Uncle John's Actual and Factual Bathroom Reader
Page 69
Both groups responded similarly to the positive words, but when they got to the negative words, “the people who watched a rude interaction had concepts about rudeness active in their mind, and thus were faster to respond to those concepts.” In other words, once the rudeness is activated in your mind—whether it was directed at you, or you simply witnessed it—you’re subconsciously more likely to respond in kind. It’s not your fault, though—the rude response is automatic. Our advice: Just take a breath and go to your happy place.
“To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.”
—John Ruskin
Fair? In ancient Rome, the birthdays of all adult males were celebrated. Women’s and children’s birthdays were not.
SUNK BY THE TITANIC
If you’re not from Chicago (and even if you are), there’s a good chance that you’ve never heard of the SS Eastland disaster. It’s one of the deadliest and least-remembered maritime tragedies in American history.
CAN’T HELP BUT WONDER
One of the first questions to arise from the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 was why there weren’t enough lifeboats for everyone on board. The answer was simple, and naive: The thinking back then was that it made more sense to turn the ship itself into a giant lifeboat, by loading it up with safety features. For example, the Titanic’s hull was divided into 16 watertight compartments, and each one had electric watertight doors that could be closed remotely via a control panel on the bridge. As many as four of the compartments at the front of the ship could be breached and flooded with seawater, and the Titanic would still remain afloat.
The only reason large ships like the Titanic carried lifeboats at all was in case they developed mechanical problems and were dead in the water. The lifeboats would then be used to ferry passengers to another ship. But this could be done in turns; there was no need to have enough lifeboats to ferry everyone over in a single large group. At the turn of the 20th century, the idea that modern ships might actually sink seemed preposterous. In 1907 an English sea captain named Edward Smith remarked that he could not think of “any condition which would cause a ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.”
THINK AGAIN
Five years later, on April 14, 1912, Smith was the captain of the Titanic when it struck an iceberg and ruptured not four but five of its forward watertight compartments, enough to send it to the bottom of the Atlantic. Some 1,500 people were killed the disaster, in large part because there weren’t enough lifeboats on board for everyone.
After the Titanic disaster, it was clear that no ship was unsinkable. And that meant that ships needed to carry more lifeboats. The Seamen’s Act of 1915, signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in March of that year, was a step in the right direction; it required American-flagged ships to carry enough lifeboats for 75 percent of the passengers and crew. (The Titanic was built to carry 3,300 people but had lifeboats for only 1,100.)
The idea that modern ships might actually sink seemed preposterous.
First American guide dog school: The Seeing Eye, Inc., established in Tennessee in 1929.
The Seaman’s Act applied to all ships, not just new ones, and that meant that older ships had to be retrofitted with more lifeboats and other safety equipment. One such ship was the SS Eastland, a 275-foot-long “excursion steamer” based in Chicago.
ODD DUCK
The Eastland was an unusual ship. It was built in 1903 in a shipyard that had never built a passenger ship before, and would never build one again. Because it was designed to operate in the Chicago River and other shallow waters, it didn’t have a bulky keel at the bottom of its hull. Keels typically contain a lot of weight, and since they’re at the very bottom of the ship well below the waterline, that weight helps to keep the ship stable by preventing it from listing, or rolling too far to one side or the other. That’s what the keel is for.
The Eastland was an unusual ship. It was built in 1903 in a shipyard that had never built a passenger ship before, and would never build one again.
The Eastland had a system of ballast tanks at the bottom of the ship that served the same purpose as a keel. If the ship listed too far to the port (left) side, water could be pumped into the starboard (right) ballast tanks to add weight to that side, leveling the ship. If the Eastland listed too far to starboard, water could be pumped into the port tanks. Such a system might have worked with cargo that didn’t move once it was loaded—the ballast tanks could be adjusted once to level the ship, then left alone. But passengers were another story: they moved around unpredictably, and if a ship was fully loaded, the ballast tanks had to be watched very carefully and adjusted regularly.
ON TOP
Another problem with the Eastland—and one that made its unusual ballast system much more problematic—was the fact that it was top-heavy. This was apparent from the moment it was launched in 1903, when it listed a full 45 degrees, or halfway over onto its side. That should have been a warning sign, but when the Eastland promptly righted itself, the builders concluded that the design was good and the ship was stable. When it listed again later that same year, this time with hundreds of passengers on board, “improvements” were made. But that didn’t solve the problem. The Eastland continued to list dangerously, especially when it was overloaded, which was often. Several times it nearly capsized.
In the years that followed, more modifications were made to the Eastland, but not for safety. Quite the opposite, in fact. The ship was reengineered to travel faster, and to carry more people. A lot more people. By 1915, when the Seaman’s Act went into effect, the ship that had been designed to carry 500 people now carried more than 2,500. Most people tended to congregate on the upper decks, well above the waterline, which made the Eastland even more top-heavy.
Only U.S. president to have registered a patent: Abraham Lincoln, for a mechanism that lifted riverboats over obstructions (1849).
