“I’m very loyal in relationships. Even when I go out with my mom I don’t look at other moms.”
“The last girl I made love to, it was not going well. Anytime you make love and have to give her the Heimlich maneuver at the same time, it’s not a good thing.”
Sure, blame the kids: 9% of women and 4% of men say their divorce is the kids’ fault.
FOOD FIGHT!
This title probably conjures up visions of leftover vegetables being hurled across a school cafeteria. But in at least two instances, people actually used food as a weapon in real wars. Here are the stories.
TAKE THAT!
“The Uruguayan army once fought a sea battle using cheeses as cannonballs.
“It happened in the 1840s. The aggressive Argentine dictator Juan Manual de Rosas, in an attempt to annex Uruguay, ordered his navy to blockade Montevideo, the capital. The besieged Uruguayans held their own in battle until they ran out of conventional ammunition. In desperation, they raided the galleys of their ships and loaded their cannons with very old, hard Edam cheeses and fired them at the enemy.
“Contemporary chronicles record that the Uruguayans won the skirmish.”
—From Significa, by Irving Wallace, David Wallechinsky, and Amy Wallace
YOU SAY POTATO...
“A World War II destroyer once defeated a submarine with the help of a seldom-used weapon of destruction: potatoes.
“The USS O’Bannon was on patrol off the Solomon Islands in April 1943 when it encountered a Japanese sub. The crew shot off the sub’s conning tower, preventing it from diving, but the captain of the sub brought it so close to the destroyer that the O’Bannon’s big guns couldn’t be aimed at it....When the Japanese came topside, the gallant O’Bannon crewmen pelted them with potatoes. The Japanese thought they were being showered with grenades, threw their guns overboard, then panicked, submerged the sub and sank it.
“When the O’Bannon was decommissioned in the early 1970s, a plaque was made to commemorate the event, and donated to the ship, by the Maine potato growers.”
— From Beyond Belief!, by Ron Lyon and Jenny Pacshall
Q: Which country drinks more Coke than any other nation on earth? A: Mexico.
LLOYD’S OF LONDON
Insurance companies are probably the last subject you’d expect to read about in the Bathroom Reader. But Lloyd’s of London is special. They insure stuff like people’s legs and performing insects and floating bathtubs. Here’s the story of Lloyd’s, courtesy of BRI alum Jack Mingo, author of How the Cadillac Got Its Fins and numerous other books.
ORIGIN. Today most business is conducted over the phone or in company offices, but in the 17th century the most popular place for businesses and their clients to meet was in coffeehouses—many of which were built specifically to the business trade. Lloyd’s Coffee House, opened by Edward Lloyd in London in 1688, was just such a place. Lloyd wanted to take advantage for the maritime insurance trade, so he built his coffeehouse near the London docks.
Lloyd never personally got involved in the insurance business, but he provided a congenial business atmosphere, semi-enclosed booths, and even writing materials for his patrons. The cafe developed a reputation as a source of accurate shipping news and quickly became the hub of London’s maritime insurance industry.
Long after Lloyd’s death in 1723, his coffeehouse remained an important business meeting place.
A GROWING BUSINESS
In the 17th and 18th centuries, merchants with a ship or cargo to insure didn’t buy insurance from companies—they hired a broker to go from one wealthy person to another, selling a share of the risk in exchange for a share of the insurance premium.
This was considered a respectable profession. But covering wagers on things like who would win a particular sports contest or war, or when the current king would die, was not. These less respectable brokers began frequenting Lloyd’s, too.
In 1769, a number of “high-class” brokers decided they didn’t want to be associated with their seamier brethren anymore. So they set up their own coffee house and called it the “New Lloyd’s Coffee House.” They allowed business dealings in maritime insurance only. The new building soon proved too small, so 79 brokers, underwriters, and merchants each chipped in £100 to finance new headquarters. When they moved this time, they left the coffee business behind. Over the following century, the Lloyd’s society of underwriters evolved into its modern incarnation, expanding to all forms of insurance except life insurance. As one broker put it, “Everybody dies, so what’s the fun of writing life insurance?”
