Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  5-c. Over a hundred years ago, at the gaming tables on the Riviera, to capot (also capout) was the worst way to lose at a card game called piquet (that is, without winning a single trick, like being “skunked” today). The Germans put the word to work, and since World War I, kaput has come to mean “destroyed.”

  6-a. The first downspout was created to divert the flow of rain from a roof. By the 13th century, church design had downspouts dispensing blessings as well: sometimes in the shape of an angel, occasionally in the form of an animal, mostly looking like some scary creature, but always shedding water out their mouths. “Gargoyle” comes from the same source as the word “gargle.”

  7-a. Golf originated in Scotland, where it was played as early as the 15th century, some 500 years before Mark Twain proclaimed it “a good walk spoiled.” James I of England (who was also James VI of Scotland) is believed to have introduced golf to London about 1608. The word “golf” first appeared in written English in 1425, and it appears to derive from the Scottish term “gowf” which meant “to strike or cuff”—as in, striking the golf ball.

  8-a. The earliest forks go back to the fourth millenium B.C. and were modeled after the tool used for stacking hay, the pitchfork.

  “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone,

  “It means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

  Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass

  When the FBI was founded in 1908, it had 34 investigators. Today there are over 15,000.

  THE GAME

  * * *

  The Spanish had never seen a rubber ball before, so when they first saw “the game” played, they thought it worked by sorcery.

  When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Mexico in 1519, they found that the country was full of large stone courts for playing a strange ball game. The audiences didn’t just watch the game, they bet all they had—gold, slaves, and precious stones—on the outcome.

  EXHIBITION GAME: SOCCER WITHOUT THE FEET

  The conquistador Cortés was so impressed that he took some Aztec prisoners back to Europe with some of the rubber balls to illustrate the game. No one in Europe had ever seen teamwork in sports before. This became the origin of all modern team games.

  In fact, what the Europeans saw was just one version of a game that was played throughout ancient Central America. It had different names—tlatchli, ulama, pok-a-tok—and different numbers on the teams, different size courts, but the basic idea was the same. The hard rubber ball had to be kept in the air without using hands—or feet. If it touched the ground, your team lost a point, and if you were very lucky you might be able to score a “goal” by hitting it through a small stone ring set twelve feet up on the wall.

  AW, BE A GOOD SPORT!

  But the game had a darker side. The ball represented the sun flying through the heavens, and the game represented the game of life and death being played between men and gods. Carvings on the courts suggest that in some versions, the losers would be decapitated. The Mayans used teams of prisoners as guaranteed losers, using the game as a prelude to a mass sacrifice. The Olmecs left sculptures that seem to show their gods dressed in the helmets and padding that were worn to play the game.

  Over 1,560 courts at 1,200 locations have been found in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. Nobody knows how such a peculiar game could have started up in the first place. A version of it is still played in Mexico today, a reminder of this 3,000-year history, but thankfully! the losing team gets to live.

  The bride’s veil dates to ancient Rome and the head-to-toe cover doubled as a burial shroud.

  GREY OWL

  * * *

  He was a pioneer of conservation and ecology. But he had a secret. . .

  The man known as “Grey Owl” came to the attention of the Canadian Parks service as a result of the groundbreaking articles he’d written, giving a real Native American perspective on the need to preserve the wilderness. They hired Grey Owl as their first official naturalist.

  GREY OWL SPEAKS

  After writing a best-selling book, Grey Owl was invited on a speaking tour of England. By this time, he was a heavy drinker and he more than once took to the English stage while intoxicated. But when the lights came on, Grey Owl—dressed in full Indian regalia—came alive and delivered his lines without a hitch.

  The demanding pace of his lecture tours—up to three engagements a day—left him physically and mentally exhausted. He returned to his home at Beaver Lodge in Prince Albert National Park a spent man. He died of pneumonia in 1938, at the age of 49.

  BUT WAIT!

  Our story’s just beginning. Shortly after his death the world was shocked (and seriously outraged, as the world is wont to be when it’s been tricked) by the news that “Grey Owl” was actually an Englishman who’d been christened Archibald Stansfield Belaney.

  From early childhood Archie’s desire was to escape the confines of his British birthplace and live the life of a free spirit. Not just any free spirit, mind you—no, young Archie wanted to be a Native American—just like the ones he’d seen in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.

  COWBOYS & INDIANS

  Raised by his aunts, Ada and Cara Belaney, in Hastings, Sussex, Archie had to content himself with playing Indian to his schoolmates’ cowboy heroes. By the time he was 17 he’d saved enough money from his job as a lumberyard clerk to afford a passage on a ship bound for Canada. His dream was to live in the wilderness with the Indians.

  The St. Bernard was named for a medieval monk who built travelers’ way stations in the Alps.

