Uncle John's Actual and Factual Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  VOTES ARE IN

  Though more inspirational suggestions—such as RRS Henry Worsley, after the explorer who died trying to cross Antarctica alone, and RRS Poppy-Mai, after a brave young girl who died from a rare form of brain cancer—received quite a few votes (15,231and 34,371), Boaty McBoatface was the absolute favorite with 124,109 votes.

  AND THE WINNER IS

  Much to the dismay of the voting public, Science Minister Jo Johnson said it would be inappropriate to give a joke label to the ship. “Its title should fit the mission and capture the spirit of public endeavor,” he said. Johnson reminded voters that NERC had reserved the right in the competition rules to have the final say on the name. So the polar research ship was named RRS Sir David Attenborough in tribute to the great broadcaster and natural scientist. Some Brits suggested that in the interest of democracy and humor, Sir David should change his name to Sir Boaty McBoatface… but no such luck.

  NO, THEY’RE NOT

  “We are excited to hear what the public has to suggest and we really are open to ideas.”

  —NERC official

  The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the vote, took 42 years to ratify (1878–1920).

  IT’S BAAACK

  The joke would not die.

  •One month after the Boaty vote, Google released a natural language parser that they called Parsey McParseface.

  •That August, the Cartoon Network’s series The Regular Show broadcast an episode titled “Spacey McSpace Tree.”

  •A character on BBC Three’s popular online series Pls Like was named Vloggy McVlogface.

  •Later that year, a new salt-spreading truck in the UK was named Salty McSaltface.

  •Sweden’s Stockholm-Gothenburg rail line named one of their engines Trainy McTrainface.

  •A new ferry in Sydney, Australia, was dubbed Ferry McFerryface.

  •The first Humboldt penguin to hatch in the UK’s Sea Life Sanctuary was named Fluffy McFluffyface.

  •And as a consolation prize for NERC voters, the yellow submarine on the RRS Sir David Attenborough was named Boaty McBoatface.

  TWO TERRIBLE TYPOS

  A special Google home page banner replaced the second “g” with a g-shaped strawberry, but the typesetter deleted the “l” as well and forgot to put it back, so for an entire day Google’s home page said:

  Googe

  Fact 1: The 2018 Winter Olympics were held in PyeongChang, South Korea.

  Fact 2: P. F. Chang’s is an Asian-inspired restaurant chain with more than 200 U.S. locations. Those two facts collided in the Olympics logo that Chicago’s WLS News displayed on its screen during a story about the PyeongChang games:

  P.F. Chang 2018

  Dam! North American beavers used to be as big as bears.

  SPORTS LASTS

  You can make the sports history books by being the first to do something…or by being the last to do something.

  Last baseball team to integrate: In 1947 Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers became the first African American player in the major leagues, integrating baseball. Other teams slowly added black players to their rosters. The final holdout: the Boston Red Sox, who signed Elijah “Pumpsie” Green in 1959.

  Last East Coast team to head out west: In 1955 the Philadelphia Athletics moved to Kansas City. Three years later, the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants became the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, respectively. In 1960 the NBA’s Minneapolis Lakers headed to Los Angeles, followed shortly by the Philadelphia Warriors heading to San Francisco in 1962. That brought professional sports to the far west, and the end of that particular moving bonanza. The very last time it happened, however, was in 1978. The NBA’s Buffalo Braves moved to California and became the San Diego Clippers. (Six years later, they headed north and became the Los Angeles Clippers.)

  Last time a team won a championship and then immediately folded: In the early 1990s the Canadian Football League expanded into the United States, bringing its distinct style of play into pro football–starved cities such as San Antonio, Birmingham, and Memphis. The experiment ended in 1995 after two seasons; all of the American franchises went out of the business. That included the Baltimore Stallions, who in November 1995 became the first and only American team to win the CFL’s Grey Cup. The NFL returned to Baltimore the following year with the birth of the Ravens.

