First “Weird Al” Yankovic song about food: The comedy singer is best known for food-related parodies such as “Eat It” and “Fat.” His first food song was the second song he ever released: “My Bologna,” a 1980 parody of the Knack’s “My Sharona.” The original version featured Weird Al—solo—on vocal and accordion. He recorded it in his bathroom.
Earth travels through space at 1/10,000 the speed of light.
First diet soda: Kirsch Bottling, a Brooklyn company that catered primarily to hospitals, launched a locally distributed sugar-free ginger ale in 1952. Called No-Cal, it was marketed to diabetics and dieters. The first nationally available diet soda: Royal Crown’s Diet Rite Cola (1958).
First bananas in the United States: The 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition featured a tropical plant exhibit, where vendors sold bananas for 10 cents each (about $2 today).
First weight-loss program: Jean Nidetch had a private weight-loss club for fellow New York City housewives. It did so well when she started it in 1963 that she formed Weight Watchers later that year.
First foods introduced to the New World: Christopher Columbus introduced Native Americans to the onions, garlic, wheat, barley, olives, and lettuce he brought from Spain. In return, he took back to Europe tomatos, potatoes, corn, beans, squash, and avocados.
First pizza delivery: In 1889 Naples, Italy, pizzeria owner Raffaele Esposito hand delivered a pie to a private home where the king and queen of Italy were staying on a visit to the city.
First commercially available canned food: Condensed milk. Gail Borden started condensing and canning milk in 1856. The business took off when he got a government contract to supply canned milk to the Union Army during the Civil War.
First Chinese restaurant in the United States: An influx of workers from China poured into northern California immediately after the Gold Rush of 1848. Chinese immigrant Norman Asing opened a restaurant serving Chinese food in San Francisco a year later—Macao and Woosung, an all-you-can-eat buffet. Cost: $1.
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“To avoid trouble and insure safety, breathe through your nose. It keeps the mouth shut.” —Uncle John
Syrupy sentiment: The maple leaf is a symbol of love in China and Japan.
ANTIPODES 101
Every point on Earth has its antipode (Greek for “opposed foot”), the place where you’d end up if you tunneled straight through the center of the Earth and out the other side.
ON THE OTHER FOOT
• Antipodes are true opposites. If you’re in the Western Hemisphere, your antipode is in the Eastern Hemisphere. If you’re in the Northern, it’s in the Southern. It is literally the farthest place on Earth from wherever you are right now. The North Pole, in the Arctic, is the antipode of the South Pole, in the Antarctic (literally, “opposite of arctic”).
• That’s not all. If it’s noon where you are, it’s midnight in your antipode. If you are in summer, your antipode is in winter (unless you’re near the equator, where there are no seasons). Half of each day, your antipode’s calendar isn’t even on the same date as yours.
• There are plenty of apps and websites that can tell you exactly where your antipode is. But don’t bother getting out your digging shovel. Odds are good that your antipode is under an ocean.
• In fact, only about four percent of Earth’s land mass has a dry antipode. That’s partly because so much of the planet is covered by water—about 70 percent, but also because so much of the dry land is in the Northern Hemisphere and so little is in the Southern.
• If you live in the Southern Hemisphere, your odds of having a dry antipode are vastly improved. Kids in Chile and Argentina really could end up in China if they dug straight down.
• Very little of North America has land in its antipodal region. Most of it is in the Indian Ocean between Africa and Australia. However, the extreme northern part of Canada and Alaska is the antipode to the far edge of Antarctica.
• For American kids who have their hearts set on digging through the center of the Earth, we suggest you start digging from Hawaii. It’s the only U.S. state where you’re safe from being flooded by seawater on the other side, because your hole will emerge in the landlocked country of Botswana in southern Africa.
Busy skies: More than one-third of the world’s airports are in the U.S.
WHEN TOILETS EXPLODE
The bathroom is supposed to be a place of peace and calm, a refuge in our modern world of toil and strife. But as the unfortunate folks below discovered, it doesn’t always work out that way.
Victims: Workers at the General Services Administration in Washington, D.C.
