Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (90 page)

A blue whale’s sound can be heard from more than 500 miles away.

3. Hans Steininger

Steininger was a 16th-century Austrian man famous for having the longest beard in the world. In September 1567, he tripped on his beard as he was climbing the stairs to the council chamber of Brunn, Austria. He fell down the stairs and died.

4 Hans Hoffman

In 1993, Hoffman, a 31-year-old vagrant, robbed a Rotterdam (Netherlands) bank of $15,000, telling the teller he needed the money to get a haircut and buy a piece of cheese. A few hours later he showed up at the Rotterdam police department, surrendered, and handed over a bag full of cash. Police counted the money and it was all there—minus the price of a haircut and a piece of cheese.

5. King Louis VII of France

King Louis had a beard when he married Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1137, but when he shaved it off, Eleanor thought he looked ugly without it and insisted he grow it back. Louis refused—so she left him and married King Henry II of England. However, Louis refused to give back Aquitaine, Eleanor’s ancestral lands, which had became part of France when the couple got married. King Henry declared war. “The War of the Whiskers” lasted 301 years, until peace was finally signed in 1453.

6. President Bill Clinton

In May 1993, President Clinton received a $200 haircut on Air Force One. The only problem: At the time, Air Force One was parked on the tarmac, and according to a Federal Aviation Administration official, the trim shut down two of LAX’s four runways for 56 minutes. The scene generated so much bad publicity that the hair stylist, Christophe, held a press conference to deny that Clinton was as smug, self-important, or stylish as the incident suggested.

“I am not saying this in a negative way,” he told reporters, “but from what you can see, do you really think that Hillary or Bill Clinton, are very concerned about their appearance?”

The whole thing may have been the work of a political trickster. Subsequent checks of the records at LAX showed that the haircut had actually caused no problems. Runways were not shut down, and no planes were kept waiting.

William Shakespeare invented more than 1,700 words.

Limericks have been around since the 1700s. And our readers have been sending them in since 1988. Here are few of their favorites.

There was a faith-healer of Deal,

Who said, “Although pain isn’t real,

If I sit on a pin,

And it punctures my skin,

I dislike what I fancy I feel.”

There were once two young people of taste

Who were beautiful, down to the waist.

So they limited love

To the regions above,

And thus remained perfectly chaste.

There was an old man of Blackheath,

Who sat on his set of false teeth;

Said he, with a start,

“O Lord, bless my heart!

I’ve bitten myself underneath!”

There was a young man of Montrose,

Who had pockets in none of his clothes.

When asked by his lass

Where he carried his brass,

He said: “Darling, I pay through the nose.”

There was a young student called Fred,

Who was questioned on Descartes and said:

“It’s perfectly clear

That I’m not really here,

For I haven’t a thought in my head.”

Dr. Johnson, when sober or pissed,

Could be frequently heard to insist,

Letting out a great fart:

“Yes, I follow Descartes—

I stink, and I therefore exist.”

A cute secretary, none cuter,

Was replaced by a clicking computer.

T’was the wife of her boss

Who put the deal across;

You see, the computer was neuter.

There was a young lady named Jeanie,

Who wore an outrageous bikini,

Two wisps light as air,

One here and one there,

With nothing but Jeanie betweenie.

President Clinton’s feet (size 13C) are the biggest presidential feet since Woodrow Wilson’s.

A few thoughts from one of America’s all-time favorite advisors, Abigail Van Buren.

“If you want a place in the sun, you have to put up with a few blisters.”

“Some people are more turned on by money than they are by love. In one respect they are alike. They’re both wonderful as long as they last.”

“If you are looking for a kindly, well-to-do older gentleman who is no longer interested in sex, take out an ad in the
Wall Street Journal
.”

Dear Abby: My wife sleeps nude. Then she showers, goes into the kitchen and fixes breakfast—still in the nude. We’re newlyweds and have no kids, so I suppose there’s nothing wrong with it. What do you think?

Dear Rex: It’s all right with me, but tell her to put on an apron when she’s frying bacon.

“The best index to a person’s character is how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and how he treats people who can’t fight back.”

