Uncle John's Actual and Factual Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  LINZER TORTE

  Description: A torte is a multilayered cake with rich filling between the layers. In a Linzer torte, the “cake” is a crumbly pastry made with ground nuts (usually hazelnuts or almonds), filled with preserves or jam, and covered with lattice pastry strips.

  Can you name the two fears you were born with? 1) Falling. 2) Loud noises. You had to learn the rest.

  Sweet History: The Linzer torte was named after the town of Linz, Austria (Linzertorte means “torte from Linz”), and food historians say it’s one of the oldest modern cake recipes still in use. A recipe for an early version of this dessert was found in the personal cookbook of a Countess Anna Magarita Sagramosa, in the library of Admont Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in the Austrian Alps. Date the recipe was written: 1653. The cake was first mass-produced in Austria in the 1820s and became popular across Europe in the ensuing decades.

  Bonus: A 1965 article in American Heritage magazine credits the Linzer torte’s introduction in the United States to one Franz Holzlhüber:

  In 1856 Holzlhüber, an enterprising young Austrian from the vicinity of Linz, started for America. He had very little money but was equipped with a zither, a sketchbook, some education in the law and in draftsmanship, and the promise of employment in Milwaukee as conductor of an orchestra. Somewhere between New York and Wisconsin, he lost both his luggage and the letter confirming his job, which, it turned out, was no longer available. Nothing daunted, he went to work as a baker—introducing (so he said) the Linzer Torte to America…

  ROCKY ROAD

  Description: A mix of chocolate ice cream, nuts (usually almonds), and marshmallows

  Sweet History: It was first concocted in 1929 by William Dreyer, founder of Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream (originally known as Edy’s Grand Ice Cream, after Dreyer’s partner, Joseph Edy) in their Oakland, California, ice cream factory. Dreyer’s original recipe used walnuts, an idea he got from Edy, who had used walnuts and marshmallows in a candy recipe. How did they come up with the name “Rocky Road”? According to Dreyer’s official history, they picked the name after the start of the Great Depression in October 1929, “to give folks something to smile about” in the face of the economic disaster.

  Uh-oh, Another Story: Fentons Creamery, an ice cream parlor in San Francisco, claims Rocky Road was invented by their candymaker, George Farron. The Fentons story goes that Farron used the same ingredients in a candy bar and later added them to a batch of chocolate ice cream. Dreyer, says Fentons, stole Farron’s recipe and called it his own. Fentons still claims to be the inventor of Rocky Road ice cream.

  DID YOU KNOW?

  What’s the difference between ice cream and gelato? Gelato is an Italian version of ice cream. The name comes from the Italian word for “frozen,” and it’s usually made with milk instead of cream. It’s thicker and creamier because, unlike ice cream, very little air is whipped into the mixture.

  How did dairying ants get their name? They “farm” aphids for the sugary substance…

  MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH

  Here’s a piece of history you probably didn’t learn in school: Were it not for bad weather and bad behavior on the high seas, the United States might have adopted the metric system way back in the 1790s.

  BASKET CASE

  One important item of business that America’s founders needed to address after winning independence from England was designating a standard of weights and measures that every state could use. At the time, different states used different systems, and that made trade between the states difficult.

  New York, for example, had been a Dutch colony called New Amsterdam until the English captured it in 1664. It still used the Dutch system of weights and measures. But the neighboring New England states used the traditional English system. The bushel used by the state of New Jersey to measure dry goods was larger than the bushel used by Connecticut; a New Jersey bushel basket was large enough to hold 32 pounds of grain, but a Connecticut bushel basket held only 28 pounds. There were already 13 states in the Union, and with more territories moving toward statehood, the problem was only going to get worse unless the federal government did something about it.

