Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ (76 page)

Genius:
Nicknamed “the Napoleon of Painting” for his dominance of the French art world in the 19th century, Ingres’s talent emerged fully formed at age nine and didn’t change much after that. He was a neoclassicist who painted primarily portraits, including Napoleon’s.

He had a hobby, too:
Ingres was a master violinist. His father started him on lessons almost from birth, and he studied under some of the greatest violinists in Europe. By his 14th birthday, he was already the second violinist for the Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, a major French orchestra. Today, “Ingres’ Violin” is a French expression for a secondary talent totally unrelated to one’s true calling in life.

CLAUDE SHANNON

Genius:
In his 1937 graduate thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 21-year-old Shannon proved that electrical circuits could be used to solve any complex algebra problem. Later, he proposed that these same circuits could be used to store and transmit information—essentially the basis for the technology behind the modern computer. For this, and other work, Shannon is referred to as “the father of information theory.”

He had a hobby, too:
Shannon taught at MIT and was known as an eccentric who traveled around campus on a unicycle, sometimes juggling as he rode. Shannon amassed a collection of exotic unicycles from around the world, a passion that overlapped with his technological genius: He devised a juggling robot as well as several mathematical proofs for an ideal juggling method.

H.G. WELLS

Genius:
Wells is best known for writing the science-fiction novels
The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine,
and
The Island of Dr. Moreau
. He was one of the first writers to take sci-fi seriously,
using it to express complex philosophical concepts about world peace and human potential. Wells was a great visionary, foreseeing the United Nations, the military use of the airplane, and space travel. He also coined the terms “Martian” and “time machine.”

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He had a hobby, too:
Wells enjoyed designing (and playing) military simulation games, notably one called “Little Wars.” While the game was made for children, it included complex rules for maneuvering infantry (mass-produced tin soldiers) and artillery (working miniature cannons that shot wooden dowels, popular in an age before safety regulations). “Little Wars” was the first modern tabletop game, and inspired hundreds of others. While games like “Warhammer” are now much more popular, Wells’s game was so well designed that it’s still played today.

ISAAC NEWTON

Genius:
Newton, the father of modern physics and originator of the theory of universal gravitation and three laws of motion, was also the warden of Britain’s royal mint, responsible for regulating the coinage of the British Empire.

He had a hobby, too:
He liked to disguise himself as a drunkard. Reason: In 17th-century England, counterfeiting was a serious crime, equivalent to treason and punishable by death. However, counterfeiters were almost impossible to catch due to Britain’s complex legal code and stratified class system. So Newton occasionally took drastic measures, hanging out in bars and brothels—where counterfeiters gathered—to collect the evidence he needed firsthand. He was, by all accounts, pretty good at this, and managed to catch more than 20 big-time counterfeiters.

TYCHO BRAHE

Genius:
Brahe was one of the 16th century’s most prominent scientists. Together with his student Johannes Kepler, he made observations which led to Galileo’s groundbreaking theory that the sun, rather than the Earth, was the center of the solar system. Brahe was an excellent businessman too, and could afford to build and staff his own personal research facility for astronomical studies.

He had a hobby, too:
Brahe had a bad temper, which he relieved
through fencing. On one occasion, he was involved in a duel with another intellectual of the Early Modern period, the Danish mathematician Manderup Parsbjerg. Unable to resolve a bitter dispute about who was the better mathematician, they decided to settle the matter with a duel. Brahe may have been good, but Parsbjerg was better: Brahe lost the bridge of his nose to a well-timed sword stroke. For the rest of his life, he wore a prosthetic nose made of metal (gold, silver, or perhaps copper—accounts vary) and held in place with paste.

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RICHARD FEYNMAN

Genius:
Theoretical physicist Feynman was the very
definition
of a genius. His first job after graduating from Princeton and MIT: nuclear physicist in the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bombs. Later, he made several groundbreaking contributions to particle physics, and even won a Nobel Prize.

He had a hobby, too:
Feynman had numerous interests that occupied his time: painting, Meso-American history…and the bongo drums. Feynman’s drumming talents were overshadowed by his achievements as a physicist, but in some circles he was known only for his musical abilities. As Feynman himself said, “On the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics.”

He had
another
hobby, too:
As if that wasn’t enough, Feynman was also an expert safecracker. He was particularly adept at solving combination locks, and was so good that, amazingly, he could often deduce combinations to safes from the psychology of their owners. Feynman earned his reputation while working at Los Alamos National Laboratory during the Manhattan Project, where he easily—and routinely—cracked the safes containing classified nuclear secrets.

ASIA IS LARGER THAN THE MOON

The surface area of the moon is about 14,645,750 square miles. The area of the continent of Asia: about 17,212,000 square miles.

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THE OTHER OLYMPICS

Every country loves to root for its hometown heroes, hoping they’ll win the gold. But the real joy of the Olympics is watching the world’s finest compete in a politics-free atmosphere. Right? Well, not necessarily
.

