Mental Floss: Instant Knowledge
Page 8
LEONA HELMSLEY
USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, punch lines, and tours of the Empire State Building
KEYWORDS: Leona Helmsley, immigrant, tax evasion
THE FACT: Believe it or not, the famous New York real estate mogul and class A witch actually lived the American Dream. Well, except for the whole prison thing.
Leona was a divorced sewing factory worker with mouths to feed before she met and married real estate tycoon Harry Helmsley. In 1980, Harry named Leona president of his opulent Helmsley Palace Hotel, which she ruled like a despot. Her tendency to explode at employees for the smallest infraction (like a crooked lampshade) earned her the title “The Queen of Mean.” The tyranny didn’t exactly last. In 1988 Leona and Harry were indicted for a smorgasbord of crimes, including tax fraud, mail fraud, and extortion. She served 18 months in prison and was forced to pay the government $7 million in back taxes. That doesn’t mean things turned out that badly for poor Leona. Said to be worth over $2.2 billion, the dreaded Ms. H still owns the lease to the Empire State Building and lives in luxury with her aptly named dog, Trouble.
LICKS
(to the center of a Tootsie Pop)
USEFUL FOR: Halloween parties, chatting up people nostalgic for the ’70s, and blowing the minds of seven-year olds across the globe
KEYWORDS: owl, lick, or Tootsie Pop
THE FACT: No thanks to that pesky owl and his woeful lack of willpower, the “How Many Licks Does It Take to Get to the Tootsie Roll Center of a Tootsie Pop?” question has been plaguing the American public ever since the commercial first aired in 1970.
Fortunately, there have been plenty of noble efforts to get to the bottom (or center, as the case may be) of it all. But the answer depends on whom you ask. A group of students at Swarthmore Junior High conducted an extensive study on the subject and concluded that getting to the center of a Tootsie Pop took a statistical average of 144 licks. However, the more ambitious and distrusting engineering students at Purdue University chose instead to rely on a “licking machine,” modeled after the human tongue for their results. The Boilermakers and their mechanical contraption found that it requires an average of 364 licks. Other studies have been done, and all results vary, so only one thing is certain: The world may never know.
LIONS
(and one particularly sexy beast)
USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, chatting up scientists, making friends at the fertility clinic
KEYWORDS: virility, fertility, sex fiends, or the zoo
THE FACT: Despite his world wide rep, Frasier, the Sensuous Lion, didn’t actually do much bragging about his amorous exploits. Then again, he didn’t have to—his proof was walking all around him!
Here’s how the story goes: Frasier was about 20 years old, ancient for a lion, when he came to a wild animal park in southern California. Unfortunately, the Mexican circus refugee was so doddering that he could hardly walk, and his keepers simply figured his demise would be any day. But that didn’t stop the old lion from tomcatting about. Frasier hung on for 18 months and sired a stunning 35 cubs in his spare time. Amazingly, the press about the fertile feline was so widespread that Frasier fan clubs started sprouting up everywhere. Wives even began writing in to find out what park rangers were feeding the beast. In fact, the lion’s fame grew so much that a popular song was written about him, and a film was made as well. When the old cat’s time finally came, it’s said, Frasier, the Sensuous Lion, went with a smile on his face.
LIQUID PAPER
USEFUL FOR: making friends with people at Staples, OfficeMax, and Kinko’s
KEYWORDS: whiteout, mistakes, and typewriters
THE FACT: The woman behind Liquid Paper, Bette Nesmith Graham, wasn’t just a sloppy typist turned secretary extraordinaire. She’s also “Mom” to former Monkees member, Michael Nesmith (the tall one with the funny hat).
It all started when Graham joined a typing pool in 1951. Recently divorced, she desperately needed the job to support herself and her as-yet-unprimatelike son. Problem was, typing wasn’t exactly her forte, and she became increasingly worried that her frequent errors would get her fired. Then inspiration struck. Graham filled a nail polish bottle with white tempera paint and took it to work. Whenever she made a mistake, she simply painted over it. Before long, the whole typing pool was indulging. As demand for what Graham first called “Mistake Out” grew, it began to distract her from her secretarial duties. In 1962, she was fired for using company time to write letters for her own business, but that turned out to be just the push Graham needed. Within six years, Liquid Paper was a million-dollar business, and Graham was laughing all the way to the bank.
