Uncle John’s Briefs (47 page)

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“Why, of course….That’s His line of work.”

—
Heinrich Heine, German poet, on being told that God would forgive his sins

“So little done. So much to do!”

—
Alexander Graham Bell

“I desire to go to hell and not to heaven. In the former place I shall enjoy the company of popes, kings, and princes, while the latter are only beggars, monks and apostles.”

—
Niccolo Machiavelli

“Waiting, are they? Waiting, are they? Well, let ’em wait.”

—
General Ethan Allen, Revolutionary War hero, on being told, “The angels are waiting for you.”

“Either the wallpaper goes, or I do.”

—
Oscar Wilde

Raw coffee beans, soaked in water and spices, are chewed like candy in some parts of Africa.

ANSWER PAGES

PLOP, PLOP, QUIZ, QUIZ

(Answers for
page 25
)

1
)
Maxwell House coffee

2
)
Allstate insurance

3
)
Perdue chickens

4
)
Brylcreem

5
)
Federal Express

6
)
Schlitz beer

7
)
Hebrew National hot dogs

8
)
Alka-Seltzer

9
)
Morton’s salt

10
)
American Express

11
)
Packard

12
)
Remington shavers

13
)
Timex

14
)
AT&T

15
)
Yellow Pages

16
)
Energizer batteries

17
)
Marlboro cigarettes

18
)
Bactine ointment

19
)
Milk

20
)
Cattlemen’s Beef Board

21
)
Delta Airlines

22
)
Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers

23
)
Chrysler Cordoba

24
)
General Foods International Coffees

25
)
Irish Spring soap

26
)
Pepsi

27
)
Motel 6

28
)
DuPont

OL’ JAY’S BRAINTEASERS

(Answers for
page 185
)

1
. BRIGHT THINKING

Standing in the hallway, Amy turned on the first light switch. She waited two minutes and then turned on the second light switch. Then after another minute she turned them both off. When she walked into the library, one was very hot, the other was slightly warm, and the other was cold—making it easy for her to tell Uncle John which switch turned on which lamp.

2
. MYSTERY JOB

Brian works at a library.

3
. SIDE TO SIDE

The river was frozen.

4
. SPECIAL NUMBER

8,549,176,320

When spelled out, it contains
each number—zero through nine—in alphabetical order.

The horns of a male bighorn sheep can weigh up to 30 lbs.—as much as all the bones in its body.

5
. TIME PIECES

An hourglass. It is filled with thousands of grains of sand.

6
. WORD PLAY

If you remove the first letter of each word and place it on the end of the word, it will spell the same word backwards.

THE JOY OF SECTS

(Answers for
page 230
)

1
. A or C.
Bravo if you eliminated Quakers and Moravians right away—they don’t wear old-fashioned clothes. As for the other two, take another look at the clothes. Color doesn’t matter, but patterns do. The Amish wear only solid colors, so anything else suggests the girls are Mennonites.

2
. D.
Amish communities do not have churches. Instead, they hold Sunday services in different homes each week, so a wagonload of benches is delivered to the designated house. Most Amish homes have dark green window shades. Why the plain, identical window treatments? The Amish community would consider decorative shades or frilly curtains signs of vanity.

3
. B.
Although a basket of buns and mugs of coffee may be passed around, the Moravian Love Feast is actually a festival that includes the singing of hymns and the playing of devotional music. The practice imitates early Christian celebrations that included prayer and sharing a meal. Moravian Love Feasts are held on holidays, anniversaries, and other special occasions.

4
. B.
You might see foot washing at a pre-Easter service in a Catholic church, but the Amish hold the only ceremony in which everyone gets their feet cleaned—a special adults-only communion service called Grossgemee in the spring and fall. The service lasts all day, and the adults wash each other’s feet to imitate Jesus, who once washed the feet of his disciples.

5
. Most likely, the Quaker.
That’s the only sect of the four that originated in England, and the British are avid tea drinkers. None of these groups approve of drunkenness, but all of them actually do allow moderate drinking. Amish men enjoy beer, and the others have changed their attitudes toward drinking over time. Mennonites in the United States were completely against alcohol during the 19th and early 20th centuries, for instance, but the sect has since relaxed that stance. Today, about 60 percent of Mennonites consider moderate alcohol consumption to be acceptable.

What’s a
bipennis
? Surprise! It’s a medieval double-sided axe.

NAME THAT COUNTRY

(Answers for
page 269
)

SAVED:
El Salvador.
El Salvador
is Spanish for “The Savior.” The Spanish conquered the Pipil, claimed the land, and gave it a new name in 1524.

NOTHING TO IT:
Namibia.

THE NAMELESS NAME:
Australia. Pre-18th-century maps show a large land mass labeled
Terra Australis Incognita
, Latin for “The Unknown Southern Land.” Geographers had never seen the land, but insisted that without it, the Earth would be lopsided.

OVER THERE WHERE THE SUN COMES UP:
Japan. In China,
jih
means “sun,”
pun
means “east,” and since the sun rises in the east,
jih pun
means “sunrise.” Referring to the islands east of China, it means “land of the rising sun.”
Japan
derived from the Malaysian version of the Chinese name:
Japang
.

GRECIAN FORMULA:
Great Britain. Pythaes sailed around this island around 300 B.C., naming it
Pretanic
, after the Pritani, or the Prits.
Pritani
is believed to be a Celtic word meaning “people with designs,” because the Pritani were extensively tattooed. When the Anglo-Saxons attacked in the 400s, many Britons fled to the European continent and settled what became known as
Brittany
. To differentiate it from this “lesser” Britain, the island was thereafter called
Great Britain
.

A BIT OBTUSE?:
England. After the Roman rule of Britain ended in 406 A.D., it became a battleground for many invaders. The most prominent were the Germanic tribes the Angles and the Saxons. The Angles came from a fishhook-shaped region in northern Germany called Angul (believed to be the origin of the word
angle
—to fish).

WHY DON’T THEY SPEAK GERMAN?:
France. The Franks were a Germanic tribe that settled along the Rhine River in Germany during the third and fourth centuries. (Frankfurt is named after them.) They would go on to conquer nearly all of northern Europe, eventually settling in what is now France.

OVERCOATIA:
Gabon. In the 15th century, Portuguese traders, the first Europeans to visit this part of Africa, thought the Como River’s estuary was shaped like a traditional Portuguese overcoat called a
gabao
. So that’s what they called it—which became
Gabon
.

The average human ear grows 0.01 inches in length every year.

UNCLE JOHN’S BATHROOM READER
CLASSIC SERIES

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