sadako’s death, the Children’s Peace Monument -a bronze statue of Sadako atop a giant pedestal, her outstretched arms holding a giant folded paper crane- was dedicated in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park.

(Image credit: Wikipedia user Robert Atendido)

After the Children’s Peace Monument was dedicated, Sadako’s story began to spread beyond Japan. Over the years it has been the subject of numerous children’s books, songs, plays, and musicals, as well as film and television shows. her story is taught in schools all over the world. Many include paper crane folding as part of the instruction, and the school send the completed senbazuru to the Children’s Peace Monument in Hiroshima, where they are put on display. Today, more than a half century after the statue was dedicated, the monument still receives more than ten tons of folded paper cranes each year from children (and adults) all over the world.

CRANES FOR KUWAIT

After the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation in 1991, Sadako’s story was taught in Kuwaiti schools, and the children there learned to fold paper cranes as a means of helping them deal with the trauma they experienced during the occupation. Following the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11, many strands of senbazuru were left on the fence surrounding Ground Zero in a spontaneous outpouring of sympathy for the victims of the tragedy.

Today Sadako Sasaki’s older brother Masahiro, now in his late sixties, travels the world telling his sister’s story as a means of furthering the cause of peace. The Sasaki family long ago donated all but five of Sadako’s original cranes to the Children’s Peace Monument in Hiroshima. On the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Masahiro Sasaki presented one of the family’s five remaining cranes, folded by Sadako out of the waxed paper from one of her pills, to the WTC Visitors Center in New York. Small enough to fit on a thumbnail, the tiny red crane is on permanent display along with the senbazuru collected from the fence at Ground Zero. “I hope that by talking about the small wish for peace, the small ripple will become bigger and bigger,” Sasaki says.

(Image credit: Tribute WTC Visitors Center)

IN PERSON

If you ever visit Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park, be sure to visit the Children’s Peace Monument and see the thousands of folded paper cranes on display there.  Ring the Peace Bell, another popular memorial, and visit the Peace Flame. Unlike many memorial flames, this one is not eternal: It will be extinguished when the last nuclear weapon has disappeared from Earth.

___________________

The article above was reprinted with permission from the newest volume of the Bathroom reader series, Uncle John’s 24-Karat Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

People around the world have been trying to regulate music for centuries, but in the 1980s, Tipper Gore launched the first campaign to rate albums. Here’s the story of how a vice-president’s wife took on graphic lyrics in music and won …sort of.

DARLING TIPPER

In 1984, Tipper Gore, wife of then-senator Al Gore, bought Prince’s Purple Rain album for her 11-year-old daughter Karenna. They put on the VD and Gore liked it …until she got to “Darling Nikki,” a very sexually explicit song, and one Gore thought was inappropriate for an 11-year-old. Had she known, she never would have bought the album.

Gore did some more “research” on the level of vulgarity in popular music -she watched MTV for a few hours and found more songs that troubled her, including Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher,” and Mötley Crüe’s “Looks That Kill.” “The images frightened my children, they frightened me,” she said. “The graphic sex and the violence were too much for us to handle.”

She started talking to some friends -wives of prominent Washington businessmen and politicians- and decided to use her influence to do something about it. With Susan Baker (wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker) , Pam Howar (wife of powerful realtor Raymond Howar), and Sally Nevius (wife of Washington City Council chairman John Nevius), Gore formed the Parents Music Resource Center, or PMRC, in 1985.

PMRC’s stated goal: to raise parental awareness of “the growing trend in music towards lyrics that are sexually explicit, excessively violent, or glorify the use of drugs and alcohol.” The group even suggested that the increase in some crimes in the previous 30 years directly correlated with the popularity of rock music -rape was up 7% since 1955 and teenage suicide was up 300%.

PMRC TO RIAA: X, V, D/A, O!

In early 1985, the PMRC sent a letter to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA, the music industry trade organization) and asked it to stop releasing sexually explicit or violent recordings, or at the very least, give albums a rating so parents could judge for themselves if the music is appropriate for their child. “Exercise voluntary self-restraint,” the letter read, “perhaps by developing guidelines and/or a rating system, such as that of the movie industry.” Gore actually had a very specific labeling program in mind. Sexual content would be marked with an “X,” violent content would be marked with a “V,” drug and alcohol mentions got a “D/A,” and promotion of occult themes got an “O.” The letter, signed by the wives of over 20 Washington politicians and businessmen, was sent to 62 record companies as well. Only seven responded and all refused to implement any changes.

THE LINK BETWEEN MUSIC AND HEARING LOSS

In 1985, using their clout (i.e. their husbands), the PMRC convinced the United States Senate to hold hearings on the alarming content of popular music. The PMRC testified, detailing their concerns about the harmful effects of sex and violence in music. Several major musicians testified against the PMRC. John Denver said he was “strongly opposed to censorship of any kind,” partially because censors often misinterpret music. (In 1973, when the government was in the midst of an anti-drug crackdown, the FCC asked many radio stations the refrain from playing Denver’s song “Rocky Mountain High,” even though the song is really about enjoying nature.) Dee Snider of the band Twisted Sister argued a similar point: Gore said his song “Under the Blade,” which Snider said he wrote about an upcoming surgery, was about bondage and rape. “Mrs. Gore was looking for sadomasochism and bondage, and she found it. Someone looking for surgical references would have found those as well.”

But Frank Zappa gave the most pointed commentary. “The proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes on the civil liberties of people who are not children, and promises to keep the courts busy for years with the interpretational problems inherent in the proposal’s design.”

Zappa went so far as to suggest that the RIAA and Congress had made a deal: The RIAA would agree to some meaningless, superficial labeling (to look good in the public eye. In return, Congress would pass a bill that the RIAA was strongly lobbying for: the Home Recording Act, which would outlaw copying music onto blank tapes (the RIAA said unauthorized copying had cost them billions in sales).

CENSORSHIP? OH, BE QUIET

Gore repeatedly assured the Senate and the public that what she was trying to do was create accountability, and let parents know what kind of music their kids were listening to -that it definitely not censorship. But was it? While the PMRC’s most talked-about goal was the labeling system, it actually had some other demands, too. They wanted to:

* establish a rating system for albums and concerts

* require song lyrics to be printed on album covers

* have albums with explicit cover art kept under store counters

* make record companies break contracts with performer who engaged in violent or sexually explicit onstage behavior

* pressure radio and television not to air objectionable artists

Some of those points were unrealistic (it would be impossible to print an entire album’s worth of lyrics on the cover of a CD or cassette), but politicians ultimately found themselves having to agree that forcing record companies or radio stations to ban any musicians the PMRC found offensive would violate the artists’ First Amendment rights.

DID IT STICK?

On November 1, 1985, before he hearings were even over, the RIAA bowed to the pressure of the PMRC (and growing public sentiment -a national poll said 75 percent of Americans favored a labeling system). Ultimately the RIAA agreed to place stickers reading “Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics” on albums deemed offensive. Record companies would do so (and determine what albums get stickers) at their own discretion. Every objectionable album would get the same sticker, not a specific label as Gore had initially proposed. The “Parental Advisory” sticker would have no legally binding effect on stores. It didn’t prevent stores from selling stickered albums to minors, nor did it require them to keep offensive albums behind the counter, unless they wanted to. Wal-Mart opted not to carry stickered albums at all (a poicy that still stands).

THE OPPOSITE EFFECT

So did labeling curb “offensive” music, or at least get kids to stop listening to it? Probably not. In fact in Heavy: The Story of Metal, a documentary about 1980s hard rock, members of the bands Mötley Crüe, Quiet Riot, and Poison all claim their album sales went up after getting stickered. “The sticker almost guaranteed your record would be bought by rebellious kids,” said Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx.

___________________

The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges into Music.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Think the old woman who lived in a shoe had weird taste in housing? It turns out she was just ahead of her time. Buildings can look like all sorts of things, even…

AN IGLOO

(Image credit: City Profile)

Crouched on the Parks Highway about 180 miles outside of Anchorage, Alaska, is a hulking, four-story igloo. Its dome can be spotted from an airplane flying at 30,000 feet. Built in the 1970s, the igloo was meant to give tourists a chance to visit a “real” Alaskan igloo. Igloo City, as it’s known, has been a convenience store, a gas station, a makeshift triage clinic for a man attacked by a grizzly bear, and an emergency airplane refueling stop (a small plane once landed on the highway and and taxied in for gas). But other than part of the ground floor, the igloo itself has never been used. It was supposed to be a motel, but the couple who built it forgot something important: building codes. The structure never passed inspection, and its owners went broke.

…THE WORLD’S LARGEST CHEST

In the 1920s, the High Point, North Carolina, Chamber of Commerce built its first building-size chest of drawers. Twenty feet tall, the chest served as the Chamber’s Bureau of Information and helped to promote the city’s image as the “Furniture Capital of the World.” In 1996 the chest was augmented, making it 38 feet tall. In 2010, upset with the city’s refusal to help with the upkeep of the landmark, Pam Stern, the building’s owner, had the chest measured for a giant bra: 20 feet of silk, Spandex, and underwiring. (Get it? A chest of drawers.) HanesBrands, Inc., maker of Playtex bras, sent engineers over to take the chest’s measurements. Whether the city will permit the chest to wear the bra remains unknown at this time.

…A CHICKEN

(Image credit: Flicker user Brent Moore)

A 56-foot tall chicken head juts from the roof of the Kentucky Fried Chicken at the corner of Roswell Street and Cobb Parkway in Marietta, Georgia. Locals use it as a landmark when giving directions: “Turn right, after you pass the Big Chicken.” The architectural whimsy, built in 1963, was a Johnny Reb’s Chick, Chuck and Shakes fried-chicken restaurant until 1966, when the owner, Tubby Davis,  sold it to his brother, who turned it into a KFC. In 1993 the chicken suffered wind damage and might have been demolished were it not considered too important to be axed. Reason: pilots use the building as a reference point when approaching Atlanta and nearby Dobbins Air Reserve Base.

…A NAUTILUS SHELL

In 2006 a young family in Mexico City decided to ditch their conventional home and build one more in harmony with nature. From above, their new house looks like the perfect spiral of a nautilus shell. From the lawn, it looks like a soft-serve ice cream sundae. The frame for the building consists of  steel-reinforced chicken wire that’s covered in a two-inch layer of stucco. Stained glass bubbles in the walls sparkle like sunlight on water. A stone walkway spirals from room to room on a bed of live plants, creating the sensation of floating above the ocean floor. The bathroom’s sandy walls and blue tile offers user the illusion of being underwater. Family members say the Nautilus House makes them feel “like a mollusk in its shell, moving from one chamber to another.”

…MR. ROBOTO

(Image credit: Oran Viriyincy)

In 1986 Thai architect Sumet Jumsai designed the new Bank of Asia in Bangkok to reflect the computerization of banking going on at the time. Result: the $10 million, 20-story building looks like a giant LEGO robot. The “robot” has two antennae that serve as lightning rods, and glass eyes with louvered metallic lids that serve as windows. Jumsai wanted the building to “free the spirit from the present architectual intellectual impasse and propel it forward to the next century.” The inspiration for what has been called a post-high-tech miracle? His son’s toy robot.

…AN EGG

(Image credit: vercruysse frederik)

The owner of a European ad agency wanted to add an office next to her lakeside home in Belgium, and hired the design firm dmvA to come up with something organic-looking that could be built without cutting down a single tree. Local authorities refused to issue a building permit because city council members thought the design was too weird: The building -nicknamed “the blob”-  looked like a giant white egg. To get around the council, the designer turned the egg into a mobile unit so it would qualify as a work or art, not a building. The structure consists of a wooden frame covered with a polyester skin and an ultra-modern grid of niches molded into the interior for storage. The interior features lighting, a sleeping shelf, a kitchen, and a bathroom. The pointy end of the egg (the egg is on its side)opens up to create a porch. After the project, known as the Blob VB3, was completed, the unique structure appeared in a Belgian newspaper under the heading “Art skirts building regulations.” The next day, some at the building council showed up to warn the owner that if the egg was placed near the house, there would be consequences. Dubbed the “rovin’ ovum” by its fans, the Blob VB3 went on the auction block in 2010. (No word as to whether anyone has the huevos to buy it.)

…A HOUSE ON STILTS

Architect Terunobu Fujimori has a weird way of getting approval for his unique designs. He invites clients to join him in his tiny Takasugi-an -his “Too-High Teahouse.” Perched 20 feet in the air, the 30-square-foot private teahouse in Chino, Japan, balances on two forked tree trunks that resemble spindly chicken legs. Once clients have climbed the ladders to the house, he shows them his hand-drawn plans. “If they don’t like my design, I shake the building!” he says with a laugh.

…A PEACH

The 150-foot-tall water tower outside Gaffney, South Carolina, was built to catch the eye of motorists speeding by along I-85. It looks like a gigantic peach. In 1981, when the tower went up, the local economy depended on peach orchards. Townspeople wanted it known that Cherokee County, where Gaffney is located, grew more peaches per year than the whole state of Georgia (the “Peach State”). Macro-artist Peter Freudenberg studied local peaches for many hours and used 50 gallons of paint in 20 different colors to make the peach hyper-realistic. Features include a 7-ton, 60-foot-long leaf, and an enormous vertical cleft in its backside, leading to the nickname “Moon over Gaffney.”

___________________

The article above was reprinted with permission from the newest volume of the Bathroom reader series, Uncle John’s 24-Karat Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

…this app will give you a daily dose of the best of what Uncle John has to offer. You never know what’ll pop up: One day it might be a dumb crook, the next day, a popular myth from history debunked. With one click you can share your favorite Uncle John’s facts via email, Twitter, and Facebook. You can even enable push notifications to get daily facts or the weekly article sent directly to your home screen without having to open the app. And when you need a bit of bathroom humor, go ahead and squeeze the little yellow ducky—he’ll fart. (How many other apps can make you smarter and make fart noises?)

But that’s not all -Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader books are available now in ebook format, starting with nine of the most popular titles!

In honor of these new products, Uncle John is giving away free apps and books to Neatorama readers! We have five Bathroom Reader Mobile Apps for iPad or iPhone* to give away and five paperback copies of Uncle John’s newest book, Uncle John’s 24-Karat Bathroom Reader.

There are two ways to enter. You can leave a comment here, and tell us whether you prefer the app or the book. Or you can Tweet to your friends about the contest, directing them to this post and using the hashtag #neatUJ, and you’ll be entered as well! We will draw ten winners, five from those who choose each prize, on Friday evening.

Meanwhile, how many of your friends and family members would like an Uncle John’s Mobile App for Christmas? Get them while they’re hot! And check out Uncle John’s new ebookstore, too!

*(The Android version of the app is not yet available for giveaway.)

Update: Congratulations to the five who won the apps: iain, Akik P, anonymous coward, TohAtin, and Ben Ratner! And congratulations to the five who won paperback copies of Uncle John’s 24-Karat Bathroom Reader: e kolter, Miles G,  Shae, Dougert, and Brad!

Ever wonder how the Santa Claus of 21st-century Christmas lore came about? Here’s the story of how an almost completely unknown bishop became the most recognized holiday character in Western civilization.

A MAN NAMED NICHOLAS

In the fourth century A.D., a man named Nicholas became the bishop of a village called Myra in what is now Turkey.

That’s all we know about him.

Nevertheless, Bishop Nicholas of Myra was later canonized and went on to become the most popular saint in all of Christianity. He is the guardian saint of Russia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Norway, and Greece. He is the patron saint of children, virgins, pawnbrokers, pirates, thieves, brewers, pilgrims, fishermen, barrel makers, dyers, butchers, meatpackers, and haberdashers. He has more churches named after him than any of the apostles. And he has evolved into one of the best-known characters in the world -the fat, jolly, red-suited Santa Claus who delivers presents on Christmas Eve, St. Nick.

How did it happen? It took centuries.

MAKING A SAINT

It’s a pretty safe guess that the real Nicholas of Myra was a kind and generous man, because most of the legends attributed to him describe kind acts toward children. Here are two of the most famous:

1. The Three Daughters. Nicholas was walking past a house when he overheard a man telling his three daughters that he was selling them into prostitution because he didn’t have enough money for the dowries that would make them desirable wives. Later that night, Nicholas snuck back to the house and threw a bag of gold through a window. He did the same thing the following night, and then again a third night, providing enough gold for all three daughter’s dowries. (According to a later version of the story, one of the bags landed in a stocking that was hung out to dry over a fireplace.)

Because of this, he became the patron saint of young brides and unmarried women. And because he delivered financial aid at a time when the girls needed it the most, pawnbrokers made him their patron saint. To this day, the symbol of the pawnbroker trade is three balls of gold -a spinoff of St. Nick’s three bags of gold.

2. The Three Boys. For centuries, it was common to paint St. Nicholas holding his three bags of gold. But not every artist painted them well …and at some point during the Middle Ages, artist painting new pictures of the saint began mistaking the bags for three human heads. To explain this image, a second legend evolved. According to this tale, St. Nicholas checked into an inn during a terrible famine and was surprised when the innkeeper served him meat -which had been unobtainable for months- for dinner. Suspecting the worst, Nicholas snuck down into the cellar and found the pickled bodies of three murdered young boys floating in a barrel. He restored the boys to life and helped them escape.

ST. NICK AND KIDS

These tales helped make St. Nick the patron saint of children. And to honor him, Europeans began giving gifts to their children on the eve of the feast of St. Nicholas, which fell on December 6.

(Image credit: Flickr user Roel Wijnants)

Nicholas was especially popular in Holland. The Dutch St. Nick was tall and gaunt, wore the traditional dress of a bishop, including the pointed bishop’s hat (a mitre), and carried a long shepherd’s staff. He also rode on a donkey, not in a sleigh. Later, it became a white horse. On St. Nicholas’s Eve, children left shoes filled with straw for the donkey, and by morning the straw was gone and their shoes were filled with presents.

ST. NICK ARRIVES IN AMERICA

In 1664, the flourishing Dutch colony of New Amsterdam was taken over by British forces -who renamed it “New York” after the Duke of York.

For the next 200 years or so, the Dutch citizens of the colony waged a losing battle to preserve what was left of their culture and traditions. One of the most active groups was an association of Dutch intellectuals who called themselves the “Knickerbockers.”

FATHER KNICKERBOCKER

Writer Washington Irving was a member of the group, and in 1809 he published a satirical version of Dutch traditions in a book called The Knickerbocker’s History of New York. It contained several dozen references to “Sinter Klaas” (an adaptation of “Sint Nikolass”), including a tale of how he flew across the sky in a wagon and dropped presents down chimneys for good little girls and boys -not just on Christmas, but on any day he felt like it.

Irving “created a new popularity for the bishop,” Teresa Chris write in The Story of Santa Claus. “He saw Saint Nicholas in America not in clerical robes, but as a jolly fellow, like the good Dutch burghers.” And New Yorkers loved the image.

Irving’s description of the saint rapidly became known to New Yorkers. The English settlers enthusiastically adopted the joyful Dutch celebrations of St. Nicholas’ Day, but they gradually merged them with their own traditions of celebrating Christmas or the New Year. It is not hard to see how Sinter Klaas became Santa Claus in the mouths of English-speaking New Yorkers.

SANTA’S HELPER: CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE

A most important contributor to the modern image of Santa was a professor of divinity in New York -Dr. Clement Clarke Moore.

When Moore, a friend of Washington Irving, sat down to write his children a Christmas poem in 1822, he was heavily influenced by Irving’s vision of Sinter Klaas and his flying wagon and gift-giving. But Moore made a few more alterations to make the story more believable. For example, Chris writes, “The clogs that the Dutch children left by the chimney corner on December 6 became something all children could relate to in cold weather -stockings.” And the wagon became a “miniature sleigh” pulled by “eight tiny reindeer.”

The sleigh and horse with its bells was a common means of transport in New England…And for it to be pulled by reindeer gave St. Nick an exotic link with the North -a land of cold and snow where few, if any people traveled and hence was mysterious and remote.

Moore described Santa as a dwarfish “jolly old elf,” dressed in furs who goes down chimneys to give children their gifts. Moore even gave the reindeer names: Dasher, Dancer, prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder, and Blitzen. Other Christmas stories have portrayed St. Nicholas on a white horse, or with one or two reindeer -one version even had him in a cart pulled by a goat- but Moore’s account was so vivid and compelling that it became the standard.

RELUCTANT HERO

Moore never intended for anyone other than his children to hear A Visit From St. Nicholas -in fact, for more than 20 years he refused to admit he was the author (apparently because he was afraid it would damage his standing in the stuffy academic community of the 10th century). But his wife liked the story so much that she sent copies to her friends …and somehow the poem wound up printed anonymously in the Troy, New York Sentinel on December 23, 1823. It eventually became known as The Night Before Christmas. It was so popular that within a decade it had become a central part of the Santa legend…as well as the best-known poem in American history.

Now Santa had a personality and a mission, and was permanently linked to Christmas. But what did he look like?

SANTA’S HELPER: THOMAS NAST

In the mid 1800s, it was popular to draw St. Nick either in his bishop’s robes or as a man with a pointed hat, long coat, and straight beard. Sometimes he even had black hair.

This changed in 1863, when Harper’s Weekly hired 21-year-old Thomas Nast to draw a picture of Santa Claus bringing gifts to Union troops fighting the Civil War. The Santa that Nast drew combined Clement Moore’s description of St. Nicholas in his poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas” with, believe it or not …Uncle Sam. Nast’s Santa was a jolly, roly-poly old man who wore a star-spangled jacket, striped pants, and a cap.

“The drawing boosted the the spirits of soldiers and civilians alike alike because it showed that the spirit of Christmas had come to the Civil War,” says historian James I. Robertson. It was so popular, that every year, for 40 years, when the magazine asked Nast to draw Santas, he stuck with the same concept -although he did drop the stars and stripes in favor of a plain wool suit. “Hence,” Robinson says, “the American Santa Claus took shape by repetition. We just became accustomed to this same figure.”

A GROWING IMAGE

Nast added new little details every Christmas: one year he showed Santa pouring over a list of naughty and nice children; another year showed him in a toy workshop in the North Pole.

Nast also went on the become the most famous political cartoonist of the 19th century -he’s responsible for giving the Democratic Party its donkey and the Republican Party its elephant- but his Santa drawings are his best remembered works.

In fact, Nast almost singlehandedly established the Santa “image” as it is today… except in one major area: the color of his suit. That was a product of Coca-Cola.

SANTA’S HELPER: HADDON SUNDBLOM

In 1931, the Coca-Cola company hired an artist named Haddon Sundblom to create the artwork for a massive Christmas advertising campaign they were preparing.

Until then, the soda was primarily a summer drink, with sales dropping off sharply in the cooler winter months. Coke hoped to reverse this trend by somehow linking the drink to the winter holidays…and they decided the most effective way to do that would be to make Santa a Coke drinker. Sundblom was told to create a painting of Mr. Claus that the company could use in magazine advertisements.

Sundblom’s first brainstorm was to dump Nast’s black-and-white Santa suit in favor of one in Coca-Cola red and white. Then he managed to find a real-life retired Coca-Cola sales rep named Lou Prentice who looked so much like Santa he could be used as a model. Prior to the Sundblom illustrations,” Mark Pendergrast writes in For God, Country, and Coca-Cola, “the Christmas saint had been variously illustrated wearing blue, yellow, green, or red… After the soft drink ads Santa would forever be a huge, fat, relentlessly happy man with a broad belt and black hip boots-and he would wear Coca-Cola red… while Coca-Cola has had a subtle, pervasive influence on our culture, it has directly shaped the way we think of Santa.”

SANTA’S HELPER: ROBERT MAY

More commercial influence: In 1939, Montgomery Ward hired ad man Robert May to pen a Christmas poem that their department store Santas could give away during the holiday season.

He came up with one he called “Rollo the Red-Nosed reindeer.” Executives of the company accepted it, but didn’t like the name Rollo. So May renamed the reindeer Reginald -the only name he could think of that preserved the poem’s rhythm. Montgomery Ward rejected that name, too. Try as he might, May couldn’t come up with another name that fit -until his four-year-old daughter suggested Rudolph. the rest is history. When the poem was put to music and recorded by singing cowboy Gene Autry, it became the second-bestselling single in history.

________________________________

The article above is reprinted with permission from The Best of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

When TV characters cook, the results are often disgusting.

Drink: Flaming Homer

Show: The Simpsons (1991)

Origin: Homer is bored at home one night -forced to watch his in-law’s vacation slides- and he doesn’t have any beer, so he makes a cocktail from whatever he can find. He pours the leftover bits from several liquor bottles into a blender, along with the accidental addition of “Krusty’s Non-Narkotic Kough Syrup.” Homer thinks it tastes okay… but it’s even better after it’s lit afire by a stray cigarette ash. “I don’t know the scientific explanation, but fire made it good,” Homer says when he recreates the “Flaming Homer” at Moe’s Tavern. Moe then steals the idea and starts serving the drink (for $6.95) and renames it “The Flaming Moe.”

Food: Chocolate Salty Balls

Show: South Park (1998)

Origin: When the Sundance Film Festival comes to town, the soul-singing school cafeteria cook Chef (voice of Isaac Hayes) opens a stand to sell cookies to tourists. His most popular item: His “Chocolate Salty Balls.” It’s a blatant double entendre, and Chef even sings a song about them: “Hey, everybody, have you seen my balls? They’re big and salty and brown!” The song (which reached #1 in England) gives the recipe: cinnamon, egg whites, melted butter, flour, unsweetened chocolate, brandy, vanilla, and sugar. (Curiously, it doesn’t call for salt.)

(Image credit: Garnished Adventures)

Drink: Thankstini

Show: How I Met Your Mother (2005)

Origins: This cocktail, a martini, invented by booze-swilling playboy Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), combines Thanksgiving food with booze. It’s made from two ounces of potato vodka, four ounces of cranberry juice …and a bouillon cube for that poultry flavor. Barney remarks that it “tastes just like a turkey dinner.”

Food: Skip’s Scramble

Show: Arrested Development (2005)

Origin: On one episode, characters eat Sunday brunch at a bistro called Skip’s Church (the joke being that people “skip church” to go there). A brief shot of the menu shows standard brunch fare, along with an omelet called Skips Scramble. Its description: “Too many choices? Menu too big to swallow? Let Skip serve you up a scram that has something from every dish on the menu. It will knock you into next week!” Price: $47.95. The dish includes eggs, ten slices of bacon, ham, peppers, onion, sausage, and a chocolate glazed doughnut. (The menu also features the disclaimer that Skip’s Church is “not responsible for medical bills of deformities resulting from the digestion of its menu items.”)

(YouTube link)

Drink: Killer Shrew

Show: Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1992)

Origin: On an episode of the movie send-up show revolving around the 1959 movie called Killer Shrews, Joel (Joel Hodgson) and his robot companions devise the “Killer Shrew,” a cocktail that’s non-alcoholic but not very healthy. The recipe: combine chocolate chip ice cream, Cap’n Crunch with Crunchberries, Peanut M&Ms, pancake syrup, Circus Peanuts, Mr. Pibb, Marshmallow Peeps, Sweet Tarts candies, vanilla cake frosting, and Good & Plenty in a blender. Then, “pour into a plastic tulip vase” and throw in a wind-up toy shrew. Joel took a sip… and fell into a diabetic coma from all the sugar. (Note: If you throw in wax lips, it’s no longer a Killer Shrew; it’s a “Vulcan Mind Probe.”)

(Image source: iCarly)

Food: Spaghetti Tacos

Show: iCarly (2009)

Origin: One on episode of the popular nickelodeon comedy, Spencer (Jerry Trainor) had no idea what to make for dinner. So he invented spaghetti tacos, hard taco shells filled with noodles and marinara sauce. Since that episode aired in 2009, the food became a cultural phenomenon both on the show and in real life. In one episode, characters oversee a spaghetti-taco-making contest on a cable show, and in the real world, spaghetti tacos were the most-requested food item at American school cafeterias in 2010. “Spaghetti tacos made it possible to eat spaghetti in your car,” said Syracuse University pop-culture professor Robert Thompson in The New York Times. “It’s an important technological development.”

(YouTube link)

Drink: Bloody Awful

Show: Top Gear (2008)

Origin: This British show about cars and other manly stuff is co-hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, who came up with this recipe for what he calls “a man’s V8 smoothie.” And that’s not V8, as in the vegetable drink- that’s V8, as in the high-powered car engine, which he used to power a blender. Into that blender were placed a few pounds of raw beef with the bones, a dozen hot chilies, a half gallon of Bovril (a meat flavoring agent and tenderizer), two cups of Tabasco sauce…and a brick.

Food: Shepherd’s Pie Trifle

Show: Friends (1999)

Origin: In a Thanksgiving episode, chef Monica (Courtney Cox) makes a holiday feast, while Rachel (Jennifer Anniston) volunteers to make a trifle for dessert. The British dish is traditionally made up of cake, custard, and fruit, but when the pages of Rachel’s cookbook get stuck together, she inadvertently mixes in the ingredients of shepherd’s pie with the trifle, making for a disgusting crossbreed of the two. Joey (Matt LeBlanc), who has a huge appetite, doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with the dish, and eats the whole thing himself. “What’s not to like? Custard, good. Jam, good. Meat, good.” Ross disagrees, saying that it “tastes like feet.”

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Tunes Into TV.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

If you’ve ever visited the Hawaiian islands, you may already know that one of them, Niihau, west of Kauai, is off-limits to outsiders. Here’s the story of how that came to be, and what life on the island is like today.

In 1863 Eliza McHutchison Sinclair, the wealthy 63-year-old widow of a Scottish sea captain, set sail with her children and grandchildren from New Zealand for Vancouver Island off the southwest coast of Canada. There she hoped to buy a ranch large enough to support the dozen family members who were traveling with her, but after arriving in Canada, she decided the country was too rough for a ranch to be successful. Someone suggested she try her luck in the kingdom of Hawaii, 2,400 miles west of North America in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. On September 17, 1863, she and her family sailed into Honolulu harbor, and quickly became friends with King Kamehameha IV.

