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The following is an article from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.
How a lady and her hat scandalized Paris.
In 1905, a painting shown in Paris shocked the public. Critics reviled it; religious and conservative moralists made speeches against it. The artist who painted it was vilified as a “wild beast” and a victimizer of women. But the painting could hardly be called pornographic. It wasn’t even a nude; it was only a portrait of a fully-clothed woman with a hat.
THE EXHIBIT
While a group of nontraditional painters prepared for a fall exhibit in Paris, their president, Monsieur Jourdain, urged them not to show Woman with a Hat. Jourdain considered himself a forward thinker who fought against the narrow-minded traditions of France’s powerful art establishment. But he also knew trouble when he saw it. He warned the group that this modernistic work, by a struggling artist named Henri Matisse, would ruin their exhibition.
THE WILD BEASTS
When Le Salon des Independents opened its doors and Parisians got their first look at Woman with a Hat, they either howled with laughter or gaped in horrified shock. The entire exhibition was derided. Matisse’s painting became the star clown in a three-ring joke. The verdict of the public, and most of the art critics, came in loud and clear. Woman with a Hat was outrageous “barbouillage et gribouillage” (smears and scribbles). It was called barbaric. It was an insult to women as well as to art. Matisse and the rest were nothing but fauves …wild beasts.
THE PAINTING
Woman with a Hat was a portrait of Matisse’s wife, Amelie, wearing an enormous, feathered hat. Critics thought the painting looked strangely unfinished and crude. What shocked them most were those odd, clashing colors that decorated the feathers of Madame Matisse’s hat and illuminated her face. Parisians might be sophisticated, but this painting confused and repelled them. Amelie Matisse was a respectable brunette, but in the portrait she sported brick red hair, an unnatural slash of dark green creasing her forehead, and mint green shading on the bridge of her nose. How could a man paint his wife in such a fashion? Rumors began to fly that all was not well in the marriage of Henri and Amelie.
THE PAINTER
For Henri Matisse, the scandal was just another dark episode in a painful struggle. Born in Bohain, a poor unlovely, industrial town in northern France, Henri was already a lawyer when he dismayed his working-class parents by deciding that art was his life’s true calling. Painting never came easily to Matisse; he studied constantly. When he failed to break into the prestigious mainstream of French art, his family labeled him an embarrassment with no talent. But Henri, as uncertain and depressed as he was, had bigger worries than rejection. By 1905, he was 35, a married man with three children -and he was broke.
He’d pinned his hoped on the 1905 exhibition. A hardworking perfectionist, Matisse believed that at last he was bringing something new and valuable to art -the joy of bright color. He painted Woman with a Hat to communicate his emotions and, he hoped, the soul of his subject. Matisse didn’t portray the true colors of nature because he was determined to paint the colors of his heart.
THE MODEL
Amelie Matisse was a rebel with a cause, and her cause was her hubby’s genius. Madame Matisse might not know art, but she knew Henri; whatever he did had to be great. Born in Toulouse in southwestern France, Amelie took Henri to he birthplace. When she showed her husband -a child of the cold, gray north- the hot colors of the south, she changed their lives, and the future of painting, forever.
Henri kept going back to the exhibit, fretting over the jeers and insults. But Amelie stayed at home. She never lost faith in Woman with a Hat. The world must change; she would not! And sure enough, slowly, the world changed.
THE BUYERS
Two American art lovers, Gertrude Stein and her brother, Leo, visited the exhibition again and again, mostly to see Woman with a Hat. They knew it was a complete break with tradition, but while others were horrified, they were impressed. A week before the exhibition closed, Leo offered to buy the painting for 200 francs. Henri could hardly wait to get rid of the unlucky canvas. His morale and his funds were very low. But Madame Matisse held out for 500 francs. The extra 200 francs would buy their daughter’s clothing for the winter. She told her husband to sit tight.
Amelie’s faith in the painting proved justified. Woman with a Hat became a turning point for Matisse. Leo Stein not only paid the 500, but he and Gertrude also promoted Henri Matisse among the people they knew (along with another artistic upstart named Pablo Picasso).
THE LEGACY
The artists of Le Salon des Independents eventually took on the term wild beast with pride, calling themselves the fauve movement. The fuss over Woman with a Hat made Matisse famous as well as notorious, and he became a leader of the French avant-garde. In time, the world became excited by Matisse’s revolutionary vision of art. Critic praised him as the creator of modern painting, the liberator of color. In fact, Matisse was so famous and so well loved, that some young artists found him too respectable, too bourgeois.
As for Madame Matisse, she later said that she was at her best in crisis, “when the house burns down.” It never surprised her that the world came around to her point of view. Years after her death, visitors at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art still cluster around her portrait, the delightful Woman with a Hat.
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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.
The book is a compendium of entertaining information chock-full of facts on a plethora of history topics. Uncle John’s first plunge into history was a smash hit – over half a million copies sold! And this sequel gives you more colorful characters, cultural milestones, historical hindsight, groundbreaking events, and scintillating sagas.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader. The subject matter may be disturbing for some readers.
“Big Nose” George Parrot got his nickname for the fact that he had a very large proboscis, but his real claim to fame comes from something much stranger than a prodigious schnoz.
THE (NOT SO) GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY
In the late 1870s, a band of Wyoming outlaws called the Sim Jan gang decided to try their hand at robbing Union Pacific trains. Most banking was done by cash in the 19th century, and much of the cash moved by rail. This made trains very tempting targets for criminals looking for big scores.
Some gangs, the James-Younger and Hole-in-the-Wall gangs among them, became quite adept at train robbery. Sim Jan and his gang never did: When, for example, they tried to derail a train out of Medicine Bow, Wyoming, by loosening a length of rail, a railroad crew on a handcart came by and discovered the damage to the track. After repairing the track, the crew sped off to report the incident to the sheriff, all in plain sight of the gang, who were hiding in the bushes nearby. The next day the gang shot it out with the two lawmen sent to find them, Deputy Sheriff Robert Widdowfield and railroad detective Henry Vincent, killing them both. They were the first Wyoming lawmen killed in the line of duty.
FRONTIER JUSTICE
Frank Tole was the first member of the gang to pay for his crime; he was killed a few weeks later while trying to rob a stagecoach. Then came “Dutch” Charlie Buress, who was arrested for the murders and put on a train bound for Rawlins, Wyoming, where he would have gone on trial had he lived long enough to see a trial. He didn’t: when his train made a stop in the town of Carbon, which was deputy Widdowfield’s hometown, an angry mob pulled him from the train and hanged him from a telegraph pole.
"Big Nose" George Parrot
Next up for justice: “Big Nose” George Parrot. His turn might never have come at all, had he not gotten drunk in Montana two years after the killings and been overheard boasting of his in
volvement in the crimes. He, too, was arrested and put on a train bound for Rawlins; when the train pulled into Carbon, history seemed about to repeat itself, because once again a lynch mob was waiting. But Big Nose managed to talk the mob out of the hanging by admitting his guilt and promising to tell all if they let him live long enough to face trial. Had he known what fate awaited him, he probably would have preferred being lynched.
DOPE ON A ROPE
Big Nose George lived long enough to be sentenced to death by hanging, to be carried out in 3 and 1/2 month’s time. But he didn’t live long enough to see the sentence carried out, because when he nearly killed a guard trying to escape from jail, the lynch mob decided that a speedier, unofficial hanging would do just fine. On March 22nd, 1881, a crowd of about 200 people dragged Big Nose George from the jail and hanged him from the crossarm of a telegraph pole.
Twice.
The mob had to hang him twice because the first rope broke. After a sturdier rope was found, Big Nose George, still very much alive, was hanged again. By now, however, George had managed to untie his hands from behind his back without anyone noticing. Then, when he was strung up the second time, he swung himself -by the noose around his neck- over to the telegraph pole, wrapped his flailing arms around it, and held on for dear life.
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The following is an article taken from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History.
She walked up and down Wall Street in rags -but in her day she was the richest woman in America. Meet Hetty Green, financial genius and obsessive skinflint.
The employees at Manhattan’s Chemical and National Bank were too intimidated to laugh at the strange woman who visited their vaults on a daily basis, even though she had a laundry list of eccentricities as long as your arm. She wore clothes so worn out they were falling apart on her body, she never washed her underwear because it was “too expensive,” and she spent almost every day locked in the bank’s vaults eating raw onions and counting her riches. Had Hetty Green been a different kind of woman, those who saw her marching down Wall Street might have snickered. But Hetty’s reputation was every bit as formidable as her scowling, forbidding face.
BORN CHEAP
Stinginess came naturally to Hetty’s family. Born in 1835 to a family of wealthy blue bloods, including a father who wanted his daughter to manage her fortune well, Hetty could read the daily financial papers to her dad at age six and opened her own savings account at age eight. By 21, she was so miserly she didn’t even want to light the birthday candles on her own cake because it would waste them. Eventually, the party guests convinced her to light them, but she blew them out immediately so she could return them to the grocery store for a refund.
SHE’S A RICH GIRL
This was the same birthday at which Hetty came into a multimillion-dollar trust. Almost a decade later, her father died and left her his vast estate. Hetty cleverly invested her money, increasing its value enormously. But she still wore secondhand clothes, took her meals in workingmen’s dives, saw doctors at free charity clinics, and lived in cheap boardinghouses to avoid paying property taxes.
ON THE DOTTED LINE
She was suspicious of the many suitors who courted her, believing they were all after her money. But at age 33, she agreed to marry businessman Edward Henry Green -after he agreed to sign a prenuptial agreement renouncing all rights to her money. Two children and a lot of angst later, Edward Green divorced her. When he died in 1902, Hetty Green moved to Hoboken, New Jersey, with her children and commuted daily to her bank in New York City.
POOR LITTLE RICH KIDS
Vowing to make her son Ned the richest man in the world, Hetty saved every cent she could. She gave up washing her clothes, never changed or washed her sheets, tried to evade paying bills, and went to bed at sundown to avoid burning candles. She never turned on the heat or used hot water.
But she refused to spend any money on her kids, either. When Ned broke his leg, she wouldn’t take him to a doctor, saying it was too pricey. His gangrenous leg later had to be amputated. She forced her daughter Sylvia to wear old clothes, too, and she wouldn’t let her date the “fortune hunters” Hetty believed were everywhere. When she finally let Sylvia marry, she forced the new husband to give up all rights to his wife’s fortune.
SHE’S A RICHER GIRL
Through it all, Hetty made one shrewd financial decision after another. She made terrific investments, owned thousands of plots of land, and had enough cash to make loans to major businesses -even New York City itself- extracting heavy interest on each loan.
But Hetty’s penny-pinching ways continued. She spent hours each day counting her money. Her habit of walking down to her bank each day in a ragged, black dress with a scowl on her face earned her the nickname “the Witch of Wall Street.”
THE DECLINE OF HETTY
Eventually, Hetty’s health failed. She suffered from a painful hernia but refused to have an operation because it cost $150 (123 euros). She became even more paranoid and suspicious, believing kidnappers and murderers were after her and her fortune.
Eventually, her bad temper was the end of her. She reportedly died of apoplexy, in 1916, after an argument with a servant (not one of her own, of course).
GIVING AWAY THE GREEN STUFF
Hetty Green left $100 million to her children, who, ironically, became some of the most generous philanthropists of their time, donating money to numerous museums, libraries, and civic institutions. Hetty Green would have been horrified to hear it.
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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!
The following is an article from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.
In 1872, Leland Stanford offered photographer Eadweard Muybridge $25,000 to perform an experiment. Muybridge wasn’t sure he could do it, but with so much money at stake, he took on the challenge.
When a horse is running or trotting, do all four hooves ever leave the ground at the same time? That was the basis of the wager that Leland Stanford, former governor of California and founder of Stanford University, made with some friends. This was the subject of much controversy in horse racing circles at the time. Most people believed that a horse always had one hoof in contact with the ground, but Stanford thought otherwise. Because a horse’s legs are moving so fast, it’s impossible to tell just by looking, so Stanford needed a way to slow down the movement so it could be studied.
THE CHALLENGE
In 1872, Stanford offered Eadweard Muybridge, a world-famous landscape photographer, $25,000 to find the answer. Muybridge had no idea if he could successfully set up and perform an experiment to settle the dispute, but he figured he’d give it a go.
THE EQUIPMENT
In most 19th-century cameras, the picture was taken when the photographer removed the lens cap for several seconds in order to expose the film and capture an image. The subject had to remain perfectly still during this time or the resulting photograph would be blurred. In order to capture very fast action like a galloping horse, the exposure time would have to be very short.
THE SHUTTER
Muybridge invented a fast shutter mechanism that relied on a small piece of wood with a hole drilled in it that slid past the lens. The wood was positioned so that a pin held it in place, covering the lens. When the pin was removed, gravity would cause the wood to drop and as the hole moved past the lens, the film was exposed for a fraction of a second.
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader.
It’s hard to imagine birthday parties, celebrations, or political conventions without a rainbow of balloons. So considering that they’re associated with joyous occasions, it’s kind of ironic that if it weren’t for poverty and sheer desperation, balloons would never have been invented.
FROM DEPRESSION TO INFLATION
Before the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression, Neil Tillotson thought he had a career that could last him a lifetime. In 1915 he dropped out of high school and began working for the Hood Rubber Company, a prosperous manufacturer of tires and and rubber footwear located in Watertown, Massachusetts. In little time, he worked his way into a position as a researcher.
After serving in World War I (he was assigned to a cavalry unit that spent the war years chasing Mexican outlaw Pancho Villa around Texas and northern Mexico), he returned home and reclaimed his position at Hood. With new products and research on artificial rubber, Hood’s wartime boom promised to continue in the post-war years. In the 1920s, an industry newsletter reported that Hood had become the largest independent rubber footwear manufacturer in the country, capable of pumping out 75,000 pairs of shoes a day.
