Uncle John's Top Secret Bathroom Reader for Kids Only!

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  PAL FOR LIFE

  Do they make good pets? Yes and no. Sugar gliders are very affectionate. Once one bonds with you, it will always glide back to you, because you become its “nest.” But a sugar glider needs lots of attention. You must spend at least two hours a day playing with it. Why? If you don’t play with them, they’ll get lonely and depressed and could actually die. And a sugar glider can live to be 15 years old, so you’re making a big commitment when you make a sugar glider your pet.

  First known bank: Babylon’s Egibi family ran a money-lending firm in 630 B.C.

  More downsides to these exotic pets: they’re nocturnal (more active at night); they’re hard to house train (they poop and pee whenever they feel like it); and they have very sharp claws (ouch!).

  * * *

  WHEN GOOD TEACHERS GO BAD

  Q: Why was the math teacher arrested?

  A: His story didn’t add up.

  Q: Why was the music teacher arrested?

  A: She got into treble.

  Q: What happened when the English teacher was arrested?

  A: She got a long sentence!

  As American as apple pie? Sorry—apple pie originated in Europe.

  PAGE OF SEVENS

  On page 77 we told you all about the number 7. Here are some interesting lists of sevens.

  Seven Notes in the Musical Scale

  1. Do

  2. Re

  3. Mi

  4. Fa

  5. So

  6. La

  7. Ti

  Seven Directions

  (Polynesia)

  1. North

  2. South

  3. East

  4. West

  5. Here

  6. Up

  7. Down

  Seven Virtues

  (Samurai)

  1. Gi (the right decision)

  2. Yu (valor)

  3. Jin (benevolence)

  4. Rei (respect)

  5. Makoto (honesty)

  6. Meiyo (honor)

  7. Chugi (loyalty)

  Seven Colors in the Rainbow

  1. Red

  2. Orange

  3. Yellow

  4. Green

  5. Blue

  6. Indigo

  7. Violet

  Seven Metals Found in Nature

  1. Gold

  2. Silver

  3. Iron

  4. Lead

  5. Mercury

  6. Copper

  7. Tin

  Seven Deadly Sins

  (Christianity)

  1. Pride

  2. Envy

  3. Gluttony

  4. Lust

  5. Anger

  6. Greed

  7. Sloth

  The Seven Dwarfs

  1. Doc

  2. Happy

  3. Bashful

  4. Sneezy

  5. Sleepy

  6. Grumpy

  7. Dopey

  Seven Seas

  1. Arctic

  2. Antarctic

  3. North Pacific

  4. South Pacific

  5. North Atlantic

  6. South Atlantic

  7. Indian

  Seven Castaways

  (Gilligan’s Island)

  1. Gilligan

  2. The Skipper

  3. The Millionaire (Thurston Howell III)

  4. His Wife (Lovey Howell)

  5. The Movie Star (Ginger)

  6. The Professor

  7. Mary Ann

  Wethersfield, Conn., is the only U.S. town to have been hit by a meteor…twice in a row.

  THE MONEY PIT

  Nobody knows who dug the mysterious pit on Oak Island or why, but one thing’s for sure: there’s something down there.

  TREASURE ISLAND

  In 1795 a Canadian teenager named Daniel McGinnis was exploring tiny Oak Island in Nova Scotia when he found a mysterious hole. Beside the hole was an old tree with some of its branches sawed off. The remnants of a ship’s tackle (ropes and pulleys used to hoist cargo) were found on one of the remaining limbs. It looked like they had been used to lower something heavy into the hole.

  McGinnis was sure he had found a pirate’s buried treasure. He went and got two buddies to help him dig. They hit a flagstone only 2 feet down, then barriers of logs at 10, 20, and 30 feet. But no treasure. McGinnis and his friends gave up…but word of their discovery soon spread and treasure hunters from all over the world flocked to the site.

  A STRANGE STONE

  Simeon Lynds joined in the search in 1803. At 90 feet, his diggers found a large stone with strange symbols carved on it. A few feet later, they struck what one digger said “felt like a wooden chest.” But it was too dark to see, so they stopped for the night.

