Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

Population of the American colonies in 1610: 350.

  MY BODY LIES OVER THE OCEAN

  When someone passes away and their remains are buried or cremated, it’s said that they are being “laid to rest.” Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. For some people, the journey is just beginning.

  DOROTHY PARKER

  Claim to Fame: Writer, critic, and member of New York’s famous Algonquin Round Table in the 1920s and 1930s Final Resting Place: Her ashes were interred in 1988, after spending more than 15 years in a filing cabinet.

  Details: Parker died in June 1967. She left instructions that her body be cremated, but didn’t specify what she wanted done after that. When nobody showed up to claim the ashes, the funeral home stored them (for a few years), then mailed them to her lawyers. The lawyers put the box containing her ashes on top of a filing cabinet, apparently waiting for Parker’s friend and executor, Lillian Hellman, to collect them. Hellman never did, so when she died in 1984, the law firm began meeting with Parker’s surviving friends to figure out what to do.

  Parker had left her entire estate to Martin Luther King, Jr. (whom she had never met), and when he was assassinated, everything went to the NAACP. When both the Algonquin Hotel (her legendary hangout) and the New Yorker magazine (her publisher) turned down Parker’s ashes, the NAACP volunteered to create a memorial garden for her at their headquarters in Baltimore. Finally, in 1988, Parker’s ashes were placed in an urn next to a marker inscribed with Parker’s self-penned epitaph: “Excuse My Dust.”

  THOMAS PAINE

  Claim to Fame: Founding Father and author of “Common Sense,” a political pamphlet that helped spark the American Revolution Final Resting Place: Unknown

  Details: Paine didn’t mince his words; he offended just about everyone he knew in the United States, England, and France. When he died in 1809 at the age of 72, he had few friends left among the Founding Fathers. He was buried on his farm in New Rochelle, New York; only six people attended his funeral.

  There are over 15,000 miles of neon lights in the signs along the Las Vegas strip.

  Ten years later, an English admirer named William Cobbett decided to return Paine to England, where he could be given a proper funeral and burial. Rather than getting permission from Paine’s relatives or the new owners of his farm, Cobbett just dug the body up and snuck it to England in a shipping crate. But since he didn’t have money for a funeral or a decent grave, Cobbett had to stage a series of “bone rallies” across England, raising money by charging for a peek at Paine’s corpse.

  No luck—the public wasn’t interested. When Cobbett couldn’t even interest people in buying locks of the dead man’s hair, he finally gave up and stored the bones under his bed.

  When Cobbett died penniless in 1835, the bones were seized as part of his estate and scheduled to be auctioned off to pay his creditors. Even that plan failed—the auctioneer balked at the idea of selling human remains to satisfy a debt. Paine’s skeleton was turned over to Cobbett’s son, and what he did with it remains a mystery.

  THE HEART OF LOUIS XIV

  Claim to Fame: King of France from 1643 to 1715

  Final Resting Place: An English dinner plate

  Details: During the French Revolution, as the country collapsed into anarchy, Louis XIV’s tomb was raided and his embalmed heart was stolen. It was eventually purchased by an English nobleman named Lord Harcourt. Harcourt sold it to the Reverend William Buckland, dean of Westminster Cathedral; when Buckland died in 1856, the heart was passed on to his son Francis.

  Francis Buckland was a peculiar man with some peculiar theories. He believed that the way to assure national security was to make England completely food self-sufficient and that the best way to do that was to raise—and eat—exotic animals. How exotic? Over time Buckland graduated from eating ostrich and buffalo to more unsual fare, including moles, flies, slugs, and porpoise heads. He eventually decided that even the king of France himself was fair game as a protein source, so one night he cooked up the royal heart and ate it. “Never before,” he told his astonished dinner guests, “have I eaten the heart of a king.”

  Bad omen? If you add up all the numbers of the roulette wheel (1 to 36), the sum is 666.

  AMAZING LUCK

  Sometimes we’re blessed with it, sometimes we’re cursed with it—dumb luck. Here are some examples of people who lucked out…for better or worse.

