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Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader

Page 47

by Bathroom Readers' Institute


  • Sneakers. Those date back to his days on The Children’s Corner—“I had to run across the studio floor to get from the puppet set to the organ,” Rogers explained. “I didn’t want to make a lot of noise by running around in ordinary shoes.”

  Do you know how long it takes the Earth to go around the sun? 46% of Americans don’t.

  GOODBYE, NEIGHBOR

  Rogers taped nearly 900 episodes of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood over its more than 30 years on the air. They’re still broadcast by more than 300 public television stations around the United States as well as in Canada, the Philippines, Guam, and other countries around the world. Videotapes of the show are used to teach English to non-native speakers (singer Ricky Martin credits Mr. Rogers with teaching him to speak English).

  Rogers retired from producing new episodes of the show in December 2000, and the last new episode aired in August 2001. He came out of retirement briefly in 2002 to record public service announcements advising parents on how to help children deal with the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. He made his last public appearance on January 1, 2003, when he served as Grand Marshal of the Tournament of Roses Parade and tossed the coin for the Rose Bowl Game. Mr. Rogers passed away from stomach cancer two months later.

  THOUGHTS FROM MR. ROGERS

  • “The world is not always a kind place. That’s something children learn for themselves, whether we want them to or not, but it’s something they really need our help to understand.”

  • “Anything we can do to help foster the intellect and spirit and emotional growth of our fellow human beings, that is our job. Those of us who have this particular vision must continue against all odds.”

  • “People don’t come up to me to talk about the weather. I’ve even had a child come up to me and not even say hello, but instead say right out, ‘Mr. Rogers, my grandmother’s in the hospital.’”

  • “So many people have grown up with the ‘Neighborhood,’ I’m just their dad coming along. You know, it’s really fun to go through life with this face.”

  One of the most common things people who met Mr. Rogers say about him is that he was the very same person off camera that he was on camera. And yet to the cynical, that seemed hard to believe. Was Fred Rogers really the person he appeared to be on TV…or was he too good to be true? Turn the page to find out.

  The French Poodle isn’t French and the Great Dane isn’t Danish. They’re both from Germany.

  NEIGHBORHOOD GOSSI

  Like a lot of celebrities, Mr. Rogers was the subject of some preposterous rumors over the years. Here are three of the strangest.

  MYSTERY: Why did Mr. Rogers always cover his arms?

  URBAN LEGEND: He was a sniper in Vietnam. He wore long-sleeved shirts, sweaters, and jackets to cover up the many tattoos he got while serving in the military.

  THE TRUTH: Rogers never served in Vietnam or any other war; he began his career in television right after he graduated from college in the early 1950s. So why did he always wear long sleeves? Dressing somewhat formally was a technique he used to establish himself as an authority figure to the children who watched the show.

  MYSTERY: Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood is a kids’ show. So how come kids almost never appeared on the show?

  URBAN LEGEND: Rogers was once convicted of abusing children and instead of jail, was sentenced to community service. Appearing on the show for more than three decades was how he served out his sentence. As a convicted child abuser, Rogers wasn’t allowed to be alone with kids—even on the TV show.

  THE TRUTH: Rogers got his start in broadcasting in the early 1950s, before the invention of videotape. Shows had to be broadcast live, which is why kids seldom appeared on any kids’ shows back then—they are too unpredictable for live TV.

  MYSTERY: How did Mr. Rogers really feel about kids?

  URBAN LEGEND: After more than three decades of hosting a children’s show, Mr. Rogers showed how he really felt about children on his very last show: he gave kids the finger on TV.

  THE TRUTH: There is such a picture floating around on the Internet, but it’s a fake—somebody doctored a real picture to make it look like Rogers was flipping the bird. It never happened. Anyway, by the end of his career new episodes were taped months in advance of broadcast, and such an image would never have been allowed to air.

  Number of holes in a Ritz cracker: 7—six in a hexagon shape, and one in the center.

