Daily salary of a U.S. senator in 1789: $6. Daily salary in 2001: $580.
PET ME!
Some people have pet peeves. Uncle John has pet trivia.
• Sir Isaac Newton invented the swinging door…for the convenience of his cats.
• Most dogs run an average of 19 mph.
• Ancient Egyptians could be put to death for mistreating a cat.
• Does your dog seem wary of going out in the rain? It’s not because it’s afraid to get wet. Rain amplifies sound…it hurts dogs’ ears.
• Total Dog is an L.A. health club…for dogs. It has treadmills, masseuses, and an aerobics course. Cost: $800/year.
• Toy-breed dogs live an average of 7 years longer than large breeds. (Tibetan Terriers live up to 20 years.)
• In ancient Rome, it wasn’t officially dark until you could no longer tell the difference between a dog and a wolf howling in the distance.
• Average cat bill at the veterinarian: $80/year for life.
• Most popular dog names in Russia: Ugoljok (Blackie) and Veterok (Breezy).
• In Japan, you can rent a dog as a companion for $20/hour.
• John Candy once paid $19,000 for a German Shepherd. (He didn’t know the average price for a Shepherd was $1,500.)
• In 1997 a member of Australia’s parliament proposed that all cats be eradicated from the country by 2002.
• Why do dogs try to mate with human legs? It’s nothing personal. In an excited state, a dog will mount almost anything.
• A schoolteacher in Kansas was ordered not to feed his pet python in class. Why? He wanted to feed it puppies.
• A Persian cat named Precious survived 18 days without food. She was found when rescue crews heard her cries—across the street from the site of the World Trade Center.
• The heaviest (and longest) dog ever recorded was an Old English Mastiff named Zorba: 343 lbs (and 8 feet 3 inches from nose to tail).
• Julius Caesar hated cats.
Frogs drink through their skin.
FUNNY BUSINESS
Big corporations play by a different set of rules: their own.
DEATH AND NO TAXES
The Wall Street Journal reported in May 2002, that hundreds of U.S. companies have life insurance policies on millions of their workers—without the workers’ knowledge. The beneficiaries? The companies themselves. The employees’ families don’t receive anything. In some cases, the companies can collect upon the death of an employee even if the person hadn’t worked for them for years. One company, Mellon Financial Corporation, said that if all their covered employees and former employees were to die, Mellon Financial would collect $3.2 billion, and added that they had already collected $75 million. Tax free.
BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE LETTER $
PBS, the Public Broadcasting System, famous for TV shows like Sesame Street and NOVA, cannot, according to FCC regulations, air commercials. In place of commercials, they regularly show “messages” from corporate underwriters that some say are looking more and more like commercials all the time. One of the “messages” that brought out the critics: Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, Inc. sponsored Sesame Street with its product Zithromax, an antibiotic often used to treat children. After the episode, kids and parents were told that Sesame Street was brought to you “by the letter Z, as in Zebra…and Zithromax.”
YOU’RE FIRED! HERE’S A ZILLION DOLLARS
A CEO who runs his company into bankruptcy (and sometimes himself into prison) is a loser, right? Not always.
• In April 2002, Bernard Ebbers resigned “under pressure” as CEO of WorldCom after accounting irregularities were revealed and earnings were adjusted downward by an amazing $4.5 billion. In July the company filed for bankruptcy, the biggest in U.S. history. Ebbers’s severance package: $1.5 million a year for life (his wife gets $750,000 a year if she outlives him).
• Richard McGinn was forced out as CEO of Lucent Technologies in October 2000 after Lucent missed several financial targets. A month later, the company admitted that earnings had been grossly overstated, spurring a still-ongoing investigation by the SEC, and in January 2001, the company announced that 16,000 employees were going to be laid off. What did McGinn get? $12.5 million in cash and stocks. (He was also able to keep his other job—on the audit committee of American Express.)
