Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader (8 page)

•
It takes
one cherry tree to produce enough cherries for 70 pies.

•
It takes
about 100 cherries to make a cherry pie.

•
It takes
2 million visits to 2 million flowers for a honeybee to make one pound of honey.

•
It takes
five gallons of milk to make a five-pound wheel of cheese.

•
It takes
a mole one day to make a tunnel 300 feet long.

•
It takes
23 seconds for blood to make a complete circuit of the human body.

•
It takes
a five-mile walk to burn off the calories of one chocolate sundae.

Stop that! Children touch their mouths with their hands about once every three minutes.

CHEDDAR MAN

Everyone wants to know about their family tree. Here’s a great-great-great-great-great-great story about how someone found the longest-lost relative in history
.

H
OLES IN CHEDDAR
Richard Gough was a retired sea captain living in the village of Cheddar, England, in 1890. Cheddar was famous for its cheese, but it was also beginning to become famous for the beautiful limestone caves that are found inside Cheddar Gorge, an enormous canyon just outside the village. Gough’s uncle had turned one of the caves into a profitable tourist attraction, and Gough wanted to find one to exploit, too. He had his eye on one in particular, but an old woman lived in it, and it wasn’t until she moved away that Gough finally got a chance to explore it.

The cave didn’t look promising at first; it was small and not very interesting. But one of the walls of the cave was made of mud and boulders, not solid rock, so despite knowing nothing about how limestone caves are formed, Gough started digging.

It turned out to be a pretty smart move.

LUCKY STRIKES

Limestone caverns are formed over millions of years as water slowly dissolves underground limestone deposits and washes them away, leaving behind large caverns filled with stalactites, stalagmites, and other beautiful wonders. Underground rivers flow through these caverns, and just as with rivers on the surface, they carry boulders, rocks, silt, and other debris. In places where the caverns narrow, the material can pile up and form a clog, or “choke.”

The wall in the old woman’s tiny cave was just such a choke, and after Gough dug for a while it fell away, revealing a much larger cavern inside. Gough and his sons spent the next eight years excavating other chokes in the cave and uncovering more than a quarter mile’s worth of magnificent chambers. “Gough’s Cave,” as it came to be known, became a huge tourist attraction.

Gough died in 1902, but his sons continued the business. When they started blasting part of the cave floor (to improve drainage) in 1903, they made another discovery: the skeleton of a Stone Age caveman that turned out to be more than 9,000 years old. To this day it remains the oldest intact human skeleton ever found in Great Britain. “Cheddar Man,” as he came to be known, helped turn Gough’s Cave into one of the most popular attractions in England (today it attracts more than 400,000 visitors per year).

TV’s Flipper was played mainly by two female dolphins, Suzy and Cathy.

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

So how much is known about Cheddar Man? The original blasting obliterated whatever artifacts may have been with him, but scientists have learned a few things by studying his bones: Cheddar Man was about 23 years old when he died, stood 5’5”, and had strong teeth, which indicates a healthy diet. There is evidence that he suffered several blows to the head before his death, one of which apparently broke off a tiny piece of bone on the inside of his skull between his eyes. Scientists speculate that the wound may have caused an infection that eventually killed him.

Today Cheddar Man’s bones are in the Natural History Museum in London, where they have been studied repeatedly over the years. But the biggest discovery of all wasn’t made until 1997, when Britain’s HTV network decided to do a series of documentaries on archaeological subjects in the United Kingdom.

A filmmaker named Philip Priestley was hired to direct one of the documentaries, and decided to make Cheddar Man the subject of his film. To make it more relevant to contemporary audiences, he obtained a DNA sample from Cheddar Man’s bones and compared it to DNA taken from villagers living in Cheddar.

BACK TO SCHOOL

Priestley was on a tight budget, so he didn’t want to test any villagers until Oxford University scientists had successfully extracted DNA from one of Cheddar Man’s molars. By then he’d already shot some footage of an archaeologist speaking before an audience of Cheddar schoolchildren. So, to make that footage blend with the footage he still had to shoot, he decided to test the DNA of some of the schoolkids who’d been filmed sitting in the audience. Their history teacher, a man named Adrian Targett, helped Priestley identify which kids came from old Cheddar families.

What is your
buccal cavity?
Your mouth.

Some of the kids were under the impression that the DNA test involved drawing blood. Targett explained that no big, scary needles were involved—the tester was just going to swab the inside of their cheek. To reassure the kids, Targett had his DNA tested, too.

When all the tests were completed, only one person tested was found to be related to Cheddar Man: Mr. Targett, the history teacher. And how much had the Cheddar Man’s family changed over time? More than 9,000 years later, Mr. Targett still lives within walking distance of the cave.

ALL IN THE FAMILY

Since the discovery Targett has managed to trace his ancestry all the way to 1807. From there his family tree spreads back more than 300 generations to Cheddar Man, who was born in about 7150 B.C. That’s the world’s oldest confirmed family tree, easily beating out the previous record holders—living descendants of the Chinese philosopher Confucius. They can trace their ancestry back 85 generations to Confucius’ great-great-great-great grandfather, who lived in the eighth century B.C.

The discovery of a living descendant of Cheddar Man has ramifications beyond the Targett family, too. Cheddar Man was a member of a clan of hunter-gatherers, who later came into contact with farmers from continental Europe. Historians have long debated whether the hunter-gatherers were pushed aside by the farmers and died out, or whether they picked up farming skills and assimilated with the new arrivals from Europe. The discovery of a living descendant of a hunter-gatherer supports the assimilation theory.

NO BIG DEAL

And what happened to Adrian Targett? One minute he was a history teacher living quietly in a small village in southwest England; the next minute he was making headlines all over the world as a living member of the world’s oldest family tree. How’s he taking it? In stride. “We all have 9,000-year-old ancestors,” he says, “I just happen to know who mine is.”

