Uncle John’s Briefs

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  • INDIA: One of the first golf clubs outside of the British Isles—the Royal Calcutta—was established in India in 1829. The first national competition, the All-India Amateur Championship, was established in 1892, making it the world’s second-oldest open championship after the British Open. British golfers dominated the All-India until 1949, when Mohinder Bal became the first native-born Indian to win it.

  • AUSTRALIA: Australians have golfed since the mid-1800s, when it was still a British colony. Today, there are plenty of elegant, highly manicured courses near the cities along the coast, but Australia also has huge expanses of largely uninhabited land in its interior. The Outback is mostly grass-free, hot desert, but that doesn’t stop course developers from building nine-hole courses of oiled sand. Natural hazards: grazing kangaroos, wombat holes, and snakes.

  • MALAYSIA: Summer temperatures hover around 90 degrees. Golf is popular there, but how do golfers avoid the extreme heat and humidity? Night golf under high-powered floodlights.

  • IRAN: In 1979 Iran’s pro-Western government was overthrown and replaced by a strict Muslim theocracy that viewed golf as a useless and decadent Western activity. Teheran’s once prestigious Imperial Golf Club quickly fell into disrepair; five holes have even been confiscated by the government for their real estate value. Golf is now starting to regain popularity, though, and one politician heads a program that provides funds and equipment to schools with golf programs. Golf is most popular among Iranian women, despite the requirement that on the course they be covered from head to toe and cannot play at the same time as men.

  Scientific term for foul-smelling breath (worse than “bad” breath): ozostomia.

  I’D LIKE TO THANK

  THE ACADEMY...

  Every year, Hollywood puts on the movie industry’s biggest party. But there’s more to the Academy Awards than sealed envelopes, gold statues, and acceptance speeches. Here are a few little-known facts about the Oscars.

  An Oscar isn’t really called an “Oscar.” It’s not even officially called an Academy Award. The award’s full title is the Academy Award of Merit. The “Academy” refers to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, formed in 1927 by film-industry employees to arbitrate labor disputes, provide a forum for teaching movie-making techniques and innovations, and improve the industry’s image. In 1929, almost as an afterthought, it began giving out awards for achievement. Most people now associate the Academy only with the awards, but it also continues its other functions (except that it ended its involvement with labor disputes in 1937).

  • At the first ceremony, only 14 awards were given out. The original award categories were: Actor, Actress, Art Direction, Cinematography, Directing (Comedy), Directing (Drama), Engineering Effects, Unique and Artistic Picture, Writing (Adaptation), Writing (Original), Writing (Title Writing), Outstanding Picture (which went to Wings), and two “special achievement” awards. The ceremony lasted 15 minutes; admission was $5.

  • The winners’ names were not always closely guarded secrets. The 1929 ceremony was an unpretentious dinner in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Everyone already knew who had won; the results had been announced nearly three months earlier. The following year, the Academy gave the press the names of the winners ahead of time—on the condition that they wouldn’t print the results until after the ceremony. That tradition continued until 1939 when, during a heated race for Best Picture among heavyweight contenders such as Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the Los Angeles Times printed the name of the winner (Gone With the Wind) in its early evening edition—a few hours before the ceremony, ruining the suspense. Since then, the winners are revealed only at the ceremony.

  Popular pizza topping in Brazil: green peas.

  LET’S DANCE!

  More origins of booty-shaking crazes. (For Part I, turn to page 53.)

  THE TWIST

  You can thank Dick Clark for this dance craze—as host of TV’s American Bandstand, he was always on the lookout for the next big fad. In 1959 he heard a little-known Hank Ballard b-side called “The Twist.” Clark loved the song and urged Ballard to perform it on Bandstand, but Ballard wasn’t interested. So Clark searched around Philadelphia (where the show was based) and found a part-time chicken plucker named Ernest Evans who was known for his ability to mimic popular singers. Before Evans could perform, however, Clark insisted he find a good stage name. Clark’s wife, Barbara, suggested modeling it after Fats Domino: “Fats” became “Chubby,” and “Domino” became “Checker.” So the newly christened Chubby Checker sang “The Twist” on Bandstand and it was an immediate hit. The single shot to #1, and the dance craze of the 1960s was born. So why was the Twist so popular? First, as a non-contact dance, it was novel and rebellious enough to appeal to teenagers, but safe enough for the conservative media. Second, the Twist is easy—even non-dancers (like Uncle John) could do it. “It’s like putting out a cigarette with both feet and wiping your bottom with a towel,” explained Checker.