The Sinclairs toured the islands looking for suitable ranch property. They turned down an opportunity to buy much of what is now downtown Honolulu and Waikiki beach, and they passed on a chance to buy much of the land in and around Pearl Harbor. “After some months of looking,” Eliza’s daughter Anne recalled years later, “we gave up and decided to leave for California. When King Kamehameha heard of this he told us that if we would stay in Hawaii he would sell us a whole island.”

(Image credit: Polihale at en.wikipedia)

SALE PENDING

The island was Niihau (pronounced NEE-ee-HAH-oo), a 72-square-mile island 18 miles off the southwest coast of Kauai. Population: about three hundred natives. Anne’s brothers, Francis and James Sinclair, had a look and liked what they saw. They offered King Kamehameha $6,000 in gold; the King countered with $10,000 (about $1.5 million in today’s money). Sold! Kameha­meha IV died before the sale could be completed, but his successor, King Kamehameha V, honored the deal. In 1864 the Sinclairs ponied up about 68 pounds of gold, and Niihau has been the family’s private property ever since.

CAVEAT EMPTOR

Eliza Sinclair

History (including Hawaiian history) is filled with examples of indigenous peoples being cheated out of their land by unscrupulous outsiders, but this may be a case where the natives pulled one over on the foreigners. When the Sinclair brothers first laid eyes on Niihau, the island was lush and green, seemingly the perfect place to set up a ranch. What Kamehameha apparently did not tell them was that the island was coming off of two years of unusually wet weather. Normally it was semi-arid, almost a desert. Niihau sits in the “rain shadow” of Kauai and receives just 25 inches of rain a year, compared to more than 450 inches on the wettest parts of Kauai. Droughts on Niihau are so severe that it was common for the Niihauans to abandon their island for years on end until the rains returned. If they didn’t leave, they starved.

Indeed, the only reason the island was available for sale—and the reason Kamehameha was so eager to unload it—was because it was so barren. After the Great Mahele (“division”) of 1848, when the monarchy made land available for purchase by native Hawaiians for the first time, the Niihauans had tried to buy the island themselves. They’d hoped to pay for it with crops and animals raised on the island, but the land wasn’t productive enough for them to do it, not even when the price of the land was just a few pennies an acre. They ended up having to lease the island from the King instead, at an even lower price. By the time the Sinclairs sailed into Honolulu harbor in September 1863, the Niihauans had fallen so far behind on even these meager payments that Kamehameha IV was ready to sell the island to someone else.

HEDGING HER BETS

The Sinclair/Robinson Family

After the sale went through, the Sinclairs built a large house on the west coast of Niihau and set up their ranch. But the dry weather returned, and it became evident that the operation might never be successful. Luckily, Eliza Sinclair still had plenty of gold left, and in the 1870s she bought 21,000 acres of land on Kauai that the family developed into a sugarcane plantation. It, too, remains in the family to this day. (In 1902 Eliza’s grandson bought the island of Lanai at a property auction, making the family sole owners of two of the eight inhabited Hawaiian Islands…but only for a time. They sold Lanai to the Hawaiian Pineapple Company—now part of Dole—in 1922.)

CHANGES, CHANGES, EVERYWHERE

When King Kamehameha V signed ownership of the island over to the Sinclairs, he told them, “Niihau is yours. But the day may come when Hawaiians are not as strong in Hawaii as they are now. When that day comes, please do what you can to help them.” The Sinclairs, it turned out, were more than just the owners of an island—they were also the rulers of the Hawaiians who lived on Niihau…at least those who chose to stay on the island after it changed hands. Having their land sold out from under them was a bitter blow to the Niihauans, and many moved off the island. By 1866 the native population of Niihau was half of what it had been in 1860.

Those Niihauans who moved away soon discovered that change was coming to all the islands, not just to Niihau. And few of the changes would be to their benefit. In 1887 a group of armed American and European landowners forced King Kalakaua to sign what has become known as the Bayonet Constitution, which stripped the king of much of his power and denied many native Hawaiians the right to vote. According to the new constitution, foreign-born landowners were allowed to vote, even if they weren’t Hawaiian citizens.

Kalakaua died in 1891, and his sister Liliuokalani became Queen. In 1893 she tried to replace the Bayonet Constitution with one that restored the power of the monarch, but her attempts had the opposite effect and she was overthrown in a coup organized by the foreign landowners. The Republic of Hawaii was declared in 1894, and in 1898 Hawaii was annexed by the United States.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH

Eliza Sinclair did not live to see the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarch; she died in 1892. Other family members opposed it, and it’s likely that she would have too. She was deeply concerned about the threat the outside world posed to the Hawaiian culture and way of life. Those threats went way beyond politics: They included exposure to deadly Western diseases as well as alcoholism, prostitution in the seafaring ports, gambling, tobacco, and other vices of the modern world. English was quickly displacing Hawaiian as the primary language of the islands, and even the hula and other Hawaiian art forms were beginning to disappear.

Aubrey Robinson

It was distressing for all Hawaiians to see their way of life under threat. What set the Niihauans apart was the fact that their island was owned by a family that was willing and able to honor the commitment made to King Kamehameha V to assist them in preserving their culture. Beginning with Eliza Sinclair, and continuing with her grandson Aubrey Robinson, who assumed responsibility for Niihau after her death, the family began limiting access to Niihau as a means of allowing the Niihauans to live their lives as they always had, free from the pressures of the modern world. When a measles epidemic on Niihau killed 11 children in the 1930s, they sealed off the island almost completely.

Over the years, control of the island passed from Aubrey to his son Aylmer and then to Aylmer’s brother Lester. When Lester died in 1969 his widow Helen Robinson assumed responsibility, and when she died in 2002 control passed to her sons Keith and Bruce Robinson. They oversee the island today.

Each generation of the family has respected the wish of the Niihauans (and Eliza Sinclair) to maintain their isolation from the outside world. The Niihauans are free to come and go as they please, and many do spend significant portions of their lives off the island. But outsiders can visit Niihau only with the Robinsons’ personal permission, and that is rarely given.

LAST OF ITS KIND

If you’ve ever been to Hawaii, you know that there’s plenty of Hawaiian culture to be found in the museums and souvenir shops that serve the 6 million tourists who visit each year. But that’s about the only place you’ll find it. The 80,000 Hawaiians who claim full native-Hawaiian ancestry today make up less than 6% of the state’s total population. Fewer than 2,000 Hawaiians are native Hawaiian speakers, and half of those are over 70 years old.

There are no communities left on the Hawaiian Islands that speak Hawaiian as their first language. No communities, that is, except one: the 130 Hawaiians who live on Niihau. Their culture and privacy are still carefully guarded by the descendants of Eliza Sinclair. On every other island, the traditional Hawaiian way of life has all but disappeared.

STILL THE SAME

The Sinclair Home on Niihau

If you’ve ever wondered what the Hawaiian islands looked like when Captain Cook first set eyes on them in 1778, you can get a pretty good idea by sailing around Niihau The island is almost completely undeveloped: There are no paved roads and no hotels or other commercial buildings. The beaches are pristine. Most of the islanders live in small houses clustered around Puuwai (pronounced POO-ooh-WAH-ee), Niihau’s only village, on the west coast of the island. With the exception of this tiny settlement, most of the island looks as if it is uninhabited by anything other than wildlife, including feral sheep, antelope, and white Polynesian boar that roam the island.

Another thing that hasn’t changed much since Eliza Sinclair bought the island in 1864 is the odd legal relationship that exists between the Robinson family that owns the island and the native Niihauans who live there. The Niihauans don’t hold legal title to any part of the island, or even to the houses they live in. On paper they are little more than the permanent houseguests of the Robinsons, who have the legal right to do with their island whatever they please. That night not be an ideal set of circumstances for the Niihauans, and yet if they had lived on any of the other Hawaiian islands, where -at least in a property-owning sense- they would have had more freedom, their language, culture, and way of life would have changed long ago.

(Image credit: Flickr user MASH POTATO)

LIFE ON THE ISLAND

The Niihauans live on the island, and in their homes, rent free. They may live a traditional lifestyle of hunting and fishing if they wish. Or if they want to earn money, there are jobs available on Niihau and on the Robinson family’s sugarcane plantation on Kauai. They are also free to move off the island, which many do, especially those who work on Kauai. And as long as the community is willing to have them back, they can move back onto the island when they are ready.

OLD SCHOOL

The Niihauans speak Hawaiian as their first language. Classes in the tiny elementary school are taught in Hawaiian through the third grade, after which English is introduced. There are no private automobiles on the island; the Niihauans get around on bicycles or on horseback. There are no police and no jail on the island, but there isn’t any crime, either. The last serious crime took place in December 1941, during the attack on Pearl Harbor, when a Japanese pilot ditched his plane on Niihau and then terrorized the island for several days before he was killed by one of the Niihauans.

Guns and alcohol aren’t allowed on Niihau, and while tobacco hasn’t been banned entirely, the Robinsons will not transport it on the barge that periodically ferried supplies over from Kauai. To outsiders, these restrictions may seem harsh, but alcohol, tobacco, and firearms were never a part of Hawaiian culture, so they’re not part of Niihauan culture now. (So how to they hunt the wild animals on the island? The same way they have for generations: with knives and rope.)

DOLLARS AND SENSE

One more thing that hasn’t changed about Niihau since 1863: It’s still a really bad place  to run a ranch. For more than a century, the Robinsons tried to raise cattle, sheep, and honeybees, and even made charcoal from some of the trees that grow on the island -anything they could think of to generate income and provide employment for the Niihauans. But the various enterprises usually lost money, and in dry years they lost a lot of it. Finally, after decades of subsidizing the ranch with income from the sugarcane plantation on Kauai, in 1999 the Robinsons shut down ranching operations on Niihau. Since then they have looked for other ways to earn income and provide jobs for Niihauans. In recent years the largest source of income has come from the U.S. military, which rents part of Niihau for an unmanned radar facility that it uses to track missiles launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai. The military also uses the island as a training site for special forces units, who land there and then try to avoid detection and capture by “enemy” forces (Niihauan trackers who are paid to hunt them down). Any other military programs that take place on the island are classified.

OPEN… JUST A CRACK

Another result of the island’s difficult finances is that after 100 years of nearly complete isolation, in 1987 Bruce Robinson, Eliza Sinclair’s great-great-grandson, decided to open up access to Niihau …bit only a little. That year he paid $1 million (100 times what Eliza Sinclair paid for the whole island) to buy a helicopter that would serve as an air-ambulance for the island. There is no hospital on Niihau, and before Robinson bought the helicopter, whenever there was a medical emergency the Niihauans had to travel to Kauai by boat.

Robinson decided to offset the cost of the helicopter by using it to provide tours to the remotest parts of the island. The flights leave from Kauai in the morning, and after a quick aerial tour of the island, the pilot selects a secluded beach and lands for the afternoon. The tourists are free to swim, fish, snorkel, or explore the beach for a few hours until it’s time to return to Kauai.  When the population of feral sheep and wild boar grew to unacceptable levels in the early 1990s, Robinson added safaris to the helicopter trips. (Safari trips are the only exception to the “no guns” rule.)

THE FORBIDDEN VILLAGE

The village of Pu'uwai.

The helicopter trips are always day trips -outsiders are not permitted to spend the night on Niihau, and there are no hotels on the island to accommodate them. Any Niihauan who wants to hike out to the helicopter landing site to greet the tourists is free to do so, but the village of Puuwai is off-limits to outsiders. The helicopters always land several miles from the village to protect the Niihauans’ privacy. Though remote parts of the island have been opened up to outsiders, the Niihauans themselves still live apart. “We have chosen not to change for generations,” a Niihauan named Ilei Beniamina told a reporter in 1987. “I’m proud of what Niihau stands for. That’s more than I can say about anywhere else in the state.”

___________________

The article above was reprinted with permission from the newest volume of the Bathroom reader series, Uncle John’s 24-Karat Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

The Demon Core

The following is an article from the newest volume of the Bathroom Reader series, Uncle John’s 24-Karat Bathroom Reader.

The real-life story of a small ball of plutonium, the people it killed, and the researchers who blew it up.

THE BOMB

On the evening of Tuesday, August 21, 1945, American physicist Harry Daghlian was working at the U.S. government’s ultra-secret Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He was performing a very delicate experiment: Daghlian was placing brick-shaped pieces of metal around a chunk of plutonium, the highly unstable fuel used in most nuclear bombs. And he was making it more unstable with every brick he placed around it.

Daghlin (pronounced “DAHL-ee-an”) was part of the government’s Manhattan Project, which since 1942 had worked to develop the world’s first atomic bombs. And they succeeded: Just a few weeks before Daghlian’s experiment, two atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombs had killed at least 100,000 people immediately, and many tens of thousands more in the days that followed. Less than a week after those bombings Japan surrendered to Allied forces, ending World War II.

For Daghlian and his fellow scientists, that meant there was much more work to do.

NEW AND IMPROVED

The United States was the only country in the world with nuclear weapons at the time, but the government knew that wouldn’t be the case for long. If America was going to survive in a world with nuclear-armed enemies, it was reasoned, the nation was going to have to keep producing these weapons, and make them even more effective. This was precisely the reason that Daghlian was doing the particular work he was doing that night at Los Alamos.

Harry Daghlian was just 24 years old. He’d been brought into the Manhattan Project in 1943, while he was still a physics student -and an exceptionally brilliant one- at Indiana’s Purdue University. He had helped in the development of the bombs used in Japan, which, their devastating effects aside, were actually not very good nuclear bombs. They were, after all, only the second and third ever exploded (one test bomb had been detonated in New Mexico just three weeks before the two in Japan).

One of the chief issues for the scientists was determining how to take full advantage of the bomb’s nuclear fuel. Amazingly, both bombs used in the attack on Japan used only tiny fractions of their fuel to produce their explosions. (Imagine if they had used it all.) And using a bomb’s fuel efficiently is all about the neutrons.

THE NEUTRON DANCE

The most common type of fuel used in nuclear weapons is a type of plutonium known as plutonium-239, or Pu-239.

* Pu-239 is naturally radioactive, meaning that its atoms naturally emit particles from their nuclei. Some of those particles are neutrons. (This is known as neutron radiation.) Neutrons are very large, as atomic particles go -so large that if a neutron emitted from one atom happens to strike another atom, it can actually “break” it, and cause the second atoms to eject some of its own neutrons. (This is the “split” in “splitting the atom,”and scientifically, it’s known as fission.)

* This process happens normally very slowly, because most of the radiating neutrons just fly off. The whole idea behind nuclear weapons is to contain those neutrons within the plutonium, thereby speeding up the splitting process -with neutrons smashing atoms, causing more and more neutrons to be emitted, smashing more and more atoms- until it is completely out of control.

* The numbers involved in this chain reaction are almost too big to fathom: In a nuclear bomb explosion, atoms of the nuclear fuel are split by neutrons trillions and trillions of times …in hundreds of billionths of a second. Because each split of each atom releases energy, the combined splitting of trillions of atoms in such an impossibly short amount of time releases an absolutely phenomenal amount of energy -hence the power of atomic bombs.

And that small box that Harry Daghlian was building that night in August 1945 was all about containing the neutrons.

CORE VALUES

Harry Daghlian

Daghlian was working with a gray, softball-sized sphere of Pu-239. It was basically the core, or pit, of a nuclear bomb -the part that does the exploding. He was performing experiments with the core to determine whether it was the proper size and density to sustain a chain reaction -so it could be used in an actual bomb.

Daghlian began surrounding the core with bricks of tungsten carbide, a very dense metal that reflects neutron radiation. The more enclosed in metal the core became, the more neutrons were reflected back into the core, rather than simply flying off. That meant that the rate of neutron bashing and atom splitting in the core increased as Daghlian added more and more bricks. (A geiger counter indicated whether the experiment was working, by clicking faster and faster.) Two very important notes:

* Daghlian wanted the chain reaction to increase to just below a critical state, meaning to a controlled chain reaction.

* He did not want the reaction to grow into a supercritical state, meaning one that was escalating completely out of control.

Using the bricks, Daghlian built walls, about ten inches on a side and ten inches high, around the plutonium. He then took a brick and slowly positioned it -he was simply holding it in his hand- over the opening at the top of the structure, right over the core. The geiger counter clicked wildly. Enough neutrons were now being reflected back into the core that it was headed toward a supercritical state.

Daghlian went to jerk the brick away -and dropped it.

UH-OH

The brick landed right on top of the ball of plutonium. The plutonium was now effectively surrounded by neutron reflecting material, and it went supercritical immediately. There was a blue flash -an effect of the sudden release of radiation- and the geiger counter was screaming. Daghlian grabbed the dropped brick in a panic …and dropped it again. He tried to overturn the table he was working on -but it was too heavy. He finally just started taking bricks away from around the plutonium, one by one. The chain reaction finally stopped, and the geiger counter quieted down. Roughly one minute had passed. It was one minute too much for Harry Daghlian. He had been exposed to a massive amount of radiation. Within hours he started feeling nauseated, the first sign of radiation sickness. He checked himself into a hospital. After a few days his hands, which had received the brunt of the radiation, began to blister due to radiation burns. He deteriorated steadily after that, and, on September 15, twenty-five days after the accident, Harry Daghlian died.

THE SECOND VICTIM

Louis Slotin

Nine months after Daghlian’s death, in May 1946, the core that he had been experimenting on was designated for use in an actual bomb, to be exploded in a test over the Pacific Ocean. On May 21, Louis Slotin, Daghlian’s friend and colleague (he had been on vacation during the accident) decided to perform one last experiment on it.

Slotin’s experiment was similar to Daghlian’s, but instead of using bricks of tungsten carbide, he had two bowl-like hemispheres made of beryllium -another metal that acts as a neutron reflector.  (The two hemispheres could be put together to form a hollow ball; the hollow was just the right size to hold the plutonium core.) One of the hemispheres sat in a frame on a table. Slotin placed the plutonium core in it, then placed the other hemisphere over the top of the core …but not all the way. He could not cover the core and allow it to be completely surrounded by the neutron-reflecting beryllium or, as happened to Daghlian, an uncontrolled chain reaction would occur. But that’s exactly what happened.

NOT AGAIN

The experiment Slotin was performing with the beryllium hemispheres required him to insert the tip of an ordinary screwdriver (yes, a screwdriver) under the lip of the beryllium cap, and raise and lower it, noting by use of a geiger counter how much of a chain reaction was being created. He was also supposed to be using safety wedges, which would insure that if the screwdriver slipped, the beryllium cap wouldn’t fall and cover the core. But Slotin didn’t use the wedges …and the screwdriver slipped.

Beryllium dome held up with a screwdriver.

The beryllium cap fell, the core became completely contained, and it immediately went supercritical. Even worse: There were seven other people standing around the table, watching Slotin work. As with Daghlian’s accident, there was an instant blue flash. (The people in the room later said they also felt a surge of heat.) To Slotin’s great credit, he immediately put himself at enormous risk by prying the spheres apart -with his bare hands- thereby stopping the reaction. In doing so he received a dose of radiation several times greater than Daghlian had. The effect came almost immediately; he was already vomiting as we walked out of the lab. Nine days later, after what can only be described as a period of horrible suffering, Slotin died. The “Demon Core,” as it was soon known by scientists at Los Alamos, had killed its second victim.

THE END?

A baffling part of this entire story was that Daghlian’s accident took place in the evening. He had already worked a regular day shift, but had gone back to the lab at around 9:30 PM, after dinner. He wasn’t supposed to do this. And he definitely wasn’t supposed to be performing criticality experiments without another scientist present. To this day nobody knows why he was there that night. And Slotin’s irresponsibility in not using the safety wedges? Nobody knows why that happened, either. And the sad reality is that they weren’t the only victims of the Demon Core.

* Army Private Robert J. Hemmerly, 29, was serving as a guard in the lab when Daghlian’s accident took place. He was at a desk reading a newspaper at the far end of the lab when he saw the blue flash. He died 33 years later, at the age of 62, of leukemia, which is believed to have been brought on by his exposure to radiation during the accident.

* Alvin Graves was the person closest to Slotin during his accident. Slotin’s action in separating the hemispheres partially shielded Graves, but he was hospitalized for several weeks with severe radiation poisoning nonetheless. He developed several lasting health problems, including vision loss, and died 18 years later, as the age of 55, of radiation-related complications.

* Of the six others in the room with Slotin, three are believed to have had their lives significantly shortened by the Demon Core.

Test Detonation Able over Bikini Atoll, containing the Demon Core.

* On July 1, 1946, the softball-sized core of Pu-239 that had killed two of America’s most important scientists was detonated near the Bikini Islands in the Pacific Ocean, in the fourth nuclear bomb explosion in history. The Demon Core was no more.

* The Bikini bomb test that finished off the Demon Core used a much higher percentage of its nuclear fuel than its predecessors and was more powerful by several kilotons (the explosive force of a thousand tons of TNT), meaning that, if nothing else, Daghlian’s and Slotin’s tests were successful.

* Several unmanned ships were anchored in the drop zone to study the bomb’s effects. Locked in several of those ships were 57 guinea pigs, 109 mice, 146 pigs, 176 goats, and 3,030 white rats. They were there so scientists could study the effects of nuclear bombs on animals. The bomb killed 10 percent of them immediately; most of the remainder died of radiation poisoning in the weeks that followed.

Pig 311 with friends.

* At least one of those animals escaped the wrath of the Demon Core, and got a bit of celebrity doing it: a 50-pound pig known as “Pig 311″ was aboard an old war ship in the drop zone. (She was locked in the ship’s officer’s toilet.) The detonation sank the ship -but sailors found Pig 311 swimming in the ocean. She was taken to the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, where she lived for the next three years -growing to a mammoth 600 pounds. In 1949, Pig 311 was given to the National Zoo in Washington, DC, where she became one of the most popular displays. She died there in 1950.

* If you want a better picture of just what Louis Slotin was doing in his experiment, watch the 1989 film Fat Man and Little Boy about the Manhattan Project. In it, John Cusack plays a scientist who performs a fairly accurate version of Slotin’s accident.

___________________

The article above was reprinted with permission from the newest volume of the Bathroom reader series, Uncle John’s 24-Karat Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

From the archives of the Old West, we’ve culled a list of the most notorious places on the frontier. Here’s our countdown of the baddest of the bad, meanest of the mean, Wild West towns.

Some historians say that the Wild West wasn’t as dangerous as we’ve been led to believe by Hollywood, but there’s no doubt that some frontier towns were beyond the immediate reach of the law -places where mischief, mayhem, and murder were everyday occurrences.

8. FORT GRIFFIN, TEXAS

One of the wildest places in the old West, Fort Griffin sprouted at the intersection of the West Fork of the Trinity River and the Clear Fork of the Brazos River in northern Texas. Built in the 1860s on a hill overlooking the Brazos, the fort itself was designed to protect the folks -mostly farmers and ranchers- who lived below in the settlement of Fort Griffin.

The town was soon invaded by outlaws and cowboys driving their cattle north to Dodge City. By the 1870s, skirmishes with the Kiowa and Comanche in the north diverted the soldiers from Fort Griffin and, as a result, law enforcement broke down, which attracted even more rough types to the town.

Visiting Celebrities. The motley collection of buffalo hunters, gamblers, gunfighters, and “painted ladies” brought with them a penchant for violence. Among them were a gambler and prostitute named Big Nose Kate and her pal, the legendary gambler Doc Holliday. Also passing through were Wyatt Earp (who met Holliday for the first time at the fort), lawman Pat Garrett, and John Wesley Hardin -by some accounts the most sadistic killer to ever come out of Texas. Dustups and gun violence became so frequent that the commander of the fort finally placed the town under martial law in 1874.

7. RUBY, ARIZONA

From the days of the Spanish explorations prospectors had searched for veins of gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc near Montana Peak in southern Arizona close to the Mexican border. In 1891, high-grade gold was discovered. A local assayer judged it to be a bonanza, and the rush was on. The town of Ruby was born practically overnight.

Here Comes Trouble. Most of the miners lived in tents or rough adobe huts, and bought their meager supplies at George Cheney’s Ruby Mercantile, the one and only general store. The men provided for themselves and their families by hunting and rustling cattle. But the primary source of trouble came from Mexican bandits who frequently terrorized the settlement. By the early 1900s, Ruby was so dangerous that Philip and Gypsy Clarke, who owned a general store, kept weapons in every room of their house as well as the general store. When Philip eventually sold the store to a pair of brothers, he warned them of the danger. They didn’t heed Clarke’s warning and were soon found shot to death. Today, Ruby is a well-preserved ghost town.

6. DELAMAR, NEVADA

Delamar got its reputation as a notorious Wild West town not from gun violence but from dangerous conditions in the mines. The 1889 discovery of gold in nearby Monkey Wrench Gulch unleashed a stampede of miners intent on digging for the peculiar form of gold, encased as it was in crystallized quartz. A former ship’s captain named Joseph Raphael De Lamar bought most of the profitable mines in 1893 and built a mill to crack the quartz and refine the gold. Within a few years, the town had 1,500 citizens, a hospital, post office, opera house, school, several churches, and plenty of saloons. But then the deaths began to mount.

Dust to Dust. Operations at the mill exposed the miners -and the town- to clouds of silicon dust. The mill workers were at the greatest risk of breathing in the dust, which slowly caused silicosis of the lungs and death. At one time, 400 widows lived in Delamar, giving the town its reputation as the “Widowmaker.” Delamar began its decline in 1909 when Captain De Lamar tore down the mill. Operation started up in the mines two decades later, but eventually slowed to a halt. The last resident moved away in 1934.

5. DODGE CITY, KANSAS

Fights and gunplay were all too familiar in Dodge City in the 1870s. In its first ten years, it became a well-known gathering hole for gunslingers -so well known that companies such as the Atchinson, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad came to Dodge to hire fighting men when they needed to protect their business interests. Fearless buffalo hunters, cowboys, muleteers, and

Bat Masterson

bullwhackers (wagon train drivers) populated the city. Characters with colorful nicknames arrived, among them Cherokee Bill, Prairie Dog Dave, Fat Jack, and Cockeyed Frank. Said one resident, “With a few drinks of red liquor under their belts, you could reckon there was something doing. They feared neither God, man, nor the devil, and so reckless they would pit themselves, like Ajax, against lightning, if they ran into it.”

The Upside to the Downside. There were plenty of deaths and gunfights in the streets of “Wicked Dodge,” as writers termed it, but it could have been worse. Because so many inhabitants were known as “sluggers, bruisers, and dead shots,” most of them were wary of starting trouble with one another. Also happening on the scene were legendary lawmen such as Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Charlie Bassett, and Bill Tilghman, who stood ready to step in and jail anyone who got out of hand.

4. ELDORADO CANYON, NEVADA

Spanish explorers in the 18th century gave Eldorado Canyon its name, but it was American gold miners a century later who gave the mining camp at the canyon its reputation. The miners were drawn to a gorge on the Colorado River after prospectors discovered a vertical vein of gold there in 1861. The established the Techatticup Mine, which eventually fell into the hands of California senator George Hearst (father of publisher William Randolph Hearst). Eventually, dozens of mines in Eldorado Canyon became a magnet for prospectors, entrepreneurs, Civil War deserters, and “sporting women.” Their only connection to the outside world was a steamboat that carried the gold, silver, copper, and lead down the Colorado River to distant Yuma, Arizona.

The Original Fight Club. Political clashes among supporters of the North or South in the Civil War and greed, vigilante justice, and disputes over claims made for frequent brawls, stabbings, and gunfights. Killings became so common they were nearly a daily event. And the canyon was so remote -300 miles from the closest civilized town- that lawmen simply refused to enter it. A military post was eventually established near the settlement in 1867 to protect the steamboats and bring a sense of civility to the neighborhood.

3. DEADWOOD, SOUTH DAKOTA

Like many other famous Wild West towns, Deadwood owes its reputation for violence to the discovery of gold. In 1874, U.S. Army general George A Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills to confirm the existence of gold. The U.S. government tried to keep the gold a secret in honor of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which recognized the Black Hills as belonging to the Lakota-Sioux. But in1875, when a miner found gold in a narrow canyon lined with dead trees, the news of the find in “Deadwood Gulch” spread like wildfire. Within a year, miners stormed into the area and established the rough-and-tumble mining camp of Deadwood.

Deadwood Comes to Life. The Black Hills gold rush was in full bloom by 1876. Deadwood swarmed with men determined to get rich by any means. Dozens of saloons, gambling parlors, and brothels competed for their attention and dollars. Legendary characters Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane were town fixtures. But danger lurked everywhere. Henry W. Smith, a Methodist minister, was murdered while walking to church, and Hickok was shot in the back of the head while playing poker in one of the saloons. By 1879, the rowdy nature of Deadwood began to ebb after a town government was established. Today, the well-preserved city is a gambling destination for tourists as well as a National Historic Landmark.

2. TOMBSTONE, ARIZONA

Many consider Tombstone the most dangerous of all the Wild West towns because of its lawlessness and frequent gunfights. The named seemed appropriate enough, but it wasn’t derived from the Boothill graveyard outside town -it came from a nearby mine named by prospector Ed Schieffelin, who filed the claim in 1877. He was told by a soldier that warring Apaches controlled the area. “All you’ll find in those hills is your tombstone,” said the soldier. But Schieffelin was undeterred and named his mine the Tombstone. News of the strike brought other miners to the site, and the town of Tombstone soon came into being.

Lovely Downtown Tombstone. Consisting of 40 buildings, a post office, and 500 residents by 1878, Tombstone began to draw the usual collection of men and women from the fringes of society.

Big Nose Kate

Within a few years, the town boasted more gambling parlors and saloons than anywhere in the Southwest, as well as the largest red light district. Wyatt Earp arrived at the end of 1879 with the intentions of establishing a stage line but instead invested in a gaming parlor while riding shotgun for Wells Fargo stagecoaches. Four of his brothers followed: James opened a saloon, and Warren, Virgil, and Morgan went into law enforcement. Wyatt’s friend Doc Holliday arrived in 1880 with Big Nose Kate, who established a brothel in a tent. The Clanton gang and the McLowrey brothers terrorized the countryside, running afoul of the Earps, which led to the showdown at the town’s O.K. Corral, thus sealing Tombstone’s legend. The city has survived into the 21s century, as has its newspaper, the Tombstone Epitaph, which memorialized Tombstone as “The Town Too Tough to Die.”