But then came the Depression. Struggling with cash flow issues and a lack of demand for its products, Hood Rubber went on hiatus for most of January 1931, locking its doors and laying off 1,200 employees. Along with everyone else, Tillotson found himself on an involuntary, unpaid vacation. To make matters worse, his brother and father-in-law had lost their jobs …and moved in with Tillotson. Trapped in a house that had become uncomfortable overcrowded, and with cabin fever setting in, he feared that Hood would not reopen. Regardless, he knew that he couldn’t afford to work for a company that reserved the right to lay him off periodically with little warning.
ESCAPING TO HIS LAB
So Tillotson built a makeshift laboratory in his attic and set about trying to invent something that might let him start his own business. The problem was that the only thing Tillotson knew well was rubber, and making the vulcanized rubber invented by Charles Goodyear required expensive machinery, lots of raw materials, and workers.
Tillotson pinned his hoped on something new in the field: liquid latex. A few years earlier, German scientist Peter Schidrowitz had developed a thick liquid that could be painted onto almost anything and would air dry into a rubber skin. It didn’t require heat, sulfur, or molding machines, just a paintbrush or a dipping bowl, which made it theoretically possible for Tillotson to start manufacturing something (he wasn’t sure what yet) with a few molds and minimal up-front costs. But what could he make?
AIR HEAD
Back at Hood Rubber, Tillotson had been lucky: He’d been allocated a supply of liquid latex and assigned the job of finding uses for it, so he already knew something about what it could do. He’d also had the opportunity to take home a quantity of liquid latex before the plant locked its doors.
His first idea was to create inexpensive inner tubes for automobile and bicycle tires. On paper, it seemed like it should work, but Tillotson quickly discovered that his latex skin wasn’t as strong as molded rubber, and it wasn’t durable enough for heavy-duty use. His first efforts were, quite literally, a blowout.
Not Tillotson's actual cat balloon.
Frustrated, Tillotson came up with another idea- one that he thought might be an amusing novelty. He cut a piece of cardboard into the shape of a cat’s head (complete with little cat ears at the top) and dipped it into the gooey latex.. He had no idea what would happen, but it was a whimsical diversion from working on inner tubes. After the latex dried, he sprinkled it with talc to keep the rubber from sticking to itself, and then carefully rolled the thin skin off the cardboard. It seemed to be an intact cat-head shape. Gingerly, he put it to his lips and blew a small puff of air into the hole at the bottom. It seemed to be airtight, so he blew a little more and kept repeating until the latex was round and dangerously taut. It was a balloon with cat ears, something he’d never seen before.
BALLOONS FROM THE BUTCHER
Not that toy balloons were anything new. For a great kids’ toy in the early 1800s, you couldn’t do much better than blowing up a pig’s bladder: It was thin, airtight, durable, and fun to toss around. Kids who wanted a different-sized balloon had plenty of choices available, from small balloons made of pig intestines or rabbit bladders to large balloons of cattle organs.
In 1824 British scientist Michael Faraday invented a rubber balloon by taking two pieces of rubber and sticking them together. It didn’t require special adhesives because before Charles Goodyear invented vulcanization to fix the problem, rubber was sticky and malleable like a thick bubble gum. Faraday filled his balloons with hydrogen in order to conduct scientific experiments, but it didn’t take long for the invention to become a popular plaything for his kids. Problems: The balloons couldn’t be mass-produced, and they didn’t last long.
A CAT KISS FOR LUCK
Tillotson ha d something new, and he knew it. He tied off the balloon and painted a cat’s face on the front. When he carried it downstairs to show the rest of the family, their reaction was enough to make him completely forget about inner tubes. He went to work with his scissors, creating more cat-head molds, and recruited his older brother and father-in-law to help hand dip dozens at a a time. After making and painting 2,000, he sold them all to a Boston novelty company, C. Decieco & Son, who filled them with helium to sell at a parade in nearby Lexington.
Desperately curious to see how the public would respond to his cat balloons, Tillotson headed to the parade site. Besides being reassured by the brisk sales of balloons, he witnessed something that convinced him that he had a hit product on his hands: A little girl pulled her balloon down and kissed the cat’s face.
That was it. Tillotson withdrew his life savings and sank the entire $720 into latex, molds, and a building, and set up production. By the end of 1931, the Tillotson Rubber Company had popped out five million cat-faced balloons and, despite the worsening Depression, generated sales of $85,000 (the equivalent of $1.2 million today).
Other companies also began making balloons and plenty of other rubbery products. Tillotson’s company went on to develop the first high-speed latex dipping machine, which helped with his second invention in the early 1960s: the one-size-fits-either-hand disposable latex medical glove.
FOOTNOTE TO OBSCURITY
Tillotson became fabulously wealthy, moved to Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, and bought a hotel. There he earned his final claim to fame: For 40 years, until his death in 2001 at age 102, he was the nation’s first voter in all presidential primaries and all presidential elections. He slid his paper ballot into Dixville Notch’s ballot box at the stroke of midnight every Election Day, followed by the three dozen other registered voters in the tiny town. Dixville Notch became famous as the first place to vote and the first to report its results a few minutes later, resulting in a crush of reporters and television cameras at every election.
Tillotson always ended up in the network news reports. But did that give him the fame he deserved as the inventor of the modern balloon and the disposable surgical glove? No. In 2007 the New Hampshire Historical Society began selling a Neil Tillotson bobblehead …depicting the staunch Republican dropping his ballot into the Dixville Notch ballot box. (Want one? At last report, they still have plenty on hand.)
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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.
Americans eat nearly three billion boxes of cereal every year. And yet few of us know how Rice Krispies, Corn Pops, or any other cereal is made. Here’s a look at the science behind some of our favorite breakfast foods.
(Image credit: Flickr user Snugg LePup)
NATURAL-BORN POPPER
Popcorn for breakfast? It’s not the first thing most people think of eating in the morning, and it’s not marketed as a breakfast food. But popcorn does have many of the qualities that cereal manufacturers look for in a breakfast food; It’s light and airy, it’s crispy, and it crunches when you eat it. If you put some popcorn in a bowl and poured milk over it, it would probably stay crunchy at least as long as your favorite breakfast cereal does.
But what about foods that don’t pop naturally the way that popcorn does? Quite a bit of the technology used in the manufacture of breakfast cereals is employed specifically to make those foods “poppable” -to produce desirable, popcorn-like qualities in foods that don’t normally have them. Foods like whole-grain rice and wheat, for example. Or grains that have been milled into flour, then mixed with other ingredients to make dough that is then baked into individual pieces of cereal.
POPCORN 101
To understand how whole grains and dough end up as Puffed Wheat, Cheerios, and Kix, it helps to understand what makes popcorn pop in the first place.
(Image credit: Flickr user Jaymi Heimbuch)
* A kernel of popcorn consists of a hard shell that surrounds a dense, starchy center, and there’s a lot of moisture in the starch. When you place a bag of unpopped popcorn in the microwave oven, the microwave “cooks” the popcorn by heating the moisture in the starch. The starch softens and develops a consistency similar to gelatin as it cooks.
* When the moisture is heated to the boiling point, it converts into steam and begins to expand. Or at least it wants to: What makes popcorn different from most other grains is that its hard outer shell does not allow the steam to escape. Instead, the kernel of corn becomes like a tiny pressure cooker: The steam pressure builds up until the outer shell can no longer contain it, and it ruptures.
* If you’ve ever opened a bottle of champagne or shaken a bottle of soda, or squirted a dollop of shaving cream into your hand, it’s easy to understand what happens next: When the shell cracks, the pressure drops and the moisture in the starch instantly converts from a liquid state to a gaseous state, creating air bubbles in the cooked, gelatinous starch that causes it to froth up in a foamy mass, expanding it to 30 or 40 times its original size. The steam escapes, leaving behind the dried, crunchy, styrofoamy starch that we know as popcorn.
POP! GOES THE CEREAL
Wheat and rice don’t have external shells that trap steam the way corn does, so if you want to obtain popcornlike results with these grains, you have to provide the pressure cooker. When cereal companies want to make puffed wheat, puffed rice, or puffed dough, they do just that, using a process known as “gun puffing” developed by Quaker Oats researchers at the turn of the 20th century. Why is it called gun puffing? Because the process was perfected using an actual Army cannon -one that saw action in the Spanish American War- that was converted into a pressure cooker. (Corn kernels can also be gun puffed. That’s how Kellogg’s Corn Pops are made.)
Corn Pops, Puffed Wheat, and Puffed Rice
* Whole grains are steam cooked in a pressure cooker (or cannon) until the pressure builds to about 200 pounds per square inch (psi), or about 13.6 times the actual atmospheric pressure (at sea level).
* When the grains have been properly cooked, the pressure inside the pressure cooker is released all at once, just like when popcorn pops. There’s even a loud POP! when the pressure is released.
* The sudden drop in pressure causes the moisture in the grains to flash into steam, puffing up the grains just like popcorn.
* The puffed grains are baked dry, and in the case of puffed-wheat cereals like Kellogg’s Honey Smacks and Post Golden Crisp, lots of sweeteners are added to make them more appealing to kids.
“Extruded” Gun-Puffed Cereals Made From Dough
How do they make Kix, Trix, Cheerios, Alpha Bits, Cocoa Puffs, and other “extruded gun-puffed” cereals?
* Various combinations of corn, oat, wheat, and rice flours are mixed with sugar, water, coloring, flavoring, and other ingredients to make a sweet dough, which is fed into a machine called a foaming extruder.
* The extruder forms the dough into the desired shape just like you might have done if you played with Play-Doh when you were a kid: To create a star shape, you squeeze, or extrude, the dough through a star-shaped hole. If you want a round shape, you squeeze the dough through a round hole. If you’re making Cheerios, you punch a hole in the middle to get a donut shape, and if you’re making Alpha-Bits, you use letter-shaped holes.
* As the extruded dough emerges from the hole in the proper shape, rotating blades cut it into individual cereal pieces.
* The freshly extruded dough pieces have too high a moisture content to be suitable for gun-puffing, so they are dried until their moisture content drops from as high as 24% down to a more desirable 9% to 12%. (Unpopped popcorn kernels, by comparison, have a moisture content of 13.5% to 14%.)
* The dried pieces are fed into a gun puffer. The puffed cereal is then toasted dry.
RICE KRISPIES
If you’ve ever watched cookies bake in an oven, you know that the dough puffs as it cooks. Rice Krispies are made the same way, in a process that’s known as “oven-puffing.”
* First, the rice is pressure cooked at a low 15-18 psi (vs. the 200 psi used in the gun-puffing process) with water, sugar, salt, flavoring, and other ingredients.
* The cooked rice is then dried to reduce the moisture content from 28% to 17%; then it is “bumped,” or fed through rollers to flatten the grains slightly and create small cracks in the rice, which will aid puffing.
* The cooked, bumped rice is dried a second time to bring the moisture content from 17% down to around 10%, which is ideal for oven-puffing. The grains are then fed into a rotating oven and baked at 550°-650°F for about 90 seconds to give them their distinctive puffy appearance and crunchy texture.
* So what causes the famous Snap! Crackle! Pop! sound? The walls of the puffed Rice Krispies kernels are so thin and brittle that many of them collapse when they come into contact with milk.
CORN FLAKES AND BRAN FLAKES
Looking into a bowl of Corn Flakes or Raisin Bran, it’s easy to imagine all those flakes started out as one single sheet of cereal that was crumbled into a thousand individual flakes. But that’s not how they’re made.
* It turns out that it’s much easier to make each flake separately. In the case of corn flakes, kernels of corn are processed to remove the hard outer shell and the germ, the part of the kernel that would have grown into a corn stalk if the kernel had been planted as a seed. What’s left after the shell and the germ are removed? Chunks of starch, each of which will become an individual corn flake.
* The chunks are cooked in a solution of water, sugar, salt, flavoring, and other ingredients until the hard, white starch has become soft, translucent, and a light golden brown in color.
* The cooked corn is fed into “de-lumping” equipment to break up any clumps; then it’s dried in a hot-air dryer and fed through giant rollers to flatten the chunks of corn into flakes.
* The flakes are toasted until they reach the proper golden color and have a moisture content of 1.5 to 3 percent.
* Bran flakes are made pretty much the same way, except that whole grains, not chunks, are used to make the flakes. Flaked cereals can also be made from rice or from dough.
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The article above was reprinted with permission from the Bathroom Institute’s newest book, Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!
This President’s Day article is from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Presidency.
FDR spent his entire presidency hiding the fact that he needed a wheelchair, and he wanted a memorial that would do the same. Future generations disagreed.
Four years before his death, Franklin Delano Roosevelt told Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter that if he had to have a memorial, he wanted it to be about the size of his desk and placed on a patch of grass in front of the National Archives -anything more would be too showy and too costly a remembrance (a granite table fitting the description was placed there in his honor in 1965). Frankfurter may have heard what FDR wanted, but Congress didn’t seem to have been listening. One year after Roosevelt’s death in 1945, Congress felt the need to commemorate him on a larger scale and passed a resolution authorizing the creation of a grander memorial, one comparable to the other presidential memorials located around the Tidal Basin. There was just one problem: FDR’s wheelchair.
POWERFUL MAN, INVISIBLE CHAIR
Despite being completely unable to walk, President Roosevelt led the country out of the Great Depression and through World War II during his unprecedented four terms in office. He was the first disabled leader to be elected in American history, but most Americans of the 1930s and 1940s didn’t even know their president required a wheelchair. They were aware that Roosevelt had contracted polio in 1921 and were under the impression that he wore braces or used a wheelchair occasionally for convenience. And that’s just what FDR wanted them to believe because he was afraid that otherwise the world would perceive him as weak.
(Image source: The U.S. National Archives)
Roosevelt went to great lengths to deceive the public regarding his paralysis -he even created a method to make it appear he was walking. With his legs in locked braces, he would lean heavily on a cane with one hand and on someone else’s hand with the other. Then he’d swing each leg forward while leaning on the opposite hand, throwing his upper body forward. When he sat down the braces had to be unlocked. The braces caused Roosevelt to fall in public three different times, but the cooperative press never reported these incidents. In fact they never photographed him in his wheelchair at all. Of the 125,000 photos housed in the FDR library in Hyde Park, New York, only two private photos show the president seated in a wheelchair.
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This article is taken from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History.