LORD OF THE (CIGAR) RINGS
USEFUL FOR: barroom banter, making friends in cigar shops, and bringing up at Sunday school
KEYWORDS: Cubans, smoking or, oh, my God!
THE FACT: In the highlands of Guatemala, you’re likely to run in to members of the cult of Maximón, a Maya group that worships its cigar-chomping deity in a rather unusual way.
Worshippers believe Maximón, also known as San Simon, is a powerful saint who possesses the ability to, among other things, cure illnesses and confront Christ. Different shrines and chapels in Guatemala have different effigies built to represent Maximón, but a few things are pretty consistent: His face is made from wood, he’s got a (lit) cigar hanging from his mouth, and he’s surrounded by bottles of liquor. In some places, he may be nothing more than a wooden box with a cigarette sticking out of it; in others, he might be sporting sunglasses or a bandanna. Either way, if you see him, just be sure you have the proper offering. In exchange for blessings, he accepts cigarettes (Payaso brand are his favorite) and most any rum (although he’s partial to Venado).
LOSING A BET
(the tale of Stephen Hawking)
USEFUL FOR: nerdy dates, academic gatherings, proving even geniuses make mistakes (and buy porn)
KEYWORDS: physics, Penthouse, or Hawking
THE FACT: One tiny mistake and the world’s most famous physicists ended up buying a subscription to one of the world’s raunchiest publications.
Well known for authoring A Brief History of Time, the world-renowned theoretician has made his greatest contributions in the physics of black holes. He was also elected one of the Royal Society’s youngest fellows and selected to Cambridge’s Lucasian post, a professorship of mathematics once held by Isaac Newton. While all signs point to genius, that doesn’t mean Hawking is always right. Earlier in his career, he made a bet with Kip Thorne of Caltech that Cygnus X-1 did not contain a black hole. (The prize was a subscription to a racy magazine.) In 1990, when Hawking decided the evidence against him was overwhelming, he conceded in a waggish manner: He had a friend break into Thorne’s office and steal the recorded terms of the bet—Hawkings signed his defeat, then snuck it back in for Thorne to find later. In the following months, Thorne also received his promised issues of Penthouse.
THE LOTTO
(Founding Father style)
USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, convenience store lines, convincing ultrapatriotic Americans that the Powerball isn’t immoral (at least according to the Framers)
KEYWORDS: Founding Fathers, lucky numbers, or Powerball
THE FACT: Despite what you may think about lotteries, early American leaders often turned to them to raise a buck or two.
It’s completely true! Displaying the astute politicians’ aversion to direct taxation, John Hancock organized several lotteries, including one to rebuild Boston’s Faneuil Hall. Ben Franklin used them during the Revolutionary War to purchase a cannon for the Continental Army. George Washington ran a lottery to pay for a road into the wilds of western Virginia. And Thomas Jefferson wrote of lotteries that “far from being immoral, they are indispensable to the existence of man.” Of course when he wrote it, he was trying to convince the Virginia legislature to let him hold a lottery to pay off his debts.
LOVE LETTERS
(to a pigeon)
USEFUL FOR: cock
tail parties, chatting up scientists, and making small talk whenever you and your loved ones are kicking pigeons in the park
KEYWORDS: AC/DC, true love, or pigeons
THE FACT: Who knew that Nikola Tesla, one of physics’ greatest minds, had such a penchant for chicks (we’re talking about the feathered kind)?
