RISE AND FALL: Teddy Ruxpin debuted in 1985. Despite its high price ($70) WOW couldn’t produce the dolls fast enough and sold $93 million worth of them in the first year alone. A hit TV cartoon show followed and by 1987 Worlds of Wonder had earned $330 million, making it the fastest-growing startup company—of any kind—to date. But by 1988 they were broke. Every toymaker in the business had come out with animatronic dolls by then, and just as quickly as the fad had exploded, it collapsed. By 1988, WOW was $312 million in debt; by 1989 it was out of business.
FAD: Pogs
LASTED: 1992–1996
BACKGROUND: Pogs has its roots in an Hawaiian game from the 1920s. Kids would take fruit juice lids—cardboard disks—and stack them up. Half were one player’s; half the other’s. One player would then toss a heavy coin at the stack, and all the disks that had turned over—landing label side up—were kept by the thrower. The game would continue until one player had all the disks. It was called “Pogs” because of what was printed on the label: P.O.G., an acronym for “passion fruit, orange, guava,” a popular juice combination.
RISE AND FALL: The game was popular for a while, died out, and then came back in the early 1990s. When it started to spread from Hawaii to the rest of the United States and then to Canada, toy companies started making a version. Instead of a juice label, the pogs—still cardboard disks—were adorned with images such as cartoon characters and movie stars. Hundreds of kinds of pogs were available. Thanks to its simplicity and low cost, the game quickly became hugely popular, with sales of more than $1 billion. The “World Pog Federation” even held international championships. But because it was so simple, kids quickly got bored with it. By 1996 it was washed up.
The state capital of Texas has been moved 15 times.
FAD: Chatty Cathy
LASTED: 1959–1965
BACKGROUND: In the late 1950s, Mattel engineer Jack Ryan—previously a missile designer for the U.S. government—designed the first doll with a voicebox that worked by pulling a string. The pull-string activated a tiny record player that played one of 11 phrases at random, including “I love you,” “I’m hungry,” and “Please brush my hair.” The doll was also different in that it didn’t look like a baby—it looked like a little girl, complete with bangs, buck teeth, and freckles. Mattel owner Elliot Handler’s wife, Ruth (the inventor of the Barbie doll), named her “Chatty Cathy.”
RISE AND FALL: Introduced in 1959, Chatty Cathy was immediately a hit. The doll was redesigned in 1963 and given seven more phrases; a new version released in 1964 could speak over 120 phrases. But by then, pull-string talking toys were commonplace and no longer a novelty. An attempt to bring the doll back in 1969 (voiced by Maureen McCormick, Marcia on The Brady Bunch) failed. Chatty Cathy was gone by 1971.
MORE TOY FADS
• Slap bracelets (1980s) Flexible strips of fabric- or plastic-covered metal. Kids “slapped” them on each other’s wrists.
• Super Soakers (1990s) Huge, pump-driven water guns that shot water farther and with more pressure than previous squirt guns.
• Tamagotchi (1997) Handheld plastic eggs with screens that displayed virtual “pets.” Kids had to feed them (by pressing buttons)…or they would “die.”
Uranus is about 19 times larger than Earth (and 20 times more fun to say).
IRONIC, ISN’T IT?
There’s nothing like a good dose of irony to put the problems of day-to-day life into proper perspective.
EYE SPY
William Foster of Tallahassee, Florida, was charged with a hit-and-run in 2004 after striking a pedestrian with his car. Foster says he doesn’t remember seeing or hitting the pedestrian, but he does remember where he was going at the time: he was driving to an optometrist appointment.
RUN FOR THE BORDER
In 2003 Men’s Fitness magazine named Houston “America’s Fattest City.” In 2005 a local bike club tried to change the city’s image by holding a 40-mile bike rally through downtown Houston. To get people to sign up, they offered free beer and tacos at the end of the race.
LOOK WHO’S TALKING
In 2004, 76-year-old game show producer Ralph Andrews filed suit against Dick Clark for age discrimination when Clark refused to hire Andrews to work for his production company, calling him a “dinosaur.” Clark’s age at the time: 74.
DID MY NAME GIVE ME AWAY?
Acting on an anonymous tip, Detroit police pulled over a suspected drug dealer in May 2005. They found 33 pounds of cocaine in the vehicle, for which the drug dealer faces several years in prison. What’s ironic about that? Her name is Denise Coke.
WEB OF DECEPTION
A family values watchdog group called United Confederacy Against the World Wide Web distributed a petition in 2005 with the specific mission of banning the Internet from all American homes. But there’s only one way to sign the petition: by visiting the UCAWWW Web site.
Oregon’s state flag is the only one with a different design on each side.
WHAT DOES IT TAKE?
It takes the average bathroom reader about two minutes to read this page.
• It takes 1,000 yards of linen to wrap an average mummy.
• It takes 50,000 words to use up the lead in one pencil.
• It takes 600 grapes to make one bottle of wine.
• It takes 30 to 40 gallons of maple tree sap to make one gallon of maple syrup.
• It takes 24 to 26 hours for a hen to produce an egg.
• It takes 72 muscles to speak one word.
