FART SONGS
All right, kids, time to sing along with Uncle John. Come on—it’s a gas!
TRAVELING FARTS
(to the tune of “Hello, Operator”)
Going down the highway,
Doing eighty-four.
Johnny cut a gasser—
It blew me out the door!
The engine, it exploded.
The chassis fell apart.
All because of Johnny and his
Supersonic fart!
BLOWING IN THE WIND
(also to the tune of “Hello, Operator”)
A little gush of wind,
Straight from the heart;
It trickled down my backbone,
And it’s also called a fart.
A fart can be useful;
It gives the body ease,
It warms the bed in winter,
And suffocates the fleas.
“The difference between genius and stupidity: Genius has limits.” —Albert Einstein
LOONEY LAWS
Believe it or not, these laws are real.
You can howl after 9:00 p.m. in Columbus, Georgia…but your cat can’t.
Pharmacists in Trout Creek, Utah, cannot sell gunpowder as a headache medicine.
Hello? If you’re under twelve and you live in Blue Earth, Minnesota, you must be accompanied by an adult when you talk on the phone.
In Eureka, Nevada, it is illegal for a man to kiss a woman if he has a mustache.
Canadians are forbidden from removing their bandages in public.
Hawaii residents can be fined for putting coins in their ears.
In Knoxville, Tennessee, it’s against the law to lasso a fish.
Lawmakers in Boston, Massachusetts, have ruled that a pickle must bounce four inches when dropped from waist height.
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, will not allow children under the age of seven to go to college.
It is illegal to drive without a steering wheel in Decatur, Illinois.
You cannot pretend to practice witchcraft in Canada.
In Portland, Oregon, you cannot wear roller skates in a restroom or whistle under water.
Magic carpet: A high-quality Persian rug can last for 500 years.
CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS
You have to admire a guy who writes about talking toilets and names one of his books Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopy Pants.
THE EARLY YEARS
Dav Pilkey was born March 4, 1966, in Cleveland, Ohio, where he lived with his mom, dad, and sister. He loved to draw—so much so that while other kids were outside playing baseball and football, Dav (pronounced “Dave”) was usually inside drawing monsters and superheroes. “Life was pretty cool when I was little,” he says. “And then school started.”
THE HYPERACTIVE KID
• In elementary school, Dav spent a lot of time making funny noises, running around the classroom, and sticking crayons up his nose. His classmates loved it, but his teacher did not and regularly sent him out of the classroom.
• He actually set a record for most time spent in the principal’s office. (He was later diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and severe hyperactivity, which explains why it was so hard for him to sit still.)
• Dav says he spent so much time in the hall during first grade that his teacher moved a little desk out there for him. It was at this desk that he first invented his ideal superhero—a guy who flew around the city in his underwear giving wedgies to all the bad guys.
Elephants are the largest land mammals, but their eyes are only slightly bigger than a human’s.
• Dav’s second-grade teacher at St. John’s Lutheran School happened to use the word underpants in class one day, and everyone started laughing. The teacher got mad and told the class that “underwear is not funny.” Everyone laughed harder. That’s when Dav realized that underpants was a very funny word, and that Captain Underpants would be a great name for a superhero.
• Dav’s name was spelled “Dave” until he reached high school, when he got a weekend job working at Pizza Hut. The machine that made the nametags broke and couldn’t print the letter “e,” so his nametag read “Dav.” He thought it was cool and has spelled it that way ever since.
DAV HITS THE BIG TIME
When Dav started college at Kent State University in Ohio, his English teacher told him she thought he was a good writer and loved the pictures he drew. She suggested he try writing children’s books, so he did.
His first book was World War Won, a story about two animal kings, each racing to build the tallest tower of nuclear weapons. When the kings realize that they are threatening not only themselves but their whole world, they seek help from the other animals.
Dav entered the book in a student writing contest—and won. World War Won was published in 1986, and Dav went on to become a very successful author. He has written other popular books, such as Kat Kong and Dogzilla, but it’s his book series about George and Harold, two kids with attention deficit disorder and severe hyperactivity (like himself) that has been the biggest success. The Captain Underpants books have won lots of awards and sold more than 14 million copies!
The first picture books for children appeared in the 1600s.
The coolest thing about being a successful author, according to Dav: “I used to get in trouble for being the class clown…and now it’s my job!”
* * *
TWO DUMB CROOKS
Crime #1: An Arkansas man decided to break into a liquor store by throwing a cinder block through the front window. He lifted the heavy block over his head and heaved it at the window.
Gotcha! Because the window was made of Plexiglas, the cinder block just bounced off…and knocked the thief unconscious. Adding insult to injury, the entire episode was recorded by a security camera.
Crime #2: Two nervous robbers burst into a Michigan record shop waving loaded revolvers. One of them yelled, “Nobody move!”
Gotcha! Someone moved—his partner. The other thief was so startled that he shot him.
Q: How can you tell a male turkey from a female? A: Only male turkeys gobble.
