Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (16 page)

Origin:
“The phrase was originally ‘fit as a fiddler,’ and referred to the stamina of fiddlers, who could play for a dance all night long without even getting tired.”
(Why Do We Say It
, by Castle Books)

MONKEY SUIT

Meaning:
Formal wear; a tuxedo

Origin:
“The organ grinder’s monkey, dressed in a little jacket and given a hat in which to collect coins, was a familiar sight in the 18th and 19th centuries. About 1820 a close-fitting, short jacket was called a
monkey jacket
for its resemblance to the street musician’s monkey; toward the end of the 19th century this name was also used for tuxedo jacket.” Eventually the tux itself was nicknamed
monkey suit. (Raining Cats and Dogs
, Christine Ammer)

Here are some more great moments in American jurisprudence. (These quotes are taken from actual court transcripts.)

Q:
“How many trucks do you own?”

A:
“Seventeen.”

Q:
“Seventy?”

A:
“Seventeen.”

Q:
“Seventeen?”

A:
“No, about twelve.”

Q:
“The respiratory arrest means no breathing, doesn’t it?”

A:
“That’s right.”

Q:
“And in every case where there is death, isn’t there no breathing?”

Q:
“Tell us your full name, please.

A:
Mine?”

Q:
“Yes, sir.”

A:
“555-2723.”

Q:
“Mr. Daniels, do you have any problems hearing me?”

A:
“Not really.”

Q:
“Where do you live?”

A:
“Pardon?”

Q:
“To the charge of driving while intoxicated, how do you plead?”

A:
“Drunk.”

Q:
“Are you qualified to give a urine sample?”

A:
“Yes, I have been since childhood.”

Q:
“Where do you live?”

A:
“LaPosta Tailer Court.”

Q:
“How do you spell that trailer court?”

A:
“T-r-a-i-l-e-r C-o-u-r-t.”

Q:
“Do you wear a 2-piece bathing suit now that you have a scar?”

A:
“I don’t wear a bathing suit at all now.”

Q:
“That can be taken two ways.”

Q:
“Are you restricted in some way by having your third finger shot off?”

A:
“Yeah, a little.”

Q:
“What could you do before the accident that you can’t do now?”

A:
“Wear a ring on it.”

Q:
“What device do you have in your laboratory to test alcohol content?”

A:
“A dual column gas chromatogragh, Hewlett Packard 5710A with flame analyzation detectors.”

Q:
“Can you get that with mag wheels?”

A:
“Only on the floor models.”

Q:
“Do you recall examining a person by the name of Rodney Edgington at the funeral chapel?”

A:
“Yes.”

Q:
“Do you recall approximately the time that you examined the body of Mr. Edgington?”

A:
“It was in the evening. The autopsy started at about 8:30 p.m.”

Q:
“And Mr. Edgington was dead at that time, is that correct?”

A:
“No, you dumb asshole. He was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy.”

You already know these names—here’s where they come from.

A
CE BANDAGES.
When World War I broke out in 1914, the Becton Dickinson Company had to stop importing German elastic bandages and start making them in the U.S.A. They held a contest to give the new product a name. The winners: a group of doctors who called it ACE, for All Cotton Elastic.

ALPO.
The original canned dog food, introduced in 1937 as
All-Pro.
Shortened in 1944 to
Alpo.

ARM & HAMMER.
In the 1860s, the Church family owned the Vulcan Spice Mills. Their logo was an arm and a hammer, representing the Roman god Vulcan (who was a blacksmith). When the family formed a baking soda company in 1867, they used the same logo…and eventually named the company after it.

DELTA AIRLINES.
Huff-Daland Dusters, formed in 1924, was the world’s first crop-dusting service. When they moved to Louisiana a year later, they changed the name to Delta Air Service (because they were serving the Mississippi Delta). In 1929 they began their first passenger route, between Dallas and Jackson.

GRAPE-NUTS.
The first Post cereal, introduced in 1897. The reference to
grapes
comes from the baking process, in which part of the starch in the dough is converted to dextrose—commonly called “grape sugar.” And C. W. Post thought the cereals small granules looked like nuts.

SARA LEE.
Charles Lubin and his brother-in-law owned three bakeries in the Chicago area. But Lubin dreamed of bigger things—he wanted a product that would be distributed nationally. In 1949 he created a cheesecake that he could sell through supermarkets, and named it after his daughter, Sara Lee Lubin. Within five years the company had developed a way to quick-freeze Sara Lee cakes and was selling them all over the U.S.

Did you know that many words are taken from place names? Here are some examples, from a book called
Toposaurus,
by John D. Jacobson.

B
UNGALOW

From:
Bengal, India

Explanation:
England’s 200-year occupation of India led to many borrowed Hindi words. An Indian
bangla
is a one-story house, often with a roofed porch (in Hindi, a
veranda). Bangla—
which literally means “from Bengal”—was anglicized to
bungalow.

BIBLE

From:
Byblos (a city now called Jubayl in present-day Lebanon)

Explanation:
The ancient city of Byblos was where the Phoenicians converted a plant called papyrus into a type of paper. Greeks called the paper
biblios
, after the city, and soon a
biblion
meant “a little book.” In 400 A.D. Greeks started using the word
Bible
to refer to the Christian scripture. Lower-case
bible
today means any authoritative source work.

