HUNGRY SPIDERS
The female black widow spider is genetically programmed to control the black widow population in her neighborhood, based on available food supply. Here’s how she does it: A male approaches her web, sits on the edge, and bobs his abdomen, causing the web to vibrate. If she’s not in the mood, she won’t respond. If she is willing to mate, she’ll send out an answering pattern of vibrations calling him toward her. But if she’s hungry, she’ll send the male the exact same mating response. And when he gets close enough…she eats him.
At the outbreak of World War I, the American Air Force consisted of only 50 men.
CARD-PLAYING SUPERSTITIONS
Over the centuries, card players have come up with all sorts of strange superstitions to help them win—and elaborate explanations for why they’re losing. (Ignoring, of course, the possibility that they’re just bad card players.)
GOOD LUCK
• Blow on the cards or spit on them, preferably when no one is looking. (Remember to wipe up any excess spit, so no one knows you’ve fouled them.)
• Wear an article of dirty clothing when you play cards, especially when you play poker. The dirt helps keep evil at bay.
• Stick a pin in your lapel, or in a friend’s lapel.
• There’s one lucky card in each deck. If you can figure out which card it is, touch it with your index finger before the game begins.
• If you’re sitting at a table made of wood, choose a seat that lets you lay your cards with the grain instead of against it.
• Whenever you’re on a losing streak, tilt your chair up on its forelegs and twist it three times. This works best if you twist following the path of the sun—i.e., from east to west.
• If twisting doesn’t help, rotate the chair so the back faces the table, then sit astride it so that you’re facing the seat back.
• If you’re sitting astride your chair and still losing, try sitting on a handkerchief, or walk clockwise three times around the table. (If you still lose, switch to a new deck of cards or consider taking up dominos.)
• If you see a hunchback on the way to your game, that’s good luck. Don’t touch the hump—just seeing the hunchback is all it takes.
BAD LUCK
• Don’t sing or whistle during a card game. It’s unlucky (not to mention annoying).
• Don’t pick up any of your cards until all the cards have been dealt, and when you do pick them up, use your right hand.
The brain can record about 86 million bits of information each day.
• Never, ever let someone hover over you and look at your cards, unless that person never plays cards. If they never play cards, then standing over you may actually bring you luck. People who bring you luck are known as “mascots.”
• Don’t sit with your legs crossed. You’re literally crossing out your luck.
• Never play cards in a room with a dog in it.
• Never let anyone place their foot on the rung of your chair. On the other hand, if you want to give bad luck to someone who’s beating you, put your foot on the rung of their chair.
• Never play cards with a cross-eyed man or woman. (This superstition dates back to the days when people thought that cross-eyed people could see the cards of the people sitting next to them.)
• Never play any gambling game in a room where there’s a woman present, unless the woman is playing, too. If you’re a woman, the same rule applies with men.
MORE BAD LUCK
• Never play cards on a bare table. (Bring felt or a tablecloth, preferably green, with you…just in case.)
• Don’t lend money during a card game. Don’t borrow it, either.
• If you are dealt a steady succession of black cards, it means that you or someone in your family will die soon.
• Pilots, coal miners, soldiers, fishermen, and sailors should never carry playing cards on their persons. If they do and bad luck occurs—a storm or an enemy attack, for example—throw the cards as far away from you as you can. They’re bringing you bad luck.
LUCKY AND UNLUCKY CARDS
• The four of clubs is “the devil’s bedstead.” Discard it unless you absolutely need it. If you’re dealt the four of clubs in the first hand of the game, throw down the cards and leave the game—you’ll have nothing but bad luck.
• Dropping any card on the floor is bad luck, but dropping one of the black aces is worst of all. If you drop a black ace, leave the game immediately. Nobody recovers from luck that bad.
Half of the genes in a banana are the same as in a human.
I THE ’80S!
Power Ties? Just say no? Baby on Board? Just do it.
1985
• New Coke flops; Coca-Cola reintroduces “classic” Coke
• Reagan meets Gorbachev in first U.S./Soviet summit
• Pete Rose breaks Ty Cobb’s record of 4,191 base hits
• Live Aid concert held in Philadelphia and London simultaneously
• #1 movie: Back to the Future
• Calvin and Hobbes comic strip premiers
• A Yugo costs $3,990
1986
• Space shuttle Challenger explodes
• Russian space station Mir launched
• Martin Luther King Day becomes U.S. holiday
• Soviet nuclear plant Chernobyl has major meltdown
• 20-year-old Mike Tyson becomes youngest heavyweight champ ever
• Album of the Year: Paul Simon’s Graceland
• On TV: Miami Vice Cheers, Family Ties
1987
• Televangelist Jim Bakker resigns after sex scandal with secretary Jessica Hahn
• Best Director: Oliver Stone, Platoon
• Oct. 19, Black Monday—Stock Market crashes
• #1 single: George Michael’s “Faith”
• Van Gogh’s painting “Sunflowers” sells for $39 million
• British humanitarian Terry Waite kidnapped in Lebanon
• Yugoslavian baby declared Earth’s five billionth inhabitant
1988
• George H. W. Bush elected 41st U.S. president (defeats Michael Dukakis)
• After eight years of fighting, Soviet army begins withdrawal from Afghanistan
• Oliver North indicted for his role in Iran-Contra scandal
• Pan Am 103 crashes in Lockerbie, Scotland
• #1 film: Rain Man
• Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader debuts
1989
• Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini issues fatwa (death sentence) on Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie
• Time, Inc. and Warner Communications announce plans to merge
• Oil tanker Exxon Valdez crashes, causing worst oil spill in U.S. history
• Chinese troops squash pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square
• Sega Genesis released
• Berlin Wall falls
• #1 movie: Batman
• Top TV show: The Cosby Show
’80s quiz: In 1987 for the first time live models advertised what on TV? A: Bras (Playtex).
