Uncle John's Actual and Factual Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Details: Like a lot of places in the mid-2000s, real estate in Washington, DC, was booming. Several developers made offers to buy Spriggs’s town house so that they could build condo and office buildings on the entire block. Spriggs apparently was willing to sell, but not for the price the developers were willing to pay. Even when one developer offered him $2 million, he held out for more.

  What Happened: The developers finally decided to build around Spriggs’s 1,800-foot parcel, and soon 10-story glass-and-steel buildings were built right up to the property line on three sides of his two-story house. That turned his property into “an essentially undevelopable” lot, and the offers dried up. By 2010 the boom was over and Spriggs’s building was on the verge of being foreclosed on, so he put it on the market for $1.5 million. No takers—and the building went into foreclosure. In 2011 some investors bought the townhouse from the lender for $750,000. They fixed it up and sold it for $3.88 million in 2016. Today it’s home to a restaurant and a gym.

  Holdout: Vera Coking, owner of a vacation home in Atlantic City, New Jersey

  Details: Coking and her husband paid $20,000 for the house in 1961. In the mid-1970s, Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione bought up the parcels around the Cokings’ property so that he could build a Penthouse-themed casino and hotel on that block. He offered the Cokings $1 million for their place. Not a bad return on their $20,000 investment…but the Cokings said no.

  What Happened: In 1978 Guccione went ahead and started building his casino anyway, wrapping the seven-story structure right around the Cokings’ three-story home. But Guccione only got as far as building the steel framework before the project ran out of money. The unfinished building sat there, rusting, until 1993 when it was torn down. Donald Trump bought the property to turn it into a parking lot for the Trump Plaza and Casino, located nearby. He wanted Vera Coking’s house, too, but again she refused to sell. The city supported Trump’s project and tried to take Coking’s property by eminent domain, but she fought the action in court and won. She remained in the house for another 12 years until she moved into a retirement home. Her daughter sold the house for $583,000 in the summer of 2014, and it was demolished that November. But it had outlived the money-losing Trump Plaza and Casino, which went under in September.

  Why a rooster on a bottle of Sriracha sauce? Founder David Tran was born in the year of the rooster.

  Holdout: Robert H. Smith, proprietor of a dry-goods store near the old Macy’s department store at 14th Street and Sixth Avenue in New York City

  Details: In the early 1900s, Sixth Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets was one of the hottest shopping districts in the city. A company called Siegel-Cooper had a huge department store there (between 18th and 19th Streets), the largest in the world at the time. Macy’s was smaller and a few blocks away. Founder Rowland H. Macy decided to steal Siegel-Cooper’s thunder by building an even bigger department store near Herald Square at 34th and Broadway. He started buying up properties on the block and managed to get all of them except one: the five-story building on the corner. Robert Smith snapped that one up for $375,000 before Macy could buy it. He is believed to have been working on behalf of Siegel-Cooper, which either hoped to block the Macy’s building entirely, or wanted to trade the corner building for a lease on Macy’s old building.

  What Happened: Whatever the case, rather than cut a deal, Macy’s built their huge department store around Smith’s building. In 1911 he sold it to another buyer for $1,000,000, an astronomical price at the time, and one that earned the building the name “Million Dollar Corner.” Siegel-Cooper is long gone, but Macy’s flagship store is still there. So is Smith’s building: Macy’s never did buy it, but today they lease the exterior, which they have covered with billboards that make it look like a giant Macy’s shopping bag.

  Holdout: Jean Herman, who lived at 134 East 60th Street in New York City in the 1980s

  Details: Herman is the rare example of a renter who was able hold out against real estate developers. In 1981 a real estate company bought every building on her block, including the five-story 1865 brownstone where she lived in a rent-controlled ($168 per month) fourth-floor walk-up apartment. But the rent control laws in New York are so strong that the real estate company was unable to evict her, not even after she turned down an a reported $650,000 to pack up and move away. Herman felt the owners had a duty to find her an even nicer rent-stabilized apartment in the same neighborhood (she lived right across the street from Bloomingdales). “I already like where I live, so if they want me to get out, they’re going to have to do me one better,” she told the New York Times in 1986. When none of the two dozen apartments they showed her were suitable—at least as far as she was concerned—she stayed put.