  Typecast: “The Twist” turned Checker into a star. He followed it up with a string of successful dance songs (to this day, he’s the only recording artist to have had five albums in the Top 12 at the same time). Yet the song also took a toll on Checker’s artistic dreams. “In a way, ‘The Twist’ really ruined my life,” he lamented years later. “I was on my way to becoming a big nightclub performer, and ‘The Twist’ just wiped it out. It got so out of proportion. No one ever believes I have talent.”

  THE WALTZ

  Even people who can’t dance (like Uncle John) can recognize the familiar 1-2-3, 1-2-3 rhythm of the waltz. Although these days it’s associated with high society, when the waltz was introduced in European ballrooms in the early 1800s, it was shunned by “respect able” people. For one, the music came from peasant yodeling melodies of Austria and Bavaria. Worse yet: the close proximity of the two dance partners. Even poet Lord Byron, a notorious rake, claimed that the “lewd grasp and lawless contact” of the waltz “does not leave much to mystery to the nuptial night.”

  Two years after Jan and Dean’s “Dead Man’s Curve” became a hit, Jan Berry nearly died in a car accident three blocks from Dead Man’s Curve in Los Angeles.

  Nevertheless, the waltz caught on and became the standard dance of the upper classes in Europe and the United States. Most of the credit for that goes to Austrian composer Johann Strauss. In the mid-1800s, he reworked the peasant melodies and turned them into layered compositions which were embraced by Viennese royalty. This made Strauss the “waltz king.” He toured Europe with his orchestra, taking the music (as well as the dance) to Germany, Poland, and Russia. It soon found its way to England, then the United States…and eventually into Earth’s orbit.

  Revolver: Perhaps the most wisely recognized waltz is Strauss’s 1867 work, “The Blue Danube”—it was so popular in Austria that it became the country’s unofficial anthem. The piece also became a staple of American pop culture when Stanley Kubrick used it in his 1969 film 2001: A Space Odyssey to accompany the delicate dance of a passenger shuttle orbiting a space station as it prepares to dock—which makes sense, as the word “waltz” comes from the German walzen, meaning “to revolve.”

  MORE WAYS TO SHAKE YOUR GROOVE THING

  The Macarena: The song by Los del Río about a sensuous Spanish woman took the U.S. by storm in 1996. VH1 called it the “#1 Greatest One-Hit Wonder of All Time.”

  Hully Gully: A popular line dance from the 1960s, popularized by the 1960 song “Hully Gully,” by the Olympics. John Belushi dances the hully gully in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers.

  Electric Slide: A disco line dance created by the famous disco dancer Ric Silver in 1976. It came from a song called “Electric Boogie,” written by Bunny Wailer (from Bob Marley’s band).

  Charleston: Though it’s associated with white “flappers” in speakeasies of the 1920s, the dance actually came from the song of the same name by African-American pianist James P. Jo
hnson.

  Achy-Breaky: The 1992 song made Billy Ray Cyrus a country superstar and ushered in a new era of line dancing—not just in America, but all over Europe as well. And it’s still going strong today.

  Limbo: Created in Trinidad in the 1950s, the name comes from the word “limber,” which you must be in order to do this dance. It became a fad in 1962 thanks to Chubby Checker’s “Limbo Rock.”

  TONGUE TWISTERS

  Try to say these three times fast. And pay no attention to the person banging on the bathroom door, wondering what’s going on in there.

  Who washed Washington’s white woolens when Washington’s washerwoman went west?

  Lesser leather never weathered wetter weather better.