  THE JEFFERSONIAN SYSTEM

  Thomas Jefferson, then George Washington’s Secretary of State, had given some thought to the matter, and invented a decimal-based system of weights and measures that he thought would do the job. Decimal-based systems use units of measure that are divisible by ten. In Jefferson’s system there were ten inches in a foot, and ten feet in a “decade.” Each inch was divisible into ten “lines.” There were 10,000 feet in a mile.

  Jefferson devised decimal-based measures of volume and weight as well, and when the new U.S. Congress met in 1789, he presented his system and proposed that it be adopted as the new standard of weights and measures for the United States. Congress considered Jefferson’s proposal…and did nothing. Americans were left to muddle along as they always had.

  PRESENT TENS

  On the other side of the Atlantic, the French government was also considering moving to a decimal-based system. In 1790 the National Assembly asked the French Academy of Sciences to devise a system that the entire world could use. The following year, members of the academy returned with a proposal for a system that used a base unit of length called a “meter,” which was defined as one ten-millionth the distance from the North Pole to the equator.

  …they produce, even “milking” the aphids by stroking them with their antennae.

  And unlike Jefferson’s system, which used unrelated terms like “line” and “decade” as well as “rood” (100 feet) and “furlong” (1,000 feet) as names for multiples and divisions of the foot, the French system used standard prefixes like milli-, centi-, and kilo- to designate multiples and divisions of the meter. There are 100 centimeters in a meter, for example, and there are 1,000 meters in a kilometer.

  Measures of area, volume, and mass could also be derived from the meter. The weight of one cubic centimeter of water was called a gram, and the volume of one thousand cubic centimeters of water was called a liter, which weighed exactly one kilogram.

  SETTING SAIL

  This new “metric” system, as it would eventually become known, was simple, elegant, and smart. When Thomas Jefferson learned about it, he wrote a letter to the French government asking for more information.

  Remember, France was a longtime rival of the English, and it had a strategic and economic interest in luring the United States away from the hodgepodge of English weights and measures used in many American states. If the United States adopted France’s metric system, that would make trade with France easier, and trade with the English more difficult. So rather than reply to Jefferson’s request with a letter, in 1793 the French government dispatched an aristocratic scientist named Joseph Dombey to the United States to explain the metric system to Jefferson in person.

  TROUBLED WATERS

  When Dombey set sail for America, he brought with him a metal rod that was exactly one meter in length, and a cylindrical copper weight called a “grave” that weighed exactly one kilogram. Had he made it to the United States, it’s possible that he and Jefferson might have been able to persuade President George Washington and the U.S. Congress to adopt the metric system.

  But Dombey didn’t make it. When he was in the middle of the Atlantic, a storm blew his ship far to the south and into the Caribbean Sea, where privateers—private ships that were commissioned by England to harass French shipping—seized Dombey’s ship and sailed it to the island of Montserrat, southeast of Puerto Rico. There he was imprisoned and held for ransom. But Dombey died soon after he arrived, so the ransom was never paid.

  Harvard University (established in 1636) is older than calculus (1660s).

  COMING UP SHORT

  When France learned of Dombey’s death, they sent another metric system emissary to the United States in 1794, but the moment had passed. By then Thomas Jefferson had resigned from Washington’s cabinet after losing too many bat
tles to his rival, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. The new Secretary of State, Edmund Randolph, wasn’t as interested in the metric system, and it went nowhere.

  Over the years, the U.S. government has been gradually embracing the metric system. In 1875 it was one of 17 countries that signed the Treaty of the Meter, which set up an international system for administering the metric system. It has long been taught in American schools, and is used widely in commerce and science. But the traditional English system of weights and measures has never been abandoned, and remains the standard for ordinary Americans. Unlike almost every other country in the world, Americans drive miles, not kilometers; measure distances by the foot, not the meter; and buy bananas by the pound, not the kilogram. We will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, and we may have the pirates—well, privateers—of the Caribbean to thank for it.

