Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  • At gatherings hosted by an international organization, such as the United Nations or the Olympic Games, national flags are displayed in alphabetical order, according to the official language of the host country. For example, in England, the Spanish flag is alphabetized by the letter S, for “Spain.” In Mexico, where Spanish is spoken, it would be alphabetized under E, for “España.”

  Poll result: 80% of Hollywood executives believe there’s a link…

  The Host Country’s Flag

  At gatherings hosted by a particular country, it is common for the flag of the host country to be displayed in a special position of honor. That position depends on how many flags are being flown and in what configuration. If two flags are flown, the host country’s flag should be flown to the left of the other flag, as seen by observers. If three flags are flown, it should be flown from the middle pole. If four or more flags are flown, it should be on the left again, or two host country flags may be flown, one at each end.

  If the flags are flying from flagpoles organized in a circle, the host flag should fly from the place of greatest prominence, as seen by viewers as they approach or enter the circle.

  * * *

  POLI-TALKS

  Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) describes the Internet

  “There’s one company now that you can sign up with and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mailbox when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right. But this service isn’t going to go through the Internet and what you do is you just go to a place on the Internet and you order your movie and guess what, you can order 10 of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free. Ten of them streaming across that Internet and what happens to your own personal Internet?

  “I just the other day—an Internet was sent to me by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially…

  “No, I’m not finished! I want people to understand my position, I’m not going to take a lot of time. They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.”

  …between TV violence and real violence.

  LINCOLN’S DUEL

  Politics can be a dirty, nasty business. And this forgotten bit of Americana reminds us that some people take it very seriously.

  THEM’S FIGHTIN’ WORDS

  In 1842 a scandalous letter to the editor appeared in the Sangamo Journal in Springfield, Illinois. The newspaper was loyal to the Whig party (forerunner of the Republican party), and, not surprisingly, the target of the letter was a member of the opposition Democrats—Illinois state auditor James J. Shields.

  The letter was biting. Signed by “Aunt Becca” from “The Lost Townships,” it mocked Shields in every possible way: as an auditor, as an American, even as a man. Among many other insults, “Aunt Becca” described Shields as “a ballroom dandy, floatin’ about on the earth without heft or substance, just like a lot of cat-fur where cats had been fightin’.” The attack became the talk of Illinois, and Shields, known as a vain and pompous man, was enraged. He threatened to find out who wrote the letter and to “meet them on the field of honor.”

  AUNTIE ABE

  Illinois was in terrible financial shape in 1842, as was most of the United States. The Panic of 1837, one of the worst economic depressions in the country’s history, had left the state in enormous debt. Shields, as state auditor, took the brunt of the blame, even though it was no fault of his: he had been appointed to the office in 1839. The state’s mounting debt culminated in the closing of the State Bank of Illinois in 1842, and Shields ordered that notes from that bank would no longer be accepted for tax payments. People were enraged—and the Whigs saw an opportunity to score some political points. One of them was a young congressman named Abraham Lincoln. Known already for his caustic wit and sarcasm, he had penned the letter from “Aunt Becca.”

  Soon after news of the letter and Shields’s response spread, another letter appeared from “Aunt Becca,” this one written by two of Lincoln’s friends, Julia Jayne and Mary Todd (the future Mrs. Lincoln). Their letter was even more inflammatory than Lincoln’s: “I will give him a choice, however, in one thing,” it said in response to Shields’s fighting words, “and that is whether, when we fight, I shall wear breeches or he petticoats, for I presume this change is sufficient to place us on an equality.”

  Duels and don’ts: In Paraguay, duelling is perfectly legal…

  Shields went to the editor of the newspaper and demanded to know who had written the letters. The editor, as instructed, told him it was Lincoln (who didn’t want to get his friends in trouble). Shields wrote an angry letter to Lincoln and demanded an immediate retraction. Lincoln replied that if the request were made a bit more gentlemanly, he might honor it. That only made Shields angrier—and he publicly challenged Lincoln to a duel.

  IT’S ON

  By this point, Lincoln realized that the situation was getting out of hand—but he had to accept the challenge. He was a politician, and duels were still respected shows of a man’s courage. (It may also have had something to do with Lincoln’s desire to impress Mary Todd.) In any case, he accepted Shields’s challenge, and the upcoming match between the two politicians was the biggest news story in Illinois.

  Because Lincoln was the one who had been challenged, the choice of location and weapons was his. Dueling was illegal in Illinois, so he chose an island in the Mississippi River between Illinois and Missouri, the island being part of Missouri. For weapons, he chose cavalry broadswords.

  The fight was to take place in a circle 10 feet across and 12 feet deep, with a plank across the middle that neither man could cross. This, historians say, was Lincoln’s way of saying how ridiculous he thought the whole thing was—but it also gave him a distinct advantage if they were actually going to fight. He was 6'4" and long-armed; Shields was much shorter. Judge William H. Herndon, Lincoln’s friend and law partner, wrote, “There is little doubt that the man who had swung a beetle [a heavy wooden hammer] and driven iron wedges into gnarled hickory logs could have cleft the skull of his antagonist, but he had no such intention.” Lincoln hoped Shields would see his disadvantage and call the fight off, but Shields wasn’t about to back down.

