Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  • Your brain is more active when you’re dreaming than it is when you’re awake.

  • Most primates sleep an average of 10 hours per night; humans average only 7. But that’s a recent development. Until the turn of the 20th century, humans slept for 10 hours, too. Who’s to blame? Thomas Edison. The invention of the lightbulb turned us into a society of night owls.

  • Having trouble falling sleep? Turn off all the lights or get some eyeshades. You need melatonin to feel drowsy, and melatonin production slows down when ambient light passes through the eyelids.

  • Certain scents can help you fall asleep. According to a recent study, the most effective aroma is jasmine.

  • If you want to remember your dreams, write them down as soon as you wake up. After five minutes, 50% of the dream fades from memory; after 10 minutes, 90% is gone.

  • If you’re average, you’ll spend more than six years of your life dreaming.

  Zzzzzz… Grrrrr… Zzzzzz… Grrrr… One in 8 men snores in his sleep. One in 10 grinds his teeth.

  • Your body is most ready for sleep during predawn hours and right after lunch, during the afternoon “siesta” time. Consequently, these are the two most dangerous times to operate heavy machinery.

  • New parents will lose 400 to 750 hours of sleep in their baby’s first year.

  • Want the best night’s sleep possible? To sleep like a baby, literally? Try the fetal position. It provides the body with optimum blood circulation for a healthy sleeping session.

  • Everyone experiences “microsleep.” It occurs when you are straining to stay awake at a meeting or on a long trip. Your eyes may remain open, but all outside stimuli will go unnoticed for anywhere from one second to a few minutes.

  • We are programmed to sleep at night, thanks to our circadian rhythms—physiological cycles that follow a daily pattern. No matter how long someone works the night shift, their body will never fully adapt.

  * * *

  REAL CANADIAN PLACE NAMES

  Goobies

  Blow Me Down

  Cupids

  Jerry’s Nose

  Lawn

  Mosquito

  Nameless Cove

  Witless Bay

  Lower Economy

  Malignant Cove

  Meat Cove

  Mushaboom

  Burnt Church

  Mechanic

  Asbestos

  Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!

  Cheapside

  Ethel

  Bigger

  Porcupine

  Swastika

  John D

  Swords

  Tiny

  Finger

  Wawa

  Elbow

  Eyebrow

  Uranium City

  Head-Smashed-In

  Buffalo Jump

  Mirror

  Vulcan

  Clo-oose

  Hydraulic

  Spuzzum

  Stoner

  Mayo

  Was he experienced? No—Jimi Hendrix never took a formal music lesson.

  THE GOLDEN AGE OF RADIO, PART I

  Long before videos or DVDs, even before television, families used to gather nightly for their favorite programs. They’d sit around the family radio and listen to popular comedies, dramas, and variety shows. Here’s how it all started.

  LISTEN TO THIS

  Have you ever heard this joke about Alexander Graham Bell? “When he invented the phone, who did he talk to? He was the only guy with a phone.” It was the same with radio when it started out. The only people who owned radios were hobbyists who built their sets themselves. There were no radio stations, as we now know them—these radio amateurs, or “hams,” built their own transmitters and receivers so they could talk to each other. They were enthusiastic about their hobby and spent a lot of time talking about their radios: what kind of equipment they had, how much power they were using, and how well they were receiving each other’s signals. But even dedicated hams got a little tired of the conversation after a while.

  One day in October 1919, Frank Conrad, a ham in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, got so bored with talking that he pushed a phonograph up to his microphone and played a record of the Stephen Foster song “Old Black Joe.” In the past, Conrad’s transmissions had always been directed toward one particular person. This time, he sent “Old Black Joe” out over the air waves to no one in particular…and made radio history. He called this new form of communication “broadcasting.”

  AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR

  Conrad continued to play records over the air and was soon deluged with letters from other radio operators thanking him and requesting specific songs. He couldn’t honor them all, so instead he announced that he would play records on Wednesday and Saturday nights, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. After he’d gone through his own record collection a few times, a local record store offered to lend him more. Conrad returned the favor (and made history again) by telling his listeners that the records were for sale at the store. It was the first commercial ever aired.

  First female national news anchor: Barbara Walters (1976).

  AN INDUSTRY IS BORN

  Over time Conrad’s regular broadcasts became so popular that the local Joseph Horne department store began selling $10 ready-made crystal radio receivers to people who wanted to listen to Conrad’s broadcasts but didn’t want to build their own radios. The store advertised its radios in local newspapers.

  Taking out newspaper ads may not sound like a very big deal, but it made all the difference. Although a few other people had played music over the air even earlier than Conrad (Reginald Fessenden, the man credited with inventing AM radio, played Christmas music and read Bible verses to ships at sea on Christmas Eve, 1906), nothing had come of those early broadcasts. Conrad worked as an engineer at Westinghouse, a company that manufactured electrical equipment for power plants, and he had been urging his company to get into the radio broadcasting business. But it wasn’t until Harry P. Davis, a Westinghouse vice president, saw the crystal radios advertised in the paper that someone in a position to do something about it finally realized that radio had potential far beyond the small pool of hams who built their own sets.

  ON THE AIR

  Davis figured the big money in radio would come from manufacturing and selling receivers, but he also knew that people had to have more to listen to than Conrad’s records two nights a week. He decided that Westinghouse should build its own radio station, one that would broadcast every night.

  The 1920 presidential election was less than a month away—why not start the new service with a bang, by broadcasting the results of the race between Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox? Davis put Conrad to work building a radio station on the roof of the Westinghouse plant in East Pittsburgh; he finished with time to spare. The station received its license—with its call letters, KDKA—on October 27, 1920, and began broadcasting election returns at 6 p.m. on election day, November 2. Listening audience: between 500 and 1,000 people. During the broadcast Conrad stayed home and manned his own station, ready to take over in case KDKA went off the air. But it didn’t—the broadcast continued without a hitch until noon the following day (Harding won in a landslide). The station is still on the air today.

  The earliest known will was written in 2550 B.C.

  THE RADIO CRAZE

  Radio started slowly at first and then exploded. In 1921 only eight more radio stations received licenses to broadcast; by the end of 1922 another 550 stations around the country were on the air. Now that there was something to listen to, Americans began buying radios as fast as manufacturers could make them. Sales went from almost none in 1920 to $60 million in 1922; they more than doubled in 1923 and doubled again in 1924, and kept climbing after that. By 1926 radios were a $500 million business.

  Another important development paralleled the tremendous growth in radio sales: the linking of individual radio stations—first into regional “chains,” as they were called, and then into national networks. AT&T
started the trend in 1923 when engineers figured out how to link the company’s 18 radio stations by telephone lines so that a program originating in one station could be broadcast simultaneously over every station in the network. By 1924 AT&T was broadcasting from coast to coast.

  In 1926 AT&T sold its radio stations to the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), which combined them with its own stations to form the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). The founding of NBC is considered the start of the golden age of radio.

  The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) network was formed in 1927, and a third network—Mutual Broadcasting—went on the air in 1934. In the early 1940s, an anti-trust decision by the Supreme Court forced NBC to split into two independent companies. One part was sold off to Lifesavers president Edward J. Noble in 1943 and was renamed the American Broadcasting Company (ABC).

  That was just the beginning for radio. For more on the little box’s Golden Age, turn the dial to page 269.

  * * *

  “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” —Walt Disney

  It’s against the law to run out of gas in Youngstown, Ohio.

  TOY FADS

  The Federal Communications Commission used to have a rule banning children’s TV shows based on existing commercial characters or toys. The reasoning was that kids are impressionable, and such TV shows would just be long ads. But in 1982, the FCC repealed the ruling. Result: TV shows designed to sell toys…lots of toys.

  TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES

  Description: Radioactive ooze turns four pet turtles into human-size crime-fighting, pizza-eating, jive-talking teens named Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donatello.

  A Fad is Born! In 1984 cartoonists Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman self-published Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a violent but darkly funny comic book. They printed 50,000 copies, all of which sold out in a few weeks. After that, the comic was published regularly for two years but garnered little interest beyond comic book fans. In 1986 advertising executive Mark Freedman discovered the comic and bought the rights from Laird and Eastman, figuring the Turtles could be a cultural phenomenon if they were marketed to kids, rather than older comic-book collectors. A newer, more kid-friendly comic was introduced, along with a TV cartoon series and lots and lots of Ninja Turtle toys. Freedman was right: In 1989, $250 million worth of toys were sold; in 1990, a live-action movie earned $140 million; and in 1991, a Burger King promotion sold 200,000 Turtle videos per week. But all fads are destined to die. Sales plummeted in 1992, and the cartoon was cancelled. A grittier, back-to-basics comic book was released, but it bombed. New cartoons and new toys were released in 2003, but they flopped too. A big failure? Hardly. Since 1984 the Ninja Turtles have generated $6 billion in revenue.

  TRANSFORMERS

  Description: Giant robots that can “transform” into vehicles crash land on Earth from outer space, and wage battle for “energon” cubes.

  A Fad is Born! In 1982 Hasbro Toys scoured the world for toys on which they could base cartoons, which they could then use to sell more toys. They bought the rights to three Japanese toy lines: Takara Toys’ Car Robots and Micro Change, and Bandai’s Machine Men. The toys were all die-cast metal robots that, with a few twists and turns, became toy planes, cars, or other objects. Nearly 20 million of these toys had been sold around the world—but would they sell in the United States? Industry insiders predicted that Hasbro’s “Transformers” would flop—complicated Japanese toys were untested and parents would balk at paying $10 for a toy car, they said. But the insiders were wrong. Kids loved the strange new toys and action-packed cartoon. (It didn’t hurt that kids could figure out how to make the toys “transform,” while their parents couldn’t.) By the end of 1985, $380 million worth of Transformers had been sold. Sales and interest declined after that, but various versions of the show have been on the air since 1985 and related toys still sell well. The success of Transformers helped make Hasbro the second largest toymaker in the world.

  There is a G.I. Joe action figure modeled after General Colin Powell.

  MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS

  Description: With the help of huge robot dinosaurs, six teenagers use ninja skills to fight giant monsters sent to Earth by an evil witch who lives in a dumpster on the moon.

  A Fad is Born! The most popular kids show and toy line of the 1990s is an unlikely success story. In 1986 TV producer Haim Saban had an idea: take footage of the robot dinosaurs from the Japanese action show Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger (Dinosaur Squadron Beast Ranger) and combine it with newly shot scenes of American teenagers. The special effects from the Japanese show were cheap and sloppy, mixing miniature models, marionettes, and stuntmen in rubber suits. It took Saban seven years to sell it to a network, but Fox finally agreed to air it. Good move. It was an instant hit in the fall of 1993, becoming the #1 kids show on TV. Bandai was contracted to make toys based on the teenagers and robots, but didn’t anticipate the high demand. How high? Twelve million toys were sold in 1993. By 1996 the show had exhausted all the available Kyoryu footage, so it had to start stealing from other Japanese shows. Now, each fall, Power Rangers changes its entire premise and cast. New heroes, monsters, robots, villains—and toys—are introduced. To date, Bandai has sold over 160 million Power Ranger toys.

  A typical hurricane lasts nine days.

  CANADIAN NAMIN’

  Over the years, we’ve written about how dozens of American places got their names. Now it’s Canada’s turn.

  TORONTO

  North of the city is Lake Toronto. The Iroquois who once lived there called it toronto, meaning “place where trees stand in water.” Who put trees in the lake? Another native group, the Hurons, planted saplings there to help trap fish.

