What would Jesus wear? According to some scholars, he wore a size 10-3/4 sandal.
•Germany: They’re dyed green and distributed on Holy Thursday, the day of the Last Supper.
•Poland: They’re decorated with colored dots, which represent the tears that Mary wept over Christ’s crucifixion.
•Armenia: They’re hollowed out and decorated with religious scenes.
•Ukraine: Melted beeswax is applied to the shell, and the egg is dipped repeatedly into a series of dyes. The wax peels off to reveal intricate, colorful patterns. The ornate eggs are called pysanki.
EASTER SUNDAY: In the early years of Christianity, Easter was an informal holiday, celebrated sometime in the spring. Early Christians were widely persecuted and could not worship openly, but conditions eased when Constantine became the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. In 325 A.D., he issued an edict: Easter was to be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox (the first day of spring).
According to that schedule, Easter will always fall on the same weekend as Passover, the time when Christ was condemned. Linking Passover, Easter, and the vernal equinox ensures that Easter will be on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25 every year.
EASTER BASKETS: This is also from the “Pennsylvania Dutch” Germans. Children would build a little “nest” and leave it overnight somewhere in the yard or home for the Oschter Haws to lay it’s colored eggs in. This eventually evolved into the brightly-colored baskets of eggs and candy we have today.
TOO MUCH EGGS-CITEMENT
The annual Easter Egg Hunt is the White House’s largest public gathering. The first one was held in 1872 on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. Children were so rambunctious and tore up so much of the lawn that Congress passed a bill banning recreation on Capitol grounds. The event returned in 1878, this time to the White House lawn, and was attended by President Rutherford B. Hayes.
Bunny-noculars: Rabbits can see forward and backward at the same time.
THE WORLD’S FIRST MUSCLE CAR
Ever seen—or heard—a muscle car? They were big sellers in the mid-1960s, but by the early 1970s they were gone. Here’s a look at the car that started it all: the Pontiac GTO.
BREAKDOWN
In the summer of 1956 General Motors appointed an engineer named Semon “Bunkie” Knudsen general manager of the company’s Pontiac division. Knudsen’s marching orders were simple: he had five years to improve the division’s sales and if he couldn’t do it, GM might shut Pontiac down for good.
In those days Pontiac was America’s sixth largest automaker. The cars were affordable and reliable, but they were slow and their styling was outdated; they were the kind of cars that grandparents drove. That was the biggest problem, Knudsen figured. “You can sell a young man’s car to an old man,” he liked to say, “but you’ll never sell an old man’s car to a young man.”
Knudsen hired E.M. “Pete” Estes, formerly the chief engineer at Oldsmobile, to head the engineering department, and he hired a 31-year-old Packard engineer named John Z. DeLorean to be Estes’ assistant. Changes came quickly: They immediately began manufacturing high-performance versions of their existing models. The following year they created the Pontiac Bonneville, a racy full-sized convertible with a big V-8 engine and fancy bucket seats.
WIDE-TRACKING
For 1959, Knudsen had the designers come up with a new wide-bodied car with extra-wide tires to boot. These “Wide-Track” Pontiacs had an athletic, broad-shouldered look that caught on quick with younger drivers. By 1960 they were the bestselling mid-priced car in the country.
By 1961 Pontiac had done so well that Knudsen was promoted to general manager of Chevrolet. Pete Estes replaced him as the head of Pontiac, and John DeLorean became the chief engineer. Together, they were about to come up with the most famous Pontiac ever.
True or false: Mythomaniacs are people who lie constantly. (True)
OUT OF THE RACE
From 1959 to 1963, Pontiac had dominated the NASCAR circuit with their custom-built race cars, but then GM decided to stop producing them so they could focus on selling higher-profit consumer vehicles. All auto divisions were banned from any participation in motorsports. The divisions weren’t even allowed to assist professional race car drivers. Estes was miffed about the restriction—he didn’t want to lose the association with sports. So he decided that if he couldn’t put a race car on a race track, he’d start putting them on the street.
He and DeLorean used the same trick that hot-rodders had used for years: They took the giant engine out of the full-sized Pontiac Bonneville and dropped it into the mid-sized Pontiac Tempest/LeMans. They added lots of other goodies, too: high performance carburetors, a heavy duty clutch and suspension, dual chrome exhausts, an air scoop on the front hood, and an optional 4-speed manual transmission with a stick shift on the floor.
SECRET WEAPON
It’s not uncommon for auto companies to hide new models from the public, but Estes and DeLorean hid it from their bosses at GM. Putting such a huge engine into a car that small was against company rules, so rather than introduce the car as a new model, they called it an “option package” for the Pontiac LeMans instead, hoping that nobody would realize what they were up to.
DeLorean named the souped up LeMans the GTO, which was short for Gran Turisimo Omologato. Omologato is the Italian word for homologous, which means “all coming from the same thing.” Whereas most custom-built hot rods of the time were pieced together from different cars and “aftermarket” parts, the GTO was truly homologous—all of its parts came from Pontiac. This made it America’s first “factory hot rod,” or “muscle car.”
