Uncle John's Actual and Factual Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  EUREKA

  It apparently didn’t take long for the roots of Amelia Adamson’s rosebush to find their way down to a spot where some of this natural human “fertilizer” had collected. As soon as it did, the plant began to grow rapidly…and it never stopped. As the decades passed, the silver mines played out and most of the townspeople moved on. By 1910 fewer than 700 people lived in Tombstone. But the rosebush kept growing: by the 1920s, its creeping vines had taken over so much of the yard that the owners of the boardinghouse, which now operated as a hotel, built trellises to place the vines overhead, so that people wouldn’t trip or trample them underfoot.

  Soon the rosebush provided a large shady area on the patio in back of the hotel, and became a popular resting spot for people who wanted to get out of the desert sun. It became so popular, in fact, that in 1935 the hotel changed its name from Cochise House to the Rose Tree Inn. And the rosebush acquired a nickname as well: the Shady Lady.

  STILL GROWING

  In 1937 Robert Ripley of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! fame visited Tombstone and saw the Shady Lady; by then it was nine feet tall, its canopy of miniature white tea roses covered an area of 2,750 square feet, and it was still growing. Ripley wrote it up in his newspaper column as the “World’s Largest Rosebush.”

  More than 80 years have passed since Ripley passed through town. The Shady Lady has more than tripled in size since then…and it’s still growing. Today the central “trunk” is 12 feet in diameter and the canopy covers more than 9,000 square feet. Guinness World Records has confirmed its status as the world’s largest rosebush. The plant owes nearly all of its 130 years of prodigious growth to the mother lode of human “fertilizer” that it found in the mine shafts beneath Tombstone. The owners of the inn, which is now a museum, didn’t need to fertilize the plant until 2015.

  The Shady Lady will probably never be as famous as the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, but it is the center of attention during Tombstone’s annual Rose Festival, held every year during March and April when the plant is in bloom. The museum’s owners sell transplanted cuttings of the rosebush, so if you want a piece of the Shady Lady in your own garden, you can have it. (Where you get your fertilizer is your problem.)

  Why do seagulls stand on one leg? Tucking one leg into its feathers keeps it warm, helping retain body heat on cold days.

  SURVIVING ’17

  Between August and November 2017, planet Earth was battered by one natural disaster after another. Floods, fires, earthquakes, and hurricanes killed several thousand people, and displaced millions more. Yet out of the anguish and devastation came inspiring stories of survival and heroism. Here are six of them.

  SIERRA LEONE MUDSLIDES

  Details: When three times the seasonal average of rainfall soaked the western African nation of Sierra Leone in the summer of 2017, mudslides were inevitable. The capital city, Freetown (with a population of nearly one million) was directly in harm’s way. Situated at the foot of a steep mountain chain, Freetown has an aging, clogged drainage system, and there were few escape routes for the city’s residents due to crowded conditions and poor infrastructure. Early on a Monday morning in mid-August, following three days of relentless rain, it happened: a torrent of thick, red mud poured out of the mountains and demolished much of Freetown. More than 500 people were killed, with hundreds more remaining missing.

  Survival Story: Unlike many who perished, Kelvin Kamara was awake when the mudslide came. He barely made it to high ground before the mud and debris overtook his street. But he didn’t stay there; instead, he jumped into action. In the crucial moments that followed, Kamara frantically began searching for people who were trapped and in danger of being buried by the still-rising mud. By his own count, he helped save more than 40 people that morning.

  HURRICANE HARVEY

  Details: Harvey was the first of four major hurricanes to make landfall in the Americas in 2017. When the category 4 hurricane hit Texas on Thursday, August 24, it weakened and stalled for two days. But by the time it finally moved on, it had dropped more than 40 inches of rain in Houston and set an all-time U.S. record for the most rainfall in a 24-hour span. More than 30,000 people were displaced; just under 100 died. And one person was born.

