Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader
Page 14
I suggest we obtain the loot [codebook] by the following means:
1. Obtain from Air Ministry an air-worthy German bomber.
2. Pick a tough crew of five, including a pilot, wireless telegraph operator and a word-perfect [fluent] German speaker. Dress them in German Air Force uniform, add blood and bandages to suit.
3. Crash plane in the Channel after making S.O.S. to rescue service in plain language.
As a boy, young Ian Fleming also gave his mother the nickname “M.”
4. Once aboard the rescue boat, shoot German crew, dump overboard, bring rescue boat back to English port.
In order to increase the chances of capturing a small or large minesweeper, with their richer booty, a crash might be staged in mid-[English] Channel. The Germans would presumably employ one of this type for the longer and more hazardous journey.
OPERATION RUTHLESS
The Director of Naval Intelligence passed the plan along to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who gave it his personal approval. A German twin-engine Heinkell 111, shot down during a raid over Scotland, was restored to flying condition and a crew was recruited to fly it. “Operation Ruthless” was ready to go.…But as David Kahn writes in Seizing the Enigma,
In October, Fleming went to Dover to await his chance. None came. Air reconnaissance found no suitable German ships operating at night, and radio reconnaissance likewise found nothing…. The navy awaited favorable circumstances. But they never materialized, and the plan faded away.
Even though Great Britain never did attempt a raid as daring as Fleming proposed, it did manage to capture codebooks from German ships. By 1943 they were cracking Enigma codes regularly; and by May of that year the Battle of the Atlantic was effectively over.
A NOVEL IDEA
After the war Fleming got out of the intelligence business and became an executive with the company that owned the London Sunday Times. He never forgot his wartime experiences.
First Person. By 1952 Fleming was in his forties and about to be married for the first time. He was apparently tense at the thought of giving up his bachelorhood, and his future wife suggested he try writing a novel to ease the strain. Fleming had wanted to write a novel for years, so he decided to give it a try. Drawing on his intelligence background, he wrote a spy thriller called Casino Royale during his two-month winter vacation in Jamaica.
Picking a Name. The book was filled with murders, torture, and lots of action. It was an autobiographical fantasy, the adventures of a British secret agent named James Bond that Fleming—who spent World War II stuck behind a desk in London—wanted to be, but couldn’t.
In Italy, James Bond is known as “Mr. Kiss-Kiss-Bang-Bang.”
Fleming thought that giving the agent an unexciting name would play off well against the plot. But what name? As Fleming later recounted, he found it “in one of my Jamaican bibles, Birds of the West Indies by James Bond, an ornithological classic. I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name that I could find. James Bond seemed perfect.”
ON HIS WAY
Casino Royale was published in England in April 1953, and in the U.S. a year later. The book was a critical success, but sales were disappointing. Luckily for Fleming, he took a two-month vacation in Jamaica every year, and in each of the next several years he wrote a new Bond novel during his vacation, including Live and Let Die (1954), Moonraker (1955), and Diamonds are Forever (1956).
Live and Let Die became a bestseller in England, and Fleming began building a considerable following in the U.K. But in America, sales remained sluggish for the rest of the 1950s.
Thanks, JFK. The Bond bandwagon got rolling in the U.S. beginning in 1961, when Life magazine published a list of President John F. Kennedy’s favorite books. Among the scholarly tomes was one work of popular fiction—From Russia, With Love. “This literally made Bond in America overnight,” Raymond Benson writes in The James Bond Bedside Companion. “From then on, sales improved almost immediately….It was good public relations for Kennedy as well—it showed that even a President can enjoy a little ‘sex, sadism, and snobbery.’”
How did a little-known Scottish actor named Sean Connery land the role of the most famous secret agent in Hollywood history? The story continues on page 211.
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Happy Anniversary! The first push-button phones were installed Nov. 18, 1963. They were put into service between Carnegie and Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
Most types of lipstick contain fish scales as an ingredient.
