• But the commanders at Pearl Harbor were apparently negligent. The base should have at least been on alert, but the antiaircraft guns were unmanned and most people on the base were asleep when the attack came.
Five percent of Americans think “espresso” is an overnight delivery service.
UNANSWERED QUESTION #2
Did a sailor pick up signals from the approaching Japanese fleet and pass the information on to the White House—which ignored it?
Suspicious Facts
• This theory is promoted in John Toland’s bestselling book,
Infamy. He asserts that in early December, an electronics expert in the 12th Naval District in San Francisco (whom Toland refers to as “Seaman Z”) identified “queer signals” in the Pacific. Using cross-bearings, he identified them as originating from a “missing” Japanese carrier fleet which had not been heard from in months. He determined that the fleet was heading directly for Hawaii.
• Toland says that although Seaman Z and his superior officer allegedly reported their findings to the Office of Naval Intelligence, whose chief was a close friend of the president, Pearl Harbor never got the warning.
On the Other Hand
• Gordon Prange, author of Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History, refutes many of Toland’s assertions. Although he concedes that there may have been unusual Japanese signals that night, Prange says that they were almost certainly signals to the carriers from Tokyo—and thus would have been useless in locating the carriers.
• To prove his point, Prange quotes reports written by Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the air attack on Pearl Harbor: “The Force maintained the strictest silence throughout the cruise....[Admiral] Genda stressed that radio silence was so important that the pilots agreed not to go on the air even if their lives depended upon it.” The chief of staff for Fleet Admiral Nagumo adds, “All transmitters were sealed, and all hands were ordered to be kept away from any key of the machine.”
• Prange notes, “It would be interesting to know how the 12th Naval District in San Francisco could pick up information that the 14th Naval District, much nearer the action in Honolulu, missed.”
• Finally, Prange reports that years after the war, “Seaman Z” was identified as Robert D. Ogg, a retired California businessman. Ogg flatly denied that he had said the unusual signals were “the missing carrier force,” nor was he even sure that the transmissions were in Japanese—“I never questioned them at the time.”
Q: What is the Levator Labii Superioris Alaeque Nasi? A: It’s the muscle you use to smile.
UNANSWERED QUESTION #3
Even if FDR didn’t specifically know about an impending attack on Pearl Harbor, did he try to provoke the Japanese into attacking the U.S. to gain the support of the American public for his war plans?
Suspicious Facts
• FDR told close aides that if the Allies were to be victorious, the U.S. had to enter the war before Japan overran the Pacific and Germany destroyed England.
• FDR told a British emissary that the United States “would declare war on Japan if the latter attacked American possessions...[but] public opinion would be unlikely to approve of a declaration of war if the Japanese attack were directed only against British or Dutch territories.”
• Earlier that year, on July 25, 1941, Roosevelt froze Japanese assets in the United States.
• In 1937, Japan sank a U.S. warship in China’s Yangtze River, and relations between America and Japan began deteriorating. Both countries made a public effort to negotiate, but FDR presented a series of impossible ultimatums to the Japanese negotiators and openly loaned money to the Nationalist Chinese, whom the Japanese were fighting at the time.
• According to columnist Pat Buchanan, Roosevelt also committed an act of war against Japan in August 1941, when he secretly approved sending a crack U.S. Air Force squadron, the “Flying Tigers,” to fight alongside the Chinese Nationalists. Although these fliers were officially “volunteers,” Buchanan claims that they were “recruited at U.S. bases, offered five times normal pay [and] sent off to fight Japan months before Pearl Harbor, in a covert operation run out of FDR’s White House....Though their planes carried the insignia of the Chinese army, [they] were on active duty for the United States.”
On the Other Hand
• No evidence proving a conspiracy to goad the Japanese into attacking has come to light in the 50-plus years since Pearl Harbor. If there had been one, it would have surfaced by now...wouldn’t it have? We’ll probably never know.
Most popular pizza topping in South Korea: Tuna.
HOW TO TAKE
A SHOWER-BATH
Showers are so commonplace today that it’s hard to think of them as a novelty. But this article by W. Beach, M.D., printed in an 1848 magazine, shows that 150 years ago, dripping water on your head was still a weird and exotic practice.
Reprinted from The American Practice of Medicine, 1848.
The shower bath is a species of cold bath, an invention by which water falls from a height through numerous holes or apertures, on the head and body. It may be conveniently made by boring numerous small holes through a tub or half barrel, which must be fastened a few feet above the head of the person.
Another tub, of a sufficient size to contain two pails of water, must be suspended over the other, and made to turn upon an axis. A rope or cord must be fastened to this, so that it can be inverted or turned downward at pleasure.
The person taking the shower bath must place himself beneath, uncovered; and, having filled the tub with water, he will suddenly pull upon the cord, when almost instantaneously the contents of the upper tub or bath will fall into the lower one containing the holes, and the water will thus be conveyed in numerous and copious streams upon the head and body.
The apparatus should be enclosed, as well as the body, in a box or frame a few feet square, or large enough to enable the person to stand or turn round with convenience. A few boards or planks enclosed in a small frame is sufficient for the purpose. Rub the body well with a dry towel after the bathing.