  WORD ORIGINS

  Ever wonder where certain words came from? Here are the interesting stories behind some of them.

  MONEY

  Meaning: Currency; a medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes

  Origin: “Hera, queen of the Greek gods, kept her name out of the vulgate [common speech] until she moved to Rome and became Juno. As Juno Moneta (Juno the Monitress), she presided over a Roman temple where gold was coined. Moneta became the eponym of money, and Moneta’s temple a mint.” (From Thou Improper, Thou Uncommon Noun, by Willard Espy)

  PADDY WAGON

  Meaning: A police van

  Origin: “A carryover from the days when Irish immigrants were low men on the social totem pole and hence fair game when a roundup of miscreants was needed to create favorable publicity for the law enforcers. Paddy was a common nickname for Irishmen.” (From Dictionary of Word Origins, by William and Mary Morris)

  EROTIC

  Meaning: Relating to sexual desire or excitement

  Origin: “Eros was the god of love, and the fairest of the gods in the Greek pantheon. But he was vain and spoiled and for sport shot his love-poisoned arrows into the hearts of men and gods. At his festival, the erotia, married couples of the day were supposed to patch up their differences and end all quarrels. From the Greek name Eros comes the word erotic, meaning ‘full of sexual desire,’ or ‘morbidly amorous.’” (From Word Origins, by Wilfred Funk)

  JUGGERNAUT

  Meaning: An overwhelming force that crushes anything in its path

  Origin: “The word comes from Hindi; its origin lies in Jagganath, a Hindu god, the Lord of the World. The city of Puri in eastern India is the site of an annual festival in his honor at which the image of the god is carried on a gigantic wheeled vehicle 45 feet high, drawn through the streets by pilgrims. It was said (mostly inaccurately) that fanatical followers would throw themselves under the wheels.” (From Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Allusions, by Elizabeth Webber and Mike Feinsilber)

  New Zealanders eat the most butter annually—about 20 lbs. per person.

  COCKTAIL

  Meaning: An alcoholic drink consisting of spirits mixed with other ingredients

  Origin: “One idea is that it came from cockfighting. A cock’s courage was fired up by slipping him a mixture of stale beer, gin, herbs, and flour, which was called cock-ale. More likely, the term was coined by Antoine Peychaud, a New Orleans restaurateur. During the 1800s, Antoine made drinks mixed from a number of different liquors. He served the wicked brew in little egg cups called coquetier in French. Wanting to give his drinks a special name, he simply Americanized the French word by changing it to cocktail.” (From Straight from the Horse’s Mouth, by Teri Degler)

  PHONY

  Meaning: A fraudulent person or thing

  Origin: “Newspaperman H. L. Mencken suggested that a maker of fake jewelry named Forney is the origin of this word, but few experts agree with him. The majority opinion is that phony is an alteration of fawney, British slang for a worthless ring. The word probably comes from the fawney rig, a con game in which a worthless ring is planted, and when someone ‘finds’ it he is persuaded by a ‘bystander’ that he should pay the bystander for his share in the find.” (From Word and Phrase Origins, by Robert Hendrickson)

  POOPED

  Meaning: Exhausted

  Origin: “Englishmen headed for the New World found that violent waves did the most damage when they crashed against the stern (rear end), or poop of a vessel. Any ship that came out of a long bout with nature was said to be badly
‘pooped.’ Sailors who described the splintered stern of a ship often confessed that they felt as pooped as their vessel looked. Landsmen borrowed the sea-going expression and put it to use.” (From Why You Say It, by Webb Garrison)

  Pound for pound, a hummingbird consumes the caloric equivalent 228 milkshakes per day.

  PETER’S PRINCIPLES

  The Canadian-born writer and educator, Lawrence J. Peter, became famous when his book The Peter Principle was published in 1969. The Principle: “Every employee rises to his level of incompetence.” He has more to say, too.

  “A man convinced against his will is not convinced.”

