Uncle John’s Briefs (31 page)
Read Uncle John’s Briefs Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
BEST OF THE BEST
At their peak the castrati were employed by all of Europe’s opera houses and church choirs, and the century’s biggest composers, such as George Frideric Handel and Christoph Willibald von Gluck, wrote operas and vocal music specifically with castrato voices in mind. And the singers demanded enormous annual salaries: Records show some being paid as much as £1,500 (the equivalent of about $245,000 today).
The most famous castrati of them all: Carlo Maria Broschi (1705–82)—known on the stage as Farinelli. He was hired by the king of Spain, Ferdinand VI, for an undisclosed (but assumed to be very large) sum of money to serenade the king every night beneath his bedroom window. Ferdinand credited the youthful-sounding singer with single-handedly lifting his depressed spirits and helping him find the mental strength to attend to his affairs of state. Farinelli worked for the royal family for the next 25 years.
DOWNFALL OF THE DRAMA QUEENS
The reign of the castrati waned in Italy by the mid-1800s. The Catholic Church had long condemned the practice (and threatened to excommunicate participants), and, bowing to public opinion, the Italian government made castration illegal in 1870.
But historians say that it was largely the conceit of the castrati themselves that brought about their demise. Most of the performers became spoiled and egotistical; they often changed the scores to highlight their voices. Leading composers Rossini, Wagner, and Verdi all grew frustrated with their tampering and simply stopped writing for them. At the same time, the devoted but temperamental opera-loving public lost interest in the castrati, turning instead to the female soprano, whose timbre had become fashionable. Alessandro Moreschi, the world’s last professional castrato and director of papal music for the Vatican, died in 1922. (Recordings of him are still widely available.)
Technically, you can drown without dying. “Drowning” refers to taking water into the lungs.
Supersleuth and BRI stalwart Jay Newman has come up with another batch of his simple yet compelling puzzles. Answers are on
page 284
.
1
. BRIGHT THINKING
Uncle John gave Amy this challenge: “In the hallway there are three light switches,” he said. “And in the library there are three lamps. Each switch corresponds to one of the lamps. You may enter the library only once—the lamps must be turned off when you do. At no time until you enter can you open the door to see into the library. Your job is to figure out which switch corresponds to which lamp.”
“Easy,” said Amy.
How did she do it?
2
. MYSTERY JOB
Brian works at a place with thousands of products, some of them very expensive. People take his products without paying for them—as many as they can carry—and then just walk out. All that Brian requests of his customers is that they keep their mouths shut.
Where does Brian work?
3
. SIDE TO SIDE
Uncle John stood on one side of a river; his dog, Porter, stood on the opposite side. “Come here, Porter!” said Uncle John. Although there were no boats or bridges, Porter crossed the river without getting wet. How?
4
. SPECIAL NUMBER
Math usually stumps Thom, but when Uncle John showed him this number, he knew right away what makes it unique. Do you?
8,549,176,320
5
. TIME PIECES
“Everyone knows that the sundial is the timepiece with the fewest moving parts,” Jay told Julia. “Do you know what timepiece has the
most
moving parts?” She did. Do you?
6
. WORD PLAY
“Weird Nate sent me this list of words,” said Uncle John. “He says there’s something unusual about them. But what?” Ol’ Jay figured it out. Can you?
revive, banana, grammar, voodoo, assess, potato, dresser, uneven
In some parts of England, rum is used to wash a baby’s head for good luck.
The treatment and disposal of a dead body is a sacred ritual
in every culture, but each one does it a little bit differently
.
I
N INDIA,
custom calls for a body to be burned on a funeral pyre near a riverbank and a temple; the ashes are thrown into the river. Some adherents to Zoroastrianism place bodies atop towers; after the flesh is eaten by vultures, the bones are thrown into a pit at the center of the tower.
IN THE SOLOMON ISLANDS
of the South Pacific, a body was traditionally placed on a reef where it would be eaten by sharks.
INUIT PEOPLE
constructed small igloos around a corpse (like an “ice tomb”). The cold protected and preserved the body (unless a polar bear found its way in).
THE NAVAJO
feared being haunted by the dead, so the body was burned and the deceased’s house was destroyed. On the way back from the funeral, relatives took a long, circuitous route to confuse the spirit into not following them.
A VIKING FUNERAL:
At sunset, the dead man was placed on a small boat. As it drifted out to sea, it was lit on fire. If the color of the sunset was the same as that of the fire, it meant the deceased was bound for Valhalla (Viking heaven).
MUSLIMS
do not use caskets (unless required by law). The body is washed three times, wrapped in a white shroud, and placed directly in the ground with the head pointed toward Mecca.
THE IROQUOIS
buried corpses in shallow graves, but exhumed them after a few months. Relatives then placed the bones in a community burial plot.
IN MODERN JAPAN,
bodies are washed in a Buddhist temple, dressed (men in suits, women in kimonos), and put in a casket with a white kimono, sandals, and six coins, all for the spirit’s crossing into the afterlife. After a funeral, the body is cremated. Relatives pick bones out of the ash, put them in an urn, and bury it.
Rats were originally native to Asia. They spread throughout the world on ships.
The odd, the weird, the strange, and
the crazy—south of the border
.
W
ORMING AROUND
One of the most lucrative products (and exports) in Mexico is mescal, a liquor similar to tequila, and most commonly packaged with a worm in every bottle. Legend says that eating the worm triggers powerful hallucinations. In 2005 the Mexican government considered banning worms from mescal. Because of the hallucinations? Nope. The worm is too high in fat, they claim. (The proposal failed; the worm remains.)