1. CANYON DIABLO, ARIZONA

Nowhere in the Southwest was there a more violent place than the railroad town of Canyon Diablo, giving it the top spot on our list of the meanest Wild West towns. The settlement was born when workers laying tracks for a railroad came to the edge of the canyon, with no  way to cross over until a bridge was built. Constructing the bridge took ten years, during which time the town that came into being took its name from the canyon. It was as despicable a place to live as there was in the West. With the closest U.S. marshal 100 miles away, Canyon Diablo quickly attracted drifters, gamblers, and outlaws. Fourteen saloons, ten gambling parlors, four brothels, two dance halls, a couple of cafes, a grocery, and a dry good store did business 24 hours a day. The buildings faced each other across the aptly-named Hell Street, the town’s single rocky road just off the railroad right-of-way.

They Shot the Sheriff. Fights and gun duels were frequent among the town’s 2,000 residents, filling dozens of graves at the town’s cemetery. Bandits regularly held up the stage that ran between Flagstaff and Canyon Diablo. When mounting violence persuaded the townspeople to hire a police officer, the first one put on his badge at three o’clock in the afternoon and was dead by eight o’clock that evening. Five more who tried it lasted a month or less before being slain. But what the law couldn’t do, the completion of the bridge accomplished. The town died, and according to Western lore, completely disappeared by 1899 when its last resident, a trading post owner named Herman Wolfe, died peacefully.

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader History’s Lists.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Astronomy wasn’t invented a couple of hundred years ago. The study of stars is almost as old as humanity itself.

(Image credit: Wikipedia member Prof saxx)

The oldest and most famous cave paintings (16,000 to 20,000 years old) are in Lascaux, France. The animals and human figures in the cave were long thought to be symbols of magic or worship to help hunters. Eventually someone noticed that the dots of paint that decorate the animals are actually diagrams of groups of stars. Most constellations have different symbols today, but the giant bull (possibly the best-known image in cave art) is actually the constellation we still call Taurus -the bull. His eye is the star Aldebaran, and a V-shaped decoration of dots around it represents the Pleides star cluster.

NOT JUST A PILE OF STONES

The first ancient monument to be identified as an astronomical observatory was England’s Stonehenge. It’s attracted a lot of interest from wanna-be Druids over the years, but current researchers think it was built and rebuilt by three separate cultures between 5,000 and 3,000 years ago. While it’s not clear exactly what it was used for, the astronomical alignments of the stones are unquestionable. The stones mark out the sunrise at midsummer and midwinter, and the rising and setting of the moon (which repeats in a cycle of 8.6 years). Some people claim to have found many more significant alignments and have suggested that Stonehenge could have been used to predict eclipses -pretty sophisticated stuff. But did the Druids actually make these calculations? We’ll probably never know, darn it.

STONEHENGE SOUTH

(Image credit: Wikipedia member Raymbetz)

Just as mysterious is the recently discovered stone circle of Nabta, Egypt, which at 7,000 year old is the oldest astronomical observatory of its kind so far discovered. Like Stonehenge, it marks sunrise and sunset at midsummer, but other than that, no one knows who built it or what else it might be for. The site was abandoned after 2,000 years, just before the rise of the Egyptian Old Kingdom. Did the ancient Egyptians get their astronomical knowledge from an older civilization in the Sahara?

SERIOUS ABOUT SIRIUS

The star Sirius was worshiped by a whole range of ancient peoples, from the Arabs and ancient Egyptians to the West African tribes of the Dogon and the Bozo (don’t laugh; they’re real). The Egyptians built whole rows of temples pointing at the spot on the horizon where Sirius would rise each year. This was the beginning of their calendar year and marked the flooding of the Nile. For them, Sirius was the resting place of the dead and the most important star in the sky.

THE INVISIBLE SUPERSTAR

Among the Arabs and some tribes in Mali,  there was a belief that Sirius had a companion, which the tribesmen called the Eye Star, and which was supposed to have supernatural qualities. Sirius really does have a companion: a small white dwarf star called Sirius B, which is not visible to the naked eye. So how did these primitive people know about it? The Dogon have precise astronomical information about its movements, which they celebrate with rituals, even though they admit that it’s invisible. (We don’t know about you, but we’ve got chills.) They even had a story about a third star, the Star of Women, which was also invisible. And guess what? In 1995, it was discovered that there really is a third star, a red dwarf that’s been named Sirius C.

PYRAMID SCHEME

(Image credit: Wikipedia member Sybz)

Because questions remain about the alignment of ancient monuments, the field is wide open for speculation. New Agers (who speculate wildly at least three times before breakfast) will tell you that the Egyptian pyramids are time machines, UFO bases, or gates to other dimensions. Thank heavens (no pun intended) for the Mayans of Mexico, who left detailed written documents to explain the astronomy behind the construction of their pyramids. It turns out that the Mayans had a highly developed calendar system, using astronomical events to fix magical dates for sacrifices and other rituals. Their pyramids were built on alignments that pointed toward the positions of the Sun, the Moon, planets, and stars at these special dates. It can’t be definitely proven that the Egyptian pyramids, or the similar ziggurats of Mesopotamia, were built on the same kind of idea, but the astronomical alignments are similar, and so far no one have come up with a better explanation.

A FEW OF MAYAN FAVORITE THINGS

For the Mayans, the two most interesting objects in the sky were the planet Venus and the Sun. While Stonehenge and other ancient sites fixed the position of the midsummer sun at dawn, the Mayans used the moment when it directly overhead. Venus dips below the horizon at a variable date in the year and rises about 50 days later. The Mayans were able to calculate this period, and they were also able to predict eclipses. They marked these occasions with human sacrifice and chose days to go to war by consulting their astronomical calendars.

STONEHENGE, U.S.A.

In the hills of Wyoming, there’s an ancient stone construction called the Big Horn Medicine Wheel, which some have called the American Stonehenge. A similar construction is the Moose Mountain Wheel in Alberta, Canada. Both were sacred sites for local Native Americans, but archaeologists date them from before the Plains Indians arrived to some unknown indigenous people.

The Big Horn Wheel has been dated to AD 1000-1400, and Moose Mountain to about 2,000 years ago. The markers -this time neat piles of stone-  pick out important events in the sky: the summer solstice and the rising of the bright stars Aldebaran, Rigel, Sirius, and Fomalhaut. there are lots of other medicine wheels and similar constructions in North America, many of which are so damaged that it’s impossible to reconstruct their original alignments. But since the positions of dawn and the rising of the stars have changed a little over the centuries, it’s possible to date the construction of them (and all the others) by accurate scientific methods.

KEEPING AN EYE ON THE SKY

It’s not surprising that great civilizations like the Egyptians and the Mayans could develop a kind of astronomy. What’s amazing is that people from the Stone Age -or people still living Stone Age lifestyles- also had detailed knowledge of astronomy. Native Americans, nomads in the Sahara desert, and even genuine cavemen were doing the math and measuring the angles. How many people today could build an astronomical observatory out of lumps of rock?

You over there. Yes, you. Wanna give it a try?

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Colonel Doolittle (second from left) and his flight crew.

The following is an article from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Salutes the Armed Forces.

After Japanese air power struck a stunning tactical blow to the U.S. military forces at Pearl Harbor, a retaliatory strike against the Japanese was a priority for president Frankin D. Roosevelt, who challenged his general staff to devise a way to attack the heart of Japan.

PAYBACK PLANS

By mid-January 1942, a carrier-based air strike against Japan was accepted as the most plausible solution to FDR’s request. When Admiral Ernest J. King, chief of Naval Operations, was asked to evaluate the possibilities, he passed the idea to General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, commander of the Army Air Forces, who then asked Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle to work out the details with the Navy. In the days immediately after Pearl Harbor, service rivalries took a back seat to striking a blow against the enemy.

B-25s specially modified for this mission are ready to go.

After preliminary test flights, the North American B-25 Mitchell bomber was selected for the mission. Eighteen B-25s flew from their Oregon home base to Indiana for modifications. The range of the unmodified Mitchell was only 1,300 miles on a favorable day, so additional internal tanks were added to allow for more fuel. At the last second, 10 five-gallon cans of gas were stowed in the radio operator’s seat. The heavy guns were removed, along with the highly secret Norden bombsight, whose classified technology couldn’t fall into Japanese hands. In the planned scenario, the Norden bombsight wouldn’t have been very accurate at the low altitude that would be flown anyway, so it was replaced with a simple metal aiming sight. Aircraft radios were also removed, since the mission would be executed under strict radio silence. These changes allowed each aircraft to carry just over 1,100 gallons of usable fuel, which under typical flight conditions would allow for a range of 2,400 miles. After all of these radical modifications, four 500-pound bombs barely fit into the bomb bay.

The Army and Navy finally agreed on a near-dusk takeoff and night raid on Tokyo as the plan that stood the best chance of achieving complete surprise. he plan depended on a fast carrier run-in at night to get as close to the mainland as possible just prior to launch. After the planes were away, the fleet would make an immediate turn back toward Hawaii and run for waters beyond the range of Japanese land-based aircraft to preserve the limited fleet that remained in the Pacific. On April 13, Naval Task Force 16 gathered near Hawaii and proceeded toward the Japanese mainland with 16 ships, including Vice Admiral William F. “Bull” Halsey’s flagship, the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise.

THE BEST-LAID PLANS

Doolittle’s plan was to lead 16 planes with five-man crews ahead of the rest of the aircraft, to attack Tokyo with incendiary bombs, and to set fires that the others could follow to the city. But the B-25 crews were forced to launch early when the nighttime attack plan was disrupted by Japanese picket boats that spotted Task Force 16 early on the morning of the 18th. There were no other acceptable options; the mission had to launch immediately.

Owing to the added distance at the takeoff point, there was no plan for how or where to land these aircraft when Doolittle took off at 8:20AM. Doolittle recognized that the mission was already in jeopardy and might end with a parachute bailout at sea. Halsey and Doolittle shared the responsibility for the launch decision, with the clear intention of completing the mission.

OFF WE GO INTO THE WILD BLUE YONDER

A B-25 just before the raid.

The USS Hornet steered into the wind while the deck pitched in heavy seas. Engines roared to life and Doolittle taxied his plane forward a few feet onto three cork pads that provide enough friction for the tires to hold the B-25 s the engines were pushed to full throttle. Minimum-distance takeoff procedures practiced on dry land in Florida worked as advertised on the deck of the ship.

After traveling more than 700 miles, miniscule errors in heading control were amplified, putting the pilots many miles off course. Several of the B-25 crews were totally lost when they finally made landfall around noon. Doolittle himself flew well north of his planned route, but quick work by his navigator steered him back on course. Those following him were much relieved at the rapid course correction. The sun was shining brightly about half past noon when Doolittle became the first pilot to bomb the Japanese homeland in fulfillment of FDR’s orders.

DOOMED FROM THE START

Unknown to Doolittle’s Raiders, the aircraft carrying the homing radio beacons for the landing fields in China had crashed, and with it any chance of finding the strips at night and in bad weather. Fortunately, the original targets planned for night recognition and attack were large industrial zones, so hitting at least part of the complex would be much easier in broad daylight.

The attack was not intended to do maximum damage; rather, it was intended to make a spectacle. The attack was designed do that the Japanese people would clearly know that a foreign enemy had bombed Tokyo. In the original plan, Doolittle had hoped to set fires to serve not only as beacons to the following 15 B-25s, but also to dramatically -and undeniably- announce that the capital city had been bombed. An order forbidding the bombardment of the radio towers near Tokyo indicated that immediate dissemination of the news by Japanese radio was desired and expected.

TRIUMPH FROM TRAGEDY

Taking off for Tokyo.

In almost every case, primary targets were bombed. The damage done far exceeded expectation largely as a result of highly inflammable Japanese construction, the low-altitude attack, the clear weather over Tokyo, and the careful target studies that the crew had done. All 16 planes had descended to extremely low altitudes, attacked, and egressed the target area at high speed. All 16 crews began to calculate how much fuel they had left and how far they could fly. Initial calculations were not encouraging. Navigator Lieutenant Eugene F. McGurl halfheartedly joked, “Hey, I don’ t think we’re gonna have to swim more than one hundred miles.”

Doolittle’s Raiders got another lucky break that evening. A stiff tailwind had developed between japan and China and, much to the surprise of the navigators, several of the planes appeared to be getting pretty good gas mileage and making good time. Only one bomber had insufficient fuel to make the Chinese mainland and diverted to Russia instead. That plane’s five crewmen were interned in Russia until they managed to escape into Iran in May 1943.

Once the raiders made landfall over China, luck ran out. The Chinese, fearing air raids by the Japanese and not knowing of the timing of Doolittle’s raid on the Japanese capital, extinguished all ground lights when the B-25 engines were heard. In addition, bad weather over the China coast made safe landings impossible and all of the planes either landed in the water near the coast or the crews parachuted out. Four were killed during bailout or ditching and eight were captured by the Japanese. Four of those who were captured survived until they were freed by U.S. troops in 1945.

Doolittle's Raiders in China.

FIRST TIME’S THE CHARM

The Tokyo raid was the first, and at that time, the only combat mission flown by these 80 men. In the weeks following the raid, American morale soared. For the planning, execution, and leadership during the raid, Doolittle received the nation’s highest military award. On May 19, 1942, President Frankin D. Roosevelt, the man who had ordered the mission, personally decorated the newly-promoted Brigadier General James H. Doolittle with the Medal of Honor in a private White House ceremony.

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Salutes the Armed Forces.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

The werewolf is one of the most recognized movie monsters in history, thanks in large part to the 1941 film The Wolf Man, starring Lon Chaney, Jr. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the making of that classic film.

FRIGHT FACTORY

The early 1930s was the golden age of movie monsters. In 1930, Universal released the classic Dracula, starring Bel Lugosi; a year later it had another huge hit with Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein. Inspired by their success, Universal decided to make a movie about a werewolf. In 1931, they handed writer/director Robert Florey a title -The Wolf Man- and told him to come up with an outline.

A few months later, Florey submitted notes for a story about a Frenchman who has suffered for 400 years under a witch’s curse that turns him into a werewolf during every full moon …unless he wears a garland of wolf-bane around his neck.

The studio approved the idea and scheduled the movie as a Boris Karloff vehicle for 1933. A shooting script was written …and rewritten …and rewritten several more times. By the time it was finished, the script was about an English doctor who was bitten by a werewolf in Tibet, then turns into one himself on his return to London. Universal renamed the pictures Werewolf of London.

BAT MAN

By now, however, Boris Karloff was too busy to take the part …So it went a Broadway actor named Henry Hull. Werewolf of London hit theaters in 1935.

The movie wasn’t very good: One critic has called it “full of fog, atmosphere, and laboratory shots, but short on chills and horror.” That was largely because Hull didn’t look scary. He refused to cover his face with werewolf hair, complaining that it obscured his features. Makeup man Jack Pierce -already a legend for creating Bela Lugosi’s Dracula and Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein- had no choice but to remove most of the facial hair, leaving Hull looking like a demonic forest elf. Werewolf of London was a box office disappointment. It was also Hull’s last werewolf film.

SECOND TRY

In the early 1940s, Universal launched a second wave of horror films featuring Dracula, Frankenstein, and other classic monsters. They decided to give the werewolf another try, too.

This second werewolf film started the same way the first one did: with the title The Wolf Man. This time the scriptwriter was Curt Siodmak. He started from scratch, researched werewolf legends himself, and used what he learned to write the script. The story he concocted was about an American named Lance Talbot who travels to his ancestral home in Wales and is bitten while rescuing a young woman from a werewolf attack.

Once again, the studio wanted to cast Karloff in the lead …and once again he was too busy to take it. They considered Bela Lugosi, but he was too old for the part. So they gave it to newcomer Lon Chaney, Jr., son and namesake of the greatest horror star of the silent movie era. Chaney, Sr. was known all over the world as the “Man of 1000 Faces,” for his roles in The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Chaney, Jr. had recently starred in Man Made Monster, and Universal thought he had potential in horror films.

THE MAKEUP

Jack Pierce was still the makeup artist at Universal, and he welcomed the chance to use his original designs; a hairy face complete with fangs and a wolfish nose, plus hairy hands and feet. The makeup took a total of four hours to apply, most of which was spent applying tufts of fur -authentic yak hair imported from Asia- one by one, and then singeing them to create a wild look.

Chaney’s wolfman didn’t talk -all it did was grunt, growl, and howl- and that was no accident: when Chaney was fully made up, he couldn’t talk and he could only eat through a straw. As he recounted years later, the only thing worse than wearing the makeup was taking it off.

What gets me is when it’s after work and I’m all hot and itchy and tired, and I’ve got to sit in that chair for forty-five minutes more while Pierce just about kills me ripping off the stuff he put on in the morning! Sometimes we take an hour and leave some of the skin on my face!

THANKS, DAD

Most actors would probably have refused to wear such difficult makeup, but Chaney (whose real first name was Creighton) had no choice: he was desperate to make it in the film business.

When he was alive, Lon Chaney, Sr. had fought Creighton’s attempt to become an actor. He even forced his son out of Hollywood High and into a plumbing school when he asked to take acting lessons. As Chaney, Sr.’s career soared to its heights in the late 1920s, Chaney. Jr. was working as a boilermaker.

The elder Chaney died of throat cancer in 1930; Creighton Chaney signed with RKO Studios two years later. After moving from bit part to bit part for more than two years, he reluctantly changed his name to Lon Chaney, Jr. to cash in on his father’s fame. “They had to starve me to make me take his name,” he groused years later.

Finally, in 1939 -only days after his car and furniture were repossessed by a furniture company- Chaney scored a hit in a stage version of Of Mice and Men. That led to a starring role in the movie version, and in 1940, a contract with Universal.

ALL THIS AND WORLD WAR II

The studio had modest hopes for The Wolf Man. They scheduled its release for December 11, 1941, right before Christmas. But on December 7, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II. Universal was sure the movie would become a box office disaster. After all, who was going to take time out for the movies when they were going to war?

Good vs. Evil
To their surprise, it was hit. The film played to packed movie houses all over the country, and was the studio’s biggest money maker of the season.It established the Wolf Man as an important movie monster, along with Dracula and Frankenstein. It almost singlehandedly made werewolves a part of the popular culture, and it turned Lon Chaney, Jr. into one of the best known actors in the country.

World War II probably had more to do with making The Wolf Man a hit than any other factor. What Universal had failed to realize was that the war fueled a need for the kind of escape that horror films provided. Inside a darkened theater, moviegoers could forget their troubles, at least for a while, as they watched ordinary mortals triumph over seemingly insurmountable evil. As David Skal writes in The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror:

Talbot’s four-film quest to put to rest his wolf-self is, in a strange way, an unconscious parable of the war effort. The Wolf Man’s crusade for eternal peace and his frustrated attempts to control irrational, violent, European forces… The Wolf Man’s saga was the most consistent and sustained monster myth of the war, beginning with the first year of America’s direct involvement in the war, and finishing up just in time for Hiroshima.

WOLF MAN FACTS

* The hardest scene to shoot was the final “metamorphosis” scene, in which Chaney turns from a werewolf to a human as he dies. Chaney describes the process:

The way we did the transformation was that I came in at 2:00 a.m. When I hit the position, they would take little nails and drive them through the skin at the edge of my fingers, on both hands, so that I wouldn’t move them anymore.

While I was in this position, they would take the camera and weigh it down with one ton, so that it wouldn’t move when people walked. They had targets for my eyes.

Then, they would shoot five or ten frames of film in the camera. They’d take the film out and send it to the lab. While it was there, the makeup man would come and take the whole thing off my face and put on a new one. I’m still immobile. When the film came back from the lab, they’d put it back in the camera and then they’d check me.

They’d say, “Your eyes have moved a little bit, move them to the right…” Then they’d roll it again and shoot another ten frames. Well, we did 21 changes of makeup and it took twenty-two hours. I won’t discuss about the bathroom…”

* For the rest of the cast and crew, the worst part of filming The Wolf Man was breathing the special effects fog that was used in the outdoor scenes. “The kind of fog they used in those days was nothing like the kind they have today,” cameraman Bill Lathrop remembers. “It was greasy stuff made with mineral oil. We worked in it for weeks and the entire cast and crew had sore eyes and intestinal trouble the entire time. Besides that, we were all shivering with cold because it was necessary to keep the temperature below 50 degrees when using the fog.” Female lead Evelyn Ankers fainted on the set after inhaling too much fog during a chase sequence.

* The Wolf Man made a lot of money for Universal, but not much of it filtered to the writers and actors who actually brought it to life.  “My salary was $400 a week,” scriptwriter Curt Siodmak recalls. “When the picture made its first million, the producer got a $10,000 bonus, the director got a diamond ring for his wife, and I got fired, since I wanted $25 more for my next job.”

LON CHANEY’S WOLFMAN SEQUELS

Chaney made four wolfman movies for Universal during the war years …more than Universal made of Dracula or Frankenstein. The others were:

* Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943). Chaney travels to Castle Frankenstein to see if he can find a cure for his wolfman condition in Dr. Frankenstein’s notes. All he finds is the Frankenstein monster, played by Bela Lugosi, who had turned down the original Frankenstein in 1931 because there wasn’t any dialogue.

Movie Note: Lugosi played a particularly stiff Frankenstein, not just because he was growing old, but also because in the original version of the film, Frankenstein is left blind and mute after a botched brain transplant. In the version released to theaters, all references to blindness, muteness and the brain transplant were removed, so he just looks old.

* House of Frankenstein (1944). Mad scientist Dr. Gustav Neimann (Boris Karloff) escapes from an insane asylum with the help of his hunchback assistant Daniel (J. Carrol Naish) and flees to castle Frankenstein. There he teams up with Dracula (John Carradine), Frankenstein (Glenn Strange), and the Wolfman (Chaney) to terrorize the countryside until they are finally killed by villagers.

* House of Dracula (1945). Dr. Franz Edelman (Onslow Stevens) finds a way to cure Dracula (John Carradine) of his vampirism, but Dracula refuses to submit. Instead, he bites Dr. Edelman and turns him into a vampire; then Edelman raises Frankenstein from the dead, just as the wolfman arrives on the scene.

Movie Note: Originally titled The Wolfman vs. Dracula, the movie had to be renamed because the Wolfman and Dracula do not actually meet in the film.

* Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). Bud Abbot and Lou Costello team up with the Wolfman to prevent Dracula (Lugosi) and a mad female scientist (Lenore Aubert) from transplanting Costello’s brain into the Frankenstein monster. Critics say the film is symbolic of the decline of Universal’s horror classics in the late 1940s -fans say it is one of the best films Abbot and Costello ever made.

THE END

Chaney would reprise the wolfman role in movies and television for the rest of his life, including appearances on The Pat Boone Show, and Route 66. He also played the Frankenstein monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Count Dracula in Son of Dracula (1943), and the Mummy in three Mummy movies.

A heavy drinker, by the 1960s he was reduced to appearing in low-budget schlock like Face of the Screaming Werewolf (1965); Hillbillies in a Haunted House (1967); and Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1970). He died of a heart attack in 1973. But the wolfman lives on.

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Great Big Bathroom Reader

This 1998 edition is so big it covers topics from your own backyard to the farthest reaches of the globe, such as the world’s tallest buildings, the world’s strangest beer, and more.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

A few years ago one of our BRI writers saw the classic 1931 horror film Dracula for the first time …and thought it was terrible. He never knew there was a story behind why the film had so many problems -or even that other people agreed with him that this Hollywood classic was flawed- until he came across this story in a book called Hollywood Gothic by David J. Skal, a leading authority on the history of monster movies.

UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

One of the nice things about silent films is that everyone can understand them, regardless of what language they speak. Of course, they needed title cards to help explain the plot, but it was easy -and cheap- to write new cards for each foreign market.

As a result American films found their way into countries all over the world, and silent films became a truly universal art form: American studios made half of their revenues from foreign film sales; silent screen stars like Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan became the most recognized human beings on the face of the earth.

SILENT TREATMENT

But the advent of talking pictures changed everything -and not just for silent-screen stars whose thick accents quickly consigned them to the Hollywood scrap heap. Suddenly, American films became incomprehensible to anyone who didn’t speak English. American film studios faced the prospect of losing up to half of their business overnight.

Bela Lugosi

Foreign countries that had become used to a steady stream of Hollywood films found themselves left out in the cold; some threatened to retaliate by slapping tariffs on films with dialogue in English, or by boycotting American films entirely.

Making matters worse, sound recording and synchronization technology was still very primitive, and dubbing foreign-language dialogue onto English-language films was all but impossible. Besides, one of the things that attracted audiences to the first “talkies” was the thrill of hearing their favorite actors speak for the very first time. Even if dubbing had been practical, it might not have been very popular. There was no easy solution to the problem, and as a result many foreign language markets were left out of the early years of the talkie era -except for the Spanish-language market. Spanish was too popular, and Mexico, Central, and South America were too close for Hollywood to ignore.

THE DOPPELGÄNGER ERA

No film crew works 24 hours a day. At some point everyone goes home, leaving the soundstage and the expensive sets unused until morning. So, reasoned Hollywood studios, why not bring in a second cast and crew at night to film foreign-language versions of the same films that were being made in English during the day?

Because the sets had already been constructed and second-string actors and crews could be hired for much less money than Hollywood stars, a film like Dracula that had cost nearly $450,000 to film in English during the day could be remade in Spanish at night for as little as $40,000. By 1930, nearly all of the major studios had begun filming Spanish “doppelgänger” films at night.

GRAVEYARD SHIFT

Lupita Tovar

Universal Pictures was one of the last major studios to adopt the idea, when it filmed Spanish and English versions of the film The Cat Creeps in 1930. Dracula was slated to be only the studios second Spanish-language film.

Paul Kohner, Universal’s head of foreign production, hired director George Melford, who’d worked with Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik, and cinematographer George Robinson. A 38-year-old Spanish actor named Carlos Villarias was cast as Dracula, and a multilingual actor named Barry Norton was hired to play “Juan Harker.” A 17-year-old Mexican actress named Lupita Tovar was hired to play Harker’s fiance Eva, who was known as Mina in the English version.

“The American crew left at 6:00 PM and we were ready,” Tovar recalled. “We started shooting at eight. At midnight, they would call for dinner… They didn’t pay us much, but we didn’t complain. We were happy to have some money -most actors were starving.”

FIRST RATE

Since they were using a second-rate cast and crew after Hollywood’s finest had gone home for the day, the assumption was that the film made at night would be inferior to the original. That may have been true in most cases …but not in the case of Dracula.

For all of its popularity and accomplishments as Hollywood’s first vampire film, on a technical level, the English-language Dracula is considered a very poorly made film. A lot of the blame for this goes to director Tod Browning, a hard-drinking recluse with a reputation as a troublemaker. Browning had been fired from at least one studio for his drinking, and was blacklisted from the entire industry for two years in the early 1920s. Making matters worse, Browning had directed nine films starring horror superstar Lon Chaney, Sr. when both men worked for MGM, and he was still reeling from Chaney’s recent death from throat cancer.

Browning’s myriad personal problems found their way into the finished film. “In scene after scene,” Skal writes, “the script demonstrates just how much Browning cut, trimmed, ignored, and generally sabotaged the screenplay’s visual potentials, insisting on static camera setups, eliminating reaction shots and special effects, and generally taking the lazy way out at every opportunity.” In one scene, a piece of cardboard the crew used to reduce the glare of a lamp takes up nearly a quarter of the entire screen, and in the film’s climax, Dracula’s death isn’t even shown on film; moviegoers had to settle for the sound of Lugosi groaning offscreen.

ON PURPOSE

Legend has it that cinematographer Karl Freund got so exasperated with Browning’s slipshod style that he just turned the camera on and let it run unattended, Skal writes:

Indeed, there is one endless take in the finished film featuring Manners (who played Jonathon Harker), Chandler (Mina Murray), and Van Sloan (Dr. Van Helsing) that runs 251 feet, nearly three minutes without a cut that was clearly meant to be broken up with close-ups and reaction shots. At one point Chandler tells Manners, “Oh, no -don’t look at me like that,” in an apparent reference to a dramatic change in his expression. The two-shot, however, shows Manners as motionless as a wax dummy -as if oblivious that the camera is even catching his face.

As if that isn’t sloppy enough, in the final credits, Universal President Carl Laemmle’s title is misspelled as “Presient.”

¡EL VAMPIRO!

The film crew on the Spanish Dracula was another story.

Kohner, who had produced the Spanish version of The Cat Creeps, was headstrong and ambitious -and not above second-guessing the English-language unit, trying to improve upon their work. On The Cat Creeps, he watched the daily footage produced by Robert Julian, the director of the English version, and found the scenes to be poorly lit and uninspiring. So when filming the same scenes for the Spanish film, Kohner relit every set and filled them with atmosphere-creating candles, cobwebs, and shadows that had been missing in the English version. Universal Pictures head Carl Laemmle, Jr. was so impressed with Kohner’s work that he ordered Julian to refilm his own footage, this time using Kohner as his artistic advisor.

Kohner did the same thing during the making of the Spanish version of Dracula. Using a moviola machine that was kept on the set, they watched the daily footage, or “dailies” that had been shot for the English-language version, made notes of the sloppiness and mistakes, and then made sure that their own scenes were better.

One thing they didn’t try to improve on was Bela Lugosi’s masterful performance as Count Dracula. Instead, Kohner insisted that Carlos Villarias imitate Lugosi as closely as possible, and he alone among the actors was allowed to watch the English-language dailies to make sure he got it right. They even let him wear Lugosi’s hairpiece, although it’s unclear whether Lugosi ever knew about it.

Carlos Villarias as Count Dracula

Now You See Him, Now You Don’t

Perhaps the most notable difference between the two films is their use -or lack thereof- of special effects. In scenes showing Dracula climbing out of his coffin, for example, the Spanish version uses a double exposure to show a cloud of mist rising out ofthe coffin and turning into Dracula.