  “Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.”

  “Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.”

  “The red light is always longer than the green light.”

  “Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.”

  “Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.”

  “Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.”

  “Speak when you are angry and you’ll make the best speech you’ll ever regret.”

  “Television has changed the American child from an irresistible force into an immovable object.”

  “Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.”

  “The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance.”

  “There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.”

  “The man with a clear conscience probably has a poor memory.”

  “Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively.”

  “The trouble with resisting temptation is that you may not get another chance.”

  “An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.”

  “A pessimist is someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.”

  “Despite the cost of living, it’s still popular.”

  U.S. state with highest median income for a family of 4: Connecticut. Lowest: Arkansas.

  EXILE ON EASY STREET

  It’s a perennial news story: some dictator somewhere is oppressing his people, plundering his country’s treasury, and defying international law. Then suddenly he’s out of power. You assume he’s in jail, but he’s probably living in the lap of luxury.

  DICTATOR: Augusto Pinochet, Chile

  REIGN OF TERROR: Pinochet came to power in a CIA-assisted coup in 1973. During his rule, tens of thousands of Chileans were tortured, killed, or “disappeared.” Pinochet relinquished power amid growing opposition in 1990 but remained the commander-in-chief until 1998, when he became “senator-for-life.”

  WHERE’D HE GO? While visiting England in 1998, Pinochet was arrested by British authorities on charges of torture and genocide. During his house-arrest, he lived at Wentworth, an exclusive estate outside of London. Estimated cost: $10,000 a month. After a long legal battle, a British court ruled that he was too sick to stand trial.

  Pinochet went back to Chile, where he was arrested again, with more than 200 charges against him. In 2002 the Chilean Supreme Court ruled him unfit for trial and all charges were dropped. During his house-arrest in Chile, he got the same royal treatment he had in England: he lived on a baronial estate overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

  DICTATOR: Alfredo Stroessner, Paraguay

  REIGN OF TERROR: He took over Paraguay in a military coup in 1954 and ruled for more than 35 years. (He was “reelected” eight times.) Stroessner was a participant in Operation Condor, a police action that tortured, disappeared, or executed hundreds of thousands of people in South America. And he helped turn Paraguay into a haven for Nazi war criminals.

  WHERE’D HE GO? Stroessner was overthrown in 1989 and fled to neighboring Brazil, where he still lives a quiet, comfortable life.

  DICTATORS: Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, Philippines

  REIGN OF TERROR: Ferdinand Marcos was elected President of the Philippines in 1966. Under the Philippine constitution, he would have had to leave office in 1973—so he declared martial law and scrapped the constitution. Having taken absolute control of the country, Marcos ordered numerous tortures and executions. And he stole more than $5 billion. When he was overthrown in 1986, the 1,220 pairs of shoes found in wife Imelda’s closet infuriated the poverty-stricken nation and became an international symbol of greed.

  WHERE’D THEY GO? To Hawaii. Ferdinand died in 1989, but with billions hidden in Swiss banks, Imelda has continued to live in luxury. (She was reported to have over 3,000 new pairs of shoes by the mid-1990s.) The Philippine government recovered $2 billion of the stolen funds, but Mrs. Marcos is still doing alright—in February 2003, she was seen shopping for diamonds in Italy.

  The squirting cucumber can shoot its seeds up to 40 feet.

  DICTATOR: Mengistu Haile Mariam, Ethiopia

  REIGN OF TERROR: Mengistu overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 and turned to the Soviets for help in starting a Marxist regime. During the two-year campaign dubbed “the Red Terror,” tens of thousands of “enemies of the revolution” were murdered. When families came to claim the bodies, they had to pay for the bullets that killed their loved ones before they could take them. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, Mengistu lost support and was finally overthrown in 1991.

  WHERE’D HE GO? He fled to Zimbabwe as a “guest” of President Robert Mugabe, where he still lives in a heavily guarded, luxurious mansion. Though he’s formally charged with “crimes against humanity” in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe refuses to extradite him.