• It takes eight weeks for the average man to grow a one-inch-long beard.
• It takes one acre of soybeans to produce 82,368 crayons.
• It takes a bushel of corn to sweeten 400 cans of soda pop.
• It takes 25 tomatoes to make one bottle of ketchup.
• It takes one acre of trees one year to remove 13 tons of dust and noxious gases from the air.
• It takes seven years for a lobster to grow to one pound.
• It takes 345 squirts of milk from a cow’s udder to make one gallon of milk.
• It takes 18 hummingbirds to weigh an ounce.
• It takes 42,000 tennis balls for a Wimbledon tournament.
• It takes one bale of cotton to make 1,217 T-shirts.
• It takes one cherry tree to produce enough cherries for 70 pies.
• It takes about 100 cherries to make a cherry pie.
• It takes 2 million visits to 2 million flowers for a honeybee to make one pound of honey.
• It takes five gallons of milk to make a five-pound wheel of cheese.
• It takes a mole one day to make a tunnel 300 feet long.
• It takes 23 seconds for blood to make a complete circuit of the human body.
• It takes a five-mile walk to burn off the calories of one chocolate sundae.
Stop that! Children touch their mouths with their hands about once every three minutes.
CHEDDAR MAN
Everyone wants to know about their family tree. Here’s a great-great-great-great-great-great story about how someone found the longest-lost relative in history.
HOLES IN CHEDDAR
Richard Gough was a retired sea captain living in the village of Cheddar, England, in 1890. Cheddar was famous for its cheese, but it was also beginning to become famous for the beautiful limestone caves that are found inside Cheddar Gorge, an enormous canyon just outside the village. Gough’s uncle had turned one of the caves into a profitable tourist attraction, and Gough wanted to find one to exploit, too. He had his eye on one in particular, but an old woman lived in it, and it wasn’t until she moved away that Gough finally got a chance to explore it.
The cave didn’t look promising at first; it was small and not very interesting. But one of the walls of the cave was made of mud and boulders, not solid rock, so despite knowing nothing about how limestone caves are formed, Gough started digging.
It turned out to be a pretty smart move.
LUCKY STRIKES
The wall in the old woman’s tiny cave was just such a choke, and after Gough dug for a while it fell away, revealing a much larger cavern inside. Gough and his sons spent the next eight years excavating other chokes in the cave and uncovering more than a quarter mile’s worth of magnificent chambers. “Gough’s Cave,” as it came to be known, became a huge tourist attraction.
Gough died in 1902, but his sons continued the business. When they started blasting part of the cave floor (to improve drainage) in 1903, they made another discovery: the skeleton of a Stone Age caveman that turned out to be more than 9,000 years old. To this day it remains the oldest intact human skeleton ever found in Great Britain. “Cheddar Man,” as he came to be known, helped turn Gough’s Cave into one of the most popular attractions in England (today it attracts more than 400,000 visitors per year).
TV’s Flipper was played mainly by two female dolphins, Suzy and Cathy.
GETTING TO KNOW YOU
So how much is known about Cheddar Man? The original blasting obliterated whatever artifacts may have been with him, but scientists have learned a few things by studying his bones: Cheddar Man was about 23 years old when he died, stood 5’5”, and had strong teeth, which indicates a healthy diet. There is evidence that he suffered several blows to the head before his death, one of which apparently broke off a tiny piece of bone on the inside of his skull between his eyes. Scientists speculate that the wound may have caused an infection that eventually killed him.
Today Cheddar Man’s bones are in the Natural History Museum in London, where they have been studied repeatedly over the years. But the biggest discovery of all wasn’t made until 1997, when Britain’s HTV network decided to do a series of documentaries on archaeological subjects in the United Kingdom.
A filmmaker named Philip Priestley was hired to direct one of the documentaries, and decided to make Cheddar Man the subject of his film. To make it more relevant to contemporary audiences, he obtained a DNA sample from Cheddar Man’s bones and compared it to DNA taken from villagers living in Cheddar.
BACK TO SCHOOL
Priestley was on a tight budget, so he didn’t want to test any villagers until Oxford University scientists had successfully extracted DNA from one of Cheddar Man’s molars. By then he’d already shot some footage of an archaeologist speaking before an audience of Cheddar schoolchildren. So, to make that footage blend with the footage he still had to shoot, he decided to test the DNA of some of the schoolkids who’d been filmed sitting in the audience. Their history teacher, a man named Adrian Targett, helped Priestley identify which kids came from old Cheddar families.
What is your buccal cavity? Your mouth.
Some of the kids were under the impression that the DNA test involved drawing blood. Targett explained that no big, scary needles were involved—the tester was just going to swab the inside of their cheek. To reassure the kids, Targett had his DNA tested, too.
When all the tests were completed, only one person tested was found to be related to Cheddar Man: Mr. Targett, the history teacher. And how much had the Cheddar Man’s family changed over time? More than 9,000 years later, Mr. Targett still lives within walking distance of the cave.