  BACK TO NATURE

  He arrived in Toronto in the middle of 1906 and got a job as a department store clerk. But the job was just a stepping-stone. By early 1907, Archie was in northern Ontario learning to trap, canoe, and survive in the wilderness. It was at this time that Archie first came into contact with real Indians living in the wild. Though a far cry from his romanticized image, these native Americans fascinated the young Englishman. For the next 20 years, Archie lived in the northern Ontario wilds, making his livelihood as a trapper, guide, and forest ranger.

  THE WOMAN BEHIND THE MAN

  Archie managed to lose his English accent and also started telling everyone he was an Apache Indian. He adopted the name “Grey Owl.” He met a woman named Anahero, a half-blood Mohawk, and the two became lovers. She convinced him to give up the “inhumane” work of trapping and refocus his life on conservation. And once he did, his passion grew, fueled in large part by the devastating effects of the timber industry in his adopted neighborhood. That’s how it all started. And you already know how it ended.

  AT LEAST HE DIDN’T LIVE TO SEE IT

  All the articles he’d written, the appearances he’d made, and the importance of the issue that he heralded were all swept aside when he was discovered to be a fraud. Archie was immediately vilified as an imposter, disgraced, and discredited. And things stayed that way for years.

  But now, more than half a century later, the rest of the world has discovered the truth behind Archie’s words, and Grey Owl’s reputation as a pioneer in conservation has been restored.

  AFTERNOTE

  In 1962, a quarter century after Grey Owl’s death, Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, widely hailed as the “first” environmental work of literature. Not surprisingly, both the book and its author, met with considerable resistance. When excerpts appeared in the New Yorker, a chorus of voices immediately accused Carson of being hysterical and an extremist charlatan. Sound familiar?

  3 countries gave women the vote before the U.S.: New Zealand, Australia, and Finland.

  THREE WISE MEN

  * * *

  All three of these men really lived, but there are so many legends about them that it’s not always easy to separate truth from myth.

  CONFUCIUS

  Rules, Rules, Rules

  An old joke goes: there are three things the Chinese do better than anyone else—firecrackers, potstickers, a
nd bureaucracy. You think your government has accumulated a lot of rules in its mere 200 years? China’s been around for over 2,000, and in China, following a complicated system of rules isn’t just part of the day’s work, it’s a religion. The name of that religion is Confucianism.

  IT’S SIMPLE

  Confucianism doesn’t deal with questions of the soul, or God, or life after death. It deals with how we should behave: toward our parents, toward our superiors, and—in the case of government officials—toward the public.

  BEST BEHAVIOR

  The master rulemaker himself is Confucius, who was born in the province of Lu in 551 B.C. His father died when he was three, and Confucius worked hard after school to support his mother. After leaving school, he gave lessons in his home, charging whatever his pupils could afford. He taught history, poetry, and—his favorite subject—the rules of proper behavior. He only had a few pupils at first, but the word spread, and at the end of his life he boasted that he’d taught 3,000 young men.

  THE RELUCTANT CIVIL SERVANT

  Now and then Confucius was invited to take a good job in government, but he wouldn’t work for any government he disapproved of, so for many years he turned down all the offers. “I don’t care that I’m not known,” he once said. “I seek to be worthy of being known.” An official he disapproved of once asked him for advice on how to rule. Confucius replied that he should learn to govern himself before trying to govern others.

  France’s Charles VIII had six toes, inspiring a square-toed men’s shoe fashion.

  CONFUCIUS SAYS. . .

  Confucius taught his students how to behave through a collection of precepts, all of which were written down by his followers and compiled into a book known as the Analects. And yes, many of the anecdotes start with the famous words “Confucius said,” or sometimes “The Master said.” Here’s a sample: “The Master said, ‘I guess I should stop hoping. I’ve yet to meet a man who loved virtue as much as he loved beautiful women.”

  HONESTVILLE

  Confucius was nearly 50 when he finally accepted a government position as chief magistrate of Chung-tu, a town in the province of Lu. One legend says that under his rule, the people became so honest that wallets and purses accidentally dropped in the streets would lie untouched until their owners returned to find them.

  YOU CAN’T KEEP A GOOD MAN DOWN

  Confucius’ reputation continued to grow after his death, and in time the Analects became the basis of one of China’s oldest and strongest religions. Mao Zedong tried to stamp out Confucianism when the Communists took over in 1949, but old habits die hard, and Confucius’s principles are still widely practiced, both in government and in private life, to this day.

  BUDDHA

  From Feasting to Fasting

  Buddha was the child of royalty, born in India, near the Himalayas, probably in 563 B.C. His mother died during childbirth, so his doting father took charge of his upbringing.

  A LITTLE OVERPROTECTIVE

  Fortune-tellers told his father that Buddha would become a great conqueror—but only if he remained interested in worldly things. Forget “my son the doctor”—the old man wanted to boast “my son the world dictator.” So he gave the kid everything a growing boy could want, and kept him from knowing that there was any pain or grief in the world.

  It was considered in poor taste to show a bed in Victorian advertising.

