Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® (79 page)

In spite of his success, Lutie Clark’s quick temper and irascible nature made him quite unpopular. His wife and children left him, and the Churchill family cut him out of the will, leaving him only a few acres of property and a job as overseer of the racetrack. People stopped calling it the Louisville Jockey Club and started calling it Churchill Downs as an insult, to remind Clark who held the purse strings. He committed suicide in 1899.

Back from the Brink

By 1902 the Derby was on the verge of bankruptcy. Then Matt Winn became the manager. Winn had a gift for publicity and promotion, which he used to rebuild the legacy. He hired John Philip Sousa’s band to entertain. He had two airplanes shipped in for races—and they made the first recorded flights in the state of Kentucky. During World War I, he pledged 10% of track profits to the Red Cross. During the potato shortage of 1918, he turned the entire infield into a huge potato patch. During World War II, he invited the Army to use the infield for public demonstrations of the new Sherman tanks. He even invited the State Fair to hold the event in the grounds.

Crazy? Nearly 60% of adults say they would like to walk without shoes in New York City.

Winn improved the grandstand seating and built a clubhouse. He courted the press. He courted radio broadcasters. He courted movie stars. Business increased, public opinion changed, and revenues skyrocketed. Because of Matt Winn, the Kentucky Derby became an international event. He ran it until his death in 1949.

Today, the Kentucky Derby is one of the world’s best-known races. It’s been run every May since 1875. Over 100,000 people come to view the race, and millions more watch it on TV.

Around the turn of the 20th century, automobiles were a new and wondrous invention. And Detroit was emerging as the car capital of the world.

Carl Fisher was a businessman in Indianapolis. He made a fortune selling Prest-O-Lite acetylene-powered headlights. In 1909 he sold his business to Union Carbide for millions…just before the invention of car batteries made Prest-O-Lites obsolete.

Fisher wanted to build something with his money, and he decided that what Indianapolis needed was a racetrack for automobiles. In those days, roads were little more than trails and it was difficult to find a place where a driver could really “open ’er up.” A racetrack would also give car manufacturers a place to test their new models and pit them against each other. It would put Indianapolis on the map.

Full Speed Ahead

Fisher set up a consortium, elected himself president, and bought 328 acres of countryside for $72,000. He hired an army of 400 workers who moved, on average, 1,500 square yards of dirt every 10 hours to build the two-and-a-half-mile track.

The track itself was made of crushed stone covered by 300,000 gallons of asphalt oil. Turns were banked to handle speeds up to 70 mph. The track was lighted, naturally, with Prest-O-Lite gas. But the best part was that here, the spectators could watch an entire race from start to finish. Fisher called it the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The first race on the new track was held August 19–21, 1909. Ten thousand people showed up. On the first day, there was a crash when a tire flew off due to loose lug nuts. The two men in the car were killed. On the second day, everything went well, but the third day, on the final race, a tire blew out and the car spun out of control and crashed into the crowd. The mechanic and two spectators were killed. The race continued, but then another car skidded out of control because the road surface was crumbling under the onslaught. The car slammed into a bridge, injuring the driver. Officials stepped in and stopped the race.

In 1923 French sports reporter Pierre Labric rode his bicycle down the 347 stairs of the Eiffel Tower. It took him 3 minutes and 17 seconds. His bike was wrecked.

Papers Blast Fisher’s Folly

Editorial headlines across the nation blared “Slaughter as a Spectacle” and “Commercial Murder.” Protests were mounted. Petitions were circulated. Prohibitions were called for. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway became known as “Fisher’s Folly.”

But Fisher was not a man to give up easily. First he installed guardrails. Then he decided that the gravel-and-asphalt surface was to blame. He replaced it with bricks—3,200,000 of them—and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway became known as the Brickyard. Still, with other racetracks being built in cities like Chicago and Atlanta, business began to fall off. To promote his Speedway, Fisher announced that in 1911, the best American cars would go up against the best European cars for a purse of $25,000. The race would be 500 miles long and was called the Indianapolis Motor Speedway 500-Mile International Sweepstakes. The Indy 500 was born.

What Comes Around Goes Around

The Indy 500 has been run almost every year since 1911, closed only during the two world wars. It’s now the oldest auto race in the world, and the Speedway is the largest spectator-sport facility in the world, with over 250,000 permanent seats. The purse is now around $9 million. In 2000, the Indy 500 placed first among televised motorsports events and generated over $100 million in sponsorship exposure. Besides the Indianapolis 500, the Speedway also hosts the Brickyard 400 and the United States Grand Prix.

Carl Fisher died in Miami in 1939 at the age of 65, but his dream lives on.

“Without music, life would be a mistake.” —
Nietzsche

Now that you’ve got a few minutes to yourself, why not try your hand at predicting the future? Reading palms is like checking your horoscope
—
even if you don’t believe in it, it can be fun to see what your hands are “telling” you.

