Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  In 1602 Dutch merchants founded the VOC—the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, better known as the Dutch East India Company. Other trading nations had formed cooperative associations like it but none were more successful than the Dutch. By 1670 the VOC was the richest commercial operation in the world. The company had 50,000 employees worldwide, with a private army of 30,000 men and a fleet of 200 ships. Yet even with that huge overhead, the VOC gave its shareholders an eye-popping annual dividend of 40% on their investments. How’d they do it? With sheer ruthlessness…and nutmeg.

  MUST-HAVE

  By the time the VOC was formed, nutmeg was already the favored spice in Europe. Aside from adding flavor to foods and drinks, its aromatic qualities worked wonders to disguise the stench of decay in poorly preserved meats, always a problem in the days before refrigeration. Then the plague years of the 17th century came. Thousands were dying across Europe, and doctors were desperate for a way to stop the spread of the disease. They decided nutmeg held the cure. Ladies carried nutmeg sachets around their necks to breathe through and avoid the pestilence in the air. Men added nutmeg to their snuff and inhaled it. Everybody wanted it, and many were willing to spare no expense to have it. Ten pounds of nutmeg cost one English penny at its Asian source, but had a London street value of 2 pounds, 10 shillings—68,000 times its original cost. The only problem was the short supply. And that’s where the Dutch found their opportunity.

  BRUTAL RULERS

  Why was nutmeg so rare? The tree grew in only one place in the world: the Banda Islands of Indonesia. A tiny archipelago rising only a few meters above sea level, the islands were ruled by sultans who insisted on maintaining a neutral trading policy with foreign powers. This allowed them to avoid the presence of Portuguese or Spanish garrisons on their soil, but it also left them unprotected from other invaders. In 1621 the Dutch swept in and took over.

  Once securely in control of the Bandas, the Dutch went to work protecting their new “investment.” First they preempted any resistance by the islanders by executing every male over the age of 15. Village leaders were beheaded and their heads displayed on poles to discourage any rebels who might have survived. Within 15 years, the brutal regime reduced the Bandanese population from 15,000 to 600. Next the Dutch concentrated all nutmeg production into a few easily guarded areas, uprooting and destroying any trees outside the plantation zones. Anyone caught growing a nutmeg seedling or carrying seeds without the proper authority was put to death. In addition, all exported nutmeg seeds were drenched with lime to make sure there was no chance a fertile nut would find its way off the islands.

  71% of corporate pilots have admitted to falling asleep on the job.

  I’LL TAKE MANHATTAN

  The Dutch had their monopoly…almost. One of the Banda Islands, called Run, was under control of the British. The little sliver of land (a fishing boat could only make landfall at high tide) was one of England’s first colonial outposts, dating to 1603. The Dutch attacked it in force in 1616, but it would take four years for them to finally defeat the combined British-Bandanese resistance. But the English still didn’t give up; they continued to press their claim to the island through two Anglo-Dutch Wars.

  The battles exhausted both sides, leading to a compromise settlement, the Treaty of Breda, in 1667—and one of history’s greatest ironies. Intent on securing their hold over every nutmeg island in Southeast Asia, the Dutch offered a trade: If the British would give them Run, they would in turn give Britain a far-away, much less valuable island that the English had already occupied illegally since 1664. The British agreed. That other island: Manhattan, which is how New Amsterdam became New York.

  MONOPOLY OVER

  The Dutch now had complete control of the nutmeg trade. A happy ending for Holland? Hardly. By the end of the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company was bankrupt. Constant wars with rival powers, rebellions from the islanders, and plain bad luck—some might say bad karma—eventually broke the back of the Dutch spice cartel.

  Strike 1: In 1770 a Frenchman named Pierre Poivre (“Peter Pepper”) successfully smuggled nutmeg plants to safety in Mauritius, an island off the coast of Africa, where they were subsequently exported to the Caribbean. The plants thrived in the islands, especially on Grenada.

  Off to a good start: As a child, Houdini often broke into his family’s locked cookie cupboard.

  Strike 2: In 1778 a volcanic eruption in the Banda region caused a tsunami that wiped out half of the nutmeg groves.

