Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader
Page 14
The word planet is from the Greek word for wanderer. (They move while the stars remain still.)
FAR SECCO QUALCUNO (Italy)
Translation: “To leave someone dry”
Meaning: This is what it’s called when you’re lucky enough to think of your witty comeback in time to use it—your comment will leave the listener speechless.
OHRWURM (Germany)
Translation: “Ear worm”
Meaning: A song that you can’t get out of your head
KHALI KHUKWANI (KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa)
Translation: “Make a noise in the pocket”
Meaning: Cell phone
HANAGE O NUKU HANDY (Japan)
Translation: “Pull the hair out of their nostrils”
Meaning: Dupe someone; play them for a fool
GOYANG KAKI (Indonesia)
Translation: “Swing your legs”
Meaning: Do nothing while others work to solve your problems
PULIR HEBILLAS (Spain/Central America)
Translation: “Polish belt buckles”
Meaning: Dance very close to your partner
POSER UN LAPIN A QUELQU’UN (France)
Translation: “Lay a rabbit on someone”
Meaning: Stand someone up on a date
MUSTASUKKAINEN (Finland)
Translation: “Wearing black socks”
Meaning: Jealous
AVEN SOLEN HAR FLACKAR (Sweden)
Translation: “Even the sun has spots”
Meaning: Nobody’s perfect
TO PRO MNE SPANELSKA VESNICE (Czech Republic)
Translation: “It’s all a Spanish village to me”
Meaning: I don’t understand
Free time: 59% of American teenagers do volunteer work.
Flying can be scary. That’s why flight attendants and pilots sometimes try to add a little levity (get it?) to the experience. Here are some actual airplane announcements that readers have sent us.
PREPARING FOR TAKEOFF
“As we prepare for takeoff, please make sure your tray tables and seat backs are fully upright in their least comfortable positions.”
“There may be fifty ways to leave your lover, but there are only four ways off this airplane.”
“Your seat cushions can be used as flotation devices. In the event of a water landing, please take them with our compliments.”
“To operate your seatbelt, insert the metal tab into the buckle, and pull tight. It works just like every other seatbelt, and if you don’t know how to operate one, you probably shouldn’t be out in public unsupervised.”
“Should the cabin lose pressure, oxygen masks will drop from the overhead area. Please place the bag over your own mouth and nose before assisting children or adults acting like children.”
“Any person caught smoking in the lavatories will be asked to leave the plane immediately.”
“We’d also like to remind you to turn off your cellular phones, computers, video games, or any other electronic device that may interfere with the captain’s pacemaker.”
IN-FLIGHT GUFFAWS FROM THE PILOT
“Mornin’, folks. As we leave Dallas, it’s warm and the sun is shining. Unfortunately, we’re going to New York, where it is cold and rainy. Why in the world y’all wanna go there I really don’t know.”
Most popular fruit worldwide: the mango.
“We are pleased to have some of the best flight attendants in the business. Sadly, none of them are working this flight.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached our cruising altitude of 30,000 feet, so I’m going to switch off the seat belt sign. Feel free to move about the cabin, but please try to stay inside the plane until we land.”
“Once again, I’m turning off the seat belt sign. I think I’ll switch to autopilot, too, so I can come back there and visit with you for the rest of the flight.”
“Folks, if you were with us last week, we never got around to mentioning that it was National Procrastination Day.”
“The weather in San Francisco is 61 degrees with some broken clouds, but they’ll try to have them fixed before we arrive.”
LANDING AND DE-PLANING
After the plane touched down and was coming to a stop, the pilot’s voice came over the loudspeaker: “Whoa, big fella. WHOA!”
“Sorry about the rough landing, folks. I’d just like to assure you that it wasn’t the airline’s fault; it wasn’t the flight attendants’ fault; nor was it the pilot’s fault. It was the asphalt.”
“We ask you to please remain seated while Captain Kangaroo bounces us to the terminal.”
“As you exit the plane, please make sure to gather all of your belongings. Anything left behind will be distributed evenly among the flight attendants. Please do not leave children or spouses.”
“Thank you for flying Business Express. We hope you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride.”
“Thanks for flying with us today. And the next time you get the insane urge to go blasting through the skies in a pressurized metal tube, we hope you’ll think of us.”
“Last one off the plane has to clean it!”
A lightning bolt strikes so fast it could circle the globe eight times in a second.
JOIN THE (CITIZENS) BAND
Got your ears on, good buddy? CB radios—part cell phone, part automobile chat room—were VERY popular in the 1970s. Here’s a look at where they came from…and where they went.
ON THE AIR
In 1946, just after World War II, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) established the Citizens Radio Service Frequency Band, and set aside certain radio frequencies for public use by people using two-way radios. Anyone in the United States could use these frequencies—all they had to do was buy a radio that worked on the “citizens band,” then fill out an application and pay a nominal fee to get a license. The first CB licenses were issued in 1947.
