GETTING CARRIED AWAY
• In 339 B.C., the poet Claudius Claudianus complained that effeminate Roman youths of the day were more interested in parading around with umbrellas than they were in carrying off conquered Sabine women.
In San Marino (a tiny republic inside Italy), tourists outnumber residents almost 19 to 1.
• In the Middle Ages, the Catholic church used special umbrellas to signify the status of the clergy. Red and gold for the pope, red or violet for cardinals, and green for bishops. Whenever the Pope appeared in public, an umbrella shaded him. The papal court keeps the tradition to this day.
• Between 1619 and 1637, King Louis XIII built a collection of umbrellas that included 11 made of taffeta (an expensive silk fabric) and 3 made of oiled cloth trimmed with gold and silver lace.
THE MAN IN THE STREET
• In 1772 a Baltimore, Maryland, shop owner bought an umbrella off a ship that had just returned from India. When he walked outside and popped it open, women—who had never seen an umbrella before—screamed. Horses bolted and children started following him. Bystanders stoned him, then took his umbrella and tore it to shreds. The town watch had to be called out to stop the free-for-all.
• So how did the umbrella go from shading royalty to sheltering commoners? It happened in London, a city that’s synonymous with rain—it gets an average of 25.6 inches per year. So it’s no surprise that the British have many nicknames for the umbrella: a brolly, a mush-topper, a rain-napper, a gingham, a gamp...and a Hanway. Around 1750 an eccentric traveler and philanthropist named Jonas Hanway ventured into the rain carrying an umbrella he’d brought home from China. Nearby coachmen nearly hooted him off the street. (At the time, Londoners considered any man who carried an umbrella to be either effeminate or French.)
If not for the 18th-century British dandies called macaronis, known for following absurd fashion trends (such as sticking feathers in their hats), Hanway might have been the first and last Englishman to carry an umbrella. Unfazed by the catcalls of coachmen, the macaronis adopted the device, and after about 30 years it became “the indispensable companion of the British gentleman.”
• The umbrella’s round-the-world journey ends where it began, in China—the world’s largest umbrella manufacturer—where one city alone, Shangyu, has more than 1,000 umbrella factories. It takes 80 steps to make a single umbrella, but only one to open it and take shelter from the sun or rain. The next time you open an umbrella, don’t think of London. Thank the Chinese.
World’s largest comic-book collection: The Library of Congress has more than 100,000.
WEIRD UMBRELLAS
The basic design of the umbrella has gone unchanged for 3,000 years. But that hasn’t stopped the world’s would-be inventors and mad scientists from trying to “improve” on it. Here are a few examples:
Stunning Umbrella. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has received thousands of applications for umbrella patents. Examples include a weather-forecasting umbrella, an umbrella with a self-contained rain-measuring device, a glow-in-the-dark umbrella, a strap-on umbrella for pets, and an electric stun-gun umbrella. The patent office reportedly has four full-time employees who do nothing but process umbrella claims.
Internet Umbrella. A projector located in the umbrella’s shaft projects a 3-D image of a map onto a large display inside the umbrella’s canopy. Using GPS technology, Flickr, and Google Earth, the map updates constantly. Users can watch the 3-D views to help find their way as they walk around the city streets. (And, hopefully, watch where they’re going.)
Gunbrella. A Hong Kong gadget-maker offers an umbrella that is opened by pressing the “trigger” on its rifle-stock-shaped handle. Carried slung over the shoulder by its handy strap, the umbrella looks like a rifle.
Light Saber Umbrella. The shaft lights up like a prop from Star Wars, illuminating you and your path. Even on the darkest nights, you’re visible to cyclists, drivers, and Jedi knights.
Eco-Umbrella. Though umbrellas have been around for thousands of years, they don’t seem to last very long. “Umbrellas,” says Julie Lasky, editor-in-chief of International Design magazine, “suffer from design flaws that often lead to their premature deaths and unwelcome burials in landfills.” In 2006 I.D. sponsored a contest for eco-friendly umbrella designs. The winner? The Crayella. All the pieces of its frame are made from recycled polyethylene (soda bottles). And all the moving parts have ball-and-socket joints that snap together, so a Crayella can be assembled quickly and any broken parts can be replaced in minutes without tools. Bonus: It’s oval shaped so you can shelter a friend or your backpack.
