Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  BAG MAN

  In Jack the Ripper’s day, many blamed the growing crime rate on violence in the theaters.

  A thief stole more than $207,000 from a London ATM machine ...and seven days later returned $187,000 of it. Barclays bank employees found it in a garbage bag just inside their door. A bank spokesperson told The Sun, “We do offer cashback facilities but we didn’t expect anything quite like this.”

  U R 2 NICE

  Lee Alaban’s car was stolen from outside her workplace in Port Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia. Later that night she realized that her son’s cell phone was in the car, so she called the thief. He answered, but then quickly hung up. So she text-messaged him. She explained that the car was a gift from her now-deceased father, and that gifts for her 13-year-old son’s birthday (which was the next day) were in the trunk. “Next thing I get this text saying he’ll return the car,” Alaban told news reporters. “I raced around to the carpark where he said he’d left it, and couldn’t believe my eyes.” The thief had returned her car (but kept the phone) and then text-messaged an apology. “I’m so sorry I was very desperate I didn’t want 2 cause damage or pain in any way,” he wrote. Alaban sent the man a final message: “Thanks 4 your apology. If I ever lock myself out of my car I’ll send you a message. Ha ha ha.”

  AN ANNIVERSARY PRESENT

  In May 2004, Lonnie and Tammy Crawford had just left a restaurant in Crestview, Florida, where they celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary, when an armed man appeared and demanded their money. They gave him the $8 they had on them and their cell phone, then noticed that the man seemed uneasy with the crime. “I could tell just by looking at him that he was having second thoughts,” said Lonnie Crawford. The thief told them he had never robbed anybody before, he was just broke and wanted to get to his home in Georgia. Before long he had put the gun away, apologized, and given them back the phone and the money, but the couple refused to take the cash. They said he needed it more than they did. Restaurant employees called police, but they couldn’t persuade the victims to press charges. “You could tell he was a nice person that had just made a mistake,” they said.

  Burrito is Spanish for “little donkey.”

  YOUNGEST & OLDEST

  More examples of some folks who prove that age doesn’t matter.

  BASEBALL PLAYER

  Youngest: Joe Nuxhall played one game for the Cincinnati Reds in 1944, just shy of his 16th birthday.

  Oldest: Satchel Paige pitched for the Kansas City Athletics in 1965 at age 59.

  MOTHER

  Youngest: Lina Medina of Peru bore a child in 1939 at age 5.

  Oldest: Satyabhama Mahapatra of India gave birth to a son in 2003 at the age of 65.

  PERSON TO CLIMB MOUNT EVEREST

  Youngest: Temba Tsheri of Nepal did it in 2001 at age 15.

  Oldest: Yuichiro Miura of Japan did it in 2003 at age 70.

  SCREENWRITER

  Youngest: Nikki Reed co-wrote thirteen when she was 15.

  Oldest: Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible at age 80.

  OLYMPIAN

  Youngest: Marjorie Gestring, a diver in the 1936 Olympics, was 13. (She won a gold medal.)

  Oldest: Oscar Swahn, a shooter in the 1912 Olympics, was age 64. (He won one, too.)

  COLLEGE GRADUATE

  Youngest: Michael Kearney earned a degree from the University of South Alabama at the age of 10 years, 4 months.

  Oldest: Ocie Tune King graduated from West Virginia University at 94.

  WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE

  Youngest: Rudyard Kipling won it in 1907 at the age of 42.

  Oldest: Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen became a laureate in 1902 at age 84.

  BRITISH MONARCH

  Youngest: King Henry VI was crowned in 1422, when he was 8 months old.

  Oldest: Queen Victoria died in 1901 at the age of 81.

  EMMY WINNING ACTOR

  Youngest: Michael J. Fox won Best Lead Actor in a Comedy (Family Ties) in 1986 at age 25.

  Oldest: Ruth Gordon won Best Lead Actress in a Comedy (Taxi) in 1979 at age 82.

  U.S. PRESIDENT (Elected)

  Youngest: John F. Kennedy was just 43 when he took office.

