The following is reprinted from Uncle John's Unstoppable Bathroom Reader book.

Here are 7 stories of people who made their fortunes and those who lost it all ...

From Rags to Riches ...
	JIM CARREY From Rags ... He had to drop out of high school and take a job as a janitor in a factory. In fact, his entire family worked in that factory, living in a small cottage on the grounds. At his lowest low, Carrey wrote a $10 million check to himself ... to be redeemed when he made the big time. ... to Riches: After working the comedy circuit for years, Carrey landed a role on In Living Color, which led to a movie deal. In 1996 he became the highest paid actor ever when he received $20 million to star in Cable Guy. When his father died, Carrey placed the check he had written to himself in his dad's burial suit.
	J.K. ROWLING From Rags ... As a single mother living on public assistance, Rowling started writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in a café while her baby daughter napped. Why the café? Because it was warmer than the tiny flat she lived in. When Bloomsbury Books bought her manuscript in 1996, she was thrilled. The £1,500 (about $2,400) she was advanced was more money than she'd ever received at one time in her life. ... to Riches: Four years and three more books later, Rowling was worth more than $400 million ... and she's not done yet. [ed note: this article was written in 2003, now Rowling is worth more than $1.1 billion]
	OPRAH WINFREY From Rags ... Born in Mississippi to unwed teenage parents, Winfrey grew up in poverty. While living in Milwaukee, she was molested by relatives. Not knowing what else to do, her mother sent her to live in a detention home. ... to Riches: Fortunately the detention home was full and Winfrey went to live with her father. He nurtured her abilities and helped her get to college. Now, as the queen of the talk show, Winfrey is worth an estimated $1 billion. [ed note: by 2007, Winfrey is worth $2.5 billion]
From Riches to Rags ...
	WILLIE NELSON From Riches ... By 1988 Willie Nelson had been a country music star for nearly 20 years and had two multiplatinum albums under his belt. ... to Rags: Due to years of "creative" accounting, in 1990 Nelson owed the IRS $16.7 million. To pay it, he had to auction off just about everything he owned. [ed note: Nelson's debts were settled in 1993, and he continued to write music and perform.]
	M.C. HAMMER From Riches ... "U Can't Touch This," released in 1990, became a pop phenomenon, making Hammer an overnight superstar. A world tour and endorsement deals with Pepsi and KFC followed. ... to Rags: Hammer went on a $30 million spending spree that included mansions and $500,000-a-month payroll. After two mediocre follow-up albums and some poor investments, Hammer declared bankruptcy in 1996, more than $13 million in debt. [ed note: Hammer is now a blogger and a preacher]
	NIKOLA TESLA From Riches ... In his heyday in the 1890s, Tesla was a rich and famous inventor and held more than 700 patents. He is best known for developing alternating current (AC) electricity. ... to Rags: He was also naive. Thomas edison, who saw Tesla as competition, did all he could to undermine Tesla's work. It worked. A series of patent lawsuits left Tesla with no money or credit, despite his many inventions. He died broke in 1943.
	MIKE TYSON From Riches ... The youngest heavyweight champion in boxing history had earned $300 million. ... to Rags: By 2003 it was all gone. Tyson blames his former promoter, Don King, for mismanaging his earnings. King claims that Tyson blew the money himself. The two will duke it out in court.

The article above is 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!

The following is an article from Uncle John's Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader

William O. "Wild Bill" Douglas (1898 - 1980) was the longest-serving justice in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. Here's what he has to say about free speech, freedom, and the government:

"The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom."

"It was against a background poignant with memories of evil procedures that our Constitution was drawn."

"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we must be most aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."

"An arrest is not justified by what the subsequent search discloses."

"The framers of the Constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They had lived in dangerous days; they knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose liberty."

"Those who won our independence believed ... liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty."

"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us."

"Whatever the reason, words mean what they say."

"What a man thinks is of no concern to government."

"A requirement that literature or act conform to some norm prescribed by an official smacks of an ideology foreign to our system."

"Words uttered under coercion are proof of loyalty to nothing but self-interest."

"Common sense often makes good law."

"When a man knows how to live dangerously, he is not afraid to die. When he is not afraid to die, he is, strangely, free to live."

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!

The following is reprinted from The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

FLY OFF THE HANDLE
Meaning: Get very angry, very quickly.
Origin: Refers to axe heads, which, in the days before mass merchandising, were sometimes fastened poorly to their handles. If one flew off while being used, it was a dangerous situation ... with unpredictable results.

HIGH ON THE HOG
Meaning: Luxurious, prosperous.
Origin: The tastiest parts of a hog are its upper parts. If you're living high on the hog, you've got the best it has to offer.

PULL THE WOOL OVER SOMEONE'S EYES
Meaning: Fool someone.
Origin: "Goes back to the days when all gentlemen wore powdered wigs like the ones still worn by the judges in British courts. The word wool was then a popular, joking term for hair ... The expression 'pull the wool over his eyes' came from the practice of tilting a man's wig over his eyes, so he couldn't see what was going on."

HOOKER
Meaning: Prostitute.
Origin: Although occasionally used before the Civil War, its widespread popularity can probably be traced to General Joseph Hooker, a Union soldier who was well-known for the liquor and whores in his camp. He was ultimately demoted, and Washington prostitutes were jokingly referred to as "Hooker's Division."

LET THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG
Meaning: Reveal the truth.
Origin: Refers to a con game practiced at country fairs in old England. A trickster tried to sell a cat in burlap bag to an unwary bumpkin, saying it was a pig. If the victim figured out the trick and insisted on seeing the animal, the cat had to be let out of the bag.

STEAL SOMEONE'S THUNDER
Meaning: To preempt; to draw attention away from someone else's achievement in favor of your own.
Origin: English dramatist John Dennis invented a gadget for imitating the sound of thunder and introduced it in a play in the early 1700s. The play flopped. Soon after, Dennis noted that another play in the same theater was using his sound-effects device. He angrily exclaimed, "That is my thunder, by God; the villains will play my thunder, but not my play." The story got around London, and the phrase grew out of it.

PAY THROUGH THE NOSE
Meaning: To pay a high price; to pay dearly.
Origin: Comes from the ninth-century Ireland. When the Danes conquered the Irish, they imposed an exorbitant Nose Tax on the island's inhabitants. They took a census (by counting noses) and levied oppressive sums on their victims, forcing them to pay by threatening to have their noses actually slit. Paying the tax was "paying trough the nose."

CHARLEY HORSE
Meaning: A muscle cramp.
Origin: In 1640, Charles I of England expanded the London police force. The new recruits were nicknamed "Charleys." There wasn't enough money to provide the new police with horses so they patrolled on foot. They joked that their sore feet and legs came from riding "Charley's horse."

NOT UP TO SCRATCH
Meaning: Inadequate, subpar.
Origin: In the early days of boxing, there was no bell to signal the beginning of a round. Instead, the referee would scratch a line on the ground between fighters, and the round began when both men stepped over it. When a boxer couldn't cross the line to keep a match going, people said that he was not "up to the scratch."

CAUGHT RED-HANDED
Meaning: Caught in the act.
Origin: For hundreds of years, stealing and butchering another person's livestock was a common crime. But it was hard to prove unless the thief was caught with a dead animal ... and blood on his hands.

GIVE SOMEONE "THE BIRD"
Meaning: Make a nasty gesture at someone (usually with the middle finger uplifted).
Origin: There are many versions. The "cleanest": Originally "the bird" referred to the hissing sound that audiences made when they didn't like a performance. Hissing is the sound that a goose makes when it's threatened or angry.

LAY AN EGG
Meaning: Fail.
Origin: From the British sport of cricket. When you fail to score, you get a zero - which looks like an egg. The term is also taken from baseball, where a zero is a "goose egg."

BURY THE HATCHET
Meaning: Make peace with an enemy.
Origin: Some Native American tribes declare peace by literally burying a tomahawk in the ground.

CHEW THE FAT
Meaning: Chat; engage in idle conversation.
Origin: Originally a sailor's term. Before refrigeration, ships carried food that wouldn't spoil. One of them was salted pork skin, a practically inedible morsel that consisted largely of fat. Sailors would only eat it if all other food was gone... and they often complained as they did. This (and other) idle chatter eventually became known as "chewing the fat."

TO THE BITTER END
Meaning: To the very end - often an unpleasant one.
Origin: Surprisingly, it has nothing to do with bitterness. It's a sailing term that refers to the end of a mooring line or anchor line that is attached to the bitts, sturdy wooden or metal posts that are mounted on the ship's deck.

HAVE A SCREW LOOSE
Meaning: Something is wrong with the person or mechanism.
Origin: The phrase comes from the cotton industry and dates back as far as the 1780s, when the industrial revolution made mass production of textiles possible for the first time. Huge mills sprang up to take advantage of the new technology (and the cheap labor), but it was difficult to keep all the machines running properly; any machine that broke down or produced defective cloth was said to have "a screw loose" somewhere.

SPEAK OF THE DEVIL
Meaning: Someone appears after you mention them.
Origin: People once believed that you could actually summon the Devil by saying his name.

BORN WITH A SILVER SPOON IN YOUR MOUTH
Meaning: Pampered; lucky; born into wealth or prosperous circumstances.
Origin: At one time, it was customary for godparents to give their godchild a silver spoon at the christening. These people were usually well-off so the spoon came to represent the child's good fortune.

TO CLOSE RANKS
Meaning: To present a united front.
Origin: "In the old-time European armies, the soldiers were aligned side by side, in neat rows, or ranks, on the battlefield. When the enemy attacked, officers would order the troops to close ranks; that is, to move the rows close together, so that the enemy faced a seemingly impregnable mass of men." (From Fighting Words, by Christine Ammer)

FOR THE BIRDS
Meaning: Worthless.
Origin: According to Robert claiborne in Loose Cannons and Red Herrings, it refers to city streets as they were before cars. "When I was a youngster on the streets of New York, one could both see and smell the emissions of horse-drawn wagons. Since there was no way of controlling these emissions, they, or the undigested oats in them, served to nourish a large population of English sparrows. If you say something's for the birds, you're politely saying it's horseshit."

BEYOND THE PALE
Meaning: Socially unacceptable.
Origin: "The pale in this expression has nothing to do with the whitish color, but comes originally from the Latin palus, meaning a pole, or stake. Since stakes are often used to mark boundaries, a pale was a particular area within certain limits." The pale that inspired this expression was the area around Dublin in Ireland. Until the 1500s, that area was subject to British law. "Those who lived beyond the pale were outside English jurisdiction and were thought to be uncivilized." (From Getting to the Roots, by Martin Manser)

I'VE GOT A FROG IN MY THROAT
Meaning: I'm hoarse from a cold.
Origin: Surprisingly, this wasn't inspired by the croaking sound of a cold-sufferer's voice, but by a weird medical practice. "In the Middle Ages," says Christine Ammer in It's Raining Cats and Dogs, "infections such as thrush were sometimes treated by putting a live frog head first into the patient's mouth; by inhaling, the frog was believed to draw the patient's infection into its own body. The treatment is happily obsolete, but its memory survives in the 19th century term frog in one's throat."

SOMETHING FITS TO A "T"
Meaning: It fits perfectly.
Origin: Commonly thought of as a reference to the T-square, which is used to draw parallel lines and angles. But this phrase was used in the 1600s, before anyone called it a T-square. "A more likely explanation is that the expression was originally 'to a tittle.' A tittle was the dot over the 'i,' so the phrase meant 'to a dot' or 'fine point.'" (From Why Do We Say It, by Nigel Rees)

X X X
Meaning: A kiss, at the end of a letter.
Origin: In medieval times, when most people were illiterate, "contracts were not considered legal until each signer included St. Andrew's cross after their name." (Or instead of a signature, if the signer couldn't write.) To prove their sincerity, signers were then required to kiss the X. "Throughout the centuries this custom faded out, but the letter X [became associated] with a kiss." This is also probably where the phrase "sealed with a kiss" comes from. (From I've Got Goose Pimples, by Martin Vanoni)

READ BETWEEN THE LINES
Meaning: To perceive or understand a hidden meaning.
Origin: In the 16th century it became common for politicians, soldiers, and businesspeople to write in code. To ordinary folks, this writing was unintelligible. They concluded that the meaning was not in the lines of gibberish, but in the space between them.

YOU'RE NO SPRING CHICKEN
Meaning: You're not young anymore; you're past your prime.
Origin: Until recent generations, there were no incubators and few warm hen houses. That meant chicks couldn't be raised during winter. New England growers found that those born in the spring brought premium prices in the summer market places. When these Yankee traders tried to pass off old birds as part of the spring crop, smart buyers would protest that the bird was "no spring chicken."

SON OF A GUN
Meaning: An epithet.
Origin: In the 1800s, British sailors took women along on extended voyages. When babies were born at sea, the mothers delivered them in a partitioned section of the gundeck. Because no one could be sure who the true fathers were, each of these "gunnery" babies was jokingly called a "son of a gun."

PUT UP YOUR DUKES
Meaning: Raise your fists and get ready to fight.
Origin: In the early 1800s, the Duke of York, Frederick Augustus, shocked English society by taking up boxing. He gained such admiration from boxers that many started referring to their fists as the "Dukes of York," and later "dukes."

HAVE AN AXE TO GRIND
Meaning: Having a hidden agenda.
Origin: The expression comes from a story told by Benjamin Franklin. A man once praised Franklin's father's grindstone and asked young Benjamin to demonstrate how the grindstone worked. As Franklin complied, the stranger placed his own axe upon the grindstone, praising the young boy for his cleverness and vigor. When the axe was sharpened, the man laughed at Franklin and walked away, giving the boy a valuable lesson about people with "an axe to grind."

UPPER CRUST
Meaning: Elite.
Origin: In the Middle Ages, the highest-level nobility and royal were served the choice part of a loaf of bread, the "upper crust," before it was offered to other diners.

MEET A DEADLINE
Meaning: Finish a project by an appointed time.
Origin: The phrase was born in prisoner-of-war camps during the Civil War. Because resources were scarce, the prison camps were sometimes nothing more than a plot of land surrounded by a marked line. If a prisoner tried to cross the line, he would be shot. So it became known as the "deadline."

TOE THE LINE
Meaning: Behave or act in accordance with the rules.
Origin: In the early days of the British Parliament, members wore swords in the House of Commons. To keep the members from fighting during heated debates, the Speaker of the House of Commons forced the Government and Opposition parties to sit on opposite sides of the chamber. Lines, two sword-lengths plus one foot apart, were drawn in the carpet. Members were required to stand behind the lines when the House was in session. To this day, when a member steps over the line during a debate, the speaker yells: "Toe the line!"

SECOND STRING
Meaning: Replacement or backup.
Origin: You might have caught William Tell without an apple, but not without a second string. In medieval times, an archer always carried a second string in case the one on his bow broke.

IN THE LIMELIGHT
Meaning: At the center of attention.
Origin: In 1826, Thomas Drummond invented the limelight, an amazingly bright white light, by running an intense oxygen-hydrogen flame through a lime cylinder. At first, the bright light was used in lighthouses to direct ships. Later, theater began using the limelight like a spotlight - to direct the audience's attention to a certain actor. If an actor was to be the focal point of a particular scene, he was thrust "into the limelight."

FLASH IN THE PAN
Meaning: Short-lived success.
Origin: In the 1700s, the pan of a flintlock musket was a part that held the gunpowder. If all went well, sparks from the flint would ignite the charge, which would then propel the bullet out of the barrel. However, sometimes the gun powder would burn without igniting a main charge. The flash would burn brightly but only briefly, with no lasting effect.

HAM ACTOR (HAM)
Meaning: Someone who enjoys putting on a show, or who plays rather obviously to an audience (though not necessarily on stage).
Origin: An American phrase originating in the 1880s. Minstrel shows, the mass entertainment of the time, often featured less-than-talented performers who overacted. They frequently appeared in blackface, and used ham fat to remove their makeup. Thus, they were referred to as "ham-fat men," later shortened to "hams."

WHIPPING BOY
Meaning: A scapegoat, or something who is habitually picked on.
Origin: Hundreds of years ago, it was normal practice for a European prince to be raised with a commoner of the same age. Since princes couldn't be disciplined like ordinary kids, the commoner would be beaten whenever the prince did something wrong. The commoner was called the prince's "whipping boy."

GO BERSERK
Meaning: Go crazy or to act with reckless abandon.
Origin: Viking warriors were incredibly wild and ferocious in battle, probably because they ate hallucinogenic mushrooms in prebattle ceremonies. They charged their enemies recklessly, wearing nothing more than bearskin, which in Old Norse was pronounced "berserkr" or "bear-sark."

PULL SOMEONE'S LEG
Meaning: Fool someone.
Origin: Years ago back-alley thieves worked in pairs. One thief, known as a "tripper up," would use a cane, rope, or piece of wire to trip a pedestrian, knocking them to the ground. While the victim was down, the second thief would rob them. Pulling your leg originally referred to the way the "tripper up" tried to make someone stumble. Today it only refers to tripping someone figuratively.

RAINING CATS AND DOGS
Meaning: Torrential rain.
Origin: In the days before garbage collection, people tossed their trash in the gutter - including deceased housepets - and it just lay there. When it rained really hard, the garbage, including the bodies of dead cats and dogs, went floating down the street.

PIE IN THE SKY
Meaning: An illusion, a dream, a fantasy, an unrealistic goal.
Origin: Joe Hill, a famous labor organizer of the early 20th century, wrote a tune called "The Preacher and the Slave," in which he accused the clergy of promising a better life in Heaven while people starved on Earth. A few of the lines: "Work and pray, live on hay, you'll get pie in the sky when you die (That's a lie!)."

HACK WRITER
Meaning: Writer who churns out words for money.
Origin: In Victorian England, a hackney, or "hack," was a carriage for hire. (The term is still used in reference to taxi drivers, who need their "hack's licenses" to work.) Hack became a description of anyone who plies their trade strictly for cash.

LONG IN THE TOOTH
Meaning: Old.
Origin: Originally used to describe old horses. As horses age, their gums recede, giving the impression that their teeth are growing. The longer the teeth look, the older the horse.

STOOL PIGEON
Meaning: Informer, traitor.
Origin: To catch passenger pigeons (now extinct), hunters would nail a pigeon to a stool. Its alarmed cries would attract other birds, and the hunters would shoot them by the thousands. The poor creature that played the traitor was called a "stool pigeon."