• In 2001, as his company’s stock prices were tumbling, CEO John Roth of Nortel Networks Corp. in Ontario, Canada, announced that he would retire in April 2002. By March 2002, the stock’s price had fallen from its high of $124 (Cdn.) to less than $7 and some 50,000 employees had been laid off. What was Roth’s retirement present? $700,000 (U.S.) a year for life. (In 2000, at the company’s peak, he had cashed in over $91 million (U.S.) in stock options.)
Don’t let the fancy title fool you—a pulicologist is someone who studies fleas.
TAKE ME OUT TO THE CLEANERS
Washington taxpayers paid 75% of the $425 million tab for the construction of the Seattle Seahawks’ new football stadium, which opened in 2002. According to Forbes magazine in 2001, Seahawks owner Paul Allen was the fourth richest person in the world, worth an estimated $30 billion.
TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN…TO BERMUDA
Most everybody has heard about big corporations moving their headquarters to faraway places like Bermuda to avoid paying income taxes. In fact, the IRS estimates that as much as $70 billion is lost every year. So how does the U.S. government punish these tax dodgers?
• Construction firm Foster Wheeler moved its address from New Jersey to Bermuda in May 2001. Government response: Wheeler got more than $600 million in federal contracts in 2001. (That’s taxpayer money.)
• Tyco International moved to Bermuda in 1997. Government response: Tyco has gotten more than 1,800 contracts (and avoided more than $400 million in taxes every year) since then.
• The offices of consulting firm Accenture (an offshoot of Arthur Andersen) set up headquarters in Bermuda in July 2001. U.S. government response: Accenture received $1 billion in federal contracts in fiscal year 2001. One of them was to redesign a website…for the IRS.
3% of U.S. motorists worry about forgetting where they parked.
OLD HISTORY, NEW THEORY
Here’s another example of new findings that may change history books.
The Event: On May 6, 1937, the German blimp Hindenburg exploded over a New Jersey airfield, killing 36 people, and effectively ending the age of passenger airships.
What the History Books Say: The explosion was caused when the highly volatile hydrogen gas that kept the airship afloat was ignited, most likely by a static electric charge.
New Theory: Two boards of inquiry couldn’t explain how the hydrogen escaped from sealed gas cells, which it had to do before it could explode. Yet investigators still determined that hydrogen was the cause of the explosion. According to Dr. William Van Vorst, a chemical engineer at UCLA, they were wrong.
A frame-by-frame analysis of film footage suggests that whatever it was that first ignited, it wasn’t the hydrogen. “The picture indicates a downward burning. Hydrogen would burn only upward,” Van Vorst says, “with a colorless flame.” Eyewitnesses described the explosion as more like “a fireworks display.”
So what caused the explosion? Van Vorst says it was the Hindenburg’s skin. The ship’s cotton shell was treated with chemicals so volatile that they “might well serve as rocket propellant,” he says. And the way it was attached to the frame allowed for the buildup of large amounts of static electricity, which, when discharged, were enough to ignite the fabric.
Smoking Gun: It turns out that the Zeppelin Company quietly conducted its own investigation after the disaster…and concluded the same thing. The Hindenburg’s sister ship, Graf Zeppelin, was reconstructed using new methods and materials, and went on to fly more than a million miles without incident.
Publicly, however, the company blamed hydrogen. Why? Politics. The United States controlled the world supply of helium, which is no
nflammable, but refused to sell any to Nazi Germany. So Zeppelin had to use explosive hydrogen gas…which made the United States look bad when the Hindenburg went down in flames.
Ohio had 161 horse-and-buggy crashes in 1999, the last year that statistics were kept.
PATENTLY ABSURD
Here’s proof that the urge to invent something—anything—is more powerful than the urge to make sure the invention is something that people will actually want to use.