  Oldest: Ronald Reagan was 69.

  Largest rodent in North America: the beaver. The porcupine is second.

  WOMEN IN SPACE, PART II

  Here’s the second installment of our story on the 13 American women with “the right stuff” to become astronauts in the early 1960s. (Part I is on page 179.)

  FLAT BROKE

  By communicating its lack of interest in women astronauts, NASA effectively scuttled the FLAT program in 1962, at least for the time being. The official explanation was that the space agency would only consider military test pilots with extensive experience flying jet aircraft. And since women were excluded from flying jets in the military (not to mention the airlines), they couldn’t qualify. Experience, not gender, was the determining factor, NASA claimed.

  In truth, however, NASA’s ban on women was motivated by a fear that the space program would be irreparably harmed if a woman died in space. “Had we lost a woman back then because we decided to fly a woman rather than a man, we would have been castrated,” Mercury Program flight director Chris Kraft admitted years later.

  REFUSING TO QUIT

  All of the Mercury 13 women had made tremendous sacrifices to get this far—Sarah Gorelick and Gene Nora Stumbough had quit their jobs, and Jerrie Sloan’s husband divorced her when she refused to drop out of the program. After all the trouble they’d been through, they didn’t want to take no for an answer.

  Janey Hart, married to Senator Philip Hart of Michigan, decided that she could no longer keep her promise to Dr. Lovelace to remain silent. She started working her connections in Washington, D.C., writing letters to each member of the congressional space committees. She released a copy of the letter to the press and, with Jerrie Cobb, began giving interviews to reporters. Hart also managed to arrange a meeting with Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who was head of the President’s Space Council and the White House’s liaison with NASA. Johnson listened politely to Hart and Cobb, and then brushed them off by telling them that while he wanted to help, it was NASA’s responsibility to decide who became an astronaut, not his. With that, he ended the meeting and had the two women shown out of his office. After they left, Johnson scrawled a note to his staff: “Let’s Stop This Now!”

  Early guns took so long to load and fire that a bow and arrow was 12 times more efficient.

  LAST CHANCE

  The meeting with LBJ had gone nowhere, but Hart and Cobb kept pushing. Result: In June 1962, the House of Representatives Committee on Science and Astronautics announced that it would hold three days of subcommittee hearings to investigate whether NASA discriminated against women. A total of six witnesses would be called—three representing the Mercury 13 and three representing NASA.

  But that wasn’t quite how it worked out. Hart and Cobb were selected to be two of the witnesses for the Mercury 13. The third witness was an aviator named Jacqueline “Jackie” Cochran.

  WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION

  You’ve probably never heard of Jackie Cochran, but in the early 1960s, she was the most famous female pilot in the world. She’d broken more speed, distance, and altitude records than any female pilot alive, and was the first woman to break the sound barrier. Yet she opposed the continued testing of the Mercury 13.

  Cochran had initially supported the FLAT project and even financed the first phase of testing at the Lovelace clinic. Since then, however, she had turned against the program. Why? One theory: She could never be an astronaut herself. Cochran was in her mid-50s and had tested poorly during her physical at the Lovelace clinic. That ruled her out as a potential candidate, and that’s when she began to oppose the Mercury 13. Perhaps the most famous female aviator since Amelia Earhart did not want to be overshadowed by the first women in space.

  HAVING THEIR SAY

&nbs
p; On the first day of the hearings, Cobb and Hart testified in favor of testing the women. Then it was Cochran’s turn. And just as Cobb and Hart had feared, Cochran told the committee that there was “no shortage of well-trained and long-experienced male pilots to serve as astronauts,” and that adding women to the mix would “slow down our [space] program and waste a great deal of money.”

  The first time the word “hell” was spoken on television: on a 1967 episode of Star Trek.

  On the second day of testimony, the committee questioned George Low, NASA’s director of spacecraft and flight missions, and then questioned astronauts John Glenn and Scott Carpenter. None of the men were receptive to the idea of allowing women into their ranks. Like Cochran, Glenn argued that testing women for the space program was a waste of money, since NASA had already spent millions of dollars training men for the job and had all the astronauts it needed. “The men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes and come back and help design and build and test them,” Glenn said. “The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order.”