Dear Abby: I have always wanted to have my family history traced, but I can’t afford to spend a lot of money on it. Any suggestions?

Dear Sam: Yes. Run for public office.

“Wisdom doesn’t automatically come with old age. Nothing does—except wrinkles. It’s true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place.”

“It is almost impossible to throw dirt on someone without getting a little on yourself.”

Dear Abby: What factor do you think is the most essential if a woman is to have a lasting marriage?

Dear Dotty: A lasting husband.

“I have long suspected that more people are sleeping apart because of snoring than are sleeping together for all the other reasons combined.”

“People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.”

Mr. Potatohead was the first toy advertised on TV.

If you had to pick the most ridiculous sitcom premise in history, what would it be? Our choice is “The Flying Nun.” How did they come up with such a stupid idea? And why did Sally Field take the role? Here are the answers.

N
UN-SENSE

It was one of the most improbable sitcom plots in American television history: Elsie Ethrington, an American teenager, gives up her life as a beach bunny and enters a Puerto Rican nunnery called the Convent San Tanco, where she is ordained as Sister Bertrille. Weighing only 90 pounds, she discovers that wearing her order’s bulky coronet (nun’s hat) on windy days enables her to fly, a skill she uses to get into and out of trouble (and fight crime).

Sure, the concept was ridiculous, but the show was one of the surprise hits of the 1967 TV season. More important, it gave a needed boost to the acting career of 19-year-old actress Sally Field, who had just finished work on the “Gidget” TV series.

YOU’RE MY INSPIRATION(S)

• Believe it or not, “The Flying Nun” was inspired by a real-life incident involving a small nun, a big hat, and high winds.

• In 1955, author Tere Rios recalled a trip she had made to France. “I saw a little Sister of Charity in her big white bonnet nearly blown off her feet in Paris,” she recalls. It gave her the idea for
The Fifteenth Pelican
, a book about a flying nun that became the inspiration for the TV series.

• The show was also inspired by “Bewitched,” a successful TV series about a friendly witch with magic powers, and “I Dream of Jeanie,” a show about a magical genie who marries an astronaut. “Bewitched” creator Harry Ackerman thought a similar show about a nun would be a hit, but he worried that giving a nun magical powers would be too controversial. So he stuck with
The Fifteenth Pelican’
s original premise and gave the nun special powers, brought on by high winds, her coronet, and the laws of aerodynamics, instead of magic ones.

You burn 50% more calories watching TV than you do when you sleep.

SHE’D HAVE NUN OF IT

• The show might never have made it onto the air if “Gidget,” another of Ackerman’s shows, hadn’t bitten the dust in 1965. Ackerman knew that Sally Field, the show’s 19-year-old star, had talent, and he wanted to find another series for her.

• The only problem: Field wanted to quit TV. When “Gidget” failed, she took it to heart. As
TV Guide
put it, “Sally came away with the feeling that she was somehow responsible for Gidget’s flop and no one would tell her why....She left the studio ‘feeling defeated’... and embarked on a movie career, determined that TV should never darken her door again.”

• Field’s first stab at a movie career bombed as badly as “Gidget.” She tried out for the part of daughter Elaine Robinson in
The Graduate
...but Katherine Ross got the part. Then she tried out for the role of Neely in
Valley of the Dolls
...but lost it to Patty Duke.

• All of a sudden, another TV series didn’t look so bad. “It was presumptuous to think I could step into movies,” Field later recalled. “‘Idiot,’ I told myself, ‘you’re not Liz Taylor!’ ‘The Flying Nun’ would give me time to learn and still keep me in the public eye. So—I changed my mind.” (Studio executives cemented the deal by raising her $450-a-week “Gidget” salary to $4,000 a week.)

CATHOLIC CONTROVERSIES

• Studio executives were worried about potential Catholic objections to “The Flying Nun” and went to great lengths to see that the Church was not offended. They gave special sneak previews of the pilot episode to high Church officials all over the country, hoping to enlist their support for the show. “We just wanted to be sure the Catholic community dug it,” one of the show’s promoters told
TV Guide
in 1968.