This bath may be used in all diseases of the head, epilepsy, nervous complaints, headache, melancholy, hypochondriasis, obstruction of the menses, and such complaints as arise therefrom, delirium, general debility, &c.
Dr. Sylvester Graham,* who has become very celebrated on account of his lectures on temperance and diet, recommends, I am told, the shower bath for numerous complaints.
*The Graham cracker was named after Dr. Sylvester Graham.
A writer in Zion’s Herald, over the appropriate signature “Comfort,” has the following interesting remarks on the shower bath, and his own experience in applying the same:
I had a shower bath made at the expense of ten dollars, and it makes a neat article of furniture in one corner of my chamber. On the top a box, that holds about a pail of water, swings on a pivot, and a string from it communicates inside; and underneath, to catch the water, is a snug-fitting drawer.
Immediately on rising in the morning I shut myself in this enclosure, and receive the contents of the box at the top, let it drip off a moment, and then apply briskly a crash towel, and immediately a fine healthy glow is produced all over the body.
The time occupied does not exceed five minutes: I have often done it conveniently in three or four minutes, particularly when the wind has been in a cold corner, and all cheerless out of doors; but in these melting times it is too great a luxury to be hurried through with.
I hope all will be induced to try this plan who can possibly raise ten dollars to pay for the bath. I can assure them they will never put this article aside as useless, or sell it for less than cost. I certainly would not part with mine for ten times its cost, if another could not be procured.
The portable shower bath may be constructed at a small expense, and placed in a bedroom or other place. Both the bath and the water may be drawn to the desired height by means of a cord or rope running over the pulleys, and fastened to the ceiling.
The person taking the shower bath is placed within, surrounded partially or wholly by curtains, when he pulls a wire or cord which inverts the vessel overhead containing the water, and lets it fall in copious streams over the whole body.
“The warm, tepid, cold, or shower bath,” says Dr. Combe, “as a means of preserving health, ought to be in as common use as a change of apparel, for it is equally a measure of necessary cleanliness.” A bath on the above plan can be purchased for eight dollars.
Doctors in ancient China were paid when patients were healthy, not sick.
MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH
It’s bizarre to think that the outcome of some of the most momentous events in Western history have hinged on one detail. But that’s the case. Here are four examples of what we mean.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Near Miss: If, in 1776, a pro-British soldier had read a note instead of sticking it in his pocket, America might have lost the Revolutionary War.
What Happened: The British had captured New York and sent the rebels scattering across New Jersey. Now winter set in, and while British troops quartered in towns and villages, George Washington and his men camped in the wilderness without sufficient shoes or blankets for everyone. Morale was low; Washington badly needed a victory to rally his troops or, he said, “I think the game will be pretty near up.” Just in time, Washington learned that the Hessian troops (pro-British German mercenaries) stationed at Trenton were vulnerable to a surprise attack. So around midnight, December 26, he and his men secretly crossed the Delaware river to strike.
A British spy found out their plans. But when the spy arrived at the Hessian camp, he was told to leave a note for the German-speaking colonel in charge. The colonel was busy “drinking apple-jack and playing cards”...and when he was handed the note, he ignored it. “It was late, he was groggy, and the note was in English, which he couldn’t read. He put it in his pocket.”
“Washington attacked at dawn and took one thousand prisoners in a much-needed victory. The colonel was wounded in the battlefield. As he lay dying, the note was found and translated into German. Had he read it earlier, he admitted, ‘I would not be here.’”
THE TITANIC
Near Miss: With an extra pair of binoculars, the Titanic might have been saved.
What Happened: After the Titanic was launched, but before it left on its maiden voyage in 1912, one of the ship’s lookouts reported that two pairs of binoculars—used by the deck crew to spot icebergs—were missing. He put in a request for a new pair, but the request was denied. So the deck crew kept watch for icebergs with their naked eyes. On April 16, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, drowning more than 1,500 people. Lookout Frederick Fleet, one of only 705 survivors, told investigators that the binoculars would have allowed the crew to see the iceberg in time to avoid it.
Ever wonder what we call these things at the bottom of the page? They’re “running feet.”
PEARL HARBOR
Near Miss: The U.S. almost learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor in time to defend against it.
What Happened: At 7 a.m. on the morning of December 7, 1941, radar operators Joseph Lockhard and George Elliott had just finished their shift at a radar station on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. But the truck that was supposed to pick them up was late, so they stayed at their consoles a few minutes longer, and at 7:02 Elliott picked up the biggest blip either man had ever seen. They tried to call the control room, but according to John and Claire Whitcomb in their book Oh Say Can You See, “the line was dead—the men in the control room had gone to breakfast.”
Elliott tried the regular phone circuit and got through to Lieutenant Kermit Tyler, a pilot who was the only person on duty. “There’s a large number of planes coming in from the north, three degrees east.” Lieutenant Tyler was unimpressed. Lockhard got on the line and tried to convince the lieutenant that it was important—he had never seen so many planes on the screen. “Well, don’t worry about it,” Tyler finally said. At 7:45 a.m. the truck came and the two privates shut down the station and left. At 7:55 a.m. the first bombs fell on Pearl Harbor.