BEAT AROUND THE BUSH
Meaning: Go about things in a circuitous manner, go around an issue rather than deal with it directly.
Origin: In the Middle Ages, people caught birds by dropping a net over a bush and clubbing the ground around it to scare the birds into flying into the net. Once a bird was caught, you could stop beating around the bush and start eating.

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!

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

Reprinted from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: Fast-Acting Long-Lasting.

There are scientific findings that expand our knowledge and make life better for mankind. These, however, aren't such findings, but they are darned interesting. Here are a few things that science has proven:

E-mail Rots Your Brain

Study: In 2004 scientists at the King's College, London University were commissioned by Hewlett-Packard to see what toll compulsive e-mail checking and Internet chatting have on a worker's "functioning IQ." Eighty volunteers participated in clinical trials and another 1,100 people were interviewed for the study.

Findings: Sixty-two percent of the interviewees were "addicted" to checking e-mail and exchanging text messages, which they did not only at their desks, but also "during meetings, in the evenings, and on weekends." The scientists dubbed this phenomenon "infomania."

Infomania takes a noticeable toll on productivity. "An average worker's functioning IQ falls 10 points when distracted by ringing telephones and incoming e-mails ... more than double the four-point drop seen in studies on the impact of smoking marijuana," the scientists concluded. A 10-point drop is the equivalent of trying to put in a full day of work after missing an entire night of sleep.

Traffic Jams Can Kill You

Study: Researchers with Germany's National Research Center for Environment and Health interviewed 691 people who'd suffered heart attacks between 1999 and 2001. The researchers asked them to describe all of their activities in the four days leading up to their heart attacks. The results of the study were published in the November 2004 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Findings: People who've been stuck in traffic in the past hour are nearly three times more likely to suffer a heart attack than people who haven't been stuck in traffic. Overall, nearly 1 in 12 heart attacks was linked in some way to traffic congestion. Men are at a greater risk than women, and people over age 60 are at a greater risk than those under 60.

If you have to be stuck in traffic, you're actually better off in a car than you would be riding the bus, the subway, or a bicycle. Heart attacks were 2.6 times more likely for people stuck in a car, 3.1 times more likely for people on public transportation, and 3.9 times greater for bike riders. "Because the association was also observed for persons who used public transportation, it is unlikely that the effect is entirely attributable to stress linked with driving a car," researchers say.

So is it the stress associated with being stuck in traffic that causes heart attacks, or is it the exhaust fumes - or some other factor? Who knows? "Given our current knowledge, it is impossible to determine the relative contribution of risk factors such as stress and traffic-related air pollution," the researchers say.

Dudes Say "Dude" More Than Dudettes Do

Study: In 2004 University of Pittsburgh linguist-dude Scott Kiesling published a paper in the journal American Speech on the word "dude" and its many uses.

Findings: Blame it on Spicoli, dude: Kiesling traces the current popularity of the word "dude" to the 1982 movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, featuring that Sean Penn dude.

Men are more likely to use the word "dude" than women are. They're also more likely to use it with men than with women. When they do use it with women, the woman is usually just a friend; women with whom dudes are intimate are rarely if ever referred to as "dude."

According to Kiesling, "dude" owes much of its popularity to the fact that it connotes "cool solidarity" - young men use it to express friendship or closeness, without being so close as to invite suspicion that they are gay. Dude!

Crosswords and Sex Grow Brain Cells

Study: Conducted by Dr. Perry Bartlett of the University of Queensland's Brain Institute, in Australia.

Findings: In April 2004, Dr. Bartlett announced that mental and physical exercise may delay the onset of brain disease such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's by creating and nurturing new brain cells to replace ones that have been lost. Brain cell creation and growth appear to be stimulated by a chemical called prolactin - and prolactin levels rise during mental and physical exertion. (They're also high when you're pregnant.) "Perhaps one should run a long distance or do crossword," Dr. Bartlett suggests. "Prolactin levels also go up during sex," he says, "so one could think of a number of more interesting activities than going jogging in order to regulate the production of nerve cells."

Parents Favor Cute Kids Over Ugly Ones

Study: Researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada went to 14 different supermarkets and observed the interactions between 400 different parents and their children. They also ranked the "physical attractiveness" of each child on a scale of 1 to 10.

Findings: When Mom did the shopping, 13.3% of the children judged "most attractive" were secured with the seat belt in the shopping cart seat; only 1.2% of the "ugliest" children were. With Dad the disparity was even greater: 12.5% of the "most attractive" children were belted in; none of the ugliest children were.

Ugly children were allowed to wander away from their parents more of then than attractive kids, and were allowed to wander farther away than attractive children were.

Good-looking boys were kept closer to their parents than pretty girls were, although the researchers concede that this may be because girls are perceived to be more mature and responsible than boys of the same age.

What does all this mean? Scientists aren't sure. Some speculate that evolution may play a role: parents may unconsciously perceive attractive children as being genetically more valuable. But Emory University psychologist Dr. Frans de Waal disagrees. "If the number of offsprings are the same for ugly people and handsome people, there's absolutely no evolutionary reason for parents to invest less in ugly kids," he says.

Dumb Blonde Jokes Slow Blondes Down

Study: German researchers at Bremen's International University asked 80 women with different hair colors to take intelligence tests, then monitored them carefully as they took the tests. Half of the women were told "dumb blonde" jokes before they took the test. (Jokes like: "Why do blondes open containers of yogurt while they're still in the supermarket? Because the lid says, 'Open here.'")

Findings: No word on how well the blondes or anyone else did on the intelligence tests - that wasn't the point, and the university didn't release the results. But it did keep track of how quickly the women completed the tests: The blondes who were told dumb blonde jokes took longer to complete their tests than the blondes who weren't told jokes. Did the dumb blond jokes make blondes dumber? No, the researchers say: the jokes made them more self-conscious, which caused them to work more slowly and cautiously so they wouldn't make mistakes. "The study shows that even unfounded prejudices generally dismissed as untrue can affect an individual's confidence in their own ability," says Jens Foerster, one of the social psychologists who administered the study.

Germans Prefer Money to Sex

Study: In December 2004, the German edition of Playboy magazine commissioned a poll of 1,000 Germans. The pollsters asked participants if they were given a choice between more free time, more money, and more sex, which one they would choose.

Findings: 62% of Germans said cash, 26% said more free time, and only 6% said more sex. (That might explain why Germany has a declining birth rate.)

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Fast-Acting Long Lasting 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 following is reprinted from Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader

Every TV show wants one, but few achieve it: a catchphrase. The best ones not only propel their show into the limelight, but eventually take a life of their own, sometimes getting into the dictionary, sometimes even electing a president. Here are the stories behind some of TV's most famous catchphrases:

D'oh!

From: The Simpsons (1989- )

Here's the Story: Dan Castellaneta, the voice of Homer Simpson, came up with Homer's signature line himself. "It was written into the script as a 'frustrated grunt,'" he explains, "And I thought of that old Laurel and Hardy character who had a grunt like 'D'owww.' Matt Groening (Simpsons creator) said 'Great, but shorten it.' ... No one thought it would become a catchphrase."

But it did - in a big way. The sitcom is seen by more than 60 million people in more than 60 countries. In 2001, "D'oh!" earned a spot in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Holy ______, Batman!

From: Batman (1966-68)

Here's the Story: Uttered by Robin (Burt Ward) whenever he was dumbfounded, this silly phrase helped make the show a hit ... and also led to its demise. During the first season, which aired two nights a week, Batman was fresh. ABC quickly realized that one of the things viewers loved was Robin's quirky lines, so they milked it for all it was worth. But by the end of the second season, the plots were all recycled and the "Holy whatever, Batman!" had lost its impact. It didn't do much for Burt Ward's career either; he was never able to get past the Boy Wonder image.

In the 1995 film Batman Forever, Chris O'Donnell's Robin gave a nod to this famous catchphrase in the following exchange with Val Kilmer's Batman: "Holy rusted metal, Batman!" exclaims Robin. "Huh?" asks Batman. "The island," explains Robin, "it's made out of rusted metal ... and holey ... you know." "Oh," says Batman dryly.

What'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis?

The awesomeness that is Gary Coleman: [YouTube clip]

From: Diff'rent Strokes (1978-86)

Here's the Story: Gary Coleman's snub-nosed delivery helped keep Diff'rent Strokes going for eight years. After the show's demise, the struggling Coleman began using it at public appearances and in TV cameos to help keep his career afloat. But in recent years he's grown so sick of the line - and the TV business in general - that he's vowed never to say it again.

Sock it to me!

From the end of the show: [YouTube Link]

From: Laugh-In (1968-73)

Here's the Story: The phrase came from pop music (Aretha Franklin's Respect). But the popular variety show Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In turned it into a mindless slapstick sketch ... and repeated it week after week. Here's how it worked: An unsuspecting person (usually Judy Carne) would be tricked into saying "Sock it to me!" Then he or she was either hit by pies, drenched with water, or dropped through a trap door. Viewers loved it; they knew what was coming every time, and they still loved it. It quickly became an "in" thing to get socked.

This catchphrase was more than popular - it may have altered history: On September 16, 1968, presidential candidate Richard Nixon appeared on the show. HE was set up in the standard fashion but surprised everyone by changing the command into a question: "Sock it to ME?" It did wonders for Nixon's staid, humorless image, and may have helped propel him into the Oval Office.

Beam me up, Scotty

From: Star Trek (1966-69)

Here's the Story: Although Captain Kirk (William Shatner) never actually said this exact phrase (the closest version he came was on the Star Trek animated series: "Beam us up, Scotty"), it has somehow been transported everywhere - feature films, advertisements, and even bumper stickers ("Beam me up, Scotty - there's no intelligent life down here") Sometimes it even finds its way into the news: when 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult committed suicide in 1997, expecting to leave their bodies and join with a spaceship, the press dubbed them the "Beam Me Up Scotty" cult.

Ayyyyy

Fonzie "jumping the shark" [YouTube Link]

From: Happy Days (1974-84)

Here's the Story: Arthur "The Fonz" Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler) was not originally intended to be the "cool" character; Potsie was. The Fonz was added as a "bad influence" to give the show more of an edge. But Winkler's hip-yet-sensitive portrayal, along with his trademark leather jacket, thumbs up, and "Ayyyyy" had such screen presence that ABC started working him into more and more storylines, making sure he got at least one "Ayyyyy" in each episode. By 1977 Winkler's billing had gone from closing credits to fifth, and finally to second. When Ron Howard left the show in 1980, Winkler was given top billing. ABC almost retitled the show Fonzie's Happy Days.

Blast From the Past: Check out the scene in Pulp Fiction where the hit-man Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) is trying to calm down the diner robbers he's terrorizing: "Let's all be good little Fonzies. And what was Fonzie like?" he asks. One of them sheepishly answers, "Coo-ol." "Correctamundo!" says Jackson.

Two thumbs up

How do they get along behind the scenes? Here's Siskel and Ebert uncensored: [YouTube Link]

From: Sneak Previews (1975-80), renamed At the Movies (1980-)

Here's the Story: "Thumbs up" has been a symbol of approval since Roman times. But "two thumbs up" means a whole lot more to the movie industry. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, film critics for rival Chicago newspapers, worked together for 24 years before Siskel's death in 1999. Their opposite tastes in movies assured moviegoers that if both of these guys liked the movie, chances are you would too. Filmmakers also took note of the growing popularity of the phrase; they watched the show each week, hoping their latest project would get two thumbs up. If so, it was plastered all over movie ads. Why? Because "two thumbs up" means big box office. If not ... well, have you ever seen a movie advertised that got "one thumb up"?

De plane! De plane!

From: Fantasy Island (1978-84)

Here's the Story: At the beginning of each episode, the vertically-challenged Tattoo (Herve Villechaize) shouted this phrase to alert his boss, Mr. Roarke (Ricardo Montalban), that "de plane" was coming. The phrase did so much for Fantasy Island that in 1983 Villechaize asked for the same salary as Montalban. Instead, he was fired. Ratings dropped off dramatically and the show was cancelled after the following season. In 1992 Villechaize turned up in a Dunkin' Donuts commercial asking for "De plain! De plain!" donuts.

Resistance is futile

We all know the Borg from Star Trek, so here's Bill Gates as a Borg instead: [YouTube Link]

From: Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-94)
Here's the Story: This line actually made its television debut on the British TV serial Dr. Who. Its more recent use by the Borg, aliens out to assimilate humans, made it a household phrase. It has even became a response to the growing power of corporations and governments. A political cartoon in the late 1990s showed a Borged-out Bill Gates declaring, "We are Microsoft. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile." And now a new bumper sticker is showing up that says, "Resistance is not futile."

Book 'em, Danno!

From: Hawaii Five-O (1968-80)

Here's the Story: Even though Hawaii Five-O ran for 12 years, more people today remember this catchphrase than the show itself. When he caught the bad guy, detective Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord) would smugly utter this line to his assistant Danny "Danno" Williams (James MacArthur).

To say the catchphrase is part of pop culture is an understatement: a 2002 Internet search found more than 1,000 entries for "Book 'em, Danno!"

Yadda Yadda Yadda

From: Seinfeld (1990-98)

Here's the Story: The phrase has been around since the 1940s; but then it showed up on Seinfeld in the 1990s and yadda yadda yadda, now it's in the dictionary.

I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up!

Here's the commercial featuring Mrs. Fletcher's famous catchphrase: [YouTube Link]

From: TV commercials selling LifeCall personal emergency response system in the 1980s.

Here's the Story: Advertisers also try to come up with catchy catchphrases (remember the "Where's the beef?" lady from the Wendy's ads?) The "I've fallen ..." plea, however, was never intended to be catchy - or funny. But somehow it outlasted the company that advertised it (bankrupt) and the woman who said it (died). More than a decade after its debut, "I've fallen and I can't get up!" is still being used by comedians from Jay Leno to Carrot Top.

Oh my God, They Killed Kenny!

From: South Park (1997- )

Here's the Story: A bigger part of what made South Park a hit was the tasteless but innovative routine of killing off the same character in nearly every episode. Asked why, the show's creator Trey Parker and Matt Stone admitted, "We just like to kill him ... And we really like the line 'Oh my God, they killed Kenny!'" A few years later, Stone retracted: "We got sick of figuring out ways to kill him ... It was funny the first 38 or 40 times we did it. Then it turned into, 'OK, how can we kill him now?'" So in December 2001 they killed Kenny for good ... but the phrase lives on.

Yabba-Dabba-Doo!

From: The Flintstones (1960-66)

Here's the Story: Just like Homer's "D'oh!" this one came from the man who voiced the character, Alan Reed. Flintstones co-creator Joe Barbera tells the story: "In a recording session, Alan said, 'Hey Joe, where it says "yahoo," can I say "yabba-dabba-doo?"' I said yeah. God knows where he got it, but it was one of those terrific phrases." Reed later said that it came from his mother, who used to say, "A little dab'll do ya."

Just The Facts, Ma'am

From: Dragnet (1952-59/1967-70)

Here's the Story: Sergeant Joe Friday's (Jack Webb) deadpan delivery made this statement famous ... sort of. He actually never said it. Friday's line was "All we want are the facts, Ma'am." Satirist Stan Freberg spoofed the popular show on a 1953 record called "St. George and the Dragonet," which featured the line: "I just want to get the facts, Ma'am." The record sold more than two million copies, and Freberg's line - not Webb's - became synonymous with the show. According to Freberg: "Jack Webb told me, 'Thanks for pushing us into the number one spot,' because after my record came out, within three weeks, he was number one."

Let's get ready to ... (something that rhymes with 'mumble' but starts with an 'R').

From: Sports announcer Michael Buffer

Here's the Story: This one wins out over many other famous TV sports sayings because of the controversy it created. After hearing others imitating his famous battle cry, Michael Buffer and his brother Bruce decided to trademark it, a decision that made them both millionaires. Michael now charges $15,000 to $30,000 just to show up, say it, and leave. But if you feel like yelling the "rumble" phrase out loud, do it quietly; the Buffer brothers will sue the pants off of you if you say it at an event without paying them. (They even sued Ollie North.) Why such big safeguards on such a trite saying? "It's probably the most famous phrase said by a human being in history," Michael explains.

The article above 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!

The following is reprinted from The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

The original 1977 Star Wars poster

Did you know that Star Wars almost didn't happen because Universal Studios turned it down? Or that Harrison Ford was an unknown actor working as a carpenter when George Lucas chose him to play Han Solo? Or that Luke Skywalker's original name was Luke Starkiller? Here are some fascinating facts about Star Wars, one of the highest grossing sci-fi film series in history:

"There's a whole generation growing up without any kind of fairy tales. And kids need fairy tales - it's an important thing for society to have for kids." - George Lucas

BACKGROUND

In July 1973, George Lucas was an unknown director working on a low-budget 1950s nostalgia film called American Graffiti. He approached Universal Studios to see if they were interested in a film idea he called Star Wars. Universal turned him down.

It was the biggest mistake the studio ever made.

Six months later, Lucas was the hottest director in Hollywood. American Graffiti, which cost $750,000 to make, was a smash. It went on to earn more than $117 million, making it the most profitable film in Hollywood history - even today.

While Universal was stonewalling Lucas, an executive at 20th Century Fox, Alan Ladd, Jr., watched a smuggled print of American Graffiti before it premiered and loved it. He was so determined to work with Lucas that he agreed to finance the director's new science fiction film.

Star Wars opened on May 25, 1977, and by the end of August it had grossed $100 million - faster than any other film in history. By 1983 the film had made over $524 million in ticket sales worldwide - making it one of the 10 highest grossing films in history. [note: this article was written in 1993; Star Wars is currently the 24th highest-grossing films]

MAKING THE FILM

- It took Lucas over two years to write the script. He spent 40 hours a week writing and devoted much of his free time to reading comic books and watching old "Buck Rogers" episodes and other serials looking for film ideas.

- Lucas insisted on casting unknown actors and actresses in all the important parts of the film - which made the studio uneasy. Mark Hamill had more than 100 TV appearances, and Carrie Fisher had studied acting, but neither had had much experience in films. Harrison Ford's biggest role had been as the drag racer in American Graffiti, and when he read for the part of Han Solo he was working as a carpenter.

