Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  In 1838, a grateful Scottish aristocrat, Lord Lovat, had told them they could have the home of their choice on his estates, and they chose the romantic island of Eilan Aigas, where they designed and built a suitably grand hunting lodge, complete with antlers, weapons, and armor on the walls, and (of course) busts of the Stuart kings, their ancestors. By the time their book came out, their triumph was complete. They sat on thrones, kings in all but name, while the flower of the Scots nobility, dressed in the costumes they had invented for them, knelt before them on the flagstones.

  The first Canadian separatists were elected, not in Quebec, but in Nova Scotia.

  WHEN IS A KING NOT A KING?

  They weren’t satisfied, though. They foolishly decided to convince Queen Victoria to accept their claim to the throne, and she was not amused. When she rejected them publicly, they were frozen out of English society. Denounced as liars and charlatans, their fabricated world fell apart, and they disappeared as suddenly as they had arrived. They were last heard of heading for Prague, where they disappeared from history, too.

  Final Irony: If Scotland ever gets its independence, the national imagery it chooses is sure to be the Sobieski Stuart version.

  GREAT SCOT!

  Though Alexander Graham Bell would have preferred to be remembered for his work with the deaf, we honor him as the inventor of the telephone. Alexander was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1847. His grandfather was a speech therapist who helped stammerers. Bell’s dad created “visual speech,” a picture-based system for teaching the deaf how to make sounds. He wrote textbooks on how to speak correctly. Alexander’s mother was a musician, although she had lost her hearing at age 12.

  Alexander, who had the gift of playing music by ear from an early age, had planned on becoming a musician. He even taught music and speech at a boys’ school. The business of talking and hearing was somewhat of a family preoccupation.

  It was his knowledge of music and his experience working with the hearing impaired that helped Bell invent the telephone when he was only 29. The first phone call was made on March 10, 1876. Bell called his assistant, Mr. Watson, in the next room to tell him “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you.”

  Annie Oakley lived long enough to teach soldiers marksmanship during World War I.

  TAKING NOTE: MUSICAL NOTATION

  * * *

  If you’re not a musician, the musical notation on sheet music looks as confusing as an algebraic formula. But for musicians it’s a clear and concise road map that shows the way: with it, any competent musician can play a piece he or she’s never heard before, and deliver it more or less as the composer intended.

  A lot of the details of our current musical notation evolved over the centuries, but the fundamentals can be traced back to one person: Guido of Arezzo, an Italian monk who lived between 990 and 1050.

  BEFORE THERE WAS GUIDO

  Guido didn’t wake up one day with the idea of musical notation whole and perfect in his head. There’d been some rudimentary forms of musical notation known to the Western world for centuries. In Guido’s own time, a system of notation known as “neumes” were used as guides for Gregorian chants. Neumes were squiggly (but vague) little notations that told the singers to “sing high here” or “sing low there.” They were okay for people who already knew the piece of music, but pretty useless if the singer or musician didn’t. Musicians still had to learn musical pieces by ear, from other musicians. Building up a repertoire of tunes could take years.

  A BETTER MOUSETRAP, MUSIC-WISE

  Guido’s innovation was to refine the “staff”—the parallel lines that are used to denote a particular pitch. The rudimentary version that was already being used had only two lines for the C and F notes. Guido added two more lines, one below the C and one between the C and F. Presto—a staff that clearly showed the relationship that each neume (and each musical note) had with the others around it. Guido liked to say that his innovation could help train an ecclesiastical singer in just one year, as opposed to the ten years that had previously been required (all that memorization, remember).

  Among the cities founded by Vikings were Dublin, Ireland, and York, Great Britain.

  KICKED OUT OF A BAND OF MONKS

  Guido’s new-fangled musical ideas got pretty much the same reception that other musical rebels from Mozart to Eminem received in their time: the older generation didn’t much cotton to it. He was kicked out of two monasteries because the other monks didn’t like his style (today we would say he left the group because of “creative differences”).

  TALENT WILL OUT

  But Guido was getting pretty famous. Pope John XIX heard about Guido’s new ideas and invited him to Rome. Guido taught the pope how to read music, which so impressed the pope that he urged Guido to stay in Rome. But the climate wasn’t good for Guido’s health. So he went back to one of his old monasteries where he was welcomed back (as you might imagine, given the pope’s being Guido’s biggest fan and all) with open arms.

  DO, RE, MI, FA, AND SO ON. . .

  Guido also created another musical innovation: the system of naming scale degrees—”re,” “mi,” “fa,” “sol,” and “la.” Guido did it by composing a hymn to St. John the Baptist, and having the first syllable of each line fall on a different tone. He called them: ut, re, mi, fa, sol, and la. “Ut” was eventually changed to “do,” which Rogers & Hammerstein no doubt appreciated; the final tone “te” (also known as “ti”) was added later.