First female U.S. Senator: Hattie Caraway of Arkansas, elected in 1932 (and again in 1938).
GOING PLACES?
Strange tips from real travel agencies to help plan your next vacation.
Come to Colombia!
“Anywhere that illicit drugs are cultivated in Colombia is a dangerous zone. To get to any of these areas, you’d have to go off the beaten track and avoid everyone’s local advice. You’re unlikely to just stumble across a coca field. So forget about that point.”
—Paisatours.com
Come to Russia!
“In most parts of Russia, a tourist is a great rarity, and speaking to one is not always that easy psychologically.”
—Svezhy Veter Agency
Come to Cameroon!
“Cameroon is a real paradise for animals in the wild. Forests and rivers full of funny gorillas are waiting for your visits.”
—Globalbushtratour.com
Come to Mongolia!
“It is better to avoid dogs, even ones which appear tame, and take caution if offered marmot meat.”
—Blue Mongolia Tour
Come to Nepal!
“Public demonstrations and strikes are popular forms of political expression in Nepal and may occur on short notice. Travelers are requested to stay at the most prominent areas where no untoward incidents have taken place, so far.”
—India Invites
Come to Iran!
“Do you want to travel to Iran but doubt it?”
—UpPersia.com
Come to Latvia!
“For travelers, the best thing about Latvia is that it is so compact.”
—Latvia.travel
Come to the USA!
“Many parts of the United States are subject to earthquakes, wildfires, floods, extreme heat, hurricanes, mudslides, landslides, thunderstorms and lightning, tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanoes, freezing rain, heavy snow and blizzards, and extreme cold.”
—Smartraveller.gov.au
Fastest-flying insect: the hawk moth. With an 8-inch wingspan, it can fly up to 33 mph.
HIGH-TECH UNDERWEAR
Is there any limit to the things underwear can do?
Underwear: X-Ray Armor, made by Rocky Flats Gear, Inc., a Colorado underwear company
What It Does: Shields your private parts from the view of invasive airport body scanners
Details: X-Ray Armor consists of ordinary underwear with patches of “patent-pending lead-free shielding material” over the crotch and breasts. The material on the crotch is shaped like a fig leaf; on bras it’s shaped like clovers, clasped hands, or flowers. Inventor Jeff Buske says his skivvies protect sensitive areas from exposure to radiation and also prevent employees of the Transportation Security Administration from trading scanner images like baseball cards. The TSA maintains that its scanners can’t print, transmit, or save the images, which are deleted immediately anyway, so there’s no way for the agency’s employees to misuse them. It also says the radiation emitted by the equipment is minimal and harmless. But try telling that to Buske: “There’s no such thing as safe radiation,” he says. “Short of wearing an actual radiation suit, which would be impractical, you protect what you can.” (One caveat: The TSA might insist on patting you down if you wear underwear designed to defeat their equipment.)
Underwear: Experimental “smart underwear” being developed
for the military by San Diego engineering professor Dr. Joseph Wang
What It Does: Puts a paramedic in your underpants
Details: Chemical sensors in the waistband monitor heart rate, blood pressure, and numerous biomarkers in human sweat, such as lactate, oxygen, norepinephrine, and glucose, that signal when someone is injured in battle. The information is fed into a microcomputer built into the soldier’s uniform. When the system detects an injury, reservoirs of painkillers and other drugs stored in the soldier’s uniform can be administered on the spot to stabilize the soldier’s condition until help arrives. The sensors are sensitive enough to distinguish between different kinds of injuries and administer treatments accordingly. Because Dr. Wang’s underwear research is funded by a grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the initial applications will be military. But the biometric sensors can also detect the markers for stroke, heart attack, diabetes, and even blood alcohol levels, so if the technology proves workable, the underwear may eventually be used to monitor the elderly and the chronically ill at home. When combined with biofeedback training, they’ve even shown promise preventing motion sickness. Who knows? Maybe one day court-ordered underpants will communicate with automobiles to prevent convicted drunk drivers from driving drunk again.
