But after World War II, fewer people had coal-burning stoves, and more people had easy-to-wash vinyl wallpaper. Result: Kutol’s sales plummeted. In 1949 the company’s owner was killed in a plane crash. His widow inherited the business, and she hired her 25-year-old son, Joe McVicker, to run it. Not long after, young McVicker was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, a type of blood cancer. He was dying, he had a factory full of products that hardly anyone needed, and Kutol was on the verge of folding.
…MAKE LEMONADE
In December 1954, McVicker got a phone call from Kay Zufall, his sister-in-law, who ran a nursery school in New Jersey. She told him that because the clay her kids were using to sculpt Christmas tree ornaments was too hard for their little hands to manipulate—and it stained—she went to a hardware store and bought a tub of Kutol Wallpaper Cleaner. It was softer than clay, nontoxic, and didn’t stain. And it worked great. So McVicker sent a few tubs to the Cincinnati School District. Again, it was a hit.
Then, after receiving experimental radiation treatment, McVicker’s cancer went into remission. With a renewed sense of purpose, he had the detergent removed from Kutol Wallpaper Cleaner, added coloring and an almond scent, and decided to market it as Kutol’s Rainbow Modeling Compound. “Don’t call it that!” said Zufall. McVicker asked her what they should call it. “It’s dough you play with,” she replied, “so how about Play Dough?” Since 1955 two billion cans of Play-Doh have sold.
The Navy ship USS New York was built with recycled World Trade Center steel.
IT’S GREEK TO US
The meanings have changed a bit, and they weren’t originally in English, of course, but many of today’s most common words and phrases are literally ancient, dating back to the heyday of ancient Greece.
BITE THE DUST
Meaning: To die suddenly
Origin: Homer’s epic poem the Iliad. Written around the 8th century B.C., it’s a tale about the legendary Trojan War, which erupts when Troy kidnaps the Greek queen Helen. The Greeks invade Troy to retrieve Helen, and in one pre-battle passage, the Greek warrior Agamemnon prays to Zeus to make sure that the Trojans are absolutely slaughtered. “Do not let the sun go down until thousands who share in this quarrel fall headlong in the dust and bite the earth.” In other words, Agamemnon wanted his opponents dead, face-down in the dirt. In an 1898 English-language translation of the Iliad, “bite the earth” was changed to “bite the dust,” which is when it entered the vernacular.
DRACONIAN
Meaning: Brutally strict
Origin: In ancient Greece, administering punishment for murder (and other crimes) wasn’t the concern of government—it was a private issue, left up to the family of the victim. In 640 B.C., an Olympic champion named Cylon and a band of followers from the neighboring city-state of Megara attempted to take over Athens. The invasion was thwarted, but so many people were involved that the Athenian government, trying to avoid a bloodbath of Athenians killing Megarans and Megarans exacting revenge by killing Athenians, set up trials for Cylon and his followers. It worked so well that in 621 B.C., Athens gave a legislator named Draco full authority to enact a law requiring that murder charges be heard in state-sponsored trials. This is both the foundation for present-day justice…as well as for the death penalty. Draco meted out death sentences for many crimes—not just for murder—leading to the English adjective draconic, used to describe anything severe or strict. It became draconian in the late 1800s.
A cursed year: The “f-word” was first printed in English in 1475.
SWAN SONG
Meaning: A triumphant final performance before death or retirement
Origin: It first appears in Phaedo, Plato’s transcript of conversations between the philosopher Socrates and his students (including Plato himself) during Socrates’ final days—just before a death sentence for corrupting Greek youth (his students) was carried out against him. In one section, Socrates declares that he has to come to terms with his impending death and is at peace with it to such a degree that he can actually enjoy his final days. He tells his friends that he has “as much of the spirit of prophecy as do the swans. For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, do then sing more, and more sweetly, than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are about to go away.” Socrates was revered, and after he died the quote was frequently repeated in documents by such philosophers and writers as Aeschylus, Aristotle, Cicero, Chaucer, and Shakespeare. That’s why we still say it today. Only problem: Swans don’t really sing—they honk.