UNCLE JOHN’S STALL OF SHAME
Don’t abuse your bathroom privileges…or you may wind up in Uncle John’s “Stall of Shame.”
Honoree: Joseph Carl Jones, Jr., an alleged burglar
Dubious Achievement: Landing in the can after a trip to the can.
True Story: On the morning of February 7, 2003, Janie Sidener of Mineral Wells, Texas, arrived to open the store where she worked. She should have been the first one in the building that morning, but shortly after she entered she noticed something unusual, so she looked around. That’s when she saw Joseph Carl Jones, fast asleep on a bed that the store had for sale. “Apparently he needed to take a break,” said police spokesperson Mike McAllister.
Sidener quietly called her employer, who called the police. They woke the burglar, arrested him, and hauled him off to the slammer. So what was it that alerted Sidener to the fact that something was
amiss? Before his nap, Jones had used the bathroom…and hadn’t flushed.
Adding Insult to Injury! The store Jones had picked to rob was owned by the wife of the district attorney.
Honoree: Jon Carl Petersen, 41, head of the Iowa office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)
Dubious Achievement: Wrecking his own career with alcohol, toilet paper, and firearms (ATPF).
True Story: During Homecoming Week 2002, a pickup truck full of Indianola high school sophomores decided to TP some houses in town, an unofficial Homecoming tradition for many years. Too bad they chose the street where Petersen lived. And too bad Petersen had been drinking.
When he saw the kids throwing toilet paper in his yard, he jumped in his patrol vehicle and chased them with lights flashing and sirens blaring. When they finally stopped, he ordered the sophomores out of their truck and held them at gunpoint until police arrived…and arrested him. A sobriety test showed that Petersen had a blood alcohol level of 0.22%, twice the legal limit. He was charged with drunk driving, 10 counts of assault with a weapon, and two counts of simple assault. If convicted on all counts, he faces up to 20 years in prison and a $50,000 fine.
World record for keeping a Lifesaver in the mouth with the hole intact: 7 hours, 10 minutes.
“He deserves what he gets,” said one of the kids involved. “It’s kind of stupid that he’s an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent, and he was doing two of the things he’s trying to prevent.”
Honoree: Catherine Tarver, the mother of an accused murderer
Dubious Achievement: Using a public restroom to influence the outcome of a trial.
True Story: In May 2003, Judge Walter McMillan ordered that Tarver be barred from Georgia’s Washington County Courthouse. Reason: A courthouse employee saw Tarver cracking open eggs and sprinkling chicken feathers, chicken blood, and what has been described as “voodoo powder” in the restroom. So Judge McMillan imposed a ban, telling her, “If I find any more eggs in this courthouse, you will face criminal charges.”
Sheriff Thomas Smith speculates that Tarver was trying to influence the outcome of the trial. “I think it’s a curse against the prosecution,” he told reporters. “There’s been four incidents of it in the courthouse bathroom where brown eggs have been busted. It always happened on the day of Brandon Tarver’s hearings.”
Tarver denies using voodoo. “I don’t even know what that is,” she claims.
Honoree: Dr. Michael Warren, a South Carolina dermatologist
Dubious Achievement: Turning his bathroom into an ICU—a peekaboo ICU.
True Story: When the staff restroom went out of order in 2002, Dr. Warren cheerfully allowed female employees to use his private restroom. But when months went by without Dr. Warren making an attempt to get the restroom fixed, his staff became suspicious. That’s when they found a hidden camera in the doctor’s bathroom. Dr. Warren admits that he installed the camera but claims that he did so “as a security measure, after cash and checks were stolen from his office.” (No word on what a thief would steal from the doctor’s bathroom.)
In how many Agatha Christie mysteries did “the butler do it?” None.
WORLD-CLASS LOSERS
Everyone makes mistakes. Some are just better at it than others.
PAPER WEIGHT
In 1965 an aspiring English publisher named Lionel Burleigh announced he was starting a newspaper called the Commonwealth Sentinel, which he promised would be “Britain’s most fearless newspaper.” Burleigh did everything it took to make the paper a success—he promoted it on billboards, sold advertising space, wrote articles, and printed up 50,000 copies of the first issue so that there would be plenty to go around. Burleigh remembered every detail, except for one very important thing: distribution.