THE CHARACTERS

Luke Skywalker. At first Lucas planned to portray him as an elderly general, but decided that making him a teenager gave him more potential for character development. Lucas originally named the character Luke Starkiller, but on the first day of shooting he changed it to the less violent Skywalker.

Obi-Wan Kenobi. Lucas got his idea for Obi-Wan Kenobi and "the Force" after reading Carlos Castaneda'sTales of Power, an account of Don Juan, a Mexican-Indian sorcerer and his experiences with what he called "the life force."

Darth Vader. David Prowse, a six-foot, seven-inch Welsh weightlifter, played the part of Darth Vader. But Lucas didn't want his villain to have a Welsh accent, so he dubbed James Earl Jones's voice over Prowse's. Still, Prowse loved the part. "He took the whole thing very seriously," Lucas remembers. "He began to believe he really was Darth Vader."

Han Solo. In the early stages of development, Han Solo was a green-skinned, gilled monster with a girlfriend named Boma who was a cross between a guinea pig and a brown bear. Solo was supposed to make only a few appearances in the film, but Lucas later made him into a swashbuckling, reckless human (allegedly modeled after the film director Francis Ford Coppola).

Chewbacca. Lucas got the idea for Chewbacca one morning in the early 1970s while watching his wife Marcia drive off in her car. She had their Alaskan malamute, Indiana (the namesake for Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark), and Lucas liked the way the large, shaggy dog looked in the passenger seat. So he decided to create a character in the film that was a cross between Indiana, a bear, and a monkey.

Princess Leia. Carrie Fisher was a beautiful 19-year-old actress when she was cast to play Princess Leia, but Lucas did everything he could to tone down her femininity. At one point, he even ordered that her breasts be strapped to her chest with electrical tape. "There's no jiggling in the Empire," Fisher later joked.

R2-D2. Lucas got the name R2-D2 while filming American Graffiti. During a sound-mixing session for the film, editor Walter Murch asked him for R2, D2 (Reel 2, Dialogue 2) of the film. Lucas liked the name so much that he made a note of it, and eventually found the right character for it.

C-3PO. Inspired by a robot character in Alex Raymond's science fiction novel, Iron Men of Mongo. Raymond's robot was a copper-colored, polite robot who was shaped like a man who worked as a servant. Lucas intended that C-3PO and R2-D2 be a space-age Laurel and Hardy team.

SPECIAL EFFECTS

- The spaceship battles were inspired by World War II films. Before filming the special effect began, Lucas watched dozens of war movies like Battle of Britain and The Bridges of Toko-Ri, taping his favorite air battle scenes as he went along. Later he edited them down to a 10-minute black-and-white film, and gave it to the special effects team - which reshot the scenes using X-wing and T.I.E. fighter models.

- None of the spaceship models ever moved an inch during the filming of the flight sequences. The motion was an optical illusion created by moving the cameras around motionless models. The models were so detailed that one of them even had Playboy pinups in the cockpit.

MISCELLANEOUS FACTS

- The executives at 20th Century Fox hated the film the first time they saw it. Some of the company's board of directors fell asleep during the first screening; others didn't understand the film at all. One executive's wife even suggested that C-3PO be given a moving mouth, because no one would understand how he could talk without moving his lips.

- The underwater monster in the trash compactor was one of Lucas's biggest disappointment in the film. He had planned to have an elaborate "alien jellyfish" in the scene, but the monster created by the special effects department was so poorly constructed that it reminded him of "a big, wide, brown turd." Result: The monster was filmed underwater during most of the scene - so that moviegoers wouldn't see it.

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!

The following is reprinted from Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again

Forget Van Gogh; he only lost an ear. It was the great catrato Farinelli who made the ultimate sacrifice for art: he gave up his nuts!

Carlo Broschi was a man who really suffered for his music. Known to the world as the great opera singer Farinelli (1705-1782), he was castrated as a young boy to prevent his exquisite singing voice from ever breaking. But before you start feeling too sorry for the songsmith, it’s worth bearing in mind that Farinelli was showered with wealth and adulation throughout his career. And even with a couple of pieces missing from his repertoire, he still managed to make beautiful music with the ladies.

THE UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL

The practice of castrating men (making them into eunuchs) arose around 3,000 years ago. Castration was usually inflicted on slaves who worked in the harem of a king or powerful ruler; the object was to ensure that they could not father children. It involved the removal of the testicles only (!), and a castrated singer like Farinelli, though sterile, was often able to perform in a lady’s boudoir as well as on the stage.

Eventually, the demand for castrated men ran out, except in one area: music. The 17th and 18th centuries were a golden age of eunuchs in classical music. Especially in Italy, where boys became castrati, or "the castrated ones." The special thing about these little fellas was that they were altered just before reaching puberty, so that their voices never broke. Boys who were promising singers were selected, given the snip, and then sent to special schools for vocal training.

THE CUTTING EDGE OF FAME

From 1599, castrati were allowed to sing in the papal choir. They proved to be so popular that a whole type of music theater was invented for them, known as opera seria, from which modern opera partly developed. While a castrato’s voice always kept its high, childlike pitch, it was delivered with the power of a fully grown man. A castrato could soar effortlessly up and down the vocal registers, belting out tunes like a diva on helium. Castrati could also perform all manner of vocal tricks, such as holding a single note for a full minute. Audiences loved it, and the castrati were the rock stars of their day, complete with rampant egos, fawning flunkies, adoring fans, and obliging groupies. And the biggest star of all was Farinelli.

Farinelli, unlike many other castrati, was not from a poor background. Indeed, his father, Salvatore, was the governor of the region around Naples, in southern Italy. Young Carlo displayed vocal talent as a child. And so, some time between his seventh and eighth birthday, little Carlo said goodbye to part of his anatomy – and hello to a singing career. After studying with the greatest vocal masters of the day, Carlo, now renamed Farinelli after one of his patrons, made his debut in 1720, aged 15. From then on it was nonstop fame and fortune for the next 17 years. After conquering Italy with triumphant performances in Naples, Rome, and Bologna, Farinelli toured Europe in his early 20s, billed as "the Singer of Kings," due to his having performed for most of Italy’s many princes and minor royalty. King Louis XV of France fell under his spell, as did the British
public. Farinelli was paid huge fees to perform, either onstage or in private audiences. All in all, life was pretty good for our hero.

THE REIGN IN SPAIN

But then, Farinelli gave it all up. Maybe life on the road with wealth, adulation, and amorous women isn’t all it’s cracked up to be; but in 1737, at the age of 32, Farinelli announced he was quitting the stage to become the private court singer to King Philip V of Spain. Farinelli had originally visited Spain as part of his European tour, but he was so affected by the king’s emotional response to his singing that he decided to stay on.

It turns out that he got much more than he bargained for. Philip V was a manic-depressive, and once he’d latched onto Farinelli and his singing, he wouldn’t let go. The king claimed that he could only get to sleep if Farinelli serenaded him. So, the castrated crooner was hired to sing the same set of songs to his patron every night for the next ten years.

Farinelli was at the Spanish court for 25 years in total, outliving two monarchs. In that time he acquired great wealth and even more political power: Philip trusted the Italian artist so much that Farinelli eventually became one of the king’s most trusted advisors.

In 1759, Farinelli quit Spain and retired to Bologna, Italy, where he lived out his remaining years composing and playing music, receiving famous guests, such as Mozart, and using his great wealth to fund many charitable causes.

GETTING THE AX

In 1870 Italy finally outlawed the creation of castrati. In 1902, and again in 1904, phonograph recordings were made of Alessandro Moreschi, the last surviving Italian castrato, but he was by then old and ill and his voice was shot. We will probably never know what a true castrato in his prime sounded like – something that young Italian boys should praise the Lord every day of their prepubescent lives.

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

The following is an article from Uncle John's Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader

Alferd G. Packer holds a unique spot in American jurisprudence. He is the only U.S. citizen ever charged, tried, and convicted for the crime of murder and cannibalism.

Born in rural Colorado in 1847, Packer drifted into the Utah Territory, supporting himself as a small-time con artist, claiming to be an experienced "mountain man." In the fall of 1873, he persuaded 20 greenhorns in Salt Lake City to grubstake an expedition to the headwaters of hate Gunnison River in Colorado Territory. He swore that the stream was full of gold and promised to lead them to it if they would finance the operation.

GOLD FEVER

With Packer leading, they plunged into San Juan Mountains and promptly got lost. The party was near starvation when they stumbled into the winter quarters of the friendly Ute tribe. The Indians nursed them back to health, but the leader, Chief Ouray, advised them to turn back. Winter snows had blocked all trails. Ten of the party listened and returned to Utah. The other 10, still believing Packer's tales of gold-filled creeks, stayed with him.

Ouray gave them supplies and advised them to follow the river upstream for safety, but Packer ignored this counsel and plunged back into the mountains. The party split up again. Five turned back and made their way to the Los Pinos Indian Agency. Fired up with gold fever, the others continued on with their con man guide. Days later, exhausted, half frozen, and out of food, they found refuge in a deserted cabin. Most of them were now ready to give up and go back to Salt Lake City.

The exception was Alferd Packer. He was broke, and returning to Salt Lake City would cost him his grubstake. When the others fell asleep, Packer shot four of them in the head. The fifth woke and tried to defend himself, but Packer cracked his skull with his rifle. Then, he robbed them ... He also used them for food.

When his strength returned, he packed enough "human jerky" to get back to the Los Pinos Agency. Several miles from the agency, he emptied his pack to conceal his crime. He was welcomed by General Adams, commander of the agency, but shocked everyone by asking for whiskey instead of food. When he flashed a huge bankroll, they started asking questions.

WELL, YOU SEE, OFFICER ...

Packer's explanations were vague and contradictory. First, he claimed he was attacked by the natives, then he claimed that some of his party had gone mad and attacked him. On April 4, 1874, two of Chief Ouray's braves found the human remains Packer had discarded. General Adams locked him up and dispatched a lawman named Lauter to the cabin to investigate. But while Lauter was away, Packer managed to escape.

He made his way back to Utah and lived quietly for 10 years as "John Schwartze," until a member of the original party recognized him. Packer was arrested on March 12, 1884 and returned to Lake City, Colorado, for trial.

Packer claimed innocence but as the evidence against him mounted, he finally confessed. Apparently, he reveled in the attention his trial gave him and even lectured on the merits of human flesh. The best "human jerky," he said, was the meat on the chest ribs. The judge was not impressed.

"Alferd G. Packer, you no good sonofabitch, there wasn't but seven Democrats in Hinsdale County, and you done et five of 'em," he thundered. "You're gonna hang by the neck until dead!"

SAVED BY A TECHNICALITY

His lawyer appealed the decision, citing a legal loophole. The crime was committed in 1873, in the territory of Colorado. The trial began in 1884, in the new state of Colorado. The state constitution, adopted in 1876, did not address such a heinous crime, so the charge was reduced to manslaughter and Packer was sentenced to 40 years in prison. He was a model prisoner and was paroled after 16 years. Freed in 1901, he found work as a wrangler on a ranch near Denver.

On April 21, 1907, Alferd G. Packer, horse wrangler and cannibal, died quietly in his sleep.

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!

ADDITIONAL NOTES

Alferd Packer achieved somewhat of a cult status in pop culture. In 1968, students at the University of colorado at Boulder named their cafeteria the Alferd G. Packer Memorial Grill, with the slogan "Have a friend for lunch!"

In 1977, Agriculture Secretary Robert Bergland wanted to get rid of cafeteria employees for bad service but was told he couldn't fire them. So he did the next best thing: he named the cafeteria after the enterprising Packer, saying "Alferd Packer exemplifies the spirit and care that this agriculture department cafeteria provides" and that the cafeteria will "serve all mankind." He even got a plaque for it. When the press found out, they had a field day and the cafeteria personnel were replaced. (Source)

Reprinted from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: Fast-Acting Long-Lasting.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness ..." wrote Charles Dickens, whose life was a rich mixture of all of the above. Here are the 8 odd facts about the novelist:

WHAT THE DICKENS?

Charles Dickens was the first literary superstar - his popular works reached a wider audience than any writer before him. With classics like Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, and David Copperfield, Dickens dominated the literary life of 19th-century England and the United States. But like many remarkable people, Dickens was a complex, multi-layered individual, full of peculiar quirks and odd habits.

• OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE. Dickens was preoccupied with looking in the mirror and combing his hair - he did it hundreds of times a day. He rearranged furniture in his home - if it wasn't in the exact "correct" position, he couldn't concentrate. Obsessed with magnetic fields, Dickens made sure that every bed he slept in was aligned north-south. He had to touch certain objects three times for luck. He was obsessed with the need for tidiness, often cleaning other homes as well as his own.

• NICKNAME-IAC. Just as some of his most endearing characters had odd nicknames (like Pip in Great Expectations), Dickens gave every one of his ten children nicknames like "Skittles" and "Plorn."

• EPILEPTIC. Dickens suffered from epilepsy and made some of his characters - like Oliver Twist's brother - epileptics. Modern doctors are amazed at the medical accuracy of his descriptions of this malady.

• PRACTICAL JOKER. Dicken's study had a secret door designed to look like a bookcase. The shelves were full of fake books with witty titles, such as Noah's Arkitecture and a nine-volume set titled Cat's Lives. One of his favorites was a multi-volume series called The Wisdom of Our Ancestors, dealing with subjects like ignorance, superstition, disease, and instruments of torture, and a companion book titled The Virtues of Our Ancestors, which was so narrow that the title had to be printed vertically.

• EGOMANIAC. Dickens often referred to himself as "the Sparkler of Albion," favorably comparing himself to Shakespeare's nickname, "the Bard of Avon." (Albion is an archaic name for England.)

• FAIR-WEATHER FRIEND. Hans Christian Andersen was Dicken's close friend and mutual influence. Andersen even dedicated his book Poet's Day Dream to Dickens in 1853. But this didn't stop Dickens from letting Andersen know when he'd overstayed his welcome at Dickens's home. He printed a sign and left it on Andersen's mirror in the guest room. It read: "Hans Andersen slept in this room for five weeks, which seemed to the family like AGES."

• MESMERIST. Dickens was a devotee of mesmerism, a system of healing through hypnotism. He practiced it on his hypochondriac wife and his children, and claimed to have healed several friends and associates.

• CLIFF-HANGER. When The Old Curiosity Shop was published in serial form in 1841, readers all over Britain and the United States followed the progress of the heroine, Little Nell, with the same fervor that audiences today follow Harry Potter. When the ship carrying the last installment approached the dock in New York, 6,000 impatient fans onshore called out to the sailors, "Does Little Nell die?" (They yelled back that ... uh-oh, we're out of room.)

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Fast-Acting Long Lasting 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!

Why settle for a boring computer mouse when you can surft in style with Road Mice, a cool wireless computer mouse that looks just like the car of your dreams?

Road Mice is available in various Chevy, Chrysler, Dodge, and Ford models. It's the perfect gift for the auto-enthusiast in your life!

Did you know that there’s a version of the Golden Rule in most (maybe all) major religions? Here are eight translations of religious texts … and one secular commentary. (Note: you can get the Golden Rule poster to the left at Scarboro Missions)

CHRISTIANITY

"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets." – Matthew 7:12

JUDAISM

"What is harmful to you, do not to your fellow men. That is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary." - Talmud, Shabbat, 312

HINDUISM

"This is the turn of duty; do naught unto others which could cause you pain if done to you." – Mahabharata, 5, 1517

CONFUCIANISM

"Surely it is the maxim of loving-kindness: Do not unto other that you would not have them do unto you." – Analects, 15, 23

TAOISM

"Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss." – T’sai Shang Kan Ying P’ien

BUDDHISM

"Hurt not others in ways you yourself would find hurtful." - Udana-Varga, 5, 18

ZOROASTRIANISM

"That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself." – Didistan-i-dinik, 94, 5

ISLAM

"No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself." – Sunnah

SECULAR VIEW

"Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same." – George Bernard Shaw

The 13th book in the series by the Bathroom Reader’s Institute has 504-all new 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 following is reprinted from Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again

Did you know that the word "cubicle" used to mean sleeping quarters (actually, it still is for some people), "suit" came
from the uniforms of stable servants, and "team" used to mean beasts of burden? Here are the origin of words you hear a lot in the office … and after you read this, get back to work!

Boss

This word came from the Dutch word baas, meaning "master." But early americans didn’t like using master – it was too aristocratic to survive as a general term. So they started using "baas" in the late 18th century. It caught on (against the objections of some word snobs) and eventually became "boss."

Cubicle

Dating back to the 1400s, this word stemmed from the Latin cubiculum, meaning "sleeping area" (completely apropos). It became obsolete after the 16th century, but it was revived in the 19th century as a word for "dormitory sleeping compartments." Its use as any partitioned space didn’t surface until the 1920s.

Getting Fired

The phrase "fired out," meaning to throw out or eject someone from a place, was first used in 1871. When the "out" was dropped a few years later, the phrase was narrowed to mean "dismissal of an employee." There’s a consensus among etymologists that both "fired" and "fired out" refer to the firing of a gun.

Learning the Ropes

Before an old-time apprentice sailor could really help out on a big ship, he had to learn which ropes had what effect on which sails. Before he did, he wasn’t much use to anyone. After he "learned the ropes,"
he could finally hoist the right mast – and avoid being flogged.

Logging On

This phrase’s predecessor was "logging in" (sometimes still used interchangeably). Back when mainframe computer operators used to go on shifts, they’d have to write everything they did in a paper log, beginning when they arrived. So when you log on to a computer today, you’re signing in.

Memorandum

From the Latin word "to be remembered," it was originally a word written at the top of a note. But by 1542, it became the word for the note itself.

Rank and File

This phrase that refers to an organization’s mass of low-ranking peons has military origins: soldiers in formation marched side by side (rank) and one behind the other (file). Its first known usage was in 1598. Later, it became generalized to mean common soldiers and then further generalized to refer to common people.

Suit

The word dates back to the 1200s, to the funky English-French word siwte, referring to the uniform worn by the royal court’s stable servants. It came to mean a more general set of clothes to be worn together in the 14th century. As a derisive term for a businessman, it dates from 1979, possibly from the hippie term for an FBI agent, circa the late 1960s. The term "empty suit," meaning a person of small intellect or personality, evolved in the 1980s.