  Last Heisman Trophy winner who didn’t turn pro: Awarded at the Downtown Athletic Club in New York City since 1935, the Heisman Trophy is the most prestigious player award in college football. Being named the winner of the Heisman almost guarantees the recipient will be selected high in the NFL Draft and go on to a career in the pros. (Some past Heisman winners turned Pro Football Hall of Famers: Barry Sanders, Marcus Allen, and Roger Staubach.) In the mid-20th century, college football was far more popular than pro football, so many early Heisman winners opted for a non-football life after college. Upon graduating in 2005, Jason White, the 2003 Heisman-winning University of Oklahoma quarterback, was not drafted. He got a tryout from the Kansas City Chiefs, and was signed as a free agent by the Tennessee Titans, but he walked away from football because multiple knee injuries left him feeling like he couldn’t make it in the NFL.

  There’s currently a black hole traveling through space at a speed of 5 million miles per hour.

  Last pitcher to win 30 games: Nowadays, winning 20 games in a season is an achievement that will often nab a pitcher a Cy Young Award. It’s difficult to win much more than that because most teams employ a five-man rotation (some are even beginning to toy with a six-man rotation). But during the 1960s, baseball was dominated by pitchers…and some teams had four-man rotations. The last time a pitcher won 30 games or more: 1968, when Denny McLain won 31 for the Detroit Tigers, winning both the American League Cy Young and MVP Awards.

  Last player-coach in the NBA: Who knows how to coach basketball better than somebody who played basketball? Somebody who still plays basketball. In the first few decades of the NBA, player-coaches were not uncommon, as coaches frequently demonstrated stuff out of the playbook by leading by example. The process fell out of favor in the 1960s, and the last player-coach in the league was the Boston Celtics’ Dave Cowans in the 1978–79 season.

  Bonus fact: The last player-manager in baseball was Pete Rose. During the 1986 season, “Charlie Hustle” managed the Cincinnati Reds and also occasionally stepped in to play several infield positions.

  Last NHL goalie to play without a mask: Helmets were optional in the NHL for decades. Some players refused to wear them—even after Bill Masterson of the Minnesota North Stars died from an on-ice head injury in 1968—because they thought it made them appear to be “sissies.” It was a different story for goalies. That position involved the most high-speed pucks flying toward the face, so by the 1960s, most goaltenders opted to wear protective masks (like the one made famous by killer Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th movies) over their faces. But they still didn’t have to wear one, and a journeyman goalie named Andy “Fearless” Brown opted to go without, claiming that the safety gear blocked his vision. By the time he left the NHL in 1977, he was the only goaltender in the league with an uncovered face. (Two years later, the NHL made helmets and masks mandatory, though players who’d signed NHL contracts prior to June 1, 1979, could continue to play helmetless if they so desired.)

  Last American League pitcher to get a hit before the DH rule: Major League Baseball has long been split into two leagues—the National and the American Leagues. Gameplay was essentially the same in both leagues…until 1973. That’s when the American League, in an effort to add more offensive excitement to the game, stopped sending pitchers up to bat. Instead, AL teams started using a designated hitter, who would bat in place of the pitcher but not take the field to play defense. The last pitcher who batted in the pre-DH era in a regular-season AL game and got a hit: rookie New York Yankees hurler Larry Gowell, on October 4, 1972. He pitched in a total of seven innings in a grand total of two bi
g-league games, and got to bat once. But he made it count, hitting a double. (That gave him a perfect career batting average of 1.000.)

  Weird MLB rule: If a player tries to catch a ball with his hat, the batter gets to take third base.

  “TWO CHICKENS TO

  PARALYZE”

  What’s a mondegreen? A woefully misheard or misunderstood phrase… or song lyric. Here are some of the funniest ones we’ve collected.

