Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  ATTACK OF THE KILLER BACTERIA

  Soon everyone realized that bacteria, although you can’t see them, are everywhere and in everything. And they come in battalions, not as single little sneaky guys. You’ve got a bunch of them right now inside you: without them you can’t digest anything because they live, love, and work in your gut. They’re also what makes yeast work—and bread, risen by yeast, is the staff of life. Bacteriology was a shiny new science. And in its wake came a number of life-enhancing developments.

  BURN, BABY, BURN

  Heat, Pasteur knew, kills bacteria, and by experimentation, he found that heating milk or other food to 161.6° F for 15 seconds and then cooling it quickly killed the bacteria. That way, disease-causing bacteria can’t be passed from the cow to the human being who drinks the milk.

  Jefferson was the first president to institute the handshake instead of the bow.

  THE MAN ON THE MILK CARTON

  By the time Pasteur kicked the milk bucket in 1895, the old boy’s name was everywhere. Almost all the milk sold in the U.S. and most of Europe was being routinely pasteurized. Result? A massive drop in the incidence of typhoid, diphtheria, dysentery, and tuberculosis. Today, worldwide, almost all milk gets the treatment.

  A JAB TO THE RIGHT CHEEK

  Pasteur was also the man behind immunization. A large number of diseases are caused by an invasion of bad bugs—as opposed to the good guys who make beer. If the body’s own army of antibodies can’t get rid of them, you’re in trouble. “Why not send in reinforcements?” reasoned Pasteur. “Strengthen resistance by making the antibodies multiply. Theoretically, that would prevent diseases from developing.” And that is exactly what immunization does.

  MAD DOGS AND A DEADLY DISEASE

  Pasteur worked on rabies, too. Human beings get it by being bitten—or even licked—by infected animals, mostly dogs, who drool and look mad—not angry, but crazy. The bad news is that no one has ever been known to recover from rabies. Better news is that, thanks to Louis Pasteur, you can prevent it from taking hold.

  “I WAS WORKING IN THE LAB LATE ONE NIGHT . . .”

  Pasteur developed a rabies vaccine, and was so sure it would work that he was ready to deliberately inoculate himself with rabies to demonstrate his discovery. At just about that moment, a nine-year-old boy named Joseph Meister arrived in Pasteur’s laboratory. Fortunately for Pasteur, if not for himself—little Joseph had been bitten two days earlier by a rabid dog. So Pasteur had a guinea pig other than himself. The treatment involved a ten-day course of injections. Joseph survived. So did Pasteur’s reputation. And medical history took a flying leap forward.

  “There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic.

  A man’s own observation, what he

  finds good of and what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health.” Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

  The test bomb dropped on Bikini atoll had a pin-up photo of actress Rita Hayworth on it.

  THE ORIGINAL DOGFIGHTS

  * * *

  You’ve probably read about flying aces and seen movies about

  aerial dogfights. But in the early days of World War I,

  it was more like hand-to-hand combat.

  Flying was still in its infancy when the Great War began in 1914. Pilots had their hands full just keeping their wood and canvas airplanes in the air. (Now we call it World War I, but back then nobody thought there’d ever be another one.)

  THE WRIGHTS GET IT RIGHT

  Eleven years earlier, after some aerial hops, skips, and jumps by various inventors, the Wright brothers had gotten their Flyer off the ground for 59 seconds and a distance of 852 feet. In 1909, a French pilot made it across the English Channel. By then, the military had taken an interest in airplanes, and designers in Europe and America were hard at work on more advanced models.

  THE BRASS SITS UP

  In 1914, flying machines—mostly double-winged biplanes—were still rickety, fragile, and hard to control. The pilots loved them, but, in the early days of the war at least, military leaders thought they were pretty useless. It was only when the pilots started to bring in accurate reports of enemy positions and movements that the honchos started to appreciate the value of planes for observation—although not for much else.

  BOMBS AWAY!

  The first bombing from a plane took place in 1911, when Italy and Turkey were at war. An Italian pilot flying a scouting mission dropped four grenades on Turkish targets.

  In the early years of World War I, bombs were usually dropped from large gas-filled balloons, such as dirigibles or zeppelins. But airplane pilots wanted to do their bit, too. More than one flyer held a bomb in his lap and tossed it over the side at a target. Soon, the pilots were relieved of that particular responsibility: a few planes were designed specifically for the job of dropping bombs. One of the first was the French Voisin, which carried 130 pounds of small bombs. In the Voisin, the job of dropping bombs fell to the observer riding in the plane’s back seat.

  As early as 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a tax rebellion against the colonial governor of Virginia.

  Later, the invention of antiaircraft guns forced planes to fly higher. That led to the development of bombsights for more accurate targeting, not to mention more sophisticated methods of releasing bombs than throwing them over the side.

  RAT-A-TAT-TAT!

  Pilots who were flying observation or bombing missions naturally started figuring out ways to down enemy planes. They tried some ingenious, but primitive, tactics—such as dropping bags of bricks or metal on each other or dangling chains into enemy propellers.