Now that the Seaman’s Act had gone into effect, all of those extra people were going to need lifeboats. Where the Eastland had once carried only six lifeboats, it now carried 11, along with 37 smaller life rafts and more than 2,500 life jackets, enough for everyone on the ship. Nearly everything was stored on the upper decks; the combined weight of all of this equipment was more than 40 tons, adding to the Eastland’s instability.
THE PICNIC
On July 24, 1915, three weeks after the last of the new lifeboats and other equipment were installed—and without any safety trials being conducted—the Eastland was scheduled for an excursion that had the ship filled to capacity: a day trip to Washington Park in Michigan City, Indiana, 38 miles southeast of Chicago on the Lake Michigan shoreline. The trip had been booked by the Western Electric Company to provide recreation for employees of the company’s Hawthorne Works factory in Cicero, Illinois. The Eastland was one of five ships chartered to bring the factory’s 7,000 workers to a picnic in the park.
The ship began loading at 6:30 a.m., and by 7:10 some 2,500 people were aboard. Because the weather was cold and drizzly, many mothers with small children moved inside to the main cabin. The ship loaded on the starboard (right) side, and because people congregated there after boarding, the Eastland initially listed to starboard. A short time later, it listed to port. The water in the ballast tanks was repeatedly adjusted in an attempt to level the ship, but the Eastland remained unsteady as people moved around.
OVER
When the Eastland began to pull away from the wharf, a crowd of passengers on the top deck suddenly moved from the starboard side of the ship to the port side, where the view was better. The ship was already listing to port, and when the passengers moved to the port side, the list became more pronounced, reaching nearly 30 degrees—so far over that water began flooding into the ship through the port side gangway. Terrified stokers and oilers belowdecks in the engine room abandoned their posts and fled in terror as water poured into their compartment.
On the upper decks, the danger was not as
apparent, at least not to the passengers. Many of them, especially the children, thought the steep list was exciting. But the crew knew better and they instructed the passengers on the port side to move to the starboard side of the ship, quickly. By now, however, the angle of the ship was so steep, and the deck so slippery from the wet weather, that the passengers were slow to move—too slow…and too late. The list increased to more than 45 degrees, then the ship rolled over onto its side, coming to rest in 20 feet of water just 20 feet from the wharf.
Most produced motor vehicle in history: the Honda Super Cub motorcycle. More than 100 million have been made since 1958.
NO ESCAPE
Technically speaking, the Eastland didn’t sink: the ship was nearly 40 feet wide, so when it rolled over in water 20 feet deep, half of the hull remained above the surface. But to the hundreds of people trapped inside the main cabin or belowdecks, that made little difference. They were tossed into great heaps when the ship rolled over, and in the mad scramble to escape as water flooded in, hundreds of them died either from drowning, or by being crushed or smothered beneath people, furniture, and other debris.
Many hundreds more passengers who had been standing on the upper deck were tossed into the river “like so many ants being brushed from a table,” one witness remembered, and were now fighting for their lives. Many did not know how to swim, and were weighed down by their clothes. Helen Repa, a Western Electric nurse who was one of the first medical professionals to arrive, described the scene:
I shall never be able to forget what I saw. People were struggling in the water, clustered so thickly that they literally covered the surface of the river. A few were swimming; the rest were floundering about, some clinging to a little raft that had floated free, others clutching at anything they could reach—at bits of wood, at each other, grabbing each other, pulling each other down, and screaming! The screaming was the most horrible of all.
Many hundreds more passengers who had been standing on the upper deck were tossed into the river “like so many ants being brushed from a table.”
CLOSE TO SHORE
The tragedy might have been even worse if the Eastland had not rolled on its side so close to the wharf. Many people were able to swim to it and pull themselves from the water, and a few bystanders jumped into the water to try and save whomever they could. There were also plenty of boats around, and many rushed to render assistance. A tugboat called the Kenosha positioned itself between the Eastland and the wharf so that people standing on the overturned hull could walk to safety.
And yet for all that, the death toll was shockingly high: by the time the last bodies were pulled from the ship (“all the bodies that came up seemed to be women and children,” Repa remembered), 844 people were dead. Among them were George Sindelar, a Western Electric foreman, his wife Josephine, and all five of their children, aged 3 to 15. The Sindelars were but one of 21 families where both parents and all of their children were killed.
Yachts get their name from jaghtschip, a Dutch word meaning “hunt ship” or “chase ship.” The Dutch used them hunt pirates.
AFTERMATH
An investigation into the deadliest shipwreck ever on the Great Lakes blamed “conditions of instability,” among which the ship’s bad design, mismanagement of the ballast system, and overloading of passengers were cited. Four officers of the St. Joseph-Chicago Steamship Company were indicted on federal charges for manslaughter, and the ship’s captain and engineer were charged with “criminal carelessness,” but the charges were later dropped when a judge ruled that since the Eastland had operated for so many years without loss of life, the accused had little reason to suspect that the ship was unsafe. As for being compensated for their losses, the families of the deceased had to get in line behind the companies that salvaged the Eastland. By the time they were paid, there was little money left for anyone else.
