73% of Americans in their twenties say playing hooky from work “would improve their…mental health and productivity.” Only 50% of Americans over 65 agrees.
• For the third time, Graff lost his case. Thanks to the stubborn policeman, the publicity for Houdini was enormous.
HOUDINI COMMITS RANDOM ACTS OF PUBLICITY…
• Houdini became famous for escaping from straitjackets while hanging upside down from his feet over public streets. He sought out the newspapers in each town he traveled to and offered to perform the stunt while hanging from their roof. It made the front page in every town he played.
• On his first trip to Europe, Houdini hired seven bald men to sit in a row on the pavement next to a popular café. At regular intervals, the seven men would simultaneously remove their hats and nod their heads forward. Each man had one letter written on his bald head, and together they spelled “Houdini.”
• In 1901 Houdini escaped from the manacles that had been worn by a sadistic murderer named Glowisky when he had been beheaded just three days earlier. It made great newspaper copy.
• A rival magician once interrupted one of Houdini’s performances with loud protests that he, The Great Cirnoc, was the true handcuff king. Houdini invited him onstage to prove himself by escaping from some special cuffs. Cirnoc first insisted that Houdini demonstrate that it was possible to do (which he did, in the privacy of his cabinet, using a secret key). The Great Cirnoc then struggled to release himself from the same cuffs but couldn’t. He was hooted offstage, and the papers were full of the story the next day.
…AND KINDNESS!
Popular singer Sarah Bernhardt was honored at a reception at the Met in New York. There, she was presented with a bronze bust of herself. However, no one had paid the bill for the bust. When the $350 bill was sent to her, she returned the bust to the maker. Houdini immediately stepped in and paid the bill. Within a few days, his gesture had been covered in no less than 3,756 newspapers. A reporter estimated that if Houdini had bought that much newspaper space outright, it would have cost him $56,340.
How’d he do all this stuff? Turn to page 289 to find out.
Doggone: Houdini trained his dog to escape from a pair of miniature handcuffs.
PLUMBERS BY THE HOUR
Some things never change. This piece of 19th-century humor by Charles Dudley Warner deals with a problem familiar to every 21st-century homeowner.
PLUMB BRILLIANT
There is no class of men whose society is more to be desired than that of plumbers. They are the most agreeable men I know. I suspect the secret of it is that they are agreeable by the hour.
In the driest days, my fountain became disabled. The pipe was stopped up. A couple of plumbers, with the implements of their craft, came out to view the situation. There was a good deal of difference of opinion about where the stoppage was. But I found the plumbers perfectly willing to sit down and talk about it—talk by the hour. Some of their guesses and remarks were exceedingly ingenious; and their general observations on other subjects were excellent in their way, and could hardly have been better if they had been made by the job.
WHAT, ME HURRY?
The work dragged a little—as it is apt to do by the hour. The plumbers had occasion to make me several visits. Sometimes they would find, upon arrival, that they had forgotten some indispensable tool and one would go back to the shop, a mile and a half, after it, and his companion would await his return with the most exemplary patience, and sit down and talk—always by the hour. I do not know but it is a habit to have something wanted at the shop.
They seemed to me very good workmen, and always willing to stop and talk about the job, or anything else, when I went near them. They had none of that impetuous hurry that is said to be the bane of our American civilization. To their credit be it said, that I never observed anything of it in them. They can afford to wait. Two of them will sometimes wait nearly half a day while a comrade goes for a tool.
First job of a newborn queen bee: killing the other newborn queens, so she can rule alone.
THE MOMENT IS HOURS
They are patient and philosophical. It is a great pleasure to meet such men. One only wishes there was some work he could do for them by the hour. There ought to be reciprocity. I think they have very nearly solved the problem of Life: it is to work for other people, never for yourself, and get your pay by the hour. You then have no anxiety, and little work.
If you do things by the job you are perpetually driven: the hours are scourges. If you work by the hour, you gently sail on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you on to the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort or not. Working by the hour tends to make one moral. A plumber working by the job, trying to unscrew a rusty, refractory nut in a cramped position, where the tongs continually slipped off, would swear; but I never heard one of them swear, or exhibit the least impatience at such a vexation, working by the hour. Nothing can move a man who is paid by the hour. How sweet the flight of time seems to his calm mind.
FROM UNCLE JOHN’S POLICE LOG
In June 2000, some kids were playing basketball at a recreational field in Moreland Township, Pennsylvania, when they heard screams for help coming from the portable toilet that serves the field. The kids ran home to mom; she called the cops. Cops found a man standing in the toilet, naked from the waist down and up to his hips in…unpleasantness. According to police, the man had dropped his keys in the toilet and became stuck when he climbed in to find them. (He says he removed his shoes, socks, and pants “so they wouldn’t get dirty.”)