MENTOR
Meaning: A person, usually older, who offers wisdom, advice, and guidance
Origin: In Homer’s Odyssey, Mentor is the name of an older man who remains loyal to King Odysseus even after the king has been missing for 10 years and is presumed dead. All of Ithaca, Odysseus’ kingdom, believes that Odysseus’ wife, Penelope, should marry one of her many suitors…except Mentor, who has held out all along that Odysseus was still alive, and is ultimately proven right. The word came to mean not just a loyal friend but a wise one with the 1699 publishing of the novel Telemaque by Fenelon of Cambrai, a retelling of the Odyssey in which Mentor is the central character—a wise figure of near superhuman goodness.
IN A NUTSHELL
Meaning: A complicated concept or experience expressed succinctly
The Statue of Liberty is 20 times taller than an average woman.
Origin: The ancient Greek historian Pliny the Elder was known to stretch the truth a bit, especially when it came to the poems of Homer, which themselves were historical epics that embellished the truth. In Natural History, Pliny claims that a copy of Homer’s Iliad, written entirely on a piece of parchment, had once been found inside a nutshell. (There’s no way this be true—the Iliad is 15,690 lines long.) This amusing boast later became a Latin proverb, in nuce Ilias, or “the Iliad in a nutshell,” which expresses the same meaning it holds today. The 16th-century English writer Stephen Gosson was the first to use the phrase without mentioning the Iliad, but it was popularized by frequent usage in the works of 19th-century writers Charles Dickens and Robert Browning.
I’M SO AFRAID!
There’s a lot to be afraid of. Do you have any of these phobias?
Automatonophobia: fear of robots
Nephophobia: clouds
Vestiphobia: clothes
Pedophobia: children
Podophobia: feet
Ouranophobia: heaven
Cnidophobia: insect bites
Barophobia: gravity
Sciophobia: shadows
Oneirophobia: dreams
Caligynephobia: beautiful women
Rhytiphobia: wrinkles
Mycophobia: mushrooms
Pteronophobia: getting tickled (by feathers)
Cyclophobia: bicycles
Defecaloesiphobia: painful bowel movements
Xanthophobia: things that are yellow, or even the word “yellow”
Toursiphobia: pickles
Sinapiphobia: mustard
Dendrophobia: trees
Rothakinophobia: peaches
Achondroplasiaphobia: little people
Bambagiaphobia: cotton balls
Catheterphobia: balloons
Eel blood is toxic to humans.
THE NAME’S FAMILIAR
You already know the names—here are the people behind them.
LAURA ASHLEY
Welsh-born Laura Mountney left school at 16, became a secretary and, at 24, married engineer Bernard Ashley. Inspired by Victorian textiles, in 1953 the Ashleys invested £10 in supplies and began producing printed fabrics in their kitchen. That same year, while vacationing in Rome, they noticed a new fashion trend among young women, sparked by Audrey Hepburn’s appearance in the film Roman Holiday: colorful headscarves. So Ashley designed a line of scarves—and that proved to be her first success. Within a few years, Ashley added home furnishings and clothing to the line. By 1970 business was brisk—in a single week, one London shop sold 4,000
Laura Ashley dresses. Laura died in 1985, Bernard in 2009, but the brand—synonymous with pastels and floral prints—still generates $600 million annually.
DINTY MOORE
In the 1910s comic strip Bringing Up Father, Dinty Moore is the name of a tavern owner who serves corned beef and cabbage to the strip’s main character, an Irish immigrant named Jiggs. Author George McManus’s inspiration for Dinty was a real-life New York restaurant owner named James Moore, who capitalized on the popularity of the strip by legally changing his first name to Dinty and opening a chain of diners. His specialty: corned beef. Moore didn’t start the line of Dinty Moore canned products (notably beef stew) available today; Hormel Foods licensed the name and introduced the product in 1935, using Jiggs in early advertising. Dinty Moore Beef Stew is still the bestselling canned stew in the U.S.
