Outlaw Ned Kelly wore homemade armor in his last stand against Aussie authorities.
THE USUAL SUSPECT
No suspect has ever been found who made a comfortable fit with the facts. One who came close was Severin Antoniovich Klosowski, a.k.a. George Chapman, a Polish surgeon who immigrated to England and worked in a Whitechapel barbershop at the time of the murders.
Chapman left England after Mary Kelly’s murder and moved to Jersey City, New Jersey, where another prostitute turned up dead and mutilated. (It’s possible but not certain that Chapman committed that one.) He had surgical skill and he was a sadist who beat women. Three of his “wives” were poisoned to death, and he eventually died on the gallows. But some profilers don’t believe that Jack the Ripper would ever kill with poison.
WILL THE RIPPER BE FOUND?
New theories about Jack-the-Ripper keep sprouting like weeds in a cemetery. The ideas have become more and more far-fetched, such as the Alice in Wonderland theory, which posits that anagrams hidden in Alice in Wonderland prove that beloved author Lewis Carroll was himself the murderer. As time goes by, it seems even less likely that the murders of the women of Whitechapel will be solved. They lost their lives, and they never found justice. That seems the unkindest cut of all.
WHITECHAPEL’S OTHER CLAIM TO FAME
Established in 1570 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and in continuous business since that date, the Whitechapel Bell Foundry is listed as Britain’s oldest manufacturing company in the Guinness Book of Records. In fact, the history can be traced back even further to Master Founder Robert Chamberlain, thus tracing an unbroken line of founders in Aldgate and Whitechapel back to the year 1420 (in the reign of Henry V, and 72 years before Columbus sailed for America).
Over the centuries, a great many famous and notable bells have been cast at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. Among the most famous to Americans is Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell. Weighing in at approximately 2,000 pounds, it was cast and shipped across the Atlantic to the colonies in 1752.
Naples is the birthplace of pizza.
WHEREWORDS: A QUIZ (The Kitchen Table)
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Here at the International House of Uncle John’s we serve everything. Where did the names of these foods come from? Choose the explanation you like best, then check it with the correct answer on the next page.
1. LOBSTER
a. Hebrew word for “unclean”: shellfish was a forbidden food.
b. Lobster Bay, Maine, where the first recorded mention appeared.
c. From “loppestre,” the Old English word for “spider” because of the resemblance.
2. CHEDDAR
a. From the Bedouin “cheda,” the word for “sour mare’s milk.”
b. The town in England where it was first made.
c. From the Celtic “chet,” describing its yellow color.
3. BISCOTTI
a. From the Spanish word “bisco,” for “viscous,” which refers to its thick batter.
b. Named for its region of origin, the Bay of Biscay in Turkey.
c. The medieval Latin “bis coctus,” meaning “twice cooked.”
4. SAUSAGE
a. From German “sosseg” for “cooked,” opposite of “rosseg” which means “raw.”
b. From Latin “salsus” meaning “salted,” for how it’s cured.
c. After the Alpine Austrian town Saussedge, where the links originated.
5. ALMOND
a. The French “al” + “monde,” which means “in the world.”
b. After St. Duane Almond, the monk-horticulturist who first cultivated the tree.
c. The Greek “amugdale” and Latin “amygdala,” which means “almond-shaped.”
6. PUMPERNICKEL
a. From German “pumpern” for “flatulence,” and “nickel” for “goblin.”
b. During its preparation, air is pumped inside the dough ball.
c. For its secret ingredient—pumpkin seeds.
7. GRAHAM CRACKER
a. From its natural sweetening ingredient, sorgraham molasses.
b. Each of the original crackers weighed a gram.
c. They were invented by and named for health food activist Sylvester Graham.
8. MAYONNAISE
a. It was named for Mahon, on the island of Minorca, Spain.
b. It was developed by dieticians at the Mayo Clinic.
c. From the Latin “maiorase,” for “superiority.”
Statistically speaking, the Bermuda Triangle isn’t especially dangerous.
1-c. Lobsters have been around long enough to make the Jewish “un-clean” list, but the word comes from their resemblance to a spider. Samuel Pepys mentions eating lobster in his diary. In America, the Pilgrims ate fresh-caught lobster, but by 1630 the Massachusetts Bay colonists were sick of them because they were so abundant and “so great, and fat, and luscious.” For centuries after, lobster was considered food for the poor.
2-b. In A.D. 1000 commercial cheese was available, by 1500 it was standard fare on Atlantic voyages, and in 1800 Camembert cheese was developed by a priest from Brie, France. The Swiss made the holiest cheese, Limburg the smelliest, and Cheddar comes from a town in England’s Somerset County called Cheddar.
3-c. Biscotti are baked twice, first as a bread, then sliced and baked again, just like the zwieback crackers that babies chew on. Like the Latin “bis coctus,” “zwieback” means “twice-baked” in German. The word “biscuit” comes from the same source. Biscotti is actually a plural word in Italian: what we know as one biscotti is really a “biscotto.”