The man spent 45 minutes trapped in the toilet; it took rescue crews another 45 minutes to free him. That doesn’t include the time removing the toilet seat from the man’s torso, which was wedged so tight it had to be removed by emergency room doctors. The man never found his keys, but the story did end on a positive note: police withheld his name to save him from embarrassment.
If you’re an average blinker, your eyes will be blinked closed for about 30 minutes today.
NO CITY DUST HERE
We’re back with another installment of anagrams…words or phrases whose letters are rearranged to form new words or phrases. Here’s an extra bonus: the new phrase has more or less the same meaning as the old one.
A TELEPHONE GIRL
becomes…REPEATING
“HELLO”
THE COUNTRYSIDE
becomes…NO CITY
DUST HERE
THE PUBLIC ART
GALLERIES becomes…
LARGE PICTURE
HALLS, I BET
THE GREAT NEW YORK
RAPID TRANSIT
TUNNEL becomes…
GIANT WORK IN
STREET, PARTLY
UNDERNEATH
THE HOSPITAL
AMBULANCE becomes…
A CAB, I HUSTLE
TO HELP MAN
HEAVY RAIN becomes…
HIRE A NAVY
VACATION TIMES
becomes…I’M NOT AS
ACTIVE
A DOMESTICATED
ANIMAL becomes…
DOCILE, AS A MAN
TAMED IT
CONVERSATION becomes…
VOICES RANT ON
THE UNITED STATES
BUREAU OF FISHERIES
becomes…I RAISE THE
BASS TO FEED US
IN THE FUTURE
SOFTWARE becomes…
SWEAR OFT
LISTEN becomes…SILENT
“THAT’S ONE SMALL
STEP FOR A MAN, ONE
GIANT LEAP FOR
MANKIND.”—NEIL
A. ARMSTRONG
becomes…
A THIN MAN RAN,
MAKES A LARGE
STRIDE, LEFT
PLANET, PINS
FLAG ON MOON!
ON TO MARS!
Christmas lite: Only 10% of U.S. households put cookies out for Santa on Christmas Eve.
PIT STOPS ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB
/> Uncle John’s loves to bring you the best in bathroom news, so here’s something he recently discovered: restroom ratings posted on the Internet. Are they legit? We don’t know. Are they accurate? We don’t know that, either. Are they fun? Definitely.
Finagle-A-Bagel, Boston, MA
Comments: “Large, unusually clean. Convenient location. Decent bagels, too.”
Unos Pizzeria, Phoenix, AZ
Comments: “The small urinals were a ridiculous four inches from the floor. At that height, even a dwarf would have to crouch to stay on target!”
Shinjuku Subway Station Men’s Room, Tokyo, Japan
Comments: “This pay toilet cost 100 yen ($1.00). Too expensive. But it smells good.”
House of Blues, New Orleans, LA
Comments: “The candies were a bit stale. The after-shave was not my brand.”
Castle Island, Boston, MA
Comments: “What a horrible bathroom. Dirty, smelly, perpetually ‘wet’ floor. I almost felt dirtier coming out than I did going in.”
The Shell Station, US-219 near Lewisburg, WV
Comments: “Upon opening the door to the men’s restroom, which was unlocked, a man already seated upon the toilet smiled at me as I opened the door. I quickly closed the door, never to enter again.”
Tabata Subway Station Men’s Room, Tokyo, Japan
Comments: “Worst toilet in Tokyo. Help! I’m nauseated.”
Syracuse Carrier Dome,
Syracuse, NY
Comments: “A unique bathroom. Instead of urinating into a urinal, you urinate on the wall. It then trickles down the wall into a small trough which carries the urine to God knows where.”
Pazzaluna, St. Paul, MN
Comments: “The small framed photos of pasta dishes hanging above the urinals were nice.”
Fifteen runners started the first-ever Boston Marathon; only 10 of them finished it.
AROUND THE HOUSE
The next time you’re doing some home improvement, chances are you’ll use one at least one of these three products.
TAKES THE CAKE
In 1894 Theodore Witte was applying putty around a window frame with a butter knife—and it was a messy job. Sometime later, while waiting in line at a bakery shop, he noticed a baker squeezing icing onto a cake from a tube attached to a nozzle…with complete precision. Witte went straight home and designed a “puttying tool.” He patented his idea of “using a ratcheted piston to force window putty through a nozzle to effect a smooth, weatherproof seal.” Witte never made much money for his invention, but to his credit, he got it right the first time; very little about the caulking gun has changed since then.
