Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  “I guess I get nervous,” she says.

  Missing! The Duke of Alcantara, made in 1732; estimated value (1994): $800,000

  Background: The Duke of Alcantara was owned by the University of California. On August 2, 1967, David Margetts, a second violinist with the UCLA string quartet, borrowed the Duke from the university collection for a rehearsal in Hollywood. On his way home he bought some groceries and then stopped at a restaurant. When he got back to his car—which was unlocked— he realized the violin was gone. To this day, Margetts can’t remember if he put the violin in the car after rehearsal—which would mean that somebody stole it—or if he simply left it on the roof of his car and drove off.

  In January 1994, a violin dealer recognized the violin he was working on as an authentic Stradivarius. He looked it up in a reference book, found a photograph of the same violin, and discovered that it had been missing from UCLA for 27 years. It turned out the violin’s “owner” was an amateur violinist named Teresa Salvato, who had gotten it from her ex-husband as part of their divorce settlement. He had gotten it from his aunt, who claimed to have found it beside a freeway in 1967. “That sort of matches the violin-left-on-the-top-of-the-car version,” says Carla Shapreau, an attorney for UCLA.

  Nonsmokers dream more at night than smokers.

  Outcome: At first Salvato refused to give the violin back, but she eventually agreed to relinquish all claims of ownership in exchange for $11,500. She claims she only wanted to do the right thing for the instrument. “UCLA lost it once. They’re really not very careful,” she explains.

  Missing! The Ex-Zimbalist, made in 1735; estimated value: $1 million

  Background: In 1949 an NBC Symphony Orchestra violinist named David Sarser scraped together all the money he had and borrowed a little more so that he could buy the Stradivarius being sold by Efram Zimbalist, Sr. (father of The FBI star Efram Zimbalist, Jr.). It cost him about $30,000.

  “Buying that Strad got me a different life,” Sarser remembers. “I was in the newspaper. I took it everywhere with me, and everyone was in awe.” He planned on eventually selling the violin and living off the money in retirement, but his plans were dashed when the instrument was stolen from his studio in the mid-1960s.

  Sarser says that at one point the FBI was close to solving the crime, but the instrument vanished a second time and was apparently sold to a buyer in Japan. The Ex-Zimbalist has since been photographed in Japan and even displayed in a department store, but Sarser hasn’t been able to retrieve it or identify the new owner. “I have no desire to play any other instrument,” he says. “It became part of me, and I became part of it.”

  Missing! The Gibson Stradivarius, made in 1713; estimated value: $1.2 million (1988)

  Background: Polish virtuoso Bronislaw Huberman may be the only person ever to have the same Stradivarius stolen from him twice. In 1919 the Gibson was stolen in Vienna, then recovered a few days later when the thief tried to sell it to a dealer. In 1936 it was stolen from Huberman’s dressing room while he was onstage at Carnegie Hall. He never saw it again—the violin was still missing when he died in 1947. Lloyd’s of London paid him $30,000 for his loss.

  A human jaw can open 30 degrees; a snake jaw can open 130 degrees.

  In 1985 an ex-con and former café violinist named Julian Altman summoned his wife, Marcelle Hall, to his deathbed and told her to take good care of his violin after he was gone. “That violin is important,” he told her. He also instructed her to carefully examine the violin case. She did…and found newspaper clippings from the 1936 theft stuffed inside. She confronted her dying husband. At first he told her he had bought it from the thief for $100. Later he confessed that he’d stolen it by distracting a guard with a fine cigar, sneaking into the dressing room, and walking out with the Stradivarius under his coat. Unlike other thieves, he didn’t want to sell it, he just wanted to play it. “Julian didn’t get rid of it,” Hall told reporters, “he played it for 50 years.”

  Outcome: After Altman died, Hall turned the violin over to Lloyd’s of London. They must have believed Hall’s claim that she didn’t know anything about the theft until Altman confessed, because when they sold the Gibson Strad to a British violinist for $1.2 million, they paid her a $263,475 finder’s fee.