  Song: “Mama Said,” by the Shirelles

  Actual lyric: “There’ll be days like this, my mama said”

  Misheard as: “There’ll be days like this, my marmoset”

  Song: “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” by Pat Benatar

  Actual lyric: “Hit me with your best shot”

  Misheard as: “Hit me with your pet shark”

  Song: “Another Brick in the Wall,” by Pink Floyd

  Actual lyric: “No dark sarcasm in the classroom”

  Misheard as: “No Dukes of Hazzard in the classroom”

  Song: “I Just Want to Celebrate,” by Rare Earth

  Actual lyric: “I just want to celebrate”

  Misheard as: “I just wanna salivate”

  Song: “Like I Love You,” by Justin Timberlake

  Actual lyric: “You’re a good girl, and that’s what makes me trust you”

  Misheard as: “You’re a good girl, and that’s what makes me Justin”

  Song: “Blank Space,” by Taylor Swift

  Actual lyric: “Got a long list of ex-lovers”

  Misheard as: “Got along with Starbucks lovers”

  Song: “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” by Scorpions

  Actual lyric: “Here I am, rock you like a hurricane”

  Misheard as: “Here I am, rock you like I’m Herman Cain”

  Song: “Pet Sematary,” by the Ramones

  Actual lyric: “I don’t wanna be buried in a pet sematary”

  Misheard as: “I don’t wanna meet Barry in a pet cemetery”

  Song: “Bizarre Love Triangle,” by New Order

  Actual lyric: “I feel a shot right through like a bolt of blue”

  Misheard as: “I feel a shot right through like a butt of poo”

  Song: “Mercy,” by Duffy

  Actual lyric: “You got me begging you for mercy”

  Misheard as: “You got me begging you for birdseed”

  A seabird called an arctic tern can live up to 34 years. In that time, it can travel up to 1.5 million miles.

  Song: “Message in a Bottle,” by the Police

  Actual lyric: “A year has passed since I wrote my note”

  Misheard as: “A year has passed since I broke my nose”

  Song: “Drive,” by the Cars

  Actual lyric: “You can’t go on thinking nothing’s wrong, uh-uh”

  Misheard as: “You can’t go on thinking nothing’s wrong, pork pie”

  Song: “Two Tickets to Paradise,” by Eddie Money

  Actual lyric: “I’ve got two tickets to paradise”

  Misheard as: “I’ve got two chickens to paralyze”

  Song: “Let My Love Open the Door,” by Pete Townshend

  Actual lyric: “Let my love open the door”

  Misheard as: “Let Milo open the door”

  Song: “Behind Blue Eyes,” by the Who

  Actual lyric: “No one knows what it’s like to be the bad man”

  Misheard as: “No one knows what it’s like to be the Batman”

  Song: “Every Time You Go Away,” by Paul Young

  Actual lyric: “You take a piece of me with you”

  Misheard as: “You take a piece of meat with you”

  Song: “Stairway to Heaven,” by Led Zeppelin

  Actual lyric: “And as we wind on down the road”

  Misheard as: “And there’s a wino down the road”

  Song: “Higher Love,” by Steve Winwood

  Actual lyric: “Bring me a higher love”

  Misheard as: “Bake me a pile of love”

  Song: “Hurts So Good,” by John Cougar

  Actual lyric: “Sometimes love don’t feel like it should”

  Misheard as: “Sometimes love is gonna feel like s**t”

  Song: “Bohemian Rhapsody,” by Queen

  Actual lyric: “I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all”

  Misheard as: “I sometimes wish I’d never been boiled in oil”

  Song: “Jet Airliner,” by the Steve Miller Band

  Actual lyric: “Big ol’ jet airliner”

  Misheard as: “Put old Jeb in the lineup”

  Song: “Panic,” by the Smiths

  Actual lyric: “Hang the D.J.”

  Misheard as: “Hank the D.J.”

  Song: “I Wanna Be Sedated,” by the Ramones

  Actual lyric: “I wanna be sedated”

  Misheard as: “I want a piece of bacon”

  Deadliest job in WWII: serving on a German sub. It had a 75% fatality rate.

  MOOS IN THE NEWS

  If you’ve herd any these stories before, you might want to steer clear of this page.

  COW ISLAND

  In January 2018, a Polish farmer identified in news reports as “Mr. Lukasz” attempted to get a cow into his truck to take it to its final destination: the slaughterhouse. Seemingly aware of its fate, the cow broke free of human handlers (breaking one farmhand’s arm), crashed through a metal fence, and headed for the nearby Lake Nyskie. That’s when Mr. Lukasz saw the cow dive into the lake and start swimming away. The cow reached a small island in the middle of the lake and took up residence there. Lukasz tried for a week to get to the cow with the aid of a fire department’s boat…which prompted the cow to swim farther away to a nearby peninsula. Lukasz finally gave up, and now just has food delivered to make sure his cow survives on its new home.