Boom! In September 2011, the water pressure system in the GSA headquarters failed, allowing air into the water lines and causing pressure to climb far beyond what the system was designed to handle. By 11:30 a.m. the pressure was so great that when a federal worker tried to flush one of the toilets, it shattered, spraying her with toilet water and shards of porcelain. She wasn’t seriously hurt, but when a second employee was cut on the leg by an exploding toilet minutes later, every bathroom in the building was closed until the problem was identified and repaired. CNN and other news outlets covered the story, and the response from the public was predictable: “A new way to get government employees off their butts,” one reader commented to The Huffington Post. “Now we need to install the same equipment in Congress.”
Victim: Carolyn Novak, a woman living in Troy, New York
Boom! Novak had just finished her shower one morning in January 1999 when water suddenly blasted out of her toilet “like a geyser,” she told the Albany Times Union. When she heard a second explosion down the street a few seconds later, she assumed the neighborhood was under attack. Not quite: The blasts were caused when a neighbor, Thomas Brooks, tried to replace the gas tank in his Cadillac Coupe de Ville. He got rid of the gas in the old tank by pouring it down the drain and into the sewer, where it ignited. The resulting explosion blew out two manhole covers plus the contents of Novak’s toilet and those of several of her neighbors, filling their homes with dangerous fumes. But the worst victim: Novak’s minivan—it was parked over one of the manhole covers, and sustained more than $1,000 in damages. While his neighbors aired out their homes, Brooks was arrested and charged with criminal mischief and reckless endangerment of property. Said Assistant Fire Chief Craig LeRoy, “He was trying to get rid of what he called ‘a little gasoline,’ and he made a very poor choice.”
There have been more than 440 celebrity visitors on Sesame Street.
Victims: Workers in an office building in Tauranga, New Zealand
Boom! New Zealand isn’t the kind of place usually associated with domestic terrorism, so it came as a surprise in September 2010 when police attributed an explosion in the restroom of a two-story commercial building in Tauranga to a homemade “basic incendiary device” powerful enough to smash the restroom door and hurl chunks of it 30 feet into an adjacent parking lot. “I heard an almighty bang,” travel agent Jolene Purdy told The New Zealand Herald. “Everyone started shouting, ‘We have to go. We have to go.’ I couldn’t talk, it was such a loud blast.” After a more thorough investigation, police concluded the explosion had actually been caused by someone smoking in the restroom, which was also used to store flammable cleaning supplies. When the fumes came in contact with the lit cigarette—BOOM! (Luckily no one was injured in the explosion, not even the smoker.)
Victim: Benjamin Barad, 84, a retired teacher from Palm Beach, Florida
Boom! In 1990 Barad and his wife were traveling by train from Lorton, Virginia, to Sanford, Florida, when Barad had to use the washroom. When he tried to flush the pressurized toilet, it backfired, covering him with the contents of the septic tank. Because there was no running water on the train (that was broken, too), Barad had no way to clean himself off. He had clean clothes in his car, which was also aboard the train, but Amtrak would have had to stop the train for him to get to his car…and Amtrak refused to stop the train. So the retire
d hygiene teacher (yes, a hygiene teacher) had to sit in sewage-soaked clothes for the next 12 hours until the train reached its destination and he and his wife could clean up in a hotel room. At last report Barad was suing Amtrak for $10,000. “Trains only stop if there’s a medical emergency. Other than that, we can’t comment on a case in litigation,” an Amtrak spokesperson said.
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“Drink to the point of hilarity.” —St. Thomas Aquinas
Some apple varieties are as small as cherries. Others are as large as grapefruits.
LAND OF THE RISING FUN
Japanese popular culture has made two major contributions to the rest of the world: video games and really weird stuff. Here’s where the two meet—weird video games from Japan.
I’M SORRY (1985)
Former Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka serves as the main character in this bizarre game, which satirizes the politician and his involvement in various bribery scandals in the early 1980s. Players control Tanaka as he makes his way through a series of maze-like levels while gobbling up gold bars, kind of like in Pac-Man. But unlike Pac-Man, whose enemies are a group of multicolored ghosts, I’m Sorry’s protagonist faces an onslaught from a group of celebrity enemies, including Michael Jackson, Carl Lewis, Madonna, and Japanese sumo wrestler Shohei Baba. If one of Tanaka’s pursuers manages to capture him, they strip him down to a diaper and whip him as he begs for mercy.