In the English version, the coffin lid starts to tremble, the camera turns away from the coffin and points at a wall …and by the time it returns, Bela Lugosi is already out of the coffin.

NUMERO UNO

When completed, the Spanish version of Dracula cost just over $66,000 to make and only took 22 nights to film, compared to the seven weeks and $450,000 it took to film the English version. In fact, the Spanish crew shot the film so fast that they ended up shooting some of their scenes on sets that weren’t completely finished. Rather than wait for them to be finished, the filmmakers compensated for the empty sets with clever lighting.

The first preview was held in early 1931, before the original Dracula was even finished, and the reviewers who saw the Spanish version were impressed. “If the English version of Dracula, directed by Tod Browning, is as good as the Spanish version,” Hollywood Filmograph magazine wrote, “why, the big U (Universal) hasn’t a thing in the world to worry about.”

Villarias and Tovar

The only problem, of course, was that the English version wasn’t as good, as Filmograph reported a few weeks later. The first few minutes of the film were enthralling, the magazine wrote, but quickly deteriorated after that. “Tod Browning directed, although we cannot believe that the same man was responsible for both the first and later parts of the picture. Had the rest of the picture lived up to the first sequence in the ruined castle Transylvania, Dracula would have been a horror and thrill classic long remembered.”

INTO THIN AIR

Dracula was one of the last foreign-language films produced in Hollywood. By 1931 the Great Depressions was in full swing, and American film studios, desperate to cut costs whenever possible, abandoned Spanish-language markets almost entirely. Universal never even bothered to register the copyright on the film and never had preservation copies made so that new prints could be made when the originals wore out.

The Spanish Dracula made the rounds of Spanish-language countries into the 1950s, then gradually disappeared.

Life After Death

It was thought to be lost entirely until the late 1970s, when an incomplete negative was found in a warehouse in New Jersey. Then, in 1989, a complete version of the film was found in the Cuban Film Archives in Havana. In the late 1990s, Universal and the UCLA Film Archives restored the film and released it to cable and video markets, where it is developing a new following and has finally received the recognition it deserves.

Here is the complete movie for your enjoyment.

(YouTube link)

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader.

The 13th book in the series by the Bathroom Reader’s Institute has 504 pages crammed with fun facts, including articles on the biggest movie bombs ever, the origin and unintended use of I.Q. test, and more.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

The original Frankenstein’s monster wasn’t Boris Karloff -it was (believe it or not) a character created by a 19-year-old author named Mary Shelley …more than 190 years ago.

BACKGROUND

In the summer of 1816, 19-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her 24-year-old husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, visited Switzerland “It proved a wet, uncongenial summer,” she wrote some 15 years later, “and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house.”

To pass the time, the Shelleys and their neighbors -28-year-old Lord Byron, his 23-year-old personal physician, and his 18-year-old lover- read German ghost stories aloud. They enjoyed it so much that one day, Byron announced, “We will each write a ghost story.” Everyone agreed, but apparently the poets, unaccustomed to prose writing, couldn’t come up with anything very scary.

Mary was determined to do better. “I busied myself to think of a story,” she recalled, “One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror.” Yet she couldn’t come up with anything. Every morning, her companions asked: “Have you thought of a story?” “And each morning,” she wrote later, “I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative.”

A FLASH OF INSPIRATION

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

One evening, Mary sat by the fireplace, listening to her husband and Byron discuss the possibility of reanimating a corpse with electricity, giving it what they called “vital warmth.”

The discussion finally ended well after midnight, and Shelley retired. But Mary, “transfixed in speculation,” couldn’t sleep.

“When I placed my head on the pillow,” she recalled, “I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arouse in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw -with shut eyes but acute mental vision- I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together …I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy half-vital motion.

“Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handiwork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of light which he had communicated would fade; that this thing would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench forever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery eyes…”

THE PERFECT HORROR STORY

At this point, Mary opened her eyes in terror -so frightened that she needed reassurance it had all just been her imagination. She gazed around the room, but just couldn’t shake the image of “my hideous phantom.” Finally, to take her mind off the creature, she went back to the ghost story she’d been trying to compose all week. “If only I could contrive one,” she thought, “that would frighten people as I myself had been frightened that night!” Then she realized that her vision was, in fact, the story she’d been reaching for.

As she recounted: “Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke in upon me. ‘I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.’ On the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story. I began the day with the words, ‘It was on a dreary night in November,’ making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream.”

THE NOVEL

The first version of Frankenstein was a short story. But Mary’s husband encouraged her to develop it further, and she eventually turned it into a novel. It was published anonymously in three parts in 1818. “Mary,” notes one critic, “did not think it important enough to sign her name to the book… And since her husband wrote the book’s preface, people assumed he had written the rest of the book as well… It was not until a later edition of Frankenstein that the book was revealed as the work of a young girl.”

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The article above is reprinted with permission from The Best of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

For some reason, Great Britain has more than its share of mansions, estates, and old homes that are reported to be haunted.

Leeds Castle is said to be haunted by a dog. He pays no attention to the people who visit the castle, but he’s said to bring bad luck to anyone who spots him. (Image credit: Flickr user Gauis Caecilius)

St. Donat’s Castle is a 12th-century Welsh castle that’s now a boarding school …and they say a ghost panther stalks the corridors. In a parlor, a piano plays itself …even when the lid is closed.

Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire supposedly has a mischievous spirit that loves to fling open doors. Billionaire J. Paul Getty said it once terrified him by barging into the room.

Chatham House is haunted by the ghost of the “Hanging Judge” George Jeffreys, the former Chief Justice of England who liked to hand out death sentences. Jeffreys is said to walk around Chatham House in his black judicial robes, carrying a bloody bone.

(East Riddlesden Hall image credit: Flickr user floato)

East Riddlesden Hall in Yorkshire hosts the “Grey Lady.” She reportedly paces up and down the stairs, looking for her lover,  who was sealed in a room by her jealous husband and left there to die.

Dover Castle is said to be haunted by a boy murdered during the Napoleanic Wars. The headless ghost stalks the halls, drumming.

(Raby Castle image credit: Flickr user Mark Loveridge)

Raby Castle near Durham is the home to the “Old Hellcat” -a ghoulish old woman who sits in a chair, knitting. (If you get close enough, you can feel the heat coming off her glowing red knitting needles.)

The Kylesku Hotel in the Scottish Highlands has a ghost who likes to pop his head through a trapdoor in the ceiling. They say he’s friendly -he only does it to startle visitors.

Rufford Old Hall in Lancashire is haunted by a young woman in a wedding dress who, the legend says, waits for the return of her fiance, who was killed in battle. The dining room is also reportedly haunted by Queen Elizabeth I.

(Netley Abbey image credit: Flickr user _moonpie)

Netley Abbey, a semi-demolished medieval nunnery in Hampshire, is haunted by the ghost of Walter Taylor, a builder hired to tear it down. A stone from an arch struck him on the head and killed him. The demolition was never completed, and now Taylor’s spirit wanders around the ruins accompanied by the sound of falling bricks.

Inverawe House, a hotel in Scotland, has “Green Jean.” Instead of trying to scare people, he actually assists the staff, leaving fresh soap and clean towels for the guests.

At Berry Pomeroy Castle, the “White Lady” haunts the dungeon and towers. It’s supposedly the ghost of Lady Margaret Pomeroy, who was imprisoned in the dungeon by her sister for 20 years and starved to death. People who see her report feeling a wave of depression and fear.

And the U.S. has fewer castles, but plenty of places people go to see ghosts.

(Alcatraz image credit: Flicker user Punchup)

Alcatraz, the island prison near San Francisco, is no longer a working penitentiary. It’s a tourist attraction. On the “night tour,” guides say, you can hear the screams of long-dead prisoners, footsteps of jackbooted guards, and the slamming of jail doors that remain motionless before your eyes.

Huntress Hall at Keene State College in New Hampshire is a freshman class dorm. Who else lives there? The college’s benefactress (and the building’s namesake), Harriet Huntress. Her wheelchair is stored in the attic, and students say it can be heard rolling around in the middle of the night.

Belcourt Castle, in Newport, Rhode Island, is famous for its ghosts, the spookiest of which is a spectral monk who appears in front of a lion statue, walks away from it, then disappears. Then he comes back and repeats the whole process over again.

At the Radisson Suite Hotel in Ogden, Utah, a ghost named Mrs. Eccles lives in the elevator. She died on the fifth floor, the story goes, so the elevator always stops there, whether anyone has pressed the button or not. You can’t see Mrs. Eccles, but when she walks past, you can feel her brush against you and you can smell her perfume.

(Image credit: Big Bay Point Lighthouse Bed & Breakfast)

Big Bay Point Lighthouse in Michigan is haunted by the ghost of its first keeper, Will Prior. If you go, he’s the red-haired ghost. They say he’s harmless.

The old high school in Brunswick, Maine, is said to be haunted by a student who died there. She was rehearsing  play on  balcony when she fell to her death. The building is now used for school board meetings …which are sometimes interrupted by slamming doors and flying books.

Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Missouri, is the haunt of former WWF wrestler Owen Hart. During a 1999 match, Hart was being lowered from the ceiling to the ring when the cable holding his harness snapped. He fell to the floor and died instantly. In his wrestling trunks, mask, and harness, Hart has been seen floating near the ceiling.

At the Vanderlip Mansion in Palos Verdes, California, legend says Mrs. Vanderlip killed her entire family (including the dogs) and then committed suicide. At night, the faces of the family stare out the windows. The dogs run around and bark at squirrels in the woods behind the house.

(Lizzie Borden House image credit: Flickr user Stewart Robotham)

The Lizzie Borden House in Fall River, Massachusetts, where Borden notoriously murdered her parents with an axe in 1892, is, according to locals, home to a ghost. One of Borden’s parents? No -its the ghost of Lizzie’s cat. The invisible feline is friendly: it likes to rub up against tourists’ legs and sit in their laps.

The Hardee’s in West Union, Iowa, was built on top of a 189th-century cemetery -and ghosts now hang out at the restaurant. Employees find objects moved and hear their names being called when nobody’s there, and the building has icy spots that stay cold year round.

In the desert outside Anthem, Arizona, the ghosts of Native American warriors on horseback have been seen riding at night. And it hey see anybody …they shoot (ghost) arrows at them.

At the Gregory Graveyard in Lancaster, South Carolina, you can hear the children laughing and a minister giving a eulogy over a grave. As you leave the graveyard, you may see a path to the left that wasn’t there when you came in. If you walk down that path, you’ll see several ghostly human figures. On Halloween night, the path is said to glow green.

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This article was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Have you ever participated in a séance or tried to contact the “spirits” using a Ouija board? You probably don’t realize it, but the modern conception of communicating with the dead only dates back to the late 1840s. Here’s the story of the hoax that started spirit-mania.

BUMP IN THE NIGHT

In 1848 a devout Methodist farmer named John Fox and his family began to hear strange noises in their Hydesville, New York, farmhouse. The noises continued for weeks on end, until finally on one particularly noisy evening, Mrs. Fox ordered the two children, 13-year-old Margaret and 12-year-old Kate, to stay perfectly quiet in bed while Mr. Fox searched the house from top to bottom. His search shed no light on the mystery, but afterward, Margaret sat up in bed and snapped her fingers, exclaiming, “Here, Mr. Split-foot, do as I do!”

“The reply was immediate,” Earl Fornell writes in The Unhappy Medium: Spiritualism and the Life of Margaret Fox. “The invisible rapper responded by imitating the number of the girl’s staccato responses.”

Mrs. Fox began to make sense of what she was hearing. “Count ten,” she told the spirit. It responded with ten raps. So she asked several questions; each time the spirit answered correctly. Next, Mrs. Fox asked the spirit if it would rap if a neighbor was present; the spirit said yes. So Mr. Fox ran and got a neighbor, the first of more than 500 neighbors and townspeople who visited over the next few weeks to watch Margaret and Kate interact with the spirit. As long as either Margaret or Kate was present, the spirit was willing to communicate.

MURDER MYSTERY

Using an alphabetic code that Margaret and Kate devised, “Mr. Split-foot” explained that in his Earthly life he’d been a peddler, murdered by the person who lived in the farmhouse. The spirit identified the killer as “C. R.” Some citizens tracked down a man named Charles Rosana, who’d lived in the house years earlier, but with no body and no evidence other than the testimony of a ghost, he was never charged.

At that point, Mrs. Fox decided to send Margaret and Kate to live with their older sister, Leah Fish, in Rochester. As soon as the girls left Hydesville, the strange noises and spirit visitations stopped.

KID STUFF

When they arrived in Rochester, Margaret and Kate let their older sister, Leah, in on the secret: the whole thing -the rappings, the spirits, “Mr. Split-foot,” the “murder,” and everything else- was a hoax. “We wanted to terrify our dear mother,” Margaret told the New York Herald in 1888.

The girls started out by tying a string to an apple and bouncing it repeatedly on the floor, but soon discovered they could make loud popping noises by cracking the joints in their big toes. They also figured out how to project the sounds around the room, in much the same way that ventriloquists throw their voices, which helped make the rapping sounds convincing.

THE SOUND OF MONEY

By now the prank had gone on too long; Mrs. Fox was so upset by the idea of her two young girls talking to dead people that Margaret started feeling guilty and decided to put an end to it. She and Kate staged one last “farewell” rap session, then had the “spirits” announce that their Earthly work was done and that they would no longer try to make contact with the living.

The only problem was that their sister Leah made her living running a music studio, and when Margaret and Kate had come to live with her, their notoriety scared away all her pupils. So Leah convinced them to help her by forming a spiritualist society and staging a series of public demonstrations of spirit rapping in Corinthian Hall, the town’s largest auditorium. Price of admission: $1 per person.

The audiences of these shows were fooled by the mysterious rappings, and within weeks a number of “spirit circles” formed in Rochester and began hiring the Fox sisters to perform séances in private homes. When people began to tire of listening to Mr. Split-foot, the sisters discovered they could communicate with the spirits of such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and William Shakespeare.

It was from this modest beginning -two young girls figuring out how to make mysterious noises by popping their big toes, and an intimidating third sister figuring out how to exploit it- that “Split-foot” spiritualism went on to become what may have been the fastest-growing spiritual movement in the history of the United States.

IN THE RIGHT PLACE, AT THE RIGHT TIME

The Fox sisters didn’t know it, but they were perfectly poised to fill the spiritual void created by advances in 19th-century science and the Industrial Revolution. According to Earl Fornell:

The appearance of these emissaries from another world was particularly welcome, for the rise of science in the early decades of the 19th century had, to some extent, brought into question the validity of older religious dogmas. Such reform movements as Utopian socialism, temperance, abolitionism, and feminism arose from a demand for a better life on earth, since science seemed to promise no afterlife… Still another endeavor was a frenzied search for positive and immediate proof of the immortality that science seemed then to set aside.

TRUE BELIEVERS

The possibility of talking to the departed took the public imagination by storm. Here are a few examples of how deeply “spiritualism” pervaded the culture:

* A judge in upstate New York developed a reputation for consulting the spirits before handing down rulings.

* Some enthusiasts became so convinced that life was better “on the other side” that they committed suicide rather than waste a lifetime waiting for paradise.

* In 1853 some New Yorkers formed a group called the Free Spirit Love Society, which forbade extramarital affairs in all instances …except those in which the adulterer “entered into a new relation under the guidance of spiritual affinities or attractions.” At its peak the society boasted of more than 600 members.

* In 1856 a Bordentown, New Jersey, man died just days before he was supposed to marry his fiancé. Rather than cancel the wedding, the man’s family and his bride-to-be turned it into a wedding-funeral, hiring a medium to marry the bride to her fiancé’s corpse before it was laid to rest.

SHE KEEPS GOING… AND GOING… AND GOING…

The public’s desire to believe was so great that the Fox sisters were able to keep their hoax going for more than 40 years. The spiritualism craze faded somewhat in the late 1850s but came roaring back following the outbreak of the Civil War, as thousands of bereaved families tried desperately to get in contact with loved ones killed in battle.

Even First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln brought spiritualists to the White House so that she could speak to her dead sons Tad and Willie. In 1872, seven years after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Mrs. Lincoln visited Fox several times and each time came away convinced that, through Margaret, she’d made contact with “the real presence of the spirit of her husband.”

UNHAPPY MEDIUMS

One of the curses of founding this fraudulent movement was that Margaret and Kate had to spend most of their time in the presence of true believers. Both women grew to hate their lives; both became alcoholics. And though Leah Fish had grown rich off years of public performances, Margaret and Kate had not.

By the late 1870s, Margaret was still giving public performances, but she was suffering from depression and worked only a few hours each week -just long enough to make the money she needed to “drown my remorse in wine,” as she put it. Somehow, she managed to keep going for another ten years.

Then in September 1888, a reporter for the New York Herald asked Fox to comment on the case of another spiritualist, who’d recently been exposed as a fraud. Margaret told the reporter that spiritualism was bogus and promised one day to give “an interesting exposure of the fraud.”

BAD RAP

Rather than wait, the Herald sent a reporter the next day. As promised, Fox delivered -and over the next few hours laid out her bizarre life story in lurid detail. There was no truth to spiritualism, she told the reporter, and she said she more than anyone else should know it.

“I have explored the unknown as far as a human can,” she told the reporter. “I have gone to the dead so that I might get from them some little token… I have tried to obtain some sign. Not a thing! No, the dead shall never return.”

And in case anyone didn’t believe her -in fact, many spiritualists blamed booze for the “false confession”- Fox gave a public confession and demonstration of her methods at New York’s Academy of Music. The New York Herald described the scene:

Everybody in the hall knew they were looking at the woman principally responsible for spiritualism. She stood upon a pine table, with nothing on her feet but stockings. As she remained motionless, loud distinct rappings were heard, now behind the scenes, now in the gallery. She had a devil’s gift in a rapping ventriloquism, from which spiritualism had sprung to life, and here was the same toe rapping it out of existence.

DIDN’T SEE THIS COMING

The cash Margaret Fox made selling her story didn’t last long. Neither did the money she made on tours exposing the fraud of spiritualism. When the public’s interest in her exposé dried up, she became so desperate for money that she recanted her confession and went back out on the séance circuit. She toured the country for the next five years, until finally in 1893, like her sister Kate, she died drunk, broke, and alone.

The funeral arrangements were handled by a friend of Margaret’s, Titus Merritt, “the mortician,” Fornell writes, “at whose establishment she often spent long nights, sitting amongst the corpses watching for some signs of spirit life.”

The signs never came.

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Our readers seem to love palindromes, words or phrases that are spelled the same forward and backward. So, on a recent trip to the BRI archives, we pulled out some of our favorite palindromes and used them to create this silly story. There are 52 hidden here (not including doubles). Can you find them all? Good luck!

OTTO

One day a zoologist named Otto paddled his kayak to Los Angeles, eating a banana sandwich. He had heard there was something amiss with the animals there and wanted to help. When Otto reached the shore, a familiar voice called out, “Yo, Banana Boy, what’s happening?” Otto looked up and saw his old friend Ed, a general, a renegade who had left the military. General Ed was standing next to his new race car -a Toyota with attitude.

“Wow!” said Otto, “Nice wheels!”

“Yeah, but if I had a hi-fi stereo with a DVD player, it would be perfect,” replied Ed. “Hey, want a ride?”

“Sure,” said Otto, and the two friends headed downtown.

“Pull up, pull up!” yelled Otto as they passed a newsstand. Ed got out and bought the afternoon edition. The headline read “L.A. Ocelots Stole Coal.” Otto read aloud: “Authorities believe the ocelots are being controlled by a giant mutant rat who calls himself King Ognik. Injected with a ‘pure evil’ gene, Ognik had grown to the size of a yak and escaped the lab. Whereabouts: unknown.”

GNU DUNG

The two men were pondering the story when Ed caught something out of the corner of his eye. “Was it a rat I saw?” he asked. Sure enough, there was a yak-sized rat waddling into the L.A. Zoo. “You’re on your own, Otto,” said Ed. “I’m outta here.”

Even though Ed is on no side, thought Otto, his military experience could help. “You have to stay. We must capture that oozy rat in a sanitary zoo and stop him before he infects the other animals!”

Ed paused, then remembered his duty. “I will help you, but we need a battle cry.” So Otto made Ed a motto: “Now, sir, a war is won.” The two warriors then followed the giant rat into the zoo.

When they were near the entrance, Otto warned, “Make very sure that you step on no pets.” Too late- General Ed walked into a pile of irradiated gnu dung. It started creeping up his leg. Ed screamed but could not move.

“Can’t go on,” Ed said, frothing at the mouth and babbling incoherently. “I am lonely. Tylenol won’t help me now.

KING OGNIK

Otto, not knowing what else to do, left his friend and entered the zoo. It was the strangest place he’d ever been. Completely devoid of humans, the animals had free reign. To Otto’s right, there was a pride of senile felines fighting over a bird rib. To his left, he saw a llama mall complete with llama stores and llama customers. And down a dark pathway, Otto spotted King Ognik. It looked like some sort of laminated E.T. animal as it ran into a building marked “DNA Land.” Otto followed Ognik into a large room, where the rat sat regally on a throne made of stack cats. Behind Ognik were lots of ocelots holding stolen coal, fueling a cauldron.

“Aha!” said King Ognik, “I knew there would be at least one human brave -and stupid- enough to confront me. I have infected these animals to do my evil bidding. Now you are all that I need to enslave the human race!”

“You dirty rat,” said Otto, “You’ll never get away with it.”

“Oh yes I will. Meet my sergeant-at-arms, Sara Sim.” Out walked an armor-clad ewe with one giant eye. She was pointing a gun at Otto. “Now,” the king continued, “You will take this bar crab to the llama mall and go to a store called Strapgod’s Dog Parts. Then swap for I, a pair of paws.  You either borrow or rob it, I don’t care. You see, after the dog paws touch human DNA, they will mix in with this lion oil, thus completing the creation of my vile virus, which will end your insignificant reign on this planet! Miss Sim will accompany you while I prepare a huge party to celebrate the end of humanity. Now go!”

STRAPGOD’S DOG PARTS

They left DNA Land just as all the animals were gathering for the party. “Don’t make a peep,” order Miss Sim. Otto was led into the llama mall, past a store called the Tangy Gnat, and then into Strapgod’s Dog Parts. Once Otto’s hands touched the paws, he knew it would be all over for humanity. Dammit, I’m mad!, he thought. he tried to run, but Miss Sim seized him, and Strapgod the llama trotted down from his top spot. Miss Sim told Otto to place the bar crab on the counter, as Strapgod pulled a pair of dog paws from a barrel labeled “Tons o’ Snot.”

Just as the paws were about to touch Otto’s skin, a familiar voice shouted in from the store’s entrance: “Yo, Banana Boy, need some help?” Otto and Miss Sim spun around. It was General Ed, and he had a huge shopping cart full of TNT! It was not a ton of dynamite, but more than enough to blow the zoo sky high. “Let him go, you ewe. If you refuse, I’ll light this fuse right now!”

MAPS, DNA, and SPAM

Miss Sim released Otto and ran toward the exit to warn the rat king, but General Ed captured her and tied her to the cart. Then Otto stepped up and said to her, “Go deliver a dare, vile dog. Tell your deified demigod that his diseased days of diabolical destruction are over! Not even a rat can live forever of evil.”

Otto lit the fuse on the TNT, and General Ed pushed the party booby-trap into DNA Land as the two heroes ran out of the zoo. Just as they reached safety, a huge explosion rang out, ending the evil reign of King Ognik and his insane animal army.

“Wow! Thanks a lot, Ed!” said Otto. “But how? I thought you were finished when you stepped in that evil poop.”

“Yes, my palindromic friend, it seemed I was done for, but then this senile cat came out of the zoo and gave me a strange gift: a shopping cart full of dynamite, maps, DNA, and Spam.”

“He did, eh?”

“Yes. So I ate the Spam to give me strength, injected the DNA to counter the effects of the gnu dung, and used the maps to find you in the llama mall, and you know what I did with the TNT.”

Otto was so relieved. He could name no one man as brave as General Ed. Thanks to them, the world was safe again for both humans and animals. And so, their civic duty done, Otto and general Ed turned to more urgent matters -they were famished. With a hankering for banana sandwiches, they hopped into Ed’s Toyota and drove off to the Yreka Bakery.

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader, a fantastic book by the Bathroom Readers’ Institute.

The 17th book in this the Bathroom Reader series is filled to the brim with facts, fun, and fascination, including articles about the Origin of Kung Fu, How to Kill a Zombie, Women in Space and more!

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Here at the BRI,  we’re huge fans of Richard Zak’s books. They’re great bathroom reading. He has a new book coming out: The Pirate Hunter-The True Story of Captain Kidd. Here’s a teaser from his masterpiece, An Underground Education.

WORKIN’ FOR THE MAN

While the popular image of buccaneers is peg-legged, eye-patched rascals, the ultimate anti-authority free agents, roving the seas, plundering ships, raping women, and brawling, the reality is much worse. They did all that and worked for the government.

Prior to 1856, it was standard operating procedure for western nations either to commission privateers directly or to wink at the actions of freelance pirates, so long as those thieves were preying on the commerce of other nations. Piracy was often state-supported economic terrorism. Captain Kidd, for example, was no Joan of Arc, but he was no “Captain Kidd,” either.

MEET CAPTAIN KIDD

William Kidd

William Kidd (c. 1645-1701) was a plain-speaking, high-tempered Scotsman who had made his fortune as captain and ship owner, trading goods in the colonies. In 1696, the 51-year-old Kidd was a prosperous New York businessman, comfortably settled with his wife and family. That year, Kidd and his friend Robert Livingston connived with the newly-appointed governor of New England, Richard Coote, Earl of Bellamount, the King of England’s cousin, to receive an unusual privateering commission.

In times of war, wealthy investors routinely funded privateering vessels to attack the enemy’s merchant ships and divvy the plunder. This was an English naval tradition dating back to Sir Francis Drake. But what was extraordinary about this commission was that it also entitled Kidd to attack pirate ships of all nationalities and keep their booty -no questions asked. It was an amazing financial opportunity.

SMART INVESTMENT

Kidd’s royal commission -secured by Bellamount- did, in fact,

give and grant full Power and Authority to Captain William Kidd, Commander of the ship Adventure Galley …to apprehend, seize and take into Custody the said Thomas Too, John Ireland, Tho Wake, and William Maze, and all other Pirates, Free-booters and Sea-rovers, of what Nation whatsoever, whom he should find or meet with, upon the said Coasts or Seas of America, or in any other Seas or Parts, with their Ships and Vessels, and all such Merchandise, Money, Goods, and Wares as should be found on board of them.

The mission began as an attempt by Britain to crack down on four colonial pirates, but was cunningly expanded so that Kidd would have maximum leeway to capture “prizes” -non-English ships.

In addition to Livingston and Lord Richard, four of the most powerful men in England secretly invested the £6,000 it would cost to outfit the ship. The prospect of profit from this legal larceny was dizzying. If Kidd captured two large ships, the backers could easily received a hundredfold return on their investment in a year. In the official contract with Kidd, four obscure merchants were listed as the investors, but they were shills. The real backers were John Somers, Lord Chancellor of England; Sire Robert Wadpole, Earl of Orford, First Lord of the Admiralty; and two secretaries of state, the Earl of Romney and the Duke of Shrewsbury. The king was to receive 10% of the booty as well, “chiefly to show that he was a partner in the undertaking,” according to The Real Captain Kidd- A Vindication, by Sir Cornelius Dalton. Kidd and Livingston stood to receive 7.5% each, while if the haul totaled more than £100,000, Kidd was to be allowed to keep the ship.

SHAKY START

The Adventure Galley

The mission got off to a bad start in March 1696; Kidd and a London merchant handpicked 100-plus English sailors for the Adventure Galley, but before they departed the coast, a British man-of-war seized the bulk of his crew. Now, Kidd sailed to New York to round up a new crew, but his articles allowed him to offer the crew shares of only a quarter of the spoils (instead of the usual half) and there would be no regular wages; the voyage would be strictly “no purchase, no pay,” or in sailor slang, “no prey, no pay.”

Kidd was forced to sign the piratical scum of the New York wharf, out-of-work scallywags. Once out of the harbor, he had no luck whatsoever at finding pirate ships, and headed to the Indian Ocean. He was fired upon, but when he captured the vessel, it turned out to be a Dutch ship. His crew -led by gunner William Moore- voted to take her as a prize anyhow, but Kidd, pistols in hand, changed their minds. Kidd then spied a merchant ship and swung into action. Employing a standard battle tactic, he flew French colors to trick his adversary and lured the giant Quedagh Merchant to come alongside. When an officer of that ship boarded holding French papers of clear passage, Kidd hoisted the British flag and declared the ship captured. Although the Quedagh Merchant was obviously an Armenian ship with a crew of Moors and a few Christians aboard, the officer presented French papers, which made it a legitimate prize, given the state of war at the time between England and France. And it was a rich prize. The Quedagh Merchant was packed with fine cloths, silks, and jewels, worth perhaps as much as £400,000.

MUTINY!

Kidd who had taken another ship traveling with French papers hauled his prizes back to Ste.-Marie, in Madagascar. His articles stated that he must take captured ships back to Boston (or to London, if armed British escort appears) so that an Admiralty Court could rule on whether they were legitimate captures and could document the spoils.

In Madagascar stood the Mocha Frigate, a former merchant ship turned pirate by a man named Robert Culliford. When Kidd (with his mounted cannon) hit port, his pirates abandoned ship. Kidd had proposed that they capture the Mocha as well, but instead, his men swore they’d shoot him if he tried. Ninety-seven of them mutinied over to Culliford and promptly attacked Kidd.

Receiving no wage with Kidd, the most the men could hope for was a share of one-quarter of the spoils, if an admiralty court ruled in their favor in Boston; with Culliford, they might split up everything, and right away. Here’s how Kidd described what happened next:

The said Deserters came on board, and carried away Guns, Powder, Shot, small Arms, Sails, Anchors, Cables, Surgeon’s Chests, and what else they pleased; and threatened several times to murder the Narrator [i.e., Kidd]. Their Wickedness was so great, after they had plundered and ransacked sufficiently, [they] went Four Miles off to one Edward Weiche’s House, which his the Narrator’s chest had lodged, and broke it open; and took out Ten Ounces of Gold, 40 Pound of Plate, 370 Pieces of Eight, the Narrator’s Journal, and a great many Papers that belonged to him,  and the People of New York that fitted him out.