Crocodiles kill more people in the jungle than any other animal.
RISKY BUSINESS
Lloyd’s will insure just about anything. Here are some of the weirder items:
• Celebrity anatomy. Bruce Springsteen has insured his voice for £3.5 million; Marlene Dietrich had a $500,000 policy on her legs; and supermodel Suzanne Mizzi was insured for £10 million against any “serious injury” that left her unable to model underwear. During filming of the movie Superman, man of steel Christopher Reeves was insured for $20 million.
• Whiskers. Forty members of the Derbyshire, England, “Whiskers Club” insured their facial hair “against fire and theft.” Cost: £20 a head.
• Laughter. One theater group took out a policy “against the risk of a member of their audience dying from laughter.”
• Space debris. Before Skylab, the space laboratory, crashed to earth, Lloyd’s offered coverage of up to £2.5 million for property damage and £500,000 for death coverage to anyone who wanted it. (No takers.)
• The weather. Lloyd’s insures the opera festival of Verona, Italy, for £1 million against bad weather. Reason: When outdoor performances get cancelled due to rain, the festival has to refund ticket holders.
• Souvenirs. When Charles and Diana announced they were tying the knot, Lloyd’s insured commemorative souvenir makers...just in case the wedding got called off.
• A floating bathtub. When a 20-year-old merchant navy officer sailed from Dover, England, to Cap Gris Nez, France, in a bathtub, Lloyd’s insured it for £100,000 on one condition: that the tub’s drain plug “remain in position at all times.”
• Dead rats. Lloyd’s once insured an entire boatload of dead rats (which were en route to a Greek research lab) for £110,000 against their condition deteriorating any further.
Nearly 75% of all U.S. Congress staff members suffer from heartburn.
• A tiny portrait. A grain of rice with a portrait of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip engraved on it was insured for £20,000.
• Nessie. Cutty Sark Whiskey once offered £1 million to anyone who could capture the Loch Ness monster alive, and took out two £1 million policies with Lloyd’s...just in case.
• The King. When a Memphis radio station offered $1 million to anyone who could prove Elvis was really alive, Lloyd’s backed them up 100 percent.
THE NAME GAME
How Lloyd’s works. Lloyd’s of London isn’t a company at all: It’s a “society” of thousands of members (called Names because they put their “name,” or full reputation and worth, behind the risk), who underwrite insurance policies with their personal assets. As was the case three centuries ago, each Name is personally liable for claims. The Name never has to turn over the money he “invests” with Lloyd’s—he just has to prove that he has it and can surrender it on demand to pay claims.
HARD TIMES
The system worked great for hundreds of years, but disaster struck in the late 1980s, after more than a decade of excessive policy writing in which Lloyd’s Names insured asbestos manufacturers, the Exxon Valdez, and the San Francisco earthquake of 1989. Between 1988 and 1990 the company had to pay out more than $10 billion in claims, which meant that by 1991 each of the company’s 32,000 Names owed more than $312,500 to policyholders, with the total expected to climb still further. More than 21,000 of the Names sued Lloyd’s, claiming that Lloyd’s underwriters were negligent in writing insurance contra
cts. Lloyd’s admitted as much in 1994, and offered a $1.3 billion settlement to the Names, but, at the time this was written, the lawsuits were still pending.
Family attachment: eight times more women than men buy Father’s Day cards.
THE NUMBERS GAME
This is a tough game—very few people can solve more than a few of these equations on the first try. But don’t look at the answers in the back of the book right away. People often come up with them later, when their minds are relaxed. And you can work on this page for a number of “sittings.” It was sent to us by BRI member Peter Wing. Answers are on page 670.
INSTRUCTIONS
Each equation contains the initials of words that will make it a correct statement. Your job is to finish the missing words. For example:
26 = L. of the A. would be 26 = Letters of the Alphabet. Good luck.
1. 7 = W. of the A. W.
2. 1001 = A. N.
3. 12 = S. of the Z.
