Mama mia! Domino’s Pizza sells a reindeer sausage pizza…but only in Iceland.
Odds that a polished diamond weighs more than a carat: one in a thousand.
GREETINGS FROM EARTH
We told you about time capsules on page 331. When you see Star Wars or Star Trek you probably think space travel is way off in the future. You’re wrong—we’re already out there. Here’s some information about our time capsule in outer space.
TO BOLDLY GO
The Voyager mission continues. Launched in 1977, the twin Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft will soon leave our solar system and become emissaries from Earth. NASA placed a message aboard Voyagers 1 and 2, a time capsule intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials.
The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record—a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. A committee led by Dr. Carl Sagan of Cornell University assembled:
• 115 images
• A variety of natural sounds
• Musical selections from different cultures and eras
• Spoken greetings from Earth-people in 55 languages—beginning with Akkadian, spoken in Sumer about 6,000 years ago, and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese dialect.
Each record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played. The images are encoded in analog form. The remainder of the record is in audio, designed to be played at 16⅔ revolutions per minute.
Here’s a list of the contents of the record:
THE PHOTOS (PARTIAL LIST)
Earth
DNA structure
Human sex organs
Diagram of conception
Ansel Adams’ photos of Snake River and Grand Tetons
Forest scene with mushrooms
Sequoia tree
Flying insect with flowers
Diagram of vertebrate evolution
Seashell
Dolphins
Tree toad
Crocodile
Fetus diagram
Diagram of male and female
Birth
Nursing mother
Eagle
Jane Goodall and chimps
Page of book (Newton’s System of the World)
Bushmen hunters
Guatemalan man
Balinese dancer
Supermarket
Turkish man with beard and glasses
Schoolroom
Sunset with birds
Father & daughter (Malaysia)
Group of children
Family portrait
Seashore
Elephant
House (Africa)
Taj Mahal
Sydney Opera
House
Rush-hour traffic
Violin
Underwater scene with diver and fish
Demonstration of licking, eating and drinking
Great Wall of China
Hibernating, a woodchuck breathes 10 times/hr; awake, 2,100 times/hr.
MUSIC
• Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 2 in F, first movement
• Bach’s “Gavotte en rondeaux” from the Partita no. 3 in E-major
• Mozart’s The Magic Flute, “Queen of the Night” aria, no. 14
• Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, “Sacrificial Dance”
• Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, prelude and fugue in C
• Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, first movement
• Beethoven’s String Quartet no. 13 in B-flat, Opus 130, Cavatina
• Holborne, Paueans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs, “The Fairie Round” (Ireland)
• Court gamelan (Java)
• Percussion (Senegal)
• Pygmy girls’ initiation song (Zaire)
• Aboriginal songs, “Morning Star” & “Devil Bird” (Australia)
• “El Cascabel” (Mexico)
• “Johnny B. Goode” (USA)
• “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong (USA)
• “Dark Was the Night,” by Blind Willie Johnson (USA)
• Panpipes and drum (Peru)
• Men’s house song (New Guinea)
• “Tchakrulo” (Georgia S.S.R.)
• “Flowing Streams” (China)
• “Tsuru No Sugomori” (Japan)
• “Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin” (Bulgaria)
• Panpipes (Solomon Islands)
• Night Chant (Navajo)
• Wedding song (Peru)
• Raga: “Jaat Kahan Ho” (India)
• Bagpipes (Azerbaijan)
What’s the slang term for an emergency room patient who isn’t sick enough to for an emergency room patient
THE SOUNDS OF EARTH
Hyena
Elephant
Wild dog
Tame dog
The first tools
Footsteps
Heartbeats
Laughter
Fire
Speech
Volcanoes
Earthquake
Thunder
Mud pots
Wind
Rain
Surf
Crickets
Birds
Blacksmith
Mother and child
Herding sheep
Sawing
Tractor
Riveter
Morse code
Ships
Horse and cart
Train
Bus
Auto
F-111 flyby
Frogs
Saturn 5
lift-off
Kiss
Life signs
Pulsar
THE INTERSTELLAR MESSAGE
Speakers were given no instructions on what to say other than that it was to be a greeting to possible extraterrestrials and that it must be brief. Here’s a sample:
• “Greetings to our friends in the stars. We wish that we will meet you someday.”
—Arabic
• “Hello to everyone. We are happy here and you be happy there.”
—Rajasthani (Northwest India)
• “Hello from the children of planet Earth.”
—English
• “Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time.”
—Amoy (Eastern China)
Here are some (not all) of the languages in which they spoke: Sumerian, Urdu, Italian, Ila, Romanian, Hindi, Nguni, Hittite, French, Vietnamese, Sotho, Swedish, Hebrew, Burmese, Amoy, Sinhalese, Akkadian, Ukrainian, Aramaic, Spanish, Greek, Korean, Wu, Persian, Indonesian, Latin, Armenian, Serbian, Portuguese, Kechua, Polish
It will be forty thousand years before the Voyagers make a close approach to any other planetary system.