  LIFE AFTER GUIDO

  With the basics of Western musical notation in place, other innovations followed. The five line staff became standard in the 16th century; the current shape of musical notes followed in the 17th. Many of the words and signs that describe tempo and dynamics were standard by the 18th century.

  And there are still new notations being added, as composers attempt to describe recent musical innovations such as microtones (musical intervals in between the conventional half-step intervals) and computer-generated music.

  GRAZIE, GUIDO!

  But still and all, the way most music is expressed today owes a direct debt to that Italian monk of a thousand years ago.

  Geronimo’s real name was Goyathlay, meaning “One Who Yawns.”

  FOOD A MILLENNIUM AGO

  * * *

  A truly grueling tale of what your average late-medieval peasant could expect to find on his table after a hard day’s work in the fields.

  WHAT’S FOR LUNCH? I’M STARVING!

  Finding enough food to eat in the year A.D. 1001 was a problem. There were long periods, particularly in winter, when no fresh food was available. Not to mention the total of 20 famines in Europe during the 10th century, some lasting three or four years. As a result, people gorged themselves whenever they had the chance because they never knew when another opportunity to eat might arise.

  HELLO, GRUEL WORLD

  The staple of Joe Peasant’s diet was gruel—what we’d call oatmeal today—which nutritionists now tell us is much healthier than eating a diet of mostly red meat. When vegetables were in season, people ate cabbage, carrots, peas, and various garden greens. They picked apples, pears, and nuts right off the trees.

  THE STAFF OF LIFE

  Bread was made from wheat, rye, or barley, and the flour was baked without removing the bran. Sounds healthy enough, eh? Unfortunately, the bread consumed a thousand years ago was full of impurities. So not only was it coarse, it was often infested with weevils and mold. Consequently, everyone’s teeth were bad to rotten, and most people suffered from foul breath.

  CRAZY ABOUT BREAD

  Worse than all that were outbreaks of ergotism, a fatal illness caused by eating rye infected with a fungus parasite. The fungus contained “ergotamine,” which when baked was transformed into a deadly hallucinogen. The infected parties suffered symptoms resembling madness and had no idea what was wrong with them, after which they died.

  The Battle of Bunker Hill was actually fought one hill over, on Breed’s Hill.


  THAT’S ONE SPICY HORSE MEATBALL!

  A millennium ago, horses were just beginning to replace oxen as the quintessential farm animal. But they were still desirable as a source of protein and were eaten with gusto—and probably a generous helping of mustard. Salt, pepper, cloves, and other spices were all the rage during the Dark Ages; they not only preserved food, but also killed the rotten taste after the food had spoiled.

  FOUR AND TWENTY BLACKBIRDS

  In addition to horses and the odd rabbit or pig, birds were eaten with regularity. People ate cranes, storks, swans, crows, herons, loons, and blackbirds. Sometimes birds were served in a pastry like the “four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie,” from the well-known English nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence.” It was said that cooks could tell if a pie was done by its sounds of crackling and “singing,” much like that of a blackbird.

  MINIMALISM MEDIEVAL-STYLE

  Setting the medieval table was easy because there were no plates. Even the great nobles, who generally spread out tablecloths for their meals, went without plates. Instead—is Martha Stewart listening?—meals were served on round, flat slabs of bread. Bread plates had the advantage of soaking up drippings, and of being edible. When plates eventually came into vogue, it was customary to share your plate with the person sitting next to you.

  Guests were invited to bring their own knives. Spoons and forks were introduced in Europe much later. Folks in the eastern Mediterranean had been using a two-pronged fork for centuries, but it wasn’t till 1071 that a Greek princess who married the doge of Venice brought the custom—and the fork in question—with her. Rich Venetians took it up as the fashion, but the custom stayed in Venice for centuries before the rest of Europe noticed.

  GROG: BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

  To wash down their rather simple meals, peasants of the day drank. And drank. In fact, a thousand years ago, alcoholic beverages were a diversion and comfort to households among all classes. Wine was the favorite drink of the nobility and wealthier middle class. But everyone drank beer, even for breakfast, and the alcoholic content was three to four times higher than today’s suds. Mead, a kind of beer made from fermented honey, was popular in northern Europe and packed a wallop stronger than a kick from an irate mule. It could have an alcohol content of up to 18 percent.

  Nazi Germany did invade the United Kingdom, but only as far as the Channel Islands.

  IT’S A BEER-ACLE!

  Beer was such a prized commodity in those days that one Swedish king chose, among several prospective brides, the one who could brew the best beer. A Swedish queen, St. Brigitte, was rumored to have repeated the miracle performed by Christ, but with a slight variation: Brigitte changed water not into wine, but into beer.

  KEEP YOUR HANDS ON YOUR CHICKEN BONE, BUDDY!

  As far as table manners were concerned, a manual of etiquette intended for gentlefolk (royalty, nobles, and the wealthier classes in general) reminded them not to break wind while at the table, neither to hawk and spit on the floor, nor to pick their noses or scratch their heads looking for lice. And, particularly in the case of males, not to fondle the breasts of the women next to them.