  They demolished the back half of the brownstone behind Herman’s apartment and the entire fifth floor above her, then built their 31-story skyscraper flush up against the rear of the building.

  While awake, hummingbirds need to eat every ten minutes.

  What Happened: The developers had no choice but to work around her. They demolished the back half of the brownstone behind Herman’s apartment and the entire fifth floor above her, then built their 31-story skyscraper flush up against the rear of the building. Herman lived out the rest of her life in her apartment, and passed away in 1992 at the age of 69. Today the building serves as office space.

  Holdout: The owners of a charcoal company in Osaka, Japan

  Details: In 1983 the city made plans to build a new stretch of the Hanshin Expressway through the area, and began buying out local landowners and demolishing buildings to create room. They wanted to put the Umeda exit ramp on the land occupied by the charcoal company, but the owners refused to sell. They thought they could make more money by building an office building on the property.

  What Happened: The government refused to issue the permits to build the office building, so it wasn’t built. But the property owners refused to sell the land, so the expressway wasn’t built, either. The stalemate dragged on for five years, until the two parties agreed to a compromise: The property owners would be issued permits to build their office building if they agreed to “rent” the fifth, sixth, and seventh floors to the government, which would run the Hanshin Expressway right through the building on those floors. The 16-story Gate Tower opened its doors in February 1992; 13 floors contain offices, the other three house the expressway. In the elevators, there are no buttons for the fifth, sixth, and seventh floors. Instead, a sign reads simply: “Hanshin Expressway.”

  The government would run the Hanshin Expressway right through the building on those floors.

  STREET FIGHTER: THE GAME BASED ON THE MOVIE BASED ON THE GAME

  One of the most popular video games of the 1990s: Street Fighter, in which players used colorful characters to engage in violent, hand-to-hand combat. It was so popular that it was adapted into a 1994 film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia. A tie-in Super Nintendo game called Street Fighter: The Movie was released, a remake of the original Street Fighter, but with the original characters removed and replaced with ones that looked more like the actors from the film.

  Maximum penalty for cheating on a college exam in China: 7 years in prison.

  DNA KIT DISCOVERIES

  DNA ancestry kits are one of the biggest fads in years. For about $100, you spit into a tube (really), send it off, and then, a few weeks later, you get a complete workup of your genetic, racial, and even family history. Only drawback: it’s really messing with some people’s sense of identity.

  GOODBYE, FAMILY

  A biologist named George Doe (not his real name) gave his parents a DNA kit as a gift, intending to find out about any possible genetic health problems. There was nothing particularly frightening on that front, and Doe’s family’s racial background was what they all figured it would be. But Doe’s online results also asked if he wanted to see if there were any genetic matches in the database. He checked yes, and learned that he had a 22 percent genome match wi
th a man named “Thomas.” Doe asked his father if he knew who this Thomas was. He didn’t, but then they checked the “see matches” on the dad’s profile. Thomas showed up again, this time with a 50 percent match. What does that mean? Doe’s father was also Thomas’s father—George and Thomas were half-brothers. News of the secret child tore the Doe family apart. The parents, for whom the DNA test had been a gift, wound up getting divorced.

  TWISTED SISTERS

  Wendy Garrett, 29, decided to take a DNA test in 2015 to try and find her biological relatives. She was adopted through an agency when she was a baby, and through that organization, she learned that somewhere out there, she had a brother. She lived in Pennsylvania, but she’d grown up in California. And that’s where a 28-year-old woman named Lisa Olivera lived. Olivera was also adopted as a child (she’d been abandoned on a beach in California the day she was born), and she was also taking a DNA test. Result: The DNA testing company connected the two people when a genome match revealed that they were sisters. Amazingly, both have the same middle name (Anne), play the banjo, and love to camp. They met up in June 2016 and camped in Yellowstone National Park together. (No word on whether they took their banjos.)