  CALGARY

  In the 1870s, when the area was a post for the Mounted Police, it was named Fort Brisebois after officer Ephrem Brisebois. But in 1876, after Brisebois declared a woman from the Metis tribe his common-law wife, his superior, Colonel James Macleod, angrily renamed it. Macleod had just returned from a trip to Calgary—a popular white sand beach on the Isle of Mull off Scotland—so Fort Brisebois became Fort Calgary. Calgary comes from the Gaelic Cala ghearraidh, which means “beach of the meadow.”

  QUÉBEC

  Prior to the arrival of French colonists in the 1500s, the area was inhabited by the Algonquin people. The Algonquins called it kebek, meaning “straight” or “narrow,” referring to the way the river (now the St. Lawrence) narrows where the Algonquins settled (now Québec City). Explorer Samuel de Champlain made the word French in 1613, spelling it “Québec.”

  OTTAWA

  In 1832 the British government hired a group of engineers, headed by Colonel John By, to build a canal in the colony of Upper Canada. The large camp that housed workers, called Bytown in the colonel’s honor, eventually grew into a town. In 1855 it became officially incorporated as a city, and took the new name Ottawa from the Adàwe, the native people with whom Europeans traded during early colonization of the area. French settlers had corrupted Adàwe to Outaouak; British settlers corrupted it to Ottawa.

  Ireland’s longest place name: Muckanaghederdauhaulia (“pig marsh between two saltwater inlets”).

  JUST PLANE WEIRD

  If you’re reading this book on an airplane, you might want to skip this section until you’re safely back on the ground.

  MUST. READ. INSTRUCTIONS.

  In 2005 Japan Airlines (JAL) announced that one of its planes had been flying with two of its engines fitted on the wrong side of the plane. The “right” and “left” engines had been switched, they said, by a maintenance company in Singapore. The engines have different thrust directions, JAL officials said, but assured the public that there was no danger, adding that the plane made 440 flights before the mistake was discovered.

  AIRLOCK

  In August 2006, the captain of an Air Canada flight from Ottawa to Winnipeg turned controls over to his co-pilot and left the cockpit to use the bathroom. When he returned, the cockpit door
wouldn’t budge—it was jammed. He was locked out, and the co-pilot couldn’t get it open from the other side. Panicked crew members had to take the door off its hinges to get the captain back inside—and they had to do it in a hurry, since there were only 30 minutes left on the flight. They succeeded; he safely landed the plane in Winnipeg. “The safety of our passengers was never compromised,” Air Canada said in a statement. Nevertheless, the embarrassed airline didn’t report the incident to Canada’s transit safety commission because they said it fell into the category of “non-reportable.”

  FLYING BLIND

  A 41-year-old Belgian named Luc Costermans hoped to set a world record: most hours ever logged by a blind pilot. Costermans lost his sight in an accident in 2004, and took up flying only after becoming blind. He planned to complete the feat with his instructor, Jean Andrieu, who takes care of takeoffs but gives the controls to Costermans once they’re airborne. If that seems weird, consider this: he did it. In June 2006 Costermans made the record books by flying a 13-hour 1,180-mile flight from France to Belgium, and back again.

  Do their shoes have tongues? Bees taste with their back feet.

  SPECIAL DELIVERY

  A 25-year-old British military pilot was on a training exercise in eastern England in early 2006 when he made an unscheduled stop in a $7.27 million Lynx helicopter. “The pilot took it upon himself to deliver a pizza to his girlfriend,” a Ministry of Defense spokesman said. “He has been made aware that the chain of command doesn’t condone his actions and has been disciplined.” The stunt prompted fellow pilots at his base to design a new badge for the unit: the words Quattro Stagione, or “Four Seasons,” over a Domino’s Pizza logo.

  LET’S GET SMALL