Uncle John's Actual and Factual Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  The Mickey Mouse Club and Captain Kangaroo both premiered on the same day: October 3, 1955.

  More everyday items that could kill you:

  •Vending machines. They’re a mortal threat for about 13 people each year, when they try to rock the machines but get crushed when they topple over.

  •The fuzzy Lonomia obliqua caterpillar, found in South America. It looks harmless, but each of those fuzzy “hairs” is actually a stinger with its own supply of a powerful venom, which can be lethal in sufficient quantities. There are more than 500 confirmed fatalities that were caused when people touched the caterpillars.

  •Bouncy castles. There have been multiple reports of poorly anchored bounce houses or inflatable slides blowing away with people inside when they are hit by high winds. In 2016 one person was killed and 41 were injured in China when a bouncy castle flew 164 feet into the air and hit a phone line. Serious and even fatal injuries are another risk: In the United States, more than a dozen people have perished from 1990 to 2010 due to bounce house accidents.

  •Clothes dryers and lint. In the United States, there are nearly 2,900 fires caused by clothes dryers each year, and they cause an estimated five deaths, 100 injuries, and $35 million in property damage. Thirty-four percent of these fires are sparked by built-up dryer lint blocking the vent that users didn’t clean out after each load.

  EVERY KNOWN NAME FOR THAT GAME WHERE YOU THROW

  BEANBAGS THROUGH A BOARD WITH HOLES IN IT

  • Cornhole

  • Bag toss

  • Bags

  • Tailgate toss

  • Backyard toss

  • Lawn toss

  • Soft horseshoes

  • Corn toss

  • Hillbilly toss

  • Baggo

  • Chuck-O

  • Doghouse

  • Dadhole

  • Dummy boards

  There are no nuts in Honey Nut Cheerios. It has a nut flavoring made from ground peach pits.

  GROANERS

  What do you call a belt made of watches? A waist of time…like this page of bad jokes.

  Q: Why do scuba divers fall backwards out of the boat?

  A: Because if they fell forward, they’d still be in the boat.

  I’d like to get a job cleaning mirrors. It’s something I could really see myself doing.

  Jay: “I got you this elephant for your room.”

  Brian: “Thanks.”

  Jay: “Don’t mention it.”

  This just in: A dog gave birth to puppies on the sidewalk and was cited for littering.

  Q: What’s unthinkable?

  A: An itheberg.

  I can’t stand those Russian dolls. They’re so full of themselves!

  Q: How many optometrists does it take to change a light bulb?

  A: Is it one, or two? One… or two?

  An artist friend of mine asked me to critique his self-portrait. I told him that it was good, except the eyebrows are too high. He seemed surprised.

  “This job isn’t for everyone,” said the scarecrow, “but hay, it’s in my jeans.”

  Q: Did you hear about the fisherman magician?

  A: He says, “Pick a cod, any cod!”

  Q: How do you find Will Smith in the snow?

  A: Follow the fresh prints.

  Q: What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?

  Q: Why did the little cookie cry?

  A: Because his mother was a wafer so long.

  Q: How was Rome split in two?

  A: With a pair of Caesars.

  A man was crushed by a pile of books. He only had his shelf to blame.

  Q: What’s the difference between a hippo and a Zippo?

  A: One is really heavy, and the other is a little lighter.

  What’s so great about Switzerland? Well, the flag is a big plus.

  Man, I bought these shoes off a drug dealer. I don’t know what he laced them with, but I’ve been tripping all day!

  It said my password had to be eight characters long, so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

  Christmas present idea: give them a refrigerator and watch their face light up when they open it.

  I watched hockey before it was cool. They were basically swimming.

  Q: What did the pirate say when he turned 80 years old?

  A: “Aye matey!”

  Did you hear Chef Boyardee died? He pasta way.

  Who cares if I don’t know what “apocalypse” means? It’s not the end of the world.

  A man walks into a bar and orders a fruit punch. The bartender says, “If you want a fruit punch, you’ll have to stand in line.” The man looked around, but there was no punchline.