CBs were popular with farmers, hunters, boaters, and people living in rural areas, where there was no phone service. Small businesses like construction companies and trucking firms used them too. In all, about a million people applied for licenses over the next 25 years…but they didn’t catch on with the general public. Most people had never even heard of them.
THE OIL CRISIS
Then, in October 1973, the Arab members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an oil boycott on the United States and countries in western Europe to retaliate against their support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War. And just to be sure they made their point, they also voted to sharply increase the price of crude oil. These two events caused widespread fuel shortages, as gasoline and diesel prices rose more than 400%. Americans panicked. No gas? No heating oil? The Nixon administration responded to the situation by imposing mandatory rationing and lowering the maximum speed limit to 55 mph, because cars consume less fuel at 55 than they do at higher speeds.
No one suffered more during the oil crisis than independent truckers. Their fuel costs skyrocketed and the new speed limit cut into their ability to pay for fuel by reducing the distances they could drive each day. In February 1974, they organized a nationwide strike that went on for 10 days. And during those 10 days they helped usher in what Time magazine called “the biggest explosion of communications since the invention of the telephone.”
Pope John Paul II was an honorary Harlem Globetrotter.
UNDERDOGS
The truckers’ strike got a lot of coverage on TV news, which exposed many viewers to CB radios for the first time. People saw how truckers used the radios to exchange information about where to buy the cheapest fuel and, just as importantly, find out where state troopers were setting up speed traps. The sight of these renegade truckers banding together to fight “the Man” was a romantic image that reminded people of the Old West—only these cowboys rode trucks instead of horses, and had CBs instead of six-shooters.
• Like everyone else with a CB license, tru
ckers were required by law to use their license number as a call sign when they went on the air. But the truckers ignored this and instead used “handles” they made up for themselves—Pigpen, Silver Fox, Maverick—so that they could warn each other about speed traps without revealing their identities to state troopers or the FCC.
• Colorful lingo made truckers and their CBs even more alluring to the general public. State troopers in many states wore flat-brimmed hats similar to the one worn by Smokey the Bear; this made them “smokeys” or “bears.” The 55 m.p.h. speed limit? The “double nickel.” Speeding tickets? “Bear bites.” Were you hauling a load of explosives from Los Angeles to Cleveland? You were a “suicide jockey” heading from “Shakey Town” to the “Mistake on the Lake.” Taking produce to New York City? You’re “hauling garbage” to “Dirty Town.” (For more CB trucker lingo, see pages 154, 289, and 484.)
COPY THAT
Inspired by the idea of using their own CB radios to avoid speed traps and fight high gas prices just like the truckers did, Americans started buying the radios in record numbers. It had taken more than a quarter century—from 1947 to 1973—for the FCC to issue its first million CB licenses. But Americans bought 2 million CBs in 1974, 5 million in 1975, 10 million in 1976, and 13 million in 1977. By January 1977, CB license applications were coming in at nearly 1 million per month—so many, in fact, that the FCC gave up licensing altogether and let anyone operate the radios, license or not. CB radio and accessory sales had grown from next to nothing to $2 billion a year in less than five years. Some experts predicted that by 1987, half of all U.S. households would own at least one CB radio.
The diameter of the universe is estimated to be 620,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles.
CB NATION
CBs (and truckers) made strong inroads into popular culture, too: In 1975 “Convoy,” a country song about a group of truckers who dodge state troopers as they travel across the U.S., went to #1 on both the country and pop music charts. In 1977 Smokey and the Bandit became the second-highest-grossing movie of the year (behind Star Wars). Muhammad Ali had a CB in his car (his handle was “The Big Bopper”). First Lady Betty Ford had a CB in her limousine (her handle: “First Mama”). Even the Big Three automakers began offering AM/FM/CB radios as options on new cars.
How many fads turn out to be practical? Stranded motorists who used CBs to call for help instead of walking miles to find a pay phone wondered how they’d ever gotten along without a two-way radio in their car. In those pre-Internet days, a CB turned your car into a chat room on wheels, enabling you to talk to other drivers without revealing any more about yourself than you wanted them to know. More than one marriage was born with the click of a CB radio microphone; more than a few were probably wrecked by them, too.
SMOKEY’S GOT HIS EARS ON
Even the police came around: At first, several states tried to pressure trucking companies into pulling CBs out of their rigs. When that failed, state police agencies started installing them in squad cars to keep track of what the truckers were up to. The truckers proved to be an asset: They reported so many accidents and drunk drivers that troopers began broadcasting license numbers of wanted cars and descriptions of suspects over the CB, so that truckers could watch out for them.
Which crayon color is used most often? Black.
OFF THE AIR
So why don’t we all have CBs in our cars today?
• For one thing, the CB system wasn’t equipped to handle the millions of people who bought radios. In those days, CBs had only 23 channels (and one—channel 9—was reserved for emergency traffic). That limited the number of people who could talk at a time, especially in crowded urban areas. People spent $150 or more on a CB, only to find that they couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
• The FCC responded to the overcrowding by adding 17 new channels, bringing the number to 40, but that actually hurt sales of CB radios—consumers didn’t want the 23-channel radios any more, but they didn’t want to pay $200 to $300 for the 40-channel radios, either.