Bonus: The title, I’m Sorry, is a play on the Japanese word sori, which means “prime minister.”
SUB MARINE CATCHER (1994)
For decades, American arcades and pizza parlors have had “claw games,” where the player controls a claw in order to grab and win a stuffed animal or a toy. Japanese arcades have a variant called Sub Marine Catcher. Instead of snatching a Hello Kitty doll or a miniature teddy bear, players can fish a live lobster out of a tank. Should they manage to snag one of the crustaceans, lucky winners are presented with a bag of water by an arcade clerk so they can take their prize catch home.
BOONG-GA, BOONG-GA (2001)
In the U.S., bullies employ the “wedgie” to terrorize their victims. In Japan, they have kancho, a less cruel, slightly less intrusive bit of mischief in which the prankster pokes someone in the butt (crack) with two fingers. Boong-Ga, Boong-Ga is a video-game version of kancho. Players select from a list of eight characters to “punish.” Among them: “Ex-girlfriend,” “Ex-boyfriend,” “Mother-in-Law,” “Gold Digger,” and “Gangster.”
Slam dunks in basketball were banned by the NCAA from 1967 until 1976.
Bonus: Game play is interactive—players poke a denim-covered fake butt, which is attached to the front of the game’s cabinet.
THE TABLECLOTH HOUR (2010)
This game gives players the opportunity to do what usually only magicians can pull off—yanking a tablecloth out from underneath an elaborate place setting, leaving the dishes and silverware intact and in place. The screen shows a red sheet loaded with cute, anthropomorphized dishes and silverware. The player must then press a button at just the right moment to pull the tablecloth in order for the dishes to remain perfectly still (You win!) or fly off the table (Game Over). Believe it or not, The Tablecloth Hour is actually the second in a series of games about table settings. Ultra Low Dining Table has a completely opposite objective: The more objects that fall off the table, the more points the player scores.
TOYLETS (2010)
This one consists of an LCD screen placed above a urinal that contains pressure sensors capable of turning the player’s “stream” into a game controller. The four Toylets games, from simple to bizarre:
• “Mannekin Pis” measures how hard the player can pee.
• “Graffiti Eraser” washes graffiti off walls.
• “The Northern Wind, The Sun and Me”: The player must provide enough “force” to make a video gust of wind blow up a woman’s skirt. (The harder you pee, the harder the wind blows.)
• “Battle! Milk From Nose”: A test of “strength” against the previous player, in which the player’s stream is translated into milk spraying out of his nose. If your stream is stronger, your milk stream knocks your opponent out of the ring.
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Helpful Household Tip: If you’re trying to fill a bucket with water, and it’s too big to fit in your sink, put a dustpan in the sink, and angle it under the faucet so the water runs down the curved handle into the bucket on the floor.
England’s King Richard II popularized the handkerchief.
WHO MADE JACK “THE RIPPER”?
Most serial killers get their nicknames from the press; some come from the cops. The creepiest names are the ones serial killers give themselves. Here are some grisly examples of all three.
JACK THE RIPPER (1888). He was the first serial killer around which a media frenzy was born, and that frenzy was related to his famous nickname. Between August and November 1888, five women were brutally murdered in the Whitechapel section of London. While the murders were still occurring, London’s Central News Agency published a letter they said they’d received from someone claiming to be the killer. Known as the “Dear Boss” letter (that’s how the letter began), it was signed “Jack the Ripper.” News of the letter made headlines worldwide—something unheard of at the time—and the name “Jack the Ripper” stuck. But was the letter really from the murderer? Police believed it was actually written by a reporter from the Central News Agency who created the “Ripper” sign-off to drum up newspaper sales. The truth will never be known.
THE CHESSBOARD KILLER (2006). Russian Alexander Pichushkin killed 49 people in Moscow between 1992 and his arrest in 2006. After he was arrested, he told interrogators his goal was to kill exactly 64 people—enough to fill all the spots on a chessboard. That information was leaked, Russian newspapers ran with it, and he’s been “The Chessboard Killer” ever since. (Pichushkin later claimed he was lying, and that he would have gone on killing indefinitely if he hadn’t been caught.)
