Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (27 page)

1982: THE FIRST BIMILLENNIAL ANTHEM

Prince released the song “1999.”

1987: THE FIRST COUNTDOWN CLOCK.

In 1987, on the tenth anniversary of the opening of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, President Francois Mitterand inaugurated a countdown clock which displays the number of seconds left till 2000. “A nation must orient its gaze toward the future,” Mitterand declared.

1991 FIRST PRIVATE PARTY BOOKED.

Wendy Warren of Portland, Oregon leased the Space Needle, Seattle’s landmark after being turned down for six years. For an undisclosed amount, Warren and 14 other families got exclusive use of the Needle beginning at 8 p.m., December 31, 1999. She plans a party of 900 people. “People go
Oh My God! Are you Nuts
?” Warren told the
Seattle Post Intelligencer
, “but I love big parties.”

1992: FIRST YEAR 2000 POLL.

The Millennium Poll by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman found that 59% expected to do “the same old thing” on New Year’s Eve, 1999.

1993: FIRST EMCEE HIRED.

ABC-TV signed up eternal teenager Dick Clark to host “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” in Times Square on December 31, 1999.

1995: FIRST CALENDAR PUBLISHED.

The first-ever calendar of the year 2000 was published as a part of “The Millennium Planner.” It invited buyers to “enter in your own millennium resolutions for the beginning of the only change of millennium ever to be experienced by the currently living human race, then sit back and wait for the future to catch up with you.”

“The devil’s in the details,” says an old proverb. And in the profits too. The littlest thing can mean big bucks. Here are a few examples.

A
MINUS SIGN

The story:
In 1962, an Atlas-Agena rocket that was carrying the Mariner 1 satellite into space was launched from Cape Canaveral. Unfortunately, the rocket went off course and ground controllers had to push the self-destruct button. The whole thing exploded. Investigators found that someone had left a minus sign out of the computer program. Cost to U.S. taxpayers: $18.5 million.

A LETTUCE LEAF

The story:
In 1993, Delta Airlines was looking for ways to reduce costs to compete in the cutthroat airline industry. They discovered that by just eliminating the decorative piece of lettuce served under the vegetables on in-flight meals, they could save over $1.4 million annually in labor and food costs.

A SHOE

The story:
On September 18, 1977, the Tennessee Valley Authority had to close its Knoxville nuclear power plant. The plant stayed shut for 17 days, at a cost of $2.8 million. Cause of the shutdown: “human error.” A shoe had fallen into an atomic reactor.

A DECIMAL POINT

The story:
In 1870, the government published a table of nutritional values for different foods. According to the charts, spinach had ten times as much iron as other vegetables. Actually, a decimal point had been misplaced; spinach has about the same amount as other veggies. But a popular misconception had already taken hold that spinach promotes strength. Long-term benefit: It ultimately gave us Popeye the Sailor, who’s “strong to the finish, ’cause I eats my spinach.”

Where do these familiar terms and phrases come from? Etymologists have researched them and come up with these explanations.

W
HAT A SUCKER!

Meaning:
A pushover, an easy mark for a con.

Origin:
Early settlers in the New World found a strange fish that fed along the bottom of rivers and streams. They called it a
sucker
. Soon, any fish that resembled it was referred to as a sucker—and this included so many types of fish that practically any time someone threw a hook in the water, they caught “a sucker.” Eventually, the term was applied to a person who’d fall for anything.

TO HECKLE SOMEONE

Meaning
: To disturb a speaker, jeer at.

Origin:
In medieval times, a brush with iron teeth, called a
heckle,
was used to split and comb the fibers from flax stalks in clothmaking. By the 15th century the word had become a verb meaning “to scratch with a steel brush” or “to look for weak points.”

DIDDLY-SQUAT

Meaning:
Very little of something; small change.

Origin:
Carnival lingo. Carny barkers referred to nickels and dimes—the going rate for games of chance—as “
Diddle-e-squat,
yelling to passers-by: “Step right up…All it costs is diddle-e-squat.”

FROM PILLAR TO POST

Meaning:
Driven from difficulty to another.

Origin:
The sport of tennis arrived in England in the early 1600’s. It was played in grassy estate courtyards. The gate was at one end of the court and the mansion was at the other. So a spirited game would see competitors running back and forth between the pillars of the mansion to the post of the gate.

Here’s an interesting little tale about a classic folk dance.

D
ANCE FEVER

Over the last 2000 years there have been occasional instances of mass hysteria that scientists call “epidemic dancing.” Entire towns or provinces will begin a wild, spontaneous dancing, often accompanied by hallucinations.

Perhaps the most serious outbreak took place in July 1374, in the French town of Aix-la-Chapelle. As Frederick Cartwright writes in
Disease and History,

      
The sufferers began to dance uncontrollably in the streets, screaming and foaming at the mouth. Some declared they were immersed in a sea of blood, others claimed to have seen the heavens open to reveal Christ enthroned with the Virgin Mary…. Streams of dancers invaded the Low Countries, moved along the Rhine, and appeared throughout Germany….In the later stages, the dancers often appeared to be entirely insensible to pain, a symptom of hysteria.