4-b. The first recorded reference was in Homer’s Odyssey: “A man beside a great fire has filled a sausage with fat and blood, and turns it this way and that and is eager to get it quickly roasted.” Certain things remain unchanged since early man’s attempts to preserve his food supply by curing meat with salt.
5-c. Grown in Greece around 2500 B.C., the fruit of Prunus dulcis was prized for its sweet-smelling oil used in body emollients and hair treatment. One of only two nuts mentioned in the Bible (pistachio is the other), the almond was named for its shape. “Amygdala” refers to any almond-shaped structure in anatomy, like a tonsil, for instance.
6-a. Egyptians were the first to get a rise out of bread, accidentally allowing a wheat/water gruel to ferment before baking it in 2600 B.C. Three thousand years later, in the Black Forest, the Germans baked a black loaf so hard to digest it was said to make even the devil break wind.
7-c. In 1830s Connecticut—long before it was fashionable—Reverend Sylvester Graham advocated a high-fiber diet for nutritional and spiritual well-being. An early temperance leader, he became a self-styled physician, even going so far as to marry his nurse. He disdained the use of doctors, calling them “pill pushers.” He suffered from nervous exhaustion for most of his life. In his 50s he got steadily weaker and died at the age of 57.
8-a. Mayonnaise was most probably invented by the Duke de Richelieu’s chef. He originally called it “mahonnaise,” and invented it to celebrate the French siege of the British fort of Mahon, which fell to Richelieu’s troops in June, 1756, during the Seven Years’ War.
In Egypt the poor bathed by rubbing themselves with castor oil; the upper class used olive oil.
SAINT ’HOOD
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No matter who you are, what you do—or don’t do—for a living, whatever your situation, you’ve got a patron saint. Whether you want one or not.
It’s true. You’re a beekeeper? Saint Ambrose. You drive a gondola? Saint Lucy. A skier? Saint Bernard. See how it works?
FORTUNE-TELLERS
Yes, even those who practice the darkish arts have a saint.
Saint Agabus: Of course, he’s not a high-profile saint, but outside of Greek drama when did fortune-tellers have any pull? Agabus was a Jewish convert who could see into the future: he predicted a famine in A.D. 49, the capture of St. Paul, and even his own martyrdom. Oooh. He could see it coming.
FLI
GHT ATTENDANTS
The patron saint of those who frequently fly died in 1207, about 700 years before the airplane was invented. She was assigned to make the skies even friendlier in 1962 thanks to Pope John XXIII.
Saint Bona: When Bona was three her father left their home in Pisa, Italy to join the Crusades. When she was seven, she had a visit from Jesus. After that she started sleeping in a manger with no blanket. Another three years, this time God appeared and gave her money for a hair shirt. When she was 13 she went to find her father. She found him all right, with a wife and three children. Bona made her way back with the help of St. James the Greater (saints have to stick together), and because he’d been so nice, she started organizing pilgrimages to his shrine in Spain. That’s why the connection with the flight attendants. All the traveling, see?
TELEVISION
If you work in television, or even just sit in front of the TV a lot, here’s your girl.
Saint Clare of Assisi: She’s not as famous as the other saint from the town of Assisi, St. Francis being the really well-known one—the one who’s always shown with all the cute animals around him and birds on his shoulder.
Rodin’s The Thinker was intended to be part of a great pair of doors.
Anyway, Clare started an order called the Poor Clares, but she wasn’t poor to begin with. She had everything: she was pretty and nice, and lively and rich. But St. Francis converted her. He did such a good job that she swung totally in the other direction: she and her Poor Clares wore no shoes, slept on the ground, and lived in absolute poverty. They had to beg for their food.
So why is she the patron saint of TV? One Christmas in the mid-13th century, when she was old and sick and couldn’t make it to the midnight services, Clare heard singing and saw a vision of the nativity scene on her wall. Talk about custom programming!
HANGED MEN
Or probably about-to-be-hanged men, because what do you need with a patron saint after you’ve swung from the gallows?
Saint Colman: In 1012 Colman was traveling from his native British Isles on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He decided to cut through Austria. Big mistake. The Austrians were at war (when weren’t they?), this time with Moravia. Colman was arrested as a spy, and because he couldn’t speak German, he couldn’t defend himself at his trial. Well, you can guess the rest. Except that after he was hanged, his body wouldn’t decompose, so the Austrians figured, wow, here was a saintly guy. And guess what, they made him the patron saint of Austria.
THIEVES
Yes, even thieves have patron saints. They probably need them more than the rest of us, anyway.
Saint Dismas: Jesus was crucified between two thieves, Dismas and Gestas. One legend has it that when Jesus was a child, Dismas and Gestas robbed the Holy Family (can you imagine?) while they were traveling in Egypt. On the cross, Dismas repented and went to heaven with Jesus. We don’t know what happened to the other guy. Dismas is also the patron saint of undertakers.
JUVENILE DELINQUENTS
Say his name without the “saint” in front of it and it sounds like he was a kid from the old neighborhood and a J.D. himself.