BURT SHAVITZ
In 1983 an unemployed single mom named Roxanne Quimby met a beekeeper named Burt Shavitz on the side of a road in Bangor, Maine. The two struck up a friendship: Quimby had a knack for crafts, and Shavitz had more beeswax and honey than he knew what to do with, so they began selling honey at local craft fairs, along with candles and other products made from Burt’s leftover beeswax. Then, using a 19th-century book of homemade personal-care recipes, they began producing lip balm, and after selling thousands of tubes of it throughout New England, they founded a company—Burt’s Bees—in 1989. Quimby bought out Shavitz’s share of the company for $130,000 in 1993. She later sold 80% of the business for $141.6 million. Burt’s Bees is now owned by Clorox, but still produces more than 150 products made from honey, beeswax, and other natural sources.
Oranges that grow higher on the tree have more vitamin C than the lower fruit.
FRANK NICHOLAS MEYER
Born Frans Nicholas Meijer in 1875, he became a gardener’s assistant in Amsterdam at age 14. Always a wanderer, he set off on foot to study plants and gardens all over western Europe, then emigrated to the U.S. in 1901, where he was hired by the Department of Agriculture as a “plant explorer.” Preferring to travel alone, Meyer gathered and studied plants in Mexico and Cuba and eventually made several trips to Asia. All told, he introduced more than 2,500 plant species to the West, including soybeans, Ginkgo biloba, Chinese cabbage, and a deep-yellow Chinese ornamental fruit thought to be a cross between a sweet or mandarin orange and a lemon—today known as the Meyer lemon. Unfortunately, Meyer didn’t live to see his namesake: In 1918, on his way to Shanghai on a commercial Japanese riverboat, he fell overboard into the Yangtze River and drowned.
MAX KOHL
Factory worker Max Kohl, a Polish immigrant, saved enough money to buy a Milwaukee corner grocery store in 1927. He transformed it into the city’s first modern supermarket, and 40 years later he had a chain of 50 stores. Then Kohl expanded the business out of the grocery sector, opening six Kohl’s department stores. In 1972 he sold a controlling interest in the operation to the Brown & Williamson tobacco company, which sold off the grocery stores to A&P and focused on opening more Kohl’s department stores. Some Kohl’s executives bought the chain in 1986, and it now has more than 1,000 stores in 49 states. Kohl maintained an executive position in the company until his retirement in 1979. He died two years later. His son, Herb Kohl, is currently a Wisconsin senator and owns the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams all played marbles.
CITY LIGHTS
Anyone can request to have a particular color scheme displayed in lights on the top third of New York City’s Empire State Building at night (which is usually lit up in white). Here are some recent examples of special lighting.
Aug. 14–16, 2009: Orange (spire and base), white (upper floors), green (lower floors), the colors of the Indian flag, in honor of India Day, which commemorates the Aug. 15, 1947, independence of India from the British empire.
Aug. 31, 2009: All yellow lights—the color of a tennis ball—to celebrate the first night of the U.S. Open.
Sept. 8, 2009: All orange, commemorating the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s exploration of what is now called the Hudson River. The lights were orange because it’s the Dutch royal family’s color.
Sept. 9, 2009: The day is an annual breast cancer awareness event called City in Pink, so the lights were pink, the color of breast cancer awareness ribbons and bracelets.
Sept. 11, 2009: Red, white, and blue to honor the victims of the 9-11 attacks.
Sept. 20, 2009: The lights were green, the traditional color of Islam. This day was Eid-al-Fitr, the final day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Sept. 24, 2009: All red, or “ruby,” to honor the 70th anniversary of the film premiere of The Wizard of Oz.
Oct. 9–12, 2009: For Columbus Day weekend, the building was green, white, and red—the colors of the Italian flag. (Columbus was Italian.)
Oct. 19, 2009: The NY Historical Society was having a Grateful Dead exhibit, so the Empire State Building provided “psychedelic colors”: Green, yellow, red, purple, and white lights were lit on all four sides of the skyscraper.
Oct. 30–31, 2009: Black and orange for Halloween.
Nov. 5–8, 2009: Blue and white, the team colors of the New York Yankees, who’d just won the World Series.
Dick Van Dyke and Gordon Lightfoot are members of the Barbershop Harmony Society.
Nov. 25–29, 2009: The traditional autumn colors of yellow, orange, and red were used over Thanksgiving weekend.
