Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  —Metro (U.K.)

  EARS TO YOU!

  “A Turkish bus driver glued part of his ear back on after it was cut off by thieves. Recep Yavrucu refused hospital treatment and bought a tube of super glue instead. He said he was scared of doctors and needles and preferred to treat his own wounds. Four youths attacked him on his regular run at Antalya. They also stole around £100. The injured man helped police with their inquiries but refused their offer to take him to the hospital. ‘I’ve never been to a doctor, and I’m not starting now,’ Mr. Yavrucu said. ‘Having a piece of my ear cut off was not that serious. I fixed it myself.’”

  —Hurriyet (Turkey)

  MISS OTHER UNIVERSE

  “In January, sponsors of a Bangkok ‘beauty’ pageant selected 40 contestants out of about 200 semi-finalists to vie for the title of Miss Acne-Free 2001. The 40 were selected actually on the basis of how severely pimpled and pock-marked their faces were, with the eventual winner to be the woman who, with treatment, clears up the most. Said one eager contestant, ‘It is not often that I can step into the limelight because of my acne.’”

  —The Nation (Thailand)

  Pope John Paul I once wrote a fan letter to Pinocchio.

  AWW, SHOOT

  “Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be shot? Phil Horner of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, did, so he took a gun and shot himself in the shoulder. While this may sound odd, it gets even more weird. Recently a 911 call came in and an ambulance was once again sent to the Horner residence. It seems that he shot himself one more time. The reason? In his own words, ‘I wanted to see if it hurt as much as it did the first time.’”

  —Bizarre News

  THE HOLE STORY

  “Forty-one-year-old Romanian Cornel Pasat has been living for the last year—stark naked—at the bottom of a 30-foot hole dug in his living room, because he can’t face people since his girlfriend left him. Relatives, tired of supplying food and water and emptying the bucket he uses as a toilet, called in the authorities for help. Says police chief Marcu Marian: ‘I don’t know how we can persuade him to come out—he seems quite happy down there.’”

  —The Dispatch (South Africa)

  FULL HOUSE

  “A couple in Australia named their three children Kitchen, Bedroom, and Garage after the rooms where they were conceived.”

  —“The Edge,” The Oregonian

  THAT’S FUNNY

  “German authorities have fined a woman for laughing too loudly. Officials in Berlin took action against the 47-year-old, named only as Barbara M. in court papers, when her neighbor complained her giggling was disturbing the peace. The neighbor said Ms. M. frequently invited people round and they would laugh the night away. ‘It is against the law in Germany to make noise after 10 p.m.,’ he complained. She claims he was exaggerating. ‘I invited some colleagues to dinner on one occasion and after a couple of glasses of wine we started to enjoy ourselves.’ She said the next thing she knew the police were knocking on her door and a few days later she received a fine for 25 euros. ‘It was laughable,’ she said.”

  —Ananova

  Only 5% of the stars in our galaxy are bigger than our sun.

  WEARABLE ELECTRONICS

  Finally, technology merges with fashion.

  THE “NO-CONTACT” JACKET:

  Inventors hope to challenge the “existing power landscapes between men and women” by delivering 80,000 volts of electricity to the initiator of any unauthorized contact. Turning a key on the left sleeve arms the battery-powered garment. If the wearer is touched anywhere on the upper body, the toucher gets a shock equal to inserting his finger in an electrical socket.

  IMAGEWEAR: Designers at Nokia have created necklaces that can store and display up to eight digital images. The images are transferred wirelessly from a mobile phone or computer. The idea behind these techno medallions: “To display images that reflect the individual style or emotion of the wearer.”

  COMPUTER JACKET: Pioneer Electronics came up with a wearable computer designed “for people on the go.” It has an Organic Electro-luminescent flat-panel display screen built into one sleeve, a keypad on its cuff, and speakers in the collar. It’s based on the same technology that Pioneer currently uses in their car stereo systems.

  AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE GLOVE: This glove (which looks more like a robotic arm) translates sign language into spoken word or text. Sensors inside the glove map the wearer’s hand and finger movements. A microcontroller analyzes the information to find the correct letter, word, or phrase associated with the movement, then converts them into text or speech.

  9-1-1-DERWEAR: German scientists have developed electronic underwear that not only monitors your vital signs, but can also call emergency services when help is needed. The bra and underpants have sewn-in sensors that look for dangerous heart rhythms. When trouble is detected, the sensor will automatically call a number for medical assistance. (They’re also machine washable.)

  High cost of medicine: Gold was once used to treat lung disease.

  BEG YOUR PARTON

  Here at the BRI when we think of Dolly Parton we think of two things: her wit and her wisdom.

  “I hope people realize that there is a brain underneath the hair and a heart underneath the boobs.”

  “I believe in my cosmetics line. There are plenty of charities for the homeless. Isn’t it time somebody helped the homely?”

  “What people do behind closed doors is certainly not my concern unless I’m behind there with them.”

  “I would only set foot on the street without all this makeup if my husband was dying of a heart attack. He’d have to be really sick.”

  “I’m a very open person. One reason I’m a good boss is ’cause you always know what I’m athinkin’. I won’t treat you bad. I’ll just say, ‘Hey, Joe, there’s somethin’ that’s really been buggin’ the s#@* outta me.”

  “After Mama gave birth to 12 of us kids, we put her up on a pedestal. It was mostly to keep Daddy away from her.”

  On her namesake, Dolly the cloned sheep:

  “Even though it’s controversial, I’m honored. There’s no such thing as baaaad publicity.”

  “It’s a good thing I was born a girl, because if I’d have been a boy, I’d have been a drag queen.”

  “I have to honestly say that most of the stuff the tabloids write has a little grain of truth. They’ve told a lot of stuff about me that’s true. They’ve told a lot of stuff about me that ain’t true. And I don’t admit or deny any of it, because what I ain’t done, I’m capable of doing.”

  “I’m more apt to count my blessings than my money.”

  “I think the fact that I look totally artificial, but I am totally real, has its own kind of magic in it.”

  “I want to be an 80-year-old lady whose sex life they’re still wondering about.”

  Pizza Hut uses 80 million pounds of tomatoes each year.

  FOUNDING FATHERS

  You already know the names—here are the people behind them.

  EDWARD BAUER

  Background: In 1920, at age 20, Bauer used his last $25 to open his own tennis shop. One day while using goose feathers to make badminton shuttlecocks, it occurred to him that goose down might be good insulation material for clothing...and the down jacket was born.

  Famous Name: Bauer landed a government contract to provide down jackets for World War II pilots. After the war, pilots remembered the “Eddie Bauer” label and wrote to his Seattle store, prompting him to start a mail-order business. Bauer retired in 1968, still with just one store. But in 1988 the Chicago-based catalog merchant Spiegel bought the business and expanded it to 500 locations, making “Eddie Bauer” a household name.

  CLIFF HILLEGASS

  Background: Bedridden as a child, Hillegass passed the time reading classic literature. While attending the University of Nebraska, he parlayed his knowledge of books into a job as a buyer for the college bookstore. Through the job, he met Jack Cole, who produced Cole’s Not
es, a Canadian line of literary study guides. Cole suggested Hillegass do the same thing in the United States.

  Famous Name: In 1958 he took out a bank loan and started writing and printing Cliffs Notes—plot and character summaries of classic works of literature—from his basement. He began with 16 Shakespeare titles. Today Cliffs Notes is owned by John Wiley & Sons, publishers of the For Dummies guides. It sells more than five million study guides a year for everything from Beowulf to trigonometry. All-time bestseller: Great Expectations.

  LIZ CLAIBORNE

  Background: Belgian-born Claiborne’s family moved so often that she never finished high school. They eventually settled in the United States, but Claiborne studied art in Europe (her father wouldn’t let her study fashion design). She won a Harper’s Bazaar design contest in 1950 and moved to New York, where she worked for Jonathan Logan, a major clothing designer in the 1950s. For the next two decades, Claiborne tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade Logan to let her design fashions for the newly emerging class of working women.

