Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® (54 page)

In some states, it’s illegal to dance to the
Star Spangled
Banner.

In August of 1814, British warships entered Chesapeake Bay, landed in Benedict, Maryland, and attacked Washington, D.C. It wasn’t much of a battle—American soldiers broke and ran and the British set fire to the Capitol, the White House, and other public buildings.

From Washington, the British moved north to mount an attack on Baltimore. But Armistead was ready with a strong defense and the British had to rely on their most formidable weapon, the bomb vessel, to try to take the fort.

At 6:30 a.m., September 13, they started bombarding Fort McHenry. The battle lasted 25 hours, with aerial bombs and rockets exploding through the night, showering sparks and schrapnel on the fort. (A young American lawyer and amateur poet named Francis Scott Key watched in wonder from the deck of one of the British ships.) But in the end the British couldn’t dent the American defense and had to withdraw. According to Robert Barrett, midshipman on the British frigate
Hebrus,
“As the last vessel spread her canvas to the wind, the Americans hoisted a splendid and superb ensign on their battery.”

American Private Isaac Munroe saw it, too. He later wrote, “At dawn on the 14th, our morning gun was fired, the flag hoisted, Yankee Doodle played, and we all appeared in full view of a mortified enemy, who calculated upon our surrender in 20 minutes after the commencement of the action.” The “splendid ensign” was the Star-Spangled Banner, the largest battle flag ever flown.

Sometime prior to his death in 1819, Armistead acquired the flag. How he got it is unknown—he probably just took it. But he was a hero, so no one protested. It passed to his widow and remained in his family for almost ninety years until 1907, when Armistead’s grandson, Eben Appleton, donated it to the Smithsonian Institution.

FDR was elected president four times…but never carried his home county—Duchess County, NY.

If you’ve ever seen Mrs. Pickersgill’s flag at the Smithsonian, you may have noticed that a significant portion of the flag is missing. Some of this was due to the damage it received during the bombardment of Fort McHenry, but not all of it. After the battle, a soldier’s widow asked for a snippet of the flag to bury with her husband, and Armistead himself cut off a piece for her. He granted numerous similar requests, as did Mrs. Armistead and her daughter, Georiana Armistead Appleton, after his death. Mrs. Appleton wrote in 1873, “Pieces of the flag have occasionally been given to those deemed to have a right to such a memento. Had we given all that we had been importuned for, little would be left to show.”

Still, Georgiana Appleton continued giving away fragments of the flag—including one of the stars—and by the time it was brought to the Smithsonian, eight feet of material were missing from the end.

In 1924 the Smithsonian hired a team of eleven “needlewomen” to sew a linen backing on the flag so that it could be displayed hanging. It took 1.7 million stitches.

For the next 70 years it hung in the Smithsonian. Then in 1998 they took it down, moved it to a lab, and began an $18 million, 3-year restoration of the flag. Using forceps, scissors, and tweezers, six restorers—lying on their stomachs on a platform suspended a foot above the flag—proceeded to surgically remove the linen backing. Then they started analyzing the fabric, along with some of the snippets, which the museum had actually been able to purchase at an auction. Their conclusion, two years into the project: the material was in worse shape than they had originally thought. The flag will have to be displayed in a gas-filled case and at a slight incline so as not to stress the fabric. But the Star-Spangled Banner will never be hung again.

Final Irony:
Francis Scott Key, author of the United States’ national anthem and the words, “O’er the land of the free,” was a slave owner.

Chance that a peanut grown in the U.S. will end up as peanut butter: 33%.

Here’s
our latest batch of urban legends
—
have you heard any of these? Remember the BRI rule of thumb: If a wild story sounds a little too “perfect,” it’s probably an urban legend…or is it?

T
HE LEGEND:
Chocolate milk is made from tainted milk. Dairies too cheap to throw away unusable milk add chocolate to hide the bad taste.

HOW IT SPREAD:
This story started out as a schoolyard rumor, spread by kids. But it took on new life in the 1990s, when the introduction of prepared coffee drinks in bottles and cans inspired people to extend the children’s tale to adult beverages.

THE TRUTH:
The milk in chocolate milk and coffee drinks is as carefully tested and regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as any other form of milk.

THE LEGEND:
When the Missouri Ku Klux Klan won a lengthy court battle to participate in the Adopt-a-Highway program— which would have required the state to use taxpayer dollars to “advertise” the KKK on those little roadside Adopt-a-Highway signs—the state legislature responded by naming the Klan’s designated stretch of road after civil rights activist Rosa Parks.

HOW IT SPREAD:
By word of mouth and over the Internet.

THE TRUTH:
What makes this urban legend different from most others? It’s true. In March 2000 the Missouri KKK really did win a legal battle to adopt a mile-long stretch of I-55 south of St. Louis, and the state legislature really did name it the Rosa Parks Highway in response.