  Strike 3: In 1809 the English returned to Indonesia and seized the Banda Islands by force. They returned the islands to the Dutch in 1817, but not before transplanting hundreds of nutmeg seedlings to plantations in India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Singapore.

  The Dutch were out; their nutmeg monopoly was over. While they would go on to have success trading steel and coal (not to mention tulips), the Netherlands declined as a colonial power, and they never again dominated European commerce.

  Still have a craving for spices? Turn to page 190 for the strange history of six others.

  * * *

  MORE FAVORITE FOREIGN PHRASES

  KUSAT’ SEBE LOKTI (Russian)

  Translation: “[Don’t] bite your elbows.”

  Meaning: Don’t cry over spilled milk; don’t get upset over things you can’t control.

  TRITTBRETTFAHRER (Germany)

  Translation: “Running-board rider”

  Meaning: Someone who benefits from someone else’s hard work.

  YI LUAN TOU SHI (China)

  Translation: “[Don’t] throw an egg against a rock.”

  Meaning: Don’t create problems for yourself by assuming you’re stronger than you are.

  KINGO NO FUNI (Japan)

  Translation: “Goldfish crap”

  Meaning: A sycophant or hanger-on. (Sometimes when a goldfish does its business, the business remains attached to its rear end for a while before falling off.)

  Boob tube: In the average American home, the TV is on for 7 hours and 40 minutes every day.

  THE BLACK PANTIES BANDIT STRIKES AGAIN

  When it comes to disguises, crooks can be very creative. We once read about a guy who smeared his face with Vaseline before he robbed a bank, figuring the security cameras couldn’t photograph him through the hazy goop (they could; he was arrested). Yes, there are some odd and outlandish thieves out there. Like the ones dressed up…

  …AS UTILITY WORKERS: In 2005 the Associated Press reported that in Baltimore a group of thieves disguised as city utility workers had stolen more than 120 street light poles. They said the thieves put up orange traffic cones around their “work area” while they dismantled and made away with the 30-foot-tall, 250-pound aluminum poles. (Why would anyone steal a light pole? Police theorize that they were stealing them to sell as scrap metal.)

  …AS PRIESTS: Police in Serbia said three men disguised as Orthodox Christian priests, complete with fake beards and ankle-length cassocks, entered a bank in Serbia, gave the traditional “Christ is born” greeting, then pulled shotguns out of their robes. Within minutes they had made off with more than $300,000.

  …AS A CHIMPANZEE: A man walked into an EZ Mart in Garland, Texas, with a gun in his hand and a chimpanzee mask over his face. He fired one shot, took the money from the register, and fled. TV news programs in the area tried to help police by airing the surveillance video of the robbery, which clearly shows… a man in a chimpanzee mask robbing the store.

  …AS SUPERHEROES: A group of young “activists” in Hamburg, Germany, showed up at a high-priced food store in April 2006. They were dressed as comic book superheroes, and they made off with several cartloads of expensive food. Police said similar robberies had taken place at other high-end supermarkets over the years, and believed they were intended as protests against inequitable income distribution. Police also reported that the superhero robbers gave the cashier a bouquet of flowers and posed for a photograph before fleeing. Although 14 police cars and a helicopter were involved in
the search, the bandits got away.

  Cacao (chocolate) trees grow only in tropical climates, 20° north or south of the equator.

  …AS COPS: At 1:30 a.m. on the night of March 18, 1990, two men disguised as cops knocked on the door of the prestigious Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The security guards on duty let them in and were immediately overpowered by the thieves. The not-cops made off with several paintings—a Vermeer, a Manet, and three Rembrandts, among other masterpieces — worth about $300 million. It still ranks as the largest art theft in U.S. history and has never been solved.

  …AS A PAIR OF UNDERWEAR: Police in Calgary, Alberta, announced in June 2004 that they had finally caught the “Black Panties Bandit,” who had robbed at least five convenience stores while wearing a black pair of women’s underwear over his face as a disguise.

  MORE MASKED ADVENTURERS

  • In February 2006, a man in a tiger suit climbed to the top of the St. Augustine Lighthouse in Florida. Frank Feldmann, 35, an author of children’s books, was protesting against child pornography on the Internet. But police couldn’t understand him—the tiger suit muffled his voice. He eventually came down and was arrested.