  I JUST WANNA GRAZE IN GRASS ALL NIGHT

  KISS bassist Gene Simmons has one of the most distinctive looks in rock ’n’ roll history. For more than 40 years, Simmons has worn his stage makeup in a certain pattern: face painted white, with what resembles black bat wings painted over his eyes and a black Bela Lugosi widow’s peak extending down from his hairline. In July 2017, a baby cow on a ranch north of San Antonio, Texas, was born with almost the same patterns on its face, leading some reporters to suggest that Simmons and the calf are from the same “gene pool.” The calf’s owners, the Taccetta family, say they’ll raise the cow as a pet. They named her Genie.

  GOLD, FRANKINCENSE, AND MOO

  Since 1973 the Old First Reformed United Church of Christ in Philadelphia has staged a live nativity scene each Christmas season. Their re-creation of the first Christmas features real donkeys, sheep, and cows, and there was never an incident until 2017. On December 14 at around 2:30 a.m., one of the nativity cows—named Stormy—escaped from the animal enclosure in the churchyard, fled the scene, and walked to the on-ramp of a nearby highway. That’s where police surrounded Stormy with squad cars, then tied a rope around her and led her back to the nativity scene. A few hours later, police received a report that Stormy had escaped again. This time, she made it to the top floor of a downtown Philadelphia parking garage before police took her back to church. Stormy was subsequently replaced by her “understudy”—a cow named Ginger.

  Give or take: The Chinese census has a 2% margin of error. That comes to about 26.7 million people.

  ANNE FRANK, RECONSIDERED

  Historians have long wondered who it was that betrayed Anne Frank’s family in Amsterdam. But were they really betrayed? A new theory could explain how their hiding place was discovered.

  IN HIDING

  The story of Anne Frank and the diary she kept while she and her family were hiding from the Nazis is perhaps the most familiar story to emerge from the Holocaust. Children all over the world read her diary in school, and it has also been made into a play, an Academy Award–winning 1959 film, and numerous television dramas. The details of her life hardly need repeating: During the Nazi occupa
tion of the Netherlands in World War II, Anne, her parents, her sister Margot, and four other Jews went into hiding in a “Secret Annex” hidden behind a bookcase in the building where her father, Otto, ran his business.

  Four trusted employees kept the people in the Secret Annex supplied with food they purchased with black market ration cards. During the two years and one month that Anne lived there, she made regular entries into her diary describing everyday life in hiding. Then on August 4, 1944, three days after Anne’s last diary entry, the building was raided by the Nazis and the eight people hiding in the Secret Annex were arrested and taken away to concentration camps. Only Otto Frank survived; he was the one who arranged for Anne’s diary to be published after the war.

  WERE THEY BETRAYED?

  One question that has remained unanswered for more than 70 years is how the Franks and the others in the Secret Annex were discovered. Otto Frank was certain that they must have been betrayed by someone who tipped off the Nazis to their hiding place. He spent the rest of his life trying to discover who the betrayer was, and after his death in 1980, the foundation that operates the Anne Frank House continued the search. The Dutch government launched two investigations of its own into the matter, one in 1948 and another in 1963. It questioned both the surviving police officials who participated in the raid, and numerous people who worked in the building, all in an attempt to find out who, if anyone, was responsible.

  One question that has remained unanswered for more than 70 years is how the Franks and the others in the Secret Annex were discovered.

  Otto Frank suspected a man named Willem van Maaren, who began working in the warehouse on the ground floor of the building in 1943. He hadn’t been told that Jews were hiding in the building, but he suspected as much, and he set several “traps” to try to find out if people were moving around the building at night: “He places books and bits of paper on the very edges of things in the warehouse so that if anyone walks by they fall off,” Anne wrote in her diary on April 25, 1944. Van Maaren also sprinkled potato flour on the floor to see if anyone would walk through it and leave footprints.