  Shave a cedar shingle thin.

  Which wristwatches are Swiss wristwatches?

  A thin little boy picked six thick thistle sticks.

  Flee from fog to fight flu fast!

  The bootblack bought the black boot back.

  We surely shall see the sun shine soon.

  Miss Smith’s fish sauce shop seldom sells shellfish.

  Which wicked witch wished which wicked wish?

  I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit, and on the slitted sheet I sit.

  Give papa a cup of proper coffee in a copper coffee cup.

  Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager managing an imaginary menagerie.

  The epitome of femininity.

  Fred fed Ted bread, and Ted fed Fred bread.

  Many an anemone sees an enemy.

  Any noise annoys an oyster but a noisy noise annoys an oyster most.

  Brooke Shields, Teri Garr, and John Travolta all appeared in 1970s Band-Aid commercials.

  THE EARTH IS FLAT!

  For centuries, scientists have been able to prove that the Earth is round, but that hasn’t stopped people from developing their own unique—and entertaining—theories about its shape.

  THE EARTH IS FLAT

  Who Says So: The International Flat Earth Research Society

  What They Believe: The world is a big flat disc, with the North Pole at the center. What is mistakenly believed to be the South Pole is actually a 150-foot-high mass of ice that forms a big square around the Earth-disc (the way an album cover makes a square around a record). People who think they’re sailing around the world are actually sailing in a circle on the surface of the disc.

  Flat-Earthers believe the Bible must be interpreted literally. Passages like Revelation 7:1 and 20:8, which refer to “the four corners of the earth,” are all the proof they need.

  History: In 1849 an English “itinerant lecturer” named Samuel Birley Rowbotham resurrected the flat-Earth theory (which had been widely discredited by the eighth century). The flat-Earth movement grew sporadically over the next 70 years, finally peaking in the 1920s when Wilbur Glen Voliva organized a flat-Earth religious community with several thousand followers in Zion, Illinois. Voliva owned one of the country’s first 100,000-watt radio stations, and used it to preach the flat-Earth gospel to folks in the American Midwest. Today the movement lives on in Charles Johnson’s Flat Earth Society, which published Flat Earth News…until Johnson’s house burned down in 1995, incinerating the 3,500-person mailing list. No word on what he’s doing now.

  THE EARTH IS HOLLOW

  Who Said So: Captain John Cleves Symmes, a hero of the War of 1812

  What He Believed: Earth has four layers, like a big onion. Each is a “warm and rich land, stocked with vegetables and animals, if not men.” What we perceive as the surface of the Earth is actually the fifth and outer layer. And the North and South poles aren’t just poles, they’re also holes leading to the four interior worlds.

  John F. Kennedy’s rocking chair was auctioned off for $453,500.

  History: In 1823 Symmes managed to get a bill introduced in the U.S. Congress to finance a steamship voyage to the “North Hole” and to the inner worlds beyond. When the bill received only 25 votes, Johnson talked President Adams’s secretaries of the Navy and the Treasury into outfitting three ships for a voyage to the middle of the earth. But before it got underway, Andrew Jackson became president and scuttled the trip. Symmes died in 1829, unfulfilled, but his theory remained popular with unconventional thinkers until 1909, when Robert Peary set foot on the North Pole (or at least came close)…and found no hole.

  Even after 1909, the hollow-Earth theory had its admirers—including Adolf Hitler. Today, a few diehard hollow-Earthers believe that Hitler survived World War II, escaped to an interior world under the South Pole, and may still be hiding there, mingling with “a race of advanced hollow-Earth beings who are responsible for the UFO sightings throughout history.”

  THE EARTH IS SHAPED LIKE THE INSIDE OF AN EGG

  Who Said So: Cyrus Reed Teed, in the late 1860s

  What He Believed: Instead of living on the outside of a solid round ball, we’re on the inside surface of a hollow one. The rest of the universe—sun, stars, etc.—is where the yolk would be.