  DOMO ARIGATO

  Jason Powell worked on a grass farm in Corvallis, Oregon. In early 2002, he lost his wallet somewhere in the fields and figured it was gone for good. But it wasn’t. Apparently it was picked up by a combine, then baled up with the straw and exported to Japan. Six months later, Powell received the wallet in the mail—returned to him by the Japanese farmer who found it—with his driver’s license, credit cards, and $6 still inside.

  GOOD THING THEY DIDN’T CLEAN UP

  While visiting their sons in Nebraska, Larry and Leita Hatch stopped at a local Burger King. Larry bought a soft drink and when he peeled off the “Cash Is King” game sticker, he became the only $1 million winner in the entire country. (Wait, it gets better.) He stopped at a grocery store to make a copy of the ticket, but when he got to his son’s house, he found he’d lost the original. So he went back to the grocery store—three hours later—and calmly picked up the ticket where it was lying…on the floor in the checkout line.

  GOOD THING THEY DIDN’T CLEAN UP, PART II

  Even if you have a winning lottery ticket, you have to turn it in before the deadline in order to claim your prize. In 1994 Duane and Nancy Black of Bullhead City, Arizona, read about an unclaimed lottery ticket. Value: $1.8 million. So just for the heck of it they decided to look through their stash of old tickets—and they found the winner. They immediately got on a plane to Phoenix and claimed their prize…two hours before the six-month ticket expired.

  HEEEERE, LITTLE FISHY

  In October 1999, 56-year-old Bev Marshall-Smith was surf-fishing off New Zealand’s North Island when a large fish chased her lure into the shallows. Thrilled, she grabbed a piece of driftwood and charged into the water to get it. She must not have been able to see what she’d caught because when the fish refused to go quietly, she started clubbing it. “Every time he wrestled, I hit him,” she said. Ultimately, she beat it to death… but the wrestling match could have ended differently. When she went in to collect her prize, she discovered she’d been wrestling with a six-foot blue shark.

  What’d they use before that? Ettore Sceccone invented the window squeegee in 1936.

  THE LUCKIEST-UNLUCKIEST AWARD

  On April 3, 1996, Mohamed Samir Ferrat, an Algerian business associate of U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, was scheduled to fly with Brown from Bosnia to Croatia. In a bizarre twist of fate, Ferrat backed out of the trip at the last minute. Brown’s plane crashed, killing all 35 passengers. Ferrat probably felt like a lucky man, but only three months later, on July 17, he boarded TWA flight 800, which exploded over Long Island Sound, killing all 230 passengers and crewmembers… including Ferrat.

  PICK ME A WINNER

  Every year the Dearborn Heights Police Supervisors Association holds a raffle in Taylor, Michigan, and because it’s a fundraiser for the police, they’re careful to be sure everything is aboveboard. The prize for the 2001 raffle was a $20,000 Harley-Davidson Road King Classic; the winning ticket was to be picked by the 2000 winner, an autoworker named Tom Grochoki. There were 7,800 tickets in the barrel. Grochoki picked one, handed it to Lt. Karl Kapelczak, and went back to the crowd to hear the winner’s name announced. The winner: Tom Grochoki.

  THE UNLUCKIEST-LUCKIEST AWARD

  It was bad luck when a 20-year-old Greek man accidentally shot himself in the head with his speargun while fishing off the island of Crete. A lifeguard found him floating in the water six hours later, the spear entering his jaw, going through his brain, and protruding from the top of his skull. But it was incredibly good luck when surgeons discovered that the spear had passed through on
e of the spaces in the brain that are nonfunctional—if it was just millimeters to the left or right he would have suffered serious brain injury or died. They removed it in a three-hour operation that left the man with no brain damage and no health problems.

  To pass U.S. Army basic training, men have to do 40 push-ups in two minutes. Women: 17 push-ups.

  CAUGHT IN THE ACT

  Things aren’t always as they seem, and savvy

  marketers can turn lying into an art form.

  But sometimes they get caught.

  THE PRODUCT: Heinz Ketchup

  YOU ASSUME: When you buy a bottle of ketchup that says “20 oz.” on it, you get 20 ounces of ketchup.