  …if both parties are registered blood donors.

  A SHOW OF FORCE

  On the morning of September 22, 1842, the two men and their respective parties showed up on the island. The “seconds,” friends of the fighters charged with securing the location and weapons and so forth, immediately began negotiating to try to bring about a peaceful solution. When Shields refused, Lincoln started hacking branches off a nearby willow tree with his sword—high above his head. The sight apparently took some of the stubbornness out of Shields. The two sides soon came to an agreement, with Lincoln agreeing to admit in writing that he had written the letters, and saying he “had no intention of injuring your personal or private character or standing as a man or gentleman.” The ordeal was over.

  AFTERMATH

  Lincoln and Shields never became friends, but their near-duel didn’t ruin their relationship as politicians—or soldiers. When the American Civil War began 19 years later, Lincoln was president and commander-in-chief. Shields, a onetime Army officer, joined the Union Army, and Lincoln made him a brigadier general. And after Shields was wounded in 1862 while his troops gave Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson his only defeat of the entire war, Lincoln approved his promotion to major general (it was blocked by Congress). Shields served with distinction and went on to serve in C
ongress after the war, becoming the only man in history to be elected U.S. Senator in three different states (Illinois, Minnesota, and Missouri). He died, still in office, on June 1, 1879.

  Historians say that Lincoln was terribly embarrassed about the duel and the events leading up to it, and refused to speak about it afterward. In an 1865 letter, Mary Todd Lincoln wrote that an army officer once visited the White House and asked President Lincoln, “Is it true…that you once went out to fight a duel and all for the sake of the lady by your side?” Lincoln answered, “I do not deny it, but if you desire my friendship, you will never mention it again.”

  * * *

  “The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.”

  —Henry Kissinger

  America’s first public park: Boston Common, established in 1634.

  THE BRISTOL SESSIONS

  Or, how one man with a microphone changed the face of American music.

  MAKING MUSIC HISTORY

  For two weeks in the summer of 1927, a vacant store in the Appalachian town of Bristol, Tennessee, became the scene of one of the pivotal moments in music history. Johnny Cash later called it, “the single most important event in the history of country music.” Scores of “hillbilly” musicians came out of the mountains and hollows, and performed their songs in an improvised recording studio run by a 35-year-old producer named Ralph Peer. With each acetate master Peer made, American roots music left its rural isolation farther behind and began down the path to worldwide acclaim. Two of the artists Peer recorded—Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family—became so influential that they defined the style of country for generations to come.

  THE HITMAKER

  In the early days of the recording industry, most records were made for urban markets. Peer noticed that many new record players were being sold in rural areas, but relatively few records were being sold in those same regions. He figured that there was probably an untapped market of rural people hungry for their own kind of music. When Peer became recording director for Okeh Records in 1920, he seized his chance to go out and find that music.

  Ralph Peer knew a good thing when he heard it. His first success was getting Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” on wax—the first blues recording targeted specifically for a black audience. He also gets the credit for making what experts agree is the first country music record: a medley of fiddle tunes called “Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane/That Old Hen Cackled” by Fiddlin’ John Carson. Peer wanted to make more country records, but he was limited by the small number of artists he could convince to come from their Appalachian homes to his New York recording studio. His solution: Take the studio to the mountains.

  Oh, be-have! State dance of South Carolina: the Shag.

  SETTING UP SHOP

  By 1925 Peer had left the Okeh label and moved to the Victor Talking Machine Company, because, as he said later, they “wanted to get into the hillbilly business and I knew how to do it.” After a long talent search through the South, Peer decided to set up shop in Bristol, Tennessee. The town of 32,000 was the largest in the area, and, more important, it lay right where the borders of Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Virginia come close together. Peer was convinced that true “mountaineer melodies” still survived in these states. He rented the second floor of the Taylor-Christian Hat Company at 410 State Street, put an ad in the local paper announcing that the Victor Recording Company would be recording local talent, and went back to New York to alert his bosses.

  On June 23, 1927, Peer drove back to Bristol with his wife, two engineers, and a carload of recording equipment. After hauling their gear up the stairs into the vacant office, the team hung blankets on the walls to deaden the sound and prepared to receive an onslaught of hopeful musicians and singers. The only problem: Almost no one showed up.

  ALERT THE MEDIA

  A desperate Peer ran down to the local paper and talked the editor into running a front-page feature about his makeshift studio. The article appeared the next day, touting the great opportunity available to the locals. One paragraph mentioned that session musicians often made as much as $100 a day in New York, and that Peer was prepared to do the same for the musicians he recorded. By noon the makeshift studio on State Street was full of hungry musicians looking to make some easy money.