  Background: For years, Teed grappled with the notion of an infinite universe…but just couldn’t accept it. Then one night in 1869, he had a dream in which a beautiful woman explained everything:

  The entire cosmos is like an egg. We live on the inner surface of the shell, and inside the hollow are the sun, moon, stars, planets, and comets. What is outside? Absolutely nothing! The inside is all there is. You can’t see across it because the atmosphere is too dense. The shell is 100 miles thick.

  The woman in Teed’s dream also said he would be the new Messiah, and he took it to heart. In the 1890s, he bought land outside Fort Meyers, Florida, and founded a community called The New Jerusalem that he preached would one day be the capital of the world. He expected 8 million residents, but only got 200. In 1908 Teed died from injuries suffered during a run-in with the local marshal; his dwindling community held on until the late 1940s, when the last of his followers disbanded following a property dispute.

  Favorite candy of the Netherlands: drop. What is it? Salty licorice.

  FOOD A MILLENNIUM AGO

  What could the average medieval peasant expect to find on the dinner table after a hard day’s work? Here’s the grueling tale.

  I’M STARVING! WHAT’S FOR LUNCH?

  For most people in the year A.D. 1000, finding enough food to eat was a constant problem. There were long periods, particularly in winter, when no fresh food was available. During the 10th century alone, Europe suffered 20 famines. As a result, people tended to gorge themselves whenever food was abundant because they never knew what the next season would bring. The staple of Joe Peasant’s diet was gruel—what we’d call oatmeal—which nutritionists say was probably healthier than our modern meat-heavy diet. When vegetables were in season, people ate cabbage, carrots, peas, and various garden greens. They picked apples, pears, and nuts right off the trees.

  FUNGAL FEVER

  Another medieval staple was bread made from whole-grain wheat, rye, or barley flour. That may sound healthy, but unsanitary kitchens and ovens introduced other ingredients that weren’t so wholesome, including insects and mold. The mold brought another problem: outbreaks of ergotism, a fatal illness caused by a substance called ergotamine found in a fungus that often infected rye grain. When baked into bread, the ergotamine chemically transformed into a deadly hallucinogen. Victims experienced tingling, dizziness, hallucinations, psychosis and, eventually, death. The symptoms of ergotism, according to some theories, may have caused some sufferers to be accused of witchcraft.

  WOULD YOU LIKE HORSE WITH THAT?

  A millennium ago, horses were just beginning to replace oxen as the quintessential farm animal. But they were still a valuable food source and were eaten with gusto. Meat was prepared with salt, pepper, cloves, and other spices, which not only preserved the food but also masked the rotten taste after it had spoiled. In addition to horses and the odd rabbit or pig, birds were eaten with regularity. People ate cranes, storks, swans, crows, herons, loons, and blackbirds, sometimes served
in a pastries like the “four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie” from the well-known English nursery rhyme.

  Feeding dyes to hens will change the color of their eggs’ yolks.

  MINIMALISM, MEDIEVAL-STYLE

  Setting the medieval table was fairly simple—because there were no plates. Even nobles, who generally spread out tablecloths for their meals, went without plates. Instead, meals were served on round, flat slabs of bread. Bread plates had the dual advantages of soaking up drippings and being edible. When plates eventually came into vogue, it was customary to share your plate with the person sitting next to you.

  Guests were invited to bring their own knives; spoons and forks weren’t widely used in Europe until much later. In the eastern Mediterranean, two-pronged forks had been in use for centuries, but they didn’t come to Europe until 1071, when a Greek princess brought the custom to Venice. Rich Venetians took it up as the fashion, but forks stayed in Venice for centuries before the rest of Europe caught on.

  GROG: BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

  A thousand years ago, alcoholic beverages were a diversion and comfort to households among all classes. Wine was the favorite drink of the nobility and wealthier middle class. But everyone drank beer, even for breakfast, and the alcoholic content was three to four times higher than today’s brews. Mead, a kind of beer made from fermented honey, was popular in northern Europe and packed an even stronger wallop—it could have an alcohol content of up to 18 percent. Beer was such a prized commodity that one Swedish king chose, among several prospective brides, the one who could brew the best beer.