Teamwork

The original Middle English meaning of team was applied to a group of draft animals yoked together. Around 1828, someone thought of combining the word "team" with the word "work" – probably hoping to spur sluggish workers into action. So "teamwork" really mean working like one of many beasts of burden. Depressing, huh?

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

The following is an article from Uncle John's Triumphant 20th
Anniversary Bathroom Reader (BRI is having a sale through June 15: everything is 30% off!)

Downtown Modesto, California, on a Sunday night. One of the oldest corners in downtown Modesto is dominated by bail bonds businesses. Photo: Inkyhack [Flickr]

Every city has something to be proud of, but some cities, despite their beauty, charm, or cultural importance, also have features of which they might be a little less proud. Here are a few cities with dubious distinctions.

• According to a survey by AutoVantage (an auto club like AAA), Miami, Florida, is the city with the rudest drivers.

• A Cornell University study determined that New York City has the lowest quality of housing. The World Health Organization says that New York is also the noisiest city in the United States.

• Because of high divorce and unemployment rates and consistently gloomy weather, the city statistics analyzing firm BestPlaces named Tacoma, Washington, the country's most stressful place to live.

• Breathe easy if you don't live in these places: Greenville, South Carolina (where residents suffer the most respiratory tract infections); Scranton, Pennsylvania (the worst city for asthma sufferers); and Tulsa, Oklahoma (the pollen capital of America).

• Based on the number of accidents and fatalities, the International Federation of Bike Messenger Associations named Boston the most dangerous place to ride a bike.

• Zero, a group dedicated to slowing population growth, determined what cities were the best and worst in which to raise children based on the quality of healthcare, education, public safety, transportation, the job market, and the natural environment. The best was Fargo, North Dakota; the worst was Newark, New Jersey.

• According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, Sarasota, Florida, is the city most hostile toward homeless people.

• Forbes magazine named Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the worst city for single people. Reasons: expensive beer, few nightclubs, and not enough single people.

• Worst traffic congestion: Los Angeles. (Not coincidentally, it also has the worst air pollution.)

• City with the bumpiest, most pothole-infested roads: Seattle.

• In 2007 Men's Health magazine analyzed various cities' obesity rates, eating habits, and other data, including how much time people spend exercising and sitting in traffic. Result: Las Vegas was judged the nation's "fattest city."

• The city with the most suicides per capita is Medford, Oregon.

• Decatur, Illinois, has the highest skin cancer fatality rate.

• America's most rat-infested city is Baltimore.

• New Orleans leads in both gun- and diabetes-related deaths per capita.

• Hallmark Cards call El Paso, Texas, the city with the worst sense of humor, based on polls in which very few people said they considered themselves funny. (The city also has very low sales of Hallmark's humorous cards.)

• City with the highest percentage of lawyers: Washington, D.C. Nearly 2% of all residents are attorneys.

• According to the book Cities Ranked and Rated, the worst overall city in America is Modesto, California. The city scored a 0 on the book's 100-point scale for its high cost of living, high unemployment rate, lack of activities, and the highest car theft rate in the United States.

The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.

Proving that some things do get better with age, the latest Bathroom Reader is jam-packed with 600 pages of fascinating trivia, forgotten history, strange lawsuits and other neat articles.

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 reprinted from Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader

Pong, Atari's most popular game (Image: screenshot of Pong from the Atari Arcade Hits #1, 1972, by Hasbro Interactive [wikipedia])

If you know anything about the pop culture of the 1970s, the name Atari is synonymous with video games. So what happened? Where did Atari go? Here’s the story.

THE GAMBLER

In the early 1960s, a University of Utah engineering student named Nolan Bushnell lost his tuition money in a poker game. He immediately took a job at a pinball arcade near Salt Lake City to make back the money and support himself while he was at school.

In school, Bushnell majored in engineering and, like everyone else who had access to the university’s supercomputers, was a Spacewar! Addict. But he was different. To his fellow students, Spacewar! Was just a game; to Bushnell, it seemed like a way to make money. If he could put a game like Spacewar! Into a pinball arcade, he figured that people would line up to play it. (Photo: Stibbe.net)

FALSE START

Bushnell graduated form college in 1968 and moved to California. He wanted to work for Disney but they turned him down, so he took a day job with an engineering company called Ampex. At night he worked on building his arcade video game.

He converted his daughter’s bedroom into a workshop (she had to sleep on the couch) and scrounged free parts from Ampex and from friends at other electronics companies. The monitor for his prototype was a black-and-white TV he got at Goodwill; an old paint thinner can was the coinbox.

When he finished building the prototype for the game he called Computer Space, he looked around for a partner to help him manufacture and sell it. On the advice of his dentist, he made a deal with a manufacturer or arcade games, Nutting Associates. Nutting agreed to build and sell the games in exchange for a share of the profits, and in return, Bushnell signed on as an engineer for the firm.

If you’ve never heard of Computer Space, you’re not alone. The game was a dud. It sounded simple - the player’s rocket has to destroy two alien flying saucers powered by the computer - but it came with several pages of difficult-to-understand instructions.

The fact that it was the world’s first arcade video game only made things worse. Neither players nor arcade owners knew what to think of the strange machine sitting next to the pinball machines. “People would look at you like you had three heads,” Bushnell remembered. “ ’You mean you’re going to put the TV set in a box with a coin slot and play games on it?’ ” (Photo: Flippers [wikipedia])

NUTTING IN COMMON

Still, Bushnell was convinced that Nutting Associates, not the game, was to blame for the failure. And he was convinced that he could do a better job running his own company. So he and a friend chipped in $250 a piece to start a company called Syzygy (the name given to the configuration of the sun, the earth, and the moon when they ‘re in a straight line in space).

That’s what Bushnell wanted to name it … but when he filed with the states of California, they told him the name was already taken. Bushnell liked to play Go, a Japanese game of strategy similar to chess. He thought some of the words used in the game would make a good name for a business, and company legend has it he asked the clerk at the California Secretary of State’s office to choose between Sente, Hane, and Atari.

She picked Atari.

FAKING IT

Bushnell hired an engineer named Al Alcorn to develop games. Meanwhile, Bushnell installed pinball machines in several local businesses, including a bar called Andy Capp’s Tavern. The cash generated by the pinball machines would help fund the company until the video games were ready for market.

Alcorn’s first assignment was to build a simple Ping-Pong-style video game. Bushnell told him that Atari had signed a contract to deliver such a game to General Electric and now it needed to get built.

According to the official version of events, Bushnell was fibbing - he wanted Alcorn to get used to designing games and wanted to start him out with something simple. Ping-Pong, with one ball and two paddles, was about as simple as a video game can be. In reality, there was no contract with G.E. and Bushnell had no intention of bringing a table tennis game to market. He was convinced that the biggest moneymakers would be complicated games like Computer Space. “He was just going to throw the Ping-Pong game away,” Alcorn remembers. But then Alcorn gave him a reason not to.

OUT OF ORDER

Instead of a simple game, Alcorn’s Ping-Pong had a touch of realism: if you hit the ball with the center of the paddle, the ball bounced straight ahead, but if you hit it with the edge of a paddle, it bounced off at an angle. With Alcorn’s enhancements, video Ping-Pong was a lot more fun to play than Bushnell had expected.

As long as the game was fun, Bushnell decided to test it commercially by installing Pong, as he decided to call it, at Andy Capp’s Tavern.

Two weeks later, the owner of Andy Capp’s called to complain that the game was already broken. Alcorn went out to fix it, and as soon as he opened the machine he realized what was wrong - the game was so full of quarters that they had overflowed the coin tray and jammed the machine. (Photo: ProhibitOnions [wikipedia])

That was only half of the story. The bar’s owner also told Alcorn that on some morning when he arrived to open the bar, people were already waiting outside. But they weren’t waiting for beer. They’d come in, play Pong for a while, and then leave without ordering a drink. He’d never seen anything like it.

That was their first indication that Pong was going to be a hit.

JUST A COINCIDENCE

But did Nolan Bushnell really come up with the idea for Pong … or did he lift it from another video game company? Video game history buffs still debate the issue today.

Here’s what we do know: In the late 1960s, a defense industry engineer named Ralph Baer invented a video game system that could be played at home on a regular television. The system featured 12 different games, including Table Tennis. (Photo: Ralph H. Baer Consultants)

Magnavox licensed Baer’s system in 1971 and prepared to market it as Odyssey, the world’s first home video game system. The company planned to sell the system through its own network of dealers and distributors. In May 1972, the company quietly began demonstrating the product around the country … and on May 24 it demonstrated it at a trade show in Burlingame, California.

“In later litigation,” Steven Kent writes in The Ultimate History of Video Games, “it was revealed that Bushnell not only attended the Burlingame show but also played the tennis game on Odyssey.”

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

Did Bushnell have a revelation when he played the Odyssey game? Did it convince him that simple games like Pong would be more popular than complicated games like Computer Space?

Or was it just as he claimed - that he instructed Alcorn to invent a ping-pong game, perhaps inspired by he Magnavox Odyssey, only because it was the simplest one he could think of? We’ll probably never know for sure.

As far as the law was concerned, the only thing that really mattered was that, unlike Willy Higginbotham (Tennis for Two) and Steve Russell (Spacewar!), Ralph Baer actually had patented his idea for playing video games on a TV screen and had even won a second patent for video Ping-Pong. His patents predated the founding of Atari by a couple of years.

Bushnell never applied for a patent for Pong, and didn’t have a case for proving he’d invented it. And even if he did, he didn’t have a chance fighting a big corporation like Magnavox in court.

SMART MOVE

So why did Atari become synonymous with video games instead of Magnavox? It was skillful maneuvering by Bushnell.

Since he couldn’t win in court, Bushnell paid a flat fee of $700,000 for a license to use Baer’s patents. That meant that Atari bought the rights free and clear and would never have to pay a penny in royalties to Magnavox. And because Magnavox was now the undisputed patent holder, they had to sue Atari’s competitors in court whenever competing game systems infringed the patents. Atari didn’t even have to chip in for the legal fees.

Magnavox Odyssey, signed by Ralph Baer. (Photo: Wgungfu [wikipedia])

Magnavox had Odyssey on the market while Atari was still years away from manufacturing a home version of Pong. But Magnavox wouldn’t capitalize on their exclusive market. Their first mistake was selling the product exclusively through their own network of dealers, when it would have been smarter to sell them in huge chain stores like Sears and Kmart. Their second mistake was implying in their advertising that Odyssey would only work with Magnavox TVs. That wasn’t true, but the company was hoping to increase TV sales. All they ended up doing was hurting sales of Odyssey.

In 1975 they discontinued the 12-game system and introduced a table tennis-only home video game to compete against the home version of Pong. Then in 1977 they introduced Odyssey2 to compete against Atari’s 2600 system.

Yet in spite of all the effort - and in spite of the fact that they, not Atari, owned the basic video game patents - Magnavox was never more than a me-too product with a marginal market share. Magnavox finally halted production in 1983.

KING PONG

From the moment it was introduced in 1972, Atari’s arcade game, Pong, was a money maker. Placed in a busy location, a single Pong game could earn more than $300 a week, compared to $50 a week for a typical pinball machine. Atari sold more than 8,000 of the machines at a time when even the most popular pinball machines rarely sold more than 2,500 units.

Atari would have sold a lot more machines, too, if competing game manufacturers hadn’t flooded the market with knockoffs. But there was no way that Atari could fight off all the imitators.

Instead, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell managed to stay one step ahead of the competition by inventing one new arcade game after another . (One of these games, Breakout, in which you use a paddle and a ball to knock out holes in a brick wall, was created by an Atari programmer named Steve Jobs and his friend Steve Wozniak, an engineer at Hewlett-Packard. Do their names sound familiar? They should - a few years later, they founded Apple Computer.)

THE ATARI 2600

In 1975 Atari entered the home video game market by creating a home version of Pong. Selling its games through Sears Roebuck and Co., Atari sold 150,000 games that first season alone.

Bushnell was ready to introduce more home versions of arcade games, and he’d decided to do it by copying an idea from a competing video game system, Channel F. The idea: game cartridges. It was a simple concept: a universal game system in which interchangeable game cartridges plugged into a game player, or “console.”

There was just one problem: inventing a video game cartridge system from scratch and manufacturing it in great enough volume to beat out his competitors was going to cost a fortune. The only way that he could come up with the money was by selling Atari to Warner Communications (today part of AOL Time Warner) for $28 million in 1976. Bushnell stayed on as Atari’s chairman and continued to work on the cartridge system.

Atari 2600. Photo: joho345 [wikipedia]

Introduced in mid-1977, the Atari Video Computer System (VCS) - later renamed the Atari 2600 - struggled for more than a year. Atari’s competitors didn’t do much better, and for a while it seemed that the entire video game industry might be on its last legs - the victim of the public’s burnout from playing too much Pong.

ALIEN RESURRECTION

Then in early 1979, Atari executives hit on the idea of licensing Space Invaders, an arcade game manufactured by Taito, a Japanese company. The game was so popular in Japan that it actually caused a coin shortage, forcing the national mint to triple its output of 100-yen coins.

Space Invaders on the Atari 2600. Image: Kudla.org

Just as it had in Japan, Space Invaders became the most popular arcade game in the United States, and the most popular Atari game cartridge. Atari followed up with other blockbuster cartridges like Defender, Missile Command, and Asteroids; by 1980 it commanded a 75% share of the burgeoning home video game market. Thanks in large part to soaring sales of the VCS system, Atari’s annual sales grew from $75 million in 1977 to more than $2 billion in 1980, making Atari the fastest growing company in U.S. history. But it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Within months of bringing VCS to market, Bushnell was already pushing Warner to begin work on a next-generation successor to the system, but Warner rejected the idea out of hand. They had invested more than $100 million in the VCS and weren’t about to turn around and build a new product to compete with it. Warner’s determination to rest on their laurels was one of the things that led to Bushnell’s break with the company.

By the time Space Invaders revived the fortunes of the VCS, Noland Bushnell was no longer part of the company. Warner Communications had forced him out following a power struggle in November 1978.

If Bushnell had been the only person to leave the company, Atari’s problems probably wouldn’t have gotten so bad. But he wasn’t - Warner also managed to alienate nearly all of Atari’s best programmers. While Atari made millions of dollars, Warner paid the programmers less than $30,000 a year, didn’t share the profits the games generated, and wouldn’t even allow them to see sales figures.

The programmers didn’t receive any public credit for their work, either. Outside of the company, few people even know who had designed classic games like Asteroids and Missile Command; Warner was afraid that if it made the names public, the programmers would be hired away by other video game companies.

BREAKOUT

So Atari’s top programmers quit and formed their own video game company, called Activision, then turned around and began selling VCS-compatible games that competed directly against Atari’s own titles.

Activision dealt a huge blow to Atari, and not just because Activision’s games were better. Atari’s entire marketing strategy was based around pricing the VCS console as cheaply as possible - $199 - then reaping huge profits from sales of its high-priced game cartridges. Now the best games were being made by Activision.

Atari sued Activision several times to try to block it from making games for the VCS but lost every time, and Activision kept cranking out hit after hit. By 1982 Activision was selling $150 million worth of cartridges a year and had replaced Atari as the fastest growing company in the United States.

THE ATARI GLUT

Activision’s spectacular success encouraged other Atari programmers to defect and form their own video game companies, and it also prompted dozens of other companies - even Quaker Oats - to begin making games for the VCS.

Many of these games were terrible, and most of the companies that made them soon went out of business. But that only made things worse for Atari, because when the bad companies went out of business, their game cartridges were dumped on the market for as little as $9.99 apiece. If people wanted good games, they bought them from Activision. If they wanted cheap games, they pulled them out of the discount bin. Not many people bought Atari’s games, and when the cheap games proved disappointing, consumer blamed Atari.

Meanwhile, just as Bushnell had feared, over the next few years, new game systems like Mattel’s Intellivision and Coleco’s ColecoVision came on the market and began chiseling away at Atari’s market share. With state-of-the-art hardware and computer chips, these game systems had higher-resolution graphics and offered animation and sound that were nearly as good as arcade video games … and vastly superior to the VCS. Adding insult to injury, both ColecoVision and Intellivision offered adapters that would let buyers play the entire library of VCS games, which meant that if consumers wanted to jump ship to Atari’s competitors, they could take their old games with them. (Photo: Fritz Saalfeld [Wikipedia])

EATEN BY PAC-MAN

But what really finished Atari off was Pac-Man. In April 1982, Atari released the home version of Pac-Man in what was probably the most anticipated video game release in history. At the time, there were about 10 million VCS systems on the market, but Atari manufactured 12 million cartridges, assuming that new consumers would buy the VCS just to play Pac-Man.

Big mistake - Atari’s Pac-Man didn’t live up to its hype. It was a flickering piece of junk that didn’t look or sound anything like the arcade version. It wasn’t worth the wait. Atari ended up selling only 7 million cartridges, and many of these were returned by outraged customers demanding refunds.

ATARI PHONE HOME

Then Atari followed its big bomb with an even bigger bomb: E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial. Atari guaranteed Steve Spielberg a $25 million royalty for the game, then rushed it out in only six weeks so that it would be in stores in time for Christmas (video games typically took at least six months to develop). Then they manufacture five million cartridge without knowing if consumers would take any interest in the game.

[YouTube Link]

They didn’t. The slap-dash E.T. was probably the worst product Atari had ever made, worse even than Pac-Man. Nearly all of the cartridges were returned by consumers and retailers. Atari ended up dumping millions of Pac-Man and E.T. game cartridges in a New Mexico landfill and then having them crushed with steamrollers and buried under tons of cement.

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

That same year Atari finally got around to doing what Noland Bushnell had wanted to do since 1978: they released a new game system, the Atari 5200.

But in the face of stiff competition from ColecoVision, which came out with Donkey Kong (the 5200 didn’t) and had better graphics and animation, it bombed. Staggering from the failures of Pac-Man, E.T., and the 5200, Atari went on to lose more than $536 million in 1983.

THE LAST BIG MISTAKE

In 1983 Atari had what in retrospect might have been a chance to revive its sagging fortunes … but it blew that opportunity, too. Nintendo, creators of Donkey Kong, decided to bring its popular Famicom (short for Family Computer) game system to the United States. The Famicom was Nintendo’s first attempt to enter the American home video game market, and rather than go it alone, the company wanted help. It offered Atari a license not just to sell the Famicom in every country in the world except Nintendo’s home market of Japan, but also to sell it under the Atari brand name. Consumers would never know that the game was a Nintendo. In return, Nintendo would receive a royalty for each unit sold and would have unrestricted rights to create games for the system.

