Uncle John's Electrifying Bathroom Reader for Kids Only!

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Put your hands to your temples and close your eyes.

  You: “Everyone, please concentrate on your selection.”

  Your assistant now moves around the room, pointing to various items, and asking you questions.

  Your Assistant: “Is this the item?”

  You (pausing for a moment to think): “No.”

  Your Assistant: “Is this the person?”

  You (pausing): “No.”

  Your Assistant: “How about this one?”

  You (quickly this time): “No.”

  Your Assistant: “Is that the object (or person)?”

  You: “Yes! That’s it!”

  Wild applause from the audience. Lights out.

  Garden rule of thumb: Plants with blue or purple flowers attract bees and butterflies plants with red flowers are more often pollinated by birds.

  HOW THE TRICK WORKS

  In every question, the assistant must use the word “this.” As in, “Is this the object?” When your assistant uses the word “that,” then you know that is the object. You can be even more tricky and come up with your own system. But start with this one first. Your friends will think you’re Magnificent!

  HAPPY NEW NIAN!

  Did you know that Chinese New Year is traditionally celebrated by setting off fireworks? Here’s an ancient Chinese myth that explains why.

  Once there was a terrible monster that appeared around the time of the new year. This monster’s name was Nian, which means “year” in Chinese. Nian was very fierce—he threatened to destroy every last person. The emperor of China, fed up with his people being terrorized by the monster, asked the help of a wise man.

  The wise man challenged Nian. He chided the monster for wasting his strength and ferocity on insignificant humans, who could never be a match for him. He suggested that Nian prove his real power by destroying other monsters. Intrigued by the challenge, Nian destroyed all of the monsters on Earth within a year, but then he returned at the start of the new year to terrorize mankind again.

  Only this time, some children playing with firecrackers noticed that the fierce and terrible monster was afraid of the noise—it scared him away. The children told everyone about this and from then on, on New Year’s Eve, firecrackers, drums, and gongs were used to scare away the last remaining monster on Earth—Nian.

  Most birds fly south for the winter. The North American poorwill hibernates.

  AMAZING COINCIDENCES

  More favorites from our “freaky” file.

  CROSSED PATHS

  The year was 1863. A Harvard student was on his way home to visit his parents when he accidentally fell in between two railroad cars at the station in Jersey City, New Jersey. Luckily, the student was rescued…by an actor. What’s the coincidence? The student was Robert Lincoln, heading home to see his father, Abraham Lincoln. The actor was Edwin Booth, whose brother, John Wilkes Booth, would assassinate President Lincoln two years later.

  WHAT’S IN A NAME?

  In 1664, 1785, and 1820, three large ships sank at sea. Each time, only one man survived. Three different shipwrecks. Three different survivors. But they all had one thing in common: they were all named Hugh Williams.

  TAXI!

  In 1974 a man in Bermuda was riding his moped when he was accidentally killed by a taxi. Exactly one year later, his brother was killed while riding the same moped, on the same street, by the same taxi driver… carrying the same passenger.

  The word malaria comes from the Italian mala aria, meaning “bad air.”

  TIME RUNS OUT

  When King Louis XIV of France died, so did his royal clock. They both stopped ticking at the same moment—7:45 a.m. on September 1, 1715. Neither has run since.

  LOOK OUT BELOW!

  Joseph Figlock was walking down the street one day in Detroit, when a baby fell out a window and landed on him. A year later, the same baby fell out of the same window and landed on Joseph again. Luckily, neither of them was seriously hurt—either time.

  OH, BROTHER

  In March 2002, identical twin brothers, age 71, were killed in Finland in identical bicycle accidents along the same road—two hours apart.

  LUCKY NUMBER 7

  Anthony S. Clancy of Dublin, Ireland, was born on July 7, 1907. It was the 7th day of the week on the 7th day of the 7th month of the 7th year of the century. Not only that, he was the 7th child of 7 brothers. On his 27th birthday he bet 7 shillings on the 7th horse in the 7th race. The odds of winning were 7 to 1. The horse, 7th Heaven, did not win. It finished—you guessed it—7th!

  ***

  “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.”

  —Les Brown

  The 1972 Apollo 17 mission holds the record for the longest stay on the moon: three days, two hours.

  SIM MAN

  If Uncle John were to create a simulated house, there’d be a bathroom in every room—even in the closets. And, of course, every bathroom would have a bookshelf.

  DIGITAL REALITY

  What’s the bestselling computer game of all time? Is it a wild car-chase game? An auto theft game? A bullet-ridden blood-and-guts game? Guess again—it’s The Sims, where players build a home, create a family, and design a neighborhood.

  Players control the digital people and get them to do exciting things like take out the garbage, go to work, or make new friends. They marry other Sim people and even have Sim babies. The goal: To simulate life and build a healthy, sane world.

  MEET MR. WRIGHT

  And who came up with this brilliant idea? A guy named Will Wright. Wright has been creating simulations ever since he was a kid. He started out playing with model ships and airplanes and then got into computers so he could build robots.

