Uncle John's Great Big Bathroom Reader (27 page)

—TV Guide
, 12/13/97

DUMB DRIVE-IN

VIRGINIA BEACH, Virginia—“A man charged with auto theft came to court in, of all things, a stolen car.

“Tony Brite appeared in court Friday like he was supposed to, then left with two companions after his preliminary hearing. A detective followed Brite outside, then watched as the three got into a new Volvo with New York license plates.

“Suspicious, Detective Gary Nelson ran a check on the plates and was told they belonged to a Mercedes. The Volvo had been stolen the day before from a Virginia dealership. Nelson followed the Volvo into a convenience store parking lot across the street from Virginia Beach’s First Precinct. All three were arrested peacefully.”

—From a 1997 wire service report

Here are more origins of some everyday phrases.

T
HE WHOLE NINE YARDS

Meaning:
Everything; the whole shebang.

Origin:
“Curiously enough, the nine yards does not refer to distance gained or lost in any kind of athletic contest....The reference is to the amount of cement contained in one of the rotating cement-mixer trucks used by construction companies. When emptied, it would discharge
the whole nine yards
, thereby completing its mission.” (One of many explanations, this one is from the
Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins
, by William and Mary Morris)

IT’S ALL GREEK TO ME

Meaning:
Something doesn’t make sense.

Origin:
“During the Middle Ages, as for centuries thereafter, any educated Englishman or woman knew Latin, but only a minority also knew Greek. A major reason was that Greek uses its own alphabet, so before even starting to learn the language you have to learn the letters. The phrase itself comes from Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar.”
(From
Loose Cannons & Red Herrings
, by Robert Claiborne)

MIND YOUR P’s AND Q’s

Meaning:
To be on your best behavior.

Origin:
According to Edwin Radford and Alan Smith in
To Coin a Phrase:
“The most likely origin of this traditional warning is the practice of tavern owners ‘chalking up’ the pints and quarts consumed by a thirsty customer in the course of an evening.” Customers had to keep track of how much they’d drunk...and how much they owed.

BULL IN A CHINA SHOP

Meaning:
To be clumsy, especially in a delicate situation.

Origin:
A common expression in English since the 1830s—and probably a political one. In 1834, China terminated trade with John Bull
(England). This, says Robert Hendrickson in
Animal Crackers
, “had something to do with the coining of the phrase—perhaps through a political cartoon showing an angry John Bull threatening to destroy a ‘China’ shop if trade wasn’t resumed.” He adds: “The ‘china’ in the phrase refers to the fine porcelain from China brought to Europe from the Far East as early as the 16th century.”

TO REST ON YOUR LAURELS

Meaning:
To be content with success already achieved; stop going after more glory.

Origin:
“For centuries, wreaths of laurel were used to crown victors, great poets, and people who had achieved distinction. This ‘evergreen’ was chosen to signify that they will be remembered for all time (hence the term ‘poet laureate’). Once someone had been crowned, they didn’t have to prove themselves anymore—and could ‘rest on their laurels.’” Another meaning: Traditionally, “anyone who aspired to greatness placed laurel leaves under their pillow—literally resting on their laurels—to acquire strength for victory, or inspiration for their poetry.” (From
Everyday Phrases
, by Neil Ewart)

LEFT IN THE LURCH

Meaning:
Left far behind, often in difficult circumstances.

Origin:
“The key word apparently comes from the French
lourche
, a 16th century game said to have resembled backgammon. To be ‘in the lurch’ started off as a way of saying a player was far behind in a game” and evolved into a term that could apply to any situation. (From
The Dictionary of Clichés
, by James Rogers)

THE DIE IS CAST

Meaning:
A final decision has been made.

Origin:
“The term comes from Suetonius’s account of Julius Caesar’s invasion of Italy in 49 B.C. When Caesar crossed the River Rubicon into Italy, thereby advancing against [Pompey] and the Roman Senate, he supposedly said, ‘
Jacta alea est
’ (The dice have been thrown), meaning that now there was no turning back.” (From
Fighting Words
, by Christine Ammer)

Ever wonder how potato chips were invented? Here’s BRI food historian, Jeff Cheeks’ account. It’s not clear whether Vanderbilt was really Crum’s first customer, but that’s the legend. We’ll leave that for you to decide.

B
ACKGROUND

Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt was born on May 27, 1794 and grew up on Staten Island. When Cornelius was 14, he quit school to help his father with the family skiff...and by the time he was 16, he’d saved enough to buy a small ferry of his own.

During the War of 1812, he made his first fortune, carrying troops and supplies to forts in the New York area. In 1829, at age 35, he started a steamship line; 25 years later, thanks to passengers lured by the 1849 Gold Rush, he was one of the richest men in the world.

I SAY POTATO...

Vanderbilt’s wealth allowed him to live lavishly. He built a number of stately homes, one of which was near Saratoga Springs in upstate New York. In 1853, while summering there, his tactless, imperious manner may have led to the creation of a favorite American snack.

In those days, potatoes were usually served baked, boiled, or mashed; oil was too expensive to waste on frying them. But one night a customer having dinner at Moon’s Lake House—legend says it was Vanderbilt—told the waiter to bring him fried potatoes like the ones he’d tasted in France. He gave detailed instructions on how to prepare them.

The chef, George Crum, had the ego of a master chef—reinforced by the fact that he was a proud Native American, a chief in the Algonquin tribe. He made the fries as directed. The customer sent them back. They were too large and not crisp enough. The chef prepared another batch, but they, too, were sent back. They were still too big and not crisp enough. Furious, Crum sliced the next potatoes paper thin, dipped them in hot fat, and dusted them with salt. The customer loved them—they were better than French fries!

