OBJECT OF SACRED POWER
But the magic of the Kalevala didn’t stop with its words—the story inspired Tolkien, too. The poem tells of a hero who seeks an object of sacred power. While on his quest, the hero comes to understand power and how it changes people. The Kalevala is also full of mythical creatures, magical plants, and shape-shifting animals—all elements Tolkien would use years later.
Two lines from the ninth-century poet Cynewulf also had a great influence on Tolkien:
Hail, Earendel, brightest of angels, Over Middle-earth sent to men.
Watch your step: There are about 25 species of venomous snakes in the United States.
Middle-earth (or Middangeard) was the Old English word to describe the world where humans live—the land between Heaven above and Hell below.
TELLING THE STORY
With Middle-earth and its languages still simmering on the back burner of his mind, Tolkien began to develop his gift for storytelling by making up bedtime stories for his children. Every year, he wrote them wonderful illustrated letters from Father Christmas describing all the news and adventures from the North Pole. His stories were so popular that Tolkien’s children often retold them to their friends, who were always eager to listen.
THE LAND OF SNERGS
While he tried out various versions of the hobbit story on his children, Tolkien found inspiration in another children’s story, written by E. A. Wyke-Smith. The Marvelous Land of Snergs tells the adventures of a “Snerg” named Gorbo and two children, Joe and Sylvia. Snergs are small—maybe three feet tall—but very strong. They love to celebrate and they love to eat. They are always looking for a reason for a feast—even celebrating the day when it is no one’s birthday.
Years later Tolkien recalled how much he and his children loved The Marvelous Land of Snergs and that it was “probably an unconscious source-book for the hobbits.”
Pierce Brosnan owns the typewriter that Ian Fleming used to write the James Bond novels.
HOBBIT HOLES
In 1929 Tolkien helped excavate an ancient Roman temple known as Dwarf’s Hill. Beneath the temple, archaeologists found a labyrinth of tunnels from when the Romans occupied England. After the Romans left, the site was abandoned for 1,000 years. People stayed away, scared by stories that the maze of tunnels and crumbling ruins were home to little people, dwarfs, and hobgoblins. Tolkien was charmed by the superstitious rumors surrounding the ruins. Friends of the author later said that visions of little people popping in and out of the holes of Dwarf’s Hill inspired Hobbiton.
MR. HOBBIT
Tolkien based hobbit characteristics on…himself. He liked “gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands.” He smoked a pipe and preferred simple food, and lots of it. He was fond of wild mushrooms and had a simple sense of humor. Whenever possible, he went to bed late and woke up late. He liked to wear fancy waistcoats and he really did not care to travel much. And the gentle professor was more inclined to rescue spiders from the bathtub than to venture forth on a hero’s quest.
AFTERTHOUGHT
Tolkien finished The Hobbit in 1936, but never expected it to be published—it was only a story he wrote to entertain his children and friends. So no one was more surprised than the shy Oxford professor when it became one of the best-loved fantasy novels of our time.
What do Sailors, Paper Kites, and Great Egg Flies have in common? They’re all butterflies.
INVISIBLE INK
Behold! Not one, but two recipes for invisible ink. Because you never know when you’ll need to write a secret message.
INK RECIPE #1
Ingredients:
Lemon juice
Small bowl (plastic or glass)
Toothpick (or chopstick)
Piece of paper
Candle
1. Pour a little lemon juice into the bowl. Dip the toothpick or chopstick into the lemon juice and then “write” on the paper.
2. Allow your secret message to air dry (don’t use heat to dry it) and the message will disappear.
3. To make the message reappear, hold the paper over a burning candle. Caution: Hold it far enough away from the flame so you don’t set the paper on fire, but close enough for it to get warm.
Prisoners of war used their own sweat or saliva as invisible ink.
Note: Don’t have any lemons? You can substitute onion juice, milk, or white vinegar.