  “You know, Julian would tell people that his violin was a Stradivarius,” remembers Altman’s friend David Gartner. “They would just laugh at him. They thought he was kidding.”

  WHAT’S IN YOUR CANDY BAR?

  In 1972 the Oregon Health Department discovered that the chunks in Hoody Chunky Style Peanut Butter were not peanuts, but rat droppings. Company executives were sentenced to 10 days in prison for health violations, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued strict new guidelines on the amount of foreign matter permissible in packaged foods. They include:

  No more than 50 insect fragments or two rodent hairs per 100 grams of peanut butter.

  No more than 10 fruit fly eggs in 100 grams of tomato juice.

  No more than 150 insect fragments in an eight-ounce chocolate bar.

  —Wrong Again!

  Detroit has more “registered” bowlers than any other American city.

  IT’S SLINKY, IT’S SLINKY

  Uncle John wants to know why Slinky is such a popular toy. Sure, it’s fascinating, but let’s face it—once you’ve “walked” it down the stairs a few times, there’s not much more you can do with it. Never mind. It’s a classic. We love it. It’s Slinky!

  1. What happened when the Slinky first hit the shelves of Macy’s department store in New York City in 1949?

  a) Sales were so poor that creators Richard and Betty James pretended to be customers and started buying Slinkys in the hope of drawing attention to their display

  b) Slinkys were so popular that they had to be removed from the store’s shelves because the crowds of people were creating a fire hazard

  c) After several accidents where children became tangled in the Slinky’s wire coils, they were banned from the store

  d) The weight of the metal Slinkys caused the shelves to collapse, leaving one salesman dead and two customers badly injured

  2. Slinkys were used to make all of the following, except which one?

  a) A pecan-picker

  b) Makeshift radio antennas for soldiers during the Vietnam War

  c) A therapeutic tool for stroke victims

  d) A device used to display toupees

  3. All of the following Slinkys were really made, except which one?

  a) A gold-plated Slinky

  b) Felt-covered Slinky Pets with animal faces and tails

  c) A novelty telephone called the Slink-a-Phone

  d) A slinky board game called the Amazing Slinky Game

  4. What company used the Slinky jingle in an ad campaign?

  a) Isuzu Amigo

  b) Hershey Kisses

  c) Pepto-Bismol Chewables

  d) North Face Sneakers

  5. In 1999 Slinky won what honor?

  a) Asked to appear on a U.S. postage stamp

  b) Received an honorary Oscar for numerous film appearances

  c) Awarded a Junior Nobel Prize for combining physics with play

  d) Sealy created a Slinky mattress in recognition of Slinky’s outstanding work with springs

  6. How much wire is used to make a Slinky?

  a) 30 feet

  b) 55 feet

  c) 80 feet

  d) 112 feet

  7. How did the inventor come up with the name Slinky?

  a) He named it after his secretary’s favorite black dress (it was actually his favorite dress, too)

  b) His wife found it in the dictionary—it took her two days of searching before she found a word that described the toy

  c) He was inspired by his out-of-work brother-in-law’s nickname: “Slinky” Wilson

  d) The toy fell in the toilet and got stuck—the plumber had to use a tool he called a Slinky to unclog it

  8. Slinky has been to which of
the following?

  a) Outer space—aboard a NASA Space Shuttle to test the power of a Slinky in zero gravity

  b) Egypt—to test its ability to “climb” down the side of the Great Pyramid at Giza

  c) Arctic Circle—to test the magnetic effect of the North Pole on a Slinky

  d) White House—a gift to President Eisenhower in 1953 as an example of “American ingenuity” a;

  Arizona has official state neckware: the bolo tie.

  Answers

  1. b; 2. d; 3. c; 4. a; 5. a; 6. c; 7. b; 8. a

  It takes 10 pounds of milk to make 1 pound of cheese.

  NEW VIETNAM

  Most families vacation in Florida because of the warm weather and abundance of theme parks. You can shake hands with Mickey Mouse at Disney World, feed the dolphins at SeaWorld…and duck and cover in New Vietnam. Well, at least that was the idea.