ICE HOTELS
They’re built in the middle of winter and last until spring. When they’re gone, there’s nothing left but a puddle. These crystal palaces are the snow forts of everyone’s dreams—and they’re great places to chill out!
WHAT ARE THEY?
Ice hotels are exactly what they sound like—hotels made out of ice. The floors and ceilings are ice. The beds, tables, and even drinking glasses are made of ice. Your bed of ice is warm and cozy because it’s covered in reindeer skins and a down sleeping bag. Your room might even have a Jacuzzi and a fireplace. There are art galleries (featuring ice art) and movie theaters, ice chapels, and snow restaurants. There’s always one room that’s not frozen, however—the bathroom (you can’t flush frozen water).
AN ICE IDEA
The first ice castle was built in Jukkasjarvi, Sweden, in 1990. It wasn’t really meant to be a hotel, but some people decided to spend the night there and loved it. They spread the word, and now there are four ice hotels around the world. No matter how cold it gets outside, the temperature in an ice castle remains between 2° and 24°F. That’s because of the insulating properties of ice. Like an igloo, ice castles retain the warmth from the people and other heat sources inside. The retained heat melts the inside of the walls and ceiling slightly, but the water quickly returns to ice. This thin sheet of ice acts like a layer of cement, sealing out the cold and holding in the heat.
Eskimos use refrigerators to keep food from freezing.
HOW ARE THEY BUILT?
Depending on the size of the structure, each hotel will use about 10,000 tons of ice and 10,000 to 30,000 tons of snow. An arched steel frame provides support for the walls, which are four feet thick. To create the vaulted ceilings, snow cannons and tractors mold snow over the frames. Finally, ice columns are put in place to provide extra support for the ceili
ngs. The 60-room ice hotel in Sweden takes two months to build, but the builders start “harvesting” thousands of tons of ice for it in June.
With a room temperature hovering around 24°F, you probably won’t be running around in your birthday suit. But with proper cold-weather clothing, the hotels are quite comfortable…and beautiful!
Not all icebergs are white—some are green, some are black, and some are blue.
SECRET AGENT WOMAN
Some spies are so secretive that their identities remain unknown…even after they die. Agent 355 was such a spy. Her life was filled with secrets, lies, danger, love, and betrayal.
ISPY
The year was 1776. The American colonies were fighting desperately for their independence from England, and were trying every tactic they could think of to win, including espionage. Secret spy rings, like the Sons of Liberty and Knowlton’s Rangers, formed to help deliver vital information to the American military.
Maj. Benjamin Tallmadge, who was based in New York City and Long Island, assembled his own top-flight group of spies to supply the leader of the American troops, Gen. George Washington, with British military secrets.
SPY RING
Tallmadge hired a farmer named Abraham Woodhull to head the spy ring. His code name was “Samuel Culper Sr.” Woodhull’s best secret agent was Robert Townsend, whose code name was “Samuel Culper Jr.” They used only their code names in all their correspondence with General Washington. The Culper Ring, as it came to be known, became the most famous spy ring of the American Revolution. They corresponded in invisible ink, wrote in secret codes, and left information packets hidden in specific places to be picked up later by other agents.
Are you afraid of dust? (Cough!) If so, you’re an amathophobic.
MYSTERY WOMAN
The Culper Ring was constantly searching for more clever ways to gain access to British secrets. In 1778 Woodhull got the idea to recruit a woman for the job. Many of the colonists still socialized with the British officers, and one officer, Major André, was known for his love of pretty girls. What could be better than making one of these beautiful girls into a spy?
Woodhull found the perfect woman for the job. Who was she? No one knows. More than 200 years later, her identity remains a secret. Most historians think she was a member of a colonial family who were British sympathizers.
When the Culper Ring learned that the British had figured out their invisible ink formula, they switched to a numerical code. The code for New York was 727, Washington was 711, Woodhull was 722, and Townsend was 723. The mysterious woman was assigned 355—the only name by which she is known today.
355 + 723 = LOVE
Agents 355 and 723 (Townsend) fell in love during their years working together. She even became pregnant with Townsend’s child. Sadly, their story does not have a happy ending: 355’s luck ran out in 1780. Betrayed by Benedict Arnold, the most famous traitor in American history, she was captured by the British and held prisoner on the prison ship Jersey. After giving birth to a son, who was named Robert Townsend Jr., Agent 355 died in captivity.
Safe to brush? Poisoned toothpaste has been used by CIA agents as a secret weapon.
THE WALL
Today, most U.S. secret agents work for the Central Intelligence Agency. At CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, there is a memorial wall for those agents who have died while in service as spies. Each life is represented by a star chiseled into the marble wall. As of 2004, there were 80 stars. Below the stars, protected in a glass case, a book of honor lists the names of only 46 of the 80 agents. The names of the other 34 will remain a secret forever—and Agent 355 is one of those secret stars.
