Uncle John's Actual and Factual Bathroom Reader
Page 13
New Zealand is the above-water portion of a submerged landmass called Zealandia.
IAN WOOSNAM
Born in Wales in 1958, Woosnam is considered one of the “Big Five” of his generation of golfers—he was born right around the same time as other, better European golfers, including Seve Ballesteros and Nick Faldo. Over his 20-year career, Woosnam was competitive on the European circuit, leading eight straight Ryder Cup teams to victory in the 1990s. But on the American PGA circuit, Woosnam just couldn’t break through. The only two tournaments he managed to win in the United States, both in 1991, were the USF&G Classic…and the Masters—the most prestigious title in golf, which he won by one stroke.
BOB BEAMON
Robert Beamon was skilled and talented enough to make the 1968 U.S. Olympic Track and Field Team. Specializing in the long jump, he was heavily favored to win the gold medal based on his accomplishments in high school, where he had the second-longest jump in the country, and in college, where he earned a silver medal in the Pan American Games. In the lead-up to the Olympics, Beamon entered 23 track meets, and won the long jump contest in 22 of them. Beamon ultimately did win the Olympic gold medal for the long jump in Mexico City in 1968, as expected, but it’s how he did it that was remarkable. On his first jump in the final round, he soared 29 feet, 2.5 inches through the air—a new Olympic record…by a span of nearly 22 inches. When the results were called out and his coach converted the metric measures to inches, Beamon realized what he’d just done and was so overwhelmed that his knees gave out. Sportscasters quickly coined a new word in Beamon’s honor to describe unbelievable athletic achievements: “Beamonesque.” Unfortunately, that was about the only Beamonesque thing Beamon ever did in sports. His world record long jump stood until 1991, but Beamon never came close to that distance again. He was drafted by the Phoenix Suns in the 15th round of the 1969 NBA Draft, but never played in a game. Instead, he returned to college, where he earned a degree in sociology.
Blue eyes only go back about 10,000 years.
LOST IN SPACE
Space exploration has risks. The old adage “what goes up must come down” isn’t always true. Some things never make it back.
SPACE CADETS. On December 11, 1998, NASA launched the Mars Climate Orbiter on a 416-million-mile mission to orbit Mars and study its climate, atmosphere, and surface changes. Unfortunately, the NASA engineers and Lockheed Martin engineers who were in charge of navigation once the orbiter reached Mars were using different types of measurement—the metric system (newton-seconds) and the American system (pound-seconds)—but didn’t know it. (Two navigators noticed the discrepancy, but they were ignored.) So after traveling nine months to get to Mars, the spacecraft never made a single orbit. Instead, the $327.6 million orbiter headed straight into the red planet’s upper atmosphere, where it disintegrated.
BULL’S-EYE! In 2001 NASA realized it was a waste of money to send up a manned space shuttle on a repair mission every time a satellite broke down. So agency scientists created a robotic space repairman called DART (Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology)—a full-fledged repair satellite, capable of doing much of its job without guidance. Unfortunately, on its maiden flight in 2005, multiple failures of DART’s propellant and navigation systems sent it crashing into a communications relay satellite—the very satellite it was sent up to repair.
GENESIS’S EXODUS. Genesis was a NASA space probe designed to collect solar wind particle samples and bring them back to Earth. In 2001 it was launched into space on the back of a Delta II rocket, and it spent 850 days collecting particle samples. Its mission accomplished, Genesis headed back toward Earth. NASA had feared that a regular parachute landing might damage the samples, so it came up with an alternate reentry plan. Once the space probe’s parachute was deployed, a helicopter was supposed to hook the chute mid-air and gently lower the probe to Earth. Unfortunately, Genesis’s parachute never opened and the $264 million probe slammed into the Utah desert at nearly 200 mph.