Atari and Nintendo negotiated for three days, but nothing ever came of it. Nintendo decided to go it alone - and it was good choice.

The article above 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!

The following is from Uncle John’s All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader.

We’ve all made mistakes … but probably not big mistakes like making snot beer, saying no to The Beatles, or turning down the patent for the telephone. In fact, here are some of the biggest business blunders in history:

Turning Down The Beatles

SHOULD WE SIGN THEM UP?

The Beatles on Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 (Source: Wikipedia)

Executives: Mike Smith and Dick Rowe, executives in charge of evaluating new talent for the London office of Decca Records.

Background: On December 13, 1961, Mike Smith traveled to Liverpool to watch a local rock ‘n’ roll band perform. He decided they had talent, and invited them to audition on New Year’s Day 1962. The group made the trip to London and spent two hours playing 15 different songs at the Decca studios. Then they went home and waited for an answer.

They waited for weeks.

Decision: Finally, Rowe told the band’s manager that the label wasn’t interested, because they sounded too much like a popular group called The Shadows. In one of the most famous of all rejection lines, he said: "Not to mince words, Mr. Epstein, but we don’t like your boys’ sound. Groups are out; four-piece groups with guitars particularly are finished."

Impact: The group was The Beatles, of course. They eventually signed with EMI Records, started a trend back to guitar bands, and ultimately became the most popular band of all time. Ironically, "within two years, EMI’s production facilities became so stretched that Decca helped them out in a reciprocal arrangement, to cope with the unprecedented demand for Beatles records."

Turning Down E.T.

SHOULD WE LET THAT DIRECTOR USE OUR CANDY IN HIS FILM?

Executives: John and Forrest Mars, the owners of Mars Inc., makers of M&M’s

Background: In 1981, Universal Studios called Mars and asked for permission to use M&M’s in a new film they were making. This was (and is) a fairly common practice. Product placement deals provide filmmakers with some extra cash or promotion opportunities. In this case, the director was looking for a cross-promotion. He’d use the M&M’s, and Mars could help promote the movie.

Decision: The Mars brothers said "No."

Impact: The film was E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, directed by Stephen Spielberg. The M&M’s were needed for a crucial scene: Eliott, the little boy who befriended the alien, uses candies to lure E.T. into his house.

Instead, Universal Studios went to Hershey’s and cut a deal to use a new product called Reese’s Pieces. Initial sales of Reese’s Pieces had been light. But when E.T. became a top-grossing film – generating tremendous publicity for "E.T.’s favorite candy" – sales exploded. They tripled within two weeks and continued climbing for months afterward. "It was the biggest marketing coup in history," says Jack Dowd, the Hershey’s executive who approved the movie tie-in. "We got immediate recognition for our product. We would normally have to pay 15 or 20 million bucks for it."

Selling M*A*S*H For Peanuts

HOW DO WE COME UP WITH SOME QUICK CASH?

Executives: Executives of 20th Century Fox’s TV division (pre-Murdoch)

Background: No one at Fox expected much from M*A*S*H when it debuted on TV in 1972. Execs simply wanted to make a cheap series by using the M*A*S*H movie set again – so it was a surprise when it became Fox’s only hit show. Three years later, the company was hard up for cash. When the M*A*S*H ratings started to slip after two of its stars left, Fox execs panicked.

Decision: They decided to raise cash by selling the syndication rights to the first seven seasons of M*A*S*H on a futures basis: local TV stations could pay in 1975 for shows they couldn’t broadcast until October 1979 – four years away. Fox made no guarantees that the should would still be popular; $13,000 per episodes was non-refundable. But enough local stations took the deal so that Fox made $25 million. They celebrated …

Impact: … but prematurely. When M*A*S*H finally aired in syndication in 1979, it was still popular (in fact, it ranked #3 that year). It became one of the most successful syndicated shows ever, second only to "I Love Lucy." Each of the original 168 episodes grossed over $1 million for local TV stations; Fox got nothing.

What Use is the Telephone, the Electrical Toy?

SHOULD WE BUY THIS INVENTION?

Executive: William Orton, president of the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1876.

Background: In 1876, Western Union had a monopoly on the telegraph, the world’s most advanced communications technology. This made it one of America’s richest and most powerful companies, "with $41 million in capital and the pocketbooks of the financial world behind it." So when Gardiner Greene Hubbard, a wealthy Bostonian, approached Orton with an offer to sell the patent for a new invention Hubbard had helped to fund, Orton treated it as a joke. Hubbard was asking for $100,000!

Decision: Orton bypassed Hubbard and drafted a response directly to the inventor. "Mr. Bell," he wrote, "after careful consideration of your invention, while it is a very interesting novelty, we have come to the conclusion that it has no commercial possibilities… What use could this company make of an electrical toy?"

Impact: The invention, the telephone, would have been perfect for Western Union. The company had a nationwide network of telegraph wires in place, and the inventor, 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell, had shown that his telephone worked quite well on telegraph lines. All the company had to do was hook telephones up to its existing lines and it would have had the world’s first nationwide telephone network in a matter of months.

Instead, Bell kept the patent and in a few decades his telephone company, "renamed American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), had become the largest corporation in America … The Bell patent – offered to Orton for a measly $100,000 – became the single most valuable patent in history."

Ironically, less than two years of turning Bell down, Orton realized the magnitude of his mistake and spent millions of dollars challenging Bell’s patents while attempting to build his own telephone network (which he was ultimate forced to hand over to Bell.) Instead of going down in history as one of the architects of the telephone age, he is instead remember for having made one of the worst decisions in American business history.

Let’s Make Snot Beer!

HOW DO WE COMPETE WITH BUDWEISER?

Executive: Robert Uihlein, Jr., head of the Schlitz Brewing Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Background: in the 1970s, Schlitz was America’s #2 beer, behind Budweiser. It had been #1 until 1957 and has pursued Bud ever since. In the 1970s, Uihlein came up with a strategy to compete against Anheuser-Busch. He figured that if he could cut the cost of ingredients used in his beer and speed up the brewing process at the same time, he could brew more beer in the same amount of time for less money … and earn higher profits.

Decision: Uihlein cut the amount of time it took to brew Schlitz from 40 days to 15, and replaced much of the barley malt in the beer with corn syrup – which was cheaper. He also switched from one type of foam stabilizer to another to get around new labeling laws that would have required the original stabilizer to be disclosed on the label.

Impact: Uihlein got what he wanted: a cheaper, more profitable beer that made a lot of money … at first. But it tasted terrible, and tended to break down so quickly as the cheap ingredients bonded together and sank to the bottom of the can – forming a substance that "looked disconcertingly like mucus." Philip Van Munchings writes in Beer Blast:

Suddenly Schlitz found itself shipping out a great deal of apparently snot-ridden beer. The brewery knew about it pretty quickly and made a command decision – to do nothing … Uihlein declined a costly recall for months, wagering that not much of the beer would be subjected to the kinds of temperatures at which most haze forms. He lost the bet, sales plummeted … and Schlitz began a long steady slide from the top three.

Schlitz finally caved in and recalled 10 million cans of the snot beer. But their reputation was ruined and sales never recovered. In 1981, they shut down their Milwaukee brewing plant; the following year the company was purchased by rival Stroh’s. One former mayor of Milwaukee compared the brewery’s fortunes to the sinking of the Titanic, asking "How could that big of a business go under so fast?"

Model T is Forever!

SHOULD WE INTRODUCE A NEW CAR?

Ford Model T (Photo: State Library of Victoria)

Executive: Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company

Background: When Henry Ford first marketed the Model
T in 1908, it was a state-of-the-art automobile. "There were cheaper cars on the market," writes Robert Lacey in Ford: The Men and Their Machine, "but no one could offer the same combination of innovation and reliability." Over the years, the price went down dramatically … and as the first truly affordable quality automobile, the Model T revolutionized American culture.

Decision: The Model T was the only car that the Ford Motor Co. made. As the auto industry grew and competition got stiffer, everyone in the company – from Ford’s employees to his family – pushed him to update the design. Lacey writes:

The first serious suggestions that the Model T might benefit from some major updating had been made when the car was only four years old. In 1912 Henry Ford had taken [his family] on their first visit to Europe, and on his return he discovered that his [chief aides] had prepared a surprise for him. [They] had labored to produce a new, low-slung version of the Model T, and the prototype stood in the middle of the factory floor, its gleaming red lacquer-work polished to a high sheen.

"He had his hands in his pockets," remembered one eyewitness, "and he walked around the car three or four times, looking at it very closely … Finally, he got to the left-hand side of the car that was facing me, and he takes his hands out, gets hold of the door, and bang! He ripped the door right off! God! How the man done it, I don’t know!"

Ford proceeded to destroy the whole car with his bare hands. It was a message to everyone around him not to mess with his prize creation. Lacey concludes: "The Model T had been the making of Henry Ford, lifting him from being any other Detroit automobile maker to becoming car maker to the world. It had yielded him untold riches and power and pleasure, and it was scarcely surprising that he should feel attached to it. But as the years went by, it became clear that Henry Ford had developed a fixation with his masterpiece which was almost unhealthy."

Ford had made his choice clear. In 1925, after more than 15 years on the market, the Model T was pretty much the same car it had been when it debuted. It still had the same noisy, underpowered four-cylinder engine, obsolete "planetary" transmission, and horse-buggy suspension that it had in the very beginning. Sure, Ford made a few concessions to the changing times, such as balloon tires, an electric starter, and a gas pedal on the floor. And by the early 1920s, the Model T was available in a variety of colors beyond Ford black. But the Model T was still … a Model T. "You can paint up a barn," one hurting New York Ford dealer complained, "but it will still be a barn and not a parlor."

Impact: While Ford rested on his laurels for a decade and a half, his competitors continued to innovate. Four-cylinder engines gave way to more powerful six-cylinder engines with manual clutch-and-gearshift transmissions. These new cars were powerful enough to travel at high speeds made possible by the country’s new paved highways. Ford’s "Tin Lizzie," designed in an era of dirt roads, was not.

Automobile buyers took notice and began trading up; Ford’s market share slid to 57% of U.S. automobile sales in 1923 down to 45% in 1925, and to 34% in 1926, as companies like Dodge and General Motors steadily gained ground. By the time Ford finally announced, that a replacement for the Model T was in the works in May 1927, the company had already lost the battle. That year, Chevrolet sold more cars than Ford for the first time. Ford regained first place in 1929 thanks to strong sales of its new Model A, but Chevrolet passed it again the following year and never looked back. "From 1930 onwards," Robert Lacey writes, "the once-proud Ford Motor Company had to be content with second place."

MORE BAD BUSINESS DECISIONS

ROSS PEROT

In 1979, Perot employed some of his well-known business acumen and foresaw that Bill Gates was on his way to building Microsoft into a great company. So he offered to buy him out. Gates says Perot offered between $6 million and $15 million; Perot says that Gates wanted $40 million to $60 million. Whatever the numbers were, the two couldn’t come to terms, and Perot walked away empty-handed. Today Microsoft is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

In 1979, the Washington Post offered the Chronicle the opportunity to syndicate a series of articles that two reporters named Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were writing about a break-in at the Democratic headquarters at Washington, D.C.’s Watergate Hotel. Owner Charles Thieriot said no. "There will be no West Coast interest in the story," he explained. Thus, his rival, the San Francisco Examiner, was able to purchase the rights to the hottest news story of the decade for $500.

W.T. GRANT CO.

Photo: Historic Columbus Indiana

In the mid-1970s, executives at the W.T. Grant variety store chain, one of the nation’s largest retailers, decided that the best way to increase sales was to increase the number of customers … by offering credit. It put tremendous "negative incentive" pressure on store managers to issue credit. Employees who didn’t meet their credit quotas risked complete humiliation. They had pies thrown in their faces, were forced to push peanuts across the floor with their noses, and were sent through hotel lobbies wearing only diapers. Eager to avoid such total embarrassment, store managers gave credit "to anyone who breathed," including untold thousands of customers who were bad risks. W.T. Grant racked up $800 million worth of bad debts before it finally collapsed in 1977.

ABC-TV

Cast of The Cosby Show (source: Wikipedia)

In 1984, Bill Cosby gave ABC-TV first shot at buying a sitcom he’d created – and would star in – about an upscale black family. But ABC turned him down, apparently "believing the show lacked bite and that viewers wouldn’t watch an unrealistic portrayal of blacks as wealthy, well-educated professionals."

So Cosby sold his show to NBC instead. What happened? Nothing much – The Cosby Show remained #1 show for four straight years, was a rating winner throughout its eight-year run, lifted NBC from its 10-year status as a last-place network to first place, resurrected TV comedy, and became the most profitable series ever broadcast.

DIGITAL RESEARCH

IBM once hired Microsoft founder Bill Gates to come up with the operating software for a new computer that IBM was rushing to market … and Gates turned to a company called Digital Research. He set up a meeting between owner Gary Kildall and IBM … but Kildall couldn’t make the meeting and sent his wife, Dorothy McEwen, instead. McEwen, who handled contract negotiations for Digital Research, felt that the contract IBM was offering would allow the company to incorporate features from Digital’s software into its own proprietary software – which would then compete against Digital. So she turned the contract down. Bill Gates went elsewhere, eventually coming up with a program called DOS, the software that put Microsoft on the map.

The 13th book in the series by the Bathroom Reader’s Institute has 504-all new 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 following is reprinted from The Best of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.

In the 1920s, a crossword puzzle craze swept the nation that drove some people over the edge: a man shot his wife when she wouldn’t help him and another man killed himself leaving a suicide note in the form of a crossword puzzle.

Here’s the story of how crossword puzzles came to be and why it took over twenty years for The New York Times to convince itself to carry the puzzles.

Origin

Arthur Wynne was a writer for the game page of the New York World at the turn of the 19th century. One winter afternoon in 1913, while trying to think up new types of games for the newspaper’s special Christmas edition, he came up with a way to adapt the "word squares" his grandfather had taught him when he was a boy. In a word square, all of the words in the square have to read the same horizontally and vertically, like the example below.

But in the new puzzle Wynne came up with, the "across" words were different from the "down" words. It was more challenging, since there were more words to work on.

Wynne’s puzzle, which he called a "Word-Cross," debuted on Sunday December 21 as planned. And it was well-received. So many people wrote in to praise the puzzle that he put one in the paper the following Sunday and again on the third Sunday. (See if you can solve the World’s First Crossword Puzzle)

Reversal of Fortune

Four weeks after the puzzle first appeared, typesetters at the newspaper inadvertently transposed the words in the title to read "Cross-Word." For some reason, the name stuck – and so did the puzzle. When the World tried to drop it a few months later, readers were so hostile that the paper reversed itself and decided to make it a permanent feature of the puzzle page instead.

Though the puzzles were popular with readers, they were decidedly unpopular with editors. Crosswords were difficult to print and were plagued with typographical and other errors. In fact, no other newspaper wanted any part of them. So for the next 10 years, if you wanted to work on a crossword puzzle, you had to buy the World.

Enter Simon and Schuster

According to legend, in 1924 a young Columbia University graduate named Richard L. Simon went to dinner at his Aunt Wixie’s house. A World subscriber and a cross-word devotee, she asked where she could buy a book of crossword puzzles for her daughter. Simon, who was trying to break into the publishing business with college chum M. Lincoln Schuster, told her there were no such books … and then hit on the idea of publishing one himself.

M. Lincoln Schuster (R) and Ricahrd L. Simon (L). Photo: Simon & Schuster

The next day, he and Schuster went to the World’s offices and made a deal with the paper’s crossword puzzle editors. They would pick the newspaper’s best crossword puzzles and pay $25 apiece for the rights to publish them in a book. The pair then used all their money to print The Cross Word Puzzle Book.

Hot off the Presses

It was literally an overnight success. The World’s crossword puzzlers flocked to stores to get copies, and by the end of the year more than 300,000 crossword books had been sold.

The book turned Simon & Schuster into a major publisher. (Today it’s the largest U.S. publishing house and the second-largest publisher on earth). It also started a major craze. Crossword puzzles became a way of life in the 1920s. Newspaper started adding them to increase circulation. They inspired a Broadway hit called Games of 1925 and a hit song called "Crossword Mama, You Puzzle Me." Sales of dictionaries soared, and foot traffic in libraries increased dramatically. Clothes made with black-and-white checked fabric were the rage. The B&O Railroad put dictionaries on all of its mainline trains for crossword-crazy commuters.

Crossword Casualties

Some folks were driven over the edge by the craze. In 1924, a Chicago woman sued her husband for divorce, claiming "he was so engrossed in solving crosswords that he didn’t have time to work." The judge ordered the man to "limit himself to 3 puzzles a day and devote the rest of his time to domestic duties." In 1925, a New York Telephone Co. employee shot his wife when she wouldn’t help with a crossword puzzle. And in 1926, a Budapest man committed suicide, leaving an explanation in the form of a crossword puzzle. (No one could solve it.) Eventually, the craze died down. It took The New York Times to revive it.

Today, The New York Times crossword puzzle is considered the puzzle of choice for hardcore addicts, but that hasn’t always been true. Believe it or not, the Times resisted crosswords for more than two decades. Here’s the story of how the newspaper changed its mind.

Hard Times

By the late 1930s, the crossword puzzle boom that started in 1924 had begun to fizzle – largely because the crossword puzzles in most newspapers had become predictable. They constantly repeat boring clues like "Headgear" (hat), "Writing instrument" (pen) and "Woody plant" (tree).

But readers of The New York Times never got bored with their crossword puzzle … because the Times didn’t have one. Then, as now, the Times considered itself America’s "newspaper of record" and the guardian of journalistic standards. It scoffed at crossword puzzles as "a primitive form of mental exercise" in a1924 editorial, and refused to print them.

Eighteen years later, it was one of the last puzzle holdouts among America’s major newspapers.

All this and World War II

Still, the Times had crossword puzzle fans on its staff. Publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger is said to have loved crosswords almost as much as he hated having to buy copies of the rival New York Herald Tribune in order to get them. And as America teetered on the brink of war in the early 1940s, the mood at the paper began to change.

