King never married, and in fact, seemed terrified of all women—except his mother. No woman, notes Berton, “could hope to compare for beauty, compassion, selflessness, purity of soul with his mother, who haunted his dreams…guiding his destinies, consoling him in his darker moments and leaving precious little time or space for a rival.”
Isabel King continued to control her son even after her death. Long after she passed away, King held séances and regularly chatted with his mother’s “spirit” about matters of state.
Diamonds will not dissolve in acid.
He liked to speak with other deceased figures as well. “He spent a lot of time communicating with departed relatives and the famous dead,” states Canada: A People’s History. “In 1934, he returned from Europe, having made friends with Leonardo da Vinci, a member of the de’Medici family, Louis Pasteur, and Philip the Apostle.” He also contacted Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, British prime minister William Gladstone, Saint Luke, Saint John, Robert Louis Stevenson, and his grandfather.
BAD RAP
King owned a crystal ball, but that’s not how he contacted the spirit world. He had a special séance table through which spirits “spoke” to him by rapping out messages that he alone could decipher. Unfortunately, the messages weren’t always accurate.
On September 2, 1939—one day after Nazi Germany invaded Poland to start World War II—King held a séance in which his dead father told him Hitler had been assassinated. The prime minister was greatly disappointed when he discovered this wasn’t true.
King vastly underestimated the dangers posed by fascist leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini. After visiting Nazi Germany in the 1930s, King decided that Hitler was okay because he allegedly shared certain personality traits with the Canadian P.M. “I am convinced Hitler is a spiritualist,” King wrote. “His devotion to his mother—that Mother’s spirit is, I am certain, his guide.”
King also dabbled in numerology and the reading of tea leaves, and held lengthy policy chats with his dog, an Irish terrier named Pat, to whom he liked to outline issues of national importance. (It’s unclear what advice, if any, Pat offered in return.) He reportedly made decisions on national issues based on the position of the hands of the clock, as a vote was being taken in Parliament.
CAN’T KEEP A SECRET
How do we know so much about King’s private life today? He kept extensive diaries. He left explicit instructions that after his death for his butler to burn the diaries. But instead of burning them, the butler read them. Now they reside in Canada’s National Archives.
What’s the only food that provides calories with no nutrition? Sugar.
CHAN THE MAN
As a kid, Uncle John spent many Saturday afternoons glued to the tube watching corny old B-movies featuring the white-suited Chinese detective, Charlie Chan. Though considered politically incorrect today, they’re still on TV…and they’re still corny.
THE MAN BEHIND CHAN
Charlie Chan has cast a portly shadow across the world of detective fiction since his creation in 1925. The wise and charming Oriental sleuth was the brainchild of a novelist and playwright from Warren, Ohio, named Earl Derr Biggers. Biggers got the idea for the character while on a visit to Honolulu in 1919, where he happened to read an article about real-life Chinese detective Chang Apana.
Charlie Chan debuted as a minor character in Bigger’s novel House Without a Key, which was serialized for the Saturday Evening Post magazine and then turned into a silent movie in 1926. Readers loved Chan, so Biggers immediately wrote another story, this one with the Chinese detective in the lead. Then, for the next five years, Biggers wrote a new Charlie Chan novel every year.
CAN UNDERSTAND CHAN GRAND PLAN
Biggers died in 1933, but his character lived on. Forty-five Charlie Chan films were produced by Twentieth Century Fox and then Monogram Studios during the 1930s and 1940s. The plots all followed the same formula: Charlie Chan, the world famous detective, would stumble upon a murder case in some exotic place like Paris, Cairo, or Monte Carlo. One or two of his sons—identified in chronological order as “Number One Son” and “Number Two Son”—would offer “Pop” their help. For the rest of the movie, these young detective wannabes would get in the way until Chan solved the case in spite of them. And along the way, he would offer numerous pearls of pithy Chinese wisdom.