TIM-BER! On September 6, 2003, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s $239 million N Prime satellite was being repositioned at the Lockheed Martin factory in Sunnyvale, California. As the team was turning the satellite into a horizontal position, they found out (the hard way) that the 24 bolts that were supposed to hold it in place had been removed by a technician—and the action was undocumented, so nobody (except the technician) knew they were missing. Result: the 18-foot satellite toppled over like a Christmas tree and crashed to the floor. Cost of repairs: $135 million.
Rhubarb grows so fast that if you listen closely, you can hear it popping.
FLYING LEFTOVERS. In 1965 the first American astronaut to walk in space, Ed White, lost a glove that is now orbiting Earth. Since that time, more than 500,000 items have joined White’s glove traveling around the planet. This space junk includes pieces of old rockets and satellites, bags of trash, various tools and equipment—such as a camera, pliers, and a spatula (nicknamed “spatsat”)—and a lucky rabbit’s foot. Traveling at over 17,500 mph, these items can do major damage to a spacecraft. But who would guess that a load of human waste could wipe out a satellite? That’s what happened to an Indonesian communications satellite, prompting NASA to discontinue the practice of flushing the contents of astronauts’ toilets into space. Now they bring it back to Earth.
ONE SMALL MISSTEP FOR MAN. The images of astronaut Neil Armstrong’s first step on the Moon are arguably the most important video footage in history. The July 20, 1969, video of Apollo 11’s mission commander bounding across the lunar surface proved to the world that the United States had “won” the space race, that the Moon’s gravity really was different from Earth’s, and that the Apollo 11 team had really made, as Armstrong memorably declared, “one giant step for mankind.” So imagine how you’d feel if you were the guy who erased the original footage of the entire Apollo 11 mission. Apparently there was a shortage of videotapes at the space center in the 1980s, so it was common practice to tape over old footage, the same as people did with sitcom reruns. And someone made the mistake of taping over the most important video of all time. It took 35 years for NASA to discover the gaffe. Luckily, they made copies.
AMERICAN MOVIES THAT WERE RENAMED IN CHINA
Dumb and Dumber Two Stupid Stupid People
Ghostbusters Super Power Dare-to-Die Team
Nixon The Big Liar
Anchorman Ace Announcer
Knocked Up One Night, Big Belly
The Full Monty Six Naked Pigs
The Naked Gun The Gun Died Laughing
Guardians of the Galaxy Interplanetary Unusual Attacking Team
Solo: A Star Wars Story Ranger Solo
As Good as It Gets Mr. Cat Poop
The “Red Carpet” at the Oscars is colored a patented shade of garnet red.
FISH AND PZZA
What are stock ticker symbols? They’re the official two-, three-, or four-letter codes that companies use for trading on the New York Stock Exchange, or other markets. IBM’s stock ticker code, for example, is, well, IBM. Sometimes companies don’t just pick an abbreviation of their name and have a little F-U-N with their I-P-Os.
Ticker symbol: FUN
Company: Cedar Fair, operator of amusement parks
Ticker symbol: EAT
Company: Brinker International, parent company of Chili’s
Ticker symbol: CAR
Company: Avis Budget Rent-a-Car
Ticker symbol: BID
Company: Sotheby’s, an auction service
Ticker symbol: FAN
Company: First Trust Global Wind Energy
Ticker symbol: TAP
Company: Molson Coors Brewing Company
Ticker symbol: GRR
Company: Asia Tigers Fund
Ticker symbol: PZZA
Company: Papa John’s Pizza
Ticker symbol: ZEUS
Company: Olympic Steel
Ticker symbol: EYE
Company: National Vision Holding
s
Ticker symbol: FIZZ
Company: National Beverage Corp., owner of Shasta and other soda brands
Ticker symbol: CAKE
Company: The Cheesecake Factory
Ticker symbol: FOIL
Company: iPath Pure Beta Aluminum
Ticker symbol: BUD
Company: Anheuser-Busch InBev
Ticker symbol: WOOD
Company: Global Timber & Forestry
Ticker symbol: BOOM
Company: Dynamic Materials, explosives manufacturer
Ticker symbol: BEN
Company: Franklin Resources
Ticker symbol: MMM
Company: 3M
Ticker symbol: TAN
Company: Guggenheim Sola
Ticker symbol: HOG
Company: Harley-Davidson
Ticker symbol: PBJ
Company: Dynamic Food & Beverage
Ticker symbol: COOL
Company: Majesco Entertainment, a video game publisher
Ticker symbol: COW
Company: Ishares Global Agriculture
Ticker symbol: ROCK
Company: Gibraltar Industries
Ticker symbol: MOO
Company: Vectors Agribusiness
Ticker symbol: JOB
Company: General Employment Enterprises, a staffing and recruiting company
Ticker symbol: WOOF
Company: VCA Inc., which runs a chain of veterinary hospitals
Ticker symbol: FISH
Company: Azure Midstream Partners (Get it? You find fish in a stream.)