El LOCO
In 1993 Gerardo Palomero went on an animal-rights crusade, invading Mexico City slaughterhouses and yelling at meat cutters to treat animals more humanely. While workers respected his message, they found Palomero hard to take seriously because he was dressed in the brightly colored spandex costume of his professional wrestling character, “Super Animal.”
THE OLDEST PROFESSION
In 2005 women’s groups in Mexico City raised funds to build a home for elderly prostitutes. The city government even donated a building. But it’s not a retirement home—it’s a brothel. Hopeful “resident” Gloria Maria, 74, said, “I can’t charge what the young ones do, but I still have two or three clients a day.”
SHE KNOWS WHAT SHE’S TALKING ABOUT
In December 1998, newly elected Mexico City mayor Rosario Robles Berlanga was preparing to give an inauguration speech in which she planned to announce a crackdown on crime. Just hours before Berlanga was to speak, her top aide was mugged in a taxi. The thief stole the briefcase containing the mayor’s tough-on-crime speech.
Most bullets travel faster than the speed of sound…you’d be hit before you heard the shot.
This page originally explained the meaning of life, but our dog eight it
.
THE KIDS ON
EIGHT IS ENOUGH
Mary (Lani O’Grady)
Joanie
(Laurie Walters)
Nancy
(Dianne Kay)
Elizabeth
(Connie Needham)
Susan
(Susan Richardson)
David
(Grant Goodeve)
Tommy
(Willie Aames)
Nicholas
(Adam Rich)
DEFUNCT OLYMPIC SPORTS
Tug-of-war, Golf,
Rugby, Croquet, Polo,
Lacrosse, Waterskiing,
Power boating
THE IVY LEAGUE
Harvard, Brown, Yale,
Cornell, Dartmouth,
Princeton, Columbia.
University of Pennsylvania
U.S. PRESIDENTS FROM VIRGINIA
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
John Tyler
James Monroe
Zachary Taylor
Woodrow Wilson
William H. Harrison
LONGEST RIVERS IN NORTH AMERICA
Missouri
(2,500 miles)
Mississippi
(2,330 miles)
Rio Grande
(1,885 miles)
Colorado
(1,450 miles)
Yukon
(1,265 miles)
Mackenzie
(1,250 miles)
Columbia
(1,152 miles)
Churchill
(1,000 miles)
GR8 MUSICIANS WHO NEVER WON A GRAMMY
The Doors
Diana Ross
Led Zeppelin
Jimi Hendrix
Chuck Berry
Patsy Cline
The Beach Boys
Sam Cooke
MOST POPULAR ICE CREAM FLAVORS
Vanilla
Chocolate
Butter pecan
Strawberry
Neapolitan
Chocolate chip
French vanilla
Cookies and cream
THE PARTS OF SPEECH
Noun, Verb,
Adjective, Adverb,
Pronoun, Preposition,
Conjunction,
Interjection
Hailey Jo Bauer was born on August 8, 2008 (8/8/08) at 8:08 a.m. She weighed 8 lb., 8 oz.
How cool would it be to have this tidbit on your resume?
“1970: designed a symbol that millions of people
around the world see every day.”
T
HINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX
The first Earth Day, celebrated by 20 million people in April 1970, not only led to the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency, it also launched an unusual contest. A Chicago-based cardboard-box company called Container Corporation of America (CCA), a pioneer in manufacturing recycled products, was looking for a simple design to print on all of their recycled boxes. Inspired by the success of Earth Day, Bill Lloyd, the graphic designer at CCA, decided to advertise the contest nationally at America’s high schools and colleges. “As inheritors of the Earth, they should have their say,” he said.
In Lloyd’s grand vision, the winning design would be more than a symbol printed on CCA’s boxes; it would serve as a symbol to promote the nationwide recycling movement. First prize: a $2,500 scholarship to the winner’s choice of colleges. More than 500 entries came in from students all over the nation.
TWISTED
The winner: Gary Anderson, a 23-year-old graduate student at USC. He drew his inspiration from 19th-century mathematician August Ferdinand Möbius, who noted that a strip of paper twisted once and joined at the tips formed a continuous one-sided surface. Commonly referred to as a “Möbius strip,” the geometric shape has since shown up in engineering (conveyor belts that last twice as long) and in popular art, such as M. C. Escher’s fantasy-based woodcuts “Möbius Strip I” and “Möbius Strip II (Red Ants).”
It was that combination of practicality and art—along with the recycling-friendly notion that everything eventually returns to itself—that put Anderson’s design at the top of the contest finalists. “I wanted to suggest both the dynamic—things are changing—and the static equilibrium, a permanent kind of thing,” he later recalled. (After the design
was chosen as the winner, Bill Lloyd altered it slightly; he darkened the edges and rotated the arrows 60 degrees so the interior of the symbol resembled a pine tree. In Anderson’s version, one of the pointy ends faced down.)
How about you? 94% of pet owners say their pet makes them smile more than once a day.
CCA attempted to trademark the recycling symbol, but after they allowed other manufacturers to use it for a small fee, the trademark application was held for further review. Rather than press the matter, Lloyd and the CCA decided that a petty legal battle over such a positive message was a bad idea. So they dropped the case and allowed Anderson’s creation to fall into the public domain. The three arrows have since come to represent the three components of conservation: Reuse, Reduce, Recycle.