  The first computer game Wright designed was a helicopter action game called Raid on Bungeling Bay. That was in 1984. He discovered he had more fun building the levels for Bungeling Bay than flying the helicopters. That gave him the idea for SimCity, his first Sim game.

  SIM UNIVERSE

  He spent two years trying to sell the idea for SimCity—The City Simulator, without success. So Wright and a partner, Jeff Braun, formed their own company, Maxis, and built SimCity in 1989. It was so successful that Wright followed up with SimEarth, SimAnt, and Sim-Copter. The Sims appeared in 2000 and with all of its expansion packs has sold 18 million copies to date.

  Now, with Sims Online, practically everyone can play it—and can play together. Your digital family can interact with other digital families online. Wright says, “There’s a lot more of SimCity in this game than Sims. Instead of playing in a small neighborhood of about 10 houses, you’re playing in a large city of around 30,000 and building an entire city—kind of a collaboration with everyone. You can form businesses or a household with other players.”

  HOW A GAME DESIGNER RELAXES

  What does Will Wright do with his time? Besides working on more Sims creations, he surfs the fan sites every day and downloads cool things that Sim-maniacs have created. “It’s really ironic,” he says. “Now it’s the fans out there who are entertaining us, the developers, with their creations.”

  Wright feels that playing games is not just for kids, it’s for everyone. He rides around his office on an electric scooter, still builds robots and, along with his daughter, Cassidy, is a frequent competitor in TV’s BattleBots tournaments.

  Avoid the stairs: Mt. Everest is as high as 20 Empire State Buildings.

  SPACE JUNK

  Can you imagine a steel bolt moving through space at 17,000 miles per hour? Compare that to an average bullet which travels through the air at only 2,045 mph. Well, up above our heads, thousands of high-speed objects are circling Earth at this very moment.

  THINGS IN SPA-A-ACE

  There are more than 9,000 objects orbiting Earth—all traveling at an incredibly high speed. Most of them fall under the category of “space junk”—stuff left over from space travel and satellites, such as old rocket parts, steel bolts, flecks of paint,
and trash. And some of these items are huge.

  So what’s the problem? Manned spacecrafts and satellites could be damaged if they collide with any of the junk. Because of this very real danger, a government agency called the U.S. Space Command’s Space Surveillance Center, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, devotes all of its time tracking objects that are orbiting Earth so it knows exactly where they are.

  WHAT GOES UP…

  There’s another reason to monitor all of that orbiting trash: sooner or later it’s going to come back down to Earth. In fact, a lot of it already has. So far, no one has been seriously injured by falling debris, but it’s always a possibility.

  The moon’s orbit around Earth would fit easily inside the sun.

  Here are a few of the objects that are whizzing over our heads at this very moment.

  • Satellites. The oldest piece of debris still in orbit is the second U.S. satellite, the Vanguard I, launched in 1958. It worked for six years, then went out of commission. Now it just circles the Earth.

  • Booster rockets. The upper stages of Delta II rockets—used to launch space vehicles and satellites—have been returning to Earth in large chunks since 1989. In Cape Town, South Africa, 700 pounds of white hot metal slammed to the ground around several farms in April 2000. In 1997 a 580-pound piece landed in Texas, just 50 yards from a house. A woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma, reported being hit by a small piece of charred metal. Put on your hard hat: there are nearly 50 Delta II rockets still orbiting Earth, waiting to come home.

  High Mom: The first mother in space was Anna Fisher of the USA, November 8, 1984.

  • Trash. What do astronauts do with their garbage? Sometimes they just toss it out the back door of the capsule, into space. Once it begins orbiting Earth, however, all of that rubbish adds up. During its first 10 years (1986–1996), the Mir Space Station released more than 200 objects—most of them were bags of trash.

  • World’s fastest glove. In 1965, during the first American space walk, Gemini 4 astronaut Ed White lost a glove. The glove stayed in orbit for a month, traveling at a speed of 17,000 mph, and becoming the most dangerous garment in history. Luckily, it didn’t hit anything and fell to Earth, burning up on re-entry.

  • Skylab, the first space station. It’s no longer up there, but when Skylab was abandoned in 1974, it became a ghost space station orbiting Earth. Then, in July 1979, it fell out of orbit. The people of the world held their breath, wondering when it was going to return to Earth and where it would hit. They hoped it would land in the ocean. But whole chunks of Skylab rocketed through the atmosphere and crash landed in western Australia. Luckily, no one was hurt.

  • Mir, the Russian space station. It was abandoned after fifteen years in orbit. But Mir avoided becoming space junk when the Russians intentionally brought it crashing back to Earth on March 23, 2001. Like Skylab, Mir splashed down harmlessly in the south Pacific Ocean.

  Life in the slow lane: Snails can live to be 6 years old.

  BIGWIGS

  A bigwig is a “very important person.” The term actually comes from the days when very important people wore really big wigs.

  BAD HAIR DAYS

  It’s an age-old question: What do I do with my hair? Ancient Egyptians had an easy solution—they just shaved their heads and wore wigs. In ancient Rome women wore wigs, colored hairpieces, and braided additions to imitate the style of Greek statues.