INK RECIPE #2
Ingredients:
cup water
2 small bowls (plastic or glass)
1 teaspoon cornstarch
Piece of paper
Toothpick (or chopstick)
10 drops iodine
Sponge
1. Pour half of the water into one bowl and stir the cornstarch into it. Microwave the mixture for 30 seconds, stir, then microwave for another 30 seconds. Let it cool.
2. Dip the toothpick or chopstick into this “ink” to write your message.
3. Let the paper air dry without heat. Your message will become invisible.
4. To make the message visible, mix the iodine with the remaining water in the second bowl. Lightly sponge the piece of paper with the iodine solution. The paper will turn light blue, and the secret message will appear dark blue.
In 2002 scientists heated the University of Georgia for 21 days by burning leftover food grease.
MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS
What do ice cream cones, hot dogs, cotton candy, and peanut butter have in common? These food favorites all got their start at the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904.
ICE CREAM CONE
Charles Menches sold his ice cream in cups, just like every other ice cream seller at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. But the weather was hot, and he had so many customers that he ran out of cups! In a panic he looked to see if a nearby vendor might have some spare containers, but all he could find was a guy from Syria selling waffles. Menches quickly bought some and began selling them wrapped around a scoop of ice cream. The substitute became even more popular than the original.
HOT DOG
By the 1890s, Americans were eating thin, long sausages called frankfurters, usually served on a plate with sauerkraut and mustard. Then, at the St. Louis World’s Fair, a German vendor named Anton Feuchtwanger introduced the bun. Like the ice cream cone, it was an invention born out of desperation.
The # symbol has a name. It’s an octothorpe.
Hot dog sellers usually handed out gloves to customers to wear while eating their frankfurters. But at the fair, too many people walked away still wearing them, and Feuchtwanger soon ran out of spare gloves. He convinced a nearby baker to make frank-shaped rolls as a substitute for gloves. The rolls actually worked better, and the hot dog, as we know it today, was created. (The name hot dog was thought up two years later by a sports cartoonist named Tad Dorgan…but that’s another story.)
COTTON CANDY
Variations of this sweet treat have been around for centuries. In the mid-1800s, master confectioners from Europe and the United States spent hours crafting candy Easter decorations out of melted sugar. They used forks and other tined instruments to separate and spin the strands of sugar into delicate threads.
Four different people—Thomas Patton, Josef Delarose Lascaux, John C. Wharton, and William Morrison—claim to be the inventors of cotton candy. By experimenting with a spinning bowl dotted with numerous holes for the heated sugar to emerge as threads, each had found a quick and easy way to make spun sugar. But it was Wharton and Morrison who took their patented cotton candy machine to the St. Louis World’s Fair. Not surprisingly, they sold clouds of the sugary confection and it became a big hit.
When cotton candy was first introduced, it was known as “Fairy Floss.”
PEANUT BUTTER
In 1890 Dr. John Kellogg created peanut butter as a healthy protein substitute for his patients with no teeth. Nobody paid much attention to the new product until a man named C. H. Sumner brought peanut butter to—you guessed it—the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.
As for Dr. Kellogg, he went on to create the best-known breakfast cereal in the world: corn flakes.
* * *
OTHER FASCINATING THINGS AT THE 1904 FAIR
• Demonstration of the “newfangled” telephone
• Ice-skating rink with a daily “snowstorm” (an amazing feat in the summer, in 1904)
• Moving picture theater, where most fairgoers saw movies for the first time
• Statue of Theodore Roosevelt sculpted in butter
• Sculpture of a bear made entirely of prunes
• French’s Mustard
• Iced tea
• A “health drink” known as Dr. Pepper
• Puffed rice
• A 250-foot-high amusement ride created by a bridge builder from Pittsburgh named George W. Ferris, which he called…the Ferris wheel
According to the Peanut Advisory Board, 89% of Americans buy peanut butter.
HOOP STATS
Highlights from the National Basketball Association.