  Survival Story: Andrea Smith went into labor just as Harvey made landfall. She and her husband Greg had been watching the storm’s approach for several days. They’d planned on going to the hospital on Sunday, but the water rose much faster than anyone had expected, and they found themselves trapped in their first-floor apartment. Although the young married couple are both doctors, neither had any experience delivering a baby, nor did they have any medical equipment. They tried calling 9-1-1, but no one answered. So they called the U.S. Coast Guard and were told that no one could rescue them until the rain stopped. With no way out, the Smiths enlisted help from Greg’s mother and some neighbors and prepared to have the baby at home. But water was coming in under the door and rising fast. Reluctantly, Andrea and Greg made their way to an apartment on the second floor.

  Dodged: The International Olympic Committee has rejected proposals to make dodgeball an Olympic event.

  As Andrea was preparing to have her first child in a stranger’s bed, a dump truck rolled up and parked out front. Greg ran outside in the torrential rain and yelled for help. The driver yelled back, “We’re here for you!” Unbeknownst to the Smiths, one of their neighbors had managed to contact nearby firefighters, who procured the dump truck. Then, in pouring rain and waist-high water, friends and strangers formed a human chain to get Andrea and Greg safely from the building to the truck, where firefighters took care of Andrea as she was driven to the hospital.

  A few hours later, little Adrielle was born. There were complications, though, and the baby girl was put straight into intensive care. She’s okay now, but who knows what would have happened if Andrea hadn’t made it to the hospital to give birth. “Moments like these,” said Molly Akers, who filmed the human-chain rescue, “remind me of all the good in the world.” That was one of 17,000 documented rescues during Hurricane Harvey.

  CENTRAL MEXICO EARTHQUAKE

  Details: September 19, 2017, marked the 32nd anniversary of a Mexico City earthquake that killed more than 10,000 people. To commemorate the tragedy, at 11:00 a.m. the country held its annual earthquake preparedness drill. Two hours later, a magnitude 7.1 quake struck central Mexico. During the 20 seconds of violent shaking, hundreds of buildings fell in Mexico City, and over 200 people were killed. (Despite the drill that had just taken place, no warning sirens preceded the earthquake, which caught the populace off guard.)

  Survival Story: “I don’t even know how I saved myself,” said 12-year-old Luis Carlos Tomé through tears to a Telemundo News reporter. A few hours earlier, Luis was in his English class when the floor started to vibrate. He yelled for everyone to get out, and they all ran to the door. Unsure which direction to go, he went with his friends to the right. They were about to run down a staircase when the ceiling started falling in front of them, so they turned around and made their way—arms linked—to another staircase…which was shaking so violently that Luis had to jump over it as the air started filling with dust and rubble. He lost sight of his friends as he somehow made his way outside. When he turned around, what had been his school was now just a pile of rubble. Although 21 students, three teachers, and a janitor died at the school, Luis was beyond relieved that his little brother Jose had also made it out unscathed. “We cried,” said Luis. “He was my biggest worry.”

  The number of human egg cells necessary to produce the next generation of the human race would fit inside in a single hen’s egg.

  SOUTH ASIA FLOODS

  Details: Monsoon season hits Asia hard every year, but the summer of 2017 brought the worst flooding in decades. Rising waters killed nearly 1,300 people across Bangladesh, Nepal, India, and Pakistan. In Karwar, a city on the west coast of India, onlookers watched helplessly as six people were washed away in a flash flood. A search was begun
immediately, but there was little hope that they would recover anyone alive. That grim forecast seemed more and more likely as four bodies were recovered. Two people were still missing, though. One of them was never found; the other was Yashwant Raikar.

  Survival Story: The young man and his wife had been preparing for a family picnic at the base of a popular waterfall. They were making chicken kabobs when the torrent of water came gushing over the falls. People started making their way to higher ground, but then, “a young boy who was running to escape the flood fell down,” Raikar later told the Times of India. “I pulled him to safety, but I fell down and was washed away.” A tourist filmed Raikar and the five others get taken by the river. The footage was shown on the local news, which pronounced all six people dead.

  But Raikar was in a fight for his life. “I was slammed against boulders and tree branches,” he recalled, for more than a mile. “I caught hold of a tree branch and held on to it. After some time, the water level receded and I came out of the stream and fell unconscious.” The next thing Raikar knew, he was in the hospital. His family was overjoyed that he was alive, as another of their relatives didn’t make it. “I never thought the picnic would cost us so dearly,” he said.

