Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Pour leftover cola into your toilet. Our resident plumber says it’ll give it a nice shine.

  At about the same time, Cubby Broccoli and his wife saw the Disney film Darby O’Gill and the Little People, in which Connery played a “farmer and country bumpkin.” Neither of the Broccolis was particularly impressed with Connery’s acting, but Cubby Broccoli liked his accent, and Mrs. Broccoli thought he had the raw sex appeal that the Bond part needed.

  Coincidentally, a short time later film editor Peter Hunt sent Broccoli several reels of a film he was working on called Operation Snafu, with the recommendation that one of the stars—Sean Connery again—would make a great Bond.

  TOUGH GUY

  Connery’s career prior to the Bond films was nothing to brag about, but he still played hard to get. When Broccoli asked him to test for the part, he refused, telling Broccoli, “Either take me as I am or not at all.”

  “He pounded the desk and told us what he wanted,” Broccoli recounted years later. “What impressed us was that he had balls.” The producers finally tricked him into auditioning on film by telling him they were experimenting with camera setups.

  Mr. Right

  Connery came from a working-class background and he showed up at the audition wearing grubby clothes, but by the time he finished his screen test Broccoli and Saltzman knew the search for Etoneducated Bond was over. “He walked like he was Superman,” Broccoli recalled, “and I believed we had to go along with him. The difference between him and the other young actors was like the difference between a still photo and film. We knew we had our Bond.” Connery remembers getting the part somewhat less romantically:

  Originally, they were considering all sorts of stars to play James Bond. Trevor Howard was one. Rex Harrison was another. The character was to be a shining example of British upper-crust elegance, but they couldn’t afford a major name. Luckily, I was available at a price they could afford.

  Casting an unknown in the lead part did not go down well at the studio—one executive rejected him and told the producers to, “see if you can do better.” Connery did not impress Ian Fleming, either. “I’m looking for Commander James Bond,” he complained, “not an overgrown stuntman.” But Connery stayed.

  According to some sources, Crisco makes a good makeup remover.

  THE BOND THEME

  Composer Monty Norman created the musical score for Dr. No, and while Broccoli and Saltzman were happy with his work on the rest of the film, they didn’t like his theme song. So they hired a new composer named John Barry. They told him they needed a song exactly 2-1/2 minutes long to fit into the soundtrack where the old song had gone. Without even seeing the film, Barry composed the “James Bond Theme,” one of the most recognizable themes in Hollywood history. He was paid £200 (less than $500) for his effort.

  BOND MANIA

  Dr. No premiered in 1962 and was a smash hit. The film earned huge returns for Broccoli, Saltzman, and United Artists and launched the most successful film series in history. By 1997 a total of 20 Bond films had been made, including 7 with Sean Connery, 1 with George Lazenby, 1 with David Niven, 7 with Roger Moore, 2 with Timothy Dalton, and 2 with Pierce Brosnan, who signed on for 2 more through the 21st century.

  Dr. No and the second Bond film, From Russia with Love, also launched a “Bond mania” complete with 007 toys, board games, spy kits, decoder rings, cartoons, toiletries, clock radios, and even lingerie. The fad peaked in 1965, but continued well into the 1970s, inspiring numerous TV knock-offs such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I Spy, and The Avengers.

  For the Boys

  But the success of Dr. No went beyond launching a spy fad or a film series, as Suzanna Andrews writes in The New York Times.

  Dr. No also marked the beginning of the big-budget “boy” movies that today dominate the film industry, movies marked by action, special effects, and men who never fail. In spirit and style, Bond is godfather to such movies as Lethal Weapon and Die Hard, and many films that star Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  Chew gum while peeling onions. It may keep you from crying.

  UNTIMELY END

  James Bond’s creator Ian Fleming, did not live to see the full impact of the genre he created: in 1964, after only two Bond films had been completed, he died from a massive heart attack brought on by years of heavy drinking and a 70-cigarette-a-day smoking habit. He was 56.