Tesla dreamed up AC current, won technical disputes with Edison, had ideas stolen from him by Marconi, and designed the Tesla coil (that lovely spinning thing you find sparking light in every mad scientist’s lab). But even more intriguing than all of this were his peculiarities. Nikola Tesla’s personal life was one of crippling obsessions: washing his hands endlessly, counting every item on a dinner table before tucking in, and maintaining a hatred for earrings and other round objects. But perhaps most unusual was his fondness for pigeons. Tesla was so smitten by one bird in particular that when it passed away, he wrote, “Yes, I loved her as a man loves a woman, and she loved me…When that pigeon died something went out of my life…I knew my life’s work was over.”
instant personalities
Race car driver DICK TRICKLE is a perennial Winston Cup loser (he’s never won the event despite 300-plus career attempts through 2004), though he clearly isn’t too focused on his driving. Dick once requested a lighter be installed in his car so he could smoke mid-race.
Author VICTOR HUGO had an unusual solution for writer’s block. He had his servant take away his clothes with strict orders not to return them for several hours. Left buck naked, and with nothing else to do, Hugo was forced to return to his pen and paper.
STEPHEN HAWKING was famous among his schoolmates for being terrible with electronics. He once attempted to turn an old television into an amplifier and gave himself a 500-volt shock.
THE MAD HATTER
(a slightly more gangsterish one than Alice met)
USEFUL FOR: costume parties, impressing your history teacher, inciting mob nostalgia with your friends in Witness Protection
KEYWORDS: nicknames, gangsters, or fancy hats
THE FACT: One of history’s strangest nicknamed mafiosos in the world, Albert “Lord High Executioner” Anastasia was also dubbed “The Mad Hatter” for his love of fancy fedoras.
As the whole “Lord High Executioner” name suggests, Al wasn’t exactly a man to be messed with. In the early 1920s, Anastasia was sentenced to death for killing a fellow longshoreman. But he was granted a retrial and the conviction was reversed when four of the witnesses “disappeared.” And that was just at the start of his career. After helping to kill crime boss Joe Masseria, Anastasia was made head of Murder, Inc. by new boss Lucky Luciano, and was dubbed the Mob’s “Lord High Executioner” by the press. And while the name stuck, his position didn’t, as Anastasia eventually fell out with the other bosses. On October 25, 1957, Anastasia was shot six times while getting a haircut. As one New York paper put it the next day: “He Died in the Chair After All.”
MARQUIS DE SADE
USEFUL FOR: barroom banter, bachelor parties, and generally impolite company
KEYWORDS: sadism, sadomasochism, and de Sade
THE FACT: How great would it be to have sadism named after you? Of course, you’d have to go to certain lengths, as the Marquis definitely did.
Essentially pawned off by his family, the Marquis de Sade was married to a woman for the money. Choosing to fulfill the “for worse” part of the whole marriage vow deal, he immediately began to busy himself (quite publicly) with prostitutes, and with a sister-in-law. Of course, de Sade’s mother-in-law didn’t like that, and she had him imprisoned. So he spent 14 years in jail, including being condemned to death in the town of Aix for his sexual practices. Yet somehow he got out of that one. Then he was imprisoned again in 1777, and again for six years at the Bastille in Paris in 1784. Imprisonment gave him lots of time to keep churning out the vigorous pornography that made him famous. In fact, the Marquis spent his last 12 years in the insane asylum at Charenton, where he wrote and directed plays starring the staff and inmates.
MASTICATION
(it’s not a dirty word)
USEFUL FOR: dinner parties, cocktail parties, and parties where you get stuck at the kids’ table
KEYWORDS: chew your food
THE FACT: Also called “the Chew-Chew Man,” American importer and art dealer Horace Fletcher gained a huge following when he began donning a white jacket, and lecturing and writing about nutrition. His 1890s theme: Chew.
So what made him so popular? Fletcher advised that nothing should be swallowed unless it could be reduced to liquid first by chewing. Supported by studies that found chewing every morsel 32 times could be beneficial for weight loss (it slowed down the rate of eating, at the very least), Fletcher claimed such adherents as novelist Henry James and industrialist John D. Rockefeller. Health reformer Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was also a devotee of “Fletcherizing” for a while, and even made up a “chewing song” for patients. Of course, keeping to the philosophy wasn’t all roses. Many Fletcherizers spit out anything they could not chew to liquid, which eliminated a lot of dietary fiber and led to constipation.