THE ZODIAC KILLER (1969). This still-unknown killer murdered eight people, possibly more, in Northern California in 1968 and 1969. During the murders, and for some years afterward, he sent taunting letters to San Francisco area media organizations. One to the San Francisco Examiner began, “Dear Editor, this is the Zodiac speaking.” The killer would identify himself by this name in several more letters. Some of them included elaborate puzzles, including four cryptograms—pages of coded text—only one of which has been solved to date. The significance of the name was never explained, but is believed to simply be another of the killer’s puzzles.
Some pregnant elephants induce labor by self-medicating with certain plants.
THE GRIM SLEEPER (2007). Between 1985 and 1988, someone killed eight women, all African Americans, in Los Angeles. Fourteen years passed. Then, between 2002 and 2007, three more African-American women were murdered. In 2007 using ballistics and DNA evidence, police learned that the same man had committed all eleven murders. Christine Pelisek, a reporter for the LA Weekly, dubbed the killer “The Grim Sleeper”—because of the 14-year lapse between his killing sprees. In 2010 police arrested 57-year-old Lonnie David Franklin Jr., alleging that his DNA matched evidence left at several of the murders. He is still awaiting trial.
THE CASANOVA KILLER (1974). Paul John Knowles, a “ruggedly handsome redhead,” as newspapers described him, killed at least 18 people (he claimed he killed 35) during a vicious seven-month cross-country killing spree in 1974. Near the end of that run, Knowles met 40-year-old British journalist Sandra Fawkes in a Holiday Inn bar in Atlanta, Georgia. Fawkes became the killer’s lover and spent three days with him—and somehow came out of it alive. She later described him as “a cross between Robert Redford and Ryan O’Neal.” Just 13 days later, Knowles was arrested, and the media, noting his good looks and Fawkes’s story, dubbed him “The Casanova Killer.” (Knowles was shot dead by a police officer while attempting to take another officer’s sidearm just a few weeks later.)
THE UNABOMBE
R (1979). Ted Kaczynski killed three people and injured 23 others in his notorious bombing campaign spanning nearly two decades, from 1978 until his arrest in 1995. Because the usual targets of his attacks were universities and airlines, the FBI labeled the secret taskforce investigating the crimes “UNABOM”—for UNiversity and Airline BOMbing. Agents referred to the unknown assailant as the “Unabomber” and that was picked up by the press.
China may be the country with the most people, but it’s only the 72nd-most crowded.
THE GORILLA KILLER (1926). Between February 1926 and June 1927, Earle Leonard Nelson murdered 22 women, all boarding-house landladies, in various locations across the United States and Canada. He was convicted of two of the murders and executed by hanging in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1928. The exact story of how he got his nickname appears to have been lost, and several versions are passed around today. One suggests that he got the name because of the strength he exhibited in carrying out his crimes: Nelson strangled all his victims with his bare hands. (Gorillas are not known to practice strangulation.) Another story says that he had a severely receding forehead, large protruding lips, and very large hands, the combination of which made him look like a gorilla. And the oddest version: Investigators interviewed Nelson’s aunt during his killing spree, and she told them that as a young boy, Nelson had been struck by a trolley and sent into a coma for several days. After he woke up, he suffered periods of mania, during which he would curl up his legs and walk around on his hands, making him look, she said, like a gorilla.
SON OF SAM (1977). David Berkowitz murdered six people, wounded several others, and committed arson around New York City in 1976 and 1977. He was first known in the press as the “.44 Caliber Killer,” after the weapon he used in most of his attacks. In April 1977, Berkowitz left a letter at the scene of a double murder in the Bronx. A month later, he sent another to New York Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin. In both letters he referred to himself as “Son of Sam,” explaining that “Sam” was some kind of evil spirit that compelled him to kill: “Sam loves to drink blood,” one read. “‘Go out and kill’ commands father Sam.” (Berkowitz later said “Sam” was a demon that possessed his neighbor’s dog.) Police eventually released that information to the press—and the rest is serial-killer history. Berkowitz was captured in August 1977 (his first words to police: “You got me. What took you so long?”), and is now serving 25 years to life for each murder.
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