Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader
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BIG VIDEO TREASURES
Great films to watch when you feel like living large.
THE BIG COUNTRY (1958) Western
Starring: Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Charlton Heston Review: “A sweeping Western epic about two families feuding over water rights. Staggering vistas and a grandiose story make this an emblematic Western, and some critics believed that it was an allegory about the Cold War.” (All Movie Guide)
BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET (1958) Comedy/Foreign Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman Review: “A charming comedy. A robbery meticulously planned (by a sadsack mix of desperate unemployed and washed-up pros) in which everything goes hilariously wrong.” (TimeOut Film Guide)
BIG WEDNESDAY (1978) Drama/Comedy
Starring: Jan-Michael Vincent, Gary Busey, William Katt Review: “The years have been kind to director John Milius’s gorgeously shot surfing epic about 12 years in the life of hotheaded hero Mattt and his two Malibu pals. Milius, a former lifeguard and surfer, based it on his heated feelings on men, guns, sex, surfboards, and war.” (Peter Travers’ 1,000 Best Movies on DVD)
BIG NIGHT (1996) Comedy
Starring: Stanley Tucci, Tony Shalhoub, Allison Janney
Review: “This gem tells the beautiful and touching story of two brothers trying to make it as restaurateurs, straight off the boat from Italy. A warm, funny, and heartbreaking look at one night in the company of some truly interesting people.” (FilmCritic.com)
BIG FISH (2003) Comedy/Fantasy
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup
Review: “This Tim Burton movie is about a grown son’s exasperated search for the truth behind his father’s larger-than-life stories. Think of the Arabian Nights meets Grimm’s Fairy Tales, with just a touch of Forrest Gump and The Wizard of Oz.” (Film Threat)
LITTLE VIDEO TREASURES
Great films to watch when you need a little pick-me-up.
LITTLE BIG MAN (1970) Adventure/Western
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway
Review: “121-year-old Jack Crabb spins a series of yarns about how he tried his hand at a gaggle of professions: gunman, gambler, alcoholic, and businessman, alternating between life in town and on an Indian reservation. One of the most entertaining (and overlooked) Westerns of the early 1970s.” (eFilmCritic)
LITTLE NEMO (1992) U.S./Japanese/Animation
Review: “Nemo is a youngster whose dreams have transported him, his flying squirrel, and his bed to Slumberland, where he’s tricked by a con man into unlocking a forbidden door. An entertaining animated feature for older children.” (Video’s Best)
LITTLE VOICE (1998) British/Comedy/Drama
Starring: Brenda Blethyn, Michael Caine, Jane Horrocks Review: “Laura never speaks above a squeak—unless she’s listening to the records of Judy Garland or Shirley Bassey. In those moments, she can perfectly imitate each singer. When her mother hooks up with an unscrupulous talent agent, they try to exploit her for their own gain. A miraculous performance.” (Boxoffice Magazine)
LITTLE CAESAR (1931) Crime/Drama
Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Review: “Small-time hood becomes underworld big-shot; Robinson as Caesar Enrico Bandello gives star-making performance in classic gangster film, still exciting.” (Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide)
LITTLE MAN TATE (1991) Drama/Family
Starring: Jodie Foster, Dianne Wiest
Review: “A dramatization of the struggle between a working-class mother and a wealthy educator for custody of a gifted child. It isn’t often that a family film is both heartwarming and thought-provoking, but this little gem is the exception.” (DVD & Video Guide)
THE GREAT MOON HOAX
No, not the one about the Hollywood
studio and all that��the other one.
A WALK ON THE MOON
On August 25, 1835, the first of a series of front-page articles was published in the Sun, a two-year-old newspaper in New York City. The subject was Sir John Frederick William Herschel, one of the most respected scientists of his day, especially in the field of astronomy. He’d already identified and named seven moons of Saturn and four of Uranus, and had received numerous awards for his work, including a British knighthood. The information for the article came from the Edinburgh Journal of Science and a Dr. Andrew Grant, who had recently accompanied Herschel to South Africa, where they were mapping the skies of the Southern Hemisphere. To do the job properly, Herschel had built a massive telescope—the lens was 24 feet in diameter—that operated “on an entirely new principle.” It was all very scientific and complicated.
The first article didn’t reveal much, but over the next six days readers received some amazing news. In the course of his investigations with the new device, Herschel had aimed his new telescope at the moon. The scope was so powerful that looking through it was almost like standing on the lunar surface, enabling Herschel to make an astonishing discovery: The moon was teeming with life. And not just plants—there were animals running all over the place.
EXPERTS AGREE
Extraterrestrial life was a hot topic in the early 1800s. Telescopes were getting larger, and astronomers were discovering more and more stars, moons, planets, comets, nebulae, etc. Along with these discoveries came claims—sometimes from respected astronomers—that it was only a matter of time before life was discovered on other planets. One especially popular book at the time was The Christian Philosopher, or the Connexion of Science and Philosophy with Religion, by Scottish scientist and minister Thomas Dick, first published in 1823. In it Dick estimated (somehow) that there were roughly 21 trillion inhabitants in our solar system—4 million of whom lived on our moon!