  YOU’VE BEEN SERVED

  Cleon Brown worked as a police officer in Hastings, Michigan, for years with little incident, getting along well with his fellow members of the force. In December 2016, Brown submitted an ancestry test and found out that while he identified as white, his DNA was 18 percent of African ancestry. (In other words, he was part black.) When he shared that information with his coworkers, Brown says they immediately began taunting him with abusive comments and racial slurs. The mayor, the chief of police, the city manager, and a police sergeant all allegedly said racist things to Brown. A lawsuit he filed against the city, citing a hostile work environment, is still pending.

  The “Hello Girls” were female soldiers stationed on the front lines during WWI to operate…

  DID YOU KNOW?

  For decades, police hunted “the Golden State Killer,” wanted for 12 murders in the 1970s and ’80s. In 2018, using publicly available DNA evidence, they found a match to genetic material recovered from crime scenes, leading to the arrest of a 72-year-old ex-cop named Joseph DeAngelo.

  MORE THAN FRIENDS

  Walter MacFarlane was born in 1943 and raised in Nu’uanu, Hawaii. His best friend since sixth grade has been a guy named Alan “Robi” Robinson. They were both star players on their high school football team—MacFarlane at tight end and Robi at tackle—and they did everything together. More than 60 years later, they still live near where they were raised and they’re still inseparable. In 2017 MacFarlane’s children bought him a DNA testing kit for his birthday. He sent in his info, and the testing company told him he matched with someone in his area: Alan “Robi” Robinson. It turns out the friend who was like a brother to him really was his brother. (They have the same mother. Robi was adopted; MacFarlane was raised by his grandparents.) MacFarlane said the possibility never crossed his mind, though “there [were] times when I did think, ‘I look like Robi a little bit.’ ” MacFarlane shared the news with Robinson at a family Christmas party, to which he was invited as a “new” member of the family. “I’ve never gotten a Christmas present this good,” Robinson said.

  8 APPS THAT COST $999.99

  • CyberTuner (piano tuner)

  • QSFFStats (flag football stats)

  • vueCAD Pro (CAD viewer)

  • Vizzywig 4K (video camera/editor)

  • Agro (farming app)

  • Alpha-Trader (trading and investing money)

  • BarMax CA (bar exam review course)

  • app.Cash (“stylish cashier system” for rich people)

  …telephone switchboards for the military. They could connect calls five times as fast as men.

  CARD GAME

  PHRASE ORIGINS

  Do you become a “wild card”“when the chips are down”? We’re “calling your bluff.” Here are some other phrases you might not realize came from card games.

  READ ’EM AND WEEP

  Meaning: To produce evidence while gloating

  Story: This phrase is generally used when someone presents physical proof to win an argument, and it comes from poker—in the 19th century, players would say it when they laid down an undeniably winning hand on the table. It implores other players to “read” the cards, see that the hand is unbeatable, and then “weep” because they just lost the game (and presumably money). It was used in poker games so often that by the early 20th century it was being used in other walks of life. In 1919 some newspaper ads for stores began with the phrase to imply that the sale prices were so good that the reader would weep tears of joy after seeing them.

  TO HAVE SOMETHING IN SPADES

  Meaning: To have something of an unusually high degree

  Story: In the game of bridge, the highest-ranking and most valuable cards are of the spade suit. It’s a very lucky player who has a lot of spades.

  STRONG SUIT

  Meaning: A personal strength

  Story: Another phrase from the game of bridge. A player has a “strong suit” (also called a “long suit”) when their hand of 13 cards contains five or more cards in one of the four suits—five spades, five hearts, and so on. It means they’ve got what it takes to win the game.