  THE END

  The hearings were scheduled to last for three days, but shortly before noon on the second day, Congressman Victor Anfuso of New York, who chaired the hearings, banged his gavel and called the proceedings to a close. He had collected enough information to write his report, he explained, so no further testimony was necessary.

  “NASA’s program of selection is basically sound,” the final report stated, acknowledging that at “some time in the future” NASA should revisit the possibility of conducting “research to determine the advantages to be gained by utilizing women as astronauts.”

  The Mercury 13 program was over, this time for good.

  WE’RE (NOT) #1

  Less than a year later, on June 16, 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, a mill worker and parachuting hobbyist, became the first woman in space. How much longer would it take an American woman to make the same trip? Twenty years.

  In 1983 physicist Sally Ride became the first when she made a six-day flight on the space shuttle Challenger. But Ride was a flight engineer, and did not pilot the shuttle. The first woman to command a space shuttle mission was Lieutenant Colonel Eileen Collins, who piloted the Columbia into orbit in 1999—nearly 40 years after the first Mercury space mission.

  Female mosquitoes are deaf.

  UPDATE

  Where are the Mercury 13 now? Some have passed away, others are still flying, and two of them—Jerrie Cobb and Wally Funk—still hope to fly in space.

  When 77-year-old John Glenn returned to space aboard the space shuttle in October 1998 as part of a scientific study on the effects of aging, Cobb’s supporters launched a campaign to get her included on a future mission. At the time, NASA officials said they still have no plans to send Cobb into space, and the grounding of the entire space shuttle program following the Columbia disaster in 2003 makes her chances even more remote.

  Wally Funk, now 64, isn’t waiting for NASA to come around. Over the years, she has completed her astronaut testing at her own expense, even traveling to Russia in 2000 to train with Russian cosmonauts. She is currently working as a test pilot for Interorbital Systems, a California-based company that plans to launch privately owned, privately funded spacecraft. “I’m still pedaling! I never lost the faith,” she told the Los Angeles Times in January 2004. “Whether we make it with Interorbital or not, I’m going to make it. I don’t know how, but I know it’s going to happen.”

  UNCLE JOHN’S PUZZLER

  Using only one straight line, make this equation true.

  5 + 5 + 5 = 550

  (One possible answer is to add a line through the equal sign so it becomes a “does not equal” sign, but there is a much more clever solution than that.)

  Answer:

  Add a line to the first plus sign so it becomes a 4. 545 + 5 = 550

  Do they hold their nose? Elephants fart more than any other animal.

  NUDES & PRUDES

  Once again, we bare all to bring you all the news that’s fit to print.

  NUDE...In February 2004, a Madison, Maine, businessman named Normand St. Michel announced he was having second thoughts about opening a topless coffee shop, even after the planning board approved his business application. Why the change of heart? St. Michel started to worry about “the potential danger of semi-nude waitresses serving hot coffee.”

  PRUDE...The Indonesian parliament introduced an amendment to the country’s anti-pornography bill that would make kissing in public punishable by a $29,000 fine and up to five years in jail. “I think there must be some restrictions on such acts,” said Aisyah Hamid Baidlowi, head of the committee that introduced the bill. “They are against our traditions of decency.”

  NUDE...In April 2004, the Yamato Wind Village restaurant in Kunming, China, announced a promotion in which it planned to serve sushi on the bodies of naked women, but health officials banned the event before it could take place. “Some residents were indignant, claiming that it is humiliating to women,” the China Daily newspaper reported, “but others were curious and tempted to have a try.”

  PRUDE...In 1999 school officials in two Georgia school districts spent two entire weeks applying touch-up paint to a picture of the famous painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware” in more than 2,300 fifth-grade social studies textbooks. Why? They feared that kids would mistake the ornamental orbs of Washington’s pocket watch, which lay across his right thigh in the painting, for his family jewels. “I know what it is and I know what it is supposed to be,” said Muscogee County Schools Superintendent Guy Sims. “But I also know fifth-grade students and how they might react to it.”