ALLENISMS
Thoughts from one of America’s leading wits, Woody Allen.
“My success has allowed me to strike out with a higher class of women.”
“My parents put a live teddy bear in my crib.”
“When I was kidnapped, my parents sprang into action. They rented out my room.”
“The world is divided into good and bad people. The good ones sleep better…while the bad ones seem to enjoy the working hours much more.”
“Life is full of loneliness, misery, and suffering, and it’s all over much too soon.”
“I do not believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.”
“How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shoe size?”
“The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it.”
“My parents stayed together for forty years, but that was out of spite.”
“Basically my wife was immature. I’d be at home in the bath and she’d come in and sink my boats.”
“Don’t pay attention to what your schoolteachers tell you. Just see what they look like and that’s how you know what life is really going to be like.”
“If God would only give me some clear sign. Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank account.”
“Eternal nothingness is fine, if you happen to be dressed for it.”
“I think crime pays. The hours are good, you travel a lot.”
“It is a gorgeous gold pocket watch. I’m proud of it. My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me this watch.”
Buyer’s tip: The slowest time for car dealers is just before Christmas.
TOP-RATED TV SHOWS, 1955-1960
The late 1950s and early 1960s were the heyday of the “adult Western.” And take a look at #3 in 1956-1957. That was Ronald Reagan’s TV show.
1955-1956
(1) The $64,000 Question
(2) I Love Lucy
(3) The Ed Sullivan Show
(4) Disneyland
(5) The Jack Benny Program
(6) December Bride
(7) You Bet Your Life
(8) Dragnet
(9) I’ve Got a Secret
(10) General Electric Theater
1956-1957
(1) I Love Lucy
(2) The Ed Sullivan Show
(3) General Electric Theater
(4) The $64,000 Question
(5) December Bride
(6) Alfred Hitchcock Presents
(7) I’ve Got a Secret
(8) Gunsmoke
(9) The Perry Como Show
(10) The Jack Benny Program
1957-1958
(1) Gunsmoke
(2) The Danny Thomas Show
(3) Tales of Wells Fargo
(4) Have Gun, Will Travel
(5) I’ve Got a Secret
(6) Wyatt Earp
(7) General Electric Theater
(8) The Restless Gun
(9) December Bride
(10) You Bet Your Life
1958-1959
(1) Gunsmoke
(2) Wagon Train
(3) Have Gun, Will Travel
(4) The Rifleman
(5) The Danny Thomas Show
(6) Maverick
(7) Tales of Wells Fargo
(8) The Real McCoys
(9) I’ve Got a Secret
(10) Wyatt Earp
1959-1960
(1) Gunsmoke
(2) Wagon Train<
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(3) Have Gun, Will Travel
(4) The Danny Thomas Show
(5) The Red Skelton Show
(6) Father Knows Best
(7) 77 Sunset Strip
(8) The Price Is Right
(9) Wanted: Dead or Alive
(10) Perry Mason
1960-1961
(1) Gunsmoke
(2) Wagon Train
(3) Have Gun, Will Travel
(4) The Andy Griffith Show
(5) The Real McCoys
(6) Rawhide
(7) Candid Camera
(8) The Untouchables
(9) The Price Is Right
(10) The Jack Benny Program
One big difference between canned and fresh vegetables is salt—there’s up to 40 times more in cans.
FORGOTTEN POP HISTORY
Here are a few tidbits of obscure Americana, from the 1941 book Keep Up with the World, by Freling Foster.
INSTANT HEIRLOOMS
In 18th-century America, before cameras, portrait painters traveled from town to town with an assortment of pictures of men and women, complete except for the face and hair. People who wanted an oil portrait of themselves merely had to select the body they liked best. The head and features would then be painted in by the artist.
THE CORPSE WOULDN’T TALK
As late as the 17th century, America held “trials by touch,” in which the defendant in a murder case was made to touch the corpse. If the accused was guilty, the dead man was supposed to move or to indicate the fact in some other way.