No one knows for sure where palm reading originated. It’s known to have existed since ancient time in China, the Middle East, India (where Gypsy fortune-telling is believed to have started), and Greece.

The Greek physician Hypocrites used palmistry to diagnose illness, and the Roman emperor Julius Caesar is said to have used it to judge the character of his men. In the Middle Ages, witch hunters studied the palms of suspects for spots of pigment—a sure sign, they believed, that the person was in league with the Devil. Ironically, a few centuries later, the Pope banned palm reading on the grounds that it, too, was a form of devil worship. Palmistry made a comeback during the Renaissance, and in the 17th century, unsuccessful attempts were made to develop scientific explanations for its basic principles.

By studying a person’s hands, you can surmise quite a bit about their health, hygiene, and nervous habits and possibly even pick up clues about their occupation—someone who works with their hands outdoors will have rougher hands than someone who works at a desk job.

But a real belief in palm reading—or any other form of fortune-telling for that matter—requires a leap of faith. You can either believe it not. It’s up to you.

Here are a few pointers you can use to read palms like the pros:

•
Timing is everything.
Read hands at least two hours after the subject has eaten, and when the hands are at normal room temperature. If you read the hands when they’re too hot or too cold, the reading may be inaccurate. According to Eastern tradition, the best time to read hands is at dawn.

•
Use good lighting.
Rule of thumb: If you can’t see ’em, you can’t read ’em.

•
Read both hands.
Palmists believe that the changes a person goes through in life are recorded in the dominant hand—for right-handed people, that means the right hand; for lefties it’s the left hand. The hand that’s not dominant gives a better picture of what they were like at the beginning of their life.

Termites are not related to ants. They are a member of the cockroach family.

The study of the shape of hands is known as
chirognomy.

•
Square-shaped hands.
These people have strong powers of reasoning, but they’re offset by a lack of idealism. They’re stubborn, but they’re also patient and have a strong respect for the law.

•
Round-shaped hands.
People with round, or “conic” hands are said to be creative, but also impulsive and impatient. They’re open to new things but bore easily.

•
Large hands.
People with big hands are analytical, perhaps even too much so—they can spend so much time on every tiny detail of their lives that they lose sight of the big picture.

•
Small hands.
People with small hands are thought to be the opposite of those with large hands: they grasp the big picture immediately but pay little or no attention to detail.

•
Long, skinny hands.
These people are cautious—they carefully consider all options before deciding on a course of action.

•
Hairy hands.
If a man, it means he’s capable of change. If a woman, it means she’s capable of extreme cruelty. If a man’s hands are completely hairless, he’s a coward. If woman’s hands are, she’s feminine.

• Wide, open palms.
Both tolerant and generous.

•
Narrow palms.
Unkind, lacking sympathy for others.

•
Soft palms.
Lazy.

•
Firm palms.
Active, straightforward.

•
Thick, chubby palms.
Self-centered.

•
Hollow palms.
Lacking courage and character.

•
Lined palms.
The more lines, the more sensitive the person.

•
Lined palms.
The more lines, the more sensitive the person.

During the 16th century, drinking coffee was punishable by death in Turkey.

•
Long palm, short fingers.
Impulsive—the smaller the hand, the more impulsive they are likely to be.

•
Long palm, long fingers.
Strong attention to detail.

•
Short palm, long fingers.
Too strong an attention to detail; obsessive.

•
Short palm, short fingers.
Impulsive
and
obsessive.

Studying the lines of the hand or palm is known as
chiromancy.

The Life Line:
This line crosses the palm diagonally across from the base of the thumb.

• A long, broad life line with few other lines crossing it is an indicator that the person is likely to live a long life. If it’s short, narrow, and crossed by many lines, the person is likely to be sickly, and their life may be shortened because of it.

• Lines that cross the life line are indicators of past, present, or future troubles, and if the cross occurs at the very end of the life line, it means they will die a sudden death.

• A double life line is an indicator of tremendous strength, but if the life line ends in a fork, it means the person will lose much of that strength in later years.

19% of men say they wouldn’t mind being stupid, “as long as they had a perfect body.”

The Fate Line:
This line starts at the wrist and runs up the center of the palm toward the middle finger.

• Not everyone has a fate line. If a person doesn’t, it means that their life is likely to be uneventful. If they do have one and it’s long and broad, they will have an interesting life and are likely to move up in the world. But if there are lots of crosses along the line, they will face many obstacles on the road to success.

• A fate line that starts on the life line indicates that they have strong family support for the goals they’re working to achieve.

• If the fate line divides into two or more branches, the person will have at least one major career or life change. Lines that branch down and away from the fate line mean they will experience setbacks.

• If a person has lines that branch up and away from the fate line, they are likely to enjoy success in multiple areas of life. If it’s wavy, they are indecisive and are unlikely to accomplish very much that is substantial.