“No-Wash” hospital boxer shorts have yellow fabric in front, brown in back. “If you have an accident it won’t stand out, and you won’t feel as bad,” says the inventor.
Underwear: FlowPants, boxer shorts being tested by ThermaRx, a manufacturer of medical devices in Houston, Texas
What It Does: They’re therapeutic “hot” pants
Details: Equipped with a battery-powered heating element, these underpants are designed to treat urinary hesitation and retention conditions associated with an enlarged prostate. They’re actually over-underwear: You wear them under your pants but over your regular underpants, and the battery pack clips to your belt. The underwear is currently undergoing clinical trials to test the “Jacuzzi effect”—anecdotal evidence that sitting in a hot tub (or hot pants) relieves urinary retention. If the underwear proves to be effective, it could be coming to a pharmacy near you.
Underwear: 4Skins briefs and boxers, manufactured by an Australian company of the same name
What It Does: The underpants are engineered to absorb the smell of farts. The company’s motto: “Keep It in Your Pants.”
Details: 4Skins’ Contrast and Modern Classic lines of underwear are made using a technologically advanced fabric that incorporates “odor-eliminating nanotechnology” into every fiber. “By doing this, it attracts, isolates and neutralizes unwanted smell immediately,” says the company’s website. So where do all the absorbed fumes end up? “As the smell is absorbed by the fabric, it holds the odor until you place the undies in the wash. This is when the odor is released.” (The underpants only absorb the smell of flatulence; how you deal with the sound is your problem.)
LIFE ON AMERICA’S
FORBIDDEN ISLAND
What’s life like on the only privately owned Hawaiian island? Here’s the second installment of our story. (Part I is on page 275.)
STILL THE SAME
If you’ve ever wondered what the Hawaiian islands looked like when Captain Cook first set eyes upon them in 1778, you can get a pretty good idea by sailing around Niihau. The island is almost completely undeveloped: There are no paved roads and no hotels or other commercial buildings. The beaches are pristine. Most of the islanders live in small houses clustered around Puuwai (pronounced POO-ooh-WAH-ee), Niihau’s only village, on the west coast of the island. With the exception of this tiny settlement, most of the island looks as if it is uninhabited by anything other than wildlife, including feral sheep, antelope, and wild Polynesian boar that roam the island.
Another thing that hasn’t changed much since Eliza Sinclair bought the island in 1864 is the odd legal relationship that exists between the Robinson family that owns the island and the native Niihauans who live there. The Niihauans don’t hold legal title to any part of the island, or even to the houses they live in. On paper they are little more than the permanent houseguests of the Robinsons, who have the legal right to do with their island whatever they please. That may not be an ideal set of circumstances for the Niihauans, and yet if they had lived on any of the other Hawaiian islands, where—at least in a property-owning sense—they would have had more freedom, their language, culture, and way of life would have changed long ago.
LIFE ON THE ISLAND
The Niihauans live on the island, and in their homes, rent free. They may live a traditional lifestyle of hunting and fishing if they wish. Or if they want to earn money, there are jobs available on Niihau and on the Robinson family’s sugarcane plantation on Kauai. They are also free to move off the island, which many do, especially those who work on Kauai. And as long as the community is willing to have them back, they can move back onto the island when they are ready.
Niihau was the only Hawaiian island that voted against U.S. statehood in 1959.
OLD SCHOOL
The Niihauans speak Hawaiian as their first language. Classes in the tiny elementary school are taught in Hawaiian through the third grade, after which English is introduced. There are no private automobiles on the island; the Niihauans get around on bicycles or on horseback. There are no police and no jail on the island, but there isn’t any crime, either. The last serious crime took place in December 1941, during the attack on Pearl Harbor, when a Japanese pilot ditched his plane on Niihau and then terrorized the island for several days before he was killed by one of the Niihauans.