  Thomas Edison had 5,000 pet birds.

  Famous Name: In 1976 Claiborne started the Liz Claiborne Company and produced the first line of office-suitable clothing for women. Within two years, she was earning $23 million a year. When the company went public in 1981, it had annual sales of $2 billion. By the end of the decade, 60% of working women were wearing Liz Claiborne designs.

  IGNAZ SCHWINN

  Background: Schwinn left school in 1871 at the age of 11 to become a mechanic’s apprentice. He soon went to work for himself, traveling the German countryside fixing bicycles by day, working on his own designs at night. When he showed them to Heinrich Kleyer, an established bicycle maker, Kleyer hired Schwinn to design and build a new line of bicycles.

  Famous Name: In 1895 Schwinn formed his own company in the United States. Early bicycles were labor-intensive to build, which made them expensive. But Schwinn found ways to lower the cost, making them available to more people, especially children, who would become their biggest consumer. Schwinn basically created a classic association of American kids and bikes. His company’s most popular model, the Sting-Ray, came out in 1963 and is the bestselling bike ever.

  THOMAS J. LIPTON

  Background: At age 15, Lipton scraped together $18 to take a boat from his native Glasgow, Scotland, to New York City. He worked odd jobs ranging from picking rice to fighting fires until he saved up $500, which he used to return to Glasgow and open a cafe in 1870.

  Famous Name: Tea had been popular in the British Isles for 200 years, but it was expensive and unwieldy, sold loose from large chests. Lipton transformed the way tea was sold: he popularized the tea bag and turned tea into a branded product. Today, his company distributes half the tea in the United States.

  Acupuncture uses 388 sites on the body, including 26 just for toothaches.

  MYTH-CONCEPTIONS

  “Common knowledge” is frequently wrong. Here are some examples of things that people believe, but according to our sources, just aren’t true.

  Myth: There are no straight lines in nature.

  Fact: Sure there are. Hundreds, in fact, most notably in crystal formations and snowflake patterns.

  Myth: Don’t read in dim light—you’ll hurt your eyes.

  Fact: According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, while reading in good light makes reading easier and limits eye strain, using poor light “causes no permanent eye damage.”

  Myth: There are hundreds of different words in the Eskimo language that mean “snow.”

  Fact: First of all, there is no Eskimo language, because there is no one group of people called “Eskimos.” The word misleadingly refers to dozens of tribal groups living in the northern parts of North America. Most speak different languages, and they typically have less than a dozen words that mean snow.

  Myth: Monkeys and apes groom each other by picking off fleas and ticks. And then they eat them.

  Fact: They’re actually removing dead skin (but they do eat it).

  Myth: More suicides occur during the Christmas season than at any other time of year.

  Fact: Suicides are pretty evenly dispersed throughout the year, but springtime actually has the most occurrences.

  Myth: Bats are rodents.

  Fact: Although bats are similar to rodents, they have more in common with primates (which include us) than they do with rodents.

  Myth: If you get arrested, you’re entitled to make one phone call.

  Fact: It’s only a law in some states (California, for example). In most states, it’s just a courtesy or privilege offered, not a legal right. (Some jurisdictions might even let you make a second phone call.)

  Approximately 50 million Americans snore.

  THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION

  Who invented the wheel? When were the Dark Ages? Who came first, Jesus or Buddha? What the heck is the Fertile Crescent? We decided to try to answer these and some other basic questions about history with this timeline of civilization. Ground rules: 1) Obviously, we couldn’t include everything; 2) Many of the dates are approximate, but close enough for bathroom reading; and 3) You’re bound to learn something. Enjoy!