  THANK YOU FOR THE FOOD WE EAT

  None of this concerned the lowly peasants, who scratched and picked their way through the same monotonous meal of gruel day after day and considered themselves lucky if they could fill their bowls to the brim. (Excuse me, dear wyfe, might ye biggie-size that gruel combo for me?)

  LET MY CHICKENS GO!

  Leonardo da Vinci felt so strongly against people eating animals that he often purchased live poultry and then set the birds free.

  He wrote, “I have, from an early age, abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.”

  General George Patton placed fifth in the pentathlon at the 1912 Olympics.

  THE OLYMPICS EXPOSED

  * * *

  If you wish we could return to the ancient Olympics when athletes played for love of the game instead of medals, when sportsmanship was king. . . Oh, dear. Uncle John is going to disllusion you again.

  The first Olympic Games were held in 776 B.C., but their real beginnings are shrouded in myth. Legend tells us that Herakles (who later made a Roman name for himself as Hercules) won a race on the sacred Greek plain called Olympia. He decreed that the Olympian race should be re-enacted every four years.

  NAKED GAMES

  A big difference between the ancient Olympics and the modern games is that back then there were no commercial logos on the athlete’s clothing because nobody wore clothing: the ancient games were played in the nude.

  The first competitors wore shorts, until 720 B.C. Then, according to the ancient writer, Pausanias, one guy tossed his trunks so he could run faster. After the shortless guy won, clothing was abolished.

  ROUGH, TOUGH, AND IN THE BUFF

  Some historians think it may have been the militaristic Spartans who pushed for nudity. They trained in the nude (both men and women, the latter—naked women in public!—being very controversial). But the Spartans were top athletes, so the other city-states may have wanted to imitate them.

  MORE NAKED GAMES

  The first Olympic games were just races, but more sports were added as the years went by: the pentathlon, horse races, chariot races, and the pankration, which was a combination of boxing and wrestling. At one time or another, there were 23 Olympic sports events. While nudity may have helped the runners, it didn’t help the Olympian jockeys much. They were bare and rode bareback—no saddles, no stirrups. Controlling the horse was a challenge!

  During the 1918 U.S. flu epidemic, the death toll was so high that there was a coffin shortage.

  PEACEFUL ENEMIES

  There was one more very important reason for the “undress” code: without their clothes athletes couldn’t hide any weapons. At the time, the Greek city-states were often at war. But during the Olympic festival, they called a truce so that everyone could travel to Olympia safely.

  Hostilities, weapons, and armies were forbidden. Even the death penalty was suspended. All the same, nobody really trusted anybody else. The games had their roots in warfare and the athletes were prepared for battle as well as for sporting competitions. For the most part the Olympic truce held.

  WHEN MEN WERE MEN AND WOMEN WEREN’T ALLOWED

  Women weren’t allowed to watch the men’s games, much less compete. This supposedly had more to do with the religious aspects of serving Zeus than it did with nudity. Women had their own races anyway, at Olympia in honor of the goddess Hera (a.k.a. Mrs. Zeus), where they could be just as naked and win their own darn laurel wreaths. By the way, any woman caught watching at the male Olympics was thrown headfirst off the cliffs of Mount Typaeum.

  ANCIENT MAULERS

  War and women were forbidden in the ancient Olympics, but violence was allowed. Some of the early Olympic games probably made professional wrestlers look like sissies. Entrants could trip, punch, and kick their opponents, even in their, um, private parts. Pankration entrants could also break fingers for a quick win, and one pankratiast became so good at this that he was called “Finger Tips.”

  THOSE RICH ATHLETES

  Today’s millionaire pros are cousins to the ancient Olympians. We may like to think of Greek athletes as idealistic amateurs, but the word “athlete” is derived from Greek words meaning “one who competes for a prize.” Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates whined about the declining morality that money brought to the Games. Galen, a Greek physician asked, “Are athletes to be worshipped like kings because they have large incomes?” Hmmm.

  Louisiana’s Cajuns are descended from French-speakers kicked out of Canada.

  MORE THAN THE KEY TO THE CITY

  Olympic competitors had to pay their way into the Games—and it wasn’t cheap. They also expected payment for the glory they brought to their cities. In 6 B.C., Athens offered bonuses equal to around $600,000 today. Athenian
champions got front row seats at the theater and free meals in the city hall for life. They even made money by doing “appearances” at other festivals.

  A SHOW OF STRENGTH

  Athletes trained hard. By the sixth century they were hiring coaches. There were fads involving diet and exercise just like today. Athletes from Croton in Italy believed in a meat diet, and beans were a no-no. The greatest wrestler of the ancient Olympics, Milo of Croton, supposedly ate 40 pounds of meat and bread at one meal, washing it down with eight quarts of wine. It worked: Milo won himself 32 titles in his career.