  In his lifetime Fleming earned nearly $3 million in book royalties; but his heirs would lose out on many of the profits his work generated after he died. Less than a month before his death, Fleming, who suspected the end was near, sold 51% of his interest in the James Bond character to reduce the inheritance taxes on his estate. He collected only $280,000, even though it was worth millions.

  FOOD NOTES

  Ian Fleming made James Bond into a connoisseur of fine wine, women, weapons, and food, but Fleming’s own tastes left a lot to be desired, especially when it came to food. As his friend and neighbor on Jamaica, Noel Coward, recounted years later,

  Whenever I ate with Ian at Goldeneye (Fleming’s Jamaican hideaway) the food was so abominable I used to cross myself before I took a mouthful….I used to say, “lan, it tastes like armpits.” And all the time you were eating there was old Ian smacking his lips for more while his guests remembered all those delicious meals he had put into the books.

  BOND’S FIRST MARTINI

  “A dry Martini,” [Bond] said. “One. In a deep champagne goblet.”

  “Oui, Monsieur.”

  “Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?”

  “Certainly, Monsieur.” The barman seemed pleased with the idea.

  —Casino Royale, 1953

  Love that holiday! Americans send an estimated 900 million Valentine’s Day cards each year.

  ANIMALS FAMOUS FOR 15 MINUTES

  When Andy Warhol said, “In the future, everyone mill be famous for 15 minutes,” he obviously didn’t have animals in mind. Yet even they haven’t been able to escape the relentless publicity machine that keeps cranking out instant celebrities.

  HEADLINE: Cat Makes Weather Forecasters Look All Wet

  THE STAR: Napoleon, a cat in Baltimore, Maryland

  WHAT HAPPENED: A severe drought hit Baltimore in the summer of 1930. Forecasters predicted an even longer dry spell, but Frances Shields called local newspapers and insisted they’d have rain in 24 hours. The reason: Her cat was lying down with his “front paw extended and his head on the floor,” and he only did that just before it rained. Reporters laughed…until there was a rainstorm the next day.

  AFTERMATH: Newspapers all over the country picked up the story, and Napoleon became a feline celebrity. He also became a professional weather-cat and newspaper columnist. His predictions were printed regularly—and he did pretty well. All told, he was about as accurate as human weather forecasters.

  HEADLINE: Nuts to Him! California Dog Wins Nutty Contest

  THE STAR: Rocky, a 100-pound male Rottweiler

  WHAT HAPPENED: In 1996 a Fresno radio station ran a contest offering free Neuticles to the dog submitting the best ghostwritten essay on why he wanted them. (Neuticles are artificial plastic testicles, implanted after a dog is neutered, that supposedly make the dog feel better about itself.) The appropriately named Rocky won.

  AFTERMATH: The contest made national news. Parade magazine called it the “Best Canine Self-Improvement Story” of 1996.

  HEADLINE: Dog Makes List of Notable Americans

  THE STAR: Otis P. Albee, family dog of the Albees, in South Burlington, Vermont (breed unknown)

  Research reports: An average 4-year-old child asks 437 questions a day.

  WHAT HAPPENED: In the 1980s George Albee, a professor at the University of Vermont, was invited to submit biographical information for a book called Community Leaders and Noteworthy Americans. Instead, he filled out the forms for his
dog—”a retired explorer, hunter and sportsman with a Ph.D. in animal husbandry.”

  AFTERMATH: Otis made it into the book. When this was reported nationwide, Albee announced that Otis had no comment. Apparently, neither did the book’s publishers.

  HEADLINE: A Dog Is Man’s…Best Man?

  THE STAR: Samson, a six-year-old Samoyed mix

  WHAT HAPPENED: In 1995 Dan Anderson proposed to Lori Chapasko at the Wisconsin animal shelter where they both volunteered. She said yes…and approved when Dan chose their dog Samson to be “best man” at the wedding. “He epitomizes everything a best man should be,” Anderson explained to reporters.