Only woman to found a major American city: Julia Tuttle, the “Mother of Miami, Florida” (1874).
ESCAPE FROM
MONKEY ISLAND
Silver Springs, Florida, is home to the largest artesian spring in the United States, and Florida’s oldest tourist attraction. But many tourists who visit aren’t there to see the water—they’re there to see the monkeys.
GO WITH THE FLOW
In the 1860s, a businessman named Samuel O. Howse bought up nearly 250 acres of land surrounding Silver Springs, the natural spring that serves as the headwaters of Florida’s Silver River. The spring is located in a giant cavern, and more than 500 million gallons of fresh water flow out of it daily, making it the largest natural spring in the United States. The water is crystal clear to depths of 80 feet or more, affording visitors excellent views of the plant and animal life in the river, including alligators, turtles, and many types of fish.
Capitalizing on the region’s natural beauty, Howse developed the land into a tourist attraction. The first visitors came to the springs via steamboat up the Silver River; when the railroad arrived in the late 1870s, the number of tourists began to grow steadily. For 100 years before Walt Disney World opened, Silver Springs was the place to visit in the state. Like the Statue of Liberty or Ellis Island in New York, no trip to Florida was complete without a visit to Silver Springs.
SOMETHING NEW
As the years passed, new businesses sprang up in and around the park. A glass-bottom boat concession was one of the first, and in 1929 a reptile exhibit with an alligator wrestling show opened its doors. In the early 1930s, a man named Colonel Tooey created a Jungle Cruise boat ride on the Silver River.
What’s a Jungle Cruise without monkeys? A few years later, Tooey decided to find a way to add primates to his attraction. On a bend of the river called Devil’s Elbow, about a mile from the springs, he dredged mud from the riverbed and piled it in one spot in the middle of the river to create an artificial island. He built a monkey house and planted some trees, then ordered three breeding pairs of Asian rhesus macaque monkeys from an exotic animal dealer in New York.
Tooey thought that his “Monkey Island” would be the perfect way to showcase the animals. Monkeys can’t swim, he reasoned, and that meant there would be no need to keep them caged. The island was the cage. Tourists would be able to watch the monkeys roaming freely in something approximating their natural habitat.
About 4 percent of the sand on Normandy Beach is made from disintegrated D-Day shrapnel.
BEST LAID PLANS
On the day the monkeys arrived from New York, three boatloads of tourists were waiting offshore from Monkey Island for Tooey to open the crates and release the macaques onto their new island home.
According to one eyewitness, the monkeys explored the island for about ten minutes. Then, one by one, they scampered to the top of a tree at one end of the island, swung out over the water on one of the branches, let go, and splashed into the river. Then they swam away. It was a painful lesson for Tooey: not only can macaques swim, they’re actually pretty good at it.
The island was a flop, but the monkeys still managed to serve Tooey’s purpose, because they didn’t wander very far. The miles of swampy, forested wilderness that surround Silver Springs provided plenty of shelter for the macaques and plenty of plants and insects for them to eat. They also came to associate the Jungle Cruise boats with food: When the boats came by, the macaques would congregate at the water’s edge to beg for peanuts and whatever else the tourists had to share.