Among the ancients, it was revered as “the elixir of the gods.”
Today, it is the one sweet temptation that most of us find impossible to resist. Yet, for most of its 3,500-year history, it was not eaten but rather consumed as a beverage -and a cold one at that. Although its form and flavor have taken many twists and turns through the millennia, its appeal, once discovered, has been universal. So, why not treat yourself to a tour through the rich history of chocolate.
THE OLD GRIND
1500 B.C.: The Olmec civilization of Guatemala, the Chiapas and the Yucatan regions of Central America cultivate the cacao tree and make use of its products by grinding the beans and then mixing with water.
MONEY GROWS ON TREES
A.D. 200: The Olmecs have been overthrown by the Mayan civilization. The vast cacao plantations are used as a source of currency, with the little black beans being traded for goods or services. The bean is only consumed by the ruling classes. By now the process of mixing the drink has become more sophisticated -the beans are roasted and then ground with water before spices such as chili are added. The resulting mixture is shaken until it develops a frothy top, at which point it is ready to be enjoyed.
A HEAVENLY DRINK
A.D. 1200: The Mayans have been supplanted by the Aztecs who heartily embrace the product of the cacao tree, even incorporating it into their mythology. Their god Quetzalcoatl is said to have pilfered a cacao tree from the heavenly realms and deposited it on the Central American plains ready to be converted into a health elixir and power aphrodisiac. Famed Emperor Montezuma enjoys the drink so much that he reputedly downs 50 goblets full every day (the amount of time he spends on the royal lavatory as a result of such liquid overload is not recorded).
WRONG CURRENCY
1502: Christopher Columbus, on his fourth voyage to the New World, takes possession of a Mayan trading vessel containing what he takes to be almonds and which functions as a means of monetary exchange for the Native Americans. He thereby become the first European to encounter the cacao bean, though he scarcely gives it any attention and certainly never tastes it.
JUST A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR
1519-1544: Spanish explorer Hernando Cortes leads an expedition into the heart of Mexico in search of gold and silver. He is welcomed by the Aztecs and served their greatest delicacy -a cold, bitter drink they call “cacahuatl.” Cortes introduces this strange new brew to the Spanish court. It becomes an instant hit, even more so when sweetened with sugar. The Spanish would keep the secret of chocolate to themselves for the next 75 years.
ENGLISH COOKING
1579: The English let the chocolate opportunity slip through their fingers when they seize a Spanish cargo ship on the high seas. The British Buccaneers are surprised to find the ship holds a cargo of what they take to be sheep droppings and set it on fire. Eight years later they got a second chance when another Spanish ship carrying cacao beans is seized. Again, however, they destroy the cargo, declaring it to be useless.
GOES A COURTING
1609-1643: The secret is out. Chocolate makes it way across Europe, causing a sensation among the royal courts who are first introduced to it. France’s Sun King, Louis XIV is so taken with the delicacy that he appoints a representative to manufacture and sell it. The first book entirely devoted to chocolate is printed in Mexico. Throughout the French nobility, the aphrodisiac properties of the drink are highly regarded. Both Casanova and the Marquis de Sade are said to be prolific consumers.
FAST FOOD
1662: The Church of Rome declares that the consumption of chocolate, although highly nutritious and filling, is not considered to be food and can therefore be safely taken in its liquid form during periods of religious fasting.
JUST WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED
1765: Chocolate, by now highly regarded as a liquid delicacy and a medicinal remedy in Europe, makes its way to the United States where Dr. James Baker of Massachusetts begins a chocolate manufacturing plant. Cacao beans are ground into chocolate liquid and pressed into cakes that can be dissolved in water or milk to make drinking chocolate. At the same time, James Watt invents the steam engine in Europe, which will soon be applied to the mechanized manufacture of chocolate.
WARRANT FOR HIS ASCENT
1824: James Cadbury opens a grocery in Birmingham, England, selling roasted cacao beans on the side. Very soon he is concentrating solely on the cacao beans and, in 1854, receives a Royal Warrant to be the sole provider of chocolate to Queen Victoria. A century later Cadbury is the largest food company in the world.
BAR KING
1847: The modern chocolate bar is born when British manufacturer Joseph Fry mixes melted cacao butter into a paste that is them pressed into a mold and sold as a solid bar. Soon the public has been educated to eat, rather than drink their chocolate.
1893: Milton Snavely Hershey enters the chocolate business. The world is introduced to the milk chocolate Hershey bar, followed by Hershey’s kisses. His operations grow at such a rate that he takes over the entire town of Derry Church, Pennsylvania, renames it Hershey, and turns it into the chocolate capital of the world.
1900 to present: The creation of chocolate delicacies becomes an art form. In 1908, the Swiss Toblerone bar is offered, in 1922 the European Chocolate Kiss, chocolate-covered cherries in 1929, and that old favorite -the chunky bar filled with nuts and raisins in the mid 1930s. During World War II, chocolate bars become standard issue for the U.S. military. When man conquers Mt. Everest in 1953 and heads into space in the 1960s, the chocolate bar goes along. By the end of the 20th century, science acknowledges what the Aztecs knew all along -that chocolate is a powerful fighter against fatigue, giving the eater added strength and energy. But, the scientists found, that energy comes at a price- a one-and-a-half ounce chocolate bar contains 220 calories!
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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History.
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 Unstoppable Bathroom Reader.
Mix reality TV and Japanese game shows and throw in the plot of The Truman Show, and you’ve got this unbelievable true story.
MADE IN JAPAN
In January 1998, a struggling 23-year-old standup comedian known only by his stage name Nasubi (Eggplant) heard about an audition for a mysterious “show-business related job” and decided to try out for it.
The audition was the strangest one he’d ever been to. he producers of the popular Japanese TV show called Susunu! Denpa Sho-Nen (Don’t Go For It, Electric Boy!) were looking for someone who was willing to be locked away in a one-bedroom apartment for however long it took to win a million yen (then the equivalent of about $10,000) worth of prizes in magazine contests.
Cameras would be set up in the apartment, and if the contestant was able to win the prizes, the footage would be edited into a segment called “Sweepstakes Boy.” The contestant would be invited on the show to tell his story, and, with any luck, the national TV exposure would give a boost to his career. That was it- that was the reward (along with the magazine prizes).
SUCH A DEAL
As if that wasn’t a weak enough offer, there was a catch -the contestant would have to live off the prizes he won. The apartment would be completely empty, and the contestant wouldn’t be allowed to bring anything with him -no clothes, no food, no nothing. If we wanted to wear clothes, he had to win those, too. Nasubi passed the audition and agreed to take the job.
On the day of the contest, the producers blindfolded him and took him to a tiny one-bedroom apartment in an undisclosed location somewhere in Tokyo. The apartment was furnished with a magazine rack and thousands of neatly stacked postcards (for entering the contests), as well as a table, a cushion to sit on, a telephone, notepads, and some pens. Other than that, it was completely empty.
Nasubi stripped naked and handed his clothes and other personal effects to the producers. He stepped into the apartment, the door was locked behind him, and his strange adventure began.
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The following is an article from the book History’s Lists from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.
Either India or China invented them. The Roman Empire helped popularize them. Armies and soldiers used them to identify who was in charge, and everyone from pirates to military ships have flown them to proclaim their loyalties. Every nation has its own flag. Here are five sovereign banners with interesting histories.
1. SWITZERLAND: THE NEUTRALITY OF BEING SQUARE
It seems only appropriate that Switzerland, with its neutral position on international conflicts, should share similarities to the international rescue group the Red Cross. Both have similar flags. Switzerland’s flag is unique for being square rather than rectangular. Its stubby white cross on a red background evokes the Red Cross, which employs the same design but with the colors reversed.
The Swiss flag, which is one of only two square national flags (the Vatican has the other one), traces its heritage to banners used by the Holy Roman Empire and adopted by the cantons of Switzerland after they were granted sovereignty. The flag has come to represent peace, refuge, democracy, and neutrality. Though Switzerland has had democratic traditions since 1291, political struggles within the confederation of cantons and a French invasion in 1798 prevented the formal adoption of a national flag. The creation of a constitution for a federal state in 1848 established the national flag, which was formalized in 1889 by the Federal Assembly.
2. NETHERLANDS: HOIST THE RIBBON! IT’S PARTY TIME!
The Dutch tricolor national flag has three horizontal stripes of red, white, and blue positioned from top to bottom. What’s unique is that the flag is festooned with an orange pennant whenever the royal family has special occasions such as birthdays. And for families throughout the kingdom, it is customary to place a schoolbag atop the flagstaff to indicate students who have graduated.
Like the flags of many nations, the Dutch flag has roots on a battlefield. It was used for the first time in the 16th century during the Dutch revolt against Spain, which was led by prince William of Orange. His followers called the banner the Prinzenvlag, or “prince’s flag”. Orange, white, and blue at the time, the flag’s orange stripe was eventually changed to red. The flag was officially recognized by the Netherlands Council in 1937.
3. FRANCE: THE HOLY TRICOLOR
Like that of the Netherlands, France’s flag, created in 1790, is also distinguished by the tricolor design in red, white, and blue, but in this case the stripes are vertical. The colors come from the city flag of Paris that was used the day French radicals stormed the city’s Bastille prison in 1789 to usher in the French Revolution and overthrow the aristocracy of King Louis XVI. The Marquis de Lafayette is said to have designed the flag, which fell out of favor after French emperor Napoléon Bonaparte was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. However, it came back into vogue in 1830 and was flown over France ever since (except for two weeks in 1848 when it was changed, and then changed back). The colors represent three religious figures important to France: blue for St. Martin of Tours, a French-Roman officer who gave his cloak to a peasant suffering in the cold; white for the Virgin Mary; and red for St. Denis, the patron saint of France.
4. TURKEY: THE MOON STAR FLAG
The Turkish national flag is mostly red, with a white star and crescent in the center, and dates back 700 years; Sultan Selim III formalized the look in 1793. The crescent and star have been adopted by many other Muslim nations since then. What is not so well known is that in Turkish history, the crescent symbolizes Diana, the patron goddess of the ancient Turkish city of Byzantium, and the five-pointed star at the mouth of the crescent symbolizes the Virgin Mary, the patron saint of Byzantium after it became Constantinople in AD 330.
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.
Last week, we told you about the battle to end the sale of adulterated milk. Part II is the story of the fight to pasteurize the U.S. milk supply. It’s an instructive tale. In spite of proof that pasteurization could save lives, Americans resisted it because it was a new idea… and because it “cost too much.”
SOLID PROGRESS
During the latter part of the 19th century, improvements were made in the quality of milk sold in the United States.
Bottles: In 1884, for example, Dr. Hervey G. Thatcher patented the first practical milk bottle with a sealable top. He got the idea while standing in line in the street for his own milk a year earlier. When the little girl ahead of him dropped her filthy rag doll into the milk dealer’s open milk can, the dealer just shook the doll off, handed it back to the little girl, then ladled Thatcher’s milk as if nothing happened.
Thatcher’s bottle wasn’t a solution to all of raw milk’s problems, but at least it kept impurities out of the milk after it left the dairy. Many dairies hated the bottles because they were expensive and broke relatively easily, but they caught on with the public and were soon in use all over the country.
The Lactometer: In the early 1890s, New York State began regulating the content of milk using a lactometer, a newly invented device that could measure the amount of milk solids in milk. For the first time, it was possible to compare pure milk with a test sample of a dairy’s milk to see if it had been watered down or adulterated. If the milk tested didn’t contain the same amount of milk solids as pure milk, the milk dealer could be fined or penalized.
BATTLING BACTERIA
But by far, the most important breakthroughs were scientific. The 1880s and 1890s were a period of great advancement in the understanding of bacteria and its role in causing disease.
In 1882, for example, A German scientist named Rupert Koch discovered that bovine tuberculosis, a form of tuberculosis found in cattle, could be spread to humans through diseased milk. This form of tuberculosis attacked the glands, intestines, and bones, frequently killing the afflicted or leaving them deformed for life.
“Children seem to be especially susceptible to bovine tuberculosis,” James Cross Gilbin writes in Milk: The Fight for Purity. “[Victims] often spent years trapped into spinal frames…designed to prevent deformity while the body slowly overcame the infection.”
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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.
“Milk and kids” are virtually synonymous in our culture with “good health.” But that wasn’t always the case. Until the early 1900s, milk was often adulterated with foreign substances, taken from sick cows, or mis-handled during milking and storage. As a result, it was often host to tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid fever, and other life-threatening diseases. But few people knew that the milk made them sick. It wasn’t until the late 19th century, when scientists began to understand germ theory, that they realized diseases were being transferred through milk -and that they could do something to eliminate the hazard. Here’s a fascinating but little-known story from American history.
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
In the days before refrigeration, farmers who lived near towns delivered milk the old-fashioned way: they brought a cow into town and went door to door looking for customers. Anyone who wanted milk could step out into the street with a pitcher or a bucket, and watch the farmer milk the cow right before their eyes.
Since customers were standing only a few feet away, it paid for the farmer to take good care of his cows. Nobody wanted to buy milk from a beast that looked dirty, mistreated, or sick. So although there was a risk of buying bad milk, it was kept to a minimum.
City Slickers
But in cities, where door-to-door cow service wasn’t practical or possible, buying milk was another matter. “Milks sellers” acted as middlemen between farmers and townspeople. Like used car dealers today, they were widely mistrusted and said to possess “neither character, nor decency of manner, nor cleanliness.” Whether or not the reputation was deserved, they were notorious for diluting milk with water to increase profits. People said their milk came from “black cows,” the black cast iron pumps that provided towns with drinking water. And if the pump was broken, horse troughs were always a handy source of water.
Although it actually spread serious diseases, water-down milk was seen as more of an annoyance than a health hazard, and nothing much was done about it. It wasn’t until the 1840s that scandals in the liquor industry led to the first demands for milk reform.
THE SWILL MILK SCANDALS
In the mid-1800s, it was common for whiskey and other distillers to run dairy and beef businesses on the side. The manufacture of grain alcohol require huge amounts of corn, rye, and other fresh grains, which are cooked into a mash and then distilled. Once that distillation is complete, the remaining “swill” can be discarded… or, as the distiller discovered, it can be fed to cows.