B
ACKGROUND

In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in an attempt to bolster that country’s faltering communist government. The spread of Communism and a Soviet Union that aggressively perpetuated it were the two biggest fears of the West. The Afghanistan invasion both concerned and infuriated United States President Jimmy Carter. He condemned it in the United Nations, and made a bold statement in his 1980 State of the Union address: If Soviet troops remained in Afghanistan past February 20, the United States—and many of its allies—would boycott the upcoming Summer Olympics, scheduled to be held in Moscow.

Soviet troops did not budge. And so, on March 21, 1980, Carter announced that the United States would not participate in the 1980 Summer Olympics. Soon, 62 more countries, including Canada, West Germany, and Japan, followed suit, supporting the boycott by pledging that they wouldn’t send any athletes to Moscow either. (A few of those 62 countries probably couldn’t really afford to send Olympians, and adding themselves to the boycott roll was a great way to both save face and earn American favor.)

American athletes—some of whom had been training their whole lives to reach the Olympics—were devastated, and Carter personally addressed 150 of them to explain his difficult decision. While the U.S.S.R. didn’t succumb to the political pressure of the boycott (it didn’t withdraw from Afghanistan until 1988), the Olympics definitely suffered. With nearly half the industrialized world refusing to compete, the Games were not a full picture of world-class sports… and besides that, the loss of vital Olympics-and tourism-generated revenue was costing Moscow billions.

THE LIBERTY BELL CLASSIC

But from something bad came something good. After Carter failed to rally international support for a full alternative Olympics in the
Ivory Coast, the U.S. Track & Field organization decided to step in and create an alternative competition for the track-and-field athletes who’d been shut out because of politics. (Athletes competing in other events were out of luck.) On July 16, 1980, three days before the opening ceremonies of the Moscow Olympics, athletes from 29 boycotting nations met on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia for the Liberty Bell Classic, more popularly known as the Olympic Boycott Games.

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LET THE GAMES BEGIN

The United States, Canada, China, West Germany, Egypt, Thailand, the Bahamas, Kenya, and Sudan, among others, competed in 33 track-and-field events over the course of a week—19 for men and 14 for women. The results of the Liberty Bell Classic (LBC) indicate that had there been no boycott, there would have been some truly exciting Olympic events. For example, American runner Renaldo Nehemiah completed the 110m hurdles in 13.31 seconds, which was a faster time than the actual Olympic gold medalist, East German runner Thomas Munkelt. The United States dominated the LBC, taking 20 gold medals, 23 silver, and 14 bronze; Canada took 5 gold, 5 silver, and 4 bronze; and Thailand, China, Kenya, and the Bahamas also took home multiple gold medals.

SECOND BOYCOTT

As the 1984 Summer Olympics approached, the world wondered how the Soviet Union would respond to the boycott of its 1980 games, especially since they would be held in Los Angeles. Not surprisingly, on May 8, 1984, the U.S.S.R. announced that it would not send athletes to the United States. Joining them were 13 other communist, Eastern Bloc, and Soviet-influenced nations: East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, Afghanistan, North Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia, Angola, Ethiopia, and Laos. Iran and Libya, not communist, but anti-America for other reasons, joined in the boycott.

And just as the United States had done in 1980, the Soviet Union planned an alternate Olympics for its athletes. But unlike the track-only Liberty Bell Classic, the 1984 alternate Olympics was huge in scope, nearly on par with the real Olympic games that were taking place on the other side of the world.

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DRUZHBA-84

The Druzhba (“Friendship”) Games featured events in 23 sports, including track and field, basketball, field hockey, rowing, swimming, weightlifting, gymnastics, boxing, water polo, archery, handball, judo, pentathlon, tennis, and equestrian events. More than 2,300 athletes competed in the two-monthlong games.

Unlike the Olympics, usually held in and around a single city, “Druzhba-84” spread events around 17 cities in nine countries, in order to demonstrate the unity of the communist world…and also to share the cost. It even looked like the Olympics. The opening ceremonies took place in the packed Grand Arena of the Central Lenin Stadium in Moscow where the Olympic cauldron from the 1980 games was, once again, reverently lit with a torch.

As in the 1980 alternate games, the nonparticipation of hundreds of the world’s greatest athletes cast a shadow on the results of the “real” Olympics. For example, Mary Lou Retton was the star of the 1984 Olympics when she became the first American woman to score a perfect 10 and win an individual gold medal. While Retton may have been a stellar athlete, no American woman had yet won a gold medal in gymnastics because the Soviet Union had, up to that point, completely dominated the sport. Had she competed against Soviet gymnasts, Retton may not have made history.

Retton wasn’t the only example. Of the 41 track and field events and 29 swimming competitions that were held at both the 1984 Olympics and Druzhba-84, the communists outperformed their Olympic counterparts in 20 track events and 11 swimming events.

SPIRIT OF THE GAMES

There have been no significant boycotts or alternate Olympics since. Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union improved in the late 1980s, and the Soviet Union (as well as communism in Europe) collapsed in 1991. There are still communist countries, of course, and they still compete in the Olympics—Cuba and North Korea, for example, and China, which even hosted the 2008 games. After the two boycotts, nations have put aside their political differences to compete in friendly sports… which, after all, is the entire point of the Olympics.

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