  UNCLE JOHN’S STRANGE CRIME BLOTTER

  •In February 2018, closed-circuit TV cameras captured footage of a Taiwanese woman breaking into a claw machine. In the video, which went viral in Taiwan, a bit of the woman’s butt crack can be seen, hence her nickname, “Butt-Crack Babe.” The agile toy thief managed to squeeze inside the claw machine and—over the course of an hour—steal all the toys. According to press reports, she was “bitter that she couldn’t win any toys legitimately.” When police finally caught up with the Butt-Crack Babe a week later, she told them she’d given all the toys to neighborhood kids. They arrested her anyway.

  •The stocks, a favorite colonial method of punishment, were invented in 1643 by a Boston carpenter named Edward Palmer. When he charged too much for his work, he became the first person sentenced to spend time in the stocks.

  •In 1902 a man was sentenced to 20 years in the Ohio State Penitentiary for attacking his father-in-law with a knife. While there, he improved the prison’s electric chair by adding iron restraining clamps. Released in 1910 for “exemplary service to the state,” he murdered a man a few months later and in 1911 was executed in his improved electric chair. The man’s name: Charles Justice.

  Frosted Flakes originally had two mascots: Tony the Tiger and Katy the Kangaroo.

  OOPS!

  It’s always nice to hear about people screwing up even more than you are. So go ahead and feel superior for a few moments.

  IN THE BAG

  In February 2018, Duncan Robb, an Irishman living in Chesterfield, England, was surfing the Internet when he read that the Red Hot Chili Peppers were going to play a rare show in Belfast, Ireland. And tickets were only £30 ($42)! An incredible bargain, Robb thought. So he quickly bought two tickets for himself and his girlfriend, who’s a huge fan of the legendary California funk band. Then he booked a flight and a hotel room for a romantic Valentine’s weekend in Belfast. They were so excited! Then, a few days before the concert, Robb’s girlfriend remarked that she hadn’t heard anything about the Chili Peppers playing in Ireland, so he took a closer look at the tickets and realized he’d actually bought tickets to see the Red Hot Chili Pipers, a bagpipe band that bills itself as “the most famous bagpipe band on the planet.” The couple laughed it off and went anyway. When asked what they thought of the bagpipe band, Robb said it was “an experience.”

  KLAW ECAPS

  In 2018 two Russian cosmonauts endured a space walk that lasted 8 hours, 13 minutes in order to upgrade an old antenna on the International Space Station. The good news: they set a record for the longest space walk in Russian history. The bad news: they set that record because they installed the antenna backward and had to spend an extra two hours trying to fix it. According to the Daily Mail, “The pair watched in dismay as the antenna got hung up on the Russian side of the complex and could not be extended properly.” In order to get it back into place, the two cosmonauts had to push on the antenna while the flight controllers tried to rotate the dish. It finally popped free, but they still couldn’t get it to point in the right direction. “Is it working?” asked one of the exasperated cosmonauts. “Or are we just wasting our time?”

  “It’s being evaluated,” responded Mission Control in Houston. At last report, a NASA spokesperson said that the “antenna is in good shape and is operating, in spite of pointing in the wrong direction by about 180 degrees.”

  BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

  How many eggs does it take to feed 109 Olympic athletes and their support staff? The Norwegian chefs at the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang calculated 1,500. So that’s how many they ordered from the South Korean food supplier. But something got lost in translation, and the truck arrived at the Norwegian compound with 15,000 eggs. “It was unbelievable,” said team chef Stale Johansen. “There was no end to the delivery.” The goof was blamed on the host country’s “complex counting system.” According to the Guardian, “It is common for restaurants to buy eggs by the crate in multiples of 30 in South Korea, but changing one syllable would mean the difference between 1,500 and 15,000.”

  Eyelash mites exist. There are probably some on your face right now.