Less than two weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Lester Markel, the Times‘ Sunday editor, dashed off a memo to his superiors suggesting that they consider adding a puzzle to the Sunday paper. The pressures and demands of the war played heavily on his mind. "We ought to proceed with the puzzle," he wrote, "especially in view of the fact that it is possible that there will now be bleak blackout hours – or if not that, then certainly a need for relaxation of some kind of other … We ought not to try to do anything essentially different from what is now being done – except to do it better."

Markel had met with Margaret Petherbridge Farrar, senior crossword puzzle editor at Simon & Schuster, and he attached a memo from her:

The Herald Tribune runs the best puzzle page in existence so far, but they have gotten into a bit of a rut. Their big puzzle never ventures even one imaginative definition, and lacks the quality that I believe can be achieved and maintained. We could, I dare to predict, get the edge on them.

I don’t think I have to sell you on the increased demand for this kind of pastime in an increasingly worried world. You can’t think of your troubles while solving a crossword …

Getting Started

The argument worked. The Times hired Farrar away from Simon & Schuster and made her its crossword editor, a position she held until she retired in 1969. The first puzzle appeared on February 15, 1942, in the Sunday magazine section. (Weekday puzzles weren’t added until September 1950.) "The puzzle," writes Times reporter Richard Shepard, "was an instant success."

Under Margaret Farrar’s direction, the crossword "constructors" (freelance puzzle makers) developed a clever and elaborate style. Instead of giving clues like "Stinging insect" (bee) and "Bird’s home" (nest), they phrased them as "Nectar inspector" and "Nutcracker’s suite." The Times‘ clever, whimsical style almost single-handedly ushered in a crossword renaissance, as newspapers all over the U.S. followed its lead.

Today, more than 90 percent of newspapers around the world have crossword puzzles, and, according to a study by the U.S. Newspaper Advertising Bureau, 26 percent of people who read newspapers regularly attempt to solve them.

Setting the Pace

The New York Times crossword puzzle sets the standard that other puzzles follow. Here are just some of the informal (but strictly followed) "rules" that were established by the Times‘ example:

There can be no unkeyed letters – letters that appear in only one word of the puzzle. Every single letter of the puzzle must be part of both a horizontal and a vertical word.

• The black and white pattern must be "diagonally symmetrical."
• The black squares should not take up more than one-sixth of the total design.
• The puzzle shouldn’t have "dirty double-crossers" – that is, obscure words should not intersect one another.

Puzzling Facts

• The Times estimates that it takes the average puzzler half an hour to solve the 15-square-by-15-square daily puzzle, and two hours to solve the much larger Sunday puzzle.
• The Times daily puzzles are designed to get progressively harder from Monday through Saturday. The Saturday puzzle is nearly impossible for anyone but experts to solve. The Sunday puzzle is even worse. The paper figures that the weekend puzzles should be the hardest, because that’s when people have the most time to work on them.
• Constructing the crossword puzzles take a lot more time than solving them. "It takes me a day to make a Times Sunday puzzle," says Maura B. Jacobson, one of the Times‘ constructors. "I spend at least 10 or 12 hours making definitions. My research takes a day, then a day to get the words into the diagram to make them cross. But the hardest is making the definitions."
• Making a puzzle that lives up to The New York Times standards isn’t easy – Eugene Maleska, the paper’s crossword editor in 1992, estimates that there aren’t more than 600 people in the entire country skilled enough to do it. And the puzzles have to be thoroughly edited before the go to press. "I and all editors change about a third of the definitions," Maleska told reporters in 1992. "I have a notebook filled with definitions so I don’t repeat them."
• The New York Times goes to great length not to offend anyone with its puzzles. Words as innocuous as "bra" are forbidden, as are the names of illegal drugs. Words such as "ale" and "rum" are considered to be at the extreme limit of good taste – they are permitted but aren’t used often.

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!

The following is from Uncle John’s All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader.

Selling to kids is big business – children directly control and spend $24.4 billion worth of goods every year, and they influence parents to spend upwards of $300 billion. Naturally, corporations are very interested. Here are some of the tricks of the trade businesses use to get your kids (and their parents) to spend the big bucks. (From a Mothering Magazine piece by Gary Ruskin).

NAG, NAG, NAG

Cheryl Idell knows a lot about nagging. She’s written reports for major corporations with such titles as "The Nag Factor" and "The Art of Fine Whining." She tells her clients that nagging spurs about a third of a family’s trips to a fast-food restaurant, to buy children’s clothing, or to rent a video.

Idell, chief strategic officer for a major market-research firm, speaks with the cold precision of a physicist. "Nagging falls into two categories," she explains. "There is ‘persistent nagging,’ the fall-on-the-floor kind, and there is ‘importance nagging,’ where a kid can talk about it."

[She considers] either a good first step. But alone they’re not enough. Idell advises Chuck E. Cheese and numerous other corporations that getting kids to whine is even better. Better yet is to give them "a specific reason to ask for the product." In other words, Idell’s job is to make your life miserable. She even rates brands according to their "nag factor" – that is, their capacity to make your children badger you – and companies toil mightily to rate high on her list. Some of the most successful are McDonald’s, Levi’s, Discovery Zone, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Disney, and OshKosh. (Like we couldn’t have guessed.)

WANTED: YOUR KID

Now meet George Broussard. He is co-founder of 3D Realms, a company that makes a video game called Duke Nukem. A violent "first-person shooter"
game, Duke Nukem comes complete with strip bars, porno theaters, and lots of gore. Even with the "mature" rating, and all the violence and sexual imagery, Broussard wants to sell this game to your kids. "Duke is a mass-market character that can sell two million games," Broussard says." It’d be suicide to make the game unplayable by younger people."

Idell and Broussard are typical of something endemic in America today. Thousands of the brightest minds in the country devote their great talents, and use sophisticated psychological techniques, to influence your children to purchase products – o rather, to want products – regardless of whether or not they are good for your kids. Name something you don’t
want your kids to have, and chances are, people are trying to entice your kids into wanting it.

WHAT ARE CHILDREN ANYWAY?

James U. McNeal, a professor of marketing at Texas A&M, is perhaps the foremost expert on selling to children. He is the elder statesman advocating a shift in our thinking from viewing children as trusting, impressionable humans to be protected to seeing children "as economic resources to be mined." His emotional response to this contrast isn’t the same as yours. McNeal sees the money in your kids and helps corporations get access to it: "Children are the brightest star in the consumer constellation," he writes.

McNeal divides the booming kiddie market into three parts: There’s the "primary" market – the $24.4 billion each year that kids directly control and spend. There’s the "influence" market, perhaps as high as $300 billion, the amount of parental spending that children can directly or indirectly influence. And there’s the "future" market, which is the purchasing that children will do for the rest of their lives.

BUY-BUY BABY

"Virtually every consumer-goods industry, from airlines to zinnia-seed sellers, targets kids," McNeal enthuses. Johann Wachs, the vice president of Saatchi and Saatchi’s Kid Connection unit, agrees: "Marketers are just waking up to the enormous possibility of kid-targeted products," he says. "As kids become more powerful as consumers, they are being targeted more directly."

Children aren’t hard to take advantage of. They tend to trust adults even when they shouldn’t – sometimes especially when they shouldn’t. Marketers know this, while most children don’t grasp the motives behind advertising or realize that the products advertised may not be good for them.

However, none of this is troubling to the new breed of advertisers and marketers. If they have any qualm, they do a good job of repressing them. Like investors in prime real estate, they see children’s mind as kind of cash cow. "If you own this child at an early age, you can own this child for years to come," explained Mike Searles, president of Kids-R-Us, a major children’s clothing store. Companies are saying, ‘Hey, I want to own the kid younger and younger.’" Wayne Chilicki, a General Mills executive, agrees: "When it comes to targeting kid consumers, we at General Mills follow the Proctor & Gamble model of ‘cradle to grave,’" he says. "We believe in getting them early
and having them for life."

BE COOL

Advertisers infuse their pitches with messages that target the weaknesses and insecurities of children. "Advertising at its best is making people feel that without their product, you’re a loser," explained Nancy Shalek, president of the Shalek Agency. "Kids are very sensitive to that. If you tell them to buy something, they are resistant. But if you tell them that they’ll be a dork if they don’t, you’ve got their attention. You open up emotional vulnerabilities, and it’s very easy to do with kids because they’re the most emotionally vulnerable."

Moreover, some marketers try to sell by tapping into destructive and antisocial urges. According to Rick Litman, a partner at Kid 2 Kid Market Research, the goal is "to use youth rebellion to more effectively target a product and sell a product."

More than anything, they want your children’s minds. "Kids marketing in general is becoming more sophisticated," says Julie Halpin, CEO of Gepetto Group, which specializes in marketing to kids. It is a competition for what she calls "share of mind."

Corporations claim this "share of mind" from every possible angle. They seek to engulf your children with ads. "Imagine a child sitting in the middle of a large circle of train tracks," one market researcher explains. "Tracks, like the tentacles of an octopus, radiate to the child from the outside circle of tracks. The child can be reached from every angle. This is how the [corporate] marketing world is connected to the child’s world."

MARKETERS GO TO SCHOOL

Marketers are resorting to extreme measures to gain access to our children. They’re invading sanctums that were previously off-limits, such as schools. For example, Channel One is a marketing company that uses TV "news" shows as a come-on. Its daily broadcast shows 10 minutes of "news" and 2 minutes of ads to captive audiences of 8 million children in 12,000 schools across the country. While promoted as "education," the real appeal is to advertisers. "The biggest selling point to advertisers," says Joel Babbit, former president of Channel One, lies in "forcing kids to watch two minutes of commercials." The atmosphere of the school is an advertiser’s dream, Babbit says. "The advertisers get a group of kids who can’t go to the bathroom, who can’t change the station, who can’t listen to their mother yell in the background, who can’t be playing Nintendo, who can’t have their headsets on."

A new company called ZapMe! has extended this strategy to computers. Like Channel One, ZapMe! offers free equipment to schools – computers and Internet browsers. In return, it advertises to kids, plus it gets a market-research gold mine. The company snoops on schoolchildren as they browse the Internet and then delivers the information to advertisers and marketers. According to Associated Press, ZapMe! "breaks down the data by age, sex, Zip Code. It delivers this information to advertisers and marketers, who use it to target students in school with laserlike precision."

THE LESSON IN THE ADS

Kids are eager learners. "Advertising targeted at elementary school children," Professor McNeal says, "on programs just for them works very effectively in the sense of implanting brand names in their minds and creating desires for the products."

Further, it is well known that RJR Nabisco’s Joe Camel ads hooked hundreds of thousands of children into smoking. And Anheuser-Busch created Budweiser ads so captivating – with frogs, penguins, and lizards – that they were kid’s favorite ads in 1999.

This is great news for ad agencies and for the corporations they work for. Business is booming. Some win kudos from their corporate peers. The owner of McFarlane Toys, Todd McFarlane, was recently given an award by Ernst & Young for creating a bestselling line of grotesque and violent "Spawn" toys and comic books. Would McFarlane let his own daughters have these toys or comic books? "Are you kidding?" he says. "I’m still a dad after five o’clock."

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader, which was published in 2000. Note: Channel One has continued financial loss until it was sold in 2007 whereas ZapMe! has gone bankrupt, but I’m sure the message is still relevant today.

The 13th book in the series by the Bathroom Reader’s Institute has 504-all new 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 following is an article from Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader

Ever heard of Prince Philip? He’s the Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth II of England. About the only time he makes headline is when he, as one newspaper puts it, "uses his royal status to insult and belittle people." His public gaffes are so frequent that they’ve earned him the title "The Duke of Hazard." (Photo: NASA/Paul E. Alers [Wikipedia])

To a driving instructor in Scotland: "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?"

To a Nigerian diplomat in traditional Nigerian garb: "You look as if you’re ready for bed."

On seeing a fuse box filled with wires, during a visit to an electronics company: "This looks like it was put in by an Indian."

To a chubby 13-year-old boy at a space exploration exhibit, pointing to a space capsule: "You’ll have to lose weight if you want to go in that."

To a smoke-detector activist who lost two of her children in a house fire: "My smoke alarm is a damn nuisance. Every time I run my bath, the steam sets it off and I’ve got firefighters at my door."

To members of the British Deaf Association, while pointing to a loudspeaker playing Caribbean music: "No wonder you are deaf."

To a tourist, during a state visit to Hungary: "You can’t have been here long, you’ve not potbelly."

Speaking to British students studying in China: "If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed."

On the "key problem" facing Brazil: "Brazilians live there."

On his daughter Princess Anne: "If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she isn’t interested."

On seeing a picture once owned by England’s King Charles I in the Louvre in Paris: "So I said to the Queen, ‘Shall we take it back?’"

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!

The following is reprinted from Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Presidency

Superstition is an American tradition in which even the presidents have taken part. Sometimes, though, their superstitions have been eerily justified.

Athletes are notorious for their pre-game rituals and good luck charms. It turns out that American presidents are no different, using superstition as one way to chart the course of their administrations.

Lincoln’s Prefiguration

The supernatural shaded Abraham Lincoln’s White House, perhaps more than any other presidents. His wife Mary Todd had visions of their children who had died young. She conducted séances – some of which Abe attended, although he thought the mediums were hucksters – to try to communicate with them.

This skepticism notwithstanding, Abe himself had dreams and visions that he took very seriously. He announced once at a Cabinet meeting when he was waiting for a report from General Sherman that he knew good news was imminent, because he had just had a recurring dream that always was a good omen for him.

Lincoln’s most famous dream vision is described by his friend War Lamon in a book of recollections. The dream began with Lincoln hearing the sound of crying far away. He traveled through a number of rooms in the White House searching for the source of the sound, then arrived in the East Room to find a crowd surrounding a shrouded, dead body. The body’s face was covered by the shroud, making it unidentifiable. He asked one of the soldiers guarding the body who was dead. The soldier replied, “The President! He was killed by an assassin!” The dream ended there. Sadly, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth soon afterward, and the story of premonition circulated far and wide.

McKinley’s Carnation

William McKinley made a habit of wearing a red carnation in his lapel for luck. Occasionally, when he wanted to share the luck with others, he would give it away.

For example, if someone asked him for a favor he couldn’t grant, he would offer the carnation as a consolation prize. Once when two boys were visiting him in the White House, he gave one boy the carnation from his lapel, then he shrewdly took another out of a vase to put into his lapel for a while before giving that one to the other boy so his blossom would be lucky too.

McKinley’s assassination (Credit: Library of Congress)

When visiting the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, in 1901, McKinley only had a short period scheduled for meeting, greeting, and shaking hands. At one point he gave his lucky red carnation to a young girl in the receiving line. Now without his good luck charm, McKinley was approached by a man with a bandage over his right hand. The man was Leon Czolgosz, and the bandage was hiding a gun. Czolgosz fired two shots at McKinley, and McKinley died eight days later.

Roosevelt’s Numbers Game

Superstition also figured in the day-to-day life of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He strongly believed that it was bad luck to light three cigarettes with one match. Once a young man tutoring some of the Roosevelt children at their Hyde Park home received a warning from Roosevelt for doing this. When he did it again at lunch, Roosevelt laid into him, in what his lifelong secretary called, “one of the few occasions I know of when the President actually reprimanded someone brusquely in public.”

Roosevelt had an acute case of triskaidekaphobia, or fear of the number 13. He would invite his secretary to come to dinner with him if there were otherwise going to be 13 guests present at the function. If his party was going to travel on the 13th of the month, he would reschedule the departure for 11:50 p.m. on the 12th or 12:10 a.m. on the 14th. He avoided the date even in death, passing away in April 1945, on the afternoon of Thursday the 12th.

The Truth is Out There, Says Carter

UFOs are the kind of thing the government usually gets accused of covering up. Contrary to the stereotype, Jimmy Carter publicized his UFO sighting, which occurred when he was a fledgling politician in Georgia in 1969.

Carter was standing outside with several other members of a Lions Club chapter in Leary, Georgia, before a meeting where he was scheduled to speak. Then, according to Carter’s report, the group saw an object in the sky that was as bright as the moon; changed color from blue to red; and moved toward and away from the observers twice. During his presidential campaign Carter promised, after having a personal experience with UFOs, to open any existing government UFO files if he were elected.

Most of those who have researched Carter’s sighting have figured that he probably saw the planet Venus, which was particularly bright in the evening on the night in question (the date of which was definitely established by finding the record of his speech in the Lions Club archives). Some of the Lions who were there with him reported that it could have been Venus. Carter never did release any government UFO files, which sounds like the making of a good episode of The X-Files.

The Reagans See Stars

Ronald and Nancy Reagan (Photo: National Archives and Records Administration)

In May 1988, former White House chief of staff Donald Regan published his book For the Record, in which he revealed that one of his tasks for President Ronald Reagan was to integrate his schedule with the advisements of an astrologer, whose reports came through First Lady Nancy Reagan.

The astrologer, Joan Quigley, credited her work for President Reagan’s surviving until the end of his second term and thwarting the 148-year curse by which the presidents elected in 1840, 1860, 1880, 1900, 1920, 1940, and 1960 had died in office.

Joan Quigley Photo: history.andiego.edu

She also claimed to have almost total control over the timing of important public events. For example, after Congress nixed two of Reagan’s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, Quigley advised that his third candidate, Anthony Kennedy, be nominated as precisely 11:32:25 a.m. On November 11, 1987. (Kennedy was confirmed 97-0). Coincidence? You be the judge.

Quigley had been introduced to Nancy by talk show host Merv Griffin in 1973, and she stayed in sporadic contact with Mrs. Reagan for a number of years, with a spike during the 1980 presidential election.

Then, after John Hinckley Jr.’s attempted assassination of Reagan, Nancy hired Quigley in May 1981 to be the Reagans’ full-time astrologer after Quigley said she could have foreseen the assassination attempt had she been studying Ronald Reagan’s chart. Nancy asked Quigley if she would waive her fee, but Quigley refused because, as she said, “People tend not to value advice they don’t have to pay for.”

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

This book is jam-packed with everything you could ever want to know about the highest office in the United States … you’ll find the slogans and smears, the legends and lore, the people and places, and the digs and the dirt – everything about the U.S. Presidency bound up in one book.

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 following is reprinted from Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader book.

The famous Mojave Phone Booth in the middle of nowhere. Photo: Lara Hartley

In the 1960s, some miners put a phone booth in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Long after they left, the booth remained … waiting for someone to call.