  Then they started carrying pistols, rifles, and even shotguns up with them. In two-seaters, backseat observers tried firing machine guns over the side of the plane. And once in a while it actually worked in downing an enemy plane.

  The French were the first to mount machine guns directly on airplanes, but with limited success. Pilots really needed guns that could fire straight ahead, so they could get behind an enemy and shoot from there. On all sides, airplane designers were working like mad to pull that off.

  OOPS!

  The problem, of course, was that shooting straight ahead would take off your own propeller. The British tried putting forward-firing guns on the plane’s upper wing, where they could shoot over the propeller. But it was hard for the pilot to know where he was aiming, besides which the guns had a tendency to jam and who was going to go out on the wing to fix it?

  The French tried attaching metal deflectors to their propeller blades. Which worked up to a point: their pilots could shoot through the whirling propeller, and at first it didn’t seem to matter that a few bullets bounced off the blades. But over time, those bouncing bullets did a lot of damage to the plane.

  THE MAN BEHIND THE PLANE

  When the war began, a 23-year-old Dutch civilian named Anthony Hermann Gerard Fokker was already designing excellent planes for the Germans. In 1915, the Germans brought him a captured French plane with those metal deflectors attached. They wanted him to come up with a similar design, but Fokker figured out something completely different—and much better.

  In 17th century America, the average woman gave birth to 13 children.

  BRILLIANT!

  The young Fokker quickly realized that the way around the problem was to let the propeller fire the gun. The propeller turned at 1200 rpm, and the gun fired 600 times a minute. He synchronized the two with a system of gears, so the propeller fired the gun on every other turn. Within a few days, Fokker had outfitted a plane so that the pilot could fire a machine gun directly through the propeller blades without ever hitting them.

  I’M FROM GERMANY—SHOW ME

  The Germans wanted a battlefield demonstration. So they took Fokker to the front, put him in uniform, and sent him up in his own plane. Fokker later described in his autobiography, The Flying Dutchman, what happened on that flight. He located a two-seater French scout plane, dived his own armed craft toward it, and then realized he wa
s about to kill two people. The thought made him sick to his stomach, so he pulled up, turned around, and flew back to the field without firing a shot.

  IF YOU WANT SOMETHING DONE RIGHT. . .

  The Germans had to get a military pilot to do the test—which worked. It wasn’t long before WWI pilots from all countries were flying planes with synchronized machine guns.

  Then came Germany’s Red Baron, America’s Eddie Rickenbacker, and all those other intrepid World War I aces who went down in history as the pedigreed masters of the dogfight.

  DOGFIGHT?

  Fokker’s innovations were so popular, that already in 1915, aviators had adopted the term “dogfight” to describe a fight between the now much more agile (thus dog-like) warring fighter planes.

  As for an actual dogfight, you should never attempt to break one up. Turn a hose on the varmints and call animal control. They’ll send out two people: each trained expert will pick up a dog by the back legs and swing the dog through the air away from the other dog. One of the animals must then be immediately kenneled to avoid a resumption of the fight. It’s a dangerous job.

  Londinium was founded by the Romans in A.D. 60; we know it as London today.

  POCAHONTAS: THE NON-DISNEY VERSION

  * * *

  She’s the brave Indian maiden who saved Captain John Smith’s life. Right? Not really.

  All the legends about Pocahontas cite her extraordinary courage and kindness—the way she intervened between her own. Algonquin tribe and the colonial settlers in general, and how she saved the life of Captain John Smith in particular, when she put her own head down next to his on the execution block.

  SORRY TO DISAPPOINT

  Unfortunately, there’s more trickery than truth to those tales. Although it’s possible that Smith and Pocahontas may have crossed paths briefly when Smith skirmished with her father Powhatan in 1607, it’s unlikely that the then-12-year-old Indian princess performed any legendary acts of bravery.

  ONE SMART COOKIE

  She was instead an innocent victim of the colonists, kidnapped as a teenager by British settlers and held hostage in hopes that her father Powhatan would strike a peaceful—and lucrative—settlement. While in captivity a British minister taught her English and tried to “civilize” her.

  Pocahontas had an aptitude for both her English lessons and for British culture. By the time she was 19, she was baptized “Rebecca” and had married Englishman-colonist John Rolfe.

  THE TOBACCO KING

  Rolfe was a planter and cultivator of tobacco and he hoped to make it big in the trade. But his business was suffering under heavy English import taxes. Despite repeated entreaties, King James I (an early anti-smoker) refused to lower tariffs, writing that tobacco was “a customer Lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, daungerous to the Lungs.”

  The Mayflower was the size of the average living room—and held 102 people.