  DICTATOR: Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, Haiti

  REIGN OF TERROR: At the age of 19, he succeeded his father, “Papa Doc,” as president-for-life. During his 15-year reign, tens of thousands of Haitians were tortured and killed. As Haiti turned into one of the world’s poorest nations, Baby Doc stole an estimated $500 million.

  WHERE’D HE GO? Although never officially granted asylum, Duvalier moved to France in 1986, taking the stolen money with him. He lived in a villa in the hills above Cannes, drove a Ferrari, and owned two apartments in Paris and a chateau.

  PARTIAL PAYBACK: According to news reports, Duvalier went broke. How? He lost everything in his divorce from his wife, Michelle Duvalier, in the mid-1990s.

  Two out of three adults in the U.S. will need glasses at some point in their life.

  THE LADY OF THE LINES

  If you’ve ever heard of the Nazca lines, you have this woman to thank for preserving them for posterity. And if you’ve ever doubted that one person can make a difference, think again…

  HELP WANTED

  In 1932 a 29-year-old German woman named Maria Reiche answered a newspaper ad and landed a job in Peru, tutoring the sons of the German consul. After that, she bounced from job to job and eventually found work translating documents for an archaeologist named Julio Tello.

  One day she happened to overhear a conversation between Tello and another archaeologist, Toribio Mejia. Mejia described some mysterious lines he’d seen in a patch of desert about 250 miles south of the capital city of Lima, near the small town of Nazca. He tried to interest Tello in the lines, but Tello dismissed them as unimportant. Reiche wasn’t so sure. She decided to go to Nazca and have a look for herself.

  MYSTERIOUS LINES

  Gazing out across the desert floor, Reiche was amazed by what she saw: More than 1,000 lines crisscrossing 200 square miles of desert, some as narrow as footpaths, others more than 15 feet wide. Many ran almost perfectly straight for miles across the desert, deviating as little as four yards in a mile.

  The lines were made by early Nazca people, etched into the desert floor between 200 B.C. and 700 A.D. They had created the lines by removing darkened surface fragments (known as “desert varnish”) to reveal the much lighter stone underneath.

  But why?
<
br />   WAITING FOR SUNDOWN

  An American archaeologist and historian named Paul Kosok had a theory. At first he thought the lines might be irrigation ditches, but they weren’t large enough or deep enough to transport water. Then he started to wonder if they might have some kind of astronomical significance. So, on June 21, 1941, the southern hemisphere’s winter solstice, he went out into the desert and waited for the sun to set.

  Dressed to kill: During the French Revolution, a woman named Renee Bordereau fought in 200 battles—dressed as a man.

  Sure enough, when the sun set, it did so at a point on the horizon that was intersected by one of the Nazca lines. The line seemed to serve as an astronomical marker, telling the Nazca people that the first day of winter had arrived.

  BIG BIRD

  Kosok had also observed that while most of the Nazca lines were straight, some were curvy. But it wasn’t until he plotted one on a piece of paper, then looked down to see that he’d drawn the outline of a giant bird, that he realized that some of the lines were drawings. The drawings were so large that they could not be made out by anyone looking at them from the ground.

  With the discovery of the solstice line and the giant bird, Kosok became convinced that the Nazca lines were an enormous astronomical calendar, or, as he put it, “the world’s largest astronomy book,” with each line carefully laid out to correspond to something in the heavens above. Maybe, he speculated, the giant bird represented a constellation in the night sky. He offered Reiche a job helping him survey the lines so that he could prove his theory.

  LIFELONG PASSION

  She took the job, and after a few months of tramping across the desert each day with little more than a canteen of water and a pencil and paper to record her observations, she found what she was looking for: a line that intersected with the sun on the southern hemisphere’s summer solstice, December 21. That was all it took—Reiche was convinced that Kosok’s theory was correct. And she would spend the rest of her life trying to prove it.

 

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