• Rising gasoline prices prompted Americans to start buying smaller cars, which had less room for bulky CBs; when people traded in their old cars, they didn’t bother to get new radios. And when the oil crisis eventually came to an end, drivers no longer needed CBs to find stations that had cheap gas.
By the late 1980s, sales of CB radios had dropped to less than 500,000 sets per year and all but a handful of CB manufacturers went out of business.
BORN AGAIN
Believe it or not, the advent of cell phones in the mid-1990s was actually good for the CB business: When people signed up for what they thought were cheap calling plans and got socked with hidden charges, CB sales started inching upward. People in areas without satellite coverage bought them, too. By 1998 sales of the “poor man’s cell phone” had climbed back up to 3 million radios a year.
If you like taking road trips to places where cell phones don’t always work, you’re in luck—modern CB radios are smaller and much more powerful than they were in the 1970s. They’re cheaper too: You can pay as little as $75 for a portable, battery-powered emergency radio, or $200 for one installed in your car. That makes them a much better value than they were during the CB craze.
So what are you waiting for? Get your ears on, put the pedal to the metal, and try to keep the bears from biting. We gone!
Hiya! Research shows that dolphins can recognize themselves in a mirror.
RANDOM ORIGINS
You know what these are…but do you know where they came from?
TRAVEL AGENCIES
In 1841 a Baptist missionary named Thomas Cook chartered a train to take 570 temperance campaigners from Leicester, England, to a rally in Loughborough, 11 miles away. In exchange for giving the business to the Midland Counties Railway, Cook received a percentage of the fares. The success of that trip inspired him to organize many more. Eventually he expanded beyond the temperance movement and began booking trips for people who wanted to travel for pleasure. Cook has been credited with inventing not only the travel agency, but modern tourism, as well. Today the company that bears his name is one of the world’s largest travel agencies.
FOUNTAIN PENS
In 1883 a New York insurance broker named Lewis Waterman handed his new fountain pen to a client who was about to sign a major contract. The pen not only didn’t write, it also dumped its contents onto the paperwork, ruining it. By the time Waterman returned from his office with another contract, the client had signed with someone else. Waterman vowed never to let that happen again—to him or anyone else. It took him a year to do it, but he invented the world’s first properly functioning fountain pen, which used capillary action to send a steady and reliable flow of ink from the reservoir to the “nib,” or point, of the pen.
WOOD-BURNING STOVES
If you wanted to heat your home in the mid-18th century, there was only one way: your fireplace. But because they were usually built into an exterior wall, fireplaces were inefficient—much of the heat was lost to the outside air. In 1742 Benjamin Franklin invented a freestanding metal stove that could be placed in the middle of the room, so all the heat radiated into the room. The “Franklin stove,” as it came to be known, remains one of Benjamin Franklin’s most famous inventions. One problem: it didn’t work. For all his genius, Franklin apparently never realized that heat and smoke rise, which means you have to put the chimney outlet at the top of the stove. Franklin connected his at the base, and because of that the fire would not stay lit. His stove didn’t become practical until another inventor, David Rittenhouse, connected the chimney above the fire.
Technically, juice boxes are known as “aseptic packaging.”
GREYHOUND RACING
Greyhounds have been admired for their speed as far back as ancient Egypt and beyond; for centuries it was a common pastime to release a live rabbit in front of two greyhounds and bet on which dog would catch and kill it. That sport was known as “coursing.’ Modern greyhound racing didn’t come
along until 1912, when a rabbit-loving New Jersey inventor named Owen Patrick Smith invented a mechanical rabbit, or lure, that the dogs could chase instead. The lure was connected to a system of pulleys so that, unlike live rabbits, it “ran” along a prescribed course instead of dashing in any direction. That made circular and oval-shaped dog tracks possible for the first time. Dog tracks were small enough that they could be located in urban areas, where the sport became very popular with working-class sports fans for whom horse racing was out of reach.
ROLLERBLADES
In-line skates weren’t so much invented as reinvented: When a Belgian instrument maker named Jean Joseph Merlin attached five small metal wheels to a pair of his shoes in 1760 and created what are believed to be the world’s first roller skates, he arranged the wheels in a single line. It was difficult to turn or maintain balance with them, and in 1863 a New York inventor named James Plimpton invented the classic side-by-side “quad” skates. His design dominated the sport for more than a century. Then in 1979, Scott Olson, a minor-league hockey player, stumbled onto a pair of inline skates from the 1960s while looking for something that would allow him to train in the off season. Olson became a distributor of the skates, and when the manufacturer rejected his suggestions for improvements, he bought the patent rights to a similar skate. In 1982 he started selling Rollerblades (it’s a trademarked name). By 1994 the company was selling $260 million worth of skates a year.
Charles Curtis was the first (and only) Native American vice president (1929–1933).
HOW TO BUILD AN ATOM BOMB
Hey Mom, looking for a fun project for the kids?