Profit, not quality, was the priority with “swill herds.” As a result, conditions in many distillery-owned dairies were atrocious. The cows spent their entire lives tied up in tiny pens, which were rarely cleaned. They received no food other than the swill -and no fresh water at all, since distillers though there was already plenty of water in the swill.
Spoiled Milk
With no exercise, no real food, and no water, even the hardiest cattle sickened and died in about six months. The failing herds were milked daily until the very end; when a cow became too weak to stand on its own, it was hoisted upright with ropes so that it cold be milked until it died.
Milk produced by swill herds, as muckraking journalist Robert Hartley wrote in 1842, was “very thin, and of a pale bluish color,” the kind nobody in their right mind would buy. So distillers added flour, starch, chalk, plaster of Paris, or anything else they could get away with to make the milk look healthy. This adulteration only increased the amount of bacteria in milk that was already virtually undrinkable.
TAKING NOTICE
The toll that adulterated milk took on public health was severe: in New York City, where five million gallons of swill milk were produced and sold each year, the mortality rate for children under five tripled between 1843 and 1856.
No one knew for sure what was causing the child mortality rate to soar, and there was probably no single cause. But people began to suspect that bad milk was at least partially to blame. In May 1858, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, one of the most popular journals of the day, published a series of articles describing in graphic detail the conditions in some of New York’s swill dairies.
REFORMS
Public exposure had a devastating impact on the industry. Some distilleries got out of the milk business entirely; other cleaned up their act. Those that remained were forced out of business in 1862, when the state of New York outlawed “crowded or unhealthy conditions” in the dairy industry. Two years later, the state outlawed the industry outright, declaring that “any milk that is obtained from animals fed on distillery waste, usually called will, is hereby declared to be impure and unwholesome.”
Several other state followed suit, including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, and Indiana. As they took action, the spiraling infant death rate in the U.S. leveled off -and even began to decline. But there was plenty of work left to be done to ensure that milk was safe.
See also: part two of The Fight for Safe Milk: Pasteurization.
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Reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader, which comes packed with 504 pages of great stories.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – check ‘em out!
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.
Ready to brush up on your science? Don’t worry -it’s fake science. Here are the names and properties of various chemicals, elements, and other substances …that exist only in books, movies, and TV shows.
Dilithium: Crystalline mineral used in the operation of the warp drive on the U.S.S. Enterprise on Star Trek. It controls the “anti-matter” used to power the warp drive. which somehow allows the ship to travel through space faster than the speed of light. Dilithium is in the “hypersonic” family of elements.
Energon: Highly radioactive and extremely unstable, this substance is found throughout the universe, but in its liquid form it’s both fuel and food for the giant robots from space in the Transformers cartoons and movies. The search for energon is what leads the evil Decepticon robots to earth, where the chemical is abundant.
Beerium: In Yahoo Serious’s Young Einstein (1988), Albert Einstein turns out to be an Australian who, in addition to his many scientific pursuits, invented rock music and beer. He invents beer by splitting the beerium atom, which releases carbonation.
Byzanium: In Clive Cussler’s 1976 novel (and the 1980 movie) Raise the Titanic!, the Pentagon begins work on a secret defense system that uses sound waves to deflect missiles. But it requires tremendous power, which can only be produced by a rare, radioactive element called byzanium. And the world’s only store of it is locked in a vault on board the sunken Titanic, requiring the book’s protagonist, explorer Dirk Pitt, to go get it.
Adamantium: A metal alloy that covers the skeleton of Wolverine in the X-Men comics and movies. It’s what allows him to have metal claws protruding from his hands.
Ice-nine: This substance drives the plot of Kurt Vonnegut’s 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle. Ice-nine has such a high melting point that any substance that comes into contact with it instantly freezes. In the novel, scientists fear that since ice-nine could freeze everything on Earth, it could bring about the end of the world.
Carbonite: A Star Wars substance in which living things could be frozen and suspended indefinitely. Most notably, it’s how Han Solo was imprisoned for delivery to his nemesis, Jabba the Hut.
Unobtainium: In the movie Avatar (2009), earthlings go to the distant planet of Pandora to mine this fuel source, worth $20 million per kilogram. Writer James Cameron actually took the name from real life: scientists have long used “unobtainium” to describe rare or possibly non-existent materials.
Vibranium: A recurring substance in Marvel Comics, it first appeared on earth 10,000 years ago, when a meteorite made out of it crashed in Africa, causing natives to mutate. In the 1940s, a scientist named Dr. Myron MacLain obtained some while developing iron alloys for military tanks and used it to create an indestructible shield for the Nazi-fighting super-soldier Captain America.
Eitr: According to Norse mythology, this bright-blue liquid is the source of all life, from which the first creature, the giant Ymir, first emerged.
Amazonium: In the comics, Wonder Woman’s lightweight armor-like bracelets are made of this metal, found only on her native “Paradise Island”. (On the TV show, her bracelets are made of “feminum”.)
Melange: The much sought after spice from Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965), it’s a drug than can both extend life and bend time. Unfortunately, it’s extremely rare and extremely addictive. Once you’ve started taking it, you can’t stop -or you’ll die.
Deutronium: Found on various planets throughout the universe on the ’60s TV series Lost in Space, it’s combustible in liquid form, making it the fuel of choice for the Robinson family’s Jupiter 2 spaceship.
Cavorite: Making appearances in novels by H.G. Wells (War of the Worlds, First Men on the Moon), it’s a rare element that, when heated into a liquid and then cooled, can block the effects of gravity.
Nitrowhisperin: From Get Smart, it was invented by scientist Albert Pfitzer in an attempt to create silent fireworks. It’s exactly like nitroglycerin, except that it explodes in silence. The evil KAOS organization tries to use it to destroy the world in a 1968 episode of the series.
Chemical X: In the 1990s cartoon The Powerpuff Girls, the Professor attempts to concoct the “perfect girls” out of “sugar, spice, and everything nice”, but accidentally drops in Chemical X, which gives the three little girls super powers.
Mithril: A rare metal in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth of the Lord of the Rings, it looks like silver but is lighter and stronger than steel. When a cave troll stabs Frodo in the Mines of Moria, the hobbit is saved by his vest made of mithril.
Upsidaisium: From the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, this mineral floats in the air, unbound by gravity. Its only known source: Mt Flatten, a mountain that hovers in the sky. (Bullwinkle inherited the mine from his Uncle Dewlap.)
Flubber: In the 1961 Disney film The Absent-Minded Professor, Medfield College chemistry professor Ned Brainard (Fred MacMurray) botches a calculation and accidentally creates an elastic substance that absorbs energy when it hits a hard surface, causing it to bounce sky-high. He names it ‘flubber” (a contraction of “flying rubber”). First Brainard uses it to help basketball players jump higher, which helps them win the big game, and then he charges the flubber with radioactive particles, enabling his Model T to fly.
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The article above was reprinted with permission from the Bathroom Institute’s newest book, Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!
The following is an article from the book History’s Lists from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.
Rumor has it that Amelia Earhart and the grassy-knoll gunman have been found in a bar in Atlantis. Whew -three mysteries solved. Now, on to these.
1. THE BABUSHKA LADY
The Mystery: President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Many people lined the motorcade route, filming the event with still and video cameras. In the days after the shooting, police and the FBI confiscated a lot of the footage, and someone interesting shows up in many of the images -a woman wearing what looks like a traditional Russian headscarf called a babushka tied underneath her chin. Her back is to the camera, but it looks like she is also filming the event, and even as the people around her run for cover or hit the ground when the president is shot, the woman stands her ground and continues to film. Who is she?
Solved? No. In 1970, a woman named Beverly Oliver came forward, claiming to be the babushka lady. She said that all the hoopla and conspiracy theories around Kennedy’s assassination scared her into silence. She also claimed to have handed over her video footage to some mysterious men who identified themselves as FBI and CIA agents.
Most investigators, though, think Oliver’s story is a hoax. Her account of the day contradicts those of other people there, and the model of a movie camera she claimed to have used wasn’t on the market in 1963. No one else has come forward.
2. NEW JERSEY SHARK ATTACKS OF 1916
Mystery: You did not want to be a swimmer along the New Jersey coast in July 1916. Over 11 days that summer, five people were mauled by sharks in three different seaside towns -four victims died. Then, like now, shark attacks were rare; fatal attacks even more so. But newspapers sensationalized the story -nicknaming the shark the “Jersey Maneater”- and rumors about the type of shark and number of sharks terrified vacationers into staying away from the beach towns… which ended up costing businesses along the coast more than $200,000.
Solved? No one is sure. On July 14, a fisherman named Michael Schleisser produced a 325-pound great white shark that he said he’d caught near the town of Matawan, where the last three victims were attacked. When he gutted the animal, Schleisser found human bones in its stomach.
Most people were satisfied that the Jersey Maneater had been caught, and indeed the attacks stopped after that. But as often happens, later research said “Not so fast.” In 2002, the National Geographic Society released a report that questioned the species of shark implicated in at least three of the 1916 attacks. Two people were killed in the open ocean, but the three victims in Matawan were attacked in a creek fed by the ocean. According to National Geographic researchers, it’s unlikely that the creek would have a high enough salt content to support a great white shark. Most sharks need to keep a constant level of salt in their bodies at all times, and a mixture of fresh creek water and salt water wouldn’t do the trick. So these scientists think that an unidentified bull shark was actually the culprit (bull sharks are unique in that they can move easily from saltwater to freshwater environments). Whatever the species, the Jersey Maneater remains part of American lore, and it inspired one of the most successful movies of all time: Jaws.
3. RONGORONGO
The Mystery: S
panish explorers first visited Easter Island in the South Pacific in the 1770s. After they left, the indigenous people who lived there developed a type of picture writing now called rongorongo (which means “to recite” in the native language). They carved this “text” onto hundreds of wooden tablets, but by the 1860s, their descendants had lost the ability to read the rongorongo writing. Only a few dozen of the tablets are left today.
Solved? No. Scientists have been unable to decipher the writing.
4. THE MARFA LIGHTS
Mystery: Unidentified glowing orbs in the desert might sound like something out of the X Files, but they’re very real to people in the town of Marfa, Texas. The fist recorded sightings of the lights came in 1883 when a ranch hand noticed them and thought they were Indian fires. On further investigation, though, he found no ash from any fires or evidence that anyone had been there at all. And the story has been like that ever since. The lights glow red, orange, and yellow, appear on most clear nights, and bounce like balls in the sky near where Highway 67 and Highway 90 meet. But no one can actually identify where they’re coming from.
Solved? Not really. People with an interest in ghosts and ghost stories claim that the Marfa lights are supernatural spirits (both friendly and harmful), while others claim that they are aliens. But the most likely explanation is that they are some kind of mirage produced when warm and cold layers of air meet and bend light. The fact is, though, that no one really knows. You can’t see the lights up close, only from far away, so no one have ever been able to truly identify what they are. Texas considers them a tourist attraction, and the highway department built a viewing area off Highway 90 so that curious visitors could see the Marfa lights for themselves.
(Image credit: Flickr user BrtinBoston)
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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader History’s Lists.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.
If you’re a fan of cheesy films like Manos: The Hand of Fate, Plan 9 From Outer Space, and Troll 2, you’ll love this one. Uncle John saw it last when our local Bad Film Society screened it, and as he was watching, it occurred to him that it actually gave new meaning to the word “bad.” (But somehow he couldn’t stop talking about how great it was.)
THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN
On June 2003, a film called The Room premiered in a handful of Los Angeles theaters. It’s the story of a love triangle between Johnny, a banker; Lisa, his girlfriend; and Johnny’s best friend Mark. The film was the brainchild of Tommy Wiseau, the actor who plays Johnny. Wiseau wrote, directed, produced, and distributed the film. He financed The Room, too, shelling out $6 million of his own money to make it, plus thousands more on print and TV ads and a single giant billboard overlooking busy Highland Avenue in Los Angeles.
The Room was Wiseau’s first feature film. He hoped to use it to launch a Hollywood career… but all he succeeded in doing was blowing $6 million in record time. The Room played to nearly empty theaters for just two weeks before it was yanked from the screen; in that time it had grossed only $1,900, not enough to cover even one month’s rent on the Highland Avenue billboard. Put another way, for every million Wiseau spent, The Room earned less than $320, making it one of the worst box-office flops in history.
CITIZEN PAIN
Is there anything about The Room that isn’t bad? The acting is stunningly incompetent- none of the actors had ever had a major film role before, and Wiseau was incapable of providing decent direction. And the love scene between Johnny and Lisa is creepy (picture a Troll doll having its way with a seat cushion, except that Lisa is the cushion). Wiseau recycles the footage in a second love scene 20 minutes after the first, so you get to watch it twice.
As a screenwriter, Wiseau was even worse. New characters appear out of nowhere and aren’t properly identified, so it’s never clear who they are. A number of subplots -such as drug abuse, unrequited love, and bad real estate deals- are introduced, then quickly abandoned. (“I got the results of the test back. I definitely have breast cancer,” Lisa’s mother tells her, and the subject never comes up again.) And though the thickly-accented Wiseau refuses to this day to say where he comes from, English is clearly not his first language. The Room is full of clunky, confusing, and unintentionally funny dialog: When a (never-identified) character catches Lisa and Mark kissing at Johnny’s birthday party, and confronts them, Mark yells, “Leave your stupid comments in your pocket!”
The following is an article from the History’s Lists book from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.
Some familiar candy brands have been in production for more than a century, while some others reach back even further. How did these sweet treats get their start? We’ve got their sugar-coated beginnings right here.
1. NECCO WAFERS
The oldest mass-produced candy brand in the United States, NECCO wafers got their start in 1847 when Oliver Chase, a candy-making English immigrant, went into business selling the wafers with his brother Silas. (Chase also invented the machine the wafers were stamped out on.) Their company became the basis for the New England Confectionery Company, which rebranded the candy as NECCO Wafers around 1910 or 1912.