  PART I: FROM FARMS TO EMPIRES

  •10,000 to 8000 B.C. As the last Ice Age ends and the Earth grows warmer, Homo sapiens make a revolutionary technological leap: after more than 100,000 years in small nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers, people discover farming. By domesticating plants and animals, they can now grow and store food. Having surplus food means being able to establish permanent, year-round homes. It also means the ability to support larger populations, and not all of those people have to work at acquiring food. This, in turn, leads to the development of other skills such as arts and crafts, sciences, politics, and religion. And then what happened? Towns and cities were built, and all the necessities and inventions that go with them. The Agricultural Revolution is known as the seed of human civilization.

  •8000 B.C. The world’s first known permanent settlements are founded in the Fertile Crescent, a semi-circular area of land in the Middle East that stretches from present-day Iraq to Egypt. The regular floods of the great rivers there—the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Jordan, and the Nile—create fertile lands that are perfect for farming. The settlements are built around the cultivation of wheat, barley, lentil, and peas, and the domestication of sheep, goat, cattle, and pigs. The world’s oldest known settlement, Jericho, is founded at this time in the Jordan Valley. Tools are still made of stone. World population: about 5 million.

  •7000 B.C. There is extensive trade and transfer of knowledge between the growing settlements in the Fertile Crescent. Catal Huyuk, possibly the first walled town (rather than a scattered collection of huts), is founded in modern-day Turkey, with irrigated crops. Pottery, an important invention for the storage of food, is now being made in many parts of the world.

  During most of Earth’s history, the North and South Poles had no ice.

  •6000 B.C. The people in the Fertile Crescent weren’t the only ones to discover farming. Farming-based settlements now spring up independently in China, the Americas, and sub-Saharan Africa.

  •5000 B.C. Large towns are flourishing in the world’s great river basins: the Tigris and Euphrates (the Middle East), the Nile (North Africa), the Indus (southern Asia), and the Yellow River (eastern Asia). Permanent farming settlements now exist on every continent except Antarctica and Australia (where they won’t appear until Europeans arrive there in the 1800s A.D.). Corn is cultivated in Mexico, mangoes in Southeast Asia.

  •4000 B.C. In Mesopotamia (the Tigris-Euphrates river valley) copper begins to replace stone in tool making. The first plow is invented, greatly increasing crop output. Advances in food production cause a huge spike in world population growth. Agriculture spreads throughout Europe.

  •3500 B.C. Sumer civilization begins in Mesopotamia with city-states ruled by kings worshiped as gods. Trade and warfare between them spurs great leaps in technology, such as the potter’s
wheel and cuneiform script, the first known system of writing. The sail is invented in Egypt, further increasing travel and the transfer of knowledge within and beyond the Fertile Crescent.

  •3200 B.C. King Menes unites the city-states along the Nile and becomes Egypt’s first pharaoh. Slightly south, Nubian Kush culture in northern Sudan, one of the earliest known black African civilizations, develops on the upper Nile River, trading gold, ivory, and ebony with Egypt. Sumerians invent the wheel. They also mix tin with copper to invent a new, harder metal—bronze—improving tool and weapon making. Sumerians and Egyptians develop number systems, mathematics, and astronomy.

  •3000 B.C. Egyptians develop hieroglyphic writing. And they brew beer. Sumerians invent glassmaking; Chinese invent silk. Sumerian mathematicians divide the day into 24 hours and hours into 60 minutes. Construction begins on Stonehenge (southern England) by an unknown people. World population: about 14 million.

  Dachshunds were originally bred to hunt badgers.

  •2500 B.C. Hebrew civilization is developing in the Middle East, Olmec civilization in southern Mexico and Central America. The Chinese invent a potter’s wheel. The Egyptians build the Great Pyramid. Sumer has the first standing professional armies.

  •2300 B.C. After years of war, King Sargon of Akkad (in northern Iraq) succeeds in conquering Sumerian city-states to the south, then conquers his neighbors to the north and west. Result: The world’s first empire (or multiethnic state). The Akkadian Empire will eventually stretch from Mesopotamia to present-day Turkey and Lebanon. The Egyptians invent paper, using the papyrus plant.