• Highest Individual Score in a Game: On March 2, 1962, Wilt “the Stilt” Chamberlain scored 100 points for the Philadelphia 76ers against the New York Knicks.
• Most Three-Point Shots in a Game: Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers sank 12 three-pointers (9 of them in a row) against the Seattle Sonics on January 7, 2003.
• Most Rebounds in a Game: Wilt “the Stilt” again. The 7′ 1″ center pulled down 41 rebounds on April 5, 1967, against the Boston Celtics.
• Highest Total Score: On December 13, 1983, the Detroit Pistons beat the Denver Nuggets 186–184, for a combined score of 370.
• Lowest Total Score: On November 22, 1950, the Ft. Wayne Pistons beat the Minneapolis Lakers by one point, 19–18.
• Tallest Player: Tie! Gheorghe Muresan from Romania and Manute Bol from the Sudan are both 7′ 7″ tall!
• Shortest Player: Tyrone “Muggsy” Bogues, 5′ 3″, played for four NBA teams from 1987 to 2001.
• Youngest Player: Jermaine O’Neal was 18 years, 53 days old when he played his first game for the Portland Trailblazers on December 5, 1996.
NBA star Dikembe Mutombo’s full name: Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean Jacque Wamutombo.
THE GHOST OF NUMBER 17
“Deliver us from ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties, and things that go bump in the night!”—Old Scottish saying
MYSTERY MAN
One hundred years ago, a very odd man moved into house Number 17 on a quiet street near the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, Scotland. The man was handsome and well-built, but strangely shy. He rarely left his 10-room townhouse, and no one ever came to call. His only visitor was an old woman who cleaned the house and brought him groceries. Years passed, and he didn’t make friends with a single person in the neighborhood.
Then one day the mystery man suddenly died. Strange men appeared at the house and took his body away. Neighbors wondered: Who were those men? Where did they come from? And where did they take the body? No one ever found out. The cleaning lady locked the windows and doors of the house, never to return. Number 17 sat empty and abandoned for years.
WHO’S TALKING?
Then word began to spread that the house at Number 17 was haunted. Neighbors at Number 16 and Number 18 claimed to hear voices through the walls, usually after midnight. Then, as quickly as they had started, the noises stopped, and people forgot about Number 17…for a while.
In 1914, shortly after the start of World War I, the house was bought by an Englishman who decided to turn it into a boardinghouse. The new business was going fine…until the noises returned.
One day while she was cleaning, a maid suddenly heard voices coming from the attic bedroom. She slowly climbed the wooden stairs toward the strange sounds, which grew louder with each step. But when she opened the door, the voices stopped—and the room was empty. Then another maid heard voices coming from the same room. She hurried up the stairs to look, but when she peered inside, she found no one. Still, she had the distinct feeling that someone—or something—was standing beside her.
MARY BREWSTER
That winter the room was rented to a young married couple. The very first night they heard voices all around them and ran screaming into the hall. While the housekeeper tried to calm the terrified couple, a maid named Mary Brewster went into the room to check it out.
Seconds later the housekeeper and the frightened couple heard a shriek of terror. Running into the room, they found Brewster gripping the bedrail, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. She never told anyone what she saw—in fact, she never spoke another word in her life. She had completely lost her mind.
Holland is the only country with a national dog: the Pug.
ANDREW MUIR
Soon everyone was talking about the ghost in Number 17. Some people believed the story, some didn’t. One man who did—a university student named Andrew Muir—offered to help the owner of the house prove the existence of the ghost once and for all.
Their plan was simple: Andrew Muir would go into the room at 10 p.m. and wait until dawn. If he heard anything strange, he would call the owner, who was in the room directly below, by ringing a loud bell.
Less than 10 minutes after Muir went into the room, the bell rang. The owner raced upstairs and burst into the room. There he found Muir, slumped in a chair, his face frozen in an expression of horror. The young student had been frightened to death.