  POCAHONTAS GOES ON TOUR

  Rolfe’s solution to this stubbornness? A 1616 promotional tour that used his English-speaking Indian wife as bait while Rolfe introduced tobacco samples. The Virginia Company, which controlled Rolfe’s settlement, agreed to pay Pocahontas’ travel and clothing expenses to the tune of a then-exorbitant four pounds weekly. Pocahontas was a huge hit with her careful English and her high-necked English dresses, quite a contrast to the traditionally dressed Indians who traveled with her on the tour. Pocahontas was presented at court and exhibited all throughout London to thunderous acclaim.

  NOT A DISNEY ENDING

  King James I never did lower tobacco duties, despite the efforts of Rolfe and Pocahontas. And her trip to England proved to be her undoing. Like half of the dozen Indians who accompanied her on her tour, Pocahontas was stricken with a European disease: she died of smallpox in 1617, shortly before she was to return to America. She died, only 22 years old, and was buried in England.

  AFTER THE FACT

  The Smith legend, by the way, appears to be his own publicity-seeking invention. Captain John Smith never even mentioned Pocahontas in his writings until 1624, seven years after Pocahontas had died and decades after he’d landed at Jamestown.

  DISNEY’S POCAHONTAS. . . NOT QUITE

  You don’t believe everything you see on TV, so it would stand to reason that you should believe even less things you see in movies, and even less again things you see in animated movies. But to set the record straight:

  • The Disney-fied looks of Pocahontas and John Smith in the movie don’t look anything like reality.

  • In the movie, both characters are young adults. In reality, Pocahontas was only a girl of twelve when she met John Smith.

  • John Smith probably invented the tale of Pocahontas’s rescue, but even if it were true, it was likely part of a mock execution ceremony practiced by the Algonquians.

  Only freeborn men were entitled to wear the toga in ancient Rome.

  WHEREWORDS: A QUIZ (Miscellaneous)

  * * *

  Words have a history, too. They all came from somewhere, be it a grunt from the ancient valley of the Neanderthals or a brand-new techno-term from the valley of the silicon chips. Where did the following words come from? Choose the explanation you like best, then check it with the correct answer on the next page.

  1. BAYONET: A knife blade bolted to the barrel of a gun.

  a. It was originally used to hold prisoners “at bay.”

  b. “Bayon,” the Spanish word for “gun barrel.”

  c. Bayonne, France, where it was first used.

  2. TANGERINE: An evergreen citrus tree, or its sweet edible fruit.

  a. The 1942 Johnny Mercer hit of the same name.

  b. Its “tangy” taste.

  c. The Moroccan city of Tangiers.

  3. POINSETTIA: The familiar Christmas plant.

  a. 19th century Mexican ambassador Dr. J. R. Poinsett who brought it to the U.S.

  b. The plant’s “pointed” leaves.

  c. The Japanese word “posuta,” meaning “poison,” since eating the berries is fatal.

  4. KARAOKE: The audio/video sing-along system.

  a. Japan’s favorite folk song, about hauling firewood.

  b. A contraction of the Japanese words for “empty” and “orchestra.”

  c. An Asian song style popularized on the island of Okinawa.

  5. KAPUT: Destroyed, finished.

  a. From Yiddish, it’s what happens after you put the “kibosh” on.

  b. From Sanskrit, where “tupak” means “rich,” but reversed, “poor.”

  c. From German “kaputt,” French “capot,” meaning to lose at cards.

  6. GARGOYLE: A roof ornament or spout, often in the form of a crouching, grotesque beast.

  a. From the Old French “gargole,” meaning “throat.”

  b. Irish architect Hedwig Argoyle, who used them in design.

  c. Middle English contraction of “garish” and “guile,” designed to both attract and fool evil spirits.

  7. GOLF: The outdoor game.

  a. The old Scottish word “gowf”, meaning “to strike”.

  b. From the Old English “gaalf,” a shepherd’s crook.

  c. An acronym for “Gentleman Only, Ladies Forbidden.”

  8. FORK: The food utensil.

  a. The Latin word “furca,” a farmer’s pitchfork.

  b. Medieval slang for “give,” as in “fork over.”

  c. The first French restaurant, La Petite Fourque (The Little Bite).

  When gold was discovered in California it was still officially Mexican territory.

  1-c. In the laste 1600s, as gunpowder replaced catapults and bow-strings, the soldier was particularly vulnerable while reloading, during which time his weapon became little more than a useless stick. The bayonet is named for Bayonne, France, where a dagger was first affixed to a gun.

  2-c. The tangerine (or Mandarin orange) takes its name from the African port town where the Vitamin C-filled fruit was taken aboard ships as
one of the ways to prevent scurvy in sailors on long voyages.

  3-a. For centuries, Mexicans associated what they call “the flower of the blessed night” with Christmas because of its resemblance to the star of Bethlehem. But it wasn’t until 1828 when the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Dr. Joel Roberts Poinsett, brought the plant to the United States, where (in his honor) it got its common English name.

  4-b. Unlike a lot of newer Japanese words, like kompyuta (computer), or karar-terebi (color TV), the recently coined (1981) karaoke, comes from a hybrid: the Japanese word “kara” for “empty” and oke, short for the English-derived “okesutora” (orchestra).