  When they came back the next morning, the hole was completely flooded with water. And it somehow kept refilling, even as the workers tried to bail it out. Unable to get to whatever lies at the bottom of the pit, Lynds and his team finally gave up in frustration.

  Tough guy: The aggressive horned frog of Argentina will attack animals as large as a horse.

  IT’S THE PITS

  More treasure hunters followed. In fact, so many holes have been dug looking for the treasure that nobody knows exactly where the original hole is. Even future president Franklin D. Roosevelt supervised a dig in 1909. He was just a young man at the time but continued to follow Oak Island’s progress after he became president—not that there was any success to follow. Each attempt at finding gold failed and was even more costly than the one before…which is why the hole on Oak Island became known as the “Money Pit.”

  KEEP OUT! THIS MEANS YOU!

  Why is it so hard to get into the hole? It’s no accident: Whoever dug the original pit wanted to make sure no one ever got to the bottom of it. In 1850 some explorers resting on a nearby beach noticed that the beach “gulched forth water like a sponge being squeezed.” So they dug it up—and discovered the beach was fake. It was actually a network of stone drains that fed seawater into the Money Pit. The drains—designed to flood the pit whenever treasure hunters got too close to the treasure—had been buried in the sand to avoid detection.

  Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, and Mike Myers never met while recording the voices for Shrek.

  It’s possible that the Money Pit is also protected by poison gas. On August 17, 1965, Robert Restall, a former daredevil motorcyclist, and his 18-year-old son were attempting to seal off one of the pit’s flood tunnels when Restall blacked out and fell into the hole. His son climbed down after him, but he blacked out, too. Three other workers jumped in, but to no avail—Restall, his son, and two workers were killed. Officials said they were poisoned by gas and then drowned in the water flooding the bottom of the hole.

  WHAT’S BEEN FOUND IN THE HOLE?

  • In 1849 three links of a gold chain were pulled up by a drill from the 98-foot level.

  • In 1897 a group of drillers dug down to 155 feet. They pulled up a small square of parchment with some odd lettering on it. Could it have been part of a treasure map? The drillers were unable to find the rest of it.

  • In 1976 an underwater video camera was lowered into the water-filled cavity at the bottom of the shaft. On the monitor, one of the workers suddenly saw what looked like a human hand. He quickly called over three of his crew members, and they confirmed that it truly was a hand.

  • In 1987 an IBM cryptologist claimed to have deciphered the strange markings on the stone. The message: “Forty feet below, two million pounds are buried.”

  The Incas had no iron, so they used gold to make such everyday objects as nails, tweezers, and eating utensils.

  THE HOLE TRUTH

  There are many theories as to what’s really down at the bottom of the Money Pit. Here are the best known:

  1. The missing crown jewels of the kings of France. Many pirates roamed the seas around Nova Scotia in the 18th century, when the jewels were stolen.

  2. Incan gold. The treasure of the Incas was plundered by Spanish g
alleons and later pirated by the English buccaneer Sir Francis Drake. Wood samples from the island have been dated back to 1575, which was when Drake roamed the seas. However, there is no record of Drake ever having been to Nova Scotia.

  3. Captain Kidd’s buried treasure. Some believe Kidd buried his treasure on Oak Island just before he was caught by the English and hanged as a pirate. Before his death in 1701, Kidd tried to cut a deal—he would lead the English to the spot where he’d hidden his treasure if they called off the hanging. The deal was refused, and Kidd’s treasure has never been found. But there is no evidence that Kidd was ever near Oak Island.

  4. The fortune of the Knights Templar. These warrior monks became very powerful after the First Crusade in 1095–1099 A.D., when they established kingdoms in Jerusalem and on the islands of Cyprus and Rhodes. Soon they had branches of their order all over Europe, controlling vast amounts of land and money. When the French king Phillip IV broke up the order and killed its leaders in the early 1300s, a few of the Templars were believed to have escaped to Scotland, where they became a secret society. A century later, they sailed to Nova Scotia and could have hidden their vast fortune on Oak Island.