  World city with the most breweries: Portland, Oregon (84).

  ONE LAST HIT

  Most singers and bands record music for many decades, sometimes to the bitter end. That doesn’t mean people are still listening, though. Here are some of the most popular musicians of all time…and their last song to hit the Billboard top 50 chart.

  BING CROSBY

  Crosby dominated American music during the 1930s and 1940s—he placed more than 300 songs on the Billboard pop chart over the course of his long career. Many of them became standards of American music, including “Pennies from Heaven,” “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” and “Swinging on a Star.” But then along came Elvis Presley and rock ’n’ roll in the mid 1950s, and Der Bingle suddenly became passé. The only ones still regularly heard are his holiday classics, such as “Mele Kalikimaka (Hawaiian Christmas Song)” and “White Christmas.” So it should be no surprise that the last time Crosby hit the top 50 was with “Adeste Fideles” (also known as “O Come All Ye Faithful”), which reached #45 in 1960. (He died in 1977.)

  THE BEE GEES

  Sure, the Gibb brothers defined the 1970s with disco hits like “Stayin’ Alive’ ” and “Night Fever,” but that was their comeback phase. Before that, they were a rock band with nine top-20 hits from 1967 to 1971. Among them was “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” which reached #1 in 1971 and was their last big success…until they reinvented themselves as a disco group with “Jive Talkin’ ” in 1975. After disco died, the Gibb brothers dove into songwriting and production. Barry Gibb coproduced Barbra Streisand’s 1980 hit album Guilty, and in 1983 the brothers wrote Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton’s #1 hit “Islands in the Stream.” As a group, however, the Bee Gees enjoyed two more (brief) comebacks. In 1989 their synth-pop ballad “One” hit #7, and in 1997 “Alone” squeaked into the top 30.

  THE BEATLES

  The Beatles are the most famous rock band ever—they landed 48 songs in Billboard’s top 50, including 20 #1 hits (such as “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Hey Jude,” and “Help!”), which is still more than any other act in history. The Fab Four broke up in 1970 and fans’ hopes for a reunion ended in 1980, when John Lennon was assassinated. However, the other three Beatles did reunite—briefly and only in the studio—in the mid-1990s. ABC aired a documentary miniseries called The Beatles Anthology, which premiered around the same time that a trilogy of Beatles rarities, called Anthology 1, 2, and 3, was being released. To entice fans to check out both projects, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr laid down new vocal and instrumental tracks over two old John Lennon demos—“Free as a Bird” and “Real Love.” Released in 1995 and 1996, the songs hit #6 and #11, respectively.

  All tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises.

  BILLY JOEL

  Billy Joel’s first hit: The 1973 song “Piano Man,” about his time as the house pianist playing in an L.A. bar. That was just the first of a long string of hits for Joel. He had a whopping 34 top-50 hits, including karaoke favorites such as “Uptown Girl,” “The Longest Time,” and “My Life.” In 1999 the Piano Man abruptly announced that he would stop recording pop albums. Two years later, he released Fantasies & Delusions, a collection of original, classical-style piano compositions. Joel soon returned t
o touring and playing his old hits, but he no longer actively makes new pop music. The last time he had a hit single: 1997, when he covered Bob Dylan’s “To Make You Feel My Love” for a greatest hits collection. It reached #50 on the pop chart.

  MICHAEL JACKSON

  Jackson’s nickname was the “King of Pop,” and that would be pretty obnoxious if it wasn’t true. Not even counting his work with the Jackson 5, Jackson sold about 350 million albums (more than 100 million of those were Thriller, the best-selling album ever) and more than 40 hit singles (“Beat It,” “Billie Jean,” “Rock with You,” “Smooth Criminal,” and “Black or White,” to name just a few). After he became increasingly isolated, and known as much for his weird behavior and appearance as his music, Jackson’s popularity started to fade. At the time of his death in 2009, he was planning a comeback in the form of a Las Vegas residency show. But Jackson’s death triggered a nostalgia-driven explosion of interest in his music. The King of Pop’s old albums sold millions more copies, spurring producers to dig up old, unreleased and unfinished songs. “Love Never Felt So Good,” a demo Jackson made in the 1980s, was dusted off, Justin Timberlake added some vocals, and the song hit #9 in 2014. (While Jackson was alive, his last hit was the 2001 single “Butterflies,” which reached the top 20.)