When the movie Tarzan Finds a Son! was filmed nearby in 1939, the macaques developed a new mystique as the “monkeys left over from Tarzan.” It wasn’t true, but it was a good story and it stuck. Soon more people than ever were coming to Silver Springs to see “Tarzan’s monkeys.”
HOME SWEET HOME
A few years later, Tooey ordered more macaques from New York to replace some of the original monkeys that had died. The introduction of new males into the colony spurred reproduction, as the new males competed with the old ones for mates. Soon there were dozens of monkeys in and around Silver Springs, then more than a hundred.
As the colony grew, younger monkeys would break away from the group to form new colonies, and as they did, the macaques’ territory increased as well. As long as they lived in the forest, they were more or less ignored by humans—except for the tourists, who continued to feed them. But by the mid-1980s the population had grown to nearly 400 monkeys and their territory butted up against surrounding communities. The number of monkey-human conflicts grew. Rhesus macaques can weigh as much as 20 pounds, and when threatened or angered they will hurl their poop or even bite. They also raid garbage cans and steal pet food, and there were also reports of small pets being killed by the macaques. Even worse, it was estimated that roughly half of the macaques were carriers of simian herpes-B. Since the disease’s discovery in the 1930s, there have only been 50 cases where it was transmitted to humans worldwide, and none involving the Florida monkeys. But 21 of the 50 cases were fatal.
At least one of them is pork: There are 70 ingredients in a McRib.
…NOT SO FAST
Because the macaques are an invasive species, state law does not protect them and they can be trapped or hunted at will. In time, pressure from the state—which was in the process of creating a new Silver River State Park on land surrounding the privately owned park—grew to the point where the operators of the private park began taking steps to bring the macaque population under control.
Trappers were brought in and they caught about 200 of the monkeys. But if the park operators thought removing the monkeys would be easy, they soon learned otherwise. After all, the macaques were one of the park’s biggest draws, and disease carriers or not, they were popular with many locals as well as tourists. When word got out that so many monkeys had been trapped—and, even worse, that some of them had been sold to labs for use in medical research—the public outcry was so great that the trapping program was shut down.
STATE FARM
In 1993 the State of Florida bought the privately owned park; eventually it would be incorporated into the state park, which was renamed Silver Springs State Park.
Now the monkeys were the state’s problem, and in 1994 Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission recommended that the monkeys should all be euthanized. Ironically, though the state has the power to implement
the recommendation, as of 2017 it still hasn’t. There are no private landowners to pressure the state anymore, and no real mechanism for the state to bring pressure upon itself. The only political pressure that does exist comes from local voters, and they overwhelmingly support leaving the monkeys alone. One petition circulating in Marion County in 1993 collected 25,000 signatures in favor of the monkeys—and those 25,000 people made up about a quarter of the electorate in the local state representative’s district.
Someday Florida may try to reduce the population by trapping and sterilizing the monkeys, then leaving them to live out the rest of their lives in the wild. But that won’t be easy. The population is now believed to exceed 1,000 monkeys, and their numbers are still growing, as is the size of their territory. Macaques have now been spotted 100 miles from Silver Springs. For the foreseeable future the monkeys will likely remain what they have been for many years now: the largest and only free-ranging population of rhesus macaques anywhere in the United States.
“I am always surprised at what movie studios think people will want to see. I’m even more surprised at how often they are correct.”
—Mindy Kaling
In Switzerland, it’s illegal to own a single guinea pig. (They get lonely, so you have to buy two.)
THE NAKED TOOTH
What time should you go to the dentist? Tooth hurty.
300 different species of bacteria live in the plaque that’s between your teeth.
Ideal tooth brushing regimen: two to three minutes, two to three times a day.
Along with coffee, wine, and soda, one of the most common tooth stainers is sour candy—it contains citric acid, which can stain and weaken teeth.