  NORTHERN CALIFORNIA FIRESTORM

  Details: With all the wildfires that roar through heavily populated Southern California, one wouldn’t expect that the most destructive fire in the state’s history would happen in the heart of Wine Country. “The Northern California Firestorm” was actually a series of more than 250 separate wildfires. The worst was the Tubbs Fire, which broke out on October 8 near the town of Calistoga. The cause: a tree branch that took down a power line in high winds. Those same high winds—some gusts reached 60 mph—quickly turned the fire into an inferno. There was no stopping it as it spread southwest through dry pine forests straight toward the city of Santa Rosa.

  Survival Story: Jan and John Pascoe, 65 and 70 respectively, lived in the mountains just outside of Santa Rosa in a home they’d built 35 years earlier. As they were getting ready for bed on that calm Sunday night, the Tubbs Fire started about 11 miles away. At around 10:00 p.m., their daughter called and told them that several fires were burning in surrounding areas, and they needed to leave. Jan checked an app on her phone, which told her the closest flames were still several miles away. And they hadn’t received a wildfire evacuation alert yet, so they thought they had some time. They started preparing to evacuate. Several crucial minutes later, a blast of wind hit the house and Jan looked out the window and saw red. They threw what they could in their pickup truck and started racing down the driveway, but they were too late. A wall of flames blocked their way to the main road, forcing them back to the house. And then their worst nightmare came true: their home was surrounded by fire.

  It takes 872 gallons of water to produce just one gallon of wine.

  Then they remembered that their neighbor had a pool; it was about a third of a mile away. It wasn’t very large, and only four feet deep, but it was their only hope. Jan called 9-1-1 to say they’d be in the pool if anyone came. (No one did.) Then they ran outside in their pajamas and traversed the burning mountainside all the way to the pool…only to discover that the water was freezing. They huddled next to it for as long as they could. Then a large pine tree burst into flames, followed by wooden railroad ties lining the steps to the pool. They had no choice. They got in.

  Just then, the neighbor’s house caught fire, and the air became hot enough to burn their skin on contact. Meanwhile, it was so cold under the water that they nearly got frostbite on their toes. Jan and John huddled together for warmth and used their shirts to shield their heads when they came up for air. “Just how long,” John kept asking, “does it take for a house to burn down?” This one took six hours.

  By the time the flames finally subsided, the sun had risen, and the Pascoes were still alive. Tired and shivering, they climbed out of the pool and surveyed the damage. Everything they owned was gone. “After being here for 35 years,” John told the Los Angeles Times, “it’s a bit hard to get my head around.” More than 5,000 structures were lost in Santa Rosa that night. Even worse, the Tubbs Fire took 43 lives. It would have likely been two more if not for the Pascoes’ quick thinking and their will to live.

  IRAN–IRAQ EARTHQUAKE

  Details: On November 12, 2017, a 7.3 magnitude quake struck rural Iran just inside the Iraqi border, and the damage was quick and severe. The already crumbling infrastructure proved no match for the violent tremors, and more than 70,000 people suddenly became homeless. The 630 confirmed fatalities made it the deadliest earthquake of 2017 (and it had competition). Worst hit was the town of Sarpol-e-Zahab. Most of its 35,000 people lived in apartment buildings, many of which tumbled to the ground.

  Survival Story: Rescue efforts there were slow, and after two days and two nights that saw temperatures fall below freezing, searchers were finding only dead bodies. But then, while looking through some rubble, they discovered a little baby…alive. Very few details were released in press reports, but a widely circulated photo of the smiling infant shows that, other than a cut on the bridge of his nose, he appears to be fine. No one knows how the baby survived on his own for more than 60 hours in freezing temperatures without food—or even how he survived the earthquake in the first place. The rescue was called a “miracle” by the beleaguered survivors…who at that point really needed a miracle.