  DARYL HALL AND JOHN OATES

  According to Billboard, Hall & Oates are the most successful duo in pop music history, racking up 28 top-40 hits in the 1970s and ’80s, including “Sara Smile,” “Rich Girl,” “Private Eyes,” “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do),” and “Maneater.” Appropriately, as the 1980s ended, the big-in-the-’80s act had their last big hits: “So Close” hit #11 in 1990, and the follow-up “Don’t Hold Back Your Love,” which peaked at #41.

  Who’s Maksymilian Faktorowicz? That’s the real name of makeup maker Max Factor.

  ABBA

  The Swedish dance-pop band remains popular in the 21st century thanks to the success of Mamma Mia!, a Broadway musical (and then a movie) built around some of ABBA’s more than a dozen hit songs, like “Dancing Queen,” “S.O.S.,” and “Mamma Mia.” The group consisted of two married couples, and when the couples broke up in the early 1980s, so did the band. ABBA disbanded in December 1982, vowing never to reunite. When all was said and done, their last hit was “When All Is Said and Done,” which reached #27 in late 1981.

  CARPENTERS

  Carpenters (no “the”—just Carpenters) countered all the social turmoil of the 1970s, and the bombastic soul, funk, arena rock, punk, and New Wave that came out of the radio during that decade. They were a squeaky-clean brother and sister act from suburban California who sang gentle songs about love, romance, and heartbreak. Richard Carpenter played piano and wrote the songs, while Karen Carpenter played the drums and sang. They virtually invented the genre of “soft rock” (still called “easy listening”) in the 1970s with catchy, mellow tunes, including “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” “Rainy Days and Mondays,” and “Top of the World.” The duo made it to the higher levels of the pop charts more than 20 times before fading from relevance and popularity in the early 1980s. The band last hit the charts in 1981 with the top-20 hit “Touch Me When We’re Dancing,” and never would again, because of the untimely death of Karen Carpenter in 1983.

  ELTON JOHN

  John is still very much in the public eye, playing concerts around the world, making movie soundtracks, writing Broadway musicals, making cameos in movies, and appearing on talk shows, but he doesn’t record all that much music anymore. He doesn’t need to—he has a huge catalog of hits to draw from when he plays live. Over the course of a career that’s lasted more than 50 years, John has amassed an amazing 61 top-50 hits. Examples: “Crocodile Rock,” “Rocket Man,” “Daniel,” “Levon,” “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” “I’m Still Standing,” “Sacrifice,” “Philadelphia Freedom,” and “Candle in the Wind,” which was originally written in the 1970s to memorialize Marilyn Monroe, and rewritten in 1997 for his friend Princess Diana. (John performed it live at her funeral.) It went on to become the second-best-selling single of all time (behind Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”). That was just about the last time John made an impact on the pop chart. In 2000, “Someday Out of the Blue” hit #49, Elton John’s last big appearance on the Billboard Hot 100.

  Second largest air force after the U.S. Air Force: the U.S. Navy and Marines (combined).

  QUEEN FOR A DAY

  As of 2018, the UK’s Queen Elizabeth has been on the throne (so to speak) for 66 years—longer than any other monarch in British history. Here are some leaders whose reigns were quite a bit shorter than that.

  Ruler: “Unnamed daughter” of Emperor Xiaoming of the Chinese kingdom of Northern Wei (528–?)