  Q: What do you call the skin that peels off after a sunburn? A: Blype.

  NUDE...In May 2004, 60 partiers on Austin’s Lake Travis capsized their double-decker party barge, known as Club Fred. The cause of the accident is still under investigation. One theory: According to onlookers, the boat started to tip over when everyone aboard crowded over to one side to gawk at the sunbathers at Hippie Hollow, the only nude beach in Texas.

  PRUDE...In May 2004, Louisiana state representative Derrick Shepherd introduced legislation to criminalize the wearing of low-slung pants or any other clothing “that intentionally exposes undergarments or any portion of the pubic hair, cleft of buttocks, or genitals.” While reading the bill, Representative Shepherd was repeatedly interrupted by laughter, catcalls, and by Representative Tommy Wright’s chants of “No more crack! No more crack!”

  NUDE...Indianapolis police arrested Erica Meredith, 25, as she was picking up her eight-year-old daughter at school in January 2004. The charge: “Disseminating matter harmful to minors,” a felony punishable by up to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The crime: She was driving her boyfriend’s car, which had a three-by-five-foot painting of a naked woman airbrushed on the hood. The prosecutor dropped the charges after the boyfriend agreed to airbrush a bikini onto the painting.

  BONUS: PRUDISH NUDISTS!

  •Desert Shadows Inn Resort and Villas, a nude resort in Palm Springs, California, has installed a $500,000, 110-foot-long bridge over a busy street that separates nudist condominiums from the rest of the resort. Now nudists can cross the street without being gawked at by passing cars.

  •Nudists at Wreck Beach in Vancouver, Canada, are up in arms over a plan by the University of British Columbia to build two 20-story dorms on the cliffs above the beach. Nudists worry that privacy will vanish when college students are able to spy on them with binoculars and Web cams. University vice president Dennis Pavlich says they don’t need to worry—the university’s board members have to sign off on the dorm plans, and they aren’t about to sign off on housing that provides a view of the beach. “All that’s been approved so far is the concept,” he says.

  Average lifespan of an NBA basketball: 10,000 bounces.

  Q & A: ASK THE EXPERTS

  Here are more answers to life’s important questions from the pe
ople who know—trivia experts.

  SPILT MILK

  Q: Why does milk turn sour?

  A: “Because bacteria grow in it. If you were to boil milk and put it in a sterile container, it couldn’t turn sour, because the boiling and sterilization would have killed the bacteria. In America, most milk is pasteurized—heated to 145 degrees Fahrenheit for a period of 30 minutes. This process kills those bacteria known to be harmful to humans. Some bacteria survive the heat, but these aren’t harmful to humans. Still, if you don’t keep your milk in a cool place, it is these bacteria which will turn it sour. Most people don’t like the taste, but fresh clean milk which has gone sour is not harmful.” (From A Book of Curiosities, by Roberta Kramer)

  YOU’RE THE TOP

  Q: Why do chefs wear those funny-looking hats?

  A: “A chef’s hat is tall and balloons at the top so as to counteract the intense heat in the kitchen; the unique shape allows air to circulate around the scalp, keeping the head cool.” (From Who Knew?, by David Hoffman)

  SHATTERED

  Q: Can you really break a wineglass by singing?

  A: “Yes, it really can happen. Sound does special things to objects as it bumps into them. Depending on how fast the sound vibrates, it can even make them move. When an object is pushed by sound and continues to be pushed so that it exaggerates its natural rhythm, resonance occurs. All hard substances have what is called resonant frequency. Glass has a high frequency, which means that only a very high sound can break it. No musical instrument or human voice can produce a pure note, but female singers’ top notes are claimed to be higher than the resonant frequency of glass, and in the right combination are strong enough to break certain kinds, particularly delicate wineglasses.” (From Why?, by Eric Laithwaite)