MOON BATS
Over the six days, the Sun’s readers learned even more new information about the moon. A few examples: The lunar surface is covered in forests, lakes, rivers, and seas, inhabited by spherical creatures that roll across the beautiful beaches, blue unicorns that wander the mountains, and two-legged beavers that live in huts and use fire. But there was one even more outlandish claim: There are intelligent humanoids on the moon—about four feet tall, largely covered in hair, with faces that are “a slight improvement upon that of the large orangutan.” And they have wings. They spend their time flying around, eating fruit, bathing, and talking with each other. Herschel gave them the scientific name Vespertilio-homo, or “man-bat,” and said they were actually civilized:They seemed eminently happy, and even polite, for we saw, in many instances, individuals sitting nearest these piles of fruit select the largest and brightest specimens, and throw them archwise across the circle to some opposite friend or associate who extracted the nutriment from those scattered around him, and which were frequently not a few.
The articles caused a sensation. Newspapers across America reprinted them without raising any questions (the New York Times called the information they contained “probable and possible”), and the Sun instantly became the biggest-selling paper in the country. To further cash in on the “moon fever” they had started, the Sun even reprinted the story in pamphlet form, along with sketches of the newly discovered moon species, and sold thousands of them, too.
BACK TO EARTH
Over the next few weeks, the story spread to Europe, where it enjoyed the same success it had in America. But doubts about the story were growing, too. Eventually it got to South Africa…and to Sir John Herschel. He, of course, denied the claims immediately. And it turned out that the Edinburgh Journal of Science had ceased to exist years earlier and there was no such person as Dr. Andrew Grant. “The Great Moon Hoax,” as it became known, was over.
The truth of the hoax’s origin remains a mystery. Most accounts say the story was written by the Sun’s Cambridge-educated reporter Richard Adams Locke, and that he did it as a satire to mock the gullible public and “scientists” like Thomas Dick, who made wild claims based on nothing but speculation. (Locke never publicly admitted to writing the articles, although ther
e are some credible accounts of him later confessing to their authorship in private.)
Herschel later said he thought the hoax was hilarious…at first. But he grew annoyed at having to answer questions about the “moon people,” which continued for years afterward. The Sun never issued a retraction for the story, and never admitted that it was a hoax. By 1836 the Sun had a circulation of 20,000—and was the largest newspaper in the world.
EPILOGUE
• Richard Adams Locke left the Sun in August 1836 and started his own paper, The New Era. There he published another hoax, “The Lost Manuscript of Mungo Park,” the purported diaries of a famed Scottish adventurer in Africa. It failed to catch the public’s imagination, as too many people knew that Locke was the author.
• Thomas Dick, who was probably overjoyed about the articles when he first heard of them, was much less happy when he found out they were hoaxes, saying that “such attempts to deceive are violations of the laws of the Creator.”
• An American preacher who heard about the story took up a collection in the hopes of sending Bibles to the man-bats on the moon. (Just how he proposed to do that is unknown.)
• In April 1844, the Sun published the story of a European aerialist named Monck Mason, who had just completed the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in a hot-air balloon…in three days. The “Balloon Hoax” is the second-most famous of the Sun’s hoax stories—and it was written by Edgar Allan Poe.
CHEATING DEATH
By all measures, these people should have died. Yet somehow, some way, miraculously…they survived.
HELLO, I MUST BE GOING
On August 6, 1945, Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in the worst possible place at the worst possible time: He was in Hiroshima, Japan, on a business trip. That day, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city, eventually killing 140,000 people. But Yamaguchi survived, suffering just some burns to his upper body. He returned to his hometown…of Nagasaki, Japan. Three days later, on August 9, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on that city. As of 2009, 93-year-old Yamaguchi was still alive, the only person to have witnessed and survived both atomic bombings.
FATHER KNOWS BEST
Joseph Rabadue, 17, was sitting on the floor of his Bangor Township, Michigan, living room watching TV in March 2009. His father told him to “get off the floor and sit on the couch.” Good timing. A few minutes after Joseph moved to the couch, a pickup truck smashed into the house, tossing the family’s TV across the room and onto the spot on the floor where Joseph had been sitting. Had he not moved, he’d probably have been killed.
THE HITS JUST KEEP COMIN’
The 1997 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City was plagued by high winds. The Cat in the Hat balloon came loose from a float and, carried by the strong winds, knocked down a lamppost. The post struck Kathleen Caronna, who was knocked unconscious and remained in a coma for a month, but recovered completely. Nine years later, New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle was flying his private airplane over New York City when he lost control and crashed into the Belaire Apartments in Manhattan. Lidle died, but a resident of the Belaire cheated death for the second time: Kathleen Caronna, who avoided death and injury because she wasn’t home.