4. 54 = C. in a D. (with the J.)
5. 9 = P. in the S. S.
6. 88 = P. K.
7. 13 = S. on the A. F.
8. 32 = D. F. at which W. F.
9. 90 = D. in a R. A.
10. 99 = B. of B. on the W.
11. 18 = H. on a G. C.
12. 8 = S. on a S. S.
13. 3 = B. M. (S. H. T. R.)
14. 4 = Q. in a G.
15. l = W. on a U.
16. 5 = D. in a Z. C.
17. 24 = H. in a D.
18. 57 = H.V.
19. 11 = P. on a F. T.
20. 1000 = W. that a P. is W.
21. 29 = D. in F. in a L. Y.
22. 64 = S. on a C.
23. 40 = D. and N. of the G. F.
24. 2 = T. T.
25. 76 = T. in a B. P.
26. 8 = G.T. in a L. B. C.
27. 101 = D.
28. 23 = S.
29. 4 = H. a J. G.F.
30. 16 = M. on a D. M. C.
31. 12 = D. of C.
32. 5 = G. L.
33. 7 = D. S.
34. 2.5 = C. in a T. A. F.
35. 1, 2, 3 = S. Y. O. at the O. B. G.
36. 3 = M. in a T.
37. 13 = B. D.
Thirty-three percent of Americans say being an hour late still counts as being “fashionably late.”
IT LOSES SOMETHING
IN TRANSLATION...
Mongo teep robinek. Pargo meep, kiga lorb. Squarp? Neegah! Sheerik sot morbo. Pid rintu...guira—gop fibge. More nonsense that seems perfectly understandable to the person who’s speaking. For the first batch see page 483.
PARDON ME...
“I once observed a foreign gentleman with halting English at a subway station asking for the correct time,” author Roger Axtell recalls in his book Do’s and Taboos of Hosting International Visitors. “He was repeatedly rebuffed by brusque New Yorkers. Edging closer, I heard the patient but tiring visitor finally say to the fifth or sixth passerby, ‘Pardon me, sir, but do you have the correct time...or should I go screw myself, as the others have suggested?’”
ADVENTURES IN THE EAST
• In China, Kentucky Fried Chicken’s slogan “finger-lickin’ good” was translated as “eat your fingers off” and a phonetic adaptation of Coca-Cola came out as “Bite the Wax Tadpole.”
• In Taiwan, Pepsi’s “Come Alive with Pepsi” came out as “Pepsi Will Bring Your Ancestors Back from the Dead.”
• Japan’s second-largest tourist agency, Kinki Nippon Tourist Co., had to change the name of its overseas division because the word “Kinki” was too close to the English word “kinky.” The company was worried about attracting the “wrong kind of customer.”
NO HABLO ESPANOL
• Many of the T-shirts made for Pope John Paul II’s visit to Miami were in Spanish. They were supposed to say “I saw the Pope.” Instead, they said, “I saw the potato.”
• Braniff Airlines once wanted to promote the fact that its leather seats were comfortable. According to reporters, when they did ads for Hispanic customers, they “used a slang term for leather which means a person’s hide as well as a cowhide. Rather than asking people to fly Braniff on leather seats, the airline asked them to fly in the nude.”
The average U.S. family redeems 81 coupons a year, compared to 33 in Canada.
• A frozen foods manufacturer used the word burruda to describe its burrito line. They didn’t realize that the word is slang for “huge mistake.”
JUST DO WHAT?
In one of its shoe commercials, Nike showed a Kenyan Samburu looking into the camera and speaking Maa, his native language. The subtitle read “Just do it,” Nike’s advertising slogan...but it wasn’t until after the commercial hit the airwaves that company officials realized he was saying, “I don’t want these. Give me big shoes.”
NO SEX, PLEASE
• The Swedish company that makes Electrolux vacuum cleaners once tried to market their products in the United States using the slogan “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.” (The company’s translators talked them out of it at the last minute.)
• What Brazilian would have admitted to driving a Ford Pinto? Pinto, it turns out, is slang in Portuguese for “small male genitals.” Ford changed the name in Brazil to “Corcel,” which means horse.