2. SQUIRREL NUT CHEWS
Adults today might be more familiar with Squirrel Nut Zippers as an eclectic rock band active in the 1990s, but the candies the band took their name from reach back a full century earlier to 1890, when the first of the excessively chewy taffy candies known as Squirrel Nut Chews rolled off the line of the Austin T. Merrill Company in Massachusetts. The “zippers” candy arrived in the 1920s. Since 2004, the candies have been made by NECCO.
3. HERSHEY’S CHOCOLATE BAR
The quintessential American chocolate bar got its start in 1900 when Milton Hershey perfected a formula to mass-produce milk chocolate, which until that time had been a confection limited primarily to the upper classes. The bar’s widespread success helped Hershey to found what is now the Milton Hershey School, in 1909, which provides education for disadvantaged children.
4. TOBLERONE
The famously triang
ular bar of Swiss chocolate with nougat, almonds, and honey got its shape and name (a combination of the last name of inventor Theodor Tobler and torrone, the Italian word for “nougat”) in 1908. Given the image of the Matterhorn on its wrapper, you may be forgiven for thinking the triangular shape is a tribute to the Alps, but the company website maintains the shape was actually inspired by “a red and cream-frilled line of dancers at the Folies Bergeres in Paris, forming a shapely pyramid at the end of a show.”
5. GOOGOO CLUSTERS
A regional favorite from Nashville, Tennessee, where it was invented in 1912, this circular candy bar’s claim to fame is that it was the first “combination” candy bar -that is, the first made with more than one type of candy (in this case, marshmallow, caramel, and roasted peanuts), all covered in milk chocolate. In the 1930s, the Standard Candy Company advertised the GooGoo Cluster as “a nourishing lunch for a nickel!” -a claim they’d be unlikely to get away with today.
6. MARY JANE
These pocket-sized taffies made from molasses and peanut butter were named for the aunt of Charles N. Miller, who invented the candy in 1914 and inherited the candy company his father had founded in a house originally belonging to Paul Revere. Mary Janes eventually became so popular that the Miller Company stopped making other candies to focus on that brand alone. At the moment, however, the candy is being made by NECCO.
7. CLARK BAR
The crispy, peanuty chocolate bar was the signature bar of the D.L. Clark candy company, named for Irish immigrant David Clark, and founded in what is now the north side of Pittsburgh in the early 1900s. The Clark Bar came into existence in time to become a favorite for U.S. soldiers fighting World War I, and its popularity carried over after the boys came home. Like so many early candy favorites, this one is also currently produced by NECCO.
8. BABY RUTH
A popular misco
nception about this chocolate-covered bar of caramel and peanuts, created in 1920, is that it was named for baseball player Babe Ruth. While disputed, it has never been proven false. But Baby Ruth candy maker Curtiss Candy Company sued another candy maker who put out a “Babe Ruth Home Run Bar”, on grounds that the candy names were too similar. The official line from Curtiss Candy, echoed to this day from contemporary producer Nestle, is that the bar is named after Ruth Cleveland, daughter of U.S. president Grover Cleveland. Some sources allege that Curtiss Company made up the Ruth Cleveland story in order to win the lawsuit and that it was actually named for the baseball player. Skeptics note that “Baby Ruth” died in 1904 -16 years before the creation of the candy bar.
9. MOUNDS
The Mounds Bar was created in 1920 by the Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company and was originally a single bar of chocolate-covered coconut instead of the current two smaller bars. Although the Peter Paul Company would later produce a number of coconut-based treats (including Almond Joy), during World War II the company faced severe coconut shortages. Rather than ration its top product, the company temporarily discontinued several other candy brands to ensure that Mounds would stay in production.
10. MILKY WAY
Mars Inc., one of the largest privately-held companies in America, got its start with this candy bar in 1923, when the candy maker Forrest Mars developed the candy to approximate the taste of a malted milk drink in chocolate bar form. In 1926, the bar was offered in chocolate and vanilla flavors, with the vanilla version becoming the Forever Yours bar for over fifty years before becoming the Milky Way Dark bar (now the Milky Way Midnight).
BEST-SELLING CANDY BY COUNTRY
1. United States: M&Ms
2. Australia and the United Kingdom: Cadbury Dairy Milk Bar
3. Germany: Milka milk chocolate bar
4. Brazil: Trident chewing gum
5. Japan: Meiji chocolate bar
6. France: Hollywood chewing gum
7. Russia: Orbit chewing gum
8. Mexico: Trident chewing gum
9. Thailand: Hall’s cough drops
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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader History’s Lists.
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader is having their annual Holiday Sale, in which you can save 30% on your purchase! Get free shipping on orders of $35 or more by using the code HOL10SHIP. And check out the BRI’s newest volume, Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader.
You probably don’t give Santa a second look when you see him in a department store or on a street corner every December …but maybe you should.
SANTA COPS
By December 2001, Mafia fugitive Francesco Farina had been on the run from Sicilian police for more than five years. Holed up in what he thought was a great hideout -a flat in downtown Catania- Farina was able to look out his window and see whether the cops were closing in on him. But all he saw were the regular assortment of Christmas shoppers, schoolchildren, and a Santa Claus ho-ho-hoing on the street corner. A few days before Christmas, thinking that the coast was clear, Farina decided to go out on the town. Bad idea: the guy in the red suit wasn’t Santa after all. A succession of surveillance cops dressed as Santa had kept their eyes on Farina, who ended up spending Christmas in jail.
SANTA’S FISTS OF FURY
An unidentified Santa was cruising down a LeHigh Acres, Florida street in his convertible when he was approached by 20-year-old Jonathan Danzey, who asked Santa for a present. Informed there was nothing for him in Santa’;s sack, Danzey got angry. Words were exchanged, Santa got out of the car, and Danzey tried to punch him. According to Katherine Phillips, who witnessed the altercation, “Santa Claus whipped his butt.” He ripped Danzey’s shirt, knocked him to the ground, then drove away. The cops soon arrived and arrested Danzey on drunk and disorderly charges. “He won, ” Danzey conceded, “but he was stronger and more soberer.”
SANTAS ON THE RUN
One of the oddest sights in the history of sports took place in Newtown, Wales, in December 2002. More than 1,000 runners -both male and female- participated in a four-mile race for charity …all dressed in full Santa Claus garb: black boots, red pants, red coat, and a big white beard. Said one of the runners: “It’s a lot easier to run in a Santa suit than to try to hold a normal conversation in one.”
SANTA PROTESTORS
What if Santa were banned from Christmas? That’s what they tried to do in the small town of Kensington, Maryland in 2001. Some of the townspeople complained that it made them feel uncomfortable having a “religious figure” participate in the annual tree-lighting ceremony, so the town fathers decided to ask Santa to stay home. Unfortunately, not everyone in town agreed with the decision. Result: 50 Santas showed up and marched on City Hall. Pro- and anti-Santa factions clashed; one Santa was arrested.
SANTA MELTDOWN
Shortly before Christmas in 1999, Kelley Fornatoro placed her 19-month-old son next to Santa for a holiday portrait in a Woodland Hills, California shopping mall. The baby immediately started crying. So Fornatoro suggested that Santa put his arm around the boy to calm him down. That’s when Santa had a fit of his own. “I will not imprison your child!” he yelled at her. “Was it worth it for you to torture your child for a picture? You must be an evil person.” As Fornatoro retrieved her baby, she said she’d be filing a formal complaint. “You can complain about me if you want, but I am Santa Claus. I am the best person in the world!” Then he got really mad. While parents rushed to cover their shocked children’s eyes, Santa began undressing. He took off his hat, beard, wig, coat, and belt, and was down to his red, baggy pants and a tank top when security guards escorted him out of the building.
THE SANTA
In a quest to find Great Britain’s ultimate Santa, organizers at Guinness World Records sponsored the first-ever “Santathon” in December 2001. The event included a field of eight top contenders donned in full beards, red suits, and black boots. Competitive events included sack-hauling, pie eating, chimney climbing, stocking filling, and ho-ho-hoing. First prize was awarded to David Broughton-Davis, 43, from Croydon, a professional department store Santa. “I’m not very proud to admit that my best event was eating three large mince pies,” Broughton-David lamented after being awarded the Golden Boots trophy. “I just wish that event hadn’t taken place before the chimney climb. It was hard on the stomach.”
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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!
Comments Off The following is an article from Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.
From Uncle John’s Dustbin of History, here’s the final installment of our story about the person most responsible for making Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 as devastating as it was. Part one is in this post.
BEFORE THE STORM
On the evening of Saturday, December 6, 1941, Yoshikawa sent what would turn out to be his the last of his coded messages to Tokyo:
VESSELS MOORED IN HARBOR; NINE BATTLESHIPS; THREE CLASS-B CRUISERS; THREE SEAPLANE TENDERS; SEVENTEEN DESTROYERS. ENTERING HARBOR ARE FOUR CLASS-B CRUISERS; THREE DESTROYERS. ALL AIRCRAFT CARRIERS AND HEAVY CRUISERS HAVE DEPARTED HARBOR. …NO INDICATION OF ANY CHANGES IN U.S. FLEET. “ENTERPRISE” AND “LEXINGTON” HAVE SAILED FROM PEARL HARBOR. …IT APPEARS THAT NO AIR RECONNAISSANCE IS BEING CONDUCTED BY THE FLEET AIR ARM.
Though Yoshikawa provided much of the intelligence used to plan the attack on Pearl Harbor, he did not know when -or even if- it would occur. (“To entrust knowledge of such a vital decision to an expendable espionage agent would have been foolish,” he later explained.) He learned the attack was underway the same way that Hawaiians did: by hearing the first bombs go off as he was eating breakfast, at 7:55 a.m. on the morning of the 7th.
INFAMY
Yoshikawa had been feeding the war planners in Japan a steady stream of information for eight months, and his efforts had paid off. The Japanese military accomplished its objective with brutal effectiveness: The naval strike force, which included nine destroyers, 23 submarines, two battleships and six aircraft carriers bristled with more than 400 fighters, bombers, dive-bombers, and torpedo planes, had managed to sail more than 4,000 miles across the Pacific undetected and then strike at the home base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet while its ships were still at anchor and the Army Air Corps planes were still on the ground.
Twenty American warships were sunk or badly damaged in the two-hour attack, including the eight battleships along Battleship Row, the main target of the raid. More than 180 U.S. aircraft were destroyed and another 159 damaged. The destruction of the airfield on Ford Island, in the very heart of Pearl Harbor, was so complete that only a single aircraft managed to make it into the air. More than 2,400 American servicemen lost their lives, including 1,177 on the battleship Arizona, and another 1,178 were wounded. It was the greatest military disaster in United States history.
more …
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, remains one of the most infamous events in U.S. history. Yet the spy who played a key role in the sneak attack is a forgotten man, unknown even to many World War II buffs.
UNDER COVER
On March 27, 1941, a 27-year-old junior diplomat named Tadashi Morimura arrived in Honolulu to take his post as vice-consul at the Japanese consulate. But that was just a cover- “Morimura” was really Takeo Yoshikawa, a Japanese Imperial Navy Intelligence officer. His real mission: to collect information about the American military installations in and around Pearl Harbor.
Relations between the United States and Japan had been strained throughout the 1930s and were now deteriorating rapidly. In 1940, after years of Japanese aggression in China and Southeast Asia, Washington froze Japanese assets in the U.S., cut off exports of oil and war material, and moved the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific fleet from southern California to Pearl Harbor, bringing it 2,400 miles closer to Japan.
The fleet was in Pearl Harbor to stay. But if Japan wanted its funds unfrozen and the crippling economic embargo lifted, the United States insisted that all Japanese troops had to leave China and Southeast Asia. This was a demand that Japan was unwilling to meet. Instead, it began preparing for war, and by early 1941, the eyes of Japan’s military planners had turned to Pearl Harbor.
THE AMERICAN DESK
Yoshikawa had become a spy in a roundabout way. He’d been a promising naval academy graduate, but his career hopes were dashed in 1936 when, just two years after graduation, stomach problems (reportedly brought on by heavy drinking) forced him out of the Japanese Navy. The following year he landed a desk job with Naval Intelligence, where he was put to work learning all that he could about the U.S. Navy.
From 1937 until 1940, Yoshikawa pored over books, magazines, newspapers, brochures, reports filed by Japanese diplomats and intelligence officers from all over the world, and anything else he could find that would give him information about the U.S. Navy. “By 1940 I was the Naval General Staff’s acknowledged American expert,” he recounted in a 1960 article in the journal Naval Institute Proceedings. “I knew by then every U.S. man-of-war and aircraft by name, hull number, configuration, and technical characteristics. I knew, too, a great deal of information about the U.S. naval bases at Manila, Guam, and Pearl Harbor.”
more …
The following is an article from The Best of the Best of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.
If you think the radio talk shows get a lot of strange calls, take a look at some of the questions that the folks at the Butterball Turkey Talk-line have fielded over the years.
DIAL “T” FOR TURKEY
If you bought a Butterball turkey in the 1970s, it would have included a sheet of cooking instructions, just like they still do today. But people still called the company to complain when their birds didn’t come out right, which made Butterball wonder if people even bothered to read and follow the instructions. Disappointing dinners make for poor repeat business, so in 1981 Butterball started printing a toll-free number on the packaging and inviting customers to call in with any cooking questions they might have.
In those days 800 numbers were fairly rare, and the idea of calling one to get free cooking advice was a novelty. The company wasn’t sure that callers would get the concept or even understand that the long-distance number was free. But they hired six home economists, set them up with phones in the company’s test kitchen, and waited to see if the phone would ring. They were flabbergasted when more than 11,000 people jammed the line during the holiday season, especially on Thanksgiving, when the company figured hardly anyone would bother to call. An American institution was born.
CLUELESS ON LINE 4
Today Butterball has an automated phone system and a website to handle the most frequently asked questions. Still, more than 100,000 people call in each year to talk to the 50 turkey experts who staff the phones from November 1 through December 25. The advent of cordless and cell phones has put the Talk-line in even greater demand: People now call right from the dinner table to have someone talk them through the carving of the bird!