BANANAS IN TINFOIL
Bananas were virtually unknown in this country until 1876, when they were featured at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. Wrapped individually in tinfoil, they were sold as novelties at 10¢ apiece.
I GET A WHOLE BED TO MYSELF?
The greatest event in hotel history was the opening of Boston’s Tremont House in October 1829. It surpassed every other inn and tavern in size (it had 180 rooms), furnishings, and accommodations. Instead of making four or five people—usually strangers to one another—sleep together in one bed in an unlocked room, the Tremont gave each guest a whole room with a lock on the door and clean linen on the bed. Instead of having to use an outside pump to wash, the guest was supplied with a bowl and a pitcher of water. Moreover, the Tremont was the first to install a device in its rooms to signal the office for service; and it was the first hotel to employ bellboys who, at that time, were known as “rotunda men.”
Poll results: 44% of Americans think God is a man; only 1% think God is a woman.
WHY A RABBIT’S FOOT?
Good question. When we were kids, they sold rabbits’ feet at the local variety store “for luck.” We always wondered how a rabbit’s foot could be lucky for us, since it obviously didn’t do the rabbit any good. Anyway, one day someone wondered aloud where the idea came from, and we went to our BRI library to look it up. To our surprise, no two books gave the same answer. After a while, we were just looking to see how many “reasons” we could find. Here are some favorites.
ORIGINS AND FIRSTS, by Jacob M. Braude
“The rabbit’s foot originated as a good luck symbol in show business, where it was used as a powder puff in makeup, and when lost or misplaced, it might delay a performance…bad luck. Hence the reverse when it wasn’t.”
SUPERSTITIOUS!, by Willard Heap
“The rabbit is a prolific animal, producing large numbers of offspring. For that reason, it was thought to possess a creative power superior to other animals, and thus became associated with prosperity and success. If a person carries a rabbit’s foot, preferably the left hind foot, good luck is sure to follow. True believers stroke their hands or faces with it, so they will have success in a new venture.”
SUPERSTITIOUS? HERE’S WHY, by Julie Forsyth Batchelor and Claudia De Lys
“The first fears and superstitions developed about the European hare…. Since most of the habits of these two are alike, superstitions about the hare also apply to the bunny.
“The ancients noticed many things about these timid creatures that they couldn’t explain, so they considered them both good and evil. They saw how rabbits came out at night to feed, and how they gathered in bands on clear moonlit nights to play as if influenced by the moon. Another astonishing fact was that northern hares were brown in summer and white in winter.
The average lightning bolt is only an inch in diameter.
“But one thing especially impressed primitive man, and that was how the rabbit used his hind legs. There are only two other animals, the greyhound and cheetah, whose rear feet hit the ground in front of the forefeet when running swiftly. Also, rabbits thump the ground with their hind legs as if ‘speaking’ with them. So their hind feet came to be looked upon as a powerful charm against evil forces.”
SUPERSTITIONS, by Peter Lorie
“The idea of a hare’s foot as a lucky charm…arose out of the primitive medical belief that the bone of a hare’s foot cured gout and cramp, though the bone had to be one with a joint in it intact, to be effective. Carrying a hare’s foot bone, with joint, would keep away all forms of rheumatism.”
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SUPERSTITIONS, by Edwin and Mona Radford
“The origin of the superstitions concerning the luck of the rabbit’s foot lies in the belief that young rabbits are born with their eyes open, and thus have the power of the Evil Eye, and can shoo away the Evil One.”
EXTRAORDINARY ORIGINS OF EVERYDAY THINGS, by Charles Panati
“The rabbit’s habit of burrowing lent it an aura of mystery. The Celts, for instance, believed that the animal spent so much time underground because it was in secret communication with the netherworld of numinia. Thus, a rabbit was privy to information humans were denied. And the fact that most animals, including humans, are born with their eyes closed, while rabbits enter the world with eyes open, imbued them with an image of wisdom for the Celts; rabbits witnessed the mysteries of prenatal life. (Actually, the hare is born with open eyes; the rabbit is born blind. And it is the rabbit that burrows; hares live aboveground. Confusion abounded.)”
