Uncle John’s 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader®

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  LAMBOR-GONE-Y

  Late one night in May 2011, a 30-year-old man let a 22-year-old friend (names not released) drive his brand-new Lamborghini Murcielago (retail price: $400,000). The owner wasn’t worried about the car because it was fully insured. From the sidewalk, the man watched his friend peel out. Traveling at nearly 50 miles per hour down a busy Sydney street, the young driver lost control of the powerful sports car, veered over the center line, and smashed head-on into a taxicab. The driver emerged from the wreck unscathed, but the 51-year-old cabbie suffered a broken leg (it took paramedics an hour to free her). As for the Lamborghini, it was totaled. And when the car’s owner later put in a claim to his insurance company, he was informed of a clause in his contract that he’d previously overlooked: The car was “not insured for drivers under age 25.” It was a total loss.

  YOU NEVER SAUSAGE A NUMBER

  Mathematically speaking, there is no such thing as more than 100 percent (unless you’re a sports coach or a motivational speaker). That’s why a Swedish consumer reported the sausage company Trangsvikens Chark to government officials. On the package of one of their products, the label said, “Meat content—104%.” “This sausage couldn’t possibly contain more than 100 percent meat,” the man complained, “as there are other ingredients stated on the label.” Marcus Farnstrom, the company’s CEO, explained that it takes 104 grams of meat in order to make 100 grams of sausage, hence the higher-than-possible percentage. However, Farnstrom also acknowledged that the packaging is confusing and promised to have it fixed.

  Australia’s crested billbird has an odd defense mechanism: It can throw its voice like a ventriloquist.

  BOOKWORMS

  Pay no attention to the fact that there are other books out there besides Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.

  • Before they figured out they could use parchment, Europeans wrote on thin peels of bark. The word “book” is derived from bog, the Danish word for beech, the preferred writing bark in Denmark.

  • Only writer to turn down the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Sinclair Lewis, for Arrowsmith in 1926. He felt the Prize committee judged books arbitrarily, based on “American ideals,” not on literary merit.

  • For her first Harry Potter book, J.K. Rowling received an advance of only £1,500 (about $2,400).

  • The British town of Hay-on-Wye loves books. It has 39 used bookstores (but only 1,300 residents). Each May it hosts a 10-day literary festival that Bill Clinton once called “the Woodstock of the mind.”

  • Most prolific author ever: Brazilian novelist José Carlos Ryoki de Alpoim Inoue. Between 1986 and 1996, he published 1,058 novels—about one every three days.

  • The dust jacket dates back to the 1830s, but Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865) came up with the idea to put the title on the spine of the jacket so you could tell what book it was when it was lined up on a shelf.

  • First e-book reader on the market: the Sony Bookman, introduced in 1992. It played CDs. (It flopped.)

  • Patron saint of librarians: St. Jerome. Patron saint of booksellers: St. John. Patron saint of bookbinders: St. Christopher.

  • Herman Melville was a failure in his own time; his novel Moby Dick sold poorly upon its release in 1851 due to bad reviews. The reason: The last few pages were accidentally not printed, giving the impression of an unresolved ending.

  • In terms of titles available, the world’s biggest bookstore is the World’s Biggest Bookstore, located in a converted bowling alley in Toronto.

  Look, but don’t eat: Azaleas and rhododendrons contain a toxin that can be fatal to humans.

  SELF-SURGERY

  Stories about people who had to perform emergency surgery on themselves may seem gross...because they are. But here’s something that might make you want to read about them anyway: They all have happy endings.

  Who: Jan de Doot of Amsterdam

  Background: In 1651 de Doot, a blacksmith, began having terrible pains in his groin. He could feel something hard—it was a bladder stone (related to kidney stones)—through his skin. According to Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, mayor of Amsterdam and one of the most renowned surgeons of the era, Doot didn’t trust doctors.