  SHOOT THE MOON

  Meaning: To take a big risk

  Story: Over the last 50 years, the phrase became associated with the U.S. space program. In the 1960s, NASA literally shot for the Moon, and succeeded in 1969. In a broader sense, the phrase means to take a chance and try to reach a lofty goal, and it comes from taking a big risk in the card game hearts. The goal of the game is to collect the fewest penalty points. Each heart is worth one penalty point, and the queen of spades is worth 13. Players try to avoid getting these cards. A much bolder (and riskier) play is to try to amass all the points. If a player is successful, they get zero penalty points and their opponents get 26. That play is called “shooting the moon.”

  If you shave your eyebrows off, it will take 64 days for them to grow back.

  THE CANDID CAMERA

  HIJACKING

  Here’s one from our “Strange Crime” files: In 1969 an Eastern Air Lines flight headed for Miami was hijacked by terrorists. Or maybe it was hijacked by a camera crew pulling off an elaborate prank. Adding to the confusion: a celebrity passenger known for pranking people.

  THE UNFRIENDLY SKIES

  Between 1968 and 1972, heightened political tensions between the United States and Cuba led to dozens of airplane hijackings for reasons ranging from extortion to mental illness to political asylum. In January 1969, for example, a man named Alan Sheffield hijacked a flight departing from San Francisco because he was “tired of TV dinners and tired of seeing people starve in the world.” The hijackings became so common that it became sort of an odd fad. Johnny Carson often made fun of hijackers on The Tonight Show.

  That might explain the relaxed mood during the hijacking of a Newark-to-Miami flight in February 1969. Another reason for the relaxed mood: Allen Funt was on the flight—the same Allen Funt who was famous for Candid Camera, the long-running TV show that featured elaborate hidden-camera pranks and the catchphrase “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!” When the captain announced that they were being diverted to Cuba, many of the passengers thought it was a joke.

  NO JOKE

  One problem: Funt wasn’t doing Candid Camera anymore. The show had been off the air for two years. He was working on a film at the time, but it had nothing to do with hijacking planes. He was on a trip with his wife and two of his kids. Accounts vary as to what actually happened during the flight, but, as Funt later wrote in an Associated Press article, he saw a “fat, little man” grab a stewardess and hold a knife to her throat while pulling her toward the cockpit. So when the pilot made the announcement, Funt knew it was serious. A few minutes later, as Funt’s daughter Juliet (who was two at the time) recalled during a 2015 int
erview, a woman jumped up from her seat and told everyone that the hijacking was just a staged stunt for Candid Camera. As proof, she pointed to Funt.

  Then a party broke out. Several passengers swarmed Funt and asked him to autograph their air sickness bags. Stewardesses popped open bottles of champagne while some passengers started dancing in the aisles. Funt tried to convince everyone that this was not his doing, to no avail. “Looking back at the experience,” he wrote, “the unbelievable thing is the way everybody took it as one big joke. We saw the knife, but everybody was cool and calm, just a little annoyed at the delay. It is strange how you can be so close to danger and not feel it.”

  Q. Can you name the six NFL teams that don’t have cheerleaders? A. The Bears, Bills, Browns, Giants, Packers, and Steelers.

  At one point, a hijacker popped his head out of the cockpit to find out what the commotion was about and the passengers started applauding him. That’s when Funt tried to hatch a plan to take down the hijacker himself…only to have his wife talk him out of it. A few hours later, the Miami-bound plane landed in Havana.

  ON FOREIGN SOIL

  By that point, as the Cuban military surrounded the plane, the passengers had come to the grim realization that this was no hidden-camera prank. According to Juliet, several passengers turned their anger on Funt for “tricking” them into assuming that it was all a gag.

  In the 11 hours that followed, the Funts and the other passengers were transported by bus to Varadero, a town along Cuba’s northern coastline. They were treated well, but no one was allowed to phone their relatives. Eventually, they were loaded onto another plane and flown back to the United States.