Good news! Only 40% of all heart attacks are fatal.
KISSY FACE
Lipstick manufacturers do whatever they can to stand out. One way to do that is to give the colors weird names. Here are some we came across. (They’re real.)
Barbarella
Beautiful Liar
Damage
Jail Bait
Catfight
Funny Face
Hot Voodoo
Suzi Sells Sushi
By the Seashore
Manhunt
Promiscuous
Hellbent
Everlasting Rum
Nice Knickers
Mindgame
Heartbreak Heather
Silent Mauvie
Raisin’ Cane
Thursday
Melon of Troy
Celebrity Meltdown
But Officer
Gypsy Soiree
St. Pertersburgundy
No Competition
La La Land
Trailer Trash
Cash Flow
Smitten
Woolloomooloo
Electric Banana
Sex Kitten
Sell Out
How to Jamaica Million
Smut
In a Nutshell
Foolish Virgin
Go Fig
Vamp
Crazed
Boiling Point
Hot Pants
Tempt Me
Chai Love You
Box-Office Beige
Plum Plot
Nude Beach
Scorption
Taxi Cab
Toast of the Town
Devil’s Claw
Sweet Mama
Marooned
Diva Brown
Mischief
Poppy Dust
Phantom
Sugar and Spice
Wuss
Bambi
Mystery
Marcia Marcia
Marcia
Cowboy
Gidget
Metal Glamour
Zsa Zsa
What’s the difference between poultry and fowl? Poultry is domesticated fowl.
WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!
Many Bathroom Readers ago, we wrote about the 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds. Here’s what happened when a radio station in Ecuador performed its own version of the drama 11 years later.
SPECIAL REPORTS
The story of the War of the Worlds radio broadcast is well known: In 1938 Orson Welles adapted H.G. Wells’s classic science fiction novel into a radio drama told in the form of emergency news broadcasts describing the invasion of Earth by hostile aliens from Mars. Despite the fact that the show was a regularly scheduled installment of Welles’s Mercury Theater On the Air, and that it was introduced as fiction, many listeners mistakenly believed that Martians had actually landed in New Jersey.
Welles later apologized, insisting that he hadn’t intended to fool anyone—it had all been an unfortunate misunderstanding. Six years later, in Santiago, Chile, the radio drama was restaged with similar results. Although the radio station in Santiago advertised the program for a full week before it aired, and made several announcements during the show intended to prevent listeners from becoming alarmed, the broadcast still resulted in mass confusion and was blamed for causing at least one fatal heart attack.
WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM…
Just a few years later, in 1949, a radio station in Quito, Ecuador, decided to produce a new version of War of the Worlds, but this one was different: Radio Quito pulled out all the stops in an effort to convince everyone within broadcast range that Ecuador was actually being attacked by invaders from outer space.
Here’s how they did it: Weeks before the show was to air, the station began planting fake UFO-sighting stories in the local newspaper. That, producers hoped, would soften up the audience, making them more vulnerable to the suggestion that they were under alien attack. Then they swore all the actors and production staff to complete secrecy and, amazingly, no one leaked the real story to the press. Finally, they began the show by actually interrupting regularly scheduled programming to bring citizens of Quito—a city of 250,000 people—the “breaking news” that the town of Latacunga, just 20 miles south, was under attack.
“If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”—Bernard Baruch
At that moment, the only people in Quito who knew it was just a radio play were inside the studio. Simply refusing to let on in any way that the story was fake would have been bad enough, but Radio Quito went a step further, and had one of the actors imitate the voice of Quito’s mayor. Women and children, the fake mayor instructed, should run into the jungle and hide. All able-bodied men, meanwhile, were to arm themselves in preparation to mount a defense of the city.
THE SHOW MUST GO OFF
Listeners, meanwhile, had no way of knowing that what they were hearing wasn’t real. Skeptics had only to look out their windows to see that something was going on. Interviewed a half-century later, one witness to that night’s events in Quito recalled his family piling into their car to flee the city. He described complete chaos on the roads, where thousands of residents believed they were fleeing for their lives.
The chaos found its way to the radio station, prompting the actors to stop the performance. That’s when things got really ugly: Upon learning that the “invasion” had been a hoax, the frightened crowd transformed into an angry mob—they attacked the building that housed the radio station…and burned it to the ground.
By the time the Ecuadorian army managed to break up the riot, six people had died in the fire and several more had been injured by jumping out of third-floor windows to escape the flames. In the aftermath, the station’s artistic director, Leonardo Paez, was deemed responsible for creating the panic. His misguided sense of “entertainment” brought such an angry backlash from the citizens of Quito that Paez was forced to change his name and flee the country. He never returned.
“No one would have believed…”
—opening line from The War of the Worlds
Invented in Canada: the electric range, the electron microscope, standard time, and the zipper.
MAKE A WHITE CABBAGE
Every language has colorful expressions that sound normal to a person who uses them every day, but can seem strange when translated into another language. Here are some common French idioms translated into English.