HEAD CASE
After a domestic-violence conviction in April 2009, Donald Sexton was ordered to stay away from his wife, Tammy, for six months. But a week into the restraining order, he went to her rural Mississippi home in the middle of the night, intending to murder her. As Tammy Sexton lay in bed, Donald shot her in the head, and then went outside and shot himself. He died instantly; Tammy Sexton, however, did not. When police arrived, she had a rag around her head and was drinking a cup of tea. A medical examination at the University of Alabama revealed that the .380-caliber bullet had somehow entered Tammy’s forehead and exited through the back of her head, passing through the lobes of her brain without leaving any damage whatsoever.
PLANE AMAZING
In January 1972, Vesna Vulovic was working as a flight attendant for Yugoslav Airlines. An hour into a flight from Denmark to Yugoslavia, an engine suddenly exploded, ripping the plane apart and sending 27 people plunging more than 33,000 feet to their deaths. But not Vulovic. The explosion thrust her into part of the fuselage, which crashed into a snow-covered hill. Somehow, Vulovic survived—she fell into a coma when she crashed, but awoke three days later in a hospital. In less than a year, she had fully recovered and become a national hero in Yugoslavia. She still gets noticed in public, especially when she flies. “People always want to sit next to me,” Vulovic says.
MOVIE TRIVIA
In 2009 the average movie ticket costs $9.00. Where does all the money go? According to Money magazine,
• $.61 goes to pay the actors.
• $.90 covers distribution, such as prints and shipping the movie reels to theaters.
• $1.54 goes to the studio that made the movie.
• $1.90 goes to cover marketing costs (previews, advertising, etc.).
• $4.05 goes to the movie theater itself.
THE WRONG MEANING
Language is a constantly evolving system. Over time, the meanings of words can change dramatically, leaving their original or “true” definitions behind. Here are some examples of words that, technically, most of us misuse every day.
PERUSE
How We Use It: To skim or browse written material quickly to get the gist
What It Really Means: The opposite—to read it thoroughly and carefully
BLATANT
How We Use It: Extremely obvious or unabashedly conspicuous
What It Really Means: Offensively loud or noisy
DISINTERESTED
How We Use It: Indifferent
What It Really Means: Impartial (as in lacking a conflict of interest)
PLUS
How We Use It: And
What It Really Means: It’s a subtle difference, but “plus” means “added to” or “increased by,” not “another”
PRESENTLY
How We Use It: Now What It Really Means: Soon
RETICENT
How We Use It: Reluctant What It Really Means: Inclination to be quiet
FORTUITOUS
How We Use It: A lucky happenstance for the good
What It Really Means: Any chance action, good or bad
ANXIOUS
How We Use It: Eagerly looking forward to an upcoming event
What It Really Means: Full of anxiety; dreading an upcoming event
PRISTINE
How We Use It: Very clean, perfectly spotless
What It Really Means: Unchanged from its original state
DAWN
How We Use It: The beginning of the day—sunrise
What It Really Means: The twilight just before sunrise
FOOL’S GOLD
Everybody is familiar with the phrase, “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.” We know better, yet we’re still susceptible to promises of getting something for nothing. So why do we keep falling for them?
IT REALLY SUCKS!
One day in late 1896, the Reverend Prescott F. Jernegan approached Arthur P. Ryan, a jeweler in Middletown, Connecticut. He told Ryan that he was quitting the preaching business and entering a new field of work: God had come to him in a vision, he said, and told him how to build a device that could extract gold from seawater. He had been working on the device for years, he said, and had finally perfected it. And he wanted Ryan to verify that it worked.
Jernegan was a member of an old and respected New England family, not to mention a respected local preacher, and it had been discovered a few years earlier that there are indeed trace amounts of gold in seawater. Ryan trusted Jernegan, so he agreed to test the device.
TESTING, TESTING…
Jernegan’s “Gold Accumulator,” as he called it, was a wooden box whose interior was lined with zinc. It had holes cut into its sides, which allowed water to enter it. Inside the box was a battery connected to a metal pan. If y
ou put mercury into the pan, along with a “secret ingredient,” Jernegan explained to Ryan, and then lowered the box into seawater, the electrified mercury-and-secret-ingredient mix would absorb the gold out of the water.
Ryan and several colleagues took the Gold Accumulator to the coastal town of Providence, Rhode Island. Jernegan refused to go along—to assure them that he wouldn’t be able to somehow falsify or influence the results of the test. Ryan and the others lowered the device off a pier into the water and spent the night in a nearby shed to make sure nobody interfered with it. In the morning, they pulled it back up and opened it. What did they find? Flakes of gold in the pan. There was only a little gold—maybe a couple of dollars’ worth—but Jernegan’s plan was to build a seaside factory with more than 1,000 accumulators. Ryan and the others believed they’d be rich and quickly signed on to invest in the project.