OUT OF LUCK

Kidd was left with 13 sailors; his original ship was leaking badly (requiring eight-man shifts to bail her out); and his prize was far too big to sail with his reduced crew. The date was early in 1699.

Kidd was two years past his contracted return date, and no doubt his powerful backers were getting nervous. And now the East India Company reported in London that “they had received some information …that Kidd had committed several acts of piracy, particularly in seizing a Moorish ship called the Quedagh Merchant.”

The vastly profitable East India Company had no desire to enrage the great mogul of India by allowing British pirates to prey upon Moorish ships, especially since the great mogul, a now-forgotten potentate, then controlled an enormous empire and could expel the Brits.

With a single order, Kidd was officially declared a pirate.

BAD TRIP

Captain Kidd spent six long months in Madagascar trying to round up a crew, then headed for Boston. When Kidd and his skeleton crew finally reached Anguillla in the West Indies and found out they were wanted for piracy, they were dumbfounded. Once again the crew started deserting. Kidd no longer had sailors enough to sail his prize to Boston, so he traded for a smaller ship complete with crew and moved an undisclosed portion of the remaining booty aboard. (How much booty has intrigued treasure hunters ever since.)

Kidd could have stayed in the Caribbean a very wealthy man. At least £10,000 of  treasure remained and possibly as much as £40,000 or even more. Instead he sailed north. In New York Harbor, he handed over the two French passes (which would clear him of the piracy charge) to an old friend to deliver to his backer, New England governor Coote, who was then in Boston.

SAVED?

Coote (as you remember, cousin to the king of England) sent the postmaster of Boston out the Block Island to give a message to Kidd. The note declared the governor was sympathetic to Kidd’s version of the events and then concluded:

I make no manner of doubt but to obtain the King’s pardon for you, and for those few man you have left who I understand have been faithful to you, and refused as well as you to dishonor the Commission you have from England …I assure you on my Word and Honour I will perform nicely what I have promised.

Richard Coote

Kidd, who was joined on ship by his wife and family, responded with great relief to the news that the governor would take up his cause; and he guessed aloud that the East India Company must have heard of acts of piracy committed by Captain Robert Culliford, using the munitied members of Kidd’s former crew. But, on July 1, 1699, when Kidd and his few remaining crew members sailed into Boston Harbor, Governor Coote promptly had them arrested.

England dispatched a Navy ship to ferry Kidd back to justice. The House of Commons sniffed a scandal and demanded that Kidd not be tried until it was back in session. Unfortunately for Kidd, that meant spending a year in Newgate Prison.

ON TRIAL

On March 6, 1701, the House of Commons began to examine Kidd’s papers. Included among them, as clearly stated in the Parliament papers, were Two French Passes from the ships Kidd had captured. Nonetheless, Kidd was ordered to stand trial in Admiralty Court -and it was specifically stated that his papers should be delivered there for his trial. The court then stunned Kidd by charging him not with piracy but with the murder of William Moore, the ship’s gunner.

Testimony from paid informants painted the following picture of the crime. While the ship was anchored off the coast of Africa, after more than a year without taking a single prize, Kidd called Moore a “lousy dog.” Moore replied: “If I be so, you have made me one.” Kidd, in a rage, swung an iron-hooped bucket, which caught Moore flush in the temple. Moore died the next day.

BETRAYED

Kidd claimed that he never meant to kill Moore, and that threat of mutiny had been strong at that time. Testifying for the Crown were two of Kidd’s crew who had mutinied, signed up with Culliford, and gone out on later pirate voyages; they were offered pardons in exchange for turning Crown’s evidence.

After one especially absurd statement, Kidd complained: “It signified nothing to ask any questions. The rogues will swear to anything.” Then later, he asked: “Have you not been promised your life to swear away mine?”

The judge intervened: “He is not bound to answer that question. He is very fit to be made as evidence for the Crown.”

It took the jury an hour to bring in a guilty verdict.

As for the piracy charges, the judge, Lord Chief Baron, shaped the trial so that it all hinged on whether or not Captain Kidd received French passes from the captured ships, which apparently never found their way to the Admiralty Court. The lord chief summed up:

And as to the French passes there is nothing of that appears by any proof; and for aught I can see, none saw them but himself, if there ever were any. “Four respected British officer’s testified to Kidd’s valor during the French war in the Caribbean and one noted that Kidd fought off a mutiny to prevent his ship from going ‘a-pirating.’”

But Kidd was convicted of piracy. When sentenced to death, he told the court: “My lord, it is a very hard sentence. For my part, I am the innocentest person of them all, only I have been sworn against by perjured persons.”

THE END?

In prison, Kidd refused to confess to the chaplain and refused repeated requests to cast blame on the ministers that backed up his mission. (Perhaps he was still hoping for a pardon.) On May 24, 1701, Captain William Kidd was brought to Execution Dock at Wapping. The noose about his neck, he kicked out unto eternity and the rope broke. Kidd would have to be re-hoisted up the ladder and turned off a second time. In the little waiting period, he told the chaplain at the gallows that his greatest sorrow was leaving his wife and children in New York without getting a chance to say good-bye.

The next day in Parliament, Lord Chancellor Somers admitted he had had a secret share in Kidd’s voyage but claimed there was nothing illegal in that. In fact, he pointed out that “owners of the said ship had lost their expenses and had not received any benefit from the grant.”

The East India Company soon after reported to the great mogul of India that the “evil pirate” Captain Kidd had been hanged. Britain’s inroads in India eventually led to conquering the entire subcontinent.

Robert Culliford, the pirate captain of the Mocha Frigate, applied for a pardon and, with a lawyer at his side, was granted amnesty by the Admiralty Court.

Kidd’s hard-earned estate was forfeited after his hanging, taken from his wife and children. Queen Anne used the money to found the Greenwich Hospital.

The British Admiralty dangled Captain Kidd’s dead body -encased in pine resin and bound by leather straps- for years from a specially constructed gallows over the Thames River to serve as a warning to other pirates.

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Before World War II, cartoons with war themes attempted to use humor or satire to sway public opinion. The spread of military newspapers and the inclusion of cartoons as a feature designed to boost morale changed all that.

UP FRONT

Arguably the most well-known of the World War II cartoonists, Bill Mauldin created the characters Willie and Joe, who were depicted as rank-and-file soldiers dealing with the realities of war without sugarcoating that some leaders, including General George S. Patton, would have preferred to see. Mauldin’s caricatures, which began in 1940 when he was an 18-year-old in the U.S. Army’s 45th Infantry Division, were initially published in the division’s newsletter and soon became hugely popular with the soldiers on the front lines. In 1943 Mauldin’s cartoon was picked up by Stars and Stripes and was then distributed domestically by United Features Syndicate as Up Front, thanks in part to the war correspondent Ernie Pyle, who helped bring the cartoons to the attention of the general public.

Bill Mauldin did not attempt to glorify the fighting in any manner; rather, he used wry humor to demonstrate the absurdities of war. For example, to make an exaggerated commentary on the practice of sending increasingly younger soldiers to the front lines, Mauldin showed Willie and Joe in a bunker, reading a notice handed to them by an adolescent dressed in a soldier’s uniform. One says to the other, “I guess it’s okay. The replacement center says he comes from a long line of infantrymen.”

SAD SACK

At the time that he was drafted in the U.S. Army in June 1941, George Baker was a struggling animator on the verge of losing his job with the Walt Disney Company in Los Angeles. Although the war in Europe had been raging for several years, the possibility of the United States entering the war seemed remote to many at the time. Baker and other soldiers went through the motions of their training with little sense of purpose, waiting for their one-year enlistment to be up so they could get on with their lives.

To break up the monotony of Army life, Baker began to create drawings on his own time, attempting to explain pictorially what life was like in the armed forces. After taking his drawings to several New York publishers and being rejected, a despondent Baker put his cartoons away and tried to forget about them. However, a few months later, the armed forces sponsored a cartoon contest for servicemen. Baker decided to enter one of his drawing into the contest -and won first prize. This caught the attention of the editor of the Army’s Yank magazine, Major Hartzell Spence, who secured Baker a position on the Yank’s staff. Baker worked for Yank for the duration of World War II, moving from one training camp to another as a salesman for the magazine while also being exposed to the many facets of Army life, which he then used for the basis of his cartoons.

Baker’s character, named the Sad Sack, was a stumbling, bumbling soldier trying to fit in an Army comprised of stereotypes: trim and well-dressed men in perfect marching lines, belligerent drill sergeants, and unsympathetic cooks, doctors, and barbers. The Sack represented the common man trying to live up to the perceived ideal of what a soldier should be, and usually without success. Baker tried to show situations that troops in all branches of the service  -situated in any theater or at any training base- would recognize. One famous cartoon, titled “Drill,” showed the Sack in a marching drill, repeatedly bumping into taller, neatly-groomed men lined up in perfect formations, and then getting trampled and carted off in a stretcher. (Neither the Sack nor anyone else in the cartoons spoke a word.) Baker took a more lighthearted approach with his illustrations than did Bill Mauldin, which may be why Baker didn’t get into much trouble with his superiors.

After the war, Baker returned to civilian life and continued to draw Sad Sack until 1958, but Sack the civilian was not as popular as Sack the soldier, in part due to the younger audience for comic books. Baker had to use entirely new settings and use less suggestive material -and in the comic books, the Sack engaged in conversations, which changed the style of the cartoon considerably. Although Sad Sack (illustrated by other artists after 1958 and distributed by Harvey Comics) lasted into the 1990s and produced several spin-offs, it never matched the popularity of the cartoons done by Baker during World War II.

MALE CALL

Prior to World War II, Terry and the Pirates, produced by Milton Caniff, was one of the most popular comic strips in American newspapers. The serial comic followed the exploits of a young boy, Terry, and his adult sidekick, Pat Ryan, in the Far East, and the supporting cast included a beautiful blonde woman named Burma. When war broke out, Caniff, who was unable to enlist due to a childhood illness that damaged his lungs, wanted to contribute in his own way to the war effort. He created a special version of Terry and the Pirates, with Burma as the star, for the military’s newspapers. When civilian newspapers complained about not having access to the “unauthorized” version of the comic strip, Caniff changed it completely (including revising the material from a serial to a stand-alone) and renamed it Male Call. The new star was Miss Lace, a dark-haired woman who visited men on military bases and addressed everyone as “General.” Male Call’s intended audience was comprised exclusively of men in the military, so it was raunchier than what would appear in civilian newspapers, and contained numerous double entendres of a sexual nature. One of the strip’s notable features is that it showed injured soldiers in a genuine manner, including those who had been blinded or had lost a limb. Male Call last appeared in military newspapers in 1947.

Another of Caniff’s creations was the serial comic Steve Canyon, which he began in 1947 and continued until his death in 1988. The title character started out as a civilian pilot but joined the Air Force during the Korean War. Steve Canyon did not reach the heights of popularity seen by Terry and the Pirates and contained less-suggestive material than Male Call to appease the general public, but it achieved a wide circulation and lasted four decades, much longer than a typical comic strip.

G.I. JOE

Before Hasbro created the G.I. Joe action figure in 1964, Dave Breger introduced the original G.I. Joe to his comic strips in 1942. Begun upon Breger’s enlistment in 1941 and originally entitled Private Breger, it was distributed domestically by King Features Syndicate. In order to have the strip published in military newspapers, Breger had to rename his character. Joe was an ordinary private who attempted to be respectful of his superiors but often ended up doing something that was good for a chuckle. By no measure was the boyish-looking Joe even close to being the gruff hero idealized by the more well-known Hasbro action figures. G.I. Joe caught on with the troops so much that it became a name given to the common foot soldier. The 1945 movie  The Story of G.I. Joe was about correspondent Ernie Pyle, and Habro’s action figures simply pirated the name. After the war, Breger -both the cartoonist and the character- returned to civilian life. The new comic, Mister Breger, began to appear in newspaper, and continued until 1969.

TODAY’S MILITARY COMICS

As the World War II-era comic were phased out and others that had a military theme, such as Sgt. Rock, came and went, more comic books focused on the exploits of superheroes, and newspapers tried to make their funny pages, well, funnier. The unpopularity of the Vietnam War was another contributing factor in the decline of military-themed comics in the public eye. One exception was Beetle Bailey, which debuted in 1951 and has continued to this day, seemingly stuck in time and never engaged in combat (which may help explain its long tenure), but still good for a laugh.

Does that mean that military comics are becoming extinct? Not at all -they have simply become modernized via the internet, and continue to be printed in newspapers wherever U.S. troops are stationed. Today’s military comics aren’t just for the soldiers, either -one of the more popular is Julie Negron’s Jenny the Military Spouse, which revolves entirely around the lives of Air Force spouses and makes little mention of the enlisted men and women. Other comic strips focus on a certain service branch, as the ease of distributing a comic through the web means that any artist with a bit of skill and a computer can be successful without the direct support of the armed forces. Reading the funnies has long been a means for soldiers to share a daily laugh, to relieve a bit of the stress that comes with a military lifestyle, and to realize that they are not the only ones who want to roll their eyes when the red tape becomes almost overwhelming.

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Salutes the Armed Forces.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

A dark tale from our “Dustbin of Gruesome History” files.

THE DISCOVERY

One the night of April 28, 1908, Joe Maxson, a hired hand on a farm outside of La Porte, Indiana, awoke in his upstairs bedroom to the smell of smoke. The house was on fire. He called out to the farm’s owner, Belle Gunness, and her three children. Getting no answer, he jumped from a second-story window, narrowly escaping the flames, and ran for help. But it was too late; the house was destroyed. A search through the wreckage resulted in a grisly discovery: four dead bodies in the basement. Three were Gunness’s children, aged 5, 9, and 11. The fourth was a woman, assumed to be Gunness herself, but identification was difficult- the body’s head was missing. An investigation ensued, and Ray Lamphere, a recently fired employee, was arrested for arson and murder. Before Lamphere’s trial was over, he would be little more than a sidebar in what is still one of the most horrible crime stories in American history …and an unsolved mystery.

BACKGROUND

Belle Gunness was born Brynhild Paulsdatter Storseth in Selbu, Norway in 1859. At the age of 22 she emigrated to America and moved in with her older sister in Chicago, where she changed her name to “Belle.” In 1884 the 25-year-old married another Norwegian immigrant, Mads Sorenson, and the couple opened a candy shop. A year later the store burned down, the first of what would be several suspicious fires in Belle’s life. The couple collected an insurance payout and used the money to buy a house in the Chicago suburbs. Fifteen years later, in 1898, that house burned down, and another insurance payout allowed the couple to buy another house. On July 30, 1900, yet another insurance policy was brought into play, but this time it was life insurance: Mads Sorenson had died. A doctor’s autopsy said he was murdered, probably by strychnine poisoning, so an inquest was ordered. The coroner’s investigation eventually deemed the death to be “of natural causes,” and Belle collected $8,000, becoming, for 1900, a wealthy woman. (The average yearly income in 1900 was less than $500.) She used part of the money to buy a farm in La Porte. But there was a lot more death -and insurance money- to come.

MORE SUSPICIONS

In April 1902, Belle married a local butcher named Peter Gunness and became Belle Gunness. One week later, Peter Gunness’s infant daughter died while left alone with Belle… and yet another insurance policy was collected on. Just eight months after that, Peter Gunness was dead: He was found in his shed with his skull crushed. Belle, who was 5’8″, weighed well over 200 pounds, and was known to be very strong, told police that a meat grinder had fallen from a high shelf and landed on her husband’s head. The coroner said otherwise, ruling the cause of death to be murder. On top of that, a witness claimed to have overheard Belle’s 14-year-old daughter, Jennie, saying to a classmate, “My mama killed my papa. She hit him with a meat cleaver and he died.”

Belle and Jennie were brought before a coroner’s jury and questioned. Jennie denied making the statement; Belle denied killing her husband. The jury found Belle innocent -and she collected another $3,000 in life insurance money. And she was just getting started.

NOT WELL SUITED

Not long after Peter Gunness’s death, Belle started putting ads in newspapers around the Midwest. One read:

Comely widow who owns a large farm in one of the finest districts of La Porte County, Indiana, desires to make the acquaintance of a gentleman equally well provided, with view of joining fortunes. No replies by letter considered unless sender is willing to follow answer with personal visit. Triflers need not apply.

The ads worked, and suitors began to show up at the farm with visions of “joining fortunes” in mind. John Moo arrived from Minnesota in late 1902 with his life savings of $1,000 in hand. He stayed at the farm for about a week …and disappeared. Over the years several more met the same fate; Henry Gurholdt from Wisconsin, who had brought $1,500; Ole B. Budsburg, also from Wisconsin, who brought the deed to his property, worth thousands, and was last seen at a La Porte bank in April 1907; and Andrew Hegelein, from South Dakota, also last seen in the bank, in January 1908.

Andrew Hegelein turned out the be the last of the disappearing suitors, because a few weeks after his disappearance, his brother, A.K. Hegelein. wrote to Gunness to inquire about him. She replied that he’d gone to Norway. Hegelein didn’t believe her -and threatened to come to La Porte to find out what happened to him.

LAMPHERE

We said at the start of the story that when the Gunness home burnt to the ground, killing the three children and, presumably, Belle Gunness, former employee Ray Lamphere was arrested. The reason: Lamphere had been hired in 1907, and by all accounts, had fallen in love with Gunness. The seemingly constant coming and going of suitors enraged him, and he and Gunness fought about it. In February 1908, around the time of Hegelein’s disappearance, Gunness fired Lamphere. Not only that -she went to the local sheriff and told him Lamphere was making threats against her. The day before the house fire, she went to a lawyer and made out a will, telling the lawyer that Lamphere had threatened to kill her and her children…and to burn her house down. Under the circumstances, the sheriff had to arrest Lamphere – but the focus of the investigation would soon turn elsewhere.

THE WOMAN IN THE BASEMENT

Lamphere denied any involvement with either the arson or the murders. Few people believed him …but there were serious questions about the body of Belle Gunness. Doctors who inspected the remains said they belonged to a woman about 5’3″ (they had to account for the missing head, of course) who weighed about 150 pounds. Gunness was much larger than that. And several neighbors who knew Gunness well viewed the remains -and said it wasn’t her. Then A.K. Hegelein showed up looking for his brother. He told the police his story and insisted that a search be made of Gunness’s property. The search began on May 3. Two days later, five bodies, carefully dismembered and wrapped in oilcloth, were discovered buried around the farm.

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

The first body was determined to be that of Gunness’s daughter Jennie, who, according to Belle, had been in school in California since 1906. The second body was Andrew Hegelein. The third was an unidentified man; the fourth and fifth were unidentified eight-year-old girls.

Neighbors told investigators that they had often seen Gunness digging in her hog pen, so they dug up that area -and found body after body after body. Included in the group: suitors John Moo, Ole Budsburg, and Henry Gurholdt. In the end the remains of 25 bodies (some reports say as many as 49) were found, many of them unidentifiable.

Belle Gunness had obviously lured the men to her farm and killed them for their money. People in La Porte began to believe that if she could do that, she could fake her own death, and that the body found after the fire was yet another of her victims. It was beginning to look a lot like A.K. Hegelein’s threat to come look for his brother made Gunness panic and come up with her bloody plan. But then a problem arose: On May 16 a part of a jawbone and a section of dentures was found in the ruins of the house. Gunness’s dentist, Ira Norton, inspected them -and said the dental work on the teeth belonged to Belle Gunness.

THE AFTERMATH

After a long investigation the body of the woman in the fire was officially declared to be that of Belle Gunness, and was buried as such. Ray Lamphere was tried for arson and murder-but because of all the lingering questions surrounding the case, he was convicted only of arson. He received a 20-year prison sentence and died less than a year later of tuberculosis. While in prison he reportedly confessed to a prison minister that he had helped Gunness bury some of her victims -and that the woman in the basement was not her. Gunness had hired a woman from Chicago as a housekeeper just days before the fire, he said, and drugged her, killed her, decapitated her, dressed her in Belle’s clothes, and put her in the basement. He helped Gunness start the fire, he said, and was then supposed to escape with her, but she double crossed him and left on her own. However, none of his story could be substantiated.

People reported seeing Belle Gunness at dozens of locations across the U.S. over the following decades. None of these sightings were ever confirmed. Then, in 1931, a woman named Esther Carlson was arrested for the poisoning murder of her husband in Los Angeles …and she reportedly looked a lot like Belle Gunness. Carlson died awaiting trial, but some La Porte residents made the trip to the Los Angeles morgue and viewed the body. They said that they believed it was Gunness.

UPDATE

In 2008 Andrea Simmons, an attorney and graduate student at the University of Indianapolis in Indiana, led a team of forensic biologists to the grave where Belle Gunness was buried. With permission from Gunness’s descendents, they dug up the grave with the intent of extracting DNA from the corpse and comparing to the DNA of living relatives. Results were hoped for by April 28, 2008, the 100th anniversary of the fire at the Gunness farm, but they were, unfortunately, inconclusive. Attempts are ongoing, and someday, possibly soon, the mystery of Belle Gunness, one of the most diabolical serial killers in history, might finally be solved.

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

During America’s wars, they were considered entertainers more than harbingers of fear to U.S. troops. But sometimes media stars like Tokyo Rose and Hanoi Hannah broadcast strategic information that there’s no way the enemy should have known.

As radio propagandists transmitting from enemy capitals, their job was to undermine the morale of opposing troops in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Uncle John examines the careers of seven infamous enemy broadcasters of the 20th century.

1. TOKYO ROSE

Iva Toguri was born in Los Angeles in 1916 and graduated from UCLA with a zoology degree; she was visiting Japan when war broke out in 1941. She was hardly a household name in World War II -until the name given her by Allied forces in the Pacific made her an international celebrity.

Wartime Activities: Tokyo Rose played American music and used American slang during her 20-minute daily newscast on Radio Tokyo’s “The Zero Hour” while she predicted attacks, identified American ships and submarines, and even peppered her conversation with the names of prominent individuals. Listeners thought she was uncannily accurate, but she had little impact on the offensive juggernaut that first isolated and then defeated Japan.

Postwar: After the war, Toguri was arrested, convicted of treason, and imprisoned; she was released for good behavior in 1956 after serving six years. Upon moving to Chicago, where her family ran a store, she insisted she had always been a loyal American. She claimed that she was forced to make the broadcasts, and Allied POWs who worked with her confirmed her story years later, convincing president Gerald Ford to pardon her in 1977. In January 2006, she received the Edgar J. Herlihy Citizenship Award from the World War II Veterans Committee; she died in September of that year.

2. LORD HAW-HAW

The British gave the nickname “Lord Haw-Haw” to a collection of announcers on the English-language propaganda broadcasts from Hamburg, Germany, during World War II. But it was William Joyce, who claimed to be a British citizen, who came to symbolize Lord Haw-Haw as the chief Nazi sympathizer. Born in the United States and raised in England and Ireland, Joyce was a member of the British Union of Fascists and was about to be arrested when he fled to Germany in 1939.

Wartime activities: From 1939 to 1945, his radio broadcasts to England on the “Germany Calling” program were designed to undermine the morale of the English, Canadian, Australian, and American troops, as well as the citizens of the British Isles. Joyce reported Allied ship losses and planes shot down, and bragged about Nazi secret weapons with the goal of demoralizing the Allies.

“Lord Haw-Haw” was originally the nickname of James Brudenell, the 19th-century British general who led the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade. A British radio critic borrowed the moniker and, whether or not he was specifically referring to Joyce, it stuck to him because he was the most popular announcer on “Germany Calling.” The radio critic noted sarcastically, “He speaks English of the ‘haw-haw, dammit-get-out-of-my-way’ variety.” The name stuck and his fame grew to the point that even the Germans introduced him on the air as “William Joyce, otherwise known as Lord Haw-Haw.”

Postwar: Joyce was captured by British troops, who got the last “haw” when the war ended. He was tried and hanged for treason in early 1946.

3. LORD HEE-HAW

A native of Dubuque, Iowa, Frederick Wilhelm Kaltenbach was on a bicycle tour of Germany after his high school graduation in 1914 when he was detained due to the outbreak of World War I. He liked Germany well enough, but after his release a few months later, he returned home and went to college. He joined the U.S. Army in 1918 but stayed stateside for the duration of the war, after which he earned his master’s degree in history from the University of Chicago. As a schoolteacher in Dubuque, he founded a Nazi-style club for boys in 1935 that was so controversial, the school board fired him. Kaltenbach promptly returned to Germany to work for Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda ministry as a broadcaster.

Wartime Activities: Kaltenbach’ thick Midwestern accent became familiar to British listeners, who dubbed him “Lord Hee-Haw” to differentiate him from “Lord Haw-Haw.” Kaltenbach’s reign on the air came to an end with the collapse of the Third Reich.

Postwar: He was under indictment in the United States for treason, but the Soviets got the last “hee.” They arrested him in Berlin in 1945 and refused to release him to American forces. The broadcaster died within a year in a Soviet prison.

4. AXIS SALLY

British and American GIs on the march through Italy in the last months of World War II were familiar with the radio voice of “Axis Sally.” Rita Luisa Zucca, born to a Manhattan restauranteur, called herself “Sally” while broadcasting propaganda first for Benito Mussolini’s fascist government and then for Nazi Germany. She was a regular voice on the “Jerry’s Front” program that aired from Rome. She’d come to Italy before the war to look after her family’s estate and was forced to renounce her American citizenship to keep the property from being expropriated by Mussolini’s government. She was 30 when she was hired as a radio announcer in February 1943.

Wartime Activities: Her theme song was “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” and her signature sign-on was “Hello, suckers!” She mixed pop music, news of Allied troop movements, and appeals to the British and American troops to surrender.

Postwar: Sally was captured by the U.S. Army in Milan on June 5, 1945, with her newborn baby. Tried in Italy for collaboration with the enemy, she was convicted and sentenced to four and a half years in prison. Released after nine months, she lived the rest of her life in obscurity in Italy.

5. BERLIN BESSIE

Mildred Gillars, who was born in Maine, dreamed of being an actress but instead wound up as radio announcer “Berlin Bessie” for Radio Berlin in World War II. After dropping out of Ohio Wesleyan University, she left the United States in the 1930s for Dresden, Germany, to study music. She was working as an English teacher at the Berlitz School of Language in Berlin when war broke out across Europe in 1939.

Wartime Activities: Radio Berlin hired her as an actress and announcer in 1940. The Allied soldiers called her a variety of names: “Berlin Bessie,” “Olga,” and “The Bitch of Berlin.” Introducing herself on air as “Midge,” she tried to convince listeners that their wives and sweethearts back home were being unfaithful. Between American tunes, she made anti-Semitic remarks and criticized president Franklin D. Roosevelt. She stayed on the air until Berlin fell in 1945.

Postwar: Gillars tried to blend in among the thousands of displaced Germans, but she was captured and flown to the United States in 1948 and charged with treason, convicted, and imprisoned until her release in 1961. She took up residence in an Ohio convent and later earned her degree from Ohio Wesleyan in 1973. She went on to teach French and German at a prep school, and died of natural causes in 1988 at age 87.

6. SEOUL CITY SUE

During the Korean War, a Methodist missionary from Lawrence County, Arkansas, became the North Korean radio announcer better known a “Seoul City Sue.” Born in 1900, Anna Wallis Suh graduated from the Scarritt College for Christian Workers in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1930 and undertook a mission to Korea. After marrying Korean schoolteacher Suh Kyoon Chul, she dropped out of the missionary service of the Southern Methodist Conference and became interested in Korean politics.

Wartime Activities: When the Korean People’s Army captured Seoul in 1950, Anna went to work as a radio announcer on Radio Seoul. Her programs featured names of American soldiers captured or killed, and threatened newly arrived soldiers and ships sitting off the coast. She also taunted African-American soldiers for their lack of civil rights in the United States. She delivered all this in a monotone against a backdrop of soft music. American soldiers dubbed her “Seoul City Sue” after the 1946 pop tune “Sioux City Sue.”

Postwar: A few days before the U.S. forces retook Seoul from the North Koreans, the Suhs evacuated to the north. Anna lived there until her death in 1969.

7. HANOI HANNAH

Trinh Thi Ngo, born in Hanoi in 1931, was a Vietnamese radio personality who became the voice of anti-American propaganda during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s. She was the daughter of a prosperous factory owner and learned English because she loved American movies like Gone With The Wind. By age 25, she was an English-language news broadcaster on Vietnam’s national radio in Hanoi.

Wartime Activities: Trinh made as many as three radio broadcasts daily in an attempt to demoralize the American troops who were defending South Vietnam from an insurgency from the north. To the GIs, she became “Hanoi Hannah” and “the Dragon Lady.” She played antiwar songs popular in the United States, and read the names of soldiers who had recently been killed or imprisoned. U.S. forces were impressed with her military intelligence, which included details about where individual units were deployed.

Postwar: After the war, Trinh and others revealed that their wartime information came from the American military newspaper Stars and Stripes. Today, she lives in relative obscurity with her husband in Ho Chi Minh City (the former Saigon). In the United States, her voice can be heard on the computer game “Battlefield Vietnam.”

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader History’s Lists.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

If you’ve ever visited the Middle East, you know that when American TV programs are shown on Arab TV, culturally sensitive content is often altered or removed. Turns out some hows aren’t so easy to “Arabize.”

MUST-SEE TV

In late 1991, the Middle East Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) went on the air for the first time. It was the Arab world’s first privately owned, independent satellite TV network, and the first to offer 24 hours of Arabic language television programming free of charge to anyone with a satellite dish.

Other networks soon sprung up, creating a huge demand for content to fill the airwaves. In the years that followed, countless American TV shows -everything from Friends to The Late Show with David Letterman to Two and a Half Man to McGyver to Dr. Phil and Oprah- found their way onto these channels, either dubbed into Arabic or broadcast with Arabic subtitles, and with culturally offensive subject matter toned down or removed entirely.