The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.
—Carl Sagan
NATURE’S REVENGE
What happens when we mess around with nature, trying to get it to do our bidding? Sometimes it works…but sometimes nature gets even. Here are a few instances when people intentionally introduced animals or plants into a new environment—and regretted it.
Import: English sparrows
Background: One hundred sparrows were brought from England to Brooklyn, New York, in 1850. Reason: to control canker worms that were killing trees in city parks.
Nature’s Revenge: The sparrows did their job—for a while. Then they got a taste for native insects, then they had a lot of babies, and then they took off. By 1875 the sparrows had made it to San Francisco, stealing nesting sites from native birds and ravaging crops and livestock feed along the way. In 1903 noted ornithologist
W. L. Dawson said, “Without question the most deplorable event in the history of American ornithology was the introduction of the English sparrow.” Today they number about 150 million in North America.
Note: They’re not even sparrows—they’re from the weaverbird family.
Import: Cane toads
Background: The cane toad can grow up 9 to 10 inches long and weigh as much as 4 pounds. Its croak is said to sound like a dog’s bark. This bizarre species is native to Central America but was imported to Australia in 1935. Australian farmers wanted it to eat two types of beetle that were damaging their sugarcane crops.
Nature’s Revenge: Nobody seemed to notice that the cane toad lives on the ground—so they were only able to eat beetles that fell off the sugarcane. The experiment was a failure, then a disaster. The toads feasted on other native insect species—many to the point of extinction—and spread into neighboring habitats. They are large enough to eat any insect, as well as frogs and other toads, and have even been known to eat from dog and cat food bowls. And, to make matters worse, they’re poisonous. Whatever tries to eat them dies—even if they only eat the tadpoles. The situation continues to be dire: people who spot a cane toad are advised to contact toad hotlines and websites.
Chew on this: What’s a “winkle”? An edible sea snail.
Import: Rats
Background: In the 16th and 17th centuries, hoards of people were leaving Europe on ships bound for the New World. Tyranny, poverty, horrendous filth, and epidemics drove boatload after boatload of settlers across the Atlantic seeking wide-open spaces, better resources, more freedom, and less disease.
Nature’s Revenge: The settlers found a pristine paradise—and quickly infested it with rats. Early ocean-crossing ships were famously rat infested, the vermin often numbering more than the humans onboard. The adaptable rodent made itself at home and spread all over the continent. According to a study by Cornell University, by 1999 there were approximately a billion rats in the United States—on farms alone, and rats do an estimated $19 billion in economic damage every year.
Import: Rabbits, opossums, and stoats
Background: New Zealand’s landscape had evolved for 60 to 80 million years with only four mammals—all bats. In this unique ecosystem, exceptionally unique flora and fauna, such as flightless birds, prospered. Then, in the early 1800s, Europeans arrived bringing sheep, pigs, and goats as livestock, and rabbits and opossums as game for sportsmen.
Nature’s Revenge: Rabbits multiply…like rabbits. By 1894 more than 17 million rabbit pelts were being exported annually. While that made money for some, the rabbits’ effect on the land, competing wildlife, and sheep farmers was devastating. The opossum did similar damage by eating massive amounts of native plant life in the exotic canopy.
Desperate farmers imported the stoat, a weasel-like creature that eats rabbits and opossums. That worked for a while, but birds, insects, and bats were easier for the stoats to catch. They quickly decimated bird populations, especially that of the kiwi. Thanks to the stoat, today several other species are either endangered or already extinct. New Zealand’s government spends millions every year trying to stop the continuing rampage. And what of the stoat’s intended targets, the rabbit and opossum? As of 2001, they were still the number one and number two pests in the country.
Rice-O-Roni: Italy produces the most rice of any country in Europe.
FAMOUS FOR 15 MINUTES
Here’s more proof that Andy Warhol was right when he said that “in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.”
THE STAR: Mark Stutzman, a 34-year-old illustrator living in Mountain Lane Park, Maryland
THE HEADLINE: Struggling Artist Takes Care of Business
WHAT HAPPENED: Stutzman was just another artist having trouble making ends meet when one of his clients encouraged him to enter a contest to design a stamp commemorating Elvis Presley. He’d never designed a stamp before, but he entered anyway, creating a portrait of the King in his younger days. “It’s the first thing I think of when I think of Elvis,” he says, “when he was really young and parents didn’t want their kids to listen to his music.”
Thirty artists submitted designs to the U.S. Postal Service; only Stutzman’s (a young Elvis) and another artist’s (an old, fat Elvis) were chosen as finalists. The American public would choose between the two designs by voting at their post office or mailing in a special ballot.
What happened? Millions of people cast their votes…and Stutzman’s stamp won overwhelmingly.