MATZO BALLS
(you should probably pass over)
USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, barroom banter, and daring anyone to repeat the feat
KEYWORDS: Matzo, Passover, dreidl, or all you can eat
THE FACT: It ain’t easy keeping kosher. Especially for contestants in Ben’s Kosher Delicatessen Charity Matzo Ball Eating Contest (where even the name’s a mouthful).
The contest is a charity fund-raiser for the Interfaith Nutrition Network by a New York–area deli chain. The 2004 record holder is Eric “Badlands” Booker of Copaigue, Long Island, who ate 20 1/4 matzo balls in five minutes and 25 seconds. If that doesn’t sound like a lot, you should know that these matzo balls were roughly the size of tennis balls. Oy! The winner gets a trophy and a $2,500 gift certificate to a stereo store, while runners-up get various prize packages, all of which involve tickets to a New York Islanders game. Umm…all that matzo for an Islanders ticket? We’re thinking we’ll pass.
MERCEDES-BENZ
(and the women who really love ’em)
USEFUL FOR: cocktail parties, nerdy dates, and making small talk at Mercedes-Benz dealerships
KEYWORDS: anytime you hear the word R-E-S-P-E-C-T spelled out in song
THE FACT: Apparently, the Mercedes-Benz as a status symbol doesn’t just cross highways, it crosses cultures as well. Case in point: the Nanas women of Togo in Africa.
The Nanas represent a stunning rags-to-riches story, overcoming illiteracy and cultural barriers when they cornered the lucrative cloth trade. After acquiring loans and making a few sharp investments, these women now conduct multimillion-dollar international transactions. In fact, the Nanas’ have expanded their businesses to hair salons, bakeries, restaurants, and real estate. What’s the Nanas’ status symbol of choice? The Benz, of course. So many of the Nanas drive around in them, in fact, that the most successful are known as Nana-Benz. The Nanas, however, aren’t the only group in Africa to incorporate the Mercedes moniker into their name. The WaBenzi, a powerful and elite class of people in many African nations, got its name because of its members’ favorite car. WaBenzi loosely translates to “people of Mercedes-Benz.”
MICE
(and men)
USEFUL FOR: barroom banter, irritating members of PETA, and chatting up Australians
KEYWORDS: mice, Fear Factor, or sushi
THE FACT: Sure, the MTV show Jackass spawned a lot of moronic copycats, but two hungry fellas in Brisbane, Australia, win the prize for trying to down a live mouse.
It’s disturbingly true. Participating in a contest at Brisbane’s Exchange Hotel in which they were dared to eat the rodents live, the winner’s grand prize was a vacation package worth a handsome $346. Both men chewed the tails off, and the “winner” actually chewed his mouse whole and spit it out. Needless to say, the RSPCA, Australia’s version of our own SPCA, wasn’t thrilled about the stunt and got the
Queensland police on the participants’…um…tail. If caught, the winner will face fines of $75,000 and two years in the pokey. Where there will no doubt be plenty of big, fat, edible rodents for snacking on.
MICROWAVES
(and the guy you should thank for ’em)
USEFUL FOR: movie theater chatter, making small talk while waiting for your popcorn to pop, and impressing anyone who really loves their microwave
KEYWORDS: I really love my microwave
THE FACT: If it weren’t for the candy bar in Percy Spencer’s pocket, it might have been years before we got the kitchen appliance.
Radar and microwave technologies developed during World War II were credited with helping to change the tide in the battle in Europe. But after the war, scientists like Percy Spencer stumbled across all sorts of new applications for the technology. Percy, who was working for Raytheon at the time, happened to be in the path of powerful radiation emitted from a magnetron (ouch), when he noticed that the candy bar in his pocket had melted. He then put popcorn kernels in front of the device and watched in fascination as the popcorn popped. He also demonstrated cooking an egg from the inside out (don’t do this at home, they tend to explode!). Of course, using low-density microwave energy to cook is now commonplace, and Spencer’s use of popcorn as an early experimental substance was prescient—today the United States produces 500,000 tons of popcorn, most of which is cooked in microwave ovens.