Was the customer really Vanderbilt? No one knows for sure...but it’s a fact that Vanderbilt loved Crum’s creation so much that he offered to put up the money if Crum wanted to start his own restaurant...and that Crum turned him down.

Could Nostradamus have predicted his own influence four centuries after his death? This 16th-century soothsayer is still as popular as ever, more than 400 years after he made his famous predictions. This profile is from our book
Uncle John’s Indispensable Guide to the Year 2000.

B
ACKGROUND
Michel de Nostradame was born in 1503 in St. Remy, France. He was trained as a physician and gained a reputation for “remarkable healing powers” during the Black Plague. But when his wife and two infant sons died of the plague, he gave up medicine and began wandering aimlessly through the south of France.

About this time, Nostradamus began experiencing visions and discovered his “powers of prophecy.” According to legend, he spontaneously knelt before a monk named Felice Peretti—who later became Pope Sixtus V—and insisted that one day the monk would head the Catholic Church.

In 1550, after years of studying magic and astrology, Nostradamus began publishing an almanac filled with predictions. Thanks to his almanacs, his reputation as a psychic spread. And in 1558, he published the book that sealed his reputation:
Centuries
—a series of 1,000 quatrains (four-line verses) that purported to predict events until the year 3797.

SUPERSTARDOM

One quatrain in particular catapulted Nostradamus to psychic superstardom in his own time:

The young lion will overcome the old one

On the field of battle in combat:

He will put out his eyes in a cage of gold,

Two wounds one, then die a cruel death.

As it turns out, a few years later the reigning French monarch,
Henry II (the “old lion”), was mortally wounded in a riding tournament by a young captain of the Scottish guard (the “young lion”).

The details of the event were so similar to the quatrain that the king’s wife, Queen Catherine de Medici, was sure Nostradamus had prophesied it. She invited him into her royal circle, and he began devising royal horoscopes and offering advice based on astrological events. His advice was apparently good. According to
The Book of Predictions:
“In his own day Nostradamus was acknowledged as the greatest seer alive.” Stewart Robb writes in
Prophecies on World Events by Nostradamus
that “his neighbors held him in awe and respect. Kings, princes and prelates beat a path to his door; he was never in want.”

By the time he died in 1566, Nostradamus was a legend. And tales of his death only added to his stature. On the night he died, he reportedly told a pupil that “tomorrow at sunrise I shall not be here.” He also supposedly arranged for a marble plaque to be buried with him. When his coffin was exhumed in 1700 to move his remains to a newer tomb, the story goes, the plaque was discovered on his skeleton. On it the date “1700” was inscribed.

NOSTRADAMUS‘S PREDICTIONS

Amazingly,
Centuries
has never been out of print. After the Bible, it’s the oldest continuously published book in history—still widely read, interpreted...and believed.

The genius of its prophesies—and the reason they’ve lasted so long—is that most can be interpreted any way a reader wants. So thousands of “experts” over the years have been able to use them to “prove” Nostradamus anticipated practically every major event in Western history. He’s credited with predicting the reigns of Napoleon and Hitler, the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers, even the rise of Saddam Hussein.

But how accurate was he really? Here are a few of his quatrains, selected at random, along with a contemporary analysis. See what you think.

Quatrain:
“The great man will be struck down in the day by a thunderbolt / The evil deed predicted by the bearer of a petition / According to the prediction another falls at night time / Conflict in Reims, London, and pestilence in Tuscany.”

Analysis:
In
Nostradamus and the Millennium
, John Hogue cites this quatrain as a prediction of John and Robert Kennedy’s assassinations. He says the first line is a reference to JFK; the second line refers to psychic Jeanne Dixon’s attempt to forewarn JFK(!); the third to Robert Kennedy; and the fourth to events going on at the time of RFK’s death.

Got that? Let’s try another.

Quatrain:
“Liberty will not be recovered / A bold, black, base-born iniquitous man will occupy it / When the material of the bridge is completed / The Republic of Venice will be annoyed by Hister.”

Analysis:
In
Prophecies on World Events by Nostradamus
, Stewart Robb says that although
Hister
is an ancient Latin term for the Danube River, it is also an anagram for the name
Hitler
(one letter change is permitted with anagrams). So it refers to a bridge across the Danube that the Nazis built in 1941. Shortly after, he says, Nazis began infiltrating Italy—the “Republic of Venice.”

About the Hister-Hitler connection:
There are a number of quatrains with references to Hister. During World War II, some scholars theorized that Hister is a misspelling of Hitler and suggested Nostradamus intentionally scrambled it to avoid trouble. But as one critic asks: “Why hide the name of a man who didn’t even exist yet?”

ON THE OTHER HAND...

According to
The Book of Predictions
, Nostradamus gave a surprisingly detailed prediction of the rise and fall of Napoleon in a series of quatrains. They say he foretold of “an Emperor born near Italy” named “Pau. nay. loron”—an anagram for
Napaulon Roy
—who “for 14 years will rule with absolute power.” (Napoleon did.)

The last of the Napoleon quatrains quoted in the book goes: “The captive prince, conquered, to Elba / He will pass the Gulf of Genoa by sea to Marseilles / He is completely conquered by a great effort of foreign forces...Will end his life far from where he was born / Among 5,000 people of strange customs and language / On a chalky island in the sea.” Napoleon
was
exiled to Elba after being beaten by the British at Waterloo.