BAISSER LES BRAS
Translation: “Lower the arms”
Meaning: Throw in the towel
BIEN EN CHAIR
Translation: “Good in flesh”
Meaning: Fat
BLAIREAU
Translation: “Shaving brush”
Meaning: A nerd
À PAS DE LOUP
Translation: “As a wolf steps”
Meaning: Quickly
AVOIR DES ANTENNES
Translation: “Have antennae”
Meaning: Have a sixth sense
AVOIR LE CAFARD
Translation: “To have the cockroach”
Meaning: To be depressed
CASSER DU SUCRE SUR LE DOS
Translation: “To break sugar on somebody’s back”
Meaning: To talk about someone behind their back
LES DENTS DU FOND QUI BAIGNENT
Translation: “The back teeth are swimming in food”
Meaning: I’m full
CASSER SA PIPE
Translation: “Break the pipe”
Meaning: Kick the bucket
ENTRE QUATRE YEUX
Translation: “Between four eyes”
Meaning: Just between us
FAIRE CHOU BLANC
Translation: “Make a white cabbage”
Meaning: Draw a blank
ACCORDER SES VIOLONS
Translation: “Tune your violins”
Meaning: Get your story straight
MARCHER À CÔTÉ DE SES POMPES
Translation: “To walk next to your shoes”
Meaning: To be out of it
The oldest surviving love poem is written on a clay tablet from around 3500 B.C.
HARLEM GLOBE-TRIVIA
Ever seen the Harlem Globetrotters play? Millions have. With tricks, acrobatics, and amazing basketball skills, they turned sports into entertainment.
• The team began in 1926 as an independent touring team called the Savoy Big Five, named after a Chicago district.
• For their first game, the team wore jerseys that read “New York” because owner Abe Saperstein figured people would believe they were world-class athletes if they were from New York.
• They were renamed the Harlem Globetrotters in 1929—Harlem because most of the team was African American, Globetrotters to create the (false) image of “experience.”
• By 1940 they’d played 2,000 games and dominated whatever team they played, including high-school teams, college teams, and semipro squads. Their record that season: 159–8.
• One night in 1939, the Globetrotters were leading their opponent 112 to 5. The crowd was bored, so Globetrotter Inman Jackson started fooling around on the court, doing finger rolls, taking (and making) full and half-court shots, shooting from under his leg, and throwing crazy passes to his teammates. The crowd loved it. Saperstein told the team to do that every night.
• In a February 1948 exhibition, the Globetrotters beat the NBA champion Minneapolis Lakers. The game is credited with leading the NBA to begin admitting black players in 1950.
• By 1953 the Globetrotters were so good that nobody would play them anymore. Saperstein had a friend named Red Klotz who owned a semipro basketball team called the Philadelphia Sphas. He asked Klotz to take the team on the road as the Globetrotters’ permanent opponent. The same players took the court every night, but wore different jerseys to create the illusion of different teams, including the Boston Shamrocks, Baltimore Rockets, New York Nationals, Atlantic City Seagulls, New Jersey Reds, and their most famous incarnation, the Washington Generals.
• In 1958 the team was at the peak of its popularity, and four different squads toured the world. (That year Saperstein drafted Wilt Chamberlain, who played with the Globetrotters for a year before leaving to become one of the NBA’s all-time greats.)
• During the 1960s civil rights movement, some civil rights leaders criticized the Globetrotters, calling them “Uncle Toms” for pleasing white crowds with “clowning” and “buffoonery.” Another civil rights leader, Jesse Jackson, disagreed. “They don’t show blacks as stupid,” he said. “On the contrary. They show them as superior.”
• More than 40 years after the team’s formation, the Globetrotters played their first ever game in Harlem, New York, in 1968.
• In the 1970s, the Globetrotters were so popular that they went Hollywood. Team members voiced themselves in two different Saturday morning cartoon shows: The Harlem Globetrotters and Super Globetrotters. The team played itself in the 1981 live-action made-for-TV movie The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island.
• The Globetrotters have played in more than 25,000 games—more than any other team in any other sport in history. (All-time record: approximately 22,000 wins and 330 losses.) More than 125 million people in 120 countries have seen a Globetrotters game.
• The Globetrotters’ games are all considered exhibition games (they’re not in a league and the games don’t count), but since the players are paid and the games aren’t fixed, the Globetrotters are considered a professional team.
• In 1985 the team signed two women, Olympic gold-medal winners Lynette Woodward and Joyce Walker, making them the first American female professional basketball players.
• In its early barnstorming days, the team lost often. From the 1960s on, losses have been rare. In 1971 the Globetrotters got too wrapped up in the stunts and lost to the New Jersey Reds 100–99. Last loss: by four points in 2006 to a team of college all-stars.
• Memorable Globetrotters: Curly Neal, Meadowlark Lemon, Goose Tatum, Twiggy Sanders, and Sweet Lou Dunbar.
• Famous people that have been made “honorary” Globetrotters: Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Henry Kissinger, Whoopi Goldberg, Kareem-Abdul-Jabbar, Bob Hope, Nelson Mandela, and Pope John Paul II.