  BACKGROUND

  In 1975 Reverend Carl McIntire, a New Jersey fundamentalist preacher and pro-Vietnam War activist, began construction on what was to be “New Vietnam.” Spread out over 300 acres of land in Cape Canaveral, Florida, McIntire and his partner, former Green Beret Giles Pace, envisioned a theme park where people could get a glimpse of the Vietnam War.

  What would the theme park look like? Here are a few of the attractions McIntire planned:

  • Sampan ride. A sampan is an Asian sailboat. Tourists would take a sampan ride around a moat that encircled a recreated Vietnamese village with a neighboring Special Forces camp.

  • Special Forces camp. The camp would be made up of simple concrete barracks displaying weapons “used by the Commies in Vietnam.” Around the barracks would be trenches and mortar bunkers complete with sandbag walls and sham machine guns.

  • The perimeter. The camp would be surrounded with row upon row of barbed wire, punji stakes, and fake Claymore mines to add to the atmosphere. “We’ll have a recording, broadcasting a fire-fight, mortars exploding, bullets flying, Vietnamese screaming,” McIntire explained, while hired GIs shoot blanks at the enemy. Visitors would be encouraged to take cover in the barracks or station themselves behind a machine gun and get in on the action.

  • A Vietnamese village. The village would be made up of 16 thatched huts and four concrete upper-class Vietnamese homes that would double as retail shops and snack bars serving traditional Vietnamese cuisine. So after working up an appetite manning the machine guns, park visitors could stop in for a bowl of rice and noodles. The village was to be completely authentic, with irrigated paddies, water buffalo, cows, chickens, ducks, and palm trees.

  That little statue on the grill of every Rolls Royce car has a name: “Spirit of Ecstasy.”

  • Vietnamese people. Vietnamese people—real refugees from the real war—would travel through the village in traditional outfits and make New Vietnam come to life. McIntire planned this as a make-work program for Vietnamese refugees arriving in Florida at the end of the war. “Every penny will go back to the Vietnamese. The Bible says love your neighbor.”

  “They’ll work anywhere for a paycheck,” Pace commented. “And this will be work that won’t be in competition with anyone else. There’s nothing offensive about it.”

  INTO THE MORASS

  The idea bombed and the park was never completed. Vietnamese refugees, having just experienced the horrors of a real war, weren’t about to participate in a fake one. “My wife won’t walk around that village in a costume like Mickey Mouse,” refugee Cong Nguyen Binh told reporters. “We want to forget. We want to live here like you. We don’t want any more war.”

  MISNOMERS

  • The rare red coral of the Mediterranean is actually blue.

  • The gray whale is actually black.

  • Whalebone is actually made of baleen, a material from the whales’ upper jaws.

  • The Atlantic salmon is actually a member of the trout family.

  • Heartburn is actually pyrosis, caused by the presence of gastric secretions, called reflux, in the lower esophagus.

  • The Caspian Sea and the Dead Sea are both actually lakes.

  • The horseshoe crab is more closely related to spiders and scorpions than crabs.

  • The Douglas fir is actually a pine tree.

  • A steel-jacketed bullet is actually made of brass.

  • Riptides are actually currents.

  Eh? HEARING AID SALES ROSE 40% WHEN PRESIDENT REAGAN GOT HIS.

  HAPPY HOLIDAYS

  Here’s some holiday trivia you may not have come across before.

  LABOR DAY

  In 1893 amid growing labor unrest, President Grover Cleveland sent 12,000 federal troops to stop a strike at the Pullman train car company in Chicago. The strike was broken, but two men were killed and many more were beaten. For Cleveland and the Democrats, the move backfired—the pro-business brutality only served to bolster the growing union movement.

  To win back constituents, Congess passed legislation the following year making the first Monday in September a national holiday honoring labor. It was a presidential election year, so President Cleveland promptly signed the bill into law, hoping it would appease American workers. It didn’t. Cleveland was defeated…but Labor Day was established for good.