Calling the GTO an option package for the LeMans paid off: by the time the bosses at GM realized what was happening, car dealers had already placed orders for 5,000 of the cars, so GM grudgingly agreed to let the car be built. Whatever anger the company had toward Estes and DeLorean disappeared when more than 32,000 GTOs sold that first model year alone, and 75,000 in 1965. The car was a smash hit, and GM not only allowed the GTO to become a model in its own right for 1966 (it sold nearly 97,000 cars that year), it also made plans for its other divisions to produce their own muscle cars, including the Chevy Chevelle SS, the Buick Regal Gran Sport, and the Oldsmobile Cutlass 442.
That’s all? An elephant can hold up to a gallon and a half of water in its trunk.
MUSCLE CARS EVERYWHERE
Over the next few years the Big Three automakers got into the act, too: Ford introduced the Fairlane GT, the Mercury Cyclone GT, and the Ford Torino Cobra. Chrysler came out with the Dodge Charger and the Plymouth Road Runner, to name just a few. Each year the engines got bigger and more powerful. The 1964 Pontiac GTO had a 325 horsepower engine; by 1971 the Plymouth Road Runner had a 425 horsepower engine.
END OF THE ROAD
Muscle cars were popular because they were cheap and fast—a brand-new 1964 GTO convertible cost only $3,081—and though many got less than 10 miles to the gallon, gas only cost about 25¢ a gallon so it wasn’t a problem. Muscle cars took to the road by the tens of thousands in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
And then by 1973 they were gone.
What happened? For one thing, when the auto insurance industry realized that muscle cars were little more than street-legal race cars, they raised their rates so high that many people paid more for insurance than they did for their monthly car payment. Then in 1973 the Arab oil embargo caused the price of gasoline to soar. Suddenly cheap muscle cars weren’t so cheap anymore. To make things worse, they were also coming under increased criticism from environmentalists and car safety advocates.
The automakers were also being pressured by the federal government to build more fuel-efficient cars that could run on regular or unleaded gas. In 1974 Pontiac came out with a muscle car without any muscle, a GTO with only 200 horsepower. In 1975 they didn’t even bother. The GTO bit the dust, just like nearly every other muscle car it inspired.
&n
bsp; If you missed your chance to own a GTO, cheer up. Pontiac brought a new one to market in 2004. Price: $32,495, quite a lot more than a new GTO cost forty years ago, but about as much as you can expect a classic GTO in excellent condition to cost you today.
You can estimate the age of a star by its color...typically, the redder, the older.
BANNED BOOKS
Sometimes even the most popular, critically acclaimed, and even kid-friendly books can be removed from libraries and schools.
Book: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume
Banned in: Fond du Lac, Wisconsin
Reason: In 1982 concerned parents challenged this novel about a young girl dealing with puberty because it was “sexually offensive” (Margaret experiences her first menstrual cycle) and “amoral” (Margaret wonders if God is real).
Book: American Heritage Dictionary
Banned in: Eldon, Missouri, and Anchorage, Alaska
Reason: This dictionary used to be one of the only dictionaries that included curse words. (Who hasn’t looked up dirty words in the dictionary for a cheap laugh?) Then in 1978, the Eldon public library banned it for containing 39 objectionable words. Hoping to avoid further controversy, the editors of the dictionary elected not to include the naughty words in future printings. However, in 1987 the Anchorage School Board banned the censored version because it still contained slang definitions of words, such as knocker and balls.
Book: Little Red Riding Hood, by the Brothers Grimm
Banned in: Two California school districts
Reason: Big Bad Wolf eating people too violent? Nope. In 1989 school officials thought the story might encourage children to drink because it shows a bottle of wine among the food Red brings to her grandmother.
Book: Where’s Waldo, by Martin Handford
Banned in: Saginaw, Michigan
Reason: The public libraries of Saginaw tried to ban Waldo in 1989 because some of the pages supposedly contained “dirty things,” including the bare back of a topless sunbather in a beach scene. (As if Waldo himself wasn’t hard enough to find.)
It’s enough to make you cry: The national symbol of Wales is the leek, a type of onion.
Book: Mickey Mouse comics
Banned in: Italy
Reason: In 1938 Italy’s National Conference of Juvenile Literature banned all materials featuring the Disney icon. The organization thought he encouraged children to be individuals, a concept that clashed with the fascist politics of dictator Benito Mussolini.
Book: Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Banned in: England (almost)
Reason: Though many think Shakespeare was the greatest writer who ever lived, poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”) didn’t. In 1815 Coleridge attempted to ban all of Shakespeare’s plays and poems throughout England because he found them crude and vulgar. Coleridge’s efforts actually had the opposite effect: He didn’t get the Bard banned, but the attention led to England’s first real academic interest in Shakespeare.
Book: To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Banned in: Eden Valley, Minnesota
Reason: Required reading for schools across the nation, To Kill a Mockingbird delivers a strong message of racial tolerance. Nevertheless, Eden Valley removed it from schools in 1977, and was soon followed by schools in New York, Illinois, and Missouri. Protestors said the book’s violent depiction of a hate crime actually encouraged racism.