  THE NUCLEAR OPTION

  The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) carries the heavy burden of defending America against a nuclear attack, which is what makes its Nuclear Posture Review so important. The review provides a comprehensive report of several nations’ nuclear stockpile and ambitions. The 2018 review caused a great amount of concern, not just because there are some serious threats but also because no one at the DOD seems to know how to read a map. According to CNN, the agency “was forced to correct several mistakes…after an initial version of the report…labeled Taiwan as part of China and included the disputed Kuril Islands in a chart depicting Russia. An earlier draft version of the report…included a graphic that superimposed the North Korean flag over an image of the entire Korean peninsula.” Said one Pentagon official: “I imagine it led to a very awkward phone call with our Asian allies.”

  THINKING INSIDE THE BOX

  A six-year-old boy named Mason got stuck inside a claw machine at the Beef O’Brady’s restaurant in Titusville, Florida. No one could figure out how he got in, nor could they get him out. (Only the vendor had the key.) Ten minutes later, firefighters arrived and had to break the plexiglass to free him. Apparently, this kind of thing happens fairly often; over the past few years there have been similar reports of little kids getting trapped inside claw machines in Maryland, Nebraska, Tennessee, Texas, Minnesota, Kentucky, Ireland, England, and Australia, and in each case, after the children were freed, they got to keep a toy.

  NOT TOO SHARP

  In December 2017, John Gomes, an 51-year-old amateur swordsmith from Cohoes, New York, attempted to bend a piece of metal just like he saw them do on the History Channel show Forged in Fire. Lacking a foundry, the man started a barrel fire in his backyard…on a very windy day. Yada yada yada. “This is the worst disaster our city has ever seen,” lamented Cohoes mayor Shawn Morse. “We often tell people we don’t allow open burns in the city and they say, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ Well, this open burn just caused millions of dollars of damage and destroyed half our downtown.”

  What do you have to do to join the Sun City Poms, a cheerleading squad in Arizona? Be at least 55.

  WATCHING THE DETECTIVES

  Uncle John loves detective TV shows. Some of his favorite series were made overseas. If you’re a fan and you haven’t seen these shows yet, they may help solve the mystery of what you’re going to binge-watch next.

  JOHNNY STACCATO (U.S.)

  John Cassavetes plays Staccato, a Greenwich Village jazz musician who moonlights as a private eye. Or is he a private eye who moonlights as a jazz musician? Guest stars who went on to greater fame include Mary Tyler Moore, Martin Landau, and Cassavetes’s wife, actress Gena Rowlands. (NBC: 27 episodes, 1959–60)

  PRIME SUSPECT (UK)

  Academy Award winner Helen Mirren stars as Jane Tennison, a detective chief inspector with London’s Metropolitan Police. She investigates murders and other high-profile crimes while battling sexism in the police force
and trying to find a balance between work and her personal life. She also drinks too much. (15 episodes, 1991–2006)

  MAIGRET (France)

  This series, which is based upon the novels of the best-selling Belgian author Georges Simenon, features Jean Richard and later Bruno Cremer as Commissaire Maigret of the National Police. When Simenon created Maigret, the character was purely fictional, but as he developed a friendship with France’s greatest living police detective, Chief Inspector Marcel Guillaume, he based more and more of Maigret on Guillaume. The French TV series is best, but if you can’t stand subtitles, there are three British series as well, starring Rupert Davies, Michael Gambon, and Rowan Atkinson, respectively, and one TV movie starring Richard Harris. (144 episodes in the French series, 1967–2005)

  DA VINCI’S INQUEST (Canada)

  Nicholas Campbell is Dominic Da Vinci, the chief coroner of Vancouver, British Columbia, who teams up with his ex-wife, chief pathologist Patricia Da Vinci, and Vancouver Police detectives Leo Shannon, Mick Leary, and Angela Kosmo to get justice for the victims of foul play in the cases he investigates. The Da Vinci character was based on real-life chief coroner Larry Campbell (no relation to Nicholas), who, like Da Vinci, eventually became mayor of Vancouver. Da Vinci’s Inquest aired for seven seasons, five of which won the Gemini Award for Best Dramatic Series in Canada (91 episodes, 1998–2005)