THE INVENTION: Musical Baby Diaper Alarm
WHAT IT DOES: Three women from France marketed this alarm to mothers in 1985. It’s a padded electronic napkin that goes inside a baby’s diaper. When it gets wet, it plays “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
THE INVENTION: The Thinking Cap
WHAT IT DOES: Improves artistic ability by mimicking the effects of autism. The cap uses magnetic pulses to inhibit the front-temporal, or “left brain” functions. This, say the two Australian scientists behind the project, creates better access to extraordinary “savant” abilites. They reported improved drawing skills in 5 of 17 volunteers in a 2002 experiment.
THE INVENTION: Pantyhose x3
WHAT IT DOES: Patented in 1997, they are three-legged panty hose. No, they’re not for three-legged people, they’re for women who know what it’s like to get a run in their stockings. Instead of having to carry spares, you just rotate the legs. The extra leg is hidden in a pocket in the crotch; the damaged leg rolls up to take its place.
THE INVENTION: The Breath Alert
WHAT IT DOES: This pocket-sized electronic device detects and measures bad breath. You simply breathe into the sensor for three seconds, then the LCD readout indicates—on a scale of 1 to 4—how safe (or offensive) your breath is.
THE INVENTION: Weather-Reporting Toaster
WHAT IT DOES: Robin Southgate, an industrial design student at Brunel University in London, hooked up his specially made toaster to the Internet. Reading the day’s meteorological stats, the toaster burns the day’s predictions into a slice of bread: a sun for sunny days, a cloud with raindrops for rainy days, and so on. “It works best with white bread,” says Southgate.
40% of Americans say the theory of evolution is “probably not true.”
THE INVENTION: Separable Pants
WHAT IT DOES: You don’t take them off, you take them apart. The zipper goes all the way around the crotch, from the front to the back. That way, you can mix and match the legs with other colors and styles, making your own artistic, customized pants.
THE INVENTION: Vibrating Toilet Seat
WHAT IT DOES: Thomas Bayard invented the seat in 1966. He believed that “buttocks stimulation” helps prevent constipation.
THE INVENTION: Automatic-Response Nuclear Deterrent System
WHAT IT DOES: A relic from the Cold War era, this idea was patented by British inventor Arthur Paul Pedrick in 1974. He claimed it would deter the United States, the USSR, and China from ever starting a nuclear war. How? Put three nuclear warheads on three orbiting satellites. If sensors on the satellites detected that nuclear missiles had been launched, they would automatically drop bombs: one each on Washington, Moscow, and Peking.
THE INVENTION: Lavakan
WHAT IT DOES: It’s a washing machine…for cats and dogs. This industrial-strength machine soaps, rinses, and dries your pet in less than 30 minutes. One of the inventors, Andres Díaz, claims that the 5-by-5-foot, $20,000 machines can actually reduce pet stress. “One of the dogs actually fell asleep during the wash,” he said. Cats weren’t quite as happy about being Lavakanned. “But it’s better than having a cat attach itself to your face, which is what can happen when you try to wash one by hand.”
MILITARY INDUSTRIAL SIMPLEX
Andorra is a small country between Spain and France. In the 1970s it reported an annual defense budget of $4.90. The money was used to buy blanks to fire on national holidays.
Teacher’s pet fact: 39% of teachers say their favorite kind of apple is Red Delicious.
WHAT AM I?
What’s white and black and read all over? This page of riddles. Here are some BRI favorites. Answers are on page 517.
1. Just two hairs upon her head But she wears a flowered gown And dances in the flower bed The prettiest creature in town.
2. I am a word of letters three. Add two, and fewer there will be.
3. My life is measured in hours, I serve by being devoured. Thin, I am quick… Thick, I am slow… A gust of wind is my greatest foe.
4. When I am filled I can point the way, When I am empty Nothing moves me, I have two skins—One without and one within.
5. I appear once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in a thousand years.
6. I am placed on the table, then cut, then passed around to everyone present, but I am never eaten.
7. We are identical twins who see everything in front of us, but never each other.
8. I am the only place where you will find yesterday after today.
9. To use me you must throw me away, but you will retrieve me when I am no longer needed.
10. I can circle the globe while never leaving a corner.
11. I am lighter than the lightest feather, but no matter how much strength you have, you couldn’t hold me for more than a few minutes.