PROBLEM SOLVED:
No one ever showed up to clean the road either before or after the name change, so the state dropped the KKK from the program in April 2000.

THE LEGEND:
A few years before the Gulf War, Barbara Walters did a news story on gender roles in Kuwait in which she reported that Kuwaiti wives traditionally walk several paces behind their husbands. She returned to Kuwait after the war and noticed that women were now walking several paces
ahead
of their husbands. When Walters asked a Kuwaiti woman how so much social progress had been accomplished in so little time, the woman replied, “Land mines.”

There are 27 chemicals that can be added to bread without being listed on the label.

HOW IT SPREAD:
By word of mouth and e-mail, starting shortly after the end of the Gulf War.

THE TRUTH:
This is the latest version of a classic urban legend that has been around as long as landmines themselves. The subjects of the story—Kuwaitis, Korean and Vietnamese peasants, and in the case of World War II, nomads in North Africa— change to fit the circumstances of each new war.

THE LEGEND:
You can help oil-soaked Australian penguins by knitting tiny sweaters for them to wear and mailing them to an address in Tasmania, off the southern coast of Australia.

HOW IT SPREAD:
By word of mouth, e-mail, and cable news broadcasts, following an oil spill near Tasmania on New Year’s Day 2000.

THE TRUTH:
Another example of an urban “legend” that’s actually true. This one is a request for public assistance that snowballed out of control. In 2001 the Tasmanian Conservation Trust and State Library asked knitters to put their leftover yarn to good use by knitting it into penguin sweaters. It even posted a pattern on the Internet so that knitters would know how to make one in just the right shape and size. (The sweaters keep oil-soaked penguins warm and prevent them from ingesting oil until they regain enough strength to be scrubbed clean.)

The story received international news coverage, prompting concerned knitters all over the world to begin sending penguin sweaters to Tasmania. The Conservation Trust had hoped to create a stockpile of 100 in preparation for the next oil spill, but more than 800 arrived in the first few weeks alone; from there the number just kept growing. “They’re all one size,” says a volunteer. “But at least the penguins have a choice of color.”

“Life is tough, but it’s tougher when you’re stupid.”

—
John Wayne

Remarkable. Left alone, a dog will spend up to 3 hours a day remarking its scent posts.

Here are the stories behind several car-related firsts. From
The Book of Firsts,
by Patrick Robertson.

Date:
1891

Background:
The first woman to drive a car was Madame Levassor, wife of one of the partners in the Paris motor manufacturing concern Panhard et Levassor, but better known by her former name of Madame Sarazin. After the death of her first husband, Madame Sarazin had acquired the French and Belgian rights of manufacture for the Daimler gas-powered engine. The following year, she married Emile Levassor, and the patent rights passed to her new husband’s firm. They began manufacturing cars under their own name in 1891, the year Madame Levassor learned to drive. The earliest evidence of her becoming a chauffeuse is a photograph showing her at the tiller of a Panhard car, dated 1892.

Date:
1899

Background:
In 1899, Dr. W. W. Barrett of Southport, England, erected the first garage specifically for cars. It was joined to his house and was equipped with engine-pits and facilities for repairing his two cars, an 1898 Daimler and an 1898 Knitley Victoria. Dr. Barrett was also the first man in England to own a totally enclosed car, and the inventor of the first practical jack for lifting cars.

That same year, a Dr. Zabriskie of Brooklyn, New York, built a brick garage measuring 18 by 22 feet for a cost of $1,500. He had purchased his Winton Road-Wagon in 1898, but it is not known whether his garage was completed before or after Dr. Barrett’s.

Date:
June 1896

Background:
The first recorded car theft occurred in Paris, when the Baron de Zuylen’s Peugeot was stolen by his mechanic from a repair garage, where it was undergoing repairs. Thief and vehicle were apprehended.

The horseshoe crab has sky-blue blood.

Date:
1899

Background:
The first occasion in which a car was used in police work occurred when Sgt. McLeod of the Northamptonshire (England) County Police borrowed a Benz vehicle to pursue a man who was selling forged tickets for the Barnum and Bailey Circus. Top speed: 12 mph. The first car
regularly
employed in police work was a Stanley Steamer acquired by the Boston Police Department in 1903. It replaced four horses.

Date:
1896

Background:
The first taxicabs for hire were two Benz-Kraft-droschkes purchased for 8,000 marks each by Droschkenbesitzer Dutz of Stuttgart. In 1897 Friedrich Greiner started a rival service, giving Stuttgart the distinction of having two cab companies running gas-driven taxis before any other city—with the exception of Paris—had even one. But in a literal sense, Greiner’s were the first true “taxis,” because they were the first motor cabs fitted with taximeters.