  WOULD THEY LIE TO US? Bill Baker of Redding, California, bought a 20-ounce bottle of ketchup for his wife’s meatloaf. The recipe called for 20 ounces exactly, but when they poured it in the measuring cup, it was an ounce and a half short.

  EXPOSED: Bill got ticked off. “If it says 20 ounces, it should be 20 ounces,” he said. He called the state’s Division of Measurement, setting off a five-year statewide investigation of H. J. Heinz Co. What did they find? Heinz’s bottled products, from the 20-ounce to the 64-ounce size, were regularly 0.5% to 2% short. That may not seem like much, but officials estimated that Californians had been cheated out of 10 million ounces—78,124 gallons—of the red stuff. That’s $650,000 worth of ketchup. Heinz was ordered to pay $180,000 in civil penalties, and agreed to overfill their bottles for one year—by about 10 million ounces.

  THE PRODUCT: Used cars

  YOU ASSUME: When you buy a used car from big-name automaker’s dealership, you’re getting a safe, reliable car.

  WOULD THEY LIE TO US? Auto manufacturers buy back about 100,000 cars every year because of defects. Under federal “lemon laws,” if they can’t fix a car’s problem, they have to buy it back. Where does it go from there? For years automakers claimed they would never resell a defective car; it would either be destroyed or studied by their engineers.

  …in two minutes. Women: 17 push-ups.

  EXPOSED: In March 2001, in a lawsuit over a “laundered lemon” sold to a North Carolina couple, DaimlerChrysler was forced to reveal some incriminating facts: Between 1993 and 2000, the auto giant had paid $1.3 billion to buy back more than 50,000 vehicles—and resold nearly all of them, recouping two-thirds of the buyback cost. They had been sold to Chrysler dealers who then resold them to the public. And, most damaging to the company, many of the legally required disclosure forms were unsigned, meaning buyers were told nothing about the cars’ histories.

  In July 2001, Chrysler settled with the couple for an undisclosed amount, but the company was still facing a class-action suit inspired by the case. In December 2001, another couple in California won a similar case against Ford Motor Co., who, the jury ruled, had knowingly resold them a lemon. Amount the jury ordered Ford to pay: $10 million.

  THE PRODUCT: Movie reviews

  YOU ASSUME: The movie reviews you read in newspapers and magazines are from authentic, unbiased movie critics.

  WOULD THEY LIE TO US? In 2001 several advertisements for Sony-made films featured quotes from reviews by “David Manning” of “The Ridgefield Press,” a small paper in Connecticut. Manning always seemed to give Sony’s movies high praise. His take on A Knight’s Tale star Heath Ledger: “This year’s hottest new star!”

  EXPOSED: After Newsweek reporter John Horn questioned the authenticity of the ads in June 2001, and the state of Connecticut investigated, Sony admitted they’d written the reviews themselves. David Manning didn’t exist, and the real Ridgefield Press knew nothing about it. The investigation also revealed that people appearing in Sony’s TV commercials—who seemed to be genuine moviegoers—were actually Sony employees. “These deceptive ads deserve two thumbs down,” said state Attorney General Richard Blumen-thal. In February 2002, Sony was fined $325,000 and agreed to stop the practice. After the case, Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Artisan Entertainment all admitted that they, too, had used employees and actors posing as moviegoers in their TV ads.

  OVEREXPOSED: Shortly after the fake reviewer was revealed, two men in California filed a class-action lawsuit against Sony for “deliberately deceiving consumers.” By July, 10 more had been filed against all of Hollywood’s major movie studios over deceptive advertising practices. The verdict? Coming soon to a courthouse near you.

  Face facts: In a standard deck of cards, the king of hearts is the only king with no moustache.

  WARNING LABELS

  Some things in life should go without saying, but there’s

  always the occasional moron who needs to be told

  not to use a blowtorch while sleeping.

  On a Duraflame fireplace log: “Caution—Risk of Fire.”

  On a compact disc player: “Do not use the Ultradisc 2000 as a projectile in a catapult.”

  On a propane blowtorch: “Never use while sleeping.”

  On a box of rat poison: “Warning: Has been found to cause cancer in laboratory mice.”