Dec. 11–20, 2009: Blue represents the divine in Judaism, and it appears on the Israeli flag. For the Jewish holiday of Chanukah, the lights on the Empire State Building were turned to blue and white.
Dec. 23, 2009–Jan. 6, 2010: Green and red, for Christmas. They stayed lit for the 12 days of Christmas.
Jan. 15–17, 2010: Green and white, the colors of the New York Jets, who made the NFL playoffs (a rare occurrence). They won, so the color scheme was repeated for the next playoff game. (They lost.)
Feb. 5, 2010: The lights were all red for the American Heart Association’s heart disease awareness campaign, National Wear Red Day.
Feb. 8, 2010: The New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl, so its team colors of yellow and black were lit up.
Feb. 15, 2010: Red, white, and blue, used for all patriotic holidays, including President’s Day (this day), Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Election Day, Veterans Day, and on Sept. 11.
Feb. 26–28, 2010: For the Winter Olympics’ closing weekend, the building was lit in three of the Olympic ring colors: black, blue, and yellow.
March 17, 2010: All green for St. Patrick’s Day. The green theme was repeated on Earth Day (April 22), and Rainforest Awareness Week (May 13).
Apr. 1, 2010: The advocacy group Autism Speaks encourages supporters to wear blue every April 1 to raise awareness of the condition. The Empire State Building was lit in blue on this day, too.
Apr. 2–4, 2010: The pastel colors of yellow, pink, and green were used for Easter.
May 7, 2010: All blue lights for “the boys in blue,” honoring Police Memorial Week.
June 16, 2010: On this day in 1860, a Japanese diplomat visited New York for the first time. For the 150th anniversary of that event, the building was lit up in white and red, the colors of Japan.
July 11–12, 2010: Spain won soccer’s World Cup, so red and yellow—Spanish flag colors—were used for the lights.
World’s worst-smelling cheese: French Vieux Boulogne—it smells like “a barnyard.”
SUPERHERO FLOPS
At the top of the superhero list, you’ve got your Superman, your Batman, and then way, way down on the list, you’ve got these.
Shamrock. In 1982 Marvel Comics told staff artists to create an Irish superhero. They created the most stereotypically Irish superhero possible. Shamrock (real name: Molly Fitzgerald) is the daughter of a militant IRA member, has long red hair, and her superpower is having extremely good luck.
Madame Fatal. In this 1940s title, Richard Stanton is an
actor whose world goes into turmoil when his daughter is kidnapped. To get her back, he uses his “acting skills”: dressing up like an old lady. The disguise fools the kidnappers; he beats them up and rescues his daughter. But he likes it all so much that he decides to become Madame Fatal, the butt-kicking old lady who is really a man.
Dazzler. In 1980 Casablanca Records, primarily a disco label operating in a world that had moved on from disco, commissioned Marvel Comics to create a comic book about a disco singer-superhero. The plot: Alison Blaire is a law student who quits to become a disco singer, aided by her newly discovered abilities to generate light, to transform sound into pure energy…and to roller skate.
U.S. Archer. Ulysses Solomon Archer is a trucker who fights evildoers on the highway system, avenging the death of his brother who was murdered by an evil trucker known only as the Highwayman. Archer has the ability to track his nemesis through a metal plate in his skull that can pick up CB transmissions. 10-4!
Wundarr the Aquarian. Premiering in 1973, this Marvel character was the first “New Age” superhero. Wundarr’s goal isn’t to rid the streets of crime—it’s to enlighten all of humanity with universal consciousness. To that aim, his superpower is the ability to negate any kind of energy, from nuclear to gravity.
Arm Fall Off Boy. This 1940s DC Comics character came here from the 30th century, and his name says it all: He has the ability to detach and re-attach at will his own arms and legs, a power gained in an antigravity mishap. (When AFOB removes an arm, it makes a “plorp” sound, which seems exactly right.)
In Poland, the day after Easter is called Dingus Day. It’s celebrated with water fights.
POLI-TALKS
Politicians say the darnedest things…
“His mom lived in Long Island for 10 years or so. God rest her soul. Wait, your mom’s still alive? Your dad passed. God bless her soul.”
Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ Page 27