Shows that appealed to younger audiences were especially popular. In some countries as much as 60 percent of the population was under 20 years of age, and the numbers remain high today. So it was probably inevitable that sooner or later, one of the Arab networks would set its sights on The Simpsons, one of the most successful shows in American TV history, and try to bring it to the Middle East. In 2005, MBC did just that.

HOMER OF ARABIA

No expense was spared to prepare The Simpsons for the Arab market. The Arab world’s best TV writers were hired to translate episodes into Arabic, and A-list actors and actresses were hired to provide new voices for the characters. To make the show seem less “foreign,” Homer Simpson was renamed Omar Shamshoon, and the show itself was renamed Al Shamshoon -”The Shamshoons.” (Marge Simpson became Mona Shamshoon, Bart became Badr, and Lisa became Beesa.) Each episode that was selected for translation into Arabic was carefully reviewed to remove anything that might be offensive to Muslims. For example, where Homer Simpson drinks Duff beer (Islam forbids the consumption of alcohol), Omar Shamshoon drinks Duff fruit juice. Homer eats hot dogs (which commonly contain pork, also forbidden) and donuts (which are unfamiliar to most Arabs), but Omar eats Egyptian beef sausage links and khak cookies, which, like donuts, are often made with a hole in the middle.

Not every episode made the cut: Those with strong religious themes were out, as were the ones where the characters spent lots of time drinking beer in Moe’s Tavern. In episodes featuring shorter church and tavern scenes, they’re referred to as a “mosque” and a “coffeehouse.” And Ned Flanders? He became just an annoyingly perfect neighbor, not an annoyingly perfect Christian neighbor.

As for all the Simpsons-centric dialog, like “Don’t have a cow, man!” and “Hi-diddley-ho, neighbors!” …well, the writers just translated as best they could. (“D’oh!” was translated as “D’oh!”)

NEITHER HERE NOR THERE

The final product was a confusing mishmash of cultural references, something not really American, not really Arab (Marge Simpson and the other female characters don’t wear veils, for example) …and definitely not The Simpsons. It wasn’t very funny, either, and with all the translations, revisions, and deletions, the storylines could be maddeningly difficult to follow.

The premier episode of Al Shamshoon aired in October 2005, on the first night of the holy month of Ramadan -the biggest TV viewing night of the year. Muslims fast from sunup to sundown during Ramadan, and after the fast is broken with an evening meal, millions of the faithful settle in for a night of watching TV. Though 52 episodes were scheduled to air that month,  -with MBC looking forward to “Arabizing” all 17 seasons of The Simpsons in years to come- the series was pulled after only 34 shows. Why? Because not many people tuned in to watch it. Al Shamshoon turned out to be just too strange a show for many viewers, especially in a part of the world where cartoons were still seen as entertainment for children.

But what really killed Al Shamshoon may have been the very thing that brought it into being in the first place: Satellite TV channels. Arabs with satellite TV dishes can pull in non-Arab stations, and some of those broadcast The Simpsons in all its original, unadulterated glory. (The show is also available on DVD.) Many of the people who tuned in to watch Al Shamshoon were fans of The Simpsons who just wanted to see how badly MBC would botch the job, and after having a few laughs at the network’s expense, they went back to watching the real thing.

HOME GROWN

For Arab critics of Al Shamshoon, one of the most frustrating things about the show was knowing that if MBC had just taken a fraction of the money it spent on Al Shamshoon and hired Arab animators to create an entirely new, entirely Arab show from scratch, they might have come up with something funny and engaging that Arabs could understand and call their own.

Even as Al Shamshoon was falling flat on its face in 2005, work had already begun on just such a show. Freej (“Neighborhood”), a comedy about four grandmothers living in a quiet neighborhood of Dubai, a booming metropolis in the United Arab Emirates, was already in production. Freej was the brainchild of a twenty-something UAE national named Mohammed Saeed Harib, whose first exposure to animated shows came in the late 1990s when he was a student at Boston’s Northeastern University and his dormmates downloaded bootleg episodes of South Park and other shows to watch on their computers. Harib came up with Um Saeed, the first of his four grandmother characters, while he was still living in the dorm. By 2003, he’d developed a concept for an entire show, which he sold to the satellite channel Sama Dubai.

FULL CIRCLE

One year after Al Shashoon bit the dust, the first episode of Freej aired in the same coveted time slot -the first night of Ramadan. Unlike Al Shamshoon, Freej, the Arab world’s first 3D animated series, was a hit from the very start. By the time the second season of Freej aired the following year, half of all television viewers in the UAE were tuning in to watch the show. Stay tuned; you may be watching one of these days, too. In 2009, Harib entered into talks with American media companies to bring his show to the United States. (Until then, you can look for clips on YouTube.)

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The article above was reprinted with permission from the Bathroom Institute’s newest book, Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute has published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Ask any film buff to name the worst directors of all-time, and you can be sure Ed Wood’s name will come up. He’s become a legend for films like Plan 9 From Outer Space -a movie so bad it needs to be seen just to be believed. This piece was written by someone who knew him -in fact, the reluctant star of Plan 9, Gregory Walcott.

The Connection

Early in our marriage, Barbara and I lived in a cottage just across the street from the First Baptist Church of Beverly Hills. Ed Reynolds, a chubby little man who attended the church, had come out to Hollywood from Alabama to make Biblical films. He talked to me occasionally, knowing I was in the movie industry, about his “calling” to produce religious movies with life-embracing themes. I tried not to encourage him, knowing he had no background in film production. Naive individuals like Reynolds are easy bait for Hollywood hucksters.

Reynolds’ Big Break

About a year later, Reynolds came to me and said he was going to finance a film starring Bela Lugosi. He wanted me to play the young romantic lead. I said to him, “But Ed, Bela Lugosi is DEAD!”

Reynolds said, “Well, that’s not a problem. There’s a very ingenious director, Ed Wood, who has some excellent footage of Lugosi, and he has written a very clever screenplay around that film.”

“But Ed, I thought you wanted to make religious pictures!”

Ed Wood

“Yes! That’s the ultimate plan. But Biblical pictures with big sets, large casts and costumes are very expensive. This fellow, Wood, has convinced me that by making a few exploitation films, I can build up my bankroll to where I can then make big budget Biblical films.”

I had never heard of Ed Wood, so I asked to see the script. It was the most atrocious piece of writing I had ever seen. A child could have written better dialog. I said, “Ed, this is a terrible script, and I hate to see you get involved in this project and lose your money.”

“No, no! I want you to meet the director,” he insisted. “I’ll arrange a luncheon.”

Reynolds was dazzled by Hollywood and couldn’t be dissuaded.

Before the meeting, I looked into Wood’s background, and discovered he had done a few cheesy low-budget pictures. It was incongruous that sweet, sincere Reynolds, who wanted to produce inspirational Biblical motion pictures, would be connected with Wood, whose movies could only be booked in fleabag theaters on back streets.

Meeting the Auteur

At the luncheon, I found Wood to be a charmingly handsome man, who gushed about how perfect I would be working with a top-notch Hollywood crew and a good cast.

Wood resembled Errol Flynn, and was clearly a smooth promoter. In fact, he started attending Reynolds’ church and showed an interest in becoming a convert to the faith. This pleased Reynolds, convincing him that Wood was sincere and a godsend. I was there the night Wood was baptized. He stood in the pool, resplendent in a white robe. His boyish face had the look of an angel. As he was immersed in the baptismal waters of the church, Ed Reynolds beamed in satisfaction and said stoutly, “Amen!”

Taking the Plunge

Greg Walcott in Plan 9

I reluctantly agreed to do the film, Plan 9 From Outer Space, as a favor to Ed Reynolds, working at scale wages on a four-day schedule.

The first day I reported to work on a tiny sound stage-behind a sleazy bar and a disreputable hotel. I knew right away that I had made a mistake. The sets looked like something a 6th grade class has hastily put together. The crew seemed fairly normal, but the cast members were a bizarre assemblage of Wood’s cronies: hopeful actors, former wives, an astrologer, an over-the-hill wrestler, a few cross-dressers, and his chiropractor.

The set had an ambiance of an old-time carny side-show, not a professional movie sound stage. I went home that first day, and I remember distinctly saying to my wife, “Honey, this has got to be the worst film ever made.”

Unfortunately my assessment was prophetic, and the movie turned out to be a debacle. Poor Ed Reynolds could get no distributor to release the picture, and he lost his investment. A couple of years later he died, a broken man at the early age of 52.

A Cult Film

Johnny Depp as Ed Wood

The film was eventually released to television and shown during late-night ghetto hours. Amazingly enough, it picked up an audience; it was so shockingly bad that it was actually funny.

A freaky Edward D. Wood phenomenon began. Even Tim Burton, director of the Batman mega hits was so fascinated by the quirky auteur that he made a movie of his life story in 1994. The film, Ed Wood, received favorable reviews but limited box office success. It did, however, add to Ed Wood’s growing international fame.

But Why?

I am still puzzled as to why people are attracted to Ed Wood’s ghastly legacy and his ludicrously inept films. Perhaps it’s like the fascination one finds looking at a macabre auto wreck. Perhaps Wood appeals to people who feel lost, or who rebel against society’s stereotypes.

I think my son, Todd, may have hit upon the real reason: “It’s that thing we fear, in ourselves, that we, too, are not really talented, and in time that truth will be revealed.”

I do say, I have to admire Wood for his flint-faced determination to do the thing he loved the most, making movies, and his uncanny ability to complete the projects, no matter how tasteless and poorly made. Who knows, maybe effort should be recognized as well as art.

R.I.P.

In his later years, Wood dashed off dirty magazine stories to survive and drank heavily. Evicted from his rat-hole apartment, he moved in with a friend in whose bed the 54-year-old Wood died quietly and unexpectedly in December 1978. His ashes were scattered in the ocean off the coast of Southern California.

As a followup to Greg Walcott’s piece, we thought we’d include a few comments from critics about Plan 9 From Outer Space.

ONLY HUBCAPS

“Some say [Plan 9 From Outer Space] is the worst movie anyone ever made. Certainly it’s the worst movie Ed Wood ever made. And nobody but Wood could have made it. The lunacy begins with a portentous introduction from our old friend Criswell, the clairvoyant. ‘Greetings my friends,’ Criswell reads from his cue card. ‘We are all interested in the future because that’s where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.’ While we’re still mulling over the meaning of that statement, Wood hits us with the heavy-duty special effects -UFOs flying over Hollywood Boulevard. Actually, they’re only hubcaps, superimposed on a pseudo-sky.”

-The Worst Movies of All Time, by Michael Sauter

ATTACK OF THE UNDEAD

Bela Lugosi in Plan 9

“God knows what the first eight “Plans” were, but Plan 9 is a doozy… Aliens Dudley Manlove and Joanna Lee (today a successful scriptwriter) were sent by The Ruler to raise the dead so that they’d attack the living. That’s just about what Wood tried to do with his dead friend Bela Lugosi, billed as the star of the film although he died prior to production. Wood had a couple of minutes of footage of Lugosi from an aborted project, so he simply inserted the snippets into the film and repeated them over and over so that Lugosi had adequate screen time. Lugosi’s character -The Ghoul Man- was played in the rest of the movie by a chiropractor, an extremely tall fellow who spends his screen time with a cape covering his face so we won’t know he’s an impostor. The ruse doesn’t work, but I don’t think Wood really cared.”

-Guide for the Film Fanatic, by Danny Peary

BEYOND RIDICULE

Lee and Manlove as the aliens

“Words such as amateurish, crude, tedious, and aaarrrggghhhh can’t begin to describe this Edward D. Wood film with Bela Lugosi in graveyard scenes made shortly before his death….

The unplotted plot by Wood has San Fernando Valley residents troubled by UFOs of the worst encounter. Humanoid aliens Dudley Manlove and Joanna Lee land their cardboard ship with a ninth plan to conquer the world (the first eight failed, you see). They resurrect corpses, including Vampira, Tor Johnson and Lugosi’s double. The results are unviewable except for masochists who enjoy a good laugh derived from watching folks make fools of themselves.”

-Creature Features Movie Guide Strikes Again, by John Stanley

MASTERFUL SPECIAL EFFECTS

“The graveyard set provides the film with many of its eerie moments, thanks to a number of dead tree branches and cardboard tombstones; in one scene a policeman accidentally kicks over one of the featherweight grave markers.

Despite the resourcefulness of the director, there are slight technical shortcomings in the final version of Plan 9. Even Wood’s staunchest defenders will admit that the Old Master seemed to have a tough time with lighting. In one scene, as Mona McKinnon runs in horror from Bela Lugosi’s double, she goes directly from a graveyard at midnight to a nearby highway at high noon. This same confusion between night and day occurs several times in the course of the film.”

-The Golden Turkey Awards, by Harry and Michael Medved

CHEAP, CHEAP, CHEAP

“Money was always a problem for Wood. Budgets were routinely nonexistent, forcing him to film on the cheap, scrimping…as best he could… How cheap was Plan 9? The flying saucers are hubcaps suspended by wires. In several scenes the movie jumps from daylight to nighttime and back. And outdoor lawn furniture doubles as bedroom furniture…In all of the literature about Plan 9 (and there’s reams of the stuff) one question about the movie has never been answered. If Plan 9 was to revive the dead, what were the other eight plans?”

-Why the People of Earth are “Stupid,” by Tom Mason

(YouTube link)

See also: Robot Monster: The Ultimate Golden Turkey and The Worst Movie of All Time?

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Great Big Bathroom Reader.

The book is a compendium of entertaining information chock-full of facts on a plethora of topics. Highly recommended!

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute

The media’s power to “create” news has become a hot topic in recent years. But it’s nothing new. This true story, from a book called The Fabulous Rogues, by Alexander Klein, is an example of what’s been going on for at least a century. It was sent to us by BRI reader Jim Morton.

Most journalistic hoaxes, no matter how ingenious, create only temporary excitement. But in 1899 four reporters in Denver, Colorado, concocted a fake story that, within a relatively short time, made news history -violent history at that. Here’s how it happened.

THE DENVER FOUR

One Saturday night the four reporters -from Denver’s four newspaper, the Times, Post, Republican, and Rocky Mountain News- met by chance in the railroad station where they had each come hoping to spot an arriving celebrity around whom they could write a feature. Disgustedly, they confessed to one another that they hadn’t picked up a newsworthy item all evening.

“I hate to go back to the city desk without something,” one of the reporters, Jack Toumay, said.

“Me, too,” agreed Al Stevens. “I don’t know what you guys are going to do, but I’m going to fake. It won’t hurt anybody, so what the devil.”

They other three fell in with the idea and they all walked up Seventeenth Street to the Oxford Hotel, where, over beers, they began to cast about for four possible fabrications. John Lewis, who was known as “King” because of his tall, dignified bearing, interrupted one of the preliminary gambits for a point of strategy. Why dream up four lukewarm fakes, he asked. Why not concoct a sizzler which they would all use, and make it stick better by their solidarity.

The strategy was adopted by unanimous vote, and a reporter named Hal Wiltshire acme up with the first suggestion: Maybe they could invent some stiff competition for the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company by reporting the arrival of several steel men, backed by an independent Wall Street combine, come to buy a large site on which they planned to erect a new steel mill. The steel mill died a quick death; it could be checked too easily and it would be difficult to dispose of later.

Stevens suggested something more dramatic: Several detectives just in from New York on the trail of two desperados who had kidnapped a rich heiress. But this story was too hot; the editors might check the wire services or even the New York City police directly.

Thereupon Toumay and Lewis both came up with the obvious answer. What they needed was a story with a foreign angle that would be difficult to verify. Russia? No, none of them knew enough about Russia to make up an acceptable story. Germany was a possibility or perhaps, a bull-ring story from Madrid? Toumay didn’t think bull-fighting was of sufficient interest to Denverites. How about Holland, one of the reporters offered, something with dikes or windmills in it, maybe a romance of some sort.

THE PLOT THICKENS

By this time the reporters had had several beers. The romance angle seemed attractive. But one of the men thought Japan would be a more intriguing locale for it. Anther preferred China; why, the country was so antiquated and unprogressive, hiding behind its Great Wall, they’d be doing the Chinese a favor by bringing some news about their country to the outside world.

At this point, Lewis broke in excitedly. “That’s it!” he cried, “The Great Wall of China! Must be fifty years since that old pile’s been in the news. Let’s build out story around it. Let’s do the Chinese a real favor, let’s tear the old pile down!”

Tear down the Great Wall of China! The notion fascinated the four reporters. It would certainly make the front page. One of them objected that there might be repercussions, but the others voted him down. They did, however, decide to temper the story somewhat.

A group of American engineers had stopped over in Denver en route to China, where they were being sent at the request of the ruling powers of China, to make plans for demolishing the Great Wall at minimum cost. The Chinese had decided to raze the ancient boundary as a gesture of international goodwill. From now on China would welcome foreign trade.

By the time they had agreed on the details it was after eleven. They rushed over to the best hotel in town, and talked the night clerk into cooperating. Then they signed four fictitious names to the hotel register. The clerk agreed to tell anyone who checked that the hotel had played host to four New Yorkers, that they had been interviewed by the reporters, and then had left early the next morning for California. Before heading for their respective city desks, the four reporters had a last beer over which they swore to stick to their story and not to reveal the true facts so long as any of the others were alive. (Only years later did the last survivor, Hal Wiltshire, let out the secret.)

The reporters told their stories with straight faces to their various city editors. Next day all four Denver newspapers featured the story on the front page. Typical of the headlines was this one from the Times:

GREAT CHINESE WALL DOOMED!

PEKING SEEKS WORLD TRADE!

THE SNOWBALL EFFECT

Within a few day Denver had forgotten all about the Great Wall. So far, so good. But other places soon began to hear about it. Two weeks later Lewis was startled to find the coming destruction of the Great Wall spread across the Sunday supplement of a large eastern newspaper, complete with illustrations, an analysis of the Chinese government’s historic decision -and quotes from a Chinese mandarin visiting in New York, who confirmed the report.

The story was carried by many other newspapers, both in America and in Europe. By the time it reached China it had gone through many transformations. The version published there- and the only one that probably made sense in view of the absence of any information on the subject from the Chinese government -was that the Americans were planning to send an expedition to tear down the Chinese national monument, the Great Wall.

Such a report would have infuriated any nation. It led to particularly violent repercussions in China at that time. The Chinese were already stirred up about the issue of foreign intervention -Europeans powers were parceling out and occupying the whole country. Russia had recently gotten permission to run the Siberian Railway through Manchuria. A year previously, German marines had seized the port town of Kiachow, and set up a military and naval base there. France followed by taking Kwangchowan. England had sent a fleet to the gulf of Chihli and bullied China into leasing Weihaiwei, midway between the recent acquisitions of France and Germany.

Faced with this danger of occidental exploitation, possibly even partition, the Chinese government under Emperor Kwang-Hsu began to institute radical reforms, to remodel the army along more modern lines, and to send students to foreign universities to obtain vital technical training.

An important segment of Chinese society bitterly resented not only foreign intervention, but all foreign cultural influences, as well as the new governmental reforms. In 1889 Empress Tsu Hsi made herself regent and officially encouraged all possible opposition to Western ideas. A secret society known as the Boxers, but whose full name was “The Order of Literary Patriotic Harmonious Fists,” took the lead in verbal attacks on missionaries and Western businessmen in China by openly displaying banners that read “Exterminate the foreigners and save the dynasty.”

THE SPARK THAT LIT THE FIRE

Into this charged atmosphere came the news of America’s plan to force the demolition of the Great Wall. It proved the spark that is credited with setting off the Boxer Rebellion. A missionary later reported: “The story was published with shouting headlines and violent editorial comment. Denials did no good. The Boxers, already incensed, believed the yarn and now there was no stopping them.”

By June 1900, the whole country was overrun with bands of Boxers. Christian villages were destroyed and hundreds of native converts massacred near Peking. The city itself was in turmoil, with murder and pillage daily occurrences and the foreign embassies under siege.

Finally, in August, an international army of 12,000 French, British, American, Russian, German, and Japanese troops invaded China and fought its way to Peking. There, the troops not only brought relief to their imperiled countrymen, but also looted the Emperor’s palace and slaughtered innumerable Chinese without inquiring too closely whether they belonged to the “Harmonious Fists” or just happened to be passing by. The invading nations also forced China to pay an indemnity of $320 million and to grant further economic concessions. All this actually spurred the reform movement, which culminated with the Sun Yat-Sen revolution in 1911.

Thus did a journalistic hoax make history. Of course, the Boxers might have been sparked into violence in some other fashion, or built up to it of their own accord. But can we be sure? The fake story may have well been the final necessary ingredient. A case could even be made that the subsequent history of China, right up to the present, might have been entirely different if those four reporters had been less inventive that Saturday night in the Hotel Oxford bar.

See also: The Great Moon Hoax, Human Oil (and Other Hoaxes), and Joey Skaggs, The Ultimate Hoax Meister.

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Reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader, which comes packed with 504 pages of great stories.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – check ‘em out!

Why are bulldogs so gosh-darned ugly? And Dobermans so scary? It’s not by chance.

(Image credit: Flickr user cayenne2006)

Scientists speculate that the first dogs separated themselves from the wolf pack about 100,000 years ago. And until a few hundred years ago, dogs pretty much bred themselves willy-nilly with little record of human intervention. That is, until the dawn of…

THE UNNECESSARY DOG

In postmedieval Europe, lower-class dogs pulled carts and herded livestock (and were completely unappreciated for it). But on royal estates, “unnecessary dogs” -the darlings of kings and countesses- were becoming the objects of previously unheard-of emotional attachments. By the mid-19th century, these pampered pets outnumbered the working dog population. And by the late 19th century, dog lovers who were fiercely loyal to particular breeds started forming private registries and kennel clubs so they could just as fiercely protect those prized bloodlines.

DESIGNER GENES

(Image credit: Flickr user Peter Jackson)

Today, after nearly 100 years of serious breeding, most pedigreed dogs are extremely inbred. The chance that a purebred dog will have a different combination of genes at any given site on a chromosome is very small: 4 to 22 percent. In most mutts, it’s a healthy 57 percent. Between two members of a typical human family it’s an even healthier 71 percent. The degree of uniformity among purebreds means that when a bad trait gets locked in by chance, it tends to stay as long as the breeding is confined within the group.

MORE THAN ONE SICK PUPPY

So when you hear the phrase “indiscriminate breeding,” it doesn’t mean despoiling those pure bloodlines with a doggie liaison outside the breed (horrors!), it refers to the breeding of pedigreed dogs who are known to carry traits that are bad for the breed- mostly physical, but behavioral as well.

A lot of breeders are doing what they can to breed out the bad stuff while keeping in the good. But meanwhile, here’s the poop on a few distinctive breeds: where they came from and -because of indiscriminate breeding- the reasons why you might end up spending all your time and money taking them to the vet (or the doggie shrink).

BULLDOGS: THE UGLY SWEETIE-PIE

(Image credit: Flickr user Fuzzy Thompson)

The dog who looks like Winston Churchill-or is it the other way around? He waddles, he slobbers, and he’s the snoring champ of all dogdom.

Origins: Bulldogs were bred to be used in a sport -and we use the term loosely- called “bull baiting,” in which it was the bulldog’s job to “take down” a bull by jumping up, biting its face, and hanging on until the bull was pinned to the ground. So the bulldog was bred for a strong lower jaw and a less intrusive nose, (so he could breathe while attacking the bull and hang on forever if need be).

After bull baiting was outlawed in the 19th century, the dog evolved into the shorter, squatter version we know today. But because of all that inbreeding, the bulldog’s physique is terribly damaged and distorted.

What they’re good for: He’s not as fierce as he looks. The bulldog is actually one of the more placid and generally happy breeds. A sweet companion.

Problems: Bulldogs have breathing problems in general and small windpipes in particular. Their pups are often delivered by cesarean section because their heads were bred to be so big. They have poor eyesight, are very sensitive to the cold and heat, and don’t even get us started on the hip and knee problems. (And probably as a throwback to their bull baiting origins, they have a penchant for attacking moving cars and vacuum cleaners.)

CHIHUAHUA: THE SHORT MAN SYNDROME

(Image credit: Flickr user Lisa Simmons)

If it weighs more than six pounds, it isn’t a Chihuahua -this according to the American Kennel Club (hey, they’ve got to have some standards). Named after the Mexican state of Chihuahua, it’s the oldest breed on the American continent and the smallest breed in the world.

Origins: The modern-day Chihuahua was bred from the Techichi, a small dog kept by the Toltecs and the Aztecs. Both peoples believed the Techichi safely guided the human soul through the underworld, warding off evil spirits until the recently deceased arrived at the Great Taco Bell in the Sky.

Gossip has it that the Techichi was a “prairie dog,” that is, not a dog at all, but a burrowing rodent, which the natives raised for food. Then there’s the belief that the little ankle-biter came originally from Asia a very long time ago, when the two continents were still joined by a land bridge.

What they’re good for: The perfect apartment dog. And not bad as a watchdog, either. An alarm system that doesn’t require any batteries.

Problems: Despite their godly status, Chihuahuas are prone to a lot of human-style diseases, including hemophilia, hypoglycemia, and cleft palates. Also, heart, knee, and trachea problems. And don’t laugh if you see one wearing an angora doggie sweater -they hate cold weather.

DOBERMAN PINSCHER: THE BAD GUY’S DOG

(Image credit: Flickr user SenzEnina)

A triumph of German engineering, the dobie is named for Louis Dobermann (yes, with two Ns), a German tax collector and dog pound keeper who first bred them at the end of the 19th century.

Orgins: In his work collecting taxes, Herr Dobermann sometimes needed to convince reluctant taxpayers to cough up the dough, and also needed to protect himself from bandits on the road. First he tried using tough-looking humans, but eventually decided to create his own breed of dog.

He took a German shepherd for hardiness and intelligence, crossed it with a German pinscher for quick reaction, added a weimeraner pointer for its hunting abilities and coloring, then he threw in a little Rottweiler, greyhound, and Manchester terrier …and voila! A dog that inspired fear and trembling in every taxpayer in the land.

What they’re good for: To inspire fear and trembling in everyone who isn’t his master. But seriously, folks, the dobie, though a ferociously loyal watchdog, turns out to be very social. He loves being with other people and other dogs (though he can be “aggressive” with the latter).

Problems: This love of being with others means that he demands almost constant companionship and social interaction. Not a dog you can toss into the backyard to take care of himself. Despite his healthy mixed heritage, those bad breeders have managed to inject him with a few nasty diseases; the most lethal of which is cardiomyopathy, a degenerative heart condition.

POODLES: MORE THAN A FASHION ACCESSORY

(Image credit: Flickr user The Pack)

A lot of people think of poodles as pampered pets with silly hairdos. Well, yes, but…

Origins: The breed probably originated in Germany, where it was called a pudel, and was brought across the border during one of France and Germany’s innumerable skirmishes. They’re the national dog of France, but they don’t call them poodles there- they call them caniche, from chien canard, or “duck dog,” because they were originally used as duck-hunting retrievers. (It’s true.)

The poodle was the most popular dog in the U.S. from 1960 to 1983, and they’re still in the top ten. They come in three sizes: standard, miniature, and toy. The three sizes are considered as one breed and are judged by the same standard.

What they’re good for: Today the poodle is primarily a companion and show dog, though if you want to teach a poodle anything -well, anything lower than high math, he can probably learn it. He’s that smart.

Problems: Hip dysplasia, eye problems, bloat, epilepsy, thyroid problems, and Addison’s disease (a disorder of the adrenal glands) haunt the standard poodle. Toys and miniatures are subject to eye, ear, skin, and joint problems.

COCKER SPANIEL: THE PUPPY ON THE GREETING CARD

(Image credit: Flickr user Adilson Borszcz)

The Shirley Temple of breeds. Though still popular, the cocker has been replaced by the ubiquitous yellow Lab in homes and on greeting cards.

Origins: First the name: “cocker” from its ability as a “cock-flusher,” which has nothing to do with toilets or bathrooms or dirty stuff at all. That’s “cocks” as in “woodcocks,” a kind of bird they used to hunt. “Spaniel” is either from Spain (Espana) or from the French verb espanir, which means “to crouch or to flatten” and which neatly describes the spaniel’s hunting posture. Which you don’t see a lot of anymore.

What they’re good for: Cuteness. The American cocker spaniel is a perennial all-star and has been the MPD (most popular dog) in the United States 25 times during the 20th century. By 1936 it was the AKC’s most-registered breed, and it held that ranking for 17 consecutive years. As usual, popularity breeds excess. The cocker suffered for its stardom. He’s possibly the best example of a dog bred for looks, which did not exactly put him on his best behavior.

Problems: A lot of unsuspecting buyers ended up with mean little cockers. They became infamous for behavioral disorders, particularly for passive-aggressive behaviors like crouching, urinating wherever and whenever, biting, and even screaming in temper tantrums. The term “cocker spaniel rage” was coined to describe this charming behavior. Physically, the problem list is long and includes eye problems like cataracts and glaucoma, as well as hip dysplasia, allergies, seborrhea, liver disease, cardiomyopathy, and occasional gastric torsion and elbow dysplasia.

SO WHAT ABOUT MUTTS?

(Image credit: Flickr user Wolves68450)

If you insist on having a pedigreed dog, the most important thing you can do is check out the breeder first. The really good breeders do everything they can to make sure their puppies are mentally and physically sound.

Mutts, on the other hand, tend to be healthy because of hybrid vigor, that greater mixture of healthy genes. And they also tend to be good dogs. They are, in fact, the embodiment of the “real dog,” the fellas that evolved along with us human beings- without our interference.

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

The place that gave Mr. and Mrs. Joe Schmoe the crazy idea that happiness was just a few subway stops away.

Between about 1880 and World War II, Coney Island was the largest amusement park in the United States. But back in 1609, when Dutch explorer Henry Hudson became the first European to arrive on the premises, he found nothing more than barren sand dunes and very unfriendly Native Americans. After his petty officer was killed in a skirmish, Hudson moved on to a much calmer and peaceful island later known as Manhattan.