AND FUNNY MONEY, TOO
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — March 4, 1992.
Lance Aukett, a 13-year-old boy, found a 10,000-yen note in a box of schoolbooks while he was cleaning his bedroom. Unsure of its value, he decided to check with some banks. One bank said it that it might be worth $8 in American money; another valued it at $26. But the best deal came from the National Bank of New Zealand, which accepted the note and gave Aukett $78 for it.
Two weeks later the bank realized they had purchased a piece of Monopoly money (from a Japanese version of the game).
“Since 1971, any money lost through bribery has been tax deductible. According to the IRS’s official taxpayers’ guide, “bribes and kickbacks to governmental officials are deductible unless the individual has been convicted of making the bribe or has entered a plea of not guilty or nolo contendere.”
—2201 Fascinating Facts, by David Louis
Americans buy more candy at Easter than they do at Halloween.
A GAGGLE OF GEESE
You’ve used the terms a “pack” of wolves and a “flock” of sheep... here are some animal terms you probably haven’t even heard of:
MAMMALS
A shrewdness or troop of apes (also monkeys)
A pace of asses
A cete of badgers
A sloth of bears
A colony of beavers
A singular of boars
A clouder of cats
A brood of chickens
A rag of colts
A cowardice of curs
A gang of elk
A business of ferrets
A skulk or troop of foxes
A trip of goats
A drift of hogs
A troop of kangaroos
A kindle of kittens
A leap of leopards
A nest of mice
A barren of mules
A string of ponies
A nest of rabbits
A crash of rhinoceroses
A bevy of roebucks
A dray of squirrels
A sounder of swine
A pod or gam of whales
BIRDS
A murder of crows
A dole or piteousness of doves
A paddling of duck (swimming)
A raft of duck (in the water, but not swimming)
A team of ducks (in the air)
A charm of finches
A gaggle of geese (on the ground)
A skein of geese (in the air)
A siege of herons
A deceit of lapwings
An exaltation or bevy of larks
A parliament of owls
A covey of quail
An ostentation of peacocks
A nye or covey of pheasants (on the ground)
A bouquet of pheasants (taking to the air)
An unkindness of ravens
A murmuration of sandpipers
A rafter of turkeys
A descent of woodpeckers
INSECTS
An army of caterpillars
A business of flies
A cluster of grasshoppers
A plague or swarm of locusts
OTHER
A shoal of bass
A clutch of eggs
A bed of snakes
A knot of toads
A bale of turtles
A nest of vipers
The world’s rarest matchbook, issued after Charles Lindbergh’s Atlantic flight, is worth $4,000.
PRIMETIME PROVERBS
TV wisdom from Primetime Proverbs: The Book of TV Quotes by Jack Mingo and John Javna.
ON LAWYERS
“Lawyers and tarts are the two oldest professions in the world. And we always aim to please.”
—Horace Rumpole, Rumpole of the Bailey
ON CROOKS
“All the laws in the world won’t stop one man with a gun.”
—Det. Lt. Mike Stone, The Streets of San Francisco
Friend of a suspect: “I just know she isn’t guilty. She’s just too nice.”
Sgt. Joe Friday: “Well, if she’s nice, she isn’t guilty...and if she’s guilty, she’s not that nice.”
—Dragnet
ON LYING
“That’s not a lie, it’s a terminological inexactitude.”
—Alexander Haig, 1983 television news interview
“Virgins don’t lie.”
—Fonzie, Happy Days
ON TOUGH COPS
Crook [explaining herself]: “You can understand, can’t you?”
Sgt. Joe Friday: “No, lady, we can’t. You’re under arrest.”
—Dragnet
“Would you like to sit down, hairball, or do you prefer internal bleeding?”
—Mick Belker, Hill Street Blues
“Another outburst like this and I’m gonna handcuff your lips together.”
—Sgt. Wojohowicz, Barney Miller
ON POLICE PROCEDURE
Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader Page 63