To this day no one knows what Andrew Muir or Mary Brewster saw. The owner sold Number 17 and moved away. The house was boarded up—no one ever lived there again. Years later all of the houses on the street were torn down, ending any chance of solving the mystery of the murderous Ghost of Number 17.
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt always carried a loaded revolver in her purse.
STUNT MASTERS
People often create publicity stunts to draw attention to a new product. One of the best ways is to put the right animal in the wrong place.
HORSES AT THE MOVIES
When a new movie is ready to go to theaters, filmmakers often have a special screening for an invited list of celebrities. Famous people attract TV and newspaper reporters like bees to honey—exactly what the publicist wants. But publicist Marty Weiser broke all the rules when he hosted a premiere for the 1974 comic western Blazing Saddles. Instead of famous stars, he invited horses!
Weiser ran a small ad in the L.A. Times “calling all horses” to the special screening at a local drive-in movie theater that Weiser had rented. Of course, Weiser made sure there was a snack bar (called the “horsepitality bar”) which offered an assortment of “horse d’oeuvres”—a favorite being dried oats served in a popcorn bucket.
Coca-Cola’s secret formula is called 7X. (What is 7X? It’s a secret!)
On the night of the screening, Weiser waited anxiously in the empty drive-in, not knowing if anyone was coming. Then a police motorcycle entered the drive-in leading a parade of more than 250 horses and riders. Each horse and rider “parked” next to a speaker box and watched the first showing of Blazing Saddles.
WHEN PIGS FLY
One day in 1976, the rock band Pink Floyd arranged for a photo shoot for the cover of their album Animals in an industrial section of London. Things went just fine until the 40-foot inflatable pig, which the band had custom-built for the shoot, suddenly broke free of its moorings. Caught in the rising heat from surrounding chimney stacks, the pig shot up to an altitude of nearly 18,000 feet. To make matters worse, the sharp-shooter who had been hired to shoot the pig down in the event of an emergency happened to be out to lunch when the pig “escaped.”
To everyone’s horror, the huge pig floated away, heading toward Heathrow Airport. The pig eventually crashed in a farmer’s field, but while it was airborne, pilots in the area were amused to hear air traffic controllers warning, “Pig on the loose! Pig on the loose!” Inflatable pigs soon became a staple at Pink Floyd concerts.
You weigh less when the moon is directly overh
ead, due to its gravitational pull.
LIONS IN A BOX
Selling cars is no easy job, so car makers are always looking for great publicity stunts to get people down to the showroom to look at their newest models. Late one night in the summer of 2003, publicity people at Land Rover—known for making some of the best off-road vehicles in the world—dropped off a mysterious crate labeled WILD ANIMALS in the center of Darmstadt, Germany. The town awoke the next morning to the roar of a lion coming from the crate. People were terrified. Animal lovers were enraged. Who would be so cruel as to cage a poor lion in the middle of the city? And what if the crate broke and the lion escaped?
Police surrounded the crate and approached with weapons drawn. But when they looked inside, they saw no lion. Instead, they saw a TV running a promotional video for Land Rover vehicles punctuated with shots of roaring lions.
People burn about 110 calories per hour while typing—50 more than while sleeping.
POCKET PET
Some say a sugar glider is the ultimate “pocket pet.” A tame sugar glider will sit on your shoulder, ride in your hair, or nap in your shirt pocket. So what is it?
PETS FROM DOWN UNDER
Sugar gliders are tiny gliding marsupials (which means they have pouches, like opossums and kangaroos) from Indonesia and Australia. They are about the size of a hamster—five to seven inches long. They’re silvery gray with a black stripe that starts just above their nose and goes all the way back to their bushy tail, and they have soft white bellies.
They’re called “gliders” because they actually have membranes between their front and hind legs that allow them to glide through the air as much as 150 feet from tree to tree without ever touching the ground—just like a flying squirrel. They eat fruits, veggies, and insects, and love honey. But they got the name “sugar” glider because in the wild they also eat sweet tree sap.
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