HELLO? ANYBODY THERE?

Miles from the nearest town, the old phone booth stood at the junction of two dirt roads. Its windows were shot out; the overhead light was gone. Yet the phone lines on the endless rows of poles still popped and clicked in anticipation – just as they’d been doing for nearly 30 years. Finally, in 1997, it rang.

The windows were shot out and the overhead light was gone, but the phone worked! (photo: Azfoo.net)

A guy named Deuce had read about the booth and called the number … and continued to call until a desert dweller named Lorene answered. Deuce wrote a story about his call to nowhere, posted it on his website … and the word spread through cyberspace. Someone else called. Then another person, and another – just to see if someone would answer. And quite often someone did. Only accessible by four wheel drive, the lonely phone booth soon became a destination. Travelers drove for hours just to answer the phone. One Texas man camped there for 32 days … and answered more than 500 calls.

REACH OUT AND TOUCH SOMEONE

Someone posted a call log in the booth to record where people were calling from: as close as Los Angeles and as far away as New Zealand and Kosovo. Why’d they call? Some liked the idea of two people who’ve never met – and probably never will – talking to each other. Just sending a call out into the Great Void and having someone answer was reward enough for most.

Unfortunately, in 2000 the National Park Service and Pacific Bell tore down the famous Mojave phone booth. Reason? It was getting too many calls. The traffic (20 to 30 visitors a day) was starting to have a negative impact on the fragile desert environment.

The end of the Mojave Phone Booth. Photo: Lara Hartley, Desert Dispatch
From The Original Mojave Phone Booth Site

The old stop sign at the cattle grate still swings in the wind. And the phone lines still pop and click in anticipation. But all that’s left of the loneliest phone on Earth is a ghost ring.

So if the urge strikes you to dial (760) 733-9969, be prepared to wait a very, very long time for someone to answer.

The article above is 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!

The following is reprinted from Uncle John’s Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader

Lots of companies have ad campaigns that flop, but Pepsi seems to have more than its share. Here are a few classic bombs.

Keep On Truckin’

For its "Pepsi 400" contest in the summer of 2001, Pepsi offered to send the holders of five winning tickets on an all-expenses-paid trip to Florida’s Daytona 400 auto race. One of the five would get to drive home in the grand prize, a brand-new Dodge truck; the other four would each get $375 worth of free gas.

There was just one problem: contest organizers accidentally printed 55 winning tickets instead of five. Rather than risk alienating the winners – not to mention millions of Pepsi drinkers – Pepsi sent all 55 winners to Daytona, gave away five trucks instead of one, and spent $20,625 on free gas instead of $1,825. Estimated cost of error: about $400,000.

Over-Stuffed

Pepsi Stuff catalog page featuring Cindy Crawford. Image: PepsiCo, Inc. (1996) from Wikipedia

In April 1996, Pepsi canceled its "Pepsi Stuff" merchandise giveaway campaign months ahead of schedule. Reason: Too many winners. The company underestimated how many people would redeem the points by 50%, forcing it to spend $60 million more than expected on free merchandise. "We’re outpacing our goals on awareness," a company spokesperson explained.

Jet Lag

Another disaster from the "Pepsi Stuff" campaign: 21-year-old John Leonard tried to redeem seven million award points for the Harrier fighter jet he saw offered in a Pepsi Stuff TV ad. The rules stipulated that contestants could buy points for 10¢ apiece, so that’s what he did. Leonard (who studied flawed promotions in business school) raised $700,000 to buy the required points and then sent the money to Pepsi, along with a letter demanding they hand over the $50 million jet.

When Pepsi refused, claiming the offer was made "in jest," Leonard filed suit in federal court. Three years later, a judge ruled that "no objective person could reasonably have concluded that the commercial actually offered consumers a Harrier jet." Pepsi lucked out … case dismissed.

The King of (Soda) Pop

YouTube Clip of a Pepsi Ad featuring Michael Jackson from the 1980s

Even Pepsi’s biggest successes can become colossal flops. In 1983 they signed the largest individual sponsorship deal in history with pop singer Michael Jackson. It was a multi-year deal and Pepsi made millions from it … only to find itself linked to one of the most lurid scandals of the 1990s when Jackson abruptly cancelled his Pepsi-sponsored "Dangerous" tour in 1993.

Jackson’s reasons for quitting: (1) stress generated by allegations that he had sexually molested a young boy, and (2) addiction to painkillers he took "to control pain from burns suffered while filming a Pepsi ad."

The Name Game

In 1983 another Pepsi contest ran into budget trouble when the company offered $5 per letter to any customer who could spell their own last name using letters printed on Pepsi bottle caps and flip tops. Pepsi hoped to control the number of cash prizes by releasing only a limited number of vowels … but it failed to take into account people like Richard "no vowels" Vlk, who turned in 1,393 three-letter sets and pocketed $20,894 for his effort.

Vlk, a diabetic who does not drink Pepsi, collected the letters by taking out classified ads offering to split the winnings with anyone who sent him a matching set. "I don’t even remember making one whole set myself," he says. "I didn’t buy any Pepsi." (The company got even by mailing him his winnings in $15 increments, one check for each winning set.)

They Can See Clearly Now

In 1992 Pepsi introduced Crystal Pepsi, an attempt to cash in on the booming popularity of see-through soft drinks like Clearly Canadian. Sales were less than half of what Pepsi projected, even after the company reformulated the product.

Marketing experts point to two critical flaws that they say doomed Crystal Pepsi from the start: (1) customers balked at paying extra for a product that, because it was clear, was perceived to have fewer ingredients than regular Pepsi, and (2) after more than a century of conditioning, consumers want colas to be dark brown in color. "Clear sodas are about as appetizing as brown water," an industry analyst explains.

The article above 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!

The following is reprinted from Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again

Illustration: Pemberley.com

Let’s say you’re an 18th-century British peasant, and you and your wife just aren’t getting along anymore. What do you do? Divorce her? Too expensive. Kill her? Too risky. Oh well, looks like you’ll have to auction her off. Welcome to the wacky world of wife selling!

HARDY HAR-HAR

Hands up all of you who’ve read Thomas Hardy’s classic of 19th-century British misery, The Mayor of Casterbridge. You know, the one where everybody dies and life is shown to be pointless parade of squalor, pain, and death? You haven’t gotten around to reading it yet? Well, it’s worth filling you in on key plot point, namely, that the main character, Michael Henchard, sells his long-suffering wife at a public auction. Surely not, you cry! Not in civilized old England. Thomas Hardy must have made it all up. Well, we’re here to tell you that it’s all true. Right up until the early 1900s, husbands in Britain were able to offer their wives to the highest bidder.

GOING, GOING …

The Golden Age of wife selling was between 1780 and 1850, when some 300 wives were sold (and that’s just those that appeared in the record books – doubtless many more spouses were gotten rid of more quietly.)

One of the earliest recorded wife sales took place in 1733, in Birmingham, central England. The local paper of the day records how "Samuel Whitehouse … sold his wife, Mary Whitehouse, in open market, to Thomas Griffiths. Value, one guinea [about one English pound]." As part of the deal, the paper comments, Griffiths was to take Mary "with all her faults." Another wife, in 1801, was put up for sale by her huband for one penny. Not surprisingly, this bargain sparked a frenzied bidding war among the locality’s lonely farmers, and Mary eventually went for five shillings and sixpence. One husband even managed to off-load his old lady for eighteen pence and a quart of ale. An even luckier chap managed to trade his other half for a full barrel of beer!

CATTLE CALL

As if the act of being auctioned off wasn’t bad enough, the method in which wives were sold really rubbed salt into the wound. Wife-selling deals always followed the same very public ritual. First, the wives were led to the local market square with halters around their necks, just like cattle for sale. Then they were made to stand on auction block, while their husbands-not-to-be began taking bids. A crowd would usually gather, and proceedings would be accompanied by much jeering and joking from the local peasantry. Once a deal was struck, all the interested parties, and most of the crowd, would retire to the local tavern to celebrate the successful transaction.

PRETTY CIVILIZED AFTER ALL

It all seems pretty distasteful, doesn’t it? But it’s not entirely what it seems. Far from being ritually humiliated by the whole thing, most of the wives on sale were there willingly. In fact, almost all sales took place with the agreemnet of both husband and wife. It was impossible for ordinary folk in Britain to get divorced. It was a difficult and expensive procedure – around $20,000 at today’s prices. So, instead, unhappily married couples had to find another way to untie the knot. Wife selling killed two birds with one stone – it was the quickest of quicky divorces, plus it provided some live street theater for the local community. The authorities hardly approved of the practice, but they turned a blind eye to it, seeing as it kept the rabble amused.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

In the vast majority of cases, the wife was sold to an existing lover for a nominal fee, which was agreed upon by all parties beforehand. By tradition, the husband would then use this fee to buy drinks for everyone in the local inn – including his ex-wife and her new husband.

Anyway, with all the pain, anguish, and huge costs that accompany most modern divorces, who’s to say those ale-swigging, wife-swapping English peasants didn’t have the right idea all along?

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 seque gives you more colorful characters, cultural milestones, historical hindsights, 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

The following is reprinted from Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again

The stabbing of Kitty Genovese lasted 50 minutes was witnessed by 38 people. Surely someone would pick up the phone and call the police, right? Wrong: here’s the infamous story of what happened when good people stood by and did nothing.

Kitty Genovese got home from work very late. As a bar manager, she had to close and clean up before she could head home to her Queens, New York, apartment. Usually her late hours were no problem. But on March 13, 1964, when the 28-year-old, 105-pound (48 kg) Genovese parked her car at 3 a.m., there was someone waiting for her. As Kitty began to walk toward her home, the man waylaid and stabbed her.

A CRY FOR HELP

She shrieked in terror, "Oh, my God, he stabbed me! Please help me!" Genovese’s neighbors in the snug apartment complex, many of whom knew her, turned on their lights and opened their apartment windows. One male neighbor shouted from his window, "Leave that girl alone!" Kitty’s attacker left. She began staggering to her apartment, bleeding from several stab wounds, while her neighbors shut their windows and turned off their lights. Kitty no doubt thought the worst was over. But her attacker returned and stabbed her again. "I’m dying!" she screamed. Her neighbors threw open their windows again, but nobody came out ot help. Kitty’s attacker got into a car and drove away.

Kitty crawled into the vestibule of an apartment house and lay there bleeding for several minutes. At this point she might still have lived. But once again her assailant returned. He cut off her underpants and bra, sexually assaulted her, and took the $49 from her wallet before stabbing her one last, fatal time. It was not until 3:50 a.m., a full 50 minutes after the attack began, that a neighbor called police. Two minutes later, police arrived to find Kitty’s body.

Crime scene photo showing the first and second attacks of Kitty Genovese

NOT MY PROBLEM

Police questioned Genovese’s neighbors and discovered that at least 38 people had witnessed the killer attacking Genovese, yet no one tried to intervene. Only one had called the police – after Kitty was already dead.

The public reacted with horror and mystifiction. Why on earth would 38 people, who could easily and safely have picked up the phone and helped, ignored a dying woman’s calls of distress? The story caused deep rumbles in the psyche of Americans who were shocked and frightened by the spectre of their own dark sides – and the ultimate in big-city alienation. Would they, in the same situation, have helped?

The neighbors offered numerous excuses for their behavior. They hadn’t wanted to get involved, they said. They could see that others were witnessing the crime – surely those people were calling the police. Some claimed they feared for their own safety: others worried that their English wasn’t up to the job of making a phone call. One heartless soul merely said, "I was tired." Another alleged that she didn’t want to interfere in what she thought was a lover’s quarrel."

Police admitted that there was no law forcing witness to call for help. So the crime that the neighbors were guilty of, if any, was a moral one.

SOME CONSOLATION

The murderer was caught less than a week later. He readily admitted to killing Kitty Genovese, as well as two other local women, claiming he had an "uncontrollable urge to kill." In June 1964, 29-year-old Winston Moseley was found guilty, and he remains in state prison to this day.

But Kitty Genovese has not been forgotten. The case has lived on in plays and TV dramas – it even spawned a whole new branch of psychology. When experts refer to the Genovese syndrome, they’re theorizing that the neighbors’ failure to act was due to "diffusion of responsibility" – there were so many people watching the crime that no one person felt they had any personal responsibility, because they were sure that someone else would do something. The case is still taught in every Psych 101 class in the country. Which is not much of a consolation for poor Kitty.

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 seque gives you more colorful characters, cultural milestones, historical hindsights, 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

Neatorama Note: Though the article outlined the Kitty Genovese story as it is generally accepted, more recent analysis of the case turned up discrepancies, such as a neighbor trying to call the police and was rudely dismissed, and sensationalization of newspaper accounts. For more information, check out:

- Kitty Genoves [wikipedia]
- Genovese syndrome: Fact or Fiction?
- Kitty Genovese, the popular account is mostly wrong at A Picture History of Kew Gardens, NY

The following
is reprinted from Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Presidency

Forty-two men have occupied the office of U.S. president; if each one made only one mistake or misspoke just once during his time in office, we’d already have a substantial collection of presidential faux pas. Fortunately for the cynics among us, most of these men have made more than a few boo-boos over the years. A few of our favorites bear special mention:

- Franklin Delano Roosevelt served hot dogs to the king and queen of England on their state visit. Here’s hoping they served him bangers and mash when he crossed the pond!

- Harry S. Truman was known as a no-nonsense straight shooter whose desk bore a sign reading, "The buck stops here." While running for reelection, he told a campaign-stop crowd, "I don’t give ‘em hell, I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell," which led to his nickname: "Give ‘em hell Harry."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower was asked by a journalist what significant decisions his vice president, Richard Nixon, had helped him make. "If you give me a week I might think of one," he replied. (He later apologized to Nixon).

- John F. Kennedy wins the award for the "gaffe that never was," his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech. For years the media and the public believed that Kennedy had misspoken, saying "I am a jelly doughnut" (a Berliner is indeed a type of Berlin jam-filled pastry) instead of "I am a citizen of Berlin." However experts now say that Kennedy did speak correctly, so there’s a little jam on the face of his critics.

- On September 16, 1968, Richard Milhous Nixon, in an effort to appeal to the young people, made campaign history on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, the hippie-esque sketch comedy television show. During a fast-paced montage sequence, this president with the stuffed-shirt persona appeared and cried out the show’s most famous catchphrase, "Sock it to me!"

- Gerald Ford was prone to all manner of physical gaffes, from locking himself out of the White House to tripping and falling down the steps of Air Force One during a visit to Austria. His clumsiness was famously parodied by comedian Chevy Chase on NBC’s Saturday Night Live.

- Jimmy Carter caused a minor scandal when he admitted in a Playboy interview that he had "lusted after women" in his heart. Most Playboy readers instantly agreed that they had, too.

- Testing the microphone during what he thought was a sound check before a radio address, Ronald Reagan joked, "My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." Only he didn’t realize that they were broadcasting. The joke fell flat with Cold War-era listeners.

- George H.W. Bush declared that he disliked broccoli and scores of irate farmers sent bushels of the green stuff his way. He stuck to his guns, saying "I’m the president and I don’t have to eat broccoli if I don’t want to."

- Bill Clinton created a minor scandal dubbed "Hair Force One." He received a $200 haircut from celeb stylist Christophe on Air Force One, reportedly shutting down two runways at Los Angeles International Airport for an hour, at an estimated cost to airlines of $76,000.

- George W. Bush has made plenty of grammatical gaffes, but one of his biggest missteps was when, believing his microphone was off, he turned to Vice President Dick Cheney and pointed out a reporter by calling him a "major league a**hole." It’s a good thing his mom Barbara Bush wasn’t there, he’d have found his mouth filled with soap – in a major league way.

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

This book is jam-packed with everything you could ever want to know about the highest office in the United States … you’ll find the slogans and smears, the legends and lore, the people and places, and the digs and the dirt – everything about the U.S. Presidency bound up in one book.

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 following is reprinted from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader: World of Odd.

From the dustbin of history, here are the stories of some of the past’s strangest people and events:

THE FLEA KILLER

Queen Christina ruled Sweden from 1632 to 1654. What did she consider the biggest threat to her kingdom? Fleas. The Queen hated them and wanted each and everyone one she found in her palace killed … individually.

To accomplish this feat (this was long before the invention of chemical insect repellents), she commissioned the construction of a tiny, one-inch-long cannon, that was packed with tiny flea-sized cannonball. Whenever she spotted one, she fired the tiny cannon at it and occasionally made a killshot.

THE SKULL IS IN THE MAIL

When Germany conquered Tanganyika (a region of eastern Africa) in 1898, Chief Mkwawa, the leader of the Wahehe tribe, was killed. The Germans then sent Mkwawa’s head to Germany, where it was displayed in a museum in Bremen.

During World War I, the British kicked the Germans out of Africa, aided by the Wahehe. H.A. Byatt, the British administrator now overseeing the former German-controlled area, lobbied the British government for the return of Mkwawa’s skull in appreciation for the Wahehes’ War effort. The return of the skull was even stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles, the 1919 agreement outlining terms of German’s surrender. But Germany denied taking Mkwawa’s head and the British government didn’t push the issue, accepting the German explanation that the skull was lost.

The skull of Chief Mkwawa on display at the Mkwawa Memorial Museum
(Photo: Matt Crypto [wikipedia])

In 1953 Sir Edward Twining, the British governor of Tanganyika, vowed to track down the skull … and found it in the Bremen Museum among a collection of dozens of skulls taken in the 1890s. Mkwawa’s skull was finally returned to the Wahehe in July 1954 and now resides in a museum there.

THE GENDER-BENDING BULLFIGHTER

In 1900, a 20-year-old bullfighter known only as "La Reverte" debuted in the Madrid bullring. What’s odd about that? La Reverte was female bullfighter. She remained a crowd favorite for seven years until 1908, when the Spanish government decided it was immoral for women to fight bulls, and La Reverte was banned from the ring.

But La Reverte wasn’t worried. Why? She was really a he. At the conclusion of one of her final bullfights, La Reverte took off her wig and fake breasts, revealing she wasn’t a woman, but a man named Agustin Rodriguez.

La Reverte aka Agustin Rodriguez (Photo: Guía de Toros de Logroño)

Did La Reverte resume a bullfighting career as a man? Nope. Bullfighting fans instantly turned on him, angered by the fraud. Within the year, Rodriguez fled Madrid and retired quietly in Majorca.