What’s your favorite way to cook a turkey? Over the years, Butterball has tried to come up with cooking tips for every weird turkey fad that has come down the pike. In the early 1980s, they perfected a technique for cooking turkey in the microwave- which, believe it or not, was the third-most popular question in those days. (By 1987, it had dropped all the way down to #20.) Do you cook your turkey in a big brown paper bag? In a deep fryer? In a pillowcase smeared with butter? On a countertop rotisserie? The Butterball people won’t always approve, but they will try to help.
DO TURKEYS HAVE BELLY BUTTONS?
Butterball has fielded some pretty bizarre questions over the past 25 years. Here are some favorites, along with the answers.
* Should I remove the plastic wrap before I cook my turkey? Yes.
* I don’t want to touch the giblets. Can I fish them out with a coat hanger? Yes.
* Can I poke holes all over the turkey and pour a can of beer over it to keep it moist? You’ll do more harm than good- the skin keeps the moisture in. Poking holes in it will dry it out.
* Can you thaw a frozen turkey using an electric hair dryer? Or by wrapping it in an electric blanket? In the aquarium with my tropical fish? In the tub while the kids are having their bath? No, no, no, and no. If you’re in a hurry, thaw the turkey in the kitchen sink by immersing it in cold water. Allow half an hour per pound, and change the water every half hour.
* How can I thaw 12 turkeys all at once? The caller was cooking for a firehouse, so Butterball advised them to put them all in a clean trash can and hose them down with a firehose.
* The family dog bit off a big piece of the turkey. Can the rest of it be saved? Maybe. If the damage is localized, cut away the dog-eaten part of the bird and serve the rest. Disguise the maimed bird with garnishes, or carve it up out of view of your guests and serve the slices. The less your guests know, the better.
* The family dog is inside the turkey and can’t get out. A few years back, Butterball really did get a call from the owner of a chihuahua that climbed inside the raw bird while the owner’s back was turned. The opening was big enough for the dog to get in, but not big enough for it to get back out. The turkey expert instructed the owner on how to enlarge the opening without injuring the dog. (No word on whether the bird was eaten.) Butterball has also fielded calls from owners of gerbils and housecats. “I was told not to talk about that,” one Talk-line staffer told a reporter in 1997.
* I need to drive two hours with my frozen turkey before I cook it. Will it stay frozen if I tie it to the luggage rack on the roof of my car? The caller was from Minnesota, so the answer was yes. If you live in Florida, Arizona, or Hawaii, the answer is no.
* I’m a truck driver. Can I cook the turkey on the engine block of my semi while I’m driving? If I drive faster, will it cook faster? There’ve been cases in wartime where soldiers cooked turkeys using the heat of Jeep engines, but Butterball gives no advice on the subject.
* I scrubbed my raw turkey with a toothbrush dipped in bleach for three hours. Is that enough to kill the harmful bacteria? The heat of the oven is what kills the bacteria; scrubbing the turkey with bleach makes it inedible. (In extreme cases like these, or anytime the Talk-line staffers fear the bird has become unsafe to eat, they advise the cook to discard the bird, eat out, and try again next year. If the caller can’t imagine Thanksgiving without turkey, they can get some turkey hot dogs.)
* I don’t want to cook the whole turkey, so I cut it in half with a chainsaw. How do I get the chainsaw oil out of the turkey? Toss the turkey and go get some hot dogs.
* The turkey in my freezer is 23 years old. Is it safe to eat? Butterball advised the caller that the bird was safe to eat, but that it probably wouldn’t taste very good. “That’s what we thought,” the caller told the Talk-line. “We’ll give it to the church.”
MORE QUESTIONS FOR THE TALK-LINE
* How long does it take to thaw a fresh turkey?
* How long does it take to cook a turkey if I leave the oven door open the whole time? That’s how my mom always did it.
* Does the turkey go in the oven feet first or head first?
* Can I baste my turkey with suntan lotion?
* When does turkey hunting season start?
* How do I prepare a turkey for vegetarians?
(All images from the Butterball website)
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The article above was reprinted with permission from The Best of 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 an article from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.
Let’s get really, really, really small…
In the fourth century B.C. a Greek named Democritus (known as the “laughing philosopher” because he was always making fun of people) proposed a theory of matter that remained uncontested well into the 19th century. (This was before he went mad and blinded himself with hot glass in an effort to heighten his intellectual acuity.)
Anyway, Democritus suggested that all matter is made up of tiny indestructible pieces that he named atomos, meaning undivided. Today it’s known that atoms can certainly be broken up into subatomic particles, and those particles can be broken into more particles, and so on. (Image credit: Flickr user edgeplot)
AND THEN THERE WERE THREE
For about 2,200 years, scientists were happy enough with the idea that matter was made up of atoms. This all changed in 1886 when E. Goldstein discovered the positively charged particle that he named “proton”, after the Greek root proto, meaning “first”, since it was the first subatomic particle ever to be discovered.
Shortly after that, in 1897, the English physicist J.J. Thomson (who also only used his initials -is it some sort of club?) discovered negatively charged particles that he called “corpuscles,” which today are known as electrons.
In 1932, English scientist Sir James Chadwick (finally, a man with a real name!) discovered the neutron, the subatomic particle that lacks a charge.
THREE QUARKS FOR MUSTER MARK!
Of course, scientists were not content to stop at having three subatomic particles -they’re funny that way- so they feverishly looked for more. And sure enough, by splitting a proton or a neutron, smaller subatomic particle were created. These particle were named “quarks” in 1964 by scientist Murray Gell-Mann, who got the name from the following quote in James Joyce’s novel Finnegan’s Wake: “Three quarks for Muster Mark! Sure he hasn’t got much of a bark/And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.”
The following is an article from The Best of the Best of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.
Who’s your favorite cartoon character? Ears ours.
IMPRESSIVE STATS
Bug Bunny is the world’s most popular rabbit:
* Since 1939, he has starred in more than 175 films.
* He’s been nominated for three Oscars, and won one -in 1958, for “Knighty Knight, Bugs” (with Yosemite Sam).
* Every year from 1945 to 1961, he was voted “top animated character” by movie theater owners (when they still showed cartoons in theaters).
* In 1985 he became only the 2nd cartoon character to be given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (Mickey Mouse was the first).
* For almost 30 years, starting in 1960, he had one of the top-rated shows in Saturday morning TV.
* In 1976, when researchers polled Americans on their favorite characters, real and imaginary, Bugs came in second …behind Abraham Lincoln.
THE INSPIRATIONS
Bugs was born in the 1930s, but cartoon historians say his ancestry goes further back. A few direct antecedents:
* Zomo. You may not have heard of this African folk-rabbit. but he’s world famous. Joe Adamson writes in Bugs Bunny: Fifty Years and Only One Grey Hare:
Like jazz and rock’n'roll, Bugs has at least some of his roots in black culture. Zomo is the trickster rabbit from Central and Eastern Africa who gained audience sympathy by being smaller than his oppressors and turning the tables on them through cleverness -thousands of years before Eastman invented film. A con artist, a masquerader, ruthless and suave, in control of the situation. Specialized in impersonating women.
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.
These hoaxes are so absurd, it’s hard to believe that anyone was fooled …but lots of people were.
WHAT A HELLHOLE
The Story: In early 1990, the Trinity Broadcasting Network reported that Russian geologists on Siberia’s Kola Peninsula had discovered Hell. They were using a giant drill, said TBN, to test how deep into the Earth they could reach. In November 1989, nine miles into the ground, the drill suddenly stopped spinning -it had hit air. The team lowered a thermometer into the hole. The temperature inside was 2,200°F -five times as hot as it should have been at that depth. They lowered a microphone down to record the sounds of shifting plates, and heard human screams. Then a black, spectral figure in the shape of a bat screeched and flew out of the hole.
The Hoax: TBN claimed (on the air) that the source for the story was Ammennusatia, “Finland’s Most Respected Newspaper.” They’d gotten the article from a Texas minister who sent it in, claiming it was from Finland’s top scientific journal. Actually, Ammennusatia is a paranormal newsletter (it is from Finland). They got the story from a staffer who wrote it from memory after having read it in Etela Soumen, another Finnish newspaper, which ran the piece in a section where readers were invited to publish anything they liked -including fiction. Someone had sent the story to Etela Soumen after reading it an another weird Finnish newsletter called Vaeltajat. That paper got it from an obscure American religious newsletter called Jewels of Jericho, which had completely made it up. TBN reported the story without bothering to find out if it was true. A few months later, they announced that because of the story, 3,000 people had converted to Christianity. Ironically, the story was rooted in fact: from 1970 to 1989, Soviet scientists were involved in a project called the Kola Superdeep Borehole. The point was to drill as deep into the Earth as possible. They got about 7.6 miles in, but never encountered any fiery air holes, human scream, or ghostly bats.
VIVOLEUM FOR EVERYONE!
The Story: At the 2007 Gas and Oil Exhibition, Canada’s largest annual oil-industry convention, a National Petroleum Council representative named Shepard Wolff and an Exxon Mobile executive, Florian Osenberg, unveiled “Vivoleum” -a revolutionary process that turned human flesh into gasoline (very handy, should oil reserves ever dry up). The executives then played a film about a deceased Exxon janitor who had volunteered to be turned into Vivoleum, and passed out candles to be lit in the janitor’s memory. That’s when they announced that the candles were the janitor- transformed by Vivoleum.
The Hoax: After the two men passed out the “human candles,” the event’s organizers realized that “Wolff” and “Osenberg” were phonies.They were really Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, two members of the Yes Men, an anti-consumerism group that stages high-profiles stunts to embarrass corporations with poor environmental or human rights records. Bichlbaum and Bonanno had set up a fake Exxon website (vivoluem.com), through which they got themselves invited to the Oil Exposition. Convention organizers threw them out and threatened to have them arrested. A few days later, Exxon demanded they shut down the Vivoleum site. They declined, saying it was a parody and thus protected under the First Amendment. (The web site has since shut down.)
MOSTLY CLOUDY
The Story: On a Sunday morning in June 2007, CT2, a television station in the Czech Republic, was airing a weather update. As weather stats scrolled along the bottom of the screen, a camera panned the country’s scenic Krkonose Mountains. Suddenly, off in the distance, a fiery mushroom cloud filled the sky. The screen went black -the Czech Republic had just been nuked.
The Hoax: A Czech performance art group called Initiative Ztohoven had hacked into CT2′s feed and replaced it with its own footage -undetectably similar …up until the bomb part. The mushroom cloud was just simple video editing done on a computer. After the initial blackout, CT2 came back on the air to reassure viewers they they weren’t under attack. Members of Initiative Ztohoven are under investigation by the Czech government and may face terrorism charges.
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This article was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!
Comments Off The following is an article from Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader.
Here’s a bit of American history we’re all familiar with… but know almost nothing about. The BRI wants to change that, because we don’t want witch trials -or with hunts- in our era. After all, someone just might decide that reading in the bathroom is a sign of demonic possession.
(Image credit: Flickr user Lexie Rydberg)
BACKGROUND The trouble at Salem, Massachusetts, began with two young girls acting oddly. It explodes into one of the strangest cases of mass hysteria in American history. In the six-month period between March and September 1692, 27 people were convicted on witchcraft changes; 20 were executed, and more than 100 people were in prison awaiting trial.
CHILD’S PLAY
In March 1692, nine-year-old Betty Parris and her cousin Abigail Williams, 12, were experimenting with a fortune-telling trick they’d learned from Tituba, the Parris family’s West Indian slave. To find out what kind of men they’d marry when they grew up, they put an egg white in a glass… and then studied the shape it made in the glass.
But instead of glimpsing their future husbands, the girls saw an image that appeared to be “in the likeness of a coffin.” The apparition shocked them… and over the next few days they exhibited behavior that witnesses described as “foolish, ridiculous speeches,” “odd postures,” “distempers,” and “fits.”
Reverend Samuel Parris was startled by his daughter’s condition and took her to see William Griggs, the family doctor. Griggs couldn’t find out what was wrong with the girl, but he suspected the problem had supernatural origins. He told Rev Parris that he thought the girl had fallen victim to “the Evil Hand” -witchcraft.
The family tried to keep Betty’s condition a secret, but rumors began spreading almost immediately -and within two months at least eight other girls began exhibiting similar forms of bizarre behavior.
THE PARANOIA GROWS
The citizens of Salem Village demanded that the authorities take action. The local officials subjected the young girls to intense questioning, and soon the girls began naming names. The first three women they accused of witchcraft were Tituba and two other women from Salem Village, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne.
The three women were arrested and held for questioning. A few weeks later two more suspects, Martha Cory and Rebecca Nurse, were arrested on similar charges. And at the end of April a sixth person -the Reverend George Burroughs, a minister that Abigail Williams identified as the leader of the witches- was arrested and imprisoned. The girls continued to name names. By the middle of May, more than 100 people had been arrested for witchcraft.
THE TRIALS
On May 14, 1692, the newly appointed governor, Sir William Phips, arrived from England. He immediately set up a special court, the Court of Oyer and Terminer, to hear the witchcraft trials that were clogging the colonial legal system.
* The first case heard was that against Bridget Bishop. She was quickly found guilty of witchcraft, sentenced to death, and hung on June 10.
* On June 19 the court met a second time, and in a single day heard the cases of five accused women, found them all guilty, and sentenced them to death. They were hung on July 19.
* On August 5 the court heard six more cases, and sentenced all six women to death. One woman, Elizabeth Proctor, was spared because she was pregnant- and the authorities did not want to kill an innocent life along with a guilty one. The remaining five women were executed on August 19.
* Six more people were sentenced to death in early September. (Only four were executed: one person was reprieved, and another woman managed to escape from prison with the help of friends.) The remaining sentences were carried out on September 22.
*Two days later, the trials claimed their last victim when Giles Cory, an accused wizard, was executed by “pressing” (he was slowly crushed to death under heavy weights) after he refused to enter a plea.