ONE CHAN, MANY MAN
Six different actors played the Chinese detective on-screen, but amazingly, none of them were Chinese. Warner Oland, probably the best-known and most popular, was Swedish. But Oland’s heritage included some Mongolian blood, which is possibly what allowed him to pass for Asian on the screen when he added a moustache and goatee. In real life, Oland often spoke in stilted speech and referred to himself as “Humble Father,” which gave some people the impression that he actually thought he was Charlie Chan.
Chinese fishermen train otters to herd fish into their nets.
After making 16 Chan films, Warner Oland died in 1938, but once again, Chan was too popular (and valuable) to die. Sidney Toler took his place, doing 22 more movies.
When Toler died in 1947, Roland Winters became Chan. Of all the Chans, Winters was the worst cast—he had a large nose and blonde hair. He tried to look Chinese by squinting and always insisted on being shot from the front so audiences wouldn’t see his Caucasian profile. If he needed to speak to anyone at his side, he simply moved his eyes to the right or left. Winters made the last Chan film in the series, The Sky Dragon, in 1949.
MORE CHAN, MANY FAN
The franchise extended to radio, too. Walter Connolly and Ed Begley, both Caucasians, played Charlie Chan on a show sponsored by Esso. The radio show ran from 1932 until 1948.
On television, The New Adventures of Charlie Chan premiered in 1957 and lasted less than a year. In the lead role was J. Carroll Naish, another Caucasian. In 1971 a made-for-TV movie, Happiness Is a Warm Clue, starred Ross Martin (he was Caucasian, too).
The last Charlie Chan movie, a parody called The Curse of the Dragon Queen, was made in 1981. It starred (non-Asian) Peter Ustinov as the detective. While in production, Chinese-American groups protested the film and several Asian-American extras were added to the cast.
EPILOGUE
More than 75 years after his first appearance, Charlie Chan lives on. Biggers’s novels have never gone out of print, and more than 40 of his movies regularly play on cable television. As Chan says, “Impossible to miss someone who will always be in heart.”
There are more varieties of orchid than of any other flower (30,000 at last count).
CHANISMS
For a fictional detective, Charlie Chan was pretty wise.
“If you want wild bird to sing do not put him in cage.”
“Owner of face cannot always see nose.”
“Hasty conclusion like gunpowder—easy to explode.”
“Grain of sand in eye may hide mountain.”
“You talk like rooster, who thinks sun come up just to hear him crow.”
“If strength were all, tiger would not fear scorpion.”
“Questions are keys to door of truth.”
“Only foolish man waste words when argument is lost.”
“Man who flirt with dynamite sometime fly with angels.”
“Every Maybe has wife called Maybe-Not.”
“When money talks, few are deaf.”
“Cannot believe piece of carved stone contain evil until dropped on foot.”
“Trouble, like first love, teach many lessons.”
“Advice after mistake is like medicine after dead man’s funeral.”
“Waiting for tomorrow—waste of today.”
“When friend asks, friend gives.”
“Every man must wear out at least one pair of fool’s shoes.”
“When doing good deed, remember kind-hearted elephant who tried to help hen hatch chicks.”
“Cat who tries to catch two mice at one time goes without supper.”
“Good idea n
ot to accept gold medal until race is won.”
“Man who seek trouble never find it far off.”
“Humbly suggest not to judge wine by barrel it is in.”
“Words cannot cook rice.”
“Cannot tell where path lead until reach end of road.”
That’s a mouthful: Linguine means “little tongues” in Italian.
JUMPING FOR JOY
The origin of the trampoline is just the kind of story we love at the BRI: one man’s dream and persistence creates something that millions of people have benefited from.
SKIN-SPIRATION
As a typical teenage boy in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the 1920s, George Nissen loved the circus. He was most fascinated with the acrobats—the way they would gracefully fall into the large nets from the high wire, sometimes doing amazing tricks and twists as they bounced. Nissen also loved vaudeville acts. One of the gags he liked best was the springboard. A man would be pushed off the stage into the orchestra pit, only to “magically” bounce back up onto the stage. He wanted to do that! When Nissen read in a high school textbook that Eskimos sometimes stretched walrus skins between stakes in the ground and then bounced up and down on them just for fun, that did it—he decided to make his own “jumping table.”
