Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® (40 page)

WHAT HAPPENED:
In February 2001, the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease struck English livestock, resulting in a ban on horse races.

What was an obsessed gambler to do? The Internet betting site Blue Square, Ltd. created something new for desperate bettors—hamster drag racing. “You put an exercise wheel in the middle of a 10-inch-long dragster,” a company spokesperson told reporters. “As they run in the wheel, it moves the whole thing forward.”

Each race featured six hamsters in tiny plastic hot rods running along a six-foot wooden track; video cameras broadcasted the
action live over the company’s website. More than 2,000 people around the world logged on to watch and bet on each race.

Gorillas can’t swim.

THE AFTERMATH:
The epidemic slowed, the horse races resumed, and the hamsters were put out to tiny little pastures.

THE STARS:
As many as 500 Barbary apes smuggled into France from North Africa

THE HEADLINE:
Dearth Of Dogs Leads To Mobs Of Monkeys

WHAT HAPPENED:
In the late 1990s, French authorities began cracking down on youth gangs that used vicious dogs—Rottweilers, Dobermans and Pit Bulls—to intimidate rival gangs. The crackdown was working… until gangs began switching to monkeys. “The apes are becoming the new weapon of choice. They’re ultra-fashionable,” says Didier Lecourbe, a police officer in Aubervilliers, a suburb of Paris.

THE AFTERMATH:
The apes turn out to be even tougher than the attack dogs. “Removed from their natural habitat,” natural historian Marie-Claude Bomsel told the
London Guardian,
“they can become highly aggressive. They bite, and their favored method of attack is to hurl themselves at people’s heads.”

THE STAR:
A dinosaur the size of a German Shepherd

THE HEADLINE:
Dinosaur Found In Rock Named In Honor Of One Of Rock’s Dinosaurs

WHAT HAPPENED:
In early 2001, paleontologists digging on Madagascar discovered a new species of dinosaur that lived 65 to 75 million years ago. “It had bizarre teeth,” paleontologist Scott Sampson told reporters. “They’re long and conical with hooked tips. They protrude straight forward, so it might be easier to catch fish or used to spear insects.”

While digging for dinosaurs, Sampson and his colleagues listened to the music of Dire Straits, so they named the species
masiakasaurus knopfleri
in honor of Dire Straits singer/guitarist Mark Knopfler. “If it weren’t for his music, we might not have found the animal in the first place,” Sampson explained.

THE AFTERMATH:
“I’m really delighted,” Knopfler told reporters when he learned of the honor. “The fact that it is a dinosaur is certainly apt, but I’m happy to report that I’m not in the least bit vicious.”

First person to receive a Social Security check: Ida May Fuller (she lived to 100).

Ever wonder where words come from? Here are some more interesting stories.

Meaning:
A broad avenue, often with one or more strips of plantings (grass, trees, flower beds) on both sides and/or down the center

Origin:
“The name originally came from the Middle Low German
Bolwerk,
the top of the wide rampart—often 20 or more feet wide—that served as the defensive wall of medieval towns. As more sophisticated weaponry rendered such structures obsolete, they sometimes were razed to ground level and used as a wide street on the town’s perimeter. Vienna has such a broad boulevard, called the Ring, circling the old town on the site of its original city walls.” (From
Fighting Words,
by Christine Ammer)

Meaning:
The wife or widow of a king

Origin:
“Queen
goes back ultimately to prehistoric Indo-European
gwen-,
‘woman’ (from which English gets
gynecology),
Persian
zan,
‘woman,’ Swedish
kvinna,
‘woman,’ and the now obsolete English
quean,
‘woman.’ In its very earliest use in Old English,
queen
(or
cwen,
as it then was) was used for a ‘wife,’ but not just any wife: it denoted the wife of a man of particular distinction, and usually a king. It was not long before it became institutionalized as ‘king’s wife,’ and hence ‘woman ruling in her own right.’” (From
Dictionary of Word Origins,
by John Ayto)

Meaning:
An organism that lives in or on another organism at the other’s expense

Origin:
“In ancient Greek it meant a professional dinner guest. It came from the Greek
para
(‘beside’) and
sitos
(‘grain, food’). Put together,
parasitos
first meant ‘fellow guest’ and acquired, even then, its present-day meaning.” (From
Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, Vol. III,
by William and Mary Morris)

Buzz Aldrin’s mother’s maiden name: Moon.

Meaning:
The larva of an amphibian

Origin:
“Tad was an early spelling for ‘toad,’ and
pol
meant ‘head’ in 17th-century speech. Therefore,
tadpole
means ‘toad head,’ an appropriate name for the early stage of a frog when it is little more than a big head with a small tail.” (From
The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins,
by Robert Hendrickson)

Meaning:
Weak, wishy-washy

Origin:
“Derived from the name of Ambrose Philips, a little-known poet whose verse incurred the ridicule of two other 18th-century poets, Alexander Pope and Henry Carey. In poking fun at Philips, Carey used the nickname
Namby Pamby:
Amby came from Ambrose; Pamby repeated the sound and form, but added the initial of Philips’s surname. After being popularized by Pope in
The Dunciad, namby-pamby
went on to be used for people or things that are insipid, sentimental, or weak.” (From
Word Mysteries & Histories,
by the Editors of The American Heritage Dictionaries)