  THE SECRET REMAINS BURIED

  After 200 years, the Money Pit continues to live up to its name. Since buying Oak Island in 1971, an investment group called the Triton Alliance of Montreal, Canada, has spent more than $3 million trying to uncover its secret. So far, they’ve retrieved…nothing.

  * * *

  “Money never made a man happy yet. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.”

  —Benjamin Franklin

  If the sun suddenly disappeared, it would take about 8.3 minutes before the world went dark.

  RECORD BREAKERS

  A few more “Golden Plunger” Award winners.

  FASTEST CAR: The Lamborghini Diablo 5.7. It can go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in less than four seconds and reach a top speed of more than 200 mph. That makes it the fastest “production,” or mass-produced, car in the world. Cost: $250,000.

  OLDEST UNIVERSITY: Université Quaraouyine in Fez, Morocco. It was founded in 859 A.D.

  LONGEST BORDER BETWEEN COUNTRIES: The border between the United States and Canada. It stretches 3,987 miles (6,416 kilometers on the Canadian side of the border).

  HOTTEST HOT PEPPER: The habanero. A pepper’s “heat” is measured in Scoville units (named after Wilbur Scoville, a research chemist). A bell pepper has about 300, a jalepeño has about 5,000; but a habanero can have a whopping 300,000 Scoville units.

  MOST EXPENSIVE MOVIE MEMORABILIA: The ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz (1939). In May 2000 they sold for a record $666,000.

  SMELLIEST ANIMAL: The zorilla. This skunklike creature, native to Africa, protects itself by spraying a fluid from its unusually large scent glands. The stink can be smelled more than half a mile away.

  Largest cat in North and South America: jaguar.

  BACK FROM THE DEAD

  These stories prove the old adage “It ain’t over until it’s over.”

  LUCKY JOCKEY

  Early Demise: On May 8, 1936, Ralph Neves was coming down the final stretch at Bay Meadows racetrack in California when his horse tripped and crashed into the fence. The 19-year-old jockey was thrown to the ground and trampled by his own horse—and then four others. Neves was declared dead at the scene.

  Still, an ambulance rushed him to a hospital where doctors tried everything they could to bring him back to life, including a shot of adrenaline directly into his heart. But nothing revived him. Finally they covered him in a sheet, tagged his toe, and sent his body off to the morgue.

  I’m B-a-a-ack: Minutes after he reached the morgue, Ralph Neves sat up. He was cold, bloody, shirtless, and wearing only one boot. He wasn’t sure where he was, but he knew where he was supposed to be: back at the track! So Neves staggered out of the hospital and hailed a cab.

  When he got to the racetrack, he ran straight for the jockey room, still wearing his toe tag! As he sprinted past the grandstand, the crowd went wild. Then his “widow,” who was still at the scene of his demise, saw him…and promptly fainted. Neves assured track officials that he didn’t feel dead and was perfectly capable of riding in the next race, but they wisely convinced him to take the day off.

  Brrr! People have sailed small icebergs 2,400 miles from Antarctica to Chile and Peru.

  The next day, Neves came back to the track and rode five winners. He also claimed the day’s big prize—a $500 watch donated by famed singer Bing Crosby.

  DOWN BUT NOT OUT

  Early Demise: April 15, 2003 was a bad day for a 10 month-old Labrador Retriever named Dosha. First, she made the mistake of wandering away from her owner’s yard in Clearlake, California. Then she was hit by a car. A police officer found her and, afraid she was in too much pain, shot the pup to put her out of her misery. Her “dead” body was taken to the animal shelter and put in the freezer until the staff could bury her.

  I’m B-a-a-ack: Two hours later, a veterinarian opened the freezer to find Dosha standing up in an orange plastic body bag, shivering but very much alive. This amazing dog had survived being hit by a car, shot by a bullet, and locked in a freezer. Today she’s back with her family, enjoying the brand-new fence in their backyard.

  Sounds animals make: Elephants trumpet; falcons chant; cats meow; peacocks scream.