But their concerns were unfounded: Catholic Church officials loved the show. They saw it as a much-needed recruiting film for nuns, whose numbers had been in decline since Vatican II.

“The show is positioning nuns as human beings,” an official with the National Catholic Office for Radio and Television said. “Only the studio, the agencies and the sponsors were worried. I guess they thought Catholics might stop buying toothpaste.”

Experts say: Elephants are the only animals in the world that can’t jump.

An informal study by the BRI has shown that many bathroom readers are also pet aficionados. Uncle John himself keeps a piranha in his bathtub. And he’s trying to convince Mrs. Uncle John to keep a fainting goat in the bedroom.

A
QUARIUMS

Fish tanks were popular in the United States as far back as the early 1800s, but for the most part only the wealthy had them. The reason: Water quickly became deprived of oxygen, and fish died unless the water was constantly changed. No one wanted to take on that responsibility...unless they could afford to pay someone to do it for them.

It wasn’t until 1850 that Robert Warrington, a chemist, announced to the world that he’d kept a pet fish alive for a year in a tank without changing the water. His secret: He added plants to the tank, which replenished the oxygen supply. His contribution was so significant that the first aquariums were known as Warrington [sic] cases.

Not long afterward, British naturalist Philip Gosse published
The Aquarium
, a how-to book that quickly became a bestseller. Soon, American and British fish lovers had made aquarium-keeping one of the largest and most popular pet fads in the world.

COLLIES

For centuries, collies were common in the Scottish Lowlands, but virtually unknown everywhere else in the world. A working dog used to guard the large flocks of sheep that roamed the area, the collie might still be uncommon today if it hadn’t been for Queen Victoria. She happened to notice some of the dogs outside of Balmoral Castle and was so charmed by them that she brought a few back to London. The British upper classes, quick to take a royal hint, made the collie one of the most popular breeds in the country...and eventually in the world.

THE MAKECH BEETLE

A short-lived fad of the 1960s, the “makech” was a gilded and stone-encrusted living beetle that was attached to a pin by a thin gold chain. The wearer attached the pin to their shirt, and let the beetle walk over their shoulder and neck. Phyllis Diller wore a makech emblazoned with gold lace and white seed pearls. “How else,” she asked at the time, “am I going to get ten men standing around looking at my chest?” Not everyone liked the fad. “A makech’s appeal is primarily to the screwball fringe,” said a customs agent in charge of breaking up illegal beetle-smuggling rings. “It takes some kind of nut to wear a bug.”

California has the most unlisted phone numbers per capita; Florida has the least.

PIRANHAS

Another weird pet craze of the 1960s was the piranha. Enterprising pet store owners skirted laws banning importation and possession of the meat-eating fishes, claiming they were actually friendly pets, not the flesh-eating meanies they were reputed to be. “We got very attached to ours,” one owner told reporters about her aquatic carnivore. “He had a personality that most tropical fish don’t seem to have.” But state and federal officials held the line—to date it is still illegal to import or own a piranha. According to one biologist with the California Fish and Game Department, “Piranhas eat people.”

FAINTING GOATS

Fainting goats aren’t much different from normal goats...except that they have a genetic trait that causes them to stiffen up and fall over when someone (usually the owner or the owner’s friends) frightens them. Fainting faddists rank their pets’ “skill” on a scale of one to six, with “six being the highest, meaning they lock up most of the time and fall over,” says Kathy Majewski, founder of The American Tennessee Fainting Goat Association (TATFGA).

First observed in Tennessee in the 1800s, the goats were nearly driven extinct by coyotes, who (for obvious reasons) preferred them to regular goats. But TATFGA was formed to save them.

The group boasts more than 200 members, but not everyone thinks their motives are pure. “To raise animals with an abnormality for use as entertainment is sick,” says Lisa Landres of the Tennessee Humane Society. “The whole phenomenon is mind-boggling.” She may not have to worry, though—the fad may die out on its own because it gets increasingly harder to scare the goats once they get to know you...which defeats the purpose of owning them in the first place.