Meaning:
To consecrate or invoke divine favor

Origin:
“A gracious word with a grisly history. Its forefather was Old English
bledsian,
a word that meant ‘to consecrate with blood,’ this, of course, from the blood sacrifices of the day. In later English, this word turned into
blessen,
and the term finally came to mean ‘consecrated.’ So today when we give you the greeting, ‘God bless you,’ we are actually saying, ‘God bathe you in blood.’” (From
Word Origins,
by Wilfred Funk)

Meaning:
A tubular optical toy; a constantly changing set of colors

Origin:
“In 1817 Dr. David Breuster invented a toy which he called a
kaleidoscope.
He selected three Greek words that when combined had a literal meaning of ‘observer of beautiful forms.’ The words were
kalos
(‘beautiful’),
eidos
(‘form’), and
skopos
(‘watcher’). The term has come into prominent use in its figurative sense; namely, a changing scene—that which subtly shifts color, shape, or mood.” (From
The Story Behind the Word,
by Morton S. Freeman)

Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West, was once a kindergarten teacher.

More tales of outrageous blunders to let us know that other people are screwing up even worse than we are.

MISHAWAKA, Ind.—“An Indiana couple should seriously consider hiring professional movers next time. Marsha and Niles Huntsinger threw their futon mattress out the window and it fell between two buildings. Niles lowered Marsha down on a rope to try to get the futon, but she became wedged in the 16-inch gap between the walls. Huntsinger had to be rescued by a fire crew after she spent half an hour jammed 20 feet off the ground. The rescuers also managed to save the futon.”

—
Bizarre News

“During a 60
Minutes
interview, Mike Wallace meant to ask former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, ‘Is Yeltsin thin-skinned about the press?’ But the question was mistranslated as: ‘Is Yeltsin a thick-skinned hippopotamus?’ Yeltsin responded by saying that Wallace should ‘express himself in a more civilized fashion.’ ”

—
San Francisco Chronicle

“A visitor at a Minneapolis art gallery sat in and broke a chair, which he did not realize was part of an exhibit dating to the Ming Dynasty. Value of the chair: $100,000.”

—“The Edge,”
The Oregonian

“A minor league baseball team in Charleston, South Carolina, recently came up with a novel promotion for Father’s Day. The River Dogs offered fans the chance to win a free vasectomy. They immediately withdrew the offer, however, when fans protested. Among those who complained was the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston, led by season ticket holder Bishop David Thompson.

‘People didn’t like the idea,’ General Manager Mark Schuster
said, noting the team never meant to offend anyone. ‘We are sensitive to our fans’ wants.’”

—Wacky News

Cheesy pop star: Michael Jackson owns the rights to “On Wisconsin,” Wisconsin’s state song.

“After a long night of drinking, Casey Adams ate some leftover lasagna, took off his clothes and made himself at home on the sofa. The problem? It was the wrong sofa—the wrong house, too.

“At about 6:00 the next morning, Frances Brown, the Edge-water homeowner, discovered Mr. Adams, 26, lounging on the sofa in his gray boxer shorts, fast asleep. A shocked Mrs. Brown quickly called the police.

“Police found no signs of forced entry on the home; residents said a door may have been left unlocked. They charged him with fourth-degree burglary and had his Jeep towed from the driveway.

“Mr. Adams didn’t know how or when he arrived there, but he gave police a statement saying he was extremely intoxicated and nothing like this had ever happened to him before.

“ ‘He kept saying he was sorry,’ Mrs. Brown said.”

—
The Capital

“A Louisville, Kentucky, man who won $65 million in the state lottery recently filed suit against a woman seeking reimbursement after he met her in a bar and, ‘while in an intoxicated state,’ accidentally gave her $500,000.”

—
Bloomington-Normal Daily Pantagraph

EDINBURGH—“Postmen in the Scottish city of Aberdeen did their very best to deliver a letter from Australia—112 years late.

“ ‘The card was posted on the fourth of January in 1889 and it arrived in Aberdeen a few days ago. We have absolutely no idea where it’s been,’ said Aberdeen postmaster Pete Smith.

“ ‘Whoever has this postcard should get in touch with us because we might start a new category,’ a spokesman for the
Guinness Book of Records
said. ‘We’ve got a record for a parcel but that’s only about two or three years.’ ”

—CNN Fringe

Q: What’s the only capital letter in the alphabet with exactly one end point? A: P

From the BRI files, a few samples of the worst of the worst.

Beet Sherbet

Like many Americans, Milton Hershey went on a vitamin kick in the early 1940s, and he started experimenting with vegetable juices. “It’s much easier to drink raw vegetables than to eat raw vegetables,” he explained. Surely vegetable juice sherbets were even better.

Hershey tested onion, carrot, and celery sherbets before concluding that beet sherbet tasted the best and adding it to the menu at the Hershey Hotel. Those brave few who ordered the stuff couldn’t stomach it—it tasted
terrible,
which had completely escaped the man who gave us the Hershey bar. How’d that happen? Former CEO Samuel Hinkle blamed the cigars that Hershey, then in his mid-80s, had smoked for more than 60 years. “After smoking six, eight, ten cigars a day, Mr. Hershey had absolutely burned out his taste buds,” Hinkle recalled. “He couldn’t taste or smell a thing.”

Killer in Drag,
by Ed Wood, Jr.

Yes,
that
Ed Wood, Jr. When he wasn’t making movies like
Plan 9 From Outer Space, Glen or Glenda,
and
Bride of the Monster,
Wood was hard at work cranking out books that were every bit as bad as his films.
Killer in Drag
is the story of a transvestite assassin who “goes straight (criminally speaking) and tries to get a shady sugar daddy to pay for his sex-change operation.”