  Peer was ecstatic. The recording sessions ran day and night to accommodate the rush. By August 5, Peer had 76 masters by 19 different acts to take back to New York. Some of the groups he recorded: the West Virginia Coonhunters, Dad Blackard and the Shelors, Red Snodgrass, Ernest Phillips and His Holiness Quartet, Blind Alfred Reed, the Alcoa Quartet, and the Bluff City Church Choir. Nearly all of these singers and musicians went on to have solid careers in the infant country music industry. But two of the acts that walked in the door at 410 State Street ended up doing much more than that.

  First person to be born in Antarctica: Emelio Palma, in 1978.

  BRISTOL BOYS

  Down in North Carolina, word of the sessions in Bristol reached a local band that was working the Asheville music scene. Three of the band members—brothers Claude and Jack Grant, and Jack Pierce—were from Bristol, so they talked their lead singer, a skinny railroad worker from Mississippi named Jimmie Rodgers, to come along with them. The night before their session, they got into a disagreement over how to bill themselves. The argument grew heated until finally the singer said in disgust, “All right, I’ll just sing one by myself.”

  The next day Rodgers recorded two songs: a World War I tune, “The Soldier’s Sweetheart,” and a lullaby called “Sleep, Baby, Sleep” that featured his distinctive yodel. The session lasted just over two hours, and Peer paid Rodgers $100. When the record was released in October 1927, it proved enough of a success to convince Peer to record more of Rodgers’s songs. This time Rodgers went to the Victor studios in Camden, New Jersey, and one of the tunes he recorded there, “T for Texas (Blue Yodel)” sold half a million copies. Rodgers became the first superstar of country music until his career was cut short by tuberculosis in 1933.

  FAMILY BUSINESS

  At the time of the Bristol sessions, Alvin Pleasant Carter, known as A. P., was managing a general store in nearby Maces Springs, West Virginia. He and his wife, Sara, sang together and were popular with the locals. After he heard about the sessions, A. P. packed Sara into their jalopy and headed for Bristol. At the last minute he asked Sara’s sister, Maybelle, to come along to play guitar and add a little harmony.

  When he first met the Carters at the studio, Peer was unimpressed. As they climbed out of their broken-down car in their overalls and homemade dresses, Peer suspected that they were “too hillbilly” to be any good. A. P. had such a thick mountain accent that he was almost unintelligible. Then they set up and began to play. For Peer it was like striking gold. Although she was only 18, Maybelle was already a virtuoso guitar player, picking in a unique style that Peer had never heard before (it came to be known as the “Carter scratch”). But it was Sara’s voice that sold the deal for him: a clear, thin alto, it seemed the essence of pure mountain singing. On August 1 and 2, the Carter Family, as they decided to call themselves, recorded six tunes, including “Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow” and “The Poor Orphan Child.” Within months, they were nationally known recording stars and went on to be the bestselling country artists of the 1920s and 1930s.

  Monkey business: Mother orangutans breastfeed their young for as long as 7 years.

  THE UNBROKEN CIRCLE

  It’s hard to overstate the influence that the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers had on the development of country music as a result of the Bristol sessions. The recordings Ralph Peer made, not only of the Carters and Rodgers but also of the other mountain artists, were the first to be widely heard in rural America. For many Americans, this was their first exposure to records at all, and they took to the music and new technology with gusto. By the 1940s, an entire generation had grown up listening to Rodgers’s “blue yodel” and the tight harmonies of th
e Carter Family.

  Country music continued to evolve, from the bluegrass innovations of Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs to the honky-tonk of Hank Williams to the intricate harmonies of the Louvin and Everly Brothers. And out of that grew the crossover blend of country and R&B that, in the hands of Elvis Presley and other early rockabilly artists, morphed into rock ’n’ roll—another direct descendant of those crude acetate masters recorded in a makeshift studio in Bristol, Tennessee.

  * * *

  WORLD CUP MADNESS

  “A Beijing soccer fan refused to let the small matter of his house burning down disturb his enjoyment of the 2006 World Cup match between France and Spain. A fire broke out in a hutong in the center of the Chinese capital at kick-off time and gutted the traditional courtyard dwelling, the Beijing Daily Messenger reported. ‘When the neighbors shouted “fire!” I took my little baby and ran out in my nightclothes,’ the man’s wife said. ‘My husband paid no attention to the danger, just grabbed the television and put it under his arm. After getting out of the house, he then set about finding an electric socket to plug in and continue watching his game.’”

  —Reuters

  The word calzone literally translates to “pant leg” in Italian.

  THE GLOMAR EXPLORER

  Shh! This story details one of the most incredible examples of nutty spy technology. Ever. (But don’t tell anyone.)

  LOST AT SEA

  On March 8, 1968, the submarine USS Barb was on a mission, secretly monitoring shipping activity near Vladivostok, home of the Soviet Union’s largest naval base on the Pacific Ocean. Suddenly five Soviet submarines came racing out of the port at full speed. Subs are supposed to be stealthy and silent—these were anything but. They were noisily “pinging” the ocean floor with active sonar, and repeatedly diving and surfacing. It was clear they were looking for something, and a dozen surface warships soon joined in the hunt. Radio communication between the ships was frantic and unencrypted, another indication of the urgency of the search. What were they looking for?