  Do It Yourself! With only his brother standing by in case something went wrong, Doot used a small, sharp knife to cut through his perineum (the floor of your crotch, basically), where he could feel the stone. Then, according to Tulp:

  To get the stone out was more difficult, and he had to stick two fingers into the wound on either side to remove it with leveraged force, and it finally popped out of hiding with an explosive noise and tearing of the bladder.

  The stone was the size of a chicken egg. When the operation was completed, Doot had his brother summon a doctor’s assistant to stitch up his wound.

  Outcome: Doot apparently survived, because sometime after the self-administered surgery he sat for a painting by Flemish artist Carel van Savoyen. In it, de Doot is depicted holding a knife in one hand, and in the other he’s holding up an egg-shaped object—the stone he cut from his own body.

  Who: Inés Ramírez of Rio Talea in southern Mexico

  Background: In April 2002, Ramírez, who was pregnant, went into labor. She had already had several children at home, but lost her last one in childbirth. And now, once again, something was not right. After 12 hours of increasingly painful labor, 50 miles from the nearest midwife, and with no phone—or electricity or running water—Ramírez decided to do something.

  What is a spectroheliokinematograph? A special camera used to film the sun.

  Do It Yourself! Ramírez drank a few shots of liquor as an anesthetic, got a sharp knife, and made a cut low on her belly. She kept cutting—for an hour—and finally reached her womb, at which point she reached inside and pulled out a baby boy. Shortly before passing out, she sent one of her sons for help. Some hours later, a local health aide arrived and, after getting over his shock, stitched up Ms. Ramírez’s belly—using ordinary needle and thread—and then drove her to a hospital in the city of Oaxaca. Outcome: Both the mother and child survived. It is the only known case in history of a woman successfully performing a cesarean section on herself.

  Who: Dr. Leonid Ivanovich Rogozov of Leningrad, U.S.S.R.

  Background: Rogozov went to Antarctica with a Russian research team in 1960, the only doctor in the 13-person group. On April 29, 1961, he woke up with a fever and a pain in the right side of his abdomen. He took antibiotics, but got worse. By the next day, he was in extreme pain and knew that he was suffering from appendicitis. The closest help was another Soviet Antarctic station 1,000 miles away, but blizzard conditions would have made landing a plane there impossible. Appendicitis, untreated, is almost always fatal. There was only one option.

  Do It Yourself! Rogozov put on his doctor’s uniform, including surgical mask, got into a hospital bed, propped his head up with pillows, and, using novocaine as a local anesthetic, cut a five-inch incision into his abdomen. Then, going by feel, though sometimes looking in a mirror held by one of the researchers (he later said that just confused him because everything was backward), he cut deeper into his body, pausing every few minutes to vomit, collect himself, and continue cutting. After four and a half hours, he got the infected and swollen appendix out, sutured himself up—and passed out.

  Outcome: After he recovered, Rogozov wrote, “At the worst moment of removing the appendix I flagged: My heart seized up and noticeably slowed; my hands felt like rubber. Well, I thought, it’s going to end badly.” Two weeks later, he was back at work. He spent the next year and a half at the station, and in 1962 returned to his home in Leningrad a national hero.

  Working double-time: The tomato is Arkansas’ state vegetable and its state fruit.

  VIDEO GAMES

  VS. REALITY

  Online multi-player immersive video games can be fun, but for some gamers, the fun gets a little out of hand.

  OUT OF ORDER

  Video and computer games are hugely popular in South Kor
ea, where it’s estimated that a third of the country’s 50 million people regularly play MMORPGs (“massively multiplayer online role-playing games”), such as World of Warcraft, Maplestory, and especially the space-war-themed Star Craft. It has become the country’s most popular televised “sport,” earning the best players lucrative sponsorship deals and prompting many South Korean kids to shun school in search of a payday. The vast majority don’t hit it big, of course, and end up with an unhealthy obsession instead. Local media reported that one teenager played Star Craft for 36 hours straight before passing out from exhaustion. “After I woke up, I spent another 30 hours playing again,” he said.

  YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE

  By December 2009, Alfred Hightower thought he was home free. The fugitive, who was wanted in Indiana on drug-dealing charges, had fled to Canada three years earlier. But Hightower’s other hobby—playing World of Warcraft—allowed authorities to use tips they collected from the game to track down him down online. And sure enough, there he was. Then they subpoenaed Warcraft’s publisher, Blizzard Entertainment, for Hightower’s IP address, screen name, account history, and billing address. Shortly thereafter, he was arrested in Ottawa, Ontario, and extradited back to the United States. Game over!

  TIME BANDIT

  In 2005 a 28-year-old man collapsed and died in an Internet café in Taegu, South Korea. He’d been playing World of Warcraft...for 50 hours straight. “We presume the cause of death was heart failure stemming from exhaustion,” police told reporters. They also noted that the man had recently been fired from his job—for missing too much work because he was playing video games.

  Nothing left to the imagination: The German word for mucus is Nasenschleim (“nose slime”).

  VIRTUAL REALTY

  Entropia Universe is an online game in which players develop real estate on a habitable asteroid called Planet Calypso. But to participate in the game, players have to spend real money to buy virtual property, virtual homes, and virtual goods. Despite the fact that they’re trading real cash for imaginary things, some people have made a lot of money at it. A resort developer named Jon Jacobs put $100,000 into his Entropia account in 2005, and in 2010 he sold his properties in the game to other players for a very real $635,000. Another Entropia player—known only as “Buzz ‘Erik’ Lightyear”—paid 3.3 million “Project Entropia Dollars” for one of the game’s top pieces of property: a space station. Each PED costs 10 cents, which means Lightyear paid $330,000 for his virtual space station (although he’s confident he’ll earn it back eventually). Altogether, economists estimate that online gamers spent $7 billion on in-game products in 2010.

  NO CHEATING!

  In the online world of Second Life, players set up identities and live fairly normal “lives”—buying houses, going on trips, working jobs, and getting married. A rising “career” in Second Life: virtual private detective. Online game monitors report an increase in the past few years of virtual detectives hired by gamers’ real-life spouses spying on virtual players to find out if they’re having affairs, either in the game or in real life.

  Top 5 Biggest Beer-Selling Holidays in the U.S.

  1. Independence Day

  2. Labor Day

  3. Memorial Day

  4. Father’s Day

  5. Christmas

  First documented user of cloth handkerchiefs: England’s King Richard II (1367–1400).

  UNCLE JOHN’S “CREATIVE

  TEACHING” AWARDS

  If schools handed out degrees for dumb, these teachers would have earned a Ph.D.

  Subject: Citizenship

  Winner: Natalie Munroe, 30, an 11th-grade English teacher at Central Bucks High School East in Pennsylvania

  Approach: In August 2009, Munroe began writing an online blog for family and friends. She talked about her students, describing them as “rat-like,” “dunderheads,” “frightfully dim,” and “utterly loathsome in all imaginable ways,” to list but a few of her nasty comments. The blog was supposed to be secret—Munroe never mentioned either her school or her students by name. But she did write under the not-very-secret pseudonym of “Natalie M.”

  What Happened: One of the rat-like dunderheads stumbled across the blog in February 2011, realized that “Natalie M” was Munroe, and shared the blog entries with other kids via Facebook. Word soon spread to school administrators, who promptly fired Munroe. “I’m not sorry. I don’t take back anything I said,” Munroe told reporters after she was let go.

  Subject: Anatomy

  Winner: Faith Kramer, a health and physical education teacher at New York City’s Intermediate School 72

  Approach: When she taught the state-mandated course on H.I.V./AIDS prevention to her eighth-graders in 2007, Kramer followed the state’s instructions that she speak to the kids using “terms that they understood.” She wrote “polite” words for various body parts and sexual acts on the blackboard, and then asked the students if they knew any other terms to describe those things. Then she wrote their answers on the board—and although she didn’t ask the kids to take notes, some did. When the parents of the note-takers found lists of words like “hooters,” “banana,” “junk,” and “taco” in their kids’ homework, they complained to school officials. Kramer was suspended and investigated for violating a regulation against the “verbal abuse” of students.