At some point the island (which is five miles long and up to a mile wide) was named Konijn Eiland, which is Dutch for “Rabbit Island.” Konijn became “Coney,” possibly during the days of Lady Deborah Moody, a London widow in her mid-50s, who brought a group of religious dissenters to the island during a lull in the Indian Wars. It was rough going -the local Native Americans still weren’t all that friendly- but the plucky group stayed on.

EASY ACCESS

Coney Island remained an island until 1829, when it was connected to mainland Long Island by Shell Road, a road made of -you guessed it- shells. It’s been a peninsula ever since. But linguistically, it’s still an island: one is said to be “on” Coney Island, not “in” it.

Hotel Brighton

HOLIDAY INN

Five years after Shell Road was built, a large hotel, Coney Island House, opened for business in hopes of drawing a summer crowd to the seaside. The hotel’s success encouraged builders of even more elegant hotels. What started as a genteel resort recommended by doctors (sea bathing was considered to be healthy and invigorating), quickly became a hot spot with the upper classes. Before long, hotels along the seashores welcomed such distinguished guests as P.T. Barnum, Daniel Webster, and Washington Irving. Visitors lingered on the the hotels’ long porches, ate their meals in posh dining rooms, and took dips in the Atlantic.

BATHING SUITS AND OTHER PURSUITS

The completion of Plank Road (made of planks, we assume) in 1850 made access easier and encouraged entrepreneurs like Peter Tilyou to set up shop: Tilyou not only sold beer for a nickel, but he also built bathhouses, so that visitors could change into their swimsuits right there on the beach -or, in those days of casual hygiene, rent them for the day.

Women’s bathing costumes of the day were about the size of a modern-day conservative dress and, stockings included, weighed 15 pounds when wet. (A dress code was strictly enforced for 100 years. For instance, in 1918 a hundred women were arrested for not wearing stockings on the beach. And in the early 1930s, men who exposed their chests on the beach could get a $50 fine and spend 10 days in jail.)

CONEY’S GREATEST GIFT TO HUMANITY

Frankfurters came to the United States via German immigrants. But they didn’t really become popular until the 1880s, when Charles Feltman, a German banker, settled in Coney Island and decided to sell boiled frankfurters on heated buns from a cart. Each frankfurter sandwich was sold for a dime and was loaded with traditional German toppings -mustard and sauerkraut.

Feltman was so successful that after a few years he opened his own restaurant, Feltman’s German Beer Garden. In 1913, he hired Nathan Handwerker as a part-time delivery boy. But for $11 a week, Nathan wasn’t too happy with his earnings. He began to plan for his own concession stand. In 1916, when he had saved $300, he made his dream a reality.

Nathan’s stand offered a unique spiced meat frankfurter made from a recipe his wife, Ida, created. As a way to market his product, he promised free franks to the local doctors. His only condition was that they had to eat them in front of his stand wearing their white lab coats and stethoscopes. So when people saw the esteemed doctors eating Nathan’s frankfurters, they automatically assumed his franks must be of much better quality than his competitors. And they were cheaper than Feltman’s, since Nathan only charged a nickel apiece.

By the time Nathan opened his concession stand, frankfurters were commonly known as hot dogs -all because of an American cartoonist who couldn’t spell. The story goes that one night in 1906, with a deadline looming, Tad Dorgan sketched a drawing of a dachshund smeared with mustard and squished in a bun. When it was time to caption the picture, poor Tad didn’t know how to spell “dachshund,” so he wrote, “Get your hot dogs!” instead.

LADIES AND GENTS OF LEISURE

But it was back in the late 1870s that island business really started booming: Five railroad lines ran to and from the island by then, bringing 50,000 to 60,000 visitors in 1878. For the first time in industrialized America, people were taking advantage of leisure time. Wearing their comparatively skimpy bathing suits and splashing in the surf was somehow liberating. Reporters of the day mention (and an early Edison Company film shows) the “jubilation” on the faces of Coney Islanders. The poor, working-class slob was learning how to have fun!

THERE GOES THE NEiGHBORHOOD

Gamblers, hookers, and card sharks were soon giving Coney Island a dubious reputation. Local residents were outraged. In hopes of cleaning up the place, they elected John Y. McKane as their police chief in 1868. But McKane ignored the misconduct (for a fee) and ended up behind bars himself when he was convicted of fixing elections.

TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT

In 1884, MaMarcus Adna Thompson opened the world’s first roller coaster, the Switchback Railroad. It had 600 feet of wooden tracks, but unlike roller coasters of today, workers had to push it up to its highest point to get it going. Passengers paid a dime for a ride.

VIVA LUNA PARK!

Captain Paul Boyton had an even better idea. In 1895, he opened Sea Lion Park, the world’s first enclosed amusement park. It featured a colony of sea lions and the ever-popular Shoot-the-Chutes, a waterslide that landed its riders in a man-made lagoon.

Sea Lion Park was redesigned in 1903 and transformed into Luna Park, the Las Vegas of its time. Besides the elephant rides, camel rides, and a circus, the park featured the Dragon’s Gorge, a tunnel ride that included a waterfall and scenes from the North Pole, Africa, the Grand Canyon, and the River Styx.

There was a simulated trip to the Moon. A live-action show, Fire and Flames, had the New York City fire department rescuing trapped residents of burning tenements, some of whom had to jump into nets to escape. This was an attraction that New Yorkers could identify with since a lot of them lived in real tenements. A real fire claimed Luna Park during the 1940s, and the site was eventually turned into a parking lot.

MEET ME TONIGHT IN DREAMLAND

Coney Island’s most famous park, the completely white Dreamland, opened in 1904, and it duplicated a lot of Luna Park’s ideas. Fighting the Flames was copied directly from Fire and Flames. There was a ride called Maxim’s Flying Machine, a miniature railroad, a ballroom, and a Japanese teahouse. All watched over by the Dreamland Tower which stood 375 feet high and was covered with 100,000 lights.

Dreamland’s most unusual attraction was the fully functional Incubator Hospital, which displayed actual premature babies in their incubators. This sounds a little less freaky when it’s revealed that real doctors and nurses provided round-the-clock care for the little newborns. That’s a relief, huh?

In 1911, a fire leveled Dreamland and all its spectacles in a matter of hours. The babies in the hospital were saved.

DAY-TRIPPING

By 1910 or so, the big hotels were closing, and the guests who used to come for weeks and months now only visited on weekends. And then they did not come at all. The island now belonged to the masses. The subway station built in 1918 cemented it. By the 1920s, one million people crowded the island on a single sunny day and walked the two-mile boardwalk, which had been completed in 1923.

During the Great depression, Coney was the perfect escape; crowds averaging 35 million came each summer, but now the beaches were the primary draw because the masses couldn’t afford the fifty cents it took to by a ride. Eventually the prices dropped to a nickel -for a hot dog, a ride, and the subway. But without an infusion of cash, the island started to decay.

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP -AND DOWN

On July 3, 1947, 1,300,000 people -one fifth of the population of New York City- spent the day enjoying not just the beach and the rides, but also a fireworks show and an air show put on by the New York Daily Mirror and the U.S. Air Force. It’s estimated that one in one hundred Americans visited Coney Island that weekend.

But that couldn’t keep the decay away. By the 1950s, it looked like the island was doomed. Even while modern-day entrepreneurs were trying their hand at revitalizing the amusement parks at Coney, the island continued to decline. New amusement parks were going up around New York and the rest of the country, including Coney’s biggest competitor: Disneyland in faraway California.

Image from the 1979 film The Warriors.

Some historians describe Coney as a ghost town in the 1970s. All of New York seemed a dangerous place then. On Coney Island, the bathhouses closed, and the big hotels were torn down.

CONEY, REBORN

But you can’t keep a good Coney Island down. In 1980, the New York Parks Department reported that concession revenues at the beach had been steadily rising for several seasons in a row.

(Image credit: Flickr user André)

Today, the rides and amusements are run by Astroland Amusement Park. The attractions include the Cyclone roller coaster, Go-Karts, the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Water Flume (a waterslide), and Dante’s Inferno (with Spook-A-Rama, one of the park’s two “dark” rides).

And let’s not forget Astroland’s Sideshows by the Seashore, featuring Insectavora, Serpentina, Bambi the Mermaid, Eak (the Illustrated Man), Scott Baker (the Twisted Shockmeister), Ravi (the Scorpion Mystic), Ula (the Rainproof Rubber Girl), and Todd Robbins (Amazement Is His Business).

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.

The book is a compendium of entertaining information chock-full of facts on a plethora of history topics. Uncle John’s first plunge into history was a smash hit – over half a million copies sold! And this sequel gives you more colorful characters, cultural milestones, historical hindsight, groundbreaking events, and scintillating sagas.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute

For nearly twenty years after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon in July 1969, the Soviet Union categorically denied having a manned lunar program of its own. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that we began to learn just how close they came to beating the United States to the moon.

HEARING IS BELIEVING

Not too long after 9:00 PM on the evening of April 11, 1961, a United States government listening post off Alaska picked up the sound of human voices speaking in Russian. That wasn’t unusual; in the early 1960s, the Cold War was at its height, and the listening post had been set up for the purpose of intercepting Soviet communications.

But as the analysts studied the transmission, they realized that one of the voices was coming from space -low-Earth orbit to be exact- and the other voices were transmitting from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Soviet Kazakhstan, headquarters of the USSR’s space program. As the entire world would learn in a few hours, the 27-year-old cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had just become the first human being to fly in space. As was typical with the Soviet space program, the launch had been kept a secret. The signals from space were probably the first inkling the United States had that it had been beaten in the space race once again.

SECOND PLACE

Gagarin had blasted off at 9:07 AM Moscow time on the morning of April 12th (Moscow was 12 hours ahead of Alaska). He made just one orbit around the Earth before landing back on Soviet soil at 10:55 AM. That’s not much of a space flight by modern standards, but in 1961 it stunned the world. Just as it had when it launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, in October 1957, the Soviet Union had demonstrated that it, not the United States, was leading the way into space. The United States wouldn’t be able to send an American astronaut, John Glenn, into orbit until February 1962.

JFK’s QUERY

No one felt the sting of second place more than president John F. Kennedy. “Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the Moon, or by a rocket to land on the moon, or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man?” the president asked in a memo to his vice president, Lyndon Baines Johnson. “Is there any other space program which promises dramatic results in which we could win?”

JFK dispatched Johnson to NASA to get an answer. Wernher von Braun, head of rocket development, suggested that America had a chance of beating the Soviets in a flight around the Moon, but that it had an even bigger chance at being the first country to land a man on the Moon’s surface. JFK weighed the options, and on May 25, 1961, made his famous speech committing the United States to landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade.

NO CONTEST?

On July 20, 1969, the United States won the race to the Moon when astronaut Neil A. Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on lunar soil. But had the Soviets contemplated trying to beat the United States to the Moon? For more than two decades after the Moon landing, the official answer was a definitive, categorical “Nyet!” The Soviets claimed they skipped the Moon race in favor of the more practical challenge of putting a space station into Earth’s orbit. And they succeeded- between 1971 and 1986, they launched seven different space stations into orbit.

The Soviets stuck to their we-didn’t-shoot-for-the-Moon story until August 18, 1989, when the government’s official newspaper, Izvestiya, admitted that the USSR had indeed tried to send a cosmonaut to the Moon, in what was one of the most closely guarded secret programs of the Cold War. They had actually come pretty close to succeeding: Were it not for one large technical challenge that proved insurmountable, the Soviet Union might well have won the race.

When the Soviets were planning their lunar program, they faced the same question NASA had faced: Did they want to go in one large rocket, or did they want to use several launches of smaller rockets to assemble a lunar spacecraft in Earth’s orbit before heading to the Moon? Launching everything aboard one rocket was a quicker option, and since beating America to the Moon was a high priority, that’s what the Soviets chose to do. They set to work developing a rocket big enough for the job, called the N-1.

DOWNSIZING

Soviet N-1 rocket

Using one rocket, no matter how big it is, severely limits the options on how to get to the moon and back, and because of this, the Soviets’ secret program ended up looking a lot like the Apollo program, which also used one rocket, the Saturn V. But because the N-1 was smaller than the Saturn V, the Soviet mission would be smaller in many respects. It would have less room for cargo, and only two cosmonauts would make the trip, not three as on the Apollo missions. And that meant that only one cosmonaut would get to walk on the Moon, instead of two.

* The Soviet plans called for the N-1 rocket to lift a command ship called the Lunniy Orbitalny Korabl (LOK) into Earth’s orbit. The command ship would then travel to the Moon and enter lunar orbit. An attached lunar lander, call the Lunniy Kabina (“Lunar Cabin,” or LK, for short), would then separate from the LOK and descend to the lunar surface with one of the cosmonauts aboard. The other cosmonaut had to remain on the LOK.

* After spending about 24 hours on the surface of the Moon, the cosmonaut would climb back into the LK, launch back into lunar orbit, and dock with the LOK. Once the cosmonaut was safety back aboard the LOK, the LK would be jettisoned, and the LOK would fire its rocket, putting the craft on a return course to Earth. Then, when the LOK arrived in Earth’s orbit, the crew compartment would split apart from the rest of the LOK and re-enter the atmosphere with the cosmonauts aboard, parachuting to a landing somewhere inside the Soviet Union. The rest of the LOK would burn up on re-entry.

A model of the Lunniy Orbitalny Korabl (LOK)

NOT QUITE APOLLO

For all its similarities with the Apollo program, the Soviet lunar program did have its differences.

* Would you want to land on the Moon all by yourself while wearing an unwieldy spacesuit that’s difficult to move around in? What if you fell down -who would help you up? The Soviets were so worried about this possibility that they attached a device to the spacesuit that looked like a hula hoop. If the lone cosmonaut did fall on his back while walking on the Moon, he could use the hula hoop to roll over on his knees and stand back up.

Lunniy Kabina (LK)

* The Soviets were also worried about the LK becoming so damaged during landing that it would be unable to blast off from the Moon -landing a man on the Moon just to watch him die there would have been a human tragedy, not to mention a public relations disaster. The Soviets made plans to send a second LK to the Moon in advance of the mission …just in case.

* The second LK would have been useless if the cosmonaut landed too far away from it or couldn’t find it after landing on the Moon, so the Soviets also planned to send an unmanned, remote controlled rover to the Moon in advance of the manned landing. Its job would be to select landing sites for both the primary LK and the unmanned backup, and then serve as a landing beacon for both LKs. The rover would also be equipped with oxygen tanks and a platform for the cosmonaut to stand on, to enable it to ferry the cosmonaut to the backup LK if necessary.

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

So why didn’t the Soviets make it to the Moon? Part of the problem was that the Soviet leadership didn’t take the challenge seriously until it was too late to catch up with the Americans. Premiere Nikita Khrushchev endorsed the idea of a lunar program in 1962, but it wasn’t until 1964, more than three years after JFK put NASA on a course toward the Moon, that the Soviet leadership started committing resources to the project.

By then it probably would have been too late for them to catch up with the United States even under the best of circumstances, and the Soviets made the situation worse by designing the giant N-1 rocket so that it used 30 smaller rocket motors instead of fewer, more powerful motors. (NASA’s Saturn V used five rocket motors -that’s how it got its name.) Getting 30 rocket motors to work together in perfect unison without shaking each other apart is next to impossible, and the Soviets never did pull it off. The N-1 was only test launched four times -twice before Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon and twice afterward. All four tests ended in failure; the rockets either exploded or malfunctioned and had to be destroyed by Soviet ground control.

SHHH!

Given the open nature of the Apollo program and subsequent NASA missions, it’s difficult to absorb just how covert the Soviet Union’s manned lunar program was. Launches took place in complete secrecy, although the United States did have an inkling that a Soviet lunar program was underway. The N-1 rockets were nearly 40 stories tall, and once they were rolled out onto the launch pads, it wasn’t hard for American spy satellites to find them or for the CIA to guess what rockets that big were designed for.

On a few occasions, the U.S. government was even spooked into thinking they were about to lose the race to the Moon. In September 1968, for example, the U.S. detected the launch of a rocket from Baikonur and traced its course all the way to the Moon. They even detected the sound of a human voice in a radio signal transmitted from the spacecraft. Was this another Yuri Gagarin moment? This time, NASA got lucky -the voice was only a recording designed to test the spacecraft’s radio equipment.

NASA was so concerned about losing the space race that it sped up the pace of its operations. The Apollo 8 mission (December-21-27, 1968), only the second manned mission of the Apollo program, was originally intended to test equipment in Earth’s orbit. But the CIA was so convinced the the USSR was about to send cosmonauts on a flight around the Moon, NASA changed it to a circumlunar mission to keep the Soviets from beating them to the punch. Less than a year later, the Soviets -along with the rest of the world- watched the United States win the race.

NOW WHAT?

With that, the Soviet lunar program lost much of its purpose. For a time, the Soviets considered expanding the program to include a base on the Moon -if they couldn’t get there first, they reasoned, they could still get there best. But the lunar program was canceled in 1974 as the Soviet Union shifted its emphasis to building space stations.

In the early 1970s, NASA began work on a reusable space shuttle. When informed that the United States’ shuttle would be able to carry military cargo over the Soviet Union, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev ordered up a space shuttle of his own. “We are not country bumpkins here!” he is said to have shouted. The first American space shuttle, the Columbia, flew on April 12, 1981; the first Soviet shuttle, named the Buran, or “Snowstorm,” flew on November 15, 1988. The Buran only made a single, unmanned flight before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 caused the program to be canceled.

Today the rivalry between the United States and Russian space programs is over, perhaps for good, as they work together with other countries in the International Space Station.

This NASA photo shows astronauts from the US, Russia, Japan, Canada, and Belgium together aboard the International Space Station (ISS)

CABIN FEVER

Not much remains of the Soviet manned lunar program more than 35 years after it was canceled. Remember, it wasn’t just canceled; it was officially, categorically denied until the late 1980s, and by then nearly everything that could be recycled or reused by the Soviet space program had long since disappeared. Some parts that couldn’t be used for anything else were made into storage sheds, airplane hangars, and even bandstands and children’s playgrounds in and around the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Four of the LKs did survive, however. If you ever make it to France, you can see one of them on display at EuroDisney.

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The true story of the slave who became the most feared man in the Roman Empire! A noble hero meets a black-hearted villain in battle! A rebel uprising! Romance, adventure, and a cast of thousands!

THRACE IS THE PLACE

As the movie Spartacus opens, the hero is sweaty and bedraggled, breaking up rocks. The voice-over tells us that he is the son of a slave, sold into slavery when he was 13.

Not exactly. The real Spartacus was a tribal warrior from the ancient region of Thrace, which is now part of Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey. His tribe was probably conquered by the Roman army -history’s a little unclear on this- because he became a Roman soldier. Then he deserted the army, was captured, was brought to Rome, and then was sold into slavery. The year: 73 B.C.

GOING, GOING, GONE

Unlike the movie, where Spartacus was a bachelor so he can fall in love with a beautiful slave girl, the real Spartacus was married by the time he became a slave. His wife, a priestess, was captured along with him. Legend has it that when they were together in the slave market, a snake coiled itself around Spartacus’s face as he slept. His wife interpreted the snake as a lucky sign, an omen that her husband would become powerful. But soon afterward, both of them became the property of a man named Lentulus Batiates. Their new owner ran a gladiator school in Capua, near Mount Vesuvius.

GLADIATOR-IN-TRAINING

Some of Spartacus’s fellow students at the imperial gladiator school were prisoners of war from northern Europe, while others were convicted criminals whose lives were spared because they were tough enough to qualify for gladiator training. The “school” was actually a prison, with plenty of opportunity to fight with other “students.” The men were taught how to handle the gladiatorial weapons: fishing spears, chains, swords, nets, and lassos.

All across Rome, gladiators were big-name celebrities. Wealthy citizens decorated the walls of their villas with portraits of the greatest gladiators. Teenagers swooned over their favorites the way they do over pop stars today. In the ruins of Pompeii, archaeologists found love notes to gladiators that young girls had scribbled on public walls.

But Spartacus wasn’t interested in fame. He reportedly told the others, “If we must fight, we might as well fight for freedom.” One day they got their chance.

THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM

Spartacus’ words inspired 200 of his fellow gladiators to stage a revolt. Using knives and skewers from the school’s kitchen, they fought their way out. About 80 managed to escape, including Spartacus and his wife. And in a twist that sounds like an unbelievable movie plot, as the gladiators ran through Capua, they found carts full of gladiatorial weapons. The escapees swapped their kitchen tools for the real things and fled.

Once the rebels made it to the countryside, they selected Spartacus as their leader. His first order of business was to lead his troops against the soldiers who’d followed them.  The gladiators defeated their pursuers and traded up in weaponry again. Now they were equipped to handle nearly anything. They headed south toward Mount Vesuvius, plundering farms for food and freeing slaves. Most of the slaves were happy to join the ever-growing band.

SNEAK ATTACK

Back in Capua, the local authorities called in the troops. With 3,000 Roman soldiers bearing down on them, Spartacus and company retreated up a narrow path that was the only access to Vesuvius. The rest of the mountaintop was too steep and slippery to climb. It looked like the Romans, who waited nonchalantly at the bottom, had them trapped.

At the top of Vesuvius, the rebels improvised rope ladders from vines and climbed down the other side. They had the perfect opportunity to sneak away, but Spartacus couldn’t resist ambushing the Romans. The rebels stormed the rear of the Roman camp and captured it easily.

RAGGED ARMY

Though the Roman senate sent armies out to capture Spartacus, the best and strongest of Rome’s fighting men were out conquering the rest of the world. The next two armies they assembled were thrown together piecemeal: an elderly man here, a dreg of society there. Spartacus and his men easily mowed them down.

Every victory brought Spartacus more fame- and more slaves to his side. Less than a year after the escape from Capua, the army of slaves totaled a whopping 70,000. The Roman senate became terrified that the rebels were going to head straight for Rome.

But that was the last thing Spartacus wanted. He knew only too well the power of Rome and was as frightened of the real Roman army as the senate was of him. So he started his troops north toward the Alps. But Spartacus had created a monster -his men didn’t want to escape. They wanted to go on looting and plundering.

ENTER THE BLACK-HEARTED VILLAIN

Rome now had to enlist its best troops against Spartacus. The only problem was that the senate couldn’t find a general to lead them: Possibly losing to a ragtag bunch of rebels was more indignity than most men wanted to face.

But they found a volunteer in Marcus Crassus, who had been waiting for the right moment to step into the limelight. Crassus was the richest man in Rome, and one of the most unprincipled -in a city where corruption was already rampant. He’d made his money in various shady business, and is still famous for starting Rome’s first fire brigade. But his firefighting method also had its profits -the property owner had to pay an exorbitant fee before his fire brigade would help them (and the fires were often set by Crassus’s employees). This was the man charged with the task of leading 10 Roman legions against Spartacus.

A HARSH LESSON

Crassus was smart enough to know that Spartacus wanted to get far away from Rome. So he sent a lieutenant named Mummius with two legions and strict orders not to fight, but to provoke the rebels into marching north, where he would wait for them. But instead, Mummius attacked Spartacus’s rebels …and were soundly defeated.

Crassus was furious, and after Mummius retreated and returned with his men to camp, Crassus sentenced the defeated legions to the traditional Roman punishment, known as “decimation.” The soldiers were divided into groups of 10, and each group drew lots to see which of them would die. The unlucky one-in-ten were executed in front of the whole army. This, Crassus felt, would inspire the men to obey orders next time.

THOSE WHO ABOUT TO DIE…

The rebels didn’t head north, as Crassus predicted, but instead turned toward the south. Crassus and his legions chased them all the way to the toe of the Italian boot, just across the water from the island of Sicily. The slaves stood with their backs to the sea, facing 50,000 of the best-trained soldiers in the world. To make things worse, Crassus has his men dig a ditch 37 miles long and 15 feet wide and deep. It cut the rebels off from any escape route but the sea. For extra insurance, the ditch was backed by a wall. The rebels managed to cross the ditch and tried to scale the wall, but were beaten back after losing more than 10,000 men. Spartacus heard another army was on its way to join Crassus, he led his men in one more desperate charge. This time the rebels made it over the wall and through enemy lines. But as they fled, the new army blocked their way. Spartacus decided to turn and fight.

DECISIONS, DECISIONS

In the long and bloody battle, Spartacus was killed, though his body was never found among the tens of thousands of dead. His followers fled to the mountains, pursued by Crassus. After one last battle, 6,000 slaves were captured. Crassus had them all crucified, their bodies spaced evenly along the road from Capua to Rome. No record has ever been found of the fate of Spartacus’s wife.

Movie note: At the end of the film Spartacus, Spartacus survives the battle, leading to the inspiring scene where Crassus promises that he won’t crucify the remaining men if someone will point out Spartacus. Of course, Kirk Douglas is about to speak up when the other men, one by one, stand up and shout, “I’m Spartacus!” “I’m Spartacus!” According to Kirk Douglas, the slave army’s cries were actually shouted out by a crowd at a Michigan State (Spartans) vs. Notre Dame football game.

(YouTube link)

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If you like professional wrestling you’ve probably heard of The Rock, The Iron Sheik, and Hulk Hogan. But have you heard of Gorgeous George? He was TV’s first big wrestling villain. TV made him a star, and in many ways, he made television. Here’s his story.

IN THIS RING, I THEE WED

In 1939, a 24-year-old professional wrestler named George Wagner fell in love with a movie theater cashier named Betty Hanson and married her in a wrestling ring in Eugene, Oregon. The wedding was so popular with wrestling fans that George and Betty reenacted it in similar venues all over the country.

With the sole exception of the wedding stunt, Wagner’s wrestling career didn’t seen to be going anywhere. After ten years in the ring, he was still an unknown, and that was a big problem: Nobodies had a hard time getting booked for fights.

THE ROBE OF A LIFETIME

Wagner might well have had to find something else to do for a living had his wife not happened to make him a robe to wear from the locker room to the ring before a fight, just like a prizefighter. Wagner was proud of the robe, and that night when he took it off at the start of his fight, he took such care to fold it properly that the audience booed him for taking so long. That made Betty mad, so she jumped into the crowd and slapped one of the hecklers in the face. That made George mad, so he jumped out of the ring and hit the guy himself. Then the whole place went nuts.

“The booing was tremendous,” wrestling promoter Don Owen remembered.

And the next week there was a real big crowd and everyone booed George. So he just took more time to fold his robe. He did everything to antagonize the fans. And from that point he became the best drawing card we ever had. In wrestling they either come to like you or hate you. And they hated George.

PRETTY BOY

Out of this hatred, George discovered the shtick he was looking for -and over the next several years gradually changed his look. Where other wrestling villains had always been dirty and ugly, “Gorgeous George,” as he began to call himself, set out to become the prettiest, daintiest pro wrestler the sport had ever seen. He grew his hair long, curled it, and bleached it platinum blond. And before each fight, he secured it in place with golden bobby pins and a golden hair net. He amassed a collection of more than 100 frilly, purple robes, made of satin and silk and trimmed with sequins, lace, and fur. He made sure to wear one to every match, and before he would enter the ring, he insisted that his tuxedoed “valet” be allowed to spray the mat, the referee, and his opponent with perfume.

Then, as the lights were dimmed and “Pomp and Circumstance” played over the loudspeaker, George would enter he hall under a spotlight and slowly traipse his way to the ring. He made such a show of climbing into the ring and removing (with the assistance of his valet) his robe, his hair net, and his golden bobby pins, that his entrance sometimes took longer than his fights, giving wrestling’s blue-collar fans one more reason to hate him.

FIGHTING DIRTY

Appearances aside, Gorgeous George was no sissy -not out of the ring and certainly not in it. He fought hard and he always cheated -gouging eyes, biting ears, butting heads, punching kidneys, kicking crotches, and pulling every other dirty stunt he could think of. He gloated when he was winning, squealed and begged for mercy when he was losing, and bawled like a baby when his opponents mussed his hair, which they did every fight. All of this was fake, of course, but the crowds either didn’t know it or didn’t care. They ate it up, fight after fight.

Gorgeous George’s antics may not sound like much compared to the wrestling of today, but at the time, they were mind-boggling. He became famous in the late 1940s, not long after the end of World War II. Many wrestling fans were veterans, and the boys who landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day or battled their way across the Pacific, and raised the flag at Iwo Jima had some pretty rigid ideas about what it meant to be a man. And bobby pins, frilly bathrobes, and platinum blond hair were definitely not considered manly. Gorgeous George broke all the rules, and these guys hated him for it. People got in their cars and drove for hours to see him fight, just so they could hate him in person. Gorgeous George made 32 appearances at the Los Angeles Olympic Auditorium in 1949; he sold out 27 times.

A BOOB FOR THE BOOB TUBE

But what was most remarkable about Gorgeous George was the impact he had on TV sales. In Los Angeles, wrestling matches -mainly featuring Gorgeous George- were broadcast on TV as early as 1945, and they proved so popular that by the late 1940s, many TV stations around the country were broadcasting live pro wrestling every night of the week. It was the perfect sport for television -the ring was small and easy to film and the action was larger than life, so viewers had no problem following the fights at home on their tiny black-and-white screens. Baseball and football players looked like ants in comparison.

TV turned Gorgeous George in to a national star, even for people who didn’t watch wrestling. And in the process, he helped make television the centerpiece of the American living room. Appliance dealers put TVs in their store windows and pasted pictures of Gorgeous George onto their screens. People who’d never owned a TV before came in and bought TVs …just so they could watch Gorgeous George. As Steve Slagle write in The Ring Chronicle,

In a very real sense, Gorgeous George single-handedly established the unproven new technology of television as a viable entertainment medium that could reach literally millions of homes all across the country. Pro wrestling was TVs first real “hit” …and Gorgeous George was directly responsible for all of the commotion. He was probably responsible for selling more television sets in the early days of TV than any other factor.

YOU’RE MY INSPIRATION

As we told you in Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader, a young pro boxer named Cassius Clay, soon to change his name to Muhammad Ali, reinvented his public persona after he happened to meet Gorgeous George on a radio show in Las Vegas in 1961. “That’s when I decided I’d never been shy about talking, but if I talked even more, there was no telling how much people would pay to see me,” Ali remembered. That’s when he started calling himself “The Greatest” …just like Gorgeous George.