* * *
IT’S BETTER THAN RAYMOND RAYMOND RAYMOND
In 2004 a 39-year-old Illinois man named Raymond Allen Gray Jr. decided to change his name to Bubba. Bubba had been his nickname for years, so he figured he was just making it official. Soon after that, he decided to change his middle name to Bubba. And then he changed his last name, too. He’s now legally known—and it’s on his driver’s license—as Bubba Bubba Bubba.
During the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, temperatures reached 2,200°F—hot enough to vaporize diamonds.
RICHIE’S TOYS
Kids can be anything they want to be. Look at Richie Stachowski. He became a toy inventor when he was just 11 years old.
UNDERWATER CHALLENGE
In 1996 fifth-grader Richie Stachowski was snorkeling with his dad in Hawaii when he spotted some sea turtles. Richie was so amazed to see them that he shouted for his dad to look. But his dad couldn’t hear Richie…because they were underwater.
That night Richie began thinking about inventing a way that people could talk to each other underwater. He sketched out some designs of an underwater megaphone in his hotel room and when he returned to California, researched underwater acoustics on the Internet. Then Richie built a model of his idea, using the $267 he had in his savings account. It looked something like a mega-phone attached to a snorkel mouthpiece.
Richie tested his underwater megaphone in every bathtub and swimming pool he could find. Three months later, he had perfected his new invention: Water Talkies.
SHORT STACK
Richie’s mother, Barbara, also an inventor and a businesswoman, helped Richie set up his own company. He called it Short Stack, after his favorite breakfast: pancakes. His company motto is “Made by a kid for kids.” Soon Richie was selling his Water Talkies through Wal-Mart, KMart, Target, and Toys ‘R’ Us.
MORE INVENTIONS
The success of Water Talkies made Richie decide to create more toys. He invented the Bumper Jumper Water Pumper, a sit-down water float whose paddle doubles as a water gun, and the Aqua Scope, a periscope that lets snorkelers see under and above the water at the same time.
Three years and five more inventions later, Richie sold his company to Wild Planet Toys in San Francisco for—are you ready for this?—$7 million! And he was only 14 years old!
Try it yourself: When an ice cube melts, it doesn’t raise the water level in the glass.
“HELLO GIRLS”
The telephone has been around for more than a century, but cell phones, dial tones, and automatic connections are relatively new. So how did phone calls get through before? The operator.
VOICE WITH A SMILE
When telephone service began in the late 1870s, every call had to go through an operator who physically connected one caller’s line with another by plugging it in at a central switchboard. The first operators were teenage boys, most of whom were used to delivering telegrams as fast as they could on their bikes. (That was the speediest way to deliver messages before Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in 1876.) But these high-spirited boys were often rude to customers and to each other. More than once, phone service was “put on hold” as the boys cheered on a fistfight.
GIRL POWER
In an attempt to improve service, the early phone companies decided to do something drastic—employ women. Single girls between the ages of 17 and 20 were hired to replace the boys and became known as “hello girls,” or “the voice with a smile.”
On September 1, 1878, Emma M. Nutt became the very first hello girl when she went to work for the Boston Telephone Despatch Company. As time went on, Emma and the other hello girls were expected to do more than just connect callers with another number. When someone called an operator, they might want to know the local time, a recipe, the weather report, or when the next train was scheduled to arrive. Some customers even asked for a wake-up call, or for the operator to listen for their baby crying while they went to visit a friend!
You can’t lead a kangaroo from the front—you have to guide it by its tail.
OPERATOR TO THE RESCUE!
The telephone became a lifeline for many people, especially out in the country, and the operator was there to help.
• Farmers would call with news of tornadoes, storms, or impending frosts, and the operators would phone the informa
tion to other farmers in time for them to round up livestock and protect crops.
• Many a story is told of heroic operators who remained at their posts to warn of floods and coordinate rescue efforts, even as the waters rose around their switchboards.
• A New Jersey operator once received a call from a panicked druggist, who said that a customer had walked off with a bottle of acid instead of eye drops. She started making calls—to relatives, the postmaster, and other subscribers. The operator finally reached the woman in a New York City hotel, just as she was unwittingly about to give her eyes an acid bath.
Today computers handle most of the work once done by operators, but some things never change—you can still reach a live operator if you need to, 24 hours a day.
Most children ever born to one mother: 69.
HOME ALONE GAMES
Here are a few more great games to play on a rainy day—or any day, for that matter.
TABLETOP OBSTACLE COURSE
Object of the Game: To build your own obstacle course and race against the clock.
Setup: You’ll need a Ping-Pong ball, a straw, a felt-tip pen, newspaper, tape, and some “obstacles,” such as books, small toys, some cups, and silverware. Cover a large table with the newspaper and tape down the corners. Spread the obstacles out on the table. Draw a course around and through them with the felt-tip pen.
How to Play: Place the Ping-Pong ball at the start of the course and blow through the straw to get it rolling. Keep blowing and don’t touch the ball with the straw. Your goal is to roll the ball through the course without touching it, without hitting any of the obstacles, and without letting it fall off the table. For even more excitement, time your run with a stopwatch to see who’s the fastest.
Uncle John's Top Secret Bathroom Reader for Kids Only! Page 18