  GROUNDHOG DAY

  February 2, the midpoint between winter solstice and spring equinox, has been celebrated for eons. The Celts called it Imbolc (“ in the belly”—for sheep pregnant with lambs); Romans had Lupercalia, a fertility celebration. For other cultures, too, the day was marked by rituals of “rebirth” and hope for a bountiful new growing season.

  According to Irish tradition, a snake emerges from “the womb of Earth” and tests the weather to see if spring has arrived. The Germans had a similar tradition, except that they watched for badgers waking from hibernation. If the day was a sunny, shadow-casting day, more winter weather was to come. No shadow meant an early spring.

  When German settlers came to Pennsylvania in the 1700s, they brought the custom with them…but there were no badgers, so they substituted another hibernating animal: the groundhog.

  COLUMBUS AMERICAN INDIAN DAY

  Attempts to designate a national day honoring Native Americans have been made—unsuccessfully—for nearly a century. In 1914 Red Fox James, a Blackfoot Indian, rode 4,000 miles on horseback in support of a national day of recognition for Native Americans. He ended the journey in Washington, D.C., where his proposal for the holiday was adopted by 24 state governments. The state of New York became the first to officially designate an American Indian Day, in May 1916.

  The carnation’s name means “fleshlike.” (Their pink color reminded people of meat.)

  While it has yet to be recognized as a national holiday, several states, South Dakota being the first, have officially changed another time-honored holiday to American Indian Day: the second Monday in October—Columbus Day.

  MERRY MITHRAS

  The Bible doesn’t say when Jesus was born, but many historians think it was in April. So why is Christmas celebrated on December 25? One possible reason: Mithras. Mithras was a Persian diety known as The Conquering Sun, and his birthday was traditionally celebrated at the winter solstice in late December. Mithraism and Christianity were both becoming popular in the Mediterranean region at about the same time. But early Christians were determined to prevail, so they adopted December 25 as the date of the Nativity. By the third or fourth century A.D., the already popular day was firmly entrenched as Christmas.

  THIS AIN’T NO PARTY

  In April 2002, a Veterans of Foreign Wars group in Utah issued a resolution demanding that the date of Earth Day be changed. Why? April 22 is former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin’s birthdate. The group refused to celebrate on the birthday of “the godless master of manipulation, misinformation, and murder.”

  Not only that, members claim the day was chosen intentionally and that former Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day, is a communist sympathizer. “He voted against funding the Vietnam War,” said one
post commander.

  The 86-year-old Nelson says it was a coincidence. “Several million people were born on any day of the year. Does the VFW want to change it to another day on which, undoubtedly, some really evil person was born? Hitler? Mussolini? Genghis Khan?”

  Another April 22 birthday: St. Francis of Assisi.

  Q: What do you get when you add zinc to copper? A: Brass.

  AMAZING COINCIDENCES

  We’re constantly finding stories about amazing coincidences, so in this Bathroom Reader, Uncle John listed a few of his favorites.

  NEEDS WORK

  While eating dinner at Notting Hill Gate restaurant in 1992, a London publisher had her car broken into. One of the things taken from the car was a manuscript she had been reading and found extremely promising. Apparently the thieves weren’t interested in literature, though—they threw the manuscript over a fence while driving away. On Monday morning she was desperately trying to come up with a way to explain how she lost the manuscript when the author called. Before she got a chance to apologize, the author asked, “Why did you have my manuscript thrown over my front fence?”

  STROKE OF LUCK

  During the 1988 Olympic games in Seoul, South Korea, Karen Lord of Australia and Manuella Carosi of Italy swam in different heats of the women’s 100-meter backstroke. Both finished with times of exactly one minute 4.69 seconds, tying them for 16th place. Only one swimmer could hold a lane in the consolation final, so Lord and Carosi were forced to swim again. Amazingly, after the swim-off the officials reported the times were exactly the same, one minute 5.05 seconds. Officials decided that the two had to swim yet one more time. At the end of the unprecedented third consecutive race Carosi was declared the winner. Her time: one minute 4.62 seconds. Lord’s time: one minute 4.75 seconds—13 hundredths of a second behind.