Guns and alcohol aren’t allowed on Niihau, and while tobacco hasn’t been banned entirely, the Robinsons will not transport it on the barge that periodically ferries supplies over from Kauai. To outsiders, these restrictions may seem harsh, but alcohol, tobacco, and firearms were never a part of Hawaiian culture, so they’re not part of Niihauan culture now. (So how do they hunt the wild animals on the island? The same way they have for generations: with knives and rope.)
DOLLARS AND SENSE
One more thing that hasn’t changed about Niihau since 1863: It’s still a really bad place to run a ranch. For more than a century, the Robinsons tried to raise cattle, sheep, and honeybees, and even made charcoal from some of the trees that grow on the island—anything they could think of to generate income and provide employment for the Niihauans. But the various enterprises usually lost money, and in dry years they lost a lot of it. Finally, after decades of subsidizing the ranch with income from the sugarcane plantation on Kauai, in 1999 the Robinsons shut down ranching operations on Niihau. Since then they have looked for other ways to earn income and provide jobs for Niihauans. In recent years the largest source of income has come from the U.S. military, which rents part of Niihau for an unmanned radar facility that it uses to track missiles launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. The military also uses the island as a training site for special forces units, who land there and then try to avoid detection and capture by “enemy” forces (Niihauan trackers who are paid to hunt them down). Any other military programs that take place on the island are classified.
When Barack Obama, born in Hawaii, ran for president in 2008, he carried every inhabited Hawaiian island except Niihau. A majority of Niihauans voted for John McCain.
OPEN...JUST A CRACK
Another result of the island’s difficult finances is that after 100 years of nearly complete isolation, in 1987 Bruce Robinson, Eliza Sinclair’s great-great-grandson, decided to open up access to Niihau...but only a little. That year he paid $1 million (100 times what Eliza Sinclair paid for the entire island) to buy a helicopter that would serve as an air-ambulance for the island. There is no hospital on Niihau, and before Robinson bought the helicopter, whenever there was a medical emergency the Niihauans had to travel to Kauai by boat.
Robinson decided to offset the cost of the helicopter by using it to provide tours to the remotest parts of the island. The flights leave fr
om Kauai in the morning, and after a quick aerial tour of the island, the pilot selects a secluded beach and lands for the afternoon. The tourists are free to fish, swim, snorkel, or explore the beach for a few hours until it’s time to return to Kauai. When the population of feral sheep and wild boar grew to unacceptable levels in the early 1990s, Robinson added safaris to the helicopter trips. (Safari trips are the only exception to the “no guns” rule.)
THE FORBIDDEN VILLAGE
The helicopter trips are always day trips—outsiders are not permitted to spend the night on Niihau, and there are no hotels on the island to accommodate them. Any Niihauan who wants to hike out to the helicopter landing site to greet the tourists is free to do so, but the village of Puuwai is off-limits to outsiders. The helicopters always land several miles away from the village to protect the Niihauans’ privacy. Though remote parts of their island have been opened up to outsiders, the Niihauans themselves still live apart. “We have chosen not to change for generations,” a Niihauan named Ilei Beniamina told a reporter in 1987. “I’m proud of what Niihau stands for. That’s more than I can say about anywhere else in the state.”
THE CURSE OF
THE DEMON CORE
The real-life story of a small ball of plutonium, the people it killed, and the researchers who blew it up.
THE BOMB
On the evening of Tuesday, August 21, 1945, American physicist Harry Daghlian was working at the U.S. government’s ultra-secret Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He was performing a very delicate experiment: Daghlian was placing brick-shaped pieces of metal around a chunk of plutonium, the highly unstable fuel used in most nuclear bombs. And he was making it more unstable with every brick he placed around it.
Daghlian (pronounced “DAHL-ee-an”) was part of the government’s Manhattan Project, which since 1942 had worked to develop the world’s first atomic bombs. And they succeeded: Just a few weeks before Daghlian’s experiment, two atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombs had killed at least 100,000 people immediately, and many tens of thousands more in the days that followed. Less than a week after those bombings Japan surrendered to Allied Forces, ending World War II.
Uncle John’s 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader® Page 51