Book: Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
Banned in: Foxworth, Mississippi
Reason: In 1998 this novel about the dangers of book banning... was banned. West Marion High School in Foxworth took it off the required reading list when parents protested the book’s use of the phrase “g*dd*m.” (We added the asterisks because Uncle John banned the letters “o” and “a.” Hppy reding and g with the flw!)
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
—Joseph Brodsky
In the 1800s, people segregated their books by the sex of the author.
THE NAKED TRUTH
Let it all hang out.
“Take off all your clothes and walk down the street waving a machete and firing an Uzi, and terrified citizens will phone the police and report: ‘There’s a naked person outside!’”
—Mike Nichols
“On the fourth day of telecommuting, I realized that clothes are totally unnecessary.”
—Dilbert
“I often think that a slightly exposed shoulder emerging from a long satin nightgown is far more sexy than two naked bodies in bed.”
—Bette Davis
“I’ve posed nude for a photographer in the manner of Rodin’s ‘Thinker,’ but I merely looked constipated.”
—George Bernard Shaw
“I can’t bear being seen naked. I’m not exactly a tiny woman. When Sophia Loren is naked, this is a lot of nakedness.”
—Sophia Loren
“And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”
—Genesis (2:25)
“I used to sleep nude—until the earthquake.”
—Alyssa Milano
“What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed?”
—Michelangelo
“My school colors were clear. We used to say, ‘I’m not naked, I’m in the band.’”
—Steven Wright
“When you’ve seen a nude infant doing a backward somersault, you know why clothing exists.”
—Stephen Fry
“I think onstage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic, and a progressive religious experience.”
—Shelley Winters
“There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth.”
—Agnes Repplie
Fred Rogers took a morning swim every day in the nude.
JUST PLANE WEIRD
The fact that hundreds of thousands of pounds of aluminum and pretzels can fly is weird enough, but it gets weirder.
COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT
Artyom Chernopup, a passenger on a Russian Aeroflot flight, was upset because some of the flight attendants were obviously intoxicated. When he complained about it, three of the drunken crew members beat him up. Chernopup planned to press charges; Aeroflot announced that the entire crew would be “temporarily dismissed.”
WALK THIS WAY
A 35-year-old man was asked to remove his belt while he was going through airport security in Cologne, Germany. He refused. When told that he had to do it to get on the plane, he angrily took off his belt—and his pants—and walked through the detector in his underwear. (No alarms sounded.)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Louis Paul Kadlecek of Angelton, Texas, started celebrating his 21st birthday on February 25, 2004. He was still drunk four days later when he decided to break into the Brazoria County Airport and steal an airplane (he had never flown one before). He got into a single-engine Cessna (with a case of beer) and took off. A mile later he flew the plane into a 100,000-volt power line, cutting off electricity to a large portion of the county, and plunged 100 feet to the ground. The drunken man then got up and walked the three miles back to his home. Police arrested him the next morning. When asked where he had planned to take the plane, he answered, “I don’t know—Mexico, maybe.” He faces up to 20 years in prison.
IT’S NOT FUNNY
A week after two America West pilots were fired for showing up drunk, a passenger was thrown off an America West plane in San Francisco when she jokingly asked flight attendants if they had “checked the crew for sobriety.” The airline said the woman’s remarks “constituted a potential security problem.” David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, called it an abuse of authority. “They ought to put up a big si
gn with an ‘H’ and a slash through it for ‘No Humor Zone’ because there’s no joking allowed.”
Length of time it takes a drop of ocean water to travel around the world: 1,000 years.
DID THEY SEE ANYTHING?
Several security screeners at Denver International Airport were reprimanded in 2004 after they sent themselves through the X-ray machine “to see what their brains looked like.”
HOW MANY WERE DETAINED? NUN.
An American Airlines plane was evacuated in Dallas because someone thought they detected a strange smell onboard. No problem was found, so they let all the passengers back on, except for four nuns. The four Indian-born nuns, who were returning home to California from their Christmas vacation, were questioned for six hours before they were allowed to get on another flight. The explanation: “The crew members didn’t feel comfortable taking you inside.” “We didn’t know we looked suspicious,” said Sister Tessy Pius. (American Airlines later sent them a formal apology.)
JAILBIRD
Perhaps they saw a telltale bump in his pants. Or heard chirping noises. Or maybe it was just because he was arriving from Cuba. Whatever the reason, airport inspectors were suspicious of Carlos Avila when he landed in Miami in October 2001. They asked him to raise his pant legs...and discovered he had 44 birds strapped to his legs. Smuggling charges were made worse by the fact that Avila had signed papers specifically stating that he was not bringing birds into the United States. He was sentenced to six months in prison.
BETTER THAN A SEAT BELT
In 2002 the BBC reported that a woman on a Scandinavian Airlines flight got stuck to the airplane toilet when she pushed the button for the vacuum-powered flush. Sealed to the seat, she was unable to get up until technicians pried her loose hours later, after the plane had landed in the United States. (Great story, huh? Unfortunately it never really happened. At first Scandinavian Airlines confirmed the story, then later claimed it was all a big mistake—probably a fictional emergency from a training manual.)
Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader Page 9