  Much later, in 1624, King Louis XIII of France went prematurely bald at 23 and hid it by wearing a wig. Thus began the “big hair” fashion for men. His son, Louis XIV, was also hair-challenged and continued the fashion. During his reign, 48 wigmakers worked night and day whipping up elaborate hairstyles for the king.

  HIGH-PRICED HAIR

  Wigs made hairdressing easy. Men and women didn’t have to sit for hours having their hair styled—they just sent it out to a wigmaker. But wigs were expensive. One human-hair man’s wig cost more than a coat, breeches (pants), shirt, stockings, shoes, and hat put together. So instead, people used alternative material, such as horse and goat hair.

  By 1775 wig-wearing had reached its peak: the bigger the hair the better. Women wore wigs that were three feet tall. They even had birdcages, with live birds, built right into their hair. The fantastic hairdos had names like The Butterfly and Sportsman in the Bush. The hairdo à la Belle Poulé was a ship model in full sail resting on curls simulating the sea. To make room for these giant headdresses, carriages—especially in France—were built with openings in the roof just so women could fit inside them! And women whose carriages didn’t have a hole in the roof had to ride with their heads sticking out of the window.

  World traveler: The Danube River flows through eight European countries and four capitals.

  GRAND THEFT WIG

  In London, wigs worn by barristers (lawyers) were so expensive that they were often stolen. Wig thieves wandered the streets carrying baskets on their backs. Hidden inside the baskets were small boys. At the right moment, the boy would pop out of the basket, grab the wig, and then disappear back into the basket. The thieves counted on the fact that the barristers would be embarrassed to be caught bareheaded and wouldn’t want to call attention to themselves—or the robbery. Today, barristers and judges in England are the two remaining professionals who still wear wigs. The wigs are all made by hand from 100% horse hair… which may give those judges some horse

  National treasure: Today more than 700,000 Americans are over 100 years old.

  DUH!

  Some grown-ups say the dumbest things, don’t they?

  “The Internet is a great way to get on the net.”

  —Senator Bob Dole

  “Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.”

  —Brooke Shields

  “You guys line up alphabetically by height.”

  —Bill Peterson, football coach

  “Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.”

  —Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, D.C.

  “I’ve worked it out: You can sleep a third of your life, so if you can reduce that to a quarter, you have more time awake.”

  —Nicole Kidman

  “I was asked to come to Chicago because Chicago is one of our 52 states.”

  —Raquel Welch, actress

  “Strangely, in slowmotion replay, the ball seemed to hang in the air for even longer.”

  —David Acfield, newscaster

  “The doctors X-rayed my head and found nothing.”

  —Dizzy Dean, baseball great

  “I get to go to lots of overseas places, like Canada.”

  —Britney Spears

  “Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.”

  —President Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Casa Botín in Madrid, Spain, is the world’s oldest restaurant. It first opened in 1725.

  KID INVENTORS

  A great idea can come to a six-year-old as easily as it can come to someone who is 50. Here are four kids who had a bright idea, acted on it, and made history.

  IT’S A GRAND OLD FLAG

  Have you ever wondered if anyone really wins those “Send in your drawing” contests? Well, they do. In 1926, 13-year-old Bennie Benson entered a flag-designing contest for the territory of Alaska. This Native American boy chose blue for his background, representing the Alaskan sky and the state flower, the forget-me-not. In the foreground, he drew the Big Dipper, symbolizing strength, and the North Star, representing Alaska’s northern location.

  Bennie won the contest—he received a $1,000 scholarship and a watch. Thirty-three years later, in 1959, Alaska became a state…and Bennie’s flag became the official state flag.

  MAKIN BACON

  One Saturday morning, when Abigail Fleck was eight years old, her dad was cooking bacon in the microwave. Usually, he used paper towels to soak up the grease, but that morning he couldn’t find any. So he reached for the newspaper, which really upset he
r mom. When Abigail’s dad said, “I guess I could just stand here and let it drip dry,” Abigail got her great idea.

  Santa Claus is called Joulupukki in Finland and Santa Kurohsu in Japan.

  Why couldn’t the bacon hang on something, sort of like a clothesline, while it cooked? Then the grease could drip into a bowl below it. They wouldn’t need paper towels, or newspaper, or anything. Brilliant!

  Abigail and her dad went to work and invented Makin Bacon. It’s a microwave-safe plastic dish that has three T-shaped supports in the middle. Now, people all over America are using this simple device and… makin’ bacon!

  PACEMATE AND KIDKARE

  What’s more incredible than one award-winning young inventor? How about two award-winning inventors…who are brothers! And they didn’t even work on the same invention. Brandon and Spencer Whale each had their own bright ideas. They both won awards in the Student Ideas for a Better America contest for their inventions, and they’re the youngest kids ever to be voted into the National Gallery for Young Inventors.

  Brandon’s Idea: PaceMate. Brandon’s mom had a heart problem, so she had a pacemaker put in her heart. After leaving the hospital, she had to send an electrocardiogram—which reported the strength and rhythm of her heartbeat—from her home to the hospital over the telephone line, using a modem.

  Nice try: In 1970 Life magazine predicted that instead of owning cars, the average American family would soon use personal helicopters for transportation.