World leaders: The U.S. is #1 in gun ownership per capita; Finland is #2.
BUILDING A BETTER SQUIRT GUN
When Uncle John was a kid, he had squirt guns that shot 5 to 10 feet at most, and that was only if you pulled the trigger so hard it hurt. Today, there are water toys that shoot 50 feet or more. Here’s the story.
BOY WONDER
Lonnie Johnson loved to tinker. As a kid, he used to take his brothers’ and sisters’ toys apart to see how they worked. By high school, he’d graduated to mixing rocket fuel in the family kitchen. One year he used scrap motors, jukebox parts, and an old butane tank to create a remote-controlled, programmable robot…which won first prize in the University of Alabama science fair. Not bad for a kid from the poor side of Mobile, Alabama.
UNDER PRESSURE
Johnson got an engineering degree from Tuskeegee Institute and wound up working at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. But he still spent his spare time tinkering. He recalls that one evening in 1982, “I was experimenting with inventions that used water instead of freon as a refrigeration fluid. As I was shooting water through a high-pressure nozzle in the bathtub, I thought ‘Wow, this would make a neat water pistol.’”
He built a prototype squirt gun out of PVC pipe, plexiglass, and a plastic soda bottle. Then he approached several toy companies…but none of them thought a squirt gun with a 50-foot range would sell. Johnson even looked into manufacturing the toys himself, but couldn’t afford the $200,000 molding cost.
BREAKTHROUGH
In March 1989, he went to the International Toy Fair in New York and tried to sell his invention again. This time, the Larami Corporation was interested. They arranged a meeting with Johnson at their headquarters in Philadelphia. When everyone was seated, Johnson opened his suitcase, whipped out his prototype, and shot a burst of water across the entire room. Larami bought the gun on the
spot. Within a year, the “Super Soaker” was the bestselling squirt gun in history.
The firefly is the official insect of the state of Pennsylvania.
THE FIRST COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS
Uncle John was sitting in the bathroom, thumbing through the Wall Street Journal (surprisingly good bathroom reading, on occasion), when he came across this historical tidbit.
This, in brief, is the story of the first computer programmers—how much they gave to history, [and] how little history gave back to them….
FOR WOMEN ONLY
The year was 1945. The clacking of adding machines and clouds of cigarette smoke filled a university-owned row house along Walnut Street [in Philadelphia]. Inside, dozens of women calculated trajectories to help wartime artillery gunners take aim. Men, the Army reasoned, lacked the patience for such tedium—a single problem might require months of work.
The army called the women “computers.” One of them, Jean Bartik, was a 20-year-old math prodigy recruited from the farms of Missouri. Another, Betty Holberton, was the granddaughter of an astronomer who spent her childhood steeped in classical literature and language. The women formed a tight fellowship, drawn together by youth, brains, and the war effort…
THE COMPUTER AGE
One day word spread that the brightest “computers” were needed to work on a new machine called the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC—a steel behemoth, 100 feet long and 10 feet high, built of 17,480 vacuum tubes in an engineering building at the University of Pennsylvania. It was the first electronic computer, intended to automate the trajectory calculations the female computers performed by hand.
Running the ENIAC required setting dozens of dials and plugging a ganglia of heavy black cables into the face of the machine, a different configuration for every problem. It was this job—“programming,” they came to call it—to which just six of the young women were assigned: Marlyn Meltzer, Ruth Teitelbaum, Kay Antonelli, and Frances Spence, as well as Ms. Bartik and Ms. Holberton. They had no user’s guide. There were no operating systems or computer languages, just hardware and human logic. “The ENIAC,” says Bartik, “was a son of a bitch to program.”