THE AFTERMATH: The U.S. Postal Service ordered 300 million of the stamps and then, when those sold out in barely a month, ordered 200 million more, making it the most popular commemorative stamp in U.S. history. Estimated profits: $20 million. How much of that went to Stutzman? Zero—he got the standard design fee of $3,000…nothing more.
THE STAR: James Carter, 76, an ex-convict and retired shipping clerk from Mississippi
THE HEADLINE: Ex-Con Makes It Big with a Song He Can’t Remember, in a Movie He’s Never Seen
WHAT HAPPENED: In September 1959, Carter was chopping wood with a Mississippi prison road gang. He frequently led the men in singing while they worked, and one afternoon he happened to be recorded while singing a song called “Po’ Lazarus.” Carter served out his sentence and became a shipping clerk when he got out of prison. By 2002 he was retired.
What are the 10 body parts with 3-letter names? Eye, hip, arm, leg, ear, toe, jaw, rib, lip, gum.
What happened to that recording of “Po’ Lazarus” is another story: It was preserved in a music archive, and in 2000 it ended up in the soundtrack of the film O Brother, Where Art Thou. The soundtrack was an even bigger hit than the movie: It went on to sell more than five million copies, generating thousands of dollars in royalties for Carter…if anyone could find him, that is: after more than 40 years, nobody knew whether he was even still alive.
It took the record’s producer about a year to track Carter down in Chicago. One day two people showed up at his doorstep, told him about the movie (he’d never seen it) and the soundtrack (he’d never heard it), and handed him a check for $20,000, the first of what would likely be hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties.
THE AFTERMATH: About a week later, Carter flew to the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, where he saw the album win five Grammies, including Album of the Year. For all that, Carter has trouble remembering the lyrics to the song that made him an instant celebrity. “I sang that song a long time back,” he says.
THE STAR: Patrick Singleton, the only athlete representing Bermuda in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City
THE HEADLINE: Athlete Comes Up Short(s) in Salt Lake
WHAT HAPPENED: Did you watch the opening ceremony for the 2002 Winter Olympics? If you did, maybe you saw it: In the sea of athletes who participated in the ceremony, all properly outfitted for the bitter cold, Singleton wore shorts. Bright red shorts. Bermuda shorts—the one thing (other than the Bermuda Triangle) that the tiny British colony is known for.
Even before the Olympics were over, Switzerland’s Olympic Museum (where the International Olympic Committee is headquartered) contacted Singleton to see if he would be willing to donate his outfit to the museum. “I doubt we will ever see again an athlete walk into the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics wearing shorts,” a museum spokesperson told reporters. “Everyone will remember, because it was so cold!”
Uncle John never talks about it in public, but 90% of Americans describe themselves as shy.
THE AFTERMATH: Singleton was glad to hand them over. But how’d he do in the Olympics? Not so good—he came in 37th out of 50 in the men’s singles luge. Had he worn pants to the opening, he would’ve been quickly forgotten. But now his legacy—or at least his shorts—will be preserved forever.
THE STAR: Andrea Noceti, representing Colombia in the Miss Universe pageant in 2001
THE HEADLINE: Ay Colombia! Beauty Queen Puts Letterman in His Place
WHAT HAPPENED: In Ma
y 2001, Noceti participated in the Miss Universe contest and was eliminated in the first round. That might have been it as far as her fame was concerned, had David Letterman not joked a few days later that she competed in the talent competition by “swallowing 50 balloons full of heroin,” a reference to the country’s troubled past as a haven for drug smugglers.
Outraged by the comment, Noceti (and the Colombian ambassador and consul general) threatened to sue. As Letterman watched helplessly, his simple one-liner mushroomed into an international incident. He quickly invited the beauty queen to come on his show so that he could apologize to her in person.
THE AFTERMATH: Do you remember who won the Miss Universe pageant in 2001? Winners of beauty pageants are fogotten almost as quickly as the losers. But Noceti’s dispute with Letterman was covered all over the world, and millions of viewers—probably more than watched the pageant—tuned in to watch Letterman apologize. He did so effusively and then invited her to sing on the show. She reciprocated the gesture by giving Letterman an autographed picture of Colombian coffee pitchman Juan Valdez and a book about her hometown.
“You joke about what you shouldn’t joke about,” she said to Letterman, “but you’re a nice man.” And then her 15 minutes of fame were up.
“According to a new study reported in USA Today, three out of four people make up 75% of the population.”
—David Letterman
If you took an average shower today, you used about 30 gallons of water.
SECRETS OF THE STRADIVARIUS
The violins made by Antonio Stradivari are considered by many to be the most perfect instruments ever made. Here’s the story of these mysterious instruments and the man behind them.
MUSIC MAN
Antonio Stradivari was born in Cremona, Italy, in 1644. As a young man he came under the tutelage of a famous violin maker named Nicolo Amati. He proved a gifted student and, before his training was even completed, began putting his own labels on the violins he made, using the Latin form of his name, Stradivarius. He was about 22 years old.
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