  AFTERMATH: The dog was news, but apparently the wedding wasn’t. Reporters seem to have ignored it.

  HEADLINE: World Gets Charge from Nuclear Kittens

  THE STARS: Four black kittens—Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Neutron—who were living at the shut-down San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant in San Diego, California

  WHAT HAPPENED: How do you make a nuclear power plant seem warm and fuzzy? Find some kittens there. In February 1996, just as the owner of the San Onofre power plant was kicking off a pro-nuclear PR campaign, a worker happened to find four motherless kittens under a building. A pregnant cat, the story went, had slipped through security at the shut-down power plant, given birth to a litter of kittens, and disappeared. When the worker tried to carry them off the grounds, alarms went off. It turned out that the cute little animals were slightly radioactive…though officials explained that they were in no danger. The story was reported worldwide. The Nuclear News, a nuclear industry publication, called it “the biggest nuclear story in years.”

  AFTERMATH: Seven months later, the Atomic Kittens were pronounced “radiation-free”…proving that nuclear power isn’t so bad after all. Offers to adopt the pets flooded in from alt over the world, but workers at the plant decided to keep them.

  More strange stats: In one day, an average typist’s hands travel 12.6 miles.

  THE DISCOVERY OF THE PLANETS

  As early as kindergarten, we’re taught that there are nine planets, but 200 years ago, even scholars were sure there were only six planets. Here’s how we got the three new ones.

  THE END OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM

  People have always known about Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Early civilizations named the days of the week after each of these planets, plus the sun and moon. The Greeks watched them move through the night sky, passing in front of the stars that make up the constellations of the zodiac, and called them planetes—which means “wanderers.”

  As recently as the 1700s, people still believed that the planet Saturn was at the farthest extent of the solar system. That there might be other planets wasn’t even a respectable idea. But as technology and science became more sophisticated, other members of the solar system were discovered.

  URANUS

  In 1781 a self-taught astronomer, William Herschel, was “sweeping the skies” with his telescope. By March, he had reached the section included the constellation Gemini, and he spotted an object that appeared as a disk rather than a glowing star. Because it moved slightly from week to week, Herschel thought it was a comet. After a few months, however, he decided the orbit was circular…and came to the shocking conclusion that it wasn’t a comet, but an unknown planet. People were astonished.

  Finding a Name

  No one since ancient times had named a planet. Herschel felt that it should be called “Georgium Sidus” (George’s Star) in honor of his patron, George III—the king of England who reigned during the American Revolution. Some people wanted to name it “Herschel” after its discoverer. But one influential astronomer suggested they call it “Uranus,” after the Greek god of the heavens. That made sense, since this new planet was certainly the limit of the skies of the solar system. Or so they thought.

  No surprise: People laugh least in the first hour after waking up in the morning.

  NEPTUNE

  The newly found planet had a slight variation in its orbit, almost as if something were tugging at it. Could there be another planet affecting Uranus? A century earlier, Isaac Newton had come up with laws describing the effects that the gravitational forces of planets have on one another. Using Newton’s laws, two young scientists set out independently in 1840 to find the unknown planet whose gravitational forces might be pulling on Uranus. One of the scientists was a French mathematician, Jean Leverrier. The other was an English astronomer, John Couch Adams. Both hoped the unknown planet would be where their calculations said they could find it.

  The Hidden Planet

  Adams finished his calculations first, in September 1845. The following August, Leverrier completed his. Neither had access to a large telescope, so they couldn’t verify their projections—and no one would make one available to them. Finally, Leverrier traveled to the Berlin Observatory in Germany, and the young assistant manager, Johann Gottfried Galle, agreed to help search for the planet.

  That was September 23, 1846. That night, Galle looked through the telescope, calling out stars and their positions while a young student astronomer, Heinrich Louis d’Arrest, looked at a star chart, searching for the stars Galle described. Finally Galle called out an eighth-magnitude star that d’Arrest couldn’t locate on the charts. They had found the unknown planet! It had taken two years of research—but only a half hour at the telescope. The honor of the discovery belongs to both Adams and Leverrier, who had essentially discovered the new planet with just a pen and a new set of mathematical laws. The greenish planet was named after Neptune, god of the sea.