12. Without wings I fly, Without eyes I cry.
13. I am only a head; I have nothing within. I’ve got no mouth; I speak with my skin.
14. Red and blue, purple and green, no one can touch me, not even a queen.
15. I go up and down the hill, yet I’m always standing still.
16. Two bodies have I Though both joined as one The stiller I stand The faster I run.
The word navel gets its name from nave, which means “hub of a wheel.”
AFTER THE QUAKE: THE FIRE WAR
In Part I of the story of the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 (page 45), we told you how the quake set off massive fires around the city. Here’s how the flames were fought.
BLASTING THE BLAZE
Within hours after the San Francisco earthquake, fires had broken out all over the city. The fires had many allies: the San Francisco hills, a steady breeze, the slow-burning redwood that composed 75% of the city’s structures, numerous aftershocks, and insufficient water to fight them. So as a last resort, Mayor Schmitz decided to fight fire with fire.
What San Franciscans did have a lot of was dynamite—so they used it to build firebreaks, the theory being that disintegrating a building before the flames could reach it would cut off the fire’s fuel supply. But this plan only partly worked; new fires sprouted up from the explosions. By noon much of downtown was engulfed in flame.
The destruction continued: The Army Medical Supply Depot went up in flames, taking with it material that could have been used in the disaster. One of the city’s highest skyscrapers, the Call Building—which had withstood the quake—was reduced to ashes. Also leveled were the St. Ignatius Church (which housed a priceless pipe organ), the Examiner building, the Emporium department store, the Hall of Justice, Chinatown, the Columbia Theater, the California Academy of Sciences, and the Opera House, where world-famous Italian tenor Enrico Caruso had sung the previous night. One by one, San Francisco’s most beloved buildings, including more than 30 schools, were destroyed. By midnight on Wednesday, most of the downtown district was in ruins, and there was more destruction to come.
ONE STEP FORWARD…
Wherever firefighters stopped the path of the fires, other avenues of fire opened up. The city streets were so narrow and the buildings so close together that there was more than enough fuel for the flames. One place where firefighters almost got the upper hand was Powell Street. Because it was very wide, the flames couldn’t reach both sides and couldn’t create the dangerous tunnels of fire that were spreading elsewhere in the city. And the massive St. Francis Hotel formed a huge firebreak. Surrounded by vacant lots, it gave the firefighters room to work and the flames no place to go. It looked like the fire might run
out of real estate.
Saudi Arabia’s King Khalid International Airport is about one-tenth the size of Rhode Island.
It would have, too, if it hadn’t been for a few tired and hungry soldiers on the other side of the firebreak. They went into the empty Delmonico Restaurant to rest and find something to eat. They decided they wanted hot food, so they built a small fire to cook with. Bad idea. The “Ham and Eggs Fire,” as it was later called, got out of hand and quickly spread. Soon the entire restaurant was in flames, followed by the Alcazar Theater next door, followed by every building on Geary Avenue. Then it headed toward Powell Street, scattering enraged firefighters and forcing them to regroup elsewhere.
TWO STEPS BACK
At this point, Mayor Schmitz decided the next fire line would be drawn at Van Ness Avenue. He ordered troops to start dynamiting homes to form another firebreak—an unpopular decision because many of the town’s wealthiest and most influential people lived there. While one Army officer was sent to begin evacuation procedures, another was sent to take the fastest boat to the nearest city to replenish the town’s exhausted stock of dynamite.
But somehow the message was misconstrued and the boat never left. With Van Ness Avenue completely evacuated and firefighters forming a line, they waited for the arrival of the dynamite…and waited…and waited. In disgust, Brigadier General Funston finally commandeered another boat and sent it on its way—but by then it was too late. In desperation, some firemen tried to set a backfire, but it failed to stop the advance of the flames, and Van Ness was on fire before the boat returned.
Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader Page 28