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Since the discovery Targett has managed to trace his ancestry all the way to 1807. From there his family tree spreads back more than 300 generations to Cheddar Man, who was born in about 7150 B.C. That’s the world’s oldest confirmed family tree, easily beating out the previous record holders—living descendants of the Chinese philosopher Confucius. They can trace their ancestry back 85 generations to Confucius’ great-great-great-great grandfather, who lived in the eighth century B.C.
The discovery of a living descendant of Cheddar Man has ramifications beyond the Targett family, too. Cheddar Man was a member of a clan of hunter-gatherers, who later came into contact with farmers from continental Europe. Historians have long debated whether the hunter-gatherers were pushed aside by the farmers and died out, or whether they picked up farming skills and assimilated with the new arrivals from Europe. The discovery of a living descendant of a hunter-gatherer supports the assimilation theory.
NO BIG DEAL
And what happened to Adrian Targett? One minute he was a history teacher living quietly in a small village in southwest England; the next minute he was making headlines all over the world as a living member of the world’s oldest family tree. How’s he taking it? In stride. “We all have 9,000-year-old ancestors,” he says, “I just happen to know who mine is.”
* * *
Chinese proverb: “Every family has a skeleton in the cupboard.”
Q: What are shaggy manes, inky caps, sulphur tufts, and pig’s ears? A: Mushrooms.
A TALE OF A WHALE
A good sea yarn is always worth telling—but even more so when it inspired one of the great works of American literature.
CHASING HIS DREAMS
Owen Chase was a happy man. Only 23 years old, he was already first mate on a New England whaling ship, the Essex, out of Nantucket and bound for the South Seas. In 1819 fortunes were made hunting sperm whales and Chase intended to get his share. Led by captain George Pollard, the crew of 21 left port August 12; two years later, more than half the crew would be dead and the Essex a wreck on the bottom of the Pacific.
The voyage started ominously when, two days out of port, a sudden squall knocked the ship over on its side. Although it righted itself after a few minutes, many of the crew began muttering that the voyage was cursed. It took five long months to reach Cape Horn at the tip of South America, and then took five more weeks to sail the treacherous Straits of Magellan. By the time the ship reached the South Pacific, the crew was exhausted and morale was low. Little did they know their ordeal had just begun.
THAR SHE BLOWS
On November 20, 1820, the Essex was sailing 1,500 miles west of the Galápagos Islands when a huge sperm whale appeared off the port bow. To the crew’s stunned disbelief, the giant beast turned and charged the ship. The whale struck the hull with such force that every man was knocked off his feet. Then it swam ahead of the boat, turned around, and rammed full speed into the bow, crushing the thick hull like an eggshell.
In 100 years of American whaling, no ship had ever been attacked by a whale. These sailors were supposed to be the hunters; suddenly they were the prey. Dazed and bewildered, the crew lowered their whaleboats and rowed away from the Essex as quickly as they could, just before it sank. What became of the whale? It had already submerged; they never saw it again.
Twenty percent of all road accidents in Sweden involve a moose.
DESPERATE CIRCUMSTANCES
The situation couldn’t have been bleaker. Twenty men (one had died on the outward journey) bobbed in three small, open boats in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean. The officers debated which direction to go. To the south and west lay the barely known islands of Polynesia, rumored to be populated by cannibals. To the east lay the Galapagos Islands and the Spanish-controlled coasts of Chile and Peru—civilization. They had about 56 days’ worth of provisions. If all went well, they could just make it.
All did not go well. They ran into vicious storms that pummeled the small boats. Even worse were the dead calms, when they would drift for days at a time with no way to shield themselves from the intense sun. On December 20, they found a small deserted island, but it didn’t have enough food or water to sustain them all. When Captain Pollard insisted they sail on for South America, three men refused and stayed behind. (They probably made the right decision: they were rescued by a passing ship i
n April.)
On January 12, 1821, Chase’s boat was separated from the others. Two days later, Second Mate Joy became the first to die; four days later another crewman, Richard Peterson, died. Both were buried at sea. By the time Seaman Isaac Cole died on February 8, Chase’s boat had been out of food for days. Chase and the other two remaining men on his boat, Benjamin Lawrence and Thomas Nickerson, decided to eat the dead man rather than throw the body to the fishes. The meat kept them alive for another 10 days, when the British brig (a two-masted ship) Indian rescued them.
TAKE A NUMBER
Captain Pollard and the men on the other two boats were forced to make the same dire decision in order to stay alive: as each shipmate died of dehydration, the others ate his carcass. Four men were consumed in this fashion. Pollard was too weak to help when the other boat, commanded by Obed Hendricks, drifted away, never to be seen again.
By February 1, after weeks at sea, Pollard’s boat ran out of “food” again. Faced with a slow, lingering death by starvation, two crew members suggested they draw lots to decide who should be eaten next. Pollard reluctantly agreed. To his dismay, the short straw was picked by his 17-year-old cousin, Owen Coffin, who was summarily shot by the man with the second-shortest straw. The next meal was provided by Brazillai Ray, who died on February 11. Now only Captain Pollard and crewman Charles Ramsdell were left.
Buckingham Palace was bombed nine times during WWII, with only one fatality.
Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader Page 5