Saint Dominic Savio: He wasn’t a delinquent himself—on the contrary, he was a goody-goody, always trying to stop school-yard fights and confiscating fake hall-passes. You can almost hear the mothers saying, “Why can’t you be more like Dominic?” The sad part is that he died at only 15—he had a lung problem that finally caught up with him. This 19th-century do-gooder was the youngest non-martyr ever to be made a saint. He’s also the patron saint of choirboys and boy scouts. A natural.
Ancient Egypt had at least six known types of beer.
UNHAPPY HUSBANDS
All you miserable henpecked guys out there, you’ve got somebody to pray to. Unfortunately, he’s got one of the goofiest names.
St. Gomer: Gomer was married to a shrew beyond belief. She was mean to his employees when he was away on business, so he had to perform miracles every time he got back to keep them happy. Added bonus: If you’ve got a hernia from carrying the wife around all day, you can pray to St. Gomer to cure you.
PRISON GUARDS
Hey, everybody’s gotta make a living.
Saint Hippolytus: He started out as a jailer himself, guarding the cell of St. Lawrence (the patron saint of cooks, librarians, and the poor). After Lawrence’s grisly martyrdom (roasting over a slow flame), Hippolytus gathered up Lawrence’s remains and was himself sentenced to death for it. Since he was dragged by horses until he died, he’s also the patron saint of horses.
FALLEN WOMEN
Who else but the most famous fallen woman herself?
Saint Mary Magdalene: She was a serious sinner until she met Jesus. After that, she became his biggest fan. She even went so far as to wash his feet (supposedly with her tears), drying them with her hair. Thus, she’s also the patron saint of hairdressers.
HANGOVERS
She’s not really the patron saint of hangovers—but she’s the one you pray to when you’ve got one.
Saint Bibiana: She arrived at her patronage by a silly mistake: to the Romans she was “Viviana,” “full of life,” which the Spanish (who pronounced Vs like Bs) heard as “Bibiana,” “full of drink.” There’s a very old church in Rome dedicated to her; she was martyred in 363.
Miguel Cervantes and William Shakespeare both died on the same day in 1616.
DAMMIT, JIM, I’M A DOCTOR!AND A MEDICAL HOBBYIST!
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In 1929, he threaded a tube through a vein in his arm all the way to his heart. He then walked two flights of stairs to the radiology department and took his own chest X-ray. If he were alive today, Werner Forssmann would be the darling of HMOs everywhere.
“WHAT IF. . .?”
Medical breakthroughs usually begin with a visionary who asks, “What if. . .” and then proceeds to do something reckless enough to land him a write-up in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Werner Forssmann was just such a man. It was this 25-year-old German, second-year medical student who first asked the question, “Can I thread a flexible tube all the way to my heart through a vein, and then photograph it for the rest of the guys to see down at the beer hall?”
“BY GOLLY, I’M GONNA DO IT!”
Without waiting for an answer, Forssmann cut an incision into the basilic vein in his upper arm. The plucky student then threaded a urethral catheter—a transparent tube used to help patients who can’t urinate—into the vein. Still feeling spunky, Werner walked up two flights of stairs with the tube in his arm. He then calmly walked into the radiology department, sat down on a table, and continued threading the tube toward his heart, using a mirror to watch his progress on a primitive X-ray device known as a fluoroscope. When he threaded the tube all the way into his heart’s right atrium, Forssmann X-rayed the event for posterity. At that moment, the diagnostic tool known as angiography was invented.
The experiment created a huge stir in the international medical community. For one thing, other countries began asking why their medical students couldn’t be that reckless. (Remember, bungee jumping wouldn’t be in vogue for another 60 years!) But nothing was done about improving on Forssmann’s experiment for a decade. . . except by Forssmann himself. A year after his initial foray into his own veins, he decided to repeat his magic trick. Only this time, he injected an iodine compound through the hollow catheter and into the right atrium of his own heart for the world to see. So now not only the catheter but the area of the heart injected with iodine could be seen with an X-ray.
George Washington was named after England’s King George.
A DISCLAIMER
Actually, Forssmann wasn’t that crazy, despite what many people thought. He’d read all the required books on anatomy and physiology that a German medical student is supposed to read. One of the first books he must have read was a 17th century tome called De Motu Cordis (“Of the motion of the heart”) by English physician William Harvey. Harvey proved that the blood circulates through the body and that the heart
is the center of circulation.
So, in theory at least, young Werner knew it should be possible to measure the activity of the human heart by determining pressures inside the heart’s chambers. If pressures were good, the heart was functioning normally; if low or erratic, the physician could diagnose faulty cardiac function.
“THANKS A LOT, WERNER!”
In 1940, two cardiologists at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital, André Cournand and Dick Richards, realized that their patients could benefit from Forssmann’s experiment. In collaboration with the Bellevue doctors and other cardiac specialists, Forssmann continued to develop and refine pressure formulas that physicians use in diagnosing human heart function even today.
If it weren’t for Forssman, who probably had nothing to do one cold Saturday night in Berlin, the diagnostic tool known as cardiac angiography probably wouldn’t have been invented. Not only was it a boon to medicine, it also set the stage for a lot of big fat bills for “diagnostic procedures,” warming the hearts (and wallets) of doctors everywhere.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History Page 53