After the Eastland was salvaged, the U.S. Navy bought it and turned it into a gunboat named the Wilmette. The ship remained in service through World War II, and for many years was a training ship on the Great Lakes. After the war, it was decommissioned and offered for sale to the public. When no one offered to buy it, the navy sold it for scrap in 1946.
ACTUAL & FACTUAL RANDOM FACTS
•Items that have been left behind in Uber cars: a 1.3-carat diamond, a mask made of rhinestones, tax returns, divorce proceedings, a skateboard, a slice of pizza, a marriage certificate, a cat carrier (with no cat in it), a Nintendo 64, a cardboard box full of hair extensions, a flute, a flat-screen television, a single Birkenstock sandal, two French bulldog statues, a jetpack, a wagon, a bulletproof vest, a leaf blower, a full laundry hamper, a tuxedo, a butcher knife, an air mattress, a bridal veil, a pool cue, a college diploma, and a superhero cape.
•“Moon River” lyricist Johnny Mercer split the profits from his song “I Wanna Be Around to Pick Up the Pieces When Somebody Breaks Your Heart” with a Youngstown, Ohio, grandmother named Sadie Vimmerstedt, who sent him the suggested title in the mail. “She did the title and I did everything else,” Mercer said. “But I figure that’s fifty-fifty, because, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a hit title.”
Hard to bee-lieve: You’re 33 times more likely to be killed by bees than you are to win the lottery jackpot.
ANSWERS
Edison Quiz (Answers for page 11)
1. Spain, Andorra, Monaco, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, and Belgium.
3. In Russia.
9. This was a trick question: Australia is more than three times as large as Greenland, but on world maps that use what is known as the Mercator projection, geographical features near the North and South Poles are exaggerated in size. On these maps, Greenland appears much larger than Australia.
10. In Denmark.
12. Papua New Guinea.
14. He was a British engineer who invented a process for making steel by blowing air through molten pig iron, which made steel much cheaper to produce.
17. The Minute Man who rode on horseback from Boston to Lexington, Massachusetts, warning that the British were marching to Concord.
20. The Carthaginian (North African) general who conquered much of Italy in the third century B.C.
32. The city of Ajaccio, on the Mediterranean island of Corsica.
34. John Napier, a Scottish mathematician (1550–1617).
35. Montezuma II, who ruled the Aztec empire from 1502 to 1520.
37. An oval-shaped region of the North Atlantic known for slow currents and large quantities of seaweed floating on the surface.
42. Delaware, then Connecticut.
46. Montana.
59. The gravitational pull of the moon.
70. In Wisconsin.
71. It depends on the medium that sound is traveling through. At sea level and a temperature of 59° Fahrenheit (15° Celsius), it travels at 1,116 feet (340 meters) per second.
72. In empty space: about 186,282 miles (299,792 kilometers) per second.
73. A queen of ancient Egypt and lover of both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. She committed suicide by causing a poisonous snake called an asp to bite her.
75. Sir Isaac Newton.
76. The average distance is 92,960,000 miles, or 149,600,000 kilometers.
79. A cloth made from wool or other animal-hair fibers matted together by pressure, moisture, and heat.
85. Marie Curie, in Paris in 1898.
86. Wilhelm Roentgen, in 1895.
92. Giuseppe Verdi, in 1853.
93. At sea level with an air temperature of 59° Fahrenheit: 0.0765 pounds per cubic feet x 6,000 cubic feet = 459 pounds.
98. Charles Goodyear.
101. Eli Whitney.
105. Silica sand (silicon dioxide), soda ash (sodium carbonate), and limestone (calcium carbonate).
110. A unit of energy equal to the amount required to raise a one-pound weight a distance of one foot.
121. The English composer John Stafford Smith wrote the music, originally for a drinking song called
“To Anacreon in Heaven,” in about 1780. Francis Scott Key wrote the words for the song in 1814.
125. Miguel de Cervantes, in 1615.
126. Victor Hugo, in 1862.
129. Auguste Rodin, in 1880.
130. It is named after Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, the Polish-Dutch physicist who invented it in 1724.
133. Mosquitoes (more specifically, female mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles).
134. The Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa, who first spotted the Pacific from a mountaintop in what is now Panama, on September 25, 1513. On September 29, he waded into the surf and claimed the Pacific and all adjoining lands for Spain.
It’s estimated that $1.5 trillion worth of bribes are paid worldwide each year.
Television by the Numbers Quiz (Answers for page 254)
1. Susan
2. Matt
3. Jan
4. Theo
5. Jim-Bob
6. Jerry
7. Brian
8. Mushmouth
9. Jughead
10. Stephanie
11. Al (short for Alicia)
12. Jill
13. Ricky
14. Manny
15. Jack Paar
Occupational Name Quiz (Answers for page 273)
1. Bradley Cooper. A cooper is a traditional name for a barrel maker.
2. Karen Carpenter
3. Mike Judge
4. Margaret Thatcher. A thatcher is an old word for “roof builder”—specifically someone who builds roofs out of reeds or straw, also called “thatch.”
5. Danny Glover. Yes, a person who makes gloves is a glover.
6. Dennis Miller. A person who grinds grain in a mill is called a miller.
7. Tim Cook
8. Tiki Barber