Today, scientists and historians speculate the dancing was caused by eating rye bread contaminated with “ergot,” a fungus that infects bread cereals. One of the chemical compounds created by ergot is lysergic acid diethylamide—LSD. So the dancers were essentially high on LSD. And long after the effects of the drug had worn off, mass hysteria kept them going.

We know about the hallucinogenic effects of LSD today…but until a few decades ago, no one had any idea what caused the mysterious outbreaks. In the 16th century, when a similar incident took place near Taranto, Italy, the townspeople blamed the
tarantula,
a local spider named after the town.

The tarantula was known for its painful bite, which was thought to be deadly. So when the dancers survived, the Tarantans were surprised. “In due course,” John Ayto notes in
The Dictionary of Word Origins,
“the dancing came to be rationalized as a method of counteracting the effects of the spider’s bite, and so the dance was named the
tarantella.”

Italians don’t dance away their spider bites anymore, but they still have a lively folk dance called the
tarantella.

They had successful acting careers…but might have been even more successful if it hadn’t been for one single decision. Here are some stories about “the one that got away.”

B
UDDY EBSEN

Background:
Ebsen eventually became famous as Jed Clampett in the 1962-71 sitcom “The Beverly Hillbillies.” But in the 1930s, he was an up-and-coming young singer/dancer.

The Story:
After appearing in several films as an MGM contract player, Ebsen got his big break in 1938 when he got the part of the Scarecrow in
The Wizard of Oz
. But Ray Bolger, cast as the Tin Man, was determined to play the Scarecrow instead. He launched a relentless campaign for the part…and Ebsen, tired of saying no, finally agreed to swap roles.

It was a costly decision. The make-up department was using aluminum powder to make the Tin Man’s face look metallic; Ebsen developed a severe allergy to it. Nine days after the film went into production, Ebsen wound up in an oxygen tent at Good Samaritan Hospital; he’d inhaled so much of the powder that his lungs were coated with aluminum. Unsympathetic studio execs kept calling the hospital, wondering when he was coming back to work. Finally director Mervyn LeRoy simply hired another actor (Jack Haley) to play the Tin Man.

Ebsen recovered from the aluminum allergy in a few weeks. His career didn’t bounce back as fast, though. He appeared in a handful of movies in the 1940s, but didn’t make a real impression until 1955, when he played Davy Crockett’s sidekick in Disney’s
Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.
He became a TV star in the “Hillbillies” in 1962, but never made it big in the movies.

ELVIS PRESLEY

Background:
Elvis left a legacy of about 30 movies, most of them inane formula films like
Harum Scarum
and
Tickle Me.
But at the end of his career, the King came close to doing something really special onscreen.

The Story:
In Joe Esposito’s book
Good Rockin’ Tonight,
he reveals that in 1974, Barbra Streisand offered Elvis “the kind of part he’d dreamed of.” Elvis was performing at the Las Vegas Hilton. After the show, Streisand and her boyfriend Jon Peters (then a well-known Hollywood hairdresser) visited him backstage.

      
“Elvis, can we go someplace where we can talk in private?” she asked. “I have something I would like to tell you about.” I suggested the room next to his dressing room, where Elvis rested between shows. Elvis asked me to come in with them. Barbra and Jon sat on the two chairs, Elvis on the bed, and I sat on the floor….

          
Barbra explained the purpose of her visit.

          
“Elvis, I bought the rights to the Judy Garland movie, A
Star Is Bom,”
she said. “I’m going to remake it, and I thought you might be interested in starring in it with me.” Elvis hadn’t been interested in making movies for a long time, but Barbra explained the entire story. Two hours later, he was hooked.

          
“I’ll have to think about it. [My agent], the Colonel, will get back to you,” he told her before she left. But to the guys he was more enthusiastic. “I’m going to do it!” he vowed.

It never happened. First, Presley’s pals suggested that since Peters was going to produce the film, he’d make sure it showcased Barbra—not Elvis. Then they pointed out that Elvis and Barbra might have a hard time getting along. Elvis was shaken. He called his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, the next night and said he wanted to do the film—but had a few reservations. “Colonel, you think I’m going to take orders from that hairdresser?” he asked.

      
“I’ve got news for you, the Colonel said. “I guarantee that they’ll turn the contract down because I’m going to request that you get top billing.”

          
A few days later, the Colonel reported back to Elvis. He’d asked for top billing. “That took care of that,” the Colonel said. Streisand and Peters never even responded to his offer.

Elvis, who never made another film, lost what
he
described as “an opportunity parallel to Frank Sinatra’s performance in
Here to Eternity
.” That performance won Sinatra an Oscar in 1954 and revived his sagging career. Who knows? If Elvis had made the film, it might have turned his life around.

BURT WARD

Background:
In 1966 Ward was playing Robin on ABC’s phenomenally popular TV series “Batman” (produced by 20th Century Fox). He was one of the hottest properties in the country—quoted, copied, and mobbed by fans wherever he went—and he was ready to break into the movies.

The Story:
“My agents submitted me to Larry Turman, a talented producer who was getting ready to produce
The Graduate
for Fox,” Ward wrote in his autobiography,
Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights.

      
I met with Larry and he told me that he wanted me for the lead role in his upcoming movie. The timing was perfect. The film was set to shoot during my hiatus from “Batman.” Wow, was I ever excited.