Muhammad Ali wasn’t the only one -Gorgeous George is credited for inspiring Little Richard …and even Liberace. “He’s imitating me,” George groused to a reporter in 1955.

THE FINAL BELL

There was, however, a limit to how long American TV viewers could stand to watch live pro wrestling every single night of the week, and by the mid-1950s, the craze had died down. George continued to wrestle until 1962, when a liver ailment -brought on by heavy drinking- forced him into retirement. Nearly broke from two expensive divorces, George had a heart attack on Christmas Eve 1963 and died two days later. He was 48.

Ironically, the fame that made Gorgeous George a national celebrity may have also contributed to his death. Believe it or not, he was a reticent person, and for years he had used alcohol to stiffen his spine and give him the courage to be Gorgeous George.

“He really didn’t have the nerve to do all those things,” his second wife, Cherie, remembered. “That’s why he drank. When he was sober, he was shy.”

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This article is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader.

Where else but in a Bathroom Reader could you learn how the banana peel changed history, how to predict the future by rolling the dice, how the Jivaro tribes shrunk heads, and the science behind love at first sight? Get ready to be thoroughly entertained while occupied on the throne. Uncle John rules the world of information and humor. It’s simply Ahh-Inspiring!

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Classical “Greco-Roman” wrestling can trace its roots all the way back to the ancient Greeks and romans. But what about “professional” wrestling -the kind where costumed buffoons hit each other with folding chairs? How old is that? Older than you might think.

WORLD-CLASS WRESTLING

In 1915 some fight promoters organized an international wrestling tournament at the Opera House in New York. A rising star named Ed “Strangler” Lewis headlined a roster of other top grapplers from Russia, Germany, Italy, Greece, and other countries. These were some of the biggest matches to be fought in New York City that year.

There was just one problem: almost nobody went to see them.

HO-HUM

Wrestling, at least as it was fought back then, could be pretty boring for the average person to watch. As soon as the bell rang or the whistle was blown, the two wrestlers grabbed onto each other and then might circle round …and round  …and round for hours on end, until one wrestler finally gained an advantage and defeated his opponent. Some bouts dragged on for nine hours or more.

Wrestling could also be hard to understand, which made it even more boring. In baseball, an outfielder either caught a fly ball or he didn’t. In football, the person with the ball either got tackled or they didn’t. Wrestling was different -when two grapplers circled for hours, who could tell at any point in the match who was winning? Did anyone even care?

Ed "Strangler" Lewis

Even by wrestling standards, 1915 was a particularly boring year because the world’s youngest and best wrestlers were all off fighting in World War I. Those that were left were often past their prime and not very entertaining. Not surprisingly, the organizers of the tournament at the Opera House were having trouble filling seats. For the firs day or two it looked like they were going to lose a lot of money.

For the first day or two.

MYSTERY MAN

Things were about to change, thanks to one spectator. He was huge, but he didn’t stand out just because of his size -he stood out because he was wearing a black mask that covered his entire head. There was no explanation for what the man was doing there or why he was wearing the mask. He just sat there watching the matches each day, and when they ended he left as silently as he came.

Then, a few days into the tournament, the masked man and a companion suddenly stood up and loudly accused the promoters of banning the masked man from the tournament. He was the best wrestler of all and the promoters knew it, they claimed. That was why he was being kept out of the tournament, and they demanded that he be let back in. Security guards quickly hustled the pair out of the building, but they came back each day and repeated their demands, generating newspaper headlines in the process. By the end of the week, much of New York City was demanding that the masked man be allowed into the tournament.

OH, ALL RIGHT

Finally, on Saturday, the promoters gave into the pressure and agreed to let him compete. Just days earlier, some of the world’s most famous wrestlers had battled one another in a nearly empty Opera House. No one cared. Now throngs of New Yorkers ponied up the price of admission to watch the mysterious masked man fight, even though -or more likely because- they had no idea who he was or whether he even knew how to fight.

Sure enough, the Masked Marvel delivered -although not quite as much as he promised, because he lost one match and only wrestled “Strangler” Lewis to a draw. But he whipped everyone else he wrestled, bringing the packed tournament to a thrilling end. Considering the amount of excitement that led up to those final bouts, it’s a good bet that the people who saw the masked man fight remembered the experience for the rest of their lives.

MYSTERY REVEALED

The following year, the Masked Marvel was officially unmasked after losing a match with a wrestler named Joe Stecher. He turned out to be… Mort Henderson, a railroad detective from Altoona, Pennsylvania, who made his living throwing hobos off trains when he wasn’t in the ring. Henderson had wrestled for years under his own name, but he lost many of his matches and had gone nowhere in the sport. Even when he wasn’t wearing a mask, no one knew who he was.

So how did Henderson do so well at the Opera House? The whole thing was a setup -the promoters planted him in the audience hoping that he would generate publicity and sell tickets. The other wrestlers were in on the scam, too; that’s how he won so many fights.

Many New Yorkers realized that they’d been had, but nobody seemed to mind. The Masked Marvel was fun.

FROM SPECTACLE…TO SPORT…TO SPECTACLE

Wrestling had long been full of colorful characters. After all, legitimate professional wrestling traced its roots back to the days when carnival strongmen traveled the country offering cash prizes to any locals who could pin them to the mat.

By 1915 wrestling had matured into a legitimate sport, a test of strength and skill, not quite as exciting as boxing but still a sport that took itself seriously. Mort Henderson could not have realized it at the time, but on the day he donned his mask the first time in 1915, he changed professional wrestling forever. It was “at this point,” Keith Greenburg writes in Pro Wrestling: From Carnivals to Cable TV, “promoters began copying techniques from vaudeville to keep spectators interested.”

PUTTING ON A SHOW

Toots Mondt

A lot of credit for changing pro wrestling into what it is today goes to a former vaudeville promoter named Joseph “Toots” Mondt. Mondt saw wrestlers as little different from theatrical performers, and their matches as just another act to be managed so that profits were maximized.

Rather than let a match run on for hours, he set time limits, which allowed him to book more fights back to back. His traveling troupe of wrestlers fought the same fights -with the same rigged outcomes- in every town they visited. Since the wrestlers didn’t have to focus on winning, they were free to thrill audiences with moves like flying drop kicks, airplane spins, and leaps across the ring feet first to kick opponents in the chest.

Landing fake body blows like these -ones that appeared devastating without actually causing serious physical harm- was elevated to a fine art. “When a grappler threw a punch, he tried to connect using a forearm instead of a fist, softening the blow,” Greenburg writes. “A man diving on a foe from the ropes actually grazed the man with a knee or elbow, rather than landing on him directly and causing injury.”

ONE-RING CIRCUS

The next big wave of innovation came during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when dwindling ticket sales forced promoters to resort to even greater gimmickry to draw crowds. Wrestler assumed false ethnic identities so that blue-collar immigrants could root for someone of their own ethnic group, and also to capitalize on whatever geopolitical goings-on might make for an interesting villain. Evil German counts and Japanese generals were popular during World War II; in peacetime, crazy hillbillies and snooty English lords filled the bill, grappling with noble Indian chiefs and scrappy Irish brawlers that the audiences loved.

Maurice Tillet

Wrestlers fought tag-team matches. They battled it out in cages. They wrestled while chained together. They fought in rings filled with mud (of course) as well as ice cream, berries, molasses, and other gooey substances. Women wrestled. Midgets wrestled. Giants wrestled. Morbidly obese people wrestled, and so did people with disfiguring diseases. Maurice Tillet, the French Angel, suffered from a glandular disease called acromegaly that gave him enlarged, distorted facial features. He was such a successful villain that he spawned a host of imitators, including the Swedish Angel, the Golden Angel, the Polish Angel, and the Czech Angel, a number of whom suffered from the same disease.

OLD SCHOOL

What happened the the “genuine” professional wrestlers, the guys who refused to showboat and took their sport seriously? They continued to wrestle one another in honest matches for legitimate championship titles. In 1920, for example, Ed “Strangler” Lewis won a world championship match against Joe Stecher in a three hour-long bout; he held the title off and on for the next 13 years. After that the title turned over several more times before it passed to a wrestler name Lou Thesz, who would win and lose it several times into the 1950s.

Not that anyone cared. Thesz wasn’t above a little showmanship -his specialty holds were the Kangaroo and the Airplane Spin- but “there was little interest in the championship among the public,” Graeme Kent writes in A Pictorial History of Wrestling. “This was mainly because Thesz scorned gimmicks, relying on his wrestling ability to carry him through.”

STAY TUNED…

Yet it was a gimmick at the end of World War II that would provide the biggest boost to professional wrestling. The emerging medium of TV …will be covered in part two of this post from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.

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This article is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader.

Where else but in a Bathroom Reader could you learn how the banana peel changed history, how to predict the future by rolling the dice, how the Jivaro tribes shrunk heads, and the science behind love at first sight? Get ready to be thoroughly entertained while occupied on the throne. Uncle John rules the world of information and humor. It’s simply Ahh-Inspiring!

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

More than 30 years after his death, the Who’s drummer, Keith Moon, is still remembered as one of the best in rock history. And as more than one hotel chain learned to their regret, that wasn’t all he was known for.

MY GENERATION

In the summer of 1967, the British rock group the Who embarked on their first concert tour of the United States. They were the opening act for Herman’s Hermits, best known for their hit single, “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter.” The Who had played dates in the U.S. before, including their breakthrough appearance at the Monterrey International Pop Festival just a few weeks earlier in June. But this was the band’s first cross-country tour, and there was still much about America that was new and unfamiliar to them. (Image credit: Wikipedia user MachoCarioca)

Take American fireworks, for example: In many Southern states, giant firecrackers much more powerful than the “penny bangers” sold in England were perfectly legal.  They could be bought cheaply and in large quantities all over the South. The Hermits had discovered them on their first American tour in 1965, and now, on a swing through Alabama, they introduced Keith Moon, the Who’s 20-year-old drummer, to his first bag of American fireworks -cherry bombs.

Cherry bombs are still sold today, but in the 1960s they contained as much as 20 times the explosive power they do now -more than enough to maim or blind anyone who was holding them when they went off, or who happened to be standing too close. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission banned original-strength cherry bombs in 1966m but judging from the reign of terror on which Keith Moon was about to embark, they must have still been available.

MAGIC BUS

The Hermits’ favorite prank was throwing cherry bombs out of their tour bus, taking care to hold the lit bombs for a few seconds before tossing them so that they would explode in front of the car traveling behind their. Moon, with a little help from Who bassist John Entwistle, came up with his own destructive trademark when the tour pulled into Birmingham, Alabama, ad the band decided that the hotel’s room service wasn’t up to snuff: He blew up his hotel-room toilet. cherry bombs (Image credit: Wikipedia user J A Chunko)

Why did Moon single out his toilet for destruction? The original plan was to blow up the plumbing beneath the toilet, not the toilet itself. The idea was to do damage without the hotel finding out who was responsible, or whether anyone was actually responsible at all. For all the management would know, the pipe under the floor might have burst as the result of normal wear and tear.

AMAZING JOURNEY

Apparently toilets in the United Sates flush differently than they do in the U.K., because when Moon and Entwistle tossed their first lit cherry bomb into that hotel toilet in Birmingham, they expected it to flush right down the bowl and into the plumbing pipes. But it didn’t- instead, it just swirled round and round the bowl as the fuse burned lower and lower. At the last second, Moon and Entwistle fled the bathroom, slamming the door behind them just as the bomb went off, blowing the toilet to pieces. When Moon and Entwistle opened the door, all they saw was smoke, shards of porcelain, and a hole in the floor.

The destruction must have made quite an impression on Moon, because he quickly abandoned the idea of blowing up pipes he couldn’t see in favor of toilets he could, even if it meant getting caught and having to pay for the damage. “From that moment on,” biographer Tony Fletcher writes in Moon: The Life and Death of a Rock Legend, “no toilet in a hotel or changing room was safe until the tour moved away or Keith’s bomb supply ran out.”

I CAN’T EXPLAIN

Some toilet bombings stood out more than others: On a trip to New York in 1968, a very drunk Moon blew up the toilet on the ninth floor of the Gorsham Hotel, a popular spot with rock bands. Then he climbed out onto the window ledge, where he tossed more cherry bombs onto the police, who responded to the call of an explosion at the hotel. Thrown out of the Gorsham, the Who moved to the Waldorf-Astoria, one of New York’s swankiest hotels. Then, when the management locked the Who out of their rooms until they paid their bill in advance and in cash (probably after receiving a call from the Gorsham), Moon retrieved his luggage from his locked room by blowing the door off its hinges. (Image credit: Flicker member Marc Kjerland)

Thrown out of 2 hotels in 24 hours, the Who tried to book rooms in a third. By then, word had gotten around to every hotel in town, though, and suddenly there were no rooms available anywhere. Pete Townshend, the Who’s guitarist and songwriter, stayed with friends that night; everyone else had to sleep on the tour bus.

WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN

The Who was one of the highest-earning bands of the era, but the band was soon reduced to staying at mid-priced hotel chains like the Holiday Inn because none of the elite hotels would have them. During a trip to New York in 1971, they did manage to book rooms at the Navarro, a luxurious hotel overlooking Central Park. But that was only because the hotel was under renovation- the manager put them in rooms that hadn’t been redone yet, and let Moon demolish them to his heart’s content. (One night Moon bashed his way through a brick wall to retrieve a cassette tape from the locked room next door.)

Moon’s reign of toilet terror ended only after his untimely death in 1978 at the age of 32, when he overdosed on the prescription medication he was taking to treat his alcoholism. It’s not clear exactly how many toilets he destroyed during his 11-year love affair with cherry bombs; one estimate places the value of all that destroyed porcelain at half a million dollars.

LONG LIVE ROCK

If you watched the halftime show on Super Bowl Sunday in 2010, you know the Who are still going strong, albeit minus Moon and Entwistle, who died from a heart attack in 2002. But the band may not be around much longer: In 2010, the Who cancelled their spring tour schedule when Pete Townshend, who is partially deaf, suffered a recurrence of tinnitus -buzzing or ringing in the ears- brought on, no doubt, by more than 40 years of exposure to loud music …and all those exploding toilets.

The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, 1967

(YouTube link)

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The article above was reprinted with permission from the Bathroom Institute’s newest book, Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

“The boy’s alive and we’re going to send someone to save him…and we’re going to get him the hell out of there.” -from Saving Private Ryan

FACT OR FICTION?

In 1998 Saving Private Ryan gave moviegoers an infantryman’s view of the 1944 invasion of Normandy on D-day. The film follows Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) and the survivors of his unit as they battle their way onto Omaha Beach. Then, instead of getting a hoped-for rest, they get another dangerous assignment -to go behind enemy lines and find a missing soldier, Private James Ryan (Matt Damon). Private Ryan’s three brothers have all recently died in combat and, in accordance with War Office policy, the last living son must return home alive to his family. Private Ryan must be “saved.”

Directed by Steven Spielberg, Saving Private Ryan won five Academy Awards and the admiration of World War II veterans who said the movie faithfully depicted their experiences. The film renewed interest in the men who fought at Normandy, but filmgoers also wanted to know of there was a real-life Private Ryan.

THE REAL PRIVATE RYAN

Sergeant Frederick "Fritz" Niland

The fictional Private Ryan was inspired by Sergeant Frederick “Fritz” Niland -a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division and 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment. Just after midnight on D-day, June 6, 1944, a plane dropped Sergeant Niland into France. He was supposed to land near the city of Carentan, but -like Private Ryan- got “lost” when his plane was hit by enemy fire and he had to jump miles away from his target.

Fritz, 24, was born in Tonawanda, New York, the youngest of four brothers, from oldest to youngest, Edward, Preston, Robert, and Fritz. Their mother Augusta “Gussie” Niland, later recalled that the brothers had always been best of friends. They graduated from Tonawanda High School and attended local colleges, but they were all attracted to military service. Their father had been a Rough Rider with Teddy Roosevelt during the Spanish-American War, and they grew up listening to his war tales. By spring 1944, they were all overseas: Robert was a mortar sergeant in the 82nd Airborne, Preston was a lieutenant in the 4th Infantry Division, and Edward was flying B-25s for the Army Air Force in the Pacific. Robert, Preston, and Fritz were all stationed in England, waiting for the invasion of Europe.

But 1944 didn’t go well for them. On May 20, Edward’s plane was shot down over the jungles of Burma. On June 6, Robert parachuted into France and was killed in heavy fighting at the village of Neuville-au-Plain. The following day, Preston, who’d landed at Utah Beach, died while defending the wounded. And Fritz, of course, was “lost” somewhere behind enemy lines.

Edward, Preston, Robert, and Frederick Niland.

THE TELEGRAMS ARRIVE

In Saving Private Ryan, one of the women in the military’s secretary pool is typing condolence letters to parents of dead soldiers when she notices that three letters are all going to the same name and address. She brings the matter to the attention of her commanding officer, and the order goes out to search for Private Ryan.

On D-day, Gussie later said, she was thinking how glad she was that Edward was far from Normandy’s fierce fighting; then the telegram came with the news about his plane crash stating that he was presumed dead. On June 21, another War Office telegram arrived, this one about Preston’s death, followed two days later by one about Robert. The courier who delivered the telegrams begged not to be sent back to deliver the second and third telegrams. Within the space of a few weeks, the Nilands were grieving for three sons lost to the war.

Father Sampson

In Spielberg’s film, Private Ryan knows nothing of his brothers’ fates until Captain Miller finds him. Fritz, separated from his unit, also knew nothing of his family’s pain. When he regrouped with Company H, he got the news about Edward’s plane being shot down. Then Robert’s company commander found the grieving sergeant and told him that his brother Robert had been killed and was buried at a cemetery in the French village of Sainte-Mère-Église. Stunned by the loss of two brothers, Fritz sought out the company chaplain, Father Sampson, and asked for a ride to Robert’s grave. New cemeteries had been hastily created for the Allied dead. Fritz and Father Sampson searched the village but were unable to find Robert’s grave. They tried another cemetery, and when Father Sampson saw Preston Niland’s grave, he thought that the wrong name had been recorded in error and showed it to Fritz. The distraught young man said, “Father Sampson, Preston is my brother, too.” Eventually they found Robert’s grave, and Fritz realized he’d lost all three brothers.

LOST BANDS OF BROTHERS

What about the film’s premise that the War Department would send a soldier home after his siblings had died in battle? Many people believed that the United States had a law forbidding families to serve on the same ship or in the same military unit -a myth repeated in the movie. In fact, no such law existed. Instead, the War Department adopted the “sole survivor” policy. If a soldier or sailor’s siblings were killed, he was not allowed to serve in combat zones. After Father Sampson brought Fritz back from the cemetery, he filled out paperwork to notify the Army that Fritz was the Niland family’s sole survivor and had to be sent home.

THE ONLY BROTHERS I HAVE LEFT

When Captain Miller finally finds Private Ryan, the young man is defending a bridge from the Nazi’s and refuses to leave his post. He explains that he’s with “the only brothers I have left …I wouldn’t desert them.” Private Ryan could have been speaking for Fritz Niland, who refused to leave his fellow soldiers, insisting, “I’m staying here with my boys.” Determined to avenge his brother’ deaths, Fritz managed to remain on the front lines until August, when he was finally ordered to return stateside. He served out the rest of the war as an MP, always longing to get back to Company H. He would later say that it took an edict from President Roosevelt to get him to leave the front.

In a miraculous turn of events, Edward, presumed dead, came home in May 1945 after nearly a year in a Japanese prison camp. Though happy to have Edward back, Fritz never fully got over the deaths of Robert and Preston. Fritz’s daughters were invited to see the premiere of Saving Private Ryan, but their father never got to see it; Fritz Niland died of a heart attack in 1983.

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Salutes the Armed Forces.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

LEVEL 1: Greenbacks for towel racks
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I believe we can scare up some entries, don’t you think? Get yours in now -the deadline is June 30th! Link

In 1942 five brothers made a sacrifice that showed just how much a family could give to the war effort.

PATRIOTIC FERVOR

January 3, 1942: After ringing in the New Year, the five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, enlisted in the Navy. The brothers were George, 28; Francis, 27; Joseph, 24; Madison, 23; and Albert, 20.The brothers all joined the Navy, which (along with the rest of the military) discouraged family members from serving together in a highly dangerous area. It was not forbidden, though, and the brothers wanted to stay together. So they requested permission to serve on the same ship, the USS Juneau, a new light cruiser. It first took them to fight in the North Atlantic and the Caribbean, and then set off for Guadalcanal in September.

FIGHTING SPIRIT

The Battle of Guadalcanal was one of the most important fights of World War II. Japan wanted control of the island to build a strategic base, and U.S. and Allied forces waged a campaign to stop them. The entire battle lasted two months, and the USS Juneau was just one of the ships involved.

An intercepted Japanese message revealed that a large battalion of enemy ships were coming. The Allies prepared themselves for their arrival -five cruisers, including the Juneau, and eight destroyers stood ready. On November 13, just after midnight, the Japanese brigade arrived: one light cruiser, two battleships, and 11 destroyers. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Allies also suffered poor radar reception that failed to show the location of the enemy ships.

USS Juneau

DAMN THE TORPEDOES

The intense battle that followed didn’t take long. It was only 15 minutes before two Japanese destroyers, a Japanese battleship, and five American destroyers were felled. The Juneau was hit by a torpedo, so it cruised away to seek repairs at Pearl Harbor.

But the massive boat could only make speeds of 18 knots, and reaching Pearl Harbor seemed impossible. So a few hours later, the Juneau turned around and rejoined the battle. The bloody confrontation raged until almost noon, when the Allied forces retreated. The Juneau limped along at a speed of 13 knots before it was hit again. The time, the torpedo split the cruiser in half; it sank almost immediately.

About 600 men on board were killed right away, including Francis, Joseph, Madison, and Albert Sullivan. The eldest brother, George, was severely wounded but made it into a lifeboat. More than 100 men from the Juneau were also still alive, but the odds were greatly stacked against them.

IN THE WATER

Finally, the Japanese left, and with the surviving men of the Juneau in need of rescue, the captain of the USS Helena radioed the sinking ship’s position and asked for aircraft assistance. Unfortunately, that message never reached its intended audience.

For a full week, the remaining servicemen had to fight exposure, exhaustion, and sharks. Many died from the wounds they had already suffered. Only three crowded lifeboats were available for the entire remaining crew, and sharks circled each of them, waiting for anyone to fall overboard.

George’s wounds were serious but not life-threatening. He might have made it, but was attacked by a shark when he attempted to quickly clean himself in the ocean. The last remaining Sullivan brother had perished. And by the time a rescue ship returned to the area, just 10 survivors remained.

Back in Waterloo, Iowa, the Sullivans’ parents did not know of their sons’ deaths. The U.S. military, in an effort to keep the Axis from knowing how much damage its forces had sustained, did not make the cruiser’s destruction public. The Sullivan parents suspected something was wrong only when they stopped receiving letters from their sons. They did not receive an official notice until January 12, 1943.

HEROES REMEMBERED

The nation mourned the loss of all aboard the Juneau, but especially the sacrifice of the Sullivan family. The brothers’ parents, Thomas and Alleta, were left behind, as was a sister, Genevieve, and Albert’s widow and son. Pope Pius XII sent his condolences. President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote a letter to the Sullivan parents in which he said, “I am sure that we all take heart in the knowledge that they fought side by side.” President Roosevelt also asked Mrs. Sullivan to christen the new naval destroyer, the USS The Sullivans, in San Francisco in April.

The Navy awarded the brothers several posthumous medals, including the Purple Heart; the American Defense Service Medal, Fleet Clasp; the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal; the World War II Victory Medal; and the Good Conduct Medal.

Thomas and Alleta remained staunch supporters of the war effort, and they began a tour to promote the buying of war bonds. Genevieve joined the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), a female service corps employed by the Navy during the war.

The house the Sullivan brothers grew up in has since been torn down. In its place stands a park dedicated to the family. Waterloo, Iowa, also hosts the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center, and the city’s Grout Museum opened a wing called The Sullivan Brothers Iowa Veteran’s Museum in 2004.

THE LEGACY LIVES ON

The first USS The Sullivans served the U.S. Navy through the Korean War. After the conflict, it was decommissioned and now resides in Buffalo, New York, as a tribute to the brothers. A second USS The Sullivans was launched on August 12, 1995, and is still in service.

USS The Sullivans

A movie about the Sullivan brothers’ sacrifice, The Fighting Sullivans (originally titled just The Sullivans), was released in 1944 and was nominated for an Academy Award. The film Saving Private Ryan, which won five Academy Awards, was partially inspired by the brothers’ deaths but did not directly tell any part of the story.

The Fighting Sullivans (segment 9 of 9)

(YouTube link)

Today, there’s a widespread belief that a law was enacted after the death of the five Sullivan brothers to prevent family members from serving together on the same ship, but that’s not true. The Navy does, however, continue to recommend against it, as do the other branches of the military. Still, if enlisted servicemen and women fill out a request form, the rule can be bent.

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Salutes the Armed Forces.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

There are countless superstitions involving cats, most of them focused on the bad luck that they supposedly bring. In Japan and other Asian countries, however, the cat is a symbol of good fortune.

THE BECKONING CAT

If you’ve ever walked in to a Chinese or Japanese business and noticed a figure of a cat with an upraised paw, you’ve met Maneki Neko (pronounced MAH-ne-key NAY-ko). “The Beckoning Cat” is displayed to invite good fortune, a tradition that began with a legendary Japanese cat many centuries ago.

Naotaka Ii

According to legend, that cat, called Tama, lived in a poverty-stricken temple in 17th-century Tokyo. The temple priest often scolded Tama for contributing nothing to the upkeep of the temple. Then one day, a powerful feudal lord named Naotaka Ii was caught in a rainstorm near the temple while returning home from a hunting trip. As the lord took refuge under a big tree, he noticed Tama with her paw raised, beckoning to him, inviting him to enter the temple’s front gate. Intrigued, the lord decided to get a closer look at this remarkable cat. Suddenly, the tree was struck by lightning and fell on the exact spot where Naotaka had just been standing. Tama had saved his life! In gratitude, Naotaka made the little temple his family temple and became its benefactor. Tama and the priest never went hungry again. After a long life, Tama was buried with great respect at the renamed Goutokuji temple. Goutokuji still exists, housing dozens of statues of Beckoning Cat.

Gotokuji temple still has a calico cat, as well as many Maneki Nekos.

(Image credit: Flickr user Shoko Muraguchi)

LUCKY CHARMS

Figures of Maneki Neko became popular in Japan under shogun rule in the 19th century. At that time, most “houses of amusement” (brothels) and many private homes had a good-luck shelf filled with lucky charms, many in the shape of male sexual organs. When Japan began to associate with Western countries in the 1860s, the charms began to be seen as vulgar. In an effort to modernize Japan and improve its image, Emperor Meiji outlawed the production, sale, and display of phallic talismans in 1872. People still wanted lucky objects, however, so the less controversial Maneki Neko figures became popular.

Nang Kwak

Eventually the image of the lucky cat spread to China and then to Southeast Asia. How popular did the Beckoning Cat become? In Thailand, the ancient goddess of prosperity, Nang Kwak, was traditionally shown kneeling with a money bag on her lap. Now she’s usually shown making the cat’s raised-hand gesture and occasionally sporting a cat’s tail.

In Europe and North America, images of Maneki Neko can be found in Asian-owned businesses, such as Chinese restaurants. And back in Japan, a new cat icon adorns clothing, toys, and various objects: Hello Kitty -a literal translation of Maneki Neko, or “Beckoning Cat.”

MANEKI NEKO FACTS

* Sometime Maneki Neko has his left paw up, sometimes the right. The left paw signifies that the business owner is inviting in customers. The right invites in money or good fortune.

* Most Maneki Nekos are calico cats; the male calico is so rare it’s considered lucky in Japan. But Maneki Neko may be white, black, red, gold, or pink to ward off illness, bad luck, or evil spirits and bring financial success, good luck, health, and love.

* Maneki Nekos made in Japan show the palm of the paw, imitating the manner in which Japanese people beckon. American Maneki Nekos show the back of the paw, reflecting the way we gesture “come here.”

* The higher Maneki Neko holds his paw, the more good fortune is being invited.

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Here’s a little-known slice of Americana: the story of how freed slaves changed the face of the American West.

LAND OF OPPORTUNITY

In 1865 the American Civil War came to an end and four million black slaves were free. But to what future? The South lay in ruins, its plantation economy shattered. Most slaves had been field workers or tenant farmers, and working the land was the only job they knew. Although they were now free to buy land to farm, few had the money. Even worse, a new terror was rising across the South as hostile white, bitter in defeat, donned the white hoods of the Ku Klux Klan and began to terrorize the black community. But there was a way out …and it lay to the west.

The Homestead Act of 1862 offered grants of 160 acres of public lands on the Great Plains to anyone who would farm the land for five years. Thousands of Southern blacks joined the flood of settlers heading west to what they called “Beulah Land” -the Promised Land- only their mission was slightly different. Yes, the promise of owning their own land was sweet. But sweeter still was the possibility of living independent lives untouched by fear and racism. So they banded together and developed all-black communities, with their own banks, their own newspapers, their own businesses, and their own schools and colleges.

OKLAHOMA, THE ALL-BLACK STATE?

Although blacks migrated to every state and territory in the West, the territory of Oklahoma became the preferred place to settle: A sizable number of African-Americans already lived there, having come as slaves with the Cherokee and other tribes during the Trail of Tears in 1838. After emancipation they bought land in Indian territory (often with the help of the Indians, who, under fierce pressure to give up their land to new settlers, preferred to sell it to black Americans). A number of black leaders, such as Edward P. McCabe and Hannibal C. Carter, led the push.

Carter established the Freedmen’s Oklahoma Immigration Association in Chicago in 1881 specifically to help blacks move to Oklahoma. They even convinced one U.S. Senator -Henry W. Blair of New Hampshire- to introduce a bill to make Oklahoma an all-black state. That legislation never passed, but the Land Run of 1889 ope