  GOT ENOUGH DANCING GIRLS?

  Teenage hormones running wild? No problem: Buddha had 40,000 dancing girls to entertain him. He had the best teachers in the military arts. When he came of age, his dad arranged for 500 women to come around so that he could choose one for his wife. Buddha’s pop would have given him a gold-plated Corvette if they’d only been invented.

  THERE’S ALWAYS A CATCH

  The one catch: every time the kid wanted to go for a walk, his father had to send the guards out first to clear the streets of anyone who wasn’t perfectly beautiful and happy. And one day—you guessed it—Buddha decided to go for a walk without telling dad first.

  BUDDHA GROWS UP

  For the first time in his life, Buddha found out that life wasn’t all a bed of roses. He saw poor people, sick people, even dying people. And he was shocked to realize that a big palace and fancy clothes couldn’t protect anyone from sickness and death.

  THE SEARCH BEGINS

  Suddenly he didn’t want to grow up to conquer the world anymore. He wanted, more than anything, to understand the world—he wanted wisdom—and his wealthy, comfortable life was getting in the way. So Buddha left his wife and went into the wilderness to live as a hermit. He lived a life of self-denial, reducing his meals until he was eating a single grain of rice each day.

  NIRVANA

  But after six years he saw that this wasn’t bringing him wisdom either. Feeling defeated, he sat beneath a shady tree and resolved not to move from that spot until he had achieved enlightenment. He thought about all the causes of human suffering, of sickness, old age, and death. And suddenly he had a vision that showed him how to escape the cycle of life, sorrow, and death, and achieve the state of bliss called “nirvana.” He spent the rest of his life teaching what he had learned, and his teachings became the basis of the religion called Buddhism, which is followed by millions of people throughout the East.

  The first horses were domesticated in 4400 B.C.

  MOHAMMED

  One Nation Under Allah

  In the sixth century A.D., Arabia was a wild and crazy place to live. There were dozens of tribes always fighting and stealing from each other. In between wars, men mostly passed the time with drunken orgies and gambling. And we aren’t talking about an occasional weekend in Vegas to blow off steam—it was poker, booze, and broads every night of the week. Everyone was living for pleasure today, because tomorrow you might lose everything, even your life.

  THE CAVE DWELLER

  Into this unstable world, Mohammed was born in A.D. 569. He was a serious boy, and as he grew up he thought more about spiritual things. As he neared 40, he started to spend several days sitting in a cave near Mecca, fasting, praying, and meditating.

  THE VISIT

  One night in A.D. 610, while Mohammed was asleep in the cave, the angel Gabriel showed up to tell him that he, Mohammed, was a messenger of Allah (the Arabic word for God). At first Mohammed thought it was just a bad dream. But the vision kept coming back, and always with the same command: to become the prophet of his people, and to bring them a new religion that would end the fighting and bring people together. It was to be called Islam, from the Arabic word for “peace.”

  THE FAT CATS

  So Mohammed started preaching, and slowly made converts, a few at a time. But he also made dangerous enemies, especially among the wealthy upper classes, who didn’t like being told that no one was better than anyone else as far as Allah was concerned.

  THE YEAR ONE

  In A.D. 622, Mohammed was visited by a group of citizens from the troubled city of Medina. They were looking for a strong leader to take charge, and Mohammed accepted their invitation. He moved there with 200 of his followers, and this migration (called the Hijra) is so important in the history of Islam that the Muslim calendar starts numbering from this year.

  Early European jesters made balloons out of animal bladders and intestines to entertain.

  THE HOMESTEADER

  As Mohammed rode into Medina, one family after another begged him to stop and make his home near them. He didn’t want to make anyone jealous, so he said he’d leave it up to the camel he was riding. Where the camel stopped, that’s where Mohammed dismounted and built his home.

  THE DIPLOMAT-SOLDIER

  Mohammed often used his talent for diplomacy when dealing with Medina’s hostile neighbors. And when that failed, he was equally shrewd in running military campaigns. Over the next ten years, using Medina as his home base, he gained more and more converts to Islam, defeated his enemies, and brought the tribes of Arabia together into a single nation.

&nb
sp; THE LADIES’ MAN

  To the end of his life, Mohammed had a weakness for women—he had scads of wives and concubines. But he was ever the diplomat, and the legends say he eased their jealousy by spending one night at a time with each.

  THE BASIC MOHAMMED

  But in other matters he remained a modest, down-to-earth man. Even after his victories brought him great power, he lived a simple life. He usually did his own chores, and was often seen mending clothes, milking a goat, or shopping in the marketplace for his family’s dinner.

  THE GREAT BOOK

  Over a period of 23 years, a little at a time, Mohammed wrote the Koran, the holy book of the Muslims. They believe it continues and completes the stories told in the Old and New Testaments. In response to the comments that it was a great miracle that a book like that was produced by a nearly illiterate man, Mohammed said that the book was dictated to him by Gabriel.