  OVER AND OUT

  Uniform - November - Charlie - Lima - Echo Juliet - Oscar - Hotel - November

  What does it mean? Read on.

  When people communicate by radio or walkie-talkie it’s easy to misunderstand words, even when you spell them out letter by letter. If someone’s life is on the line, mistakes can be fatal. So in the 1950s, linguists invented the NATO Phonetic Alphabet. Pilots, police and fire departments, rescue workers, and the military have used this alphabet since then to ensure their messages come through loud and clear.

  A Alpha

  B Bravo

  C Charlie

  D Delta

  E Echo

  F Foxtrot

  G Golf

  H Hotel

  I India

  J Juliet

  K Kilo

  L Lima

  M Mike

  N November

  O Oscar

  P Papa

  Q Quebec

  R Romeo

  S Sierra

  T Tango

  U Uniform

  V Victor

  W Whiskey

  X X-ray

  Y Yankee

  Z Zulu

  The Snickers candy bar was named after a horse owned by the Mars family.

  SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD

  Two thousand years ago, the Greeks compiled a list of the greatest structures ever built by human hands. They called them the Seven Wonders of the World. Almost all of these structures have since been destroyed, so we’ll never know if they really were the greatest. But it is a great list.

  1. LIGHTHOUSE OF ALEXANDRIA. In the third century B.C., the Greeks built a huge lighthouse in the city of Alexandria, Egypt, near the Mediterranean Sea. It stood over 400 feet tall and could be seen by ships from an amazing 40 miles away! (Remember: They didn’t have cranes or power tools back then.) The lighthouse overlooked the harbor for 1,600 years, until it was destroyed by an earthquake in the 14th century.

  2. STATUE OF ZEUS. This massive statue was built around 450 B.C. in the Greek city of Olympia (the site of the first Olympics). Made out of ebony, ivory, gems, and a lot of gold, it depicted the Greek god Zeus seated on a throne. It was 20 feet wide by 40 feet tall. A fire destroyed it in 462 A.D.

  3. TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS. Built around 550 B.C., this solid marble temple to the Greek goddess Artemis was bigger than a football field. It had 127 columns each 60 feet high, topped by a beautifully carved roof. Inside, it was filled with precious artworks and gold and silver statues. Located in what is now Turkey, it
stood until enemies destroyed it in 262 A.D.

  Earth is the only planet in our solar system not named after a god.

  4. MAUSOLEUM AT HALICARNASSUS. This was a mansion-size tomb built for King Mausolos around 353 B.C. in what is now Turkey. It became famous for its beauty and size: the alabaster and gold sarcophagus was surrounded by large columns that supported a pyramid roof—140 feet tall! An earthquake destroyed it in 1304.

  5. HANGING GARDENS OF BABYLON. The Persian king Nebuchadnezzar II built this massive garden palace around 600 B.C. for Queen Amytis in what is now Iraq. Vast columned terraces on several levels were covered with full-grown trees, flowering plants, fountains, and pools. It even had several mechanically powered waterfalls. So why were the gardens called “hanging”? Historians believe it was a mistranslation of the word “overhanging.” (Some historians think the gardens never really existed at all but were just a myth.)

  6. COLOSSUS OF RHODES. Over 2,000 years ago, a bronze statue of the god Helios as big as the Statue of Liberty stood on the Greek island of Rhodes. The sculptor worked on it for 12 years before finally completing it in 282 B.C. It had the shortest life of any of the Seven Wonders—it was destroyed by an earthquake in 226 B.C., only 56 years after it was built.

  To increase milk production, Oregon farmer Arie Jongeneel had his cows sleep on water beds.

  7. THE GREAT PYRAMID. In 2560 B.C. the Egyptians built a tomb for Pharaoh Khufu. It was made with more than 2.3 million stones, each weighing more than 5,000 pounds. They were all chiseled to fit together perfectly and required no mortar. The tomb is riddled with tunnels and chambers, many still unexplored.

  The Great Pyramid is the only one of the Seven Wonders that remains. To this day, scientists still aren’t sure how the ancient Egyptians built it.

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  OTHER ANCIENT WONDERS