  The official language of Mexico is Spanish, but 62 other languages are also spoken there.

  What Happened: No disciplinary charges were ever brought against Kramer. After being suspended for eight months with pay, she was allowed to return to her classroom. (She’s suing the Board of Education for $2 million.)

  Subject: Modern Dance

  Winner: Adeil Ahmed and Chrystie Fitchner, teachers at Churchill High School in Winnipeg, Manitoba

  Approach: At a school pep rally in February 2010, the pair performed a dance routine to Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel.” The song must have made them feel good, because their routine included a lap dance, followed by a simulated sex act.

  What Happened: In an era when cell phones didn’t have cameras, they might have gotten off with a suspension or a written reprimand. But video clips of the incident were posted on YouTube within hours, and when those clips received more than two million hits by the end of the week, Ahmed and Fitchner were told to take their dirty dancing elsewhere.

  Subject: Peace and Conflict Studies

  Winner: Mike Richards, the head teacher at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic School in northwestern England

  Approach: In 2011 Richards wanted to give his primary school students a sense of what it was like to live through World War II, so he called an assembly of the entire school and told the children that World War III had broken out that morning. He showed them wartime film footage of the bombing of London, and told them it had been taken earlier in the day. Then an air raid siren sounded and the students were led into the cellar while fireworks were set off in the schoolyard outside to simulate bombs.

  What Happened: The “exercise” was supposed to last all day, but Richards called it off at 1:30 when the children became too terrified for him to continue. “We spent all afternoon explaining to the kids that it wasn’t real,” he said afterward. “On this occasion we realize that we went too far.” (Parents were not amused. “No one with an ounce of common sense would put children through that,” one angry mother told the Daily Mail newspaper.)

  Anteaters, armadillos, bats, and platypuses are the only land mammals that don’t get lice.

  EDUCATIONAL TOYS

  What kind of person would think you can learn and have fun at the same time? (Uh-oh—don’t tell Uncle John we said that.)

  SPEAK & SPELL

  One of the earliest handheld electronic toys ever available, the Speak & Spell was introduced in 1978 by Texas Instruments, primarily a manufacturer of calculators. The candy-red toy with a kid-friendly handle on top would speak letters in a robotic voice as the child typed them out, helping the child recogn
ize the letters and learn to read. It featured a small digital display screen, a speech synthesizer, and a standard QWERTY keyboard, so it also taught kids to type. It was part of a line that also included the Speak & Read and Speak & Math, which weren’t as successful. The product got a major boost when E.T. used one to communicate with his Earth friends in E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982), helping to fuel sales of more than 10 million Speak & Spells (in seven different languages) by 1992, when the toy was discontinued.

  STACKING RINGS

  Cornelius Holgate started a small family carpentry business outside Philadelphia in 1789. It thrived over the years, but in 1929, the Holgates finally found their niche: wooden toys. Child psychologist Lawrence Frank married into the Holgate family and convinced them to take the business that way. The most popular item: stacking rings—smooth, painted wooden rings that toddlers placed over a small wooden pole in order to learn motor skills. Stacking rings are still manufactured in wood by the Holgate Toy Company, as well as in plastic by Playskool and Fisher-Price, who introduced the popular Rock-a-Stack version in 1960.

  SEE ’N SAY

  “The cow says...mooooo” is probably familiar if you had kids or were a kid in the last few decades. The See ’n Say was introduced by Mattel in 1965. Here’s how it works: There’s a spinning arrow in the middle of the round toy. The child points the arrow at a picture of an animal, then pulls the “chatty ring” (it’s now a lever) and a voice pronounces the name of the animal, followed by the noise it makes. See ’n Say is unique in that it operates mechanically, without batteries. A metal needle inside the toy plays tracks on a plastic disc, functioning much like an old fashioned gramophone record. Mattel engineers were inspired by the company’s popular 1950s toy Chatty Cathy, a doll that said different phrases at random. The See ’n Say was the first toy in which kids could choose exactly what would be heard.