SOMETHING’S FISHY
After someone spilled raw fish oil on his metal deck, a Scottish fishing boat captain named Robert Fergusson noticed that—over time—the deck stopped rusting. So after he landed in New Orleans, Fergusson spent many years trying to formulate a fish-oil based paint that would inhibit rust and corrosion. His biggest problem wasn’t getting it to work, but getting it to work without smelling fishy. Finally in 1921, after working with more fish oil than any person should ever have to, Fergusson unveiled a new paint that stopped rust, dried overnight, and left no lingering aroma: Rust-Oleum.
ROCKET SCIENCE
Norm Larsen, a chemist at the Rocket Chemical Company, had unsuccessfully tested 39 compounds that would prevent corrosion and eliminate water from electrical circuitry. He finally got it right in 1953 and labeled the compound Water Displacement Formula 40. Other workers snuck the stuff home and discovered that in addition to preventing corrosion, it also stopped squeaks and unstuck locks. So the Rocket Chemical Company marketed it for home use. The product, now called WD-40, hit store shelves in 1958. Today more than a million cans are sold every week.
Q: What do Eskimos use for toothpicks? A: Walrus whiskers.
PARLIAMENTARY MANNERS
Canadians have a well-deserved reputation for being polite. Turns out it’s all an act—at least for politicians. This excerpt from the “Dear Miss Parliamentary Manners” column in the Canadian National Post shows us that American politicians have a lot to learn.
DEAR MISS PARLIAMENTARY MANNERS,
A recent news story contended that decorum is taking a bruising in Canadian legislatures. The article quoted a Cabinet minister as saying, “There is a certain level of civil discourse to be expected in the house even during heckling.” How can you be civil and heckle at the same time?
ANSWER: Actually, it’s very easy to hector with ferocity and yet remain civil and mannerly—once you’ve mastered the subtle nuances of the parliamentary vernacular.
Expression: “My learned colleague.”
Translation: “You cheese-eating throwback.”
Expression: “If the honorable member will forward his request to my department, we will provide the relevant documents.”
Translation: “Talk to the hand.”
Expression: “I would be happy to address the member’s question.”
Translation: “I yearn to bleach your skull and use it on my desk as a novelty pencil holder.”
Expression: “If the member had concerns, he should have made them known at the proper time.”
Translation: “Your mother didn’t have any complaints last night.”
Expression: “Mr. Speaker, the people of Canada deserve an answer.”
Translation: “Leave my mother out of this—I swear, I’ll cut you!”
Expression: “I am outraged by your craven duplicity!”
Translation: “I’m not really upset; I just wanted to get on the news. Want to have dinner tonight?”
No way: According to one expert, the most frequently used English noun is “way.”
THE MIRACLE WORKER
Observations about life from Helen Keller.
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.…Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.”
“Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.”
“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something.”
“Science may have found a cure for most evils, but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all—the apathy of human beings.” “No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land.”
“It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.”
“There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.”
“As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so love clears and sharpens the vision.”
“The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.”
“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”
“The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but no vision.”
First song ever sung in space: “Happy Birthday,” to the Apollo astronauts on March 8, 1969.
RAINFOREST CRUNCH
We’ve heard about “saving the rainforests” for years, but why are they so important? Here are some facts about some of nature’s most amazing phenomena.
RAINFORESTS ARE DIVERSE
The Facts: Rainforests—forests with an average year-round temperature of 70°F and annual rainfall of more than 60 inches—are home to 50% of life on Earth…even though they make up only 6% of the landmass.
• More types of woody plant species grow on the slopes of a single forested volcan
o in the Philippines than grow in the entire United States from coast to coast. Forests in the tiny country of Panama contain as many plant species as all of Europe.
• More species of fish live in the Amazon River than in the entire Atlantic Ocean. One study found more species of ants living on a single tropical stump than are found in all of the British Isles.
• Yet scientists estimate that they have discovered and identified only one-sixth of the species living in rainforests.
RAINFORESTS ARE UNIQUE ECOSYSTEMS
The Facts: The ecosystem of a rainforest is upside down compared to other forests: nutrients are stored not in the soil, but in the canopy of plants above it.
• In forests with temperate climates, the deciduous trees all drop their leaves at roughly the same time, triggered by the change of seasons. Dead leaves gradually decompose and turn into rich soil.
• That doesn’t happen in the rainforest—there is no change of season; tropical trees drop their leaves gradually over the entire year.
• The constant heat and moisture of the climate spur the continuous growth of bacteria, insects, and fungi, which feed on the dead leaves—causing the forest floor to act as a huge living stomach.
• Result: Decomposition (which can take one to seven years in a temperate forest) takes only six weeks in a rainforest. Downside: The rich loamy soil that accumulates in temperate forests never gets a chance to build up on a rainforest’s floor.
Most destructive disease in human history, according to health experts: malaria.
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