In fact, he had forgotten it completely until he received a phone call from the police informing him that all 50,000 copies had been deposited on the sidewalk in front of the hotel where he was staying. They were blocking the entrance. Could he please come and remove them?
Britain’s “most fearless paper” folded after just one day. “To my knowledge, we only sold one copy,” Burleigh remembered years later. “I still have the shilling in my drawer.”
A LOAD OF BULL
In 1958 the town of Lindsay, Ontario, organized the country’s first-ever bullfight. There aren’t many bullfighting bulls in Canada, and even fewer matadors, so they had to bring in both from Mexico. But the bulls brought ticks with them, and ticks from other parts of the world aren’t allowed into Canada. The bulls had to be quarantined for a week. By the time they got out, the matadors had returned to Mexico. Result: no bullfight.
HORSE SENSE
Horatio Bottomley (great name) was a convicted fraud artist and ex-member of the English parliament. In 1914 he figured out what he thought was a foolproof way to rig a horse race: He bought all six horses in the race, hired his own jockeys to race them, and told them in which order he wanted them to cross the finish line. Then he bet a fortune on the horses he’d picked to win, and also placed bets on the order of finish. Everything went according to plan…until a thick fog rolled in over the track in the middle of the race. It was so thick that the jockeys couldn’t see each other well enough to cross the finish line in the proper order. And Bottomley lost every bet he placed.
The sun’s diameter is 109.12 times the diameter of the Earth.
MORE LOSERS
Not to be outdone by civilians, the “military intelligence” personnel of past war machines have had their day in the doghouse as well.
Brits in the Pits. In the early 1940s, the English military came up with what they thought would be a simple but powerful antitank weapon: a four-and-a-half-pound hand grenade covered with sticky adhesive that would help it stick to the sides of tanks. The grenade was withdrawn from service a short time later. Reason: It stuck a little too well…to the soldier who was trying to throw it. It was so sticky, in fact, that the only practical way to put it to use was to run up to the tank and stick the grenade on manually—which was practically a suicide mission because the bomb’s short fuse gave its user less than five seconds to get away.
Peru’s Blues. As part of its Air Force Week celebrations in 1975, the Peruvian military decided to show off the might of its newest fighter planes. Fourteen derelict fishing boats were towed a short distance out to sea to serve as targets. After the crowds had gathered along the coast, a squadron of 30 fighters swooped down and attacked the boats with bombs and machine-gun fire for 15 minutes. They didn’t sink a single boat.
France’s Chance. In 1870 the French military made preparations to use its own new machine gun, called the mitrailleuse, in the imminent war against Prussia. Machine guns were new at the time and the government wanted to keep the technology a secret. So it distributed the guns to military units…without instructions for how to use them; the instructions weren’t sent until after the war had begun. But by then it was too late—France lost.
* * *
“Whoever said, ‘It’s not whether you win or lose that counts,’ probably lost.”
—Martina Navritilova
There is one slot machine in Las Vegas for every eight inhabitants.
EVERYDAY OBJECTS
They once were miracle inventions—now they’re so common we throw them in a junk drawer. Here are the stories behind three items that make life just a little bit easier.
SAFETY PIN
In 1849 a New York inventor named Walter Hunt had a problem: he was too broke to pay an employee the $15 he owed him. But the employee gave him an out—he’d forgive the $15 debt if he could have the rights to whatever Hunt could invent from a single piece of wire.
Hunt was a prolific inventor—he’d designed a fire engine warning gong, a stove that burned hard coal, and even an early sewing machine (which he decided not to market because he didn’t want to put seamstresses out of work). But for all his skill, he seemed unable to profit from any of his inventions.
Hu
nt had no money, so he had no choice—he accepted the employee’s challenge. After three hours of twisting an eight-inch piece of brass wire, Hunt had created the world’s first safety pin. It had a clasp at one end, a point on the other, and a coil in the middle to act as a spring and keep the point tucked into the clasp.
So did Hunt hand over his “dress pin,” as he called it, to the employee? No—he reneged on the deal and patented the safety pin himself. Then he sold the rights to his new invention for $400 (about $5,000 today), from which he paid his draftsman the $15, keeping the rest. Millions of safety pins have been made and sold since then, but Hunt never made another cent on his invention.
CAN OPENER
Strange but true: the metal can was invented a full 50 years before the first practical can opener.
Peter Durand, the English merchant who developed the “tin cannister” in 1810, had figured out a way to preserve foods in cans, but he neglected to come up with a way to get the food out. Early cans carried instructions advising users to cut around the top with a chisel and hammer. British soldiers didn’t carry chisels—they had to open their canned rations with bayonets or pocket knives, and, in desperation, sometimes shot them open with their rifles.
Penguins have an organ on their foreheads that desalinizes water.
In 1858 a man named Ezra Warner came up with a can opener that looked like a bent bayonet, with a large, curved blade that could be driven into the rim of a can and forced around the perimeter to cut off the top. It was unwieldy and dangerous; but grocery stores that sold canned food had to buy them so they could open cans as a service to customers. The customers would then leave the store carrying the opened cans. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t a big hit.
Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader Page 44