In the 1st pro basketball league (1898), players got $2.50 for home games and $1.25 for away games.
Americans buy an estimated 20 million lbs. of candy corn each Halloween (and very little real corn).
THE PLOT AGAINST FDR
Conspiracy theories are fun to read about because they’re usually so bizarre that they couldn’t possibly be true. What’s even more fun is a conspiracy that’s not a theory at all. Here’s one that actually happened.
ALL THE RAGE IN EUROPE
In the 1930s, many Western countries suffered severe economic depressions. The need to prevent unrest and establish control was so desperate that in Italy, Germany, and Spain, military-backed coups installed fascist governments. In that system a centralized government, led by a sole dictator, holds all the power and the individual citizen has little recourse. Fascist governments readily use force to quell what they perceive as threats, such as labor unions. Notable fascist dictators of the 1930s: Benito Mussolini in Italy, Francisco Franco in Spain, and Adolf Hitler in Germany.
In another country, a fascist coup was attempted not by the military, but by a group of powerful businessmen and politicians. They wanted to overthrow the democratically elected head of state through blackmail and threats of violence and replace him with a puppet dictator who would serve their interests. That country was the United States.
RAW DEAL?
Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932 largely on the basis of his New Deal, a far-reaching series of reforms designed to stimulate the economy out of the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s plans weren’t universally popular—giving control of economic matters to the government instead of business in a free-market economy was viewed by many as communism, especially Social Security, which was perceived as the needy getting “something for nothing.”
But the crux of the New Deal was job creation. Roosevelt proposed more than 10 new government agencies such as the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Civil Works Administration, and the Tennessee Valley Authority, that would oversee construction and beautification projects and generate millions of new jobs.
Speed demon: The giant house spider can travel up to 1.17 miles per hour.
THE PLOT BEGINS
Business leaders were especially opposed to the National Recovery Administration, which set minimum wages and reduced the work week, even in the private sector. Used to paying their workers whatever they wanted (for as much work as they wanted), barons of industry stood to lose millions.
A group of anti-Roosevelt business leaders and politicians (Democrats and Republicans) formed an organization in 1933 called the American Liberty League (ALL), dedicated to “fostering the right to work, earn, save, and acquire property.” In other words, they advocated individual wealth-building and villainized welfare. The ALL was so dedicated to that goal that it would do whatever was necessary to secure their wealth. That included staging a militia-backed coup to force Roosevelt out of office and replace him with a pro-business dictator.
BUSINESS CLASS
In June 1933, a number of ALL members met to discuss the specifics of removing Roosevelt. Among those reported to be in attendance were:
• Irénée Du Pont, president of the DuPont chemical company
• Dean Acheson, the undersecretary of the Treasury, a position to which he was appointed by Roosevelt
• Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic presidential candidate
• Grayson Murphy, a board member of several companies, including Goodyear, Bethlehem Steel, and the J. P. Morgan & Co. banking conglomerate
• Robert Clark, one of Wall Street’s wealthiest investors
• William Doyle, commander of the Massachusetts departm
ent of the American Legion, a veterans’ service and political organization. The 300,000 Massachusetts members were almost exclusively veterans of World War I.
• Gerald MacGuire, a bonds investor and commander of the Connecticut department of the American Legion
• Prescott Bush, an influential banker and a board member of several corporations (later, a Republican Senator from Connecticut from 1952 to 1962, father of George H. W. Bush, and grandfather of George W. Bush)
The pressure at the Sun’s center is about 700 million tons per sq. inch—enough to smash atoms.
The group concocted a plan to force Roosevelt to create a new cabinet position called the Secretary of General Affairs, which would be filled by a person of the ALL’s choosing. Next, they’d force Roosevelt to admit to the public that he had been crippled by polio (not widely known because he was rarely photographed in his wheelchair). The knowledge that the president couldn’t walk or even stand without assistance would destroy all trust in his ability to pull the country out of its economic mess, and the backlash would force Roosevelt to shift authority to the Secretary of General Affairs.
In all likelihood, of course, Roosevelt would refuse to meet the ALL’s demands to create the new position, confess his condition, and transfer power. Part two of the plan: If Roosevelt refused, Doyle and MacGuire would activate their American Legion brigades to form a militia of more than 500,000 who would then storm Washington, D.C., and take power by force.
THE BUTLER DID IT
For the American people and 500,000 soldiers to go along with a plan to depose a president, the ALL knew that whoever they chose to be the Secretary of General Affairs would have to be popular with both the military and the general public. So, acting on behalf of the plotters, MacGuire approached Smedley Butler, a major general in the Marine Corps and the most decorated Marine in history at that point. Butler was as loved by the military and respected by the general public just as later generals like Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, and Colin Powell would be. That’s because in 1932, when World War I veterans marched on Washington to lobby Congress over still-unpaid combat bonuses from 15 years earlier, Butler publicly supported them and even gave a speech encouraging them to fight for what was rightfully theirs.
Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader Page 35