REVERSAL OF FORTUNE
By now the hysteria surrounding the witch trials was at its peak: 19 accused “witches” had been hung, about 50 had “confessed” in exchange for lenient treatment, more than 100 people accused of witchcraft were under arrest and awaiting trial -and another 200 people had been accused of witchcraft but had not yet been arrested. Despite all this, the afflicted girls were still exhibiting bizarre behavior. But public opinion began to turn against the trials. Community leaders began to publicly question the methods that the courts used to convict suspected witches. The accused were denied access to defense counsel, and were tried in chains before jurors who had been chosen from church membership lists.
The integrity of the girls then came into question. Some of the adults even charged that they were faking their illnesses and accusing innocent people for the fun of it. One colonist even testified later that one of the bewitched girls had bragged to him that “she did it for sport.”
As the number of accused persons grew into the hundreds, fears of falling victim to witchcraft were replaced by an even greater fear: that of being falsely accused of witchcraft. The growing opposition to the proceedings came from all segments of society: common people, ministers -even from the court itself.
THE AFTERMATH
Once the tide had turned against the Salem witchcraft trials, many of the participants themselves began having second thoughts. Many of the jurors admitted their errors, witnesses recanted their testimony, and one judge on the Court of Oyer and Terminer, Samuel Sewall, publicly admitted his error on the steps of the Old South Church in 1697. The Massachusetts legislature made amends as well: in 1711 it reversed all of the convictions issued by the Court of Oyer and Terminer (and did it a second time in 1957), and it made financial restitution to the relatives of the executed, “the whole amount unto five hundred seventy eight pounds and twelve shillings.”
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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader.
This special edition book covers the three “lost” Bathroom Readers – Uncle John’s 5th, 6th and 7th book all in one. The huge (and hugely entertaining) volume covers neat stories like the Strange Fate of the Dodo Bird, the Secrets of Mona Lisa, 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. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute
The following is an article from Uncle John’s All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader.
It was a dark and stormy night… no, it really was. And that was the perfect setting for telling one of the scariest stories of all time. Here’s how it happened.
CABIN FEVER
It all started in the summer of 1816. Percy Bysshe Shelley, the famed English poet, was vacationing along the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland with his 18-year-old future wife Mary Wollstonecraft. In adjoining villas were their friends, the poet Lord Byron, and Lord Byron’s personal physician Dr. John Polidori. “It was a wet, ungenial summer,” Mary Shelley later wrote, and then the rain “confined us for days.”
The group passed some of their time reading German horror stories. Then inspired by the tales, Lord Byron announced to the group, “We will each write a ghost story.” And with that challenge, two of the most enduring monsters in English literature came into being.
DYNAMIC DUO
Mary Wollstonecraft wrote a tale about a mad scientist who assembles a monster out of body parts stolen from cadavers and then brings the monster to life. Polidori, she recounted later, “had some terrible idea about a skull-headed lady, who was punished for peeping through a keyhole.” Percy Shelley came up with a story “founded on the experiences of his early life” …and Lord Byron created a story about a vampire.
Wollstonecraft spent the rest of the summer turning her story into a novel-Frankenstein. Lord Byron never did complete his story, but Dr. Polidori was so intrigued by the vampire idea that he scrapped the skull-headed lady and, borrowing from Byron, later wrote The Vampyre, the first vampire novel of any substance to appear in English literature. The Vampyre was published in the 1819 edition of New Monthly Magazine, and earned Polidori £30.
REVENGE!
The Vampyre might have been just another simple retelling of the traditional vampire legends of Eastern Europe, were it not for the fact that Polidori and Lord Byron had once been lovers. Cooped up in the villa in Geneva that summer, they were driving each other crazy. Polidori was jealous of Byron’s increasingly close friendship with Percy Shelley, and, perhaps because of this, he decided to make the vampire character a parody of Lord Byron.
The vampires of Eastern European lore were not that different from today’s conception of werewolves: They were scary, uncivilized creatures, more animal than human. But Polidori’s character was different. His vampire was a nobleman, and an immoral, sinister antihero named Lord Ruthven-not unlike Lord Byron, whose numerous sexual liaisons were the scandal of English society.
The name Ruthven was another dig at Byron. Polidori took the name from Ruthven Glenarvon, the main character of Glenarvon, a popular novel, written by Lady Caroline Lamb, another of Byron’s former lovers. Lamb, too, had intended her character to be a satirical slap at Byron.
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader.
In the late 1950s, teenage culture was big business-Elvis, James Dean, and rock’n'roll were bringing in the bucks. That’s when (not so coincidentally) a brand new kind of exploitation film appeared-the teenage monster movie. Today it’s just a cliche, but “I Was a Teenage… (fill in the blank)” was hot stuff for a while. Here’s Uncle John’s salute to the best (and worst) of them.
I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF
Starring: Michael Landon, Whit Bissell, Yvonne Lime, Barney Phillips, Joseph Mell. Director: Gene Fowler, Jr.
The Plot: Tony Rivers-played by Michael Landon in his first feature film-is a hot-tempered teenager who’s always getting into fights. (In fact, the first scene is a fist thrown right at the audience.) But when he accidentally hits his girlfriend, Arlene, he realizes things are out of control. So he decides to see Dr. Brandon, a local psychiatrist.
Bad move. Brandon doesn’t want to cure Tony… he wants to experiment on him. Using “retrogression therapy”, he injects Tony with a serum and hypnotizes the teenager to bring out his “primitive” side. Now whenever Tony gets startled, he grows body hair and fangs and suddenly gets the urge to kill. After killing at least one person and scaring the hell out of everyone in town, the creature is gunned down by the cops. Of course, he kills the crazy shrink just before he dies. Inevitable final line (delivered by the cop): “It is not for man to interfere in the ways of God.”
Commentary: Not a bad film, as ’50s schlock goes. Legend has it that after seeing the poster, American International Pictures’ (AIP) head Samuel Z. Arkoff declared it “A million dollar title in a hundred-thousand dollar movie.” AIP knew how to exploit teenagers, but by today’s standards, they kept it pretty tame. In her website, “And You Call Yourself a Scientist!“, Liz writes:
Astonishingly, I Was A Teenage Werewolf provoked the ire of politicians and moral crusaders alike, who accused the film of “promoting juvenile delinquency.” One can only assume that-as is often the case with politicians and moral crusaders-they hadn’t actually seen the film they were attacking.
It is quite clear that at first AIP underestimated the cash crop their adolescent audiences represented. Later, when the money began pouring in, the executives pitched their films more and more to teenagers, and cared less and less about upsetting the adults; but this early effort is not only a moral little film, it is populated with some of the best-behaved teenagers and the most caring adults ever put on screen. Cops, teachers, parents-they only want what’s best for the kids. There’s even a subplot about the perils of parental neglect. As for the kids themselves, well, you should see what constitutes their idea of a hot party. Warning: before you get to the good part of the film, you have to sit through some of the most painfully embarrassing teenage party scenes ever committed to film, which cause Tony’s girlfriend to announce that “I’ve never had so much fun!” -sad, but probably true.
IMMORTAL LINES
They don’t write ‘em like this anymore.
D. Brandon (the Mad psychiatrist): “At last, after years of searching, I’ve found a suitable person for my experiment! His record at school, what the principal told me, and what I learned through Dt-Sgt Donovan gives him the proper disturbed emotional background. And with what I found out from the physical examination, this boy’s my perfect subject! There were certain tell-tale marks on his body only I would recognize…”
Assistant: “But you know what might happen!”
Brandon: “‘Might’? In science, one must be sure!”
Brandon: “Mankind is on the brink of destroying itself! The only hope for the human race is to hurl it back to its primitive dawn, to start all over again. What’s one life compared to such triumph?”
Brandon: “Through hypnosis, I’m going to regress this boy back… back into the primitive past that lurks within him! I’m going to transform him, and unleash the savage instincts that lie hidden within!”
Janitor: “I know what killed him. He was killed by… a werewolf!”
Policeman: “A what?”
Janitor: “In the old country, in my little village in the Carpathian mountains, there was a story…”
Assistant: “Alfred, you read the paper! You know what happened!”
Brandon: “There’s a difference between a newspaper story and a scientific report!”
Assistant: “Aren’t you wasting your time? Or do you have a second victim in view?”
Brandon: “I’m not wasting my time, and I don’t like to hear the subject of a world-shaking experiment referred to as a ‘victim’!”
Brandon: “We’ll have it all on film, from the time I give him the injection to through the transformation! Even the most exacting, the most sceptical of of scientists will be convinced that I have penetrated the deepest secrets of creation!”
MORE TEENAGE MONSTER-MANIA
I Was A Teenage Frankenstein (1957) “Herman Cohen’s sequel to I Was A Teenage Werewolf, with Whit Bissell reappearing as a mad doctor-a relative of the infamous Baron. Ludicrous as its title, with severed limbs graphically offered up for their shock value (and severed limbs in 1957 were an onscreen rarity) …You, too will be a teenage zombie if you sit through this.”
-Creature Features, John Stanley
Teenage Caveman (1958) “After …I Was A Teenage Frankenstein, American International Pictures further mined the youth market with-what else-Teenage Caveman. Robert Vaughn stars as a boy (he would later become the man …From U.N.C.L.E., that is), who defies his elders by venturing… into the forbidden land… where he finds ‘the monster who kills with a touch.’ Directed by Roger Corman in ten days on a $70,000 budget.”
-Cult Flicks and Trash Pics
Teenagers From Outer Space (1959) “‘They blast the Flesh off humans!’ claimed the ads. A young alien falls for a teenage earth girl and ruins the plans of his invading cohorts by blowing them up. The invaders, who arrive in a flying saucer, carry deadly ray guns and breed giant lobster monsters for food. Only the shadow of one of the creatures is shown in this extremely low-budget feature.”
-The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, Michael Weldon
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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader.
This special edition book covers the three “lost” Bathroom Readers – Uncle John’s 5th, 6th and 7th book all in one. The huge (and hugely entertaining) volume covers neat stories like the Strange Fate of the Dodo Bird, the Secrets of Mona Lisa, 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. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.
A 12,000-year-old grave in Israel has touching evidence of the long, close relationship between humans and dogs. The grave contains a human skeleton whose hand rests upon the bones of a small puppy. Through the centuries dogs have given people loyalty, aid, and companionship. So what did people do to get such understanding and helpful friends? Well, actually, they created them themselves.
NEVER CRY WOLF
(Image credit: Flicker user ucumari)
Scientists have discovered 400,000-year-old wolf bones mingled with human bones. But they believe that the man and the wolf relationship goes back hundred of thousands of years before that. Early humans probably first used wolves as food; but the wolves would have also been using humans, scavenging through their garbage dumps and over time moving closer and closer to the center of camp and the human’s food source-the campfire. After a while, the gentler wolves were accepted by humans as part of the group.
Wolf packs and early human tribes had a lot in common. They were both willing to follow a leader, cooperate, and work together to protect members of their group. So, a wolf-human cooperation was natural-especially when it came to hunting.
Wolves began to follow humans when they went hunting. Wolves gave off cues when prey was around and humans soon figured out that wolves possessed a superior sense of smell and could detect prey at long distances. Man and wolf began to cooperate and eventually wolves became active participants and true partners with humans in the hunt for food.
AN EVOLVING PUPPY TALE
When selecting a wolf pal, humans naturally favored the most cooperative animals. They associated cooperative behavior with a puppylike appearance in an adult wolf and encouraged those animals to stick around. They also began picking out the most gentle, trainable puppies to raise.
(Image credit: Flickr user Paul Moody)
In effect humans replaced nature’s selection process with a man-made one. And after thousand of years of human meddling-about 14,000 years ago-a new animal evolved. Thanks to domestication and their diet, these animals had smaller brains, heads, and teeth than wolves. We call them dogs. As wolves evolved into dogs, they became even more important to humans because of their usefulness and their companionship.
Dogs have always had a wide variety of size and body proportions, but about 3,000 to 4,000 years ago, folks tinkered with Mother Nature in earnest to create specialized working and companion dogs. That’s when the difference in breeds really began to emerge.
The Romans bred and trained working dogs and lap dogs. As breeding continued, dogs became more and more specialized. Herding dogs were bred to work with livestock. Sporting dogs were bred for bird hunting. Hounds were bred to hunt by scent or by sight. Working dogs were bred to perform many tasks, including herding, hauling, and guarding. Terriers were bred to hunt rodents and other vermin. Toy breeds were bred to be companions and some of those were bred to be simply lap warmers.
DOGS OF WAR
(Image credit; Flickr user United States Marine Corps)
Alexander the Great was said to have helped develop a huge breed called Molossus, as a battle dog that could knock a man right off a horse. In the 16th century, Spanish conquistadors used kill-trained greyhounds and large Mastiff-type dogs against Native Americans and to assist in their conquest of the New World.
During the Civil War, dogs were used for sentry duty, to guard prisoners, and to accompany troops as mascots. In World War I, dogs were used to detect enemy forces, carry messages, search battlefields for wounded soldiers, and evacuate wounded soldiers by pulling small ambulance carts. Dogs also cheered up soldiers at the front lines and those wounded in hospitals.
During World War II, the United States really got serious about using dogs to protect its military and military-related property. Scout dogs were used to good advantage in Vietnam; they served double duty as security dogs. Mine-detector dogs and tunnel dogs were both trained during this conflict. Vietnam also saw the development of the tracker dog. Tracker dogs were used to hunt down the enemy.
The modern canine soldier is trained to save lives, not take them. American war dogs help our troops avoid potentially deadly encounters. They work as sentries on sensitive military installations, or lead their handlers to hidden caches of weapons, explosives, and drugs.
COP DOGS
(Image credit: Flickr user Thomas Hawk)
The organized use of dogs in law enforcement for the apprehension of criminals was established in the early 1900s. Working German shepherds became so good at helping law enforcement personnel that they were nicknamed “police dogs”. The idea of using dogs for police work was largely brought about by the development of and organization of purebred dog clubs. The earliest examples of police dog programs were those in Germany, Belgium, and England.
EXCEEDINGLY WELL BRED
Dogs have been successful as a species because they have adapted well to the needs and desires of humans for loyalty, companionship, and assistance. Dogs and people communicate effectively through voice, body language, and facial expressions, though in many ways dogs are much better at understanding humans than humans are at understanding dogs.
