Au gratin. From the French, this cooking method becomes “with scrapings.” A dish served au gratin includes dried bread crumbs mixed with grated cheese and browned on top.
Ginger. Originating in India, this spice’s name is from the Sanskrit singabera (“horn shaped”) because of the roots.
Junk food. From the Dutch jonket. These were dried fish and salted meat rations fed to sailors on long voyages.
Tears are 0.9% salt.
GOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!
Weird tales from the world of football...no, soccer...no...
POT SHOTS. Newspapers reported in 2004 that Portuguese police were turning a blind eye to marijuana-smoking among fans at soccer matches—especially if they were English. A police spokesperson said they hoped it would keep the notoriously rowdy fans calm.
PIN-UP GUY. Swiss newspapers featured cut-out voodoo dolls of English soccer star David Beckham before the Switzerland/England match in the Euro 2004 games. “Let’s all rip this page out, pin it on the wall and stick in nails, needles and staples,” read the caption. “If we believe it will work, then it will.” (It didn’t.)
TASTES GREAT. LESS WINNING. The Bernard brewery offered Czech Republic football coach Karel Bruckner 60 liters of beer per year for the rest of his life if the team won the Euro 2004 competition. They also promised 160 liters to every player on the team. “While they will earn a lot of money if they win,” said a brewery spokesman. “We think the offer of free beer is extra motivation and will inspire the team to go for gold.” (They didn’t win.)
KILL YOUR TELEVISION. Police in a Romanian town received several phone calls after explosions were heard all over town. Explanation: the Romanian team had just been knocked out of the Euro 2004 and several fans had thrown their TV sets out of their windows.
WARDROBE MALFUNCTION. During a game between two teams in the Belgian Football Association, a man ran onto the field and pulled the referee’s pants and shorts down. Ref Jacky Temmerman said, “I looked very nice in front of a few hundred supporters. That man made a fool of me.” The fan faces a lifetime ban from Belgian soccer games.
BLACK MAGIC WOMAN. An award winning Romanian sports photographer was banned from flying with the Romanian soccer team in 2003 because she’s female—and women bring bad luck. The Romanian team is notoriously superstitious: Women aren’t allowed on the team bus, players can’t whistle on the bus, and the bus isn’t allowed to drive in reverse while players are aboard.
All marble starts out as limestone.
DID THEY WEAR TRUNKS? Prison officials in Thailand wanted to avoid gambling and rivalry troubles during the Euro 2004 tournament. So they scheduled an actual game—inmates versus non-inmates. The non-inmates were trained soccer-playing elephants. They played to a 5-5 tie.
BRING IT ON! Turkish soccer commentator Ahmet Cakar is well-known as an outspoken critic of officials, coaches, players, fans, the game, his fellow Turks, and just about everyone in general. When asked in 2004 if he would enrage someone, he said, “Whoever dares can come and try and take my life.” In March, 2004, an angry fan shot him five times in the stomach and groin. (He survived the attack.)
HE HAD A DREAM. In January 2004, nine-year-old English soccer fan Billy Harris had a dream: Middlesbrough would beat the Bolton Wanderers 2–1 to win the English League Cup...AND Boudewijn Zenden would score the winning goal. So his dad, who had never bet on a game before, put a £15 ($27) wager on the team. On February 29, Middlesbrough, a 60 to 1 long shot, beat the Bolton Wanderers and won the cup. The score was 2-1...and Boudewijn Zenden scored the winner. Dad won £900 ($1,600). “It was unbelievable,” said Billy. “Now my mum’s given me a notepad to write down all my dreams.”
AIN’T THAT A KICK IN THE HEAD. “The wind tunnel we’ve developed enabled us to analyze David Beckham’s sensational goal against Greece in the World Cup,” said physicist Dr. Matt Carré of England’s University of Sheffield. “We know that the shot left his foot at 80 mph from 27 meters out, moved laterally over two meters during its flight due to the amount of spin applied, and during the last half of its flight suddenly slowed to 42 mph, dipping into the top corner of the goal. The sudden deceleration happens at the moment when the airflow pattern around the ball changes, increasing drag by more than a hundred percent. This crucial airflow transition is affected both by the velocity and spinning rate of the ball and by its surface seam pattern. Beckham was instinctively applying some very sophisticated physics calculations in scoring the goal.”
Finland has 60,000 lakes.
I SCARE NOTHING! EVEN YOU BECOME NAPKINS!