  On an air conditioner: “Avoid dropping air conditioners out of windows.”

  On a vacuum cleaner: “Do not use to pick up anything that is currently burning.”

  On a Batman costume: “Warning: Cape does not enable user to fly.”

  On a bottle of hair coloring: “Do not use as an ice cream topping.”

  On a curling iron: “Warning: This product can burn eyes.”

  On a cardboard sunshield for a car: “Do not drive with sunshield in place.”

  On a toner cartridge: “Do not eat toner.”

  On a toilet bowl cleaning brush: “Do not use orally.”

  On a pair of shin guards: “Shin pads cannot protect any part of the body they do not cover.”

  On a portable stroller: “Caution: Remove infant before folding for storage.”

  On a plastic, 13-inch wheelbarrow wheel: “Not intended for highway use.”

  On a laser pointer: “Do not look into laser with remaining eye.”

  In a microwave oven manual: “Do not use for drying pets.”

  In the instructions for a digital thermometer: “Do not use orally after using rectally.”

  First state to require license plates on cars: New York, in 1901.

  LET’S PLAY SPACEWAR!

  Three years after a government physicist named William

  Higinbotham created the first video game, Tennis for Two

  (see page 65), some students at MIT invented a

  game called Spacewar! Here’s their story.

  NOT EXACTLY A LAPTOP

  If you ever get a chance to see a picture of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC for short), you probably won’t recognize it for what it is. Completed in 1945, the ENIAC is considered to be the first practical digital computer ever made.

  ENIAC was the supercomputer of its day. It was as big as a three-bedroom house and weighed more than 60,000 pounds. It contained more than 18,000 vacuum tubes, each one the size of a lightbulb. And because the tubes burned out so frequently (2,000 a month on average), ENIAC was out of order about a third of the time.

  Even when it was working, ENIAC couldn’t do very much: Its operators programmed it manually, spending hours or even days flipping switches and rewiring circuits. And ENIAC couldn’t store these “programs,” so each time the operators finished one computational task (calculating the path of an artillery shell, for example) and wanted to start another (nuclear weapons research), they had to flip the switches and rewire the whole computer all over again. ENIAC didn’t have a keyboard or video screen, and it was more than 10,000 times slower than a modern personal computer.

  COLLEGE SCREENING

  Computers evolved slowly. Computers with video monitors, for example, were extremely rare through the 1960s. Only three universities in the entire United States—Stanford, the University of Utah, and MIT—had one.

  So if it took 15 years for computer technology to progress to the point where exactly thr
ee American universities could own computers with video screens, how long do you think it took students at these universities to program the first video games into these supercomputers? A couple of months, at most.

  What’s another name for a suckling calf? A “bob.”

  SOMETHING TO SEE

  MIT’s legendary Whirlwind computer, for example, had a demonstration program called Bouncing Ball. Technically, it wasn’t a video game because the viewer didn’t do anything. You could only watch as a ball appeared at the top of the screen, then fell to the bottom and bounced around the screen, with a thwok! sound coming from the computer’s speaker at each bounce. Eventually the ball lost its momentum and settled on the floor, finally rolling off to one side and out of the picture, at which point another ball would drop from the top of the screen.

  But Bouncing Ball and the computer “games” that followed weren’t supposed to be taken seriously. They were just things the early programmers dreamed up to amuse themselves and to demonstrate the number-crunching power of the Whirlwind computer. The best games were designed to tax the abilities of the computers to the limit. But other than that, they were “hacks,” as they were called even then—programs with no constructive purpose whatsoever. The people who made them called themselves “hackers.”

  Mouse in the Maze was one of the earliest hacks. Designed for a supercomputer called the TX-O, it consisted of a mouse (the animal), a maze, and a piece of cheese. Using a special light pen, the player drew a maze right on the screen and then placed the cheese in the maze. Then the mouse searched through the maze and ate the cheese, leaving crumbs wherever it ate. An “improved” version had the mouse searching for martinis and after drinking the first one, staggering around the maze looking for the rest. There were other games—Tic-Tac-Toe, and a pattern-generating program called HAX—but nothing that would hold the interest of players for more than a few minutes.