Still in high school, Nissen started his project in 1926. He scavenged materials from the local dump and tinkered away in his garage…for 10 years. In that time he had become a world-class tumbler, winning the National Championship three times in a row, from 1935 to 1937. It was around this same time that Nissen was putting the final touches on his new invention. With the assistance of a local gymnastics coach named Larry Griswold, Nissen used rails from a bed, some strips of inner tube, tightly wound rope, and canvas to build his first jumping table. He called it the trampoline, from the Spanish word trampolín, which means “springboard.” They took it to the local YMCA, where Nissen worked as an instructor to test-market it. The kids loved it—they stood in long lines for a chance to jump on the new contraption.
BOUNCING BACK
The trampoline became so popular in Cedar Rapids that Nissen began mass-producing them in 1938. One problem: no one bought them. Why? Nissen believed that even though the trampoline intrigued them, people saw it as something only for circus performers. So he strapped a trampoline to the top of his car and took off cross-country, giving exhibitions anywhere a crowd was gathered—schools, fairs, playgrounds, and sporting events.
Dubious achievement: New Jersey is #1 in the nation for hazardous waste sites, with 96.
Taking a lesson from Barnum (see page 23), Nissen taught a kangaroo to jump on a trampoline. He trained it using dried apricots as treats and quickly learned that the best way to avoid getting kicked was to “hold hands” with the kangaroo’s front paws. A photograph of man and beast high in the air was printed in newspapers all over the country—exactly the publicity Nissen wanted. It brought the crowds out, and sure enough, sales improved.
Then when World War II started, Nissen convinced the Army that trampolines could train pilots not only to achieve better balance, but also to be less fearful of being upside down. And jumping on a trampoline was great for physical conditioning. The military agreed; thousands of cadets learned to jump on trampolines.
IT’S A FAD!
Still, even after the war, trampolines were mostly found at gymnasiums, primarily used by athletes. Then, in the late 1950s, a new fad emerged: trampoline centers. Here’s what Life magazine said about it in May 1960:
All across the nation the jumping business is jumping, and a device called the trampoline, once a tool of tumblers, has overnight become a popular plaything. Matrons trying to reduce, executives trying to relax and kids trying to outdo each other are plunking down 40¢ for a half hour of public bouncing at trampoline centers which are spreading the way miniature golf courses spread several decades ago.
And trampolining wasn’t just for the average person. Nissen boasted that “Vice President Richard Nixon, Yul Brynner, the Rockefellers, and King Farouk” were all avid jumpers as well.
But while Nissen must have been happy that his invention was finally catching on, he was very critical of the trampoline centers. Profiteers, he said, were just buying the trampolines and allowing patrons to jump unsupervised. Many of the jumpers were either inept or intoxicated. After a few high-profile injuries (a beauty queen lost her teeth and a high school football star was paralyzed), the centers started folding. Nissen tried opening his own properly supervised centers, called Jumpin’ Jiminy. But it was too late—the injuries had given trampolines a bad name.
Kangaroos can cover a distance of 30 feet with one jump.
IT’S A SPORT!
When Nissen saw the interest in trampolines start to dwindle, he understood why. “You have to have programs,” he said. “I bounce too, but if I didn’t have something new to do on a trampoline, I would lose interest.”
So he set his sights on turning trampolining into a sport. First he tried “Spaceball,” a combination of jumping and volleyball, but that turned out to be too dangerous. He also tried combining trampolining and running by putting little bounce pads at either end of a track, but that didn’t catch on, either.
Then Nissen met a Swiss economist in California named Kurt Baechler, who also happened to be a gymnast. Together they combined trampolining with gymnastics, creating the sport Nissen was looking for. They organized the Nissen Cup trampoline competition, formed the International Trampoline Federation, and financed the first trampolining World Championships in the Royal Albert Hall in London. As the trampoline center fad gave way to hula hoops and pinball arcades, the sport of trampolining started taking off.