Here are some actual English subtitles from movies made (and translated) in Hong Kong.
“Fat head! Look at you! You’re full of cholesterol.”
“The tongue is so ugly. Let’s imagine it to be Tom Cruise.”
“It took my seven digestive pills to dissolve your hairy crab!”
“Dance the lion for others for just some stinking money! It’s like razing my brows with the kung-fu I taught you.”
“Alternatively, you must follow my advice whenever I say ‘maltose.’”
“If you nag on, I’ll strangle you with chewing gum.”
“A red moon? Why don’t you say ‘blue buttocks?’”
“Let us not forget to form a team up together and go into the country to inflict the pain of our karate feets on some ass of the giant lizard person.”
“Catherine is a nasbian!”
“A poor band player I was, but now I am crocodile king.”
“Aha! I forget nothing. Elephant balls!”
“Watch out! The road is very sweaty.”
“The wet nurse wants rock candy to decoct papayas.”
“Cool! You really can’t see the edges of the tea-bag underwear.”
“Beauty and charm is yours, to you I run. I’d never leave, even forced by gun. I’d always want you, even if you were a nun.”
“I scare nothing! Even you become napkins!”
“Your dad is an iron worker, your mom sells beans!”
“Same old rules: no eyes, no groin.”
“I’m Urine Pot the Hero!”
The NHL Stanley Cup trophy weighs 32 pounds.
AMAZING LUCK
Sometimes we’re blessed with good luck, sometimes we’re cursed with bad luck, sometimes we get a little of both. Here are some examples of people who lucked out...for better or worse.
THAT SINKING FEELING
While on vacation in Orange Beach, Alabama, Mark Waters accidentally locked himself out of his condo. His solution: to go through his neighbor’s apartment, climb out the window, scale the balcony, leap next door onto his balcony, and climb in his own window. The only problem: his condo was on the 14th floor. While he was climbing out of his neighbor’s window, Waters slipped and fell. As he plummeted 14 stories, Waters was certain he faced imminent death. Instead, he landed in the condo swimming pool below. Suffering only a few broken ribs and a collapsed lung, Waters said, “I’m very convinced there is a God.”
HE WAS STUNNED
In the summer of 2000, Laurence Webbler took his eight-year-old grandson Josh on a fishing trip. The Texas native was looking forward to relaxing and spending some quality time with his grandson, but unfortunately, while they were out, he suffered a heart attack. As Webbler lost consciousness, Josh sprang into action. He picked up the electronic fish stunner his grandpa had brought and jabbed him with 5,000 volts. “That was enough to get the old ticker going again,” Webbler later commented.
LA BOMBA
Doctors at a military hospital in Bogota, Colombia, took off their surgical robes and put on bulletproof vests when Nicolas Sanchez was wheeled into the operating room. Why? Another soldier accidentally fired a grenade launcher at him and he had a live grenade embedded in his left thigh. It took the surgeons only three minutes to expose the device before a police bomb expert removed it from his leg and detonated it in an empty lot near the hospital. Pressed directly against Sanchez’s femur, the explosive had failed t
o detonate.
Bummer! Over 4 million Americans suffer from chronic constipation.
TOUGH GUY
Donald Morehouse was shot in combat seven times during his service in the Korean War. Six rounds never made it past his bulletproof vest, but one slug entered through his left shoulder and lodged in his right side. The wounded Morehouse hiked to a M.A.S.H. unit, where medics successfully removed the bullet. Forty-eight years later, as Morehouse was undergoing routine bypass surgery in 2001, doctors made a startling discovery: Calcified scars showed that the .29-caliber bullet removed from his side in 1953 had in fact passed through his heart. Most people would have died minutes after sustaining such an injury; Morehouse walked three miles...and lived.
HANGNAIL
Jan Madsen was fixing the roof of his home outside of Berlin when he tripped and started sliding toward the roof’s edge. As he scrambled to grab onto anything that might prevent his fall, Madsen’s nail gun accidentally went off and shot him through the knee. It was excruciatingly painful, but the nail pinned his leg to a wooden support beam and held him there until rescue workers arrived an hour later and freed him.
BABY SAVES THE DAY
One afternoon in 1995 at the Kiddie Kove Nursery in Chicago, two-year-old Kolby Grinston reached up and innocently pulled the school’s fire alarm. Teachers calmly filed their students outside as they had practiced many times before. Minutes later, as the children were waiting to return to their classroom, a car barreled through a red light and struck another vehicle, sending it across the nursery playground and crashing into the school. The car landed on top of a row of lockers, where the children would have been standing, hanging up their jackets and sweaters before their afternoon nap had Kolby not pulled the fire alarm.
SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO
Between the ages of 30 and 70, a person’s nose may lengthen and widen by as much as half an inch.
Could it be true? Donkeys have the loudest farts in the animal kingdom.
THAT’S ABOUT THE SIZE OF IT
Most people never give a second thought to life’s most important questions, such as: How tall should a bowling pin be? Fortunately for them, Uncle John does. Here’s a look at the standard sizes of everyday objects.
Soccer Ball: Must measure between 27 and 28 inches in circumference and weigh 14 to 16 ounces.
Napkin (dinner): Should be no less than 183 square inches, unfolded. (A cocktail napkin should be no larger than 100 square inches, unfolded.)
Boulder: An “official” boulder must be at least 256 millimeters (10.07 inches) in diameter.
Pebble: A pebble must be no smaller than 4 millimeters (0.16 inch) and no larger than 64 millimeters (2.51 inches) in diameter.
Bowling ball: Should be 27 inches in circumference and weigh no more than 16 pounds.
Bowling pin: Should weigh between 3 pounds, 2 ounces and 3 pounds, 10 ounces and should be exactly 1 foot, 3 inches tall.
Dart: Cannot be more than 1 foot in length, or weigh more than 50 grams.
Dartboard: Must be hung so that the bull’s-eye is 5 feet, 8 inches above the floor. The person throwing the dart must stand 7 feet, 9 1/4 inches from the board.
Wash cloth: Should be a square of cloth no smaller than 12 by 12 inches and no larger than 14 by 14 inches.
Compact car: Must weigh at least 3,000 pounds, but no more than 3,500.
Parachute: To slow a 200-pound person to a landing speed of 20 feet per second, a parachute must be 28 feet in diameter.
Golf ball: Must weigh no more than 1.62 ounces, with a diameter no less than 1.68 inches. (A standard tee is 2-1/8 inches long.)
King mattress: Must be no smaller than 80 inches long and 76 inches wide.
Jumbo egg: One dozen jumbo eggs should weigh no less than 30 ounces.
What fore? Americans spend over $630 million a year on golf balls.
THE CIA’S FIRST COUP, PART I
Few Americans know much about a secret coup orchestrated by the CIA in Iran in 1953. Yet it is one of the most important moments in the history of U.S. relations with the Muslim world. Here’s the story.
LIVE FROM BAGHDAD
In March 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, overthrew the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, and began working toward the day when U.S. administrators would turn over control of the country to a new elected government in Iraq.
The war in Iraq was easily the most thoroughly documented “regime change” ever. CNN covered developments live, 24 hours a day. So did Fox News, MSNBC, the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Al-Jazeera, and every other news network worldwide. If you didn’t have a TV or newspaper, you could follow events on the Internet. Breaking news was never more than a click away.
Compare that to another U.S. attempt at regime change: the 1953 CIA-sponsored coup in Iran, right next door to Iraq. It doesn’t sound familiar? That’s not surprising—CIA coups are supposed to be secret, and for nearly 50 years this one was as secret as the Iraq war was public.
Rumors have been circulating about it since the 1950s, especially in Iran. But it wasn’t until April 2000—when the agency’s own in-house history of the coup became public—that Americans got the first detailed account of U.S. involvement in the affair. And that only happened because someone leaked the history to the New York Times. Had that document not been leaked, much of what we now know about the coup would still be secret today.
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
Pop quiz: What do Iraq and Iran have in common? Answer: They both have lots of oil. For decades Great Britain had controlled Iran’s oil industry, but by the early 1950s, the Iranians were ready for a change. On March 15, 1951, the Majlis (an elected assembly similar to the U.S. House of Representatives) voted to nationalize their country’s oil industry and take it back from Great Britain.
The moon is 2,140 miles in diameter. That’s less than the width of the continental U.S.
The British government owned a 51% stake in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now known as British Petroleum), a private company that had begun developing the Iranian oil fields in 1908. Iran was home to one-fourth of the world’s proven petroleum reserves, and the British-built refinery at Abadan was the largest on Earth, supplying Europe with 90% of its oil. England had no known oil reserves of its own, nor did any of its colonies. If the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry was allowed to pass, Great Britain would be stripped of its most valuable foreign asset and the only