SLEAZY

From:
Silesia, Poland

Explanation:
The Eastern European region of Silesia was known for its fine cloth. Eventually, so many low-quality imitations wound up on the market that
Silesian
turned into
sleazy.

JEANS

From:
Genoa, Italy

Explanation:
Genoa—called
Gene
by sixteenth-century Europeans—was the first city to make the denim cloth used for jeans. The pants were named after the city.

SPA

From:
Spa, Belgium

Explanation:
The Belgian resort town of Spa was known for its healthful mineral springs. As a result, the term
spa
became associated with mineral water. Today it means “a place to rejuvenate.”

It’s hard to believe now, but when the Eiffel Tower was proposed in the late 1800s, a lot of Parisians—and French citizens in general—opposed it. Here’s a look at the story behind one of the most recognizable architectural structures on earth.

R
EVOLUTIONARY THINKING

In 1885, French officials began planning the Great Exposition of 1889, a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. They wanted to build some kind of monument that would be as glorious as France itself.

The Washington Monument, a masonry and marble obelisk, had recently been completed. At 557 feet high, it was the tallest building on earth. The French decided to top it by constructing a 1,000-foot-tall tower right in the heart of Paris.

Now all they had to do was find somebody who could design and build it.

OPEN SEASON

On May 2, 1886, the French government announced a design contest: French engineers and architects were invited to “study the possibility of erecting on the Champ de Mars an iron tower with a base 125 meters square and 300 meters high.”

Whatever the contestants decided to propose, their designs had to meet two other criteria: 1) the structure had to be self-financing—it had to attract enough ticket-buying visitors to the exposition to pay for its own construction; and 2) it had to be a temporary structure that could be torn down easily at the end of the Exposition.

MERCI…BUT NON, MERCI

More than 100 proposals were submitted by the May 18 deadline. Most were fairly conventional, but some were downright weird. One person proposed building a huge guillotine; another suggested erecting a 1,000-foot-tall sprinkler to water all of Paris during droughts; a third suggested putting a huge electric light atop the tower that—with the help of strategically placed parabolic mirrors—would provide the entire city “eight times as much light as is necessary to read a newspaper.”

NO CONTEST

The truth was, none of them had a chance. By the time the contest was announced, Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel—a 53-year-old structural engineer already considered France’s “master builder in metal” had the job sewn up. (He would later become as
le Magicien du Fer
—“the Iron Magician.”)

Weeks earlier, he had met with French minister Edouard Lockroy and presented plans for a wrought iron tower he was ready to build. Eiffel had already commissioned 5,329 mechanical drawings representing the 18,038 different components that would be used. Lockroy was so impressed that he rigged the contest so only Eiffel’s design would win.

JOINT VENTURE

In January 1887, Eiffel signed a contract with the French government and the City of Paris. Eiffel & Company, his engineering firm, agreed to contribute $1.3 million of the tower’s estimated $1.6 million construction cost. In exchange, Eiffel would receive all revenues generated by the tower during the Exposition…and for 20 years afterward. (The government agreed to leave the tower up after the Exposition.) Afterward, full ownership reverted to the City of Paris. They could tear it down if they wanted.

MONEY MACHINE

Unlike other public monuments, the Eiffel Tower was designed to make money from the very beginning. If you wanted to take the elevator or the stairs to the first story, you had to pay 2 francs; going all the way to the top cost 5 francs (Sundays were cheaper). That was just the beginning: restaurants, cafes, and shops were planned for the first story; a post office, telegraph office, bakery, and printing press were planned for the second story. In all, the tower was designed to accommodate up to 10,416 paying customers at a time.

GROUNDBREAKING

Construction began on January 26, with not a moment to spare. With barely two years left to build the tower in time for the opening of the Exposition, Eiffel would have to build the tower more quickly than any similar structure had been built before. The Washington Monument, just over half the Eiffel Tower’s size, had taken 36 years to complete.

PARISIAN PARTY POOPERS

A 1,000-foot tower would dwarf the Parisian skyline and overpower the city’s other landmarks, including Notre Dame, the Louvre, and the Arc de Triomphe. When digging started on the foundation, more than 300 prominent Parisians signed a petition protesting the tower. They claimed that Eiffel’s “hollow candlestick” would “disfigure and dishonor” the city. But Eiffel and the city ignored the petition, and work continued uninterrupted

OTHER FEARS

The tower still had its critics. A French mathematics professor predicted that when the structure passed the 748-foot mark, it would inevitably collapse; another “expert” predicted that the tower’s lightning rods would kill all the fish in the Seine.

The Paris edition of the New York
Herald
claimed the tower was changing the weather; and the daily newspaper
Le Matin
ran a headline story claiming “The Tower Is Sinking.” “If it has really begun to sink,”
Le Matin
pontificated, “any further building should stop and sections already built should be demolished as quickly as possible.” As the tower’s progress continued unabated, however, a sense of awe began to replace the fear.