  Research shows that red and yellow are the colors that most make people want to eat…

  LIFE IMITATES

  THE SIMPSONS

  When a TV show has been on as long as The Simpsons has, it’s bound to intersect with the real world every once in a while—especially because the show contains so many references to cultural moments and current events. Still, when things happen on The Simpsons first and then they happen in real life, it’s kind of eerie.

  On The Simpsons: At the end of “When You Dish Upon a Star,” a 1998 episode guest-starring Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, director Ron Howard pitches a movie idea to his business partner, Brian Grazer. He does it on the lot of 20th Century Fox (parent company of The Simpsons), which a sign indicates is “A Division of Walt Disney Co.”

  In Real Life: Nearly 20 years after the episode aired, Disney announced plans to buy most of 20th Century Fox.

  On The Simpsons: In the 2010 episode “Boy Meets Curl,” Marge and Homer go on a date to an ice-skating rink but discover that the place has been taken over by a curling team. The two realize they’re really good at the bizarre sport that involves sliding a stone across an ice rink toward a target, assisted by sweeping—Homer can bowl and Marge can sweep. They wind up on the U.S. Olympic team and win a gold medal over Sweden.

  In Real Life: At the 2018 Winter Olympics, the U.S. men’s curling team won its first-ever gold medal…over Sweden.

  On The Simpsons: The depths to which the Springfield Elementary School cafeteria, and Lunchlady Doris, will sink to save a buck on food is a long-running, disgusting joke on The Simpsons. In the 1995 episode “The PTA Disbands,” Doris makes a meal out of shredded newspaper and old gym mats.

  In Real Life: In 2014 a health watchdog organization called the Environmental Working Group released a report revealing that a compound called azodicarbonamide had been found in 500 different processed foods, mostly bread products like Wonder Bread, Pillsbury rolls, and the bread used at the Subway sandwich chain. What’s azodicarbonamide? It’s a chemical ingredient that is added to bread—and yoga mats—to make them soft and pliable.

  …which is why most fast-food companies use one or both of those colors in their logos.

  On The Simpsons: The show aired a “flash forward” episode set in the distant future called “Bart to the Future.” It begins with Lisa being inaugurated as the “first straight female president” of the United States. In a budget meeting with advisors, she laments that she “inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump.”

  In Real Life: That episode aired in 2000, when the id
ea of Donald Trump becoming president was absurd.

  On The Simpsons: In the 1992 episode “New Kid on the Block” (written by Conan O’Brien), Homer goes to an all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant called the Frying Dutchman. Of course, he eats until the place closes down for the night and the staff kicks him out. Claiming to still be hungry—despite having eaten hundreds of helpings of fried shrimp—Homer and his sleazy attorney Lionel Hutz sue the restaurant for false advertising.

  In Real Life: In 2012 a man named Bill Wisth attended the weekly Friday night all-you-can-eat fish fry at Chuck’s Place in Mequon, Wisconsin. After a few trips to the buffet, the restaurant ran out of fish. Claiming to still be hungry, Wisth refused to pay for his meal and summoned the media. “If the people who run the restaurant put up signs that say all-you-can-eat, but then selectively not want to fill that promise, that’s false advertising,” he told reporters. Wisth threatened to sue, but backed down when the owner of Chuck’s Place claimed that Wisth had eaten more than 20 pieces of fish and had also violated the buffet’s strict “no sharing” rule.

  On The Simpsons: In “Elementary School Musical,” from 2010, Lisa, Millhouse, Martin, and other nerdy kids (with gambling help from Homer) put together a pool to place their bets on who will win Nobel Prizes in various categories. Millhouse thinks Bengt Holmström is a lock for Economics, but he loses to Jagdish Bhagwati.

  In Real Life: Bengt Homström isn’t a made-up name—he’s a real economist. And in 2016 Millhouse’s prediction came true when Homström won the Nobel Prize for Economics.

  A LUCKY FIND

  In 2016 a “bargain hunter” (unnamed in press reports) bought an old, cracked teapot for $20 from an antiques store. The shopper had it appraised, only to discover it was made in South Carolina in the 1760s. The teapot was later sold at auction for $806,000.