A PRESIDENT’S LIFE
Near Miss: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was almost assassinated in 1943, during World War II... by the U.S. Navy.
What Happened: On November 14, 1943, the battleship Iowa was carrying FDR and his joint chiefs of staff to Cairo for a secret conference with Winston Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek. According to one account, “In one of the U.S. Navy’s most embarrassing moments, the destroyer William D. Porter, making a simulated torpedo attack during defensive exercises, inadvertently fired a live ‘fish’ directly at the Iowa. Five minutes of pure panic ensued. The Iowa’s skipper desperately executed a high-speed turn, trying to get his ship out of the line of fire. However, as the torpedo entered the Iowa’s churning wake, it exploded, set off by the extreme turbulence of the sea.”
Yuck! 70% of the dust in your house is skin your family members (including pets) have shed.
TWISTED TITLES
California Monthly, the magazine for alumni of the University of California at Berkeley, features a game called Twisted Titles. They ask readers to send the title of a book, film, play, etc., with just one letter changed—and include a brief description of the new work they envision. Here are some that were submitted way back in 1994.
WHAT KIND OF FOOD AM I?
The Donner Party’s marching song.
IN THE BIGINNING
God created baseball.
THE COLD RUSH
Limbaugh is shipped to Alaska.
PREPARATION “I”
To reduce the swelling of an inflated ego.
A FRIDGE TOO FAR
Couch potato dies of thirst.
SHORTS ILLUSTRATED
Playboy for pygmies.
TOP NUN
Hollywood does the biography of Mother Teresa.
WHEN I SAY HO I FEEL GUILTY
Self-help book for Santas who laugh too much.
WAA AND PEACE
The baby’s finally asleep.
MRS. DOUBTTIRE
AAA gets a new automotive critic.
IN THE LINE OF TIRE
The reason behind road kills.
BORN FRED
Marilyn shocks her classmates at their 25th reunion.
NAIR
The original, unsightly Broadway cast is removed only to appear again in 3 to 4 days.
CAR AND DRIVEL
Magazine features automotive nonsense.
FIFTY WAYS TO LEASE YOUR LOVER
Innovative ways to beat the recession.
I GET A KINK OUT OF YOU
Chiropractic anthem.
I CHUNG
Connie tries a new greeting on TV.
Scientists say: An average person gives off about as much heat in an hour as a 100-watt lightbulb.
PRESIDENTIAL QUIZ
How much obscure stuff about the presidents do you know? Here’s a multiple-choice quiz by Jerome Agel to help you find out. Answers on page 669.
1. Before Congress decided that the responsibility was the nation’s and not an individual’s,_________ personally paid pensions to the widows of former presidents.
(a) Babe Ruth
(b) William S. Paley
(c) Andrew Carnegie
(d) Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
2. The term “First Lady” was first used to describe the wife of
(a) President John F. Kennedy
(b) President Martin Van Buren
(c) President George Washington
(d) President Rutherford B. Hayes
3. The first president to be born in the United States rather than in an English colony was
(a) Martin Van Buren
(b) James K. Polk
(c) John Quincy Adams
(d) Zachary Taylor
4. No president and only one vice president,_________, has been sworn in outside the United States.
(a) Alben Barclay
(b) Thomas J
efferson
(c) William Rufus De Vane King
(d) Harry S. Truman
5. After his presidency, William H. Taft (1857-1930) became
(a) the owner of a health farm in Ludlow, Vermont
(b) chief justice of the Supreme Court
(c) commissioner of major league baseball
(d) president of the International Red Cross
6. No president has been
(a) An alcoholic
(b) An only child
(c) A driven man
(d) Close to his father
1960s music trivia: The Byrds say they wrote “Eight Miles High” about an airplane ride.
7. President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for
(a) putting down his “big stick” diplomacy
(b) warning Czar Nicholas that his Baltic fleet would be ambushed by the Japanese in Tsushima Strait
(c) mediating the Russo-Japanese War, in a treaty conclave in Portsmouth, New Hampshire
(d) keeping U.S. marines out of the French-German war over the future of Morocco
8. The first president to accept in person the nomination of his party’s convention rather than follow tradition and acknowledge it weeks later was
(a) Thomas Jefferson
(b) Zachary Taylor
(c) Grover Cleveland (the third time)
(d) Franklin D. Roosevelt
9. The first president to visit a foreign country was _________ and he visited_________.
(a) Grover Cleveland, Canada
(b) Theodore Roosevelt, Panama
(c) Zachary Taylor, Mexico
(d) Thomas Jefferson, France
10._________ presidents were professional soldiers.
(a) Two
(b) Six
(c) Nine
(d) Twelve
11._________ was defeated for the legislature, failed in business, suffered a nervous breakdown, was defeated for nomination for Congress, lost renomination to Congress, was rejected for land office, was defeated for the Senate, was defeated for nomination for vice president, was defeated for the Senate, then became president.
Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader Page 60