  Reign: A few hours

  Details: Xiaoming was only five years old when he inherited the imperial throne in 515. Because of this, his mother, Empress Dowager Hu, ruled as regent in his name. But when the boy came of age, the empress dowager refused to surrender power. That led to a struggle between Hu and Xiaoming that ended only when she poisoned Xiaoming. By then the 18-year-old had fathered a daughter with one of his concubines, but because the child was female, she was ineligible to inherit the throne. Undeterred, the empress dowager passed off the child as a boy, and thus the new emperor, so that she could maintain power by serving as the child’s regent. A few hours after proclaiming the child emperor, she realized the ruse was not going to work, so she admitted the “boy” was a girl and proclaimed Xiaoming’s two-year-old male cousin, named Yuan Zhao, emperor instead. These shenanigans did not impress a general named Erzhu Rong. He marched on the capital, captured both the dowager empress and Yuan Zhao, and drowned them in the Yellow River.

  Ruler: Pope Stephen (II) of the Roman Catholic Church (752)

  Reign: Four days

  Details: Stephen suffered a stroke three days after he was elected pope, and died the following day—before he could be consecrated as pope in a special ceremony. In those days, popes weren’t considered popes until the consecration took place, so for centuries the church did not recognize him as a pope. Only later, when being elected pope came to be seen as what counted, did the church add his name to the official list. Subsequent popes who took the name Stephen have two numbers beside their name: one number that doesn’t include Pope Stephen (II), and one (in parentheses) that does. The last was Pope Stephen IX (X), who ruled from 1057 to 1058.

  Ruler: King John I “the Posthumous” of France and Navarre (1316)

  Reign: Five days

  Details: When King Louis X (Louis the Quarreler) died in 1316, his wife was four months pregnant with their unborn child. Louis already had a daughter, Joan, but if the unborn child turned out to be male, he—not Joan—would inherit the throne. While the realm waited for the child’s birth, Louis’s brother, Philip the Tall, ruled as regent. On November 15, 1316, a baby boy was born. He was proclaimed King John I, but died five days later. His was the shortest reign in French history, and he was the only king born a king. So…did Joan become the queen after John died? Nope—Philip the Tall muscled in and claimed the thrones of both France and Navarre (a small kingdom between Castille and Aragon in northern Spain) for himself. When Joan protested, he called her paternity into question and raised other issues that kept her from ever becoming the queen of France. But she did become the queen of Navarre in 1328, and reigned there until her death in 1349.

  Closest U.S. state to Africa: Maine. Its easternmost point is 3,154 miles west of El Beddouza, Morocco.

  Ruler: Czar Alexei II of Russia (1904–1918)

  Reign: Just shy of nine hours

  Details: World War I was only three days old when Germany declared war against Russia on August 1, 1914. The war went badly for Russia, and after Czar Nicholas II assumed personal command of the army in 1915, much of the blame fell on him. By March 1917, the country was near collapse. Revolution broke out in the capital, and on the 15th, Nicholas abdicated in favor of his 12-year-old son, Alexei.


  The moment that Nicholas signed the abdication papers at 3:00 p.m., Alexei became the czar. Nicholas initially assumed that because Alexei was a minor, the boy’s uncle, Grand Duke Michael, would rule in his name until he came of age, and Nicholas would be allowed to raise his son in Russia. But after speaking with advisors, Nicholas realized that he would likely be sent into exile, without the boy czar. Making the situation more painful, Alexei suffered from hemophilia, a life-threatening and, at the time, untreatable blood disorder. Nicholas decided it would be cruel to permit his son to be raised away from his family. Shortly before midnight, he signed a second set of abdication papers, back-dated to 3:00 p.m., passing the throne to Grand Duke Michael instead.

  Ruler: Czar Michael II of Russia (1878–1918)

  Reign: Less than a day

  Details: When Grand Duke Michael awoke on the morning of March 16, 1917, he was handed a telegram informing him that his brother, Czar Nicholas, had abdicated and that he was now the czar. Representatives of the provisional government were already on their way to meet with him; the discussions that followed lasted well into the afternoon. By the time they ended, Michael had decided to abdicate. He said he would be willing to return to the throne if a democratically elected government asked him to. But that never happened: in November the Bolshevik Party (later renamed the Communist Party) seized power and abolished the Russian monarchy. In the months that followed, Michael, Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, their son Alexei, their four daughters, and a dozen other members of the royal family were executed by the Bolsheviks to prevent them from ever returning to power.