  • In December 2004, Lionel Arias, 47, of San Jose, Costa Rica, was “playing a practical joke” by wearing an Osama bin Laden mask, carrying a pellet rifle in his hand, and jumping out and scaring drivers on a narrow street near his home. He was shot twice in the stomach by a startled taxi driver. Arias recovered from his wounds; the taxi driver was not charged.

  * * *

  STORE-ZILLA

  Wal-Mart has nearly 1.4 million employees worldwide. That’s roughly equivalent to 4% of the population of Canada. (Or the entire population of Phoenix, Arizona.)

  Happy woof day! 70% of pet owners sign their pet’s name on greeting cards.

  POWER OF THE PEN

  Satire—writing that lampoons government politics or social conventions—has been around for centuries. But sometimes readers don’t get the joke. Here are some satirical writers who got a lot more reaction than they bargained for.

  TO THE PILLORY!

  Long before he wrote Robinson Crusoe, English author Daniel Defoe often ruffled feathers by writing satirical essays about Britain’s bitter politics. In 1702 the nation’s ruling Tory party was imposing tighter and tighter restrictions on their opponents, the Dissenters—Protestants who refused to join the Tories’ Anglican Church—a critical issue at the time. When the Tories tried to pass a new law requiring all Dissenters in public office to convert to Anglicanism—a strategy designed to drive them out of politics—Defoe, a Dissenter, was infuriated. So he decided to lampoon the Tories in an anonymously authored pamphlet called The Shortest Way with Dissenters, suggesting that the Tories weren’t going far enough—why not just execute all the Dissenters? The pamphlet was meant to be sarcastic, but many took it seriously, including some Tories who actually thought it was a good idea, and panicked Dissenters who showed up in droves at Anglican church services to avoid the death sentence.

  When it was revealed that Defoe had duped everyone, he was arrested for “seditious libel” and sentenced to three days in the pillory—a public stockade where citizens were free to pelt him with rocks and garbage. But before the sentence could be carried out, Defoe composed a poem called “Hymn to the Pillory,” another satirical spoof of the Tories. His friends smuggled it out of jail and distributed copies to the mob as they gathered to stone him. The crowd loved the poem—so much that they threw flowers at him instead of rocks. The incident turned out to be a turning point in Defoe’s career, bringing him fame and backfiring on the Tory government, which was unable to pass the law against the Dissenters.

  DIRTY DANCE

  Ambrose Bierce, an American author best known for his macabre short stories, such as “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” was also a journalist known for his scathing wit. In 1877 he and two friends teamed up to write a satirical book, The Dance of Death, under the pseudonym “William Herman,” attacking what they called a dance of “intolerable nastiness.” What was the dance? The waltz. The book overflowed with descriptions of lecherous men luring weak-willed women into a “shameless gratification of sexual desire” by…waltzing.

  Top three cat breeds in the U.S.: Persian, Maine Coon, and Exotic.

  Though it started out as a joke, the book began to sell because of its titillating content. Religious leaders weren’t sure what to make of its racy scenes mixed with righteous morality. Then Bierce decided to up the ante by reviewing the book—unfavorably—in his own newspaper column. His criticism of the book only made it more popular, especially with the Methodist church, which formally endorsed it—to Bierce’s delight. In spite of being released through a small publisher, the book sold a more-than-respectable 18,000 copies.

  ACTUALLY, IT’S A CURVEBALL

  In 1985 Sports Illustrated ran a 14-page cover article on a young baseball phenomenon, pitcher Sidd Finch. Orphaned as a child, the article said, Finch grew up in Tibet, where he learned the rudiments of baseball by throwing rocks. Photos showed the youngster’s odd, straight-armed windup that resulted in a jaw-dropping 168-mph fastball—60 mph faster than any ever recorded. He’d recently arrived in the United States carrying his only possessions—a French horn, a rug, and a food bowl—and was immediately drafted by the New York Mets. Finch, it was claimed, was on the verge of revolutionizing baseball. Excited fans wanted to know more; newspapers clamored to interview him. Baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth fielded phone calls from major-league managers who were concerned that Finch’s blistering fastball might injure batters.