  VULCAN

  Leverrier was on a roll. He started looking for other planets…and became convinced that there was one between the Sun and Mercury. He called his planet “Vulcan,” the god of fire, because it was so close to the Sun. Leverrier noted that, like Uranus, Mercury experienced disturbances that caused it to travel farther in one point in its orbit. Since Neptune was one of the causes of similar pulls on Uranus, it made sense that another planet was affecting Mercury.

  A bee has 5,000 nostrils. It can smell an apple tree that’s 2 miles away.

  Leverrier never found Vulcan, but people believed it was there until 1916, when Einstein’s general theory of relativity was published. Einstein gave a satisfactory explanation for the discrepancies in Mercury’s orbit, so scientists no longer needed Vulcan. It thereby ceased to exist…until decades later, when Gene Roddenberry, creator of “Star Trek,” appropriated the planet and made it the home of Spock.

  PLUTO

  The discovery of Neptune did not completely account for the peculiar movements of Uranus. Once again, scientists considered the pull of another planet as a cause and set out to find “Planet X.” Using the telescope at his observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, Percival Lowell searched for Planet X for 10 years. After he died in 1916, his brother gave the observatory a donation that enabled it to buy a telescope-camera. The light-sensitive process of photography allowed astronomers to capture images of dim and distant stars that they couldn’t see, even with the aid of a telescope.

  In 1929 the Lowell Observatory hired Clyde Tombaugh, a young self-taught astronomer from Kansas, to continue the search for Planet X. Lowell had suggested that the unknown planet was in the Gemini region of the sky. Using an instrument called the blink microscope, Tombaugh took two photographs of that area of the sky a few days apart and placed them side by side under the microscope. If something moved in the sky, as planets do, it would appear as a speck of light jumping back and forth as Tombaugh’s eyes moved from one photograph to the other, looking through the microscope.

  That’s just what happened. The observatory announced the discovery of the ninth planet on March 13,1930. An 11-year-old girl, the daughter of an Oxford astronomy professor, chose the name Pluto—the god of the netherworld—for the new planet.

  For years before his death, Tombaugh repeatedly declared that there were no more planets in our solar system. If there were, he said, he would have found them. />
  The Indian hero Geronimo was once kicked out of church for gambling.

  OOPS!

  More goofs, blunders, and dumb mistakes.

  CHURCH MUSIC

  ‘A funeral in 1996 in an English church ended with Rod Stewart singing:

  If you want my body,

  And you think I’m sexy,

  C’mon baby let me know.

  The vicar admitted that when he was recording the deceased’s last request—a hymn—he’d apparently failed to erase the entire cassette tape.”

  —Fortean Times, 1996

  UNPLUGGED

  “In 1978 workers were sent to dredge a murky stretch of the Chesterfield-Stockwith Canal. Their task was to remove all the rubbish and leave the canal clear….They were disturbed during their tea-break by a policeman who said he was investigating a giant whirlpool in the canal. When they got back, however, the whirlpool had gone…and so had a 1 1/2-mile stretch of the canal…. A flotilla of irate holidaymakers were stranded on their boats in brown sludge.

  Among the first pieces of junk the workers had hauled out had been the 200-year-old plug that ensured the canal’s continued existence. ‘We didn’t know there was a plug,’ said one bewildered workman…All the records had been lost in a fire during the war.”

  —The Book of Heroic Failures, by Stephen Pile

  YIKES!

  “Defense lawyer Phillip Robertson, trying to make a dramatic point in front of the jury at his client’s recent robbery trial in Dallas, pointed the pistol used in the crime at the jury box, causing two jurors to fling their arms in front of their faces and others to gasp. Though Robertson was arguing that his client should be sentenced only to probation, the horrified jury gave him 13 years.”