*        *        *

Chinese proverb:
“Every family has a skeleton in the cupboard.”

Q: What are shaggy manes, inky caps, sulphur tufts, and pig’s ears? A: Mushrooms.

A TALE OF A WHALE

A good sea yarn is always worth telling—but even more so when it inspired one of the great works of American literature
.

C
HASING HIS DREAMS
Owen Chase was a happy man. Only 23 years old, he was already first mate on a New England whaling ship, the
Essex
, out of Nantucket and bound for the South Seas. In 1819 fortunes were made hunting sperm whales and Chase intended to get his share. Led by captain George Pollard, the crew of 21 left port August 12; two years later, more than half the crew would be dead and the
Essex
a wreck on the bottom of the Pacific.

The voyage started ominously when, two days out of port, a sudden squall knocked the ship over on its side. Although it righted itself after a few minutes, many of the crew began muttering that the voyage was cursed. It took five long months to reach Cape Horn at the tip of South America, and then took five more weeks to sail the treacherous Straits of Magellan. By the time the ship reached the South Pacific, the crew was exhausted and morale was low. Little did they know their ordeal had just begun.

THAR SHE BLOWS

On November 20, 1820, the
Essex
was sailing 1,500 miles west of the Galápagos Islands when a huge sperm whale appeared off the port bow. To the crew’s stunned disbelief, the giant beast turned and charged the ship. The whale struck the hull with such force that every man was knocked off his feet. Then it swam ahead of the boat, turned around, and rammed full speed into the bow, crushing the thick hull like an eggshell.

In 100 years of American whaling, no ship had ever been attacked by a whale. These sailors were supposed to be the hunters; suddenly they were the prey. Dazed and bewildered, the crew lowered their whaleboats and rowed away from the
Essex
as quickly as they could, just before it sank. What became of the whale? It had already submerged; they never saw it again.

Twenty percent of all road accidents in Sweden involve a moose.

DESPERATE CIRCUMSTANCES

The situation couldn’t have been bleaker. Twenty men (one had died on the outward journey) bobbed in three small, open boats in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean. The officers debated which direction to go. To the south and west lay the barely known islands of Polynesia, rumored to be populated by cannibals. To the east lay the Galapagos Islands and the Spanish-controlled coasts of Chile and Peru—civilization. They had about 56 days’ worth of provisions. If all went well, they could just make it.

All did not go well. They ran into vicious storms that pummeled the small boats. Even worse were the dead calms, when they would drift for days at a time with no way to shield themselves from the intense sun. On December 20, they found a small deserted island, but it didn’t have enough food or water to sustain them all. When Captain Pollard insisted they sail on for South America, three men refused and stayed behind. (They probably made the right decision: they were rescued by a passing ship in April.)

On January 12, 1821, Chase’s boat was separated from the others. Two days later, Second Mate Joy became the first to die; four days later another crewman, Richard Peterson, died. Both were buried at sea. By the time Seaman Isaac Cole died on February 8, Chase’s boat had been out of food for days. Chase and the other two remaining men on his boat, Benjamin Lawrence and Thomas Nickerson, decided to eat the dead man rather than throw the body to the fishes. The meat kept them alive for another 10 days, when the British brig (a two-masted ship)
Indian
rescued them.

TAKE A NUMBER

Captain Pollard and the men on the other two boats were forced to make the same dire decision in order to stay alive: as each shipmate died of dehydration, the others ate his carcass. Four men were consumed in this fashion. Pollard was too weak to help when the other boat, commanded by Obed Hendricks, drifted away, never to be seen again.

By February 1, after weeks at sea, Pollard’s boat ran out of “food” again. Faced with a slow, lingering death by starvation, two crew members suggested they draw lots to decide who should be eaten next. Pollard reluctantly agreed. To his dismay, the short straw was picked by his 17-year-old cousin, Owen Coffin, who was summarily shot by the man with the second-shortest straw. The next meal was provided by Brazillai Ray, who died on February 11. Now only Captain Pollard and crewman Charles Ramsdell were left.

Buckingham Palace was bombed nine times during WWII, with only one fatality.

SAVED

On February 23, 1821, the lookout on the Nantucket whaler
Dauphin
spotted the drifting whaleboat. When the sailors came up alongside, they found Pollard and Ramsdell, living skeletons, sucking the bones of their dead mates, which, according to the captain of the
Dauphin
, “they were loathe to part with.” Pollard and Ramsdell had spent 95 days in an open boat and had drifted 3,500 nautical miles.

The five survivors were taken home to Nantucket. Surprisingly, they all went back to the sea. Chase, Ramsdell, Lawrence, and Nickerson all became successful sea captains. Pollard did as well, but was shipwrecked again in 1823, survived again, and then spent the remaining 45 years of his life as a night watchman…on land. Chase not only became a captain, he became an author. In 1821 he wrote a pamphlet entitled
Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex
, chronicling his sea adventure. It was a modest success. Poor health forced him to retire from the sea in 1840, and he suffered from chronic headaches the rest of his life. Shortly before his death in 1869, he was found hoarding food in the attic of his home.

CALL ME…HERMAN?

In 1841, 20 years after the wreck of the
Essex
, Owen Chase’s son, William, was hunting whales in the South Pacific in the same area in which his father’s ordeal had taken place. When a young whaler from another ship peppered him with questions about the whale that sank the ship, William Chase reached into his sea chest and gave the stranger a copy of his father’s pamphlet to read.

The young stranger was Herman Melville. Ten years later he published an epic novel about a Nantucket whaling ship that was rammed and sunk by a huge sperm whale named Moby Dick.