  But alert readers smelled something fishy when they saw the issue’s cover date: April 1. And if they looked carefully, the first letters of every word in the article’s first paragraph spelled out “Happy April Fools’ Day.” Two weeks later, Sports Illustrated admitted that the story was a hoax dreamed up by writer George Plimpton and a handful of editors, who’d hired an Illinois middle-school teacher to pose as Finch. SI received 7,000 letters from readers—some angry, some applauding Plimpton for the elaborate practical joke. Seven of them were so disgusted that they cancelled their subscriptions—all, reportedly, Mets fans.

  A good pitcher can make a baseball curve as much as 17½ inches from a straight path.

  WHAT’S IN YOUR…

  Some reasons to start—or stop—reading ingredient lists.

  BREAD? Many bread products, from pizza to bagels to pastries, contain l-cysteine, an amino acid that adds stretchiness to dough, making it easier to mass produce in a variety of shapes. L-cysteine can be made from feathers, cow horn, or petroleum, but experts say that some of it comes from human hair. That’s because it’s the cheapest source. Several factories in China buy hair from the poor to make the product.

  JELLY BEANS? Most jelly beans get their hard, shiny surface from shellac—which is made from insect secretions. The insects, Laccifer lacca, live in trees, and their secretions coat the branches. The branches are cut and the shellac is refined from the coating. (It’s also sometimes used in processing coffee beans.)

  SKIN CREAM? Many “anti-aging” skin-care products contain afterbirth—human placentas—said to “rejuvenate” skin and help get rid of wrinkles. Cosmetic makers actually have deals with hospitals, and one Beverly Hills–based company gets its supply from Russian maternity wards. (Some use cow placentas.)

  CHEWING GUM? Some chewing gums still use castoreum, which is used to enhance flavors. Produced in the anal glands of beavers, it’s also used in perfumes and incense.

  TOOTHPASTE? Many toothpaste varieties contain dicalcium phosphate, an abrasive agent. It’s made from the bones of ruminants (mammals that “chew their cud”), such as cattle, sheep, and goats.

  BEER AND WINE? Many European and some American producers use isinglass to speed the fining, or clarification, process. It’s made by cleaning and drying the bladders of fish like sturgeon, cod, and hake, and is also used to make glue and cement.

  PER
FUME? Skatole is commonly used as a “fixative”—something added to make other ingredients stick to your skin and last longer. What is it? A white crystalline organic compound found in beets, coal tar…and feces. It’s what gives poop its distinctive smell.

  The first archaeological evidence of soup dates back to 6000 B.C. Main ingredient: hippopotamus.

  WEIRD ANIMAL NEWS

  Strange tales of creatures great and small.

  BETWEEN A CROC AND A HARD PLACE

  “A crocodile agitated by a chainsaw’s noise chased the man operating the machine and snatched it from him. Freddy Buckland was at a Northern Territory, Australia, roadhouse cutting a dead tree that had fallen against a crocodile pen when the 14-foot reptile struck. ‘The croc jumped out of the water and sped along the tree about 20 feet and actually grabbed the chainsaw out of his hands,’ said Peter Shappert, the owner of the Corroboree Park Tavern. Buckland was not injured, nor was the crocodile, named Brutus. ‘He chewed on the chainsaw for about an hour and a half. It’s still in one piece but, yeah, it’s buggered.’”

  —Australian Associated Press

  THE GRASS IS GREENER

  “Russia’s long winter will just fly by for a herd of Russian cows which will be fed confiscated marijuana over the cold months of 2005. Drug workers said they adopted the unusual form of animal husbandry after they were forced to destroy the sunflowers and maize crops among which the 40 tons of marijuana had been planted, Novye Izvestia daily reported. ‘There is simply no other way out,’ a government spokesman told the paper. ‘You see, the fields are planted with feed crops and if we remove it all the cows will have nothing to eat.’ He then added, ‘I don’t know what the milk will be like after this.’”

  —MSNBC

  DE BEAR IS NO MATCH FOR DE-CLAWED