Uncle John’s Impossible Questions & Astounding Answers (34 page)

Which country has the world’s oldest still-active constitution?

For 3,800 years, Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza was the world’s tallest building, rising 480 feet above the desert floor. Built circa 2560 B.C. as a tomb for the Pharaoh Khufu, the Great Pyramid took thousands of workers 20 years to complete. It’s as wide as it is tall, with a footprint of 13 acres—the size of 10 football fields. The building that overtook it: the Lincoln Cathedral, an English church completed in 1311. Until its spire blew off in 1549, it was 524 feet tall.

The country with the oldest constitution that’s still in use is San Marino, a tiny European nation located inside northern Italy, high in the Apennine Mountains. Population: 32,000. Area: 24 square miles.

San Marino was founded in A.D. 301 by Croatian mason (and future saint) Marinus. Its constitution is much younger, drafted around 1600, but unlike the constitutions of every other nation, it has remained unchanged. Why? Because the country is so small that there hasn’t been the kind of internal strife that often leads to constitutional amendments. Besides, no armies have ever thought to invade San Marino, which also could have led to changes in its constitution; it’s too isolated and has no significant bodies of water or even any level land (except for soccer fields). Locals, however, credit the nation’s stability to its serene setting. How serene? The country’s official name is the Most Serene Republic of San Marino.

What declaration made celebrities out of Hiroo Onoda and Teruo Nakamura in 1974?

Nearly 30 years after World War II ended, the last two Japanese soldiers finally formally surrendered. Hiroo Onoda and Teruo Nakamura had both been assigned to remote posts—Onoda in the Philippines and Nakamura in Indonesia. After Japan’s defeat, they were believed to be dead, but they soldiered on.

Onoda, an intelligence officer and saboteur, led a dwindling band of holdouts in mini-battle campaigns against Filipino farmers, who tried—to no avail—to convince Onoda and his men that the war was over. The farmers fought back until Onoda was the only one left. He lived alone in the woods, and would have died there had it not been for a Japanese college dropout named Norio Suzuki, who told his friends he was going to find “Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman, in that order.” In early 1974, Suzuki did find Onoda and the two became friends, but Onoda
still
refused to surrender…unless he was ordered to do so by his superior officer. So Suzuki returned to Japan and told his tale to the government. Officials tracked down the soldier’s ex-commander, who now owned a bookstore, and flew him to the Philippines. He ordered Onoda to surrender.

A few months after Onoda toured Japan as the “last World War II soldier,” Teruo Nakamura was spotted by a pilot who noticed a small camp in the middle of the Indonesian wilderness. He took a bit of convincing as well, but surrendered a short time later. Both men were given back pay and a modest pension.

Uncle John’s original surname was Poopenheimer, but he changed it out of embarrassment. (He now regrets that change.) In 1917 the British Royal Family also changed their surname. What did they change it from (not Poopenheimer), and why?

What were
ientaculum, praendium, merenda
, and
cena
?

The British Royal Family’s surname was once Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a name it shared with many European royal houses. During World War I, while England was mired in a fierce conflict with Germany, the Royal Family decided that a less German-sounding surname might ease tensions at home. So in 1917 they changed their name to the more British-sounding House of Windsor, after one of their many royal homes, Windsor Castle.

Ancient Roman mealtimes. With more time on their hands than most of us have today, well-to-do Romans enjoyed four meals a day. What we’d call breakfast was
ientaculum
, followed by a lunch-like
praendium. Merenda
was a light afternoon meal comparable to the British tea time, and then came
cena
(supper).

A family dining by themselves might take an hour for a
cena
of fruits, vegetables, breads, and grain porridge. However, if the family were hosting company, they were expected to provide a multiple-course extravaganza with a rich variety of wines and exotic foods—ostrich, peacock, or boiled dormice (a bird) dipped in honey and poppy seeds. These lavish
cenas
could last up to four hours.

Footnote:
Rome was the first city in history to have more than one million citizens. The next city to achieve that feat was London in the 1800s.

In the history of the Roman Catholic Church, only one man served as pope three separate times. Who was he?

Pope Benedict IX (1012–56)—arguably the worst pope ever. How bad was he? According to a later Pope, Victor III, Benedict IX committed “rapes, murders and other unspeakable acts.” (Those “other unspeakable acts” were, reportedly, bestiality.) How could such a horrible man ascend to a level of such prominence three times? Corruption.

Benedict was born Theophylactus of Tusculum into a wealthy Roman family, and two of his uncles had previously served as pope. His rich father basically bought Benedict the papacy—through bribes and political pressure—in 1032 when Benedict was a teenager. Unspeakable acts commenced.

Four years later, Benedict was forced out of Rome by outraged clerics, only to return a few months later and forcibly retake his position. In 1044 he was deposed again…until his armed forces regained control. Less than a year later, Benedict had grown tired of the job, so he sold the papacy to one of his uncles. Soon after, he changed his mind and took it back by force. By this point, Holy Roman Emperor Henry III had tired of all the papal shenanigans and ordered his army to remove Benedict once and for all. Henry then promoted John, bishop of Sabinato, to pope (John served as Sylvester III and was later charged with bribing his way into the position). Meanwhile, the excommunicated Benedict slunk home to Tusculum as just Theophylactus again. And then he died.

How did Ancient Egyptians prepare the brains of the deceased for mummification?

How did the Great London Fire of 1666 save more human lives than it took?

The Egyptians didn’t care about the brain. They believed that the heart was the source of thought and feeling, and that the brain was an insignificant mass of tissue. Before carefully preparing the heart, liver, intestines, and other vital organs for the trip to the next world, Egyptian embalmers inserted a type of whisk into the cranium through the dead person’s nostril and then whipped the brain into a gooey liquid for easy extraction—also through the nose.