Dogs and humans have a relationship that is based on mutual support. Dogs have a greater difficulty surviving on their own and a dog’s dependence on humans make it a sensitive pal, cooperative and responsive to its owner’s moods. Dogs are wonderful companions, they help people make a living, and they save lives. Man’s best friend is even a healer, reducing stress and lowering blood pressure.
Dogs may be mankind’s greatest accomplishment-the creation of a superior being. After all, a dog will never turn o you as long as you treat it right. The same can’t be said about people.
*****
“Dogs look up to you. Cats look down on you. Give me a pig. He just looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal.” -Winston Churchill
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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.
The book is a compendium of entertaining information chock-full of facts on a plethora of history topics. Uncle John’s first plunge into history was a smash hit – over half a million copies sold! And this sequel gives you more colorful characters, cultural milestones, historical hindsight, groundbreaking events, and scintillating sagas.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader.
From the “Dustbin of History” files, here’s the pungent tale of two midwest states whose pride and honor were once challenged…by a slab of stinky cheese.
IT AIN’T EASY BEING CHEESY
It began in the winter of 1935 when a doctor in Independence, Iowa, prescribed an odd medicine to an ailing farm wife: Limburger cheese. The doctor figured the heavily aromatic cheese would help clear the woman’s clogged sinuses. (If you don’t know what Limburger smells like, give it a whiff the next time you’re at the supermarket.) So the order was put through to Monroe, Wisconsin, to send some Limburger cheese-post haste.
Why Monroe? Swiss cheesemakers first arrived there in 1845. At the time, Wisconsin was in the depths of an economic depression and cheese helped pull them out of it.By 1910, Wisconsin had become the cheese-making capital of the United States, producing more cheese than any other state. And Monroe was the Limburger capital of Wisconsin.
THE BATTLE LINES ARE DRAWN
Monroe’s postmaster, John Burkhard, approved the delivery and sent it on its way. But the mail carrier in Independence, Iowa, who delivered the Limburger was so offended by the stench wafting through his roadster that he refused to deliver it. Citing a postal rule that said mail would only be delivered if it “did not smell objectionable,” Independence’s postmaster, Warren Miller, concurred without examining or even smelling the cheese. He had it sent back to Monroe on the grounds that it could “fell an ox twenty paces.”
Burkhard took it personally; to insult Limburger is to insult not just Monroe, but all of Wisconsin and its proud cheese heritage. So Burkhard rewrapped the package and sent it back to Iowa. Miller promptly returned it to Wisconsin. War was brewing.
THE BATTLE OF DUBUQUE
Burkhard took his gripe all the way to the United States Postmaster General in Washington, D.C. At first, he couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. So Burkhard sent him some Limburger. The Postmaster general then decided that, yes, the cheese smelled bad, but no, it wasn’t hazardous. And the war was over, right? Wrong.
By this time the press had sniffed out the story. At a time when the nation was mired in the Great Depression and Hitler was rising to power in Germany, a story about smelly cheese was a breath of fresh air. And unwilling to give in, postmaster Burkhard challenged postmaster Miller to a “cheese-smelling duel”-if Miller could sit at a table and not wretch from the stench of freshly-cut Limburger, then he would never again raise a stink about Wisconsin and its cheese. Miller accepted. Dozens of people from each town-as well as a throng of reporters-showed up at the Julien Hotel in Dubuque, Iowa, on the cold afternoon of March 8, 1935, to witness the standoff.
A Duel to the Breath
The two sat across from each other at a table. While flashbulbs flickered and onlookers whispered, Burkhard placed a box on the table, unwrapped it, and produced a very strong sample of his state’s pride and joy, praising not only its medicinal qualities, but boasting that nothing on Earth tasted better with beer. The tension was so thick that you could cut it with a knife. Famed Milwaukee Journal reporter Richard S. Davis sent out a dispatch, calling it a “duel to the breath.”
As Burkhard prepared to push the slab of cheese over to Miller, he offered Miller a clothespin and a gas mask. But Miller just shook his head and meekly surrendered. “I won’t need that clothespin,” he lamented, “I haven’t any sense of smell.”
The crowd gasped. The battle was over before it began. Burkhard was immediately declared the winner, and Miller had to agree to allow any and all Wisconsin cheese safe passage through Iowa’s postal routes. The next day newspapers in 30 states ran a picture of the olfactorily-challenged Miller looking bewildered next to a piece of steaming Limburger. And now the war was over, right? Wrong. The final battle was yet to come.
THE BATTLE OF BEAVER DAM
While Burkhard was basking in victory, something he’d said about Limburger at that table in Dubuque-that nothing tasted better with beer-was churning through Miller’s head. Every good Iowan knew that the best food to eat with beer was smoked whitefish, not some stinky piece of cheese. Miller just couldn’t let it go. So he challenged Burkhard with another contest: a fight for the title of “Best Snack in the World.” Once again the press got whiff of the food feud, and they convened at the neutral site chosen for the contest: the American Legion Hall in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin.
This confrontation was even more serious than the first-now there were judges. And with so much at stake, both sides used underhanded tactics; they bribed the judges with beer. The fish-heads bought a round, then the cheese-heads. And once all palates were properly whetted, the showdown began.
Carnage
First came the sliced Limburger with beer. Then the Iowans gave the judges smoked whitefish…and more beer. The battle raged on: Limburger and beer, whitefish and beer. Limburger and beer, whitefish and beer. Finally, when the judges could eat or drink no more, they sent the least-inebriated member of their panel to the podium: “The judgeth have reached a dethision. It was unamus… unans… they all said the same darn thing! Cheese’n beer s’wunnerful. Fishes’n beer s’wunnerful, too. But when you have Limburger cheese and smoked whitefish and beer, heck, it don’t get no better than that!”
Both sides were declared victorious, Burkhard and Miller retained their respective states’ honor, and Limburger cheese had risen from being referred to as “hazardous material” to holding the co-title of “Best Snack in the World.”
VICTORY PARADE
That October, Monroe, Wisconsin, held its annual Cheese Day parade. All the press coverage from the Limburger cheese war made it the biggest Cheese Day ever. Fifty thousand people showed up to bask in the glory-including the farmer’s wife (who had healed quite nicely). Warren Miller came all the way from Iowa and was given a place of honor in the parade-right next to his friend John Burkhard.
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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader, a fantastic book by the Bathroom Readers’ Institute.
The 17th book in this the Bathroom Reader series is filled to the brim with facts, fun, and fascination, including articles about the Origin of Kung Fu, How to Kill a Zombie, Women in Space and more!
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader.
Today, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is one of the most popular memorials in the United States, but at the time it was conceived it was so controversial that it’s a wonder it got built at all.
MOVING PICTURE
One evening in March 1979, Jan Scruggs went to see The Deer Hunter, a movie about a group of friends who go off to fight in the Vietnam War. Scruggs had served in Vietnam, and the movie upset him so much that he sat up all night drinking whiskey to dull the pain. But something good came from the experience, too: Scruggs decided he wanted to try and get a memorial built for Vietnam veterans, to honor their sacrifices and aid in the healing process. In April he and an attorney friend, also a Vietnam vet, founded the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund to raise money to build the monument.
LAYING THE FOUNDATION
After a slow start, the memorial fund began to make progress. More veterans joined the efffort, the money started coming in, and legislation setting aside three acres on the Mall in Washington, D.C. for the memorial sailed through both houses of Congress. Jimmy Cater signed the bill into law on July 1, 1980.
As fundraising continued, the organization announced that the design for the memorial would be chosen in a national contest. Any U.S. citizen over the age of 18 was eligible to enter. The deadline for entry was March 31, 1981; the winning design would be chosen by a jury of eight architects, sculptors, and other professionals in May. For an entry to be considered, it had to meet four criteria: 1) It had to be “reflective and contemplative” in nature; 2) It had to fit in with its surroundings on the Mall; 3) It had to contain the names of all U.S. personnel who died in the war or went missing in action; and 4) It could not make a political statement about the war.
In all, 4,241 people entered designs. The entries were identified by number only to prevent the judges from knowing who was responsible for each design. It took them four days to winnow the entries down to 232 and then to 39 and then to 1, entry number1,026. That entry had been submitted by Maya Lin, a 21-year-old Yale architecture student who created it as a class assignment. (It got a B+). Her design won by unanimous vote.
THE WALL
Lin’s design was simple and stark: Two long black walls that met at a 125 degree angle. The walls were just over ten feet high where they met at the apex, and taper to just eight inches tall at the far ends.
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader.
Mad magazine has a place in American pop culture as one of the most successful humor magazines ever published. It’s also great bathroom reading. Here’s a brief history.
BACKGROUND
In 1947 Max Gaines, owner of Educational Comics (which published biblical, scientific, and historical comic books), was killed in a boating accident. He left the business to his 25-year-old son, William, a university student.
The younger Gaines renamed the company Entertainment Comics (EC) and got rid of the stodgy educational stuff. Instead, he started publishing more profitable crime, suspense, and horror comics like Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horrors, and House of Fear.
THE BIRTH OF MAD
Gaines paid his writers and artists by the page. Most of his employees preferred this-but not Harvey Kurtzman. Kurtzman was a freelancer who worked on Frontline Combat, a true-to-life battle comic that portrayed the negative aspects of war. He enjoyed writing it, but it took so long to research and write that he couldn’t make a living doing it. So he went to Gaines and asked for a raise. Gaines refused, but suggested an alternative-in addition to his current work, Kurtzman could produce a satirical comic, which would be easier and more profitable to write. Kurtzman liked the idea and immediately started creating it.
The first issue of Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad: Humor in a Jugular Vein debuted in August 1952. It was a flop…and so were the next two issues. But Gaines didn’t know it; back then, it took so long to get sales reports that the fourth issue-which featured a Superman spoof called Superduperman-was already in the works before Gaines realized he was losing money. By then, Mad had started to sell.
RED SCARE
Gaines didn’t expect Mad to be as successful as his other comics, but it turned out to be the only one that survived the wave of anti-comic hysteria that swept the country during the McCarthy era.
In 1953, Frederic Wertham, a noted psychologist and self-proclaimed “mental hygienist”, published a book called The Seduction of the Innocents, a scathing attack on the comic book industry. Few comics were left untouched-Wertham denounced Batman and Robin as homosexuals, branded Wonder Woman a lesbian, and claimed that such words as “arghh”, “blam”, “thunk”, and “kapow” were producing a generation of illiterates. The charges were outlandish, but the public believed it; churches across the country even held comic book burnings.
To defend themselves, big comic book publishers established the Comics Code Authority (CCA) to set standards of “decency” for the comic book industry and issue a seal of approval to comics that passed scrutiny. (Among the co-called reforms: only “classic” monsters such as vampires and werewolves could be shown; authority figures such as policemen, judges, and government officials could not be shown in any way that encouraged “disrespect for authority,” and the words “crime”, “horror”, and “weird” were banned from comic book titles.) Magazine distributors would no longer sell comics that didn’t adhere to CCA guidelines.
Gaines refused to submit his work the the CCA, but he couldn’t withstand public pressure. By 1954, only four EC titles were left. Amazingly, Mad was one of them.
MAD LIVES
Gaines knew Mad wouldn’t survive long unless he did something drastic to save it. So rather than fight the CCA, he avoided it: He dropped Mad‘s comic book format and turned it into a full-fledged “slick” magazine. Thus, it was no longer subject to CCA censorship.
The first Mad magazine was published in the summer of 1955. “We really didn’t know how Mad, the slick edition, was going to come out,” one early Mad staffer later recalled, “but the people whop printed it were laughing and getting a big kick out of it, so we said ‘This has got to be good.’”
The first issue sold so many copies that it had to be sent back for a second printing. By 1960, sales hit 1 million copies, and Mad was being read by an estimated 58% of American college students and 43% of high school students.
In 1967, Warner Communications, which owned DC Comics, bought Mad, but it couldn’t affect sales or editorial content: as part of the deal, Warner had to leave Gaines alone. In 1973 sales hit an all-time high of 2.4 million copies; since then they’ve leveled off at 1 million annually in the United States. There are also 12 foreign editions. Gaines died in 1992, but Mad continues to thrive.
WHAT, ME WORRY?
Alfred E. Neuman has been Mad magazine’s mascot for years. But his face and even his “What, me worry?” slogan predate the magazine by 50 years. They were adapted from advertising postcards issued by a turn-of-the-century dentist from Topeka, Kansas, who called himself “Painless Romine”.
(Image source: Kansas State Historical Society)
Mad artists were able to rationalize their plagiarism, according to Harvey Kurtzman, after they discovered that Romaine himself had lifted the drawing from an illustration in a medical textbook showing a boy who had gotten too much iodine in his system.
Kurtzman first dubbed the boy “Melvin Koznowski”. But he was eventually renamed Alfred E. Neuman, after a nerdy fictional character on the “Henry Morgan Radio Show.” Strangely enough, that character had been named after a real-life Alfred Newman, who was the composer and arranger for more than 250 movies, including The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Grapes of Wrath.
MAD FACTS
*In 1965, Mad magazine was turned into an off-Broadway play called The Mad Show. Notices were sent out to New York theater critics in the form of ransom notes tied to bricks. The show gave performances at 3:00 p.m. and midnight, and sold painted rocks, Ex-Lax, Liquid Drano, and hair cream in the lobby. The play got great reviews from the press and ran two years, with bookings in Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and other major cities. It was reportedly a major influence on the creators of “Laugh-In”.
*The Mad Movie, Gaines’ first attempt to adapt Mad for the silver screen, was dumped before production began, and Up The Academy, Mad’s second effort, was so bad that Gaines paid $50,000 to have all references to the magazine edited out of the film. An animated TV series in the early 1970s was pulled before it aired. In the mid-1990s, “Mad TV” debuted on the Fox network.
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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader.
This special edition book covers the three “lost” Bathroom Readers – Uncle John’s 5th, 6th and 7th book all in one. The huge (and hugely entertaining) volume covers neat stories like the Strange Fate of the Dodo Bird, the Secrets of Mona Lisa, 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. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute
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