Today, trampolines can be found in backyards worldwide. And the Nissen company is still a major manufacturer of gymnastics equipment and trampolines. George Nissen holds 35 patents on sports and fitness equipment (including the seat cushion that protects your bottom from rock-hard bleacher seats). At 83 years old Nissen won California’s Senior Fitness Award. And he finally achieved his goal of having competitive trampolining—the idea he came up with when he was 19 years old—recognized as a real sport. It became an Olympic event in 2000.
TRAMPOLINE FACTS
• Jeff Schwartz of Illinois bounced on a trampoline for 266 hours, 9 minutes in 1981, setting a world record. He was allowed breaks for eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom.
• Another world record was set on July 24, 1999, when a team of 20 people in West York, United Kingdom, did 29,503 somersaults in exactly five hours using two standard trampolines. That averages out to 1,500 somersaults per person.
• The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reported that there were 83,212 trampoline-related injuries in 1996, up from only 19,000 in 1976.
Egg shells are 90% calcium carbonate…the same thing your teeth are made of.
THE GLASS ARMONICA
Benjamin Franklin invented bifocals, the lightning rod, an odometer, the Franklin stove, swim fins, and street lights. He also invented the glass armonica. (Doesn’t everybody know that?)
SINGING WINEGLASSES
It’s a classic party trick: Wet your finger and rub it around the rim of a wineglass. What you’ll hear is a very pure musical note. Add some wine, and the pitch gets lower; remove some, and the pitch gets higher.
The singing wineglass trick has been around for hundreds of years. It’s mentioned in Persian documents from the 1300s. There’s a European reference to tuned water glasses dating from 1492. And Galileo wrote about the phenomenon in his book Two New Sciences, published in 1638. But it was Benjamin Franklin in the 1700s who turned the trick into a musical instrument.
Between the years 1757 and 1766, Franklin spent most of his time in Europe as an agent for the American colonies and often attended musical concerts. One evening in 1761, while listening to virtuoso Richard Puckridge perform on the “singing glasses,” Franklin was struck with the beauty of the sound. He immediately set about inventing his own glass musical instrumen
t.
BEN INVENTS IT
Franklin worked with London glassblower Charles James to create a special set of glass bowls that did not need to be filled with water to make different musical notes because each was tuned to its own pitch. Painted different colors to represent each note of the scale, the bowls were nested inside each other and looked like a stack of goblets lying on their sides. An iron rod ran through them to a wheel, which was turned by a foot pedal. To create musical sounds, the player would touch the spinning glasses with moistened fingers. By the end of the year, Franklin had completed his invention and using the Italian word for harmony, he named it the armonica. He wrote,
The advantages of this instrument are that its tones are incomparably sweet beyond those of any other; that they may be swelled and softened by stronger or weaker pressures of the finger, and continued at any length; and that the instrument, being once well tuned, never again wants tuning.
Why did Mick Jagger have the emerald filling on his front tooth replaced with a diamond?
PLEASANT UNDER GLASS
The armonica was an overnight success. Franklin received orders for the instrument from customers in Paris, Versailles, Prague, and Turin. Marie Antoinette took lessons on it. The world’s greatest composers, including Mozart, Beethoven, Donizetti, Richard Strauss, and Saint-Saëns, wrote music for it. Thomas Jefferson called it “the greatest present offered to the musical world in this century.”
Because of its angelic tones, many people believed the glass armonica had healing powers. Franklin agreed: he used it to heal the “melancholia” of Princess Izabela Czartoryska of Poland in 1772. Dr. Franz Mesmer, the father of hypnotism, used the armonica to calm his patients during his magnetic séances. By 1790 more than 5,000 armonicas had been sold, making it the most celebrated musical instrument of the 18th century.
Then, just as quickly as it began, the musical fad ended.
Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader Page 50