TIME TO GET THE CLOCK FIXED

In 1996, German systems analyst Heribert Illig introduced a theory he called "phantom time hypothesis."

Illig believes that the Early Middle Ages – the years 614 to 911 – never actually happened and that all evidence of the 300-year period is faked.

He says that in 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII replaced the Julian calendar with the Gregorian calendar (which we still use) in order to correct a ten-day error, he actually added 300 years.

Among the historical evidence that Illig uses to support his claim are "fraudulent" records of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, whom Illig says is actually a fictional character.

… AND THE DISH RAN AWAY WITH THE SPOON

On May 9, 1962, a Guernsey cow in Iowa named Fawn was picked up by a tornado and flew through the air for a few minutes before landing softly and safely at a nearby farm a half a mile away. The flight is believed to be the longest (but no the first) unassisted solo cow flight in recorded history. Fawn safely landed in the pen of a Holstein bull at a neighboring farm before she successfully wandered home. (The brief encounter resulted in a calf.)

Photo: indegentevirtual [Flickr]

Amazingly, Fawn had a chance to beat her own record. In 1967, she was out grazing a country road and was caught up in another tornado. She flew over a busload of gawking tourists and landed safely on the other side of the road. From then on, Fawn’s owner locked her up whenever there was a storm warning.

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

This book focuses on the odd-side of life and features articles like the strangest TV shows never made, the creepiest insect on Earth, odd medical conditions, and many, many more.

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 following is reprinted from The Best of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.

Sherlock Holmes (R) and Dr. Watson (L), drawn by Sidney Paget

Sherlock Holmes is one of the most widely recognized characters in all of English literature. He isn’t just a person, he’s a cultural icon. His adventures are also some of our favorite reading. In his honor, we’ve done a little detective work and uncovered these facts.

THE DOCTOR IS IN

The year was 1877. Dr. Joseph Bell, a brilliant surgeon and lecturer at Scotland’s prestigious Edinburgh University Medical School, was standing next to one of the hospital’s patients. His students – including 18-year-old named Arthur Conan Doyle – stood around him as he motioned to the patient and systematically ticked off his first observation about the case. "You’ll notice, gentlemen," Dr. Bell began, "that the man is clearly a left-handed cobbler."

How could Dr. Bell tell a man’s occupation – and the fact that he was left-handed – from a single glance at someone he had never met before? Doyle and the rest of the students were amazed. And this wasn’t the first time, either. Bell made these amazing deductions every time he examined patients in front of the class.

Dr. Bell continued with his observations, this time pointing to the man’s pants. "Notice the worn places in the corduroy breeches, where a cobbler rests his lapstone."

It was the pants! Dr. Bell read the man’s life story from a patch of worn corduroy. It was amazing, and Arthur Conan Doyle would never forget it.

FROM BAD TO VERSE

Nine years later, in 1886, Doctor Arthur Conan Doyle – who had put himself through medical school largely through the sale of short stories – turned again to writing to try to save his failing medical practice. He decided to write a detective story using Dr. Bell as a model. "I thought of my old teacher," Doyle later recalled, "and his eerie tricks of spotting details. If he were a detective, he would surely reduce this fascinating but unorganized business to something nearer to an exact science. It was surely possible in real life, so why should I not make it plausible in fiction? It is all very well to say that a man is clever, but the reader wants to see examples of it – such examples as Bell gave us every day in the (hospital) wards. The idea amused me."

THE NAME GAME

Originally, Doyle named his detective Sherrinford Holmes, after Oliver Wendell Holmes – and named Holmes’s sidekick Ormand Sacker. But during the three weeks it took to write the story, Doyle renamed the characters Sherlock Holmes, after a cricket player he had once played against, and Thomas John H. Watson, after Patrick Watson, a colleague of Dr. Bell’s.

Doyle sent the manuscript for A Study in Scarlet to a publisher … but it was returned unread. So he sent it to a second, a third, a fourth, and a fifth .. and was rejected each time. Finally, Ward, Lock & Company agreed to publish it in a magazine called Beeton’s Christmas Annual, where it was read by the English public and quickly forgotten.

BORN IN THE USA

Fortunately for Doyle, a pirated version of the story was printed in the Lippincott magazine. "The wife of the editor of Lippincott liked Study in Scarlet," says Sherlock Holmes expert Ely Liebow, "and her husband arranged to dine with Doyle and a writer named Oscar Wilde" when he was visiting England. It was one of the most productive business meetings in the history of English literature, Liebow recounts. "At the end of the meal, the editor had commitments from Doyle for his second Holmes novel, The Sign of the Four, and from Wilde for The Picture of Dorian Gray."

But it wasn’t until 1890 that Doyle made enough money from his writing to enable him to shut down his medical practice, and it wasn’t until the story Scandal in Bohemia was published in Strand magazine in 1891 that he really made it big. "That story established his reputation," Liebow says. "Sherlock Holmes became very popular, and the money started pouring in."

THE PERFECT CRIME

Just as actors resent being typecast, so too did Doyle come to resent Sherlock Holmes. His interests turned to more "serious" works … but the public continued to clamor for Holmes tales. In 1893, Doyle decided to kill Holmes off. He sent him over Switzerland’s Reichenbach Falls wrestling with arch-villain Professor Moriarty. Called The Final Problem, the story killed both characters. The public was outraged – more than 20,000 people cancelled their subscriptions to the Strand – but Doyle still hoped it would be the end of Sherlock. "I am weary of his name," he signed to a friend.

BEYOND AND BACK

It wasn’t the end. Public demand for Sherlock Holmes stories continued unabated. Doyle succumbed to the pressure in 1902 and published The Hound of Baskervilles, in which Watson discovers a manuscript describing a previously unknown Holmes case.

But even this partial resurrection wasn’t enough for Holmes fans, so in 1903 Doyle gave in and brought Holmes back to life in The Adventure of the Empty House. Why the change of heart? An American magazine offered him $5,000 per story, and a British publisher offered him almost $3,000 per story for the British rights, unheard of sums in those days.

CASE CLOSED

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would write a total 56 short stories and 4 novels featuring Sherlock Holmes, and, just as he feared, the general public came to associate him exclusively with that body of work. Still, his fate wasn’t that terrible – his 1902 historical study of The Great Boer War won him great praise from historians and earned him a knighthood, and his 6-volume history of World War I is considered a masterpiece, even though it never won him the fame his novels did. Doyle became a very rich man – by the 1920s he was the highest-paid writer on Earth, and he left an estate so huge that his heirs were still suing each other over it well into the 1990s.

Note: How good a real-life sleuth was Dr. Joseph Bell? So good – at least according to legend – that he correctly identified "Jack the Ripper." "The story," says Dr. Ely Liebow, "is that Bell and his friend analyzed the Ripper killings and put the name of the killer in an envelope. They gave the envelope to the Edinburgh police, who sent it to London, where the crimes occurred. The contents of the envelope were never divulged, but there were no more murders after they named the killer."

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!

The following is reprinted from Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader book.

We all have fantasies of getting even with people who annoy us … but we seldom actually go through with them . Here are some examples of what could happen if we did.

REVENGE OF THE PHONE CLERK

Background: In early 2002, New Zealander James Storrie called New Zealand Telecom Corporation to complain that his cell phone had been disconnected. When the representative informed him that the phone had been reported stolen, Storrie insisted that he still had the phone and that he had not reported its theft. The mistake was cleared up, but the representative (identity unknown) was apparently offended by Storrie’s attitude.

Revenge Gone Wild! When Storrie received his next phone bill, he found that he’d been charged an extra $140. What for? The explanation was printed right on the bill: "penalty for being an arrogant bastard." N.Z. Telecom apologized profusely, offered Storrie some undisclosed financial compensation, and promised to investigate the vengeful billing.

REVENGE OF THE BAD WAITER

Background: One evening in June 2003, Wayne and Darlene Keller of Corona, California, took their two children to a Sizzler’s restaurant. Mrs. Keller requested vegetables with her dinner, instead of potatoes. According to the family, the waiter, Jonathan Voeltner, rudely told her that she had to choose between French fries or baked potato. "When I told him my wife can’t eat potatoes," Said Mr. Keller, "he brought back a really small salad, practically threw it at her, and told her to go get the dressing herself." After the meal, the Kellers left – and they didn’t leave a tip.

Revenge Gone Wild! Voeltner had his girlfriend follow the Kellers home to get their address. When he got off work, he, his girlfriend, and his brother went to the Keller home, waited until 1 a.m., and then doused their house, yard, and mailbox with a gallon of maple syrup, smashed eggs, toilet paper, duct tape, and plastic wrap. They might have gotten away with it, but in a state of heightened stupidity, Voeltner rang the doorbell. Then he hid in the bushes and waited to see their reaction. Their reaction: They called the police.

Officers found Voeltner in the bushes and his co-conspirators in a nearby car. When they presented the suspects to the Kellers, Mrs. Keller said,
"Oh my God! It’s the waiter from the restaurant!" They were all charged with vandalism, with Voeltner receiving an extra charge of child endangerment because his girlfriend was a minor. He was also fired by Sizzler’s. "The company doesn’t allow this sort of thing," the manager said. (Photo: tom.arthur [Flickr])

REVENGE OF THE POSTMASTER

Background: On October 17, 2001, 62-year-old James Beal was fired from his job as relief postmaster in Empire, Michigan.

Revenge Gone Wild! The next day, Beal showed up at the post office carrying two five-gallon buckets full of worms, grubs, and porcupine poop. He proceeded to splatter several of his former co-workers with the putrid concoction, completely saturating two of them. He was on his way to his car for another bucket when police arrived. For his bizarre act of revenge, he was charged with four counts of assaulting a federal worker. "I let my anger sort of overrule my judgments,"
Beal told the court. He was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. (Photo: Drpoulette [Flickr])

REVENGE OF THE NON-WITNESS

Background: Jane White was upset that Jehovah’s Witness had come to her house once a month, every month, for 12 years. At first, she politely told them that she wasn’t interested. Finally, after a visit on a Saturday in January 2002, she had had enough.

Revenge Gone Wild! White went to the group’s local Kingdom Hall in Peacehaven, England, the following morning, carefully timing her visit for the middle of the Sunday service. She banged on the door loudly, again and again, until someone answered, and then proceeded to offer members of the congregation religious literature that she had brought along. "I tried to hand out free magazines just like the Jehovah’s Witness hand
out," she said. "Nobody seemed to want them though." She continued her "mission" for 30 minutes until the police showed up and asked her to leave. (Photo: creepysleepy [Flickr])

REVENGE OF THE SPAM HATERS

Background: In November 2002, Detroit Free Press columnist Mike Wendland wrote a story about a man named Alan Ralsky. Ralsky had become a multimillionaire through marketing spam on the Internet. How much spam? His company sent up to 250 million e-mails a day. The story told readers about Ralsky’s new 8,000-square-foot, $740,000 home. The spammer bragged that one entire wing of the house was paid for by a single weight-loss e-mail.

Revenge Gone Wild! A group of spam haters decided to give Ralsky a dose of his own medicine. They posted his home address on hundreds of websites, and Ralsky started getting tons – literally – of junk mail. Then they posted his e-mail address and his phone number, and the mega-junkmailer got inundated with the very thing he had made his millions from – spam. And, no surprise: He was annoyed! Ralsky later complained, "They’ve signed me up for every advertising campaign and mailing list there is. These people are out of their minds! They’re harassing me!" (Photo: The Detroit News)

The article above is 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!

Previously on Neatorama:

- Killdozer: Don’t Get Mad – Get an Armored Bulldozer and Get Even!
- Hello Neighbor! A Tale of Sweet Revenge
- The Weirdest Grave in the West
- The Wal-Mart Prank

The following is an article from Uncle John’s Triumphant 20th
Anniversary Bathroom Reader

The Simpsons is loaded with references to cultural moments, historical people, and current events. But occasionally things happen on The Simpsons first … and then they happen in real life.

ON THE SIMPSONS: In the 2001 episode "Hungry Hungry Homer," the local minor-league baseball team – the Springfield Isotopes – want to move to New Mexico and become the Albuquerque Isotopes.

IN REAL LIFE: When the Calgary Cannons announced a move to Albuquerque in 2003, they held a contest for Albuquerque citizens to name the new team. The winning entry: the Isotopes."Isotope" is a term used in nuclear energy, something the fictional Springfield (with its nuclear power plant) has in common with New Mexico, which is home to many of the nation’s nuclear research facilities, including Los Alamos National Laboratory.

ON THE SIMPSONS: In a 1992 episode, Homer’s brother Herb – with the help of baby Maggie – invents, markets, and gets rich off a device that understands infants gurgles, whines, and shrieks, and translates them into plain English.

IN REAL LIFE: In 2004 the Japanese company Takara announced that it had developed a successful prototype for a baby translator. In addition to analyzing a baby’s coos and cries, it also examines facial expressions and body temperature to tell parents what their baby wants or needs. *No word on whether the product was successfully marketed…or turned to poo-poo.)

ON THE SIMPSONS: School superintendent Chalmers remarks to school principal Skinner in a 1993 episode: "We’re dropping the geography requirement. The children weren’t testing well. It’s proving to be an embarrassment."

IN REAL LIFE: In 2007 Washington-state lawmakers dropped the math and science sections of the state’s 10th-grade assessment test. Reason: Too few students passed those sections, severely driving down statewide scores.

ON THE SIMPSONS: Marge leads a group that wants to censor cartoons. She abandons the group and the cause when the other members go too far, trying to cover up the private parts of Michelangelo’s statue of David when it is put on display at the Springfield Museum.

IN REAL LIFE: In 2001 a store in Lake Alfred, Florida, put a replica of Michelangelo’s David on the grounds outside of its front door. A handful of citizens fiercely protested the "indecent" statue and successfully led a drive to cover up David’s private parts with a white cloth. (The store’s manager later replaced the cloth with a leopard-print bandanna.)

ON THE SIMPSONS: While juggling groceries, a dog, and baby Maggie, Homer sees a newspaper inside a paper vending box with the headline "Senator Helms Proposes Donut Tax." Frantically wanting to read the article, he shuffles his bag of groceries, the dog, the baby, and his coins from arm to arm until he gets the paper while, he thinks, keeping all his stuff safely in his arms. He’s wrong: Somehow, his juggling results in Maggie getting stuck in the newspaper box.

IN REAL LIFE: In 2006 three-year-old Robert Moore of Antigo, Wisconsin, spotted a SpongeBob SquarePants doll in a grocery store’s "claw"-style toy vending machine. While his grandmother went to get a dollar to feed the machine, impatient Robert crawled through the dispenser at the bottom of the machine and got stuck inside. (The store didn’t have a key to the machine, so they had to call firefighters, who safely rescued the toddler.)

ON THE SIMPSONS: In the 1996 episode "Hurricane Neddy," a hurricane hits Springfield. Most of the town is spared. In fact, only Ned Flander’s house is destroyed. Rebuilding his house and his life is an expensive test of faith for the extremely religious Ned, who doesn’t have homeowners’ insurance because, as his wife says, he believes "insurance is a form of gambling."

IN REAL LIFE: In 2007 Darul Uloom Seminary of Deoband, a politically influential Islamic school for Sunni Muslims in india, issued an edict, or fatwa, declaring life insurance illegal under Muslim law. Reason: "Insurance is nothing less than gambling."

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

Proving that some things do get better with age, the latest Bathroom Reader is jam-packed with 600 pages of fascinating trivia, forgotten history, strange lawsuits and other neat articles.

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 from Uncle
John’s All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader.

Sick and tired of political campaigns this election year? Let’s take a step back with something you can appreciate from the politicians: strange and peculiar quotes. They’re not to be “misunderstimated”!

"I think that the free-enterprise system is absolutely too important to be left to the voluntary action of the marketplace." – Rep. Richard Kelly (R-Fla.)

"If a frog had wings, he wouldn’t hit his tail on the ground." – George Bush, on unemployment benefits

"I make my decisions horizontally, not vertically." – Sen. Bob Kerry (D-Neb.)

"I hope that history will present me with maybe two words. One is peace. The other is human rights." – Jimmy Carter

"The streets are safe in Philadelphia, it’s only the people who make them unsafe." – Frank Rizzo, mayor of Philadelphia

"If we don’t watch our respective tails, the people are going to be running the government." – State Sen. Bill Craven (R-Ca.), on state initiatives

"Democracy used to be a good thing, but now it has gotten into the wrong hands." – Sen. Jesse Helms

"I don’t see why the legislature should be in the business of artificial intelligence, real intelligence or any intelligence at all." – Rep. Hunt Downer (D-La.)

"A zebra cannot change its spots." - Al Gore

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" – George W. Bush

"We, as Republicans, need to start rowing with one oar." – Rep. John Kasich (R-Ohio)

"I haven’t committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law." – David Dinkins, former New York mayor

"I don’t have the brains for business. I want to go into politics." – Mao Xinyou, grandson of Mao Zedong

"I’m not indecisive. Am I indecisive?" – Jim Scheibel, mayor of St. Paul, Minn.

"If BS was a dollar a pound, we would have paid off the deficit at about noon." – Rep. Jim Ross Lightfoot (R-Iowa)

"Congressmen are so damn dumb they could throw themselves on the ground and miss." – Rep. James Traficant, Jr. (D-Ohio)

"I think that’s self-evident, but not true." – Bill Clinton

"It’s hard for somebody to hit you when you’ve got your fist in their face." – James Carville, on negative campaigning

"What’s the difference between a politician and a catfish? One is a wide-mouthed, bottom-feeding, slime sucker – and the other is a fish." – Preston Manning, Reform Party leader

"I’m a politician, and as a politician I have the prerogative to lie whenever I want." – Charles Peacock, ex-director of the Madison Guaranty S&L

"Look, I’m trying to run for president! I can’t sit here and debate free trade versus fair trade!" – Pat Robertson

"The contagious people of Washington have stood firm against diversity during this long period of increment weather." – Marion Barry, former mayor of Wash., D.C.

"The senator has got to understand – he can’t have it both ways. He can’t take the high horse and then claim the low road." – George W. Bush, referring to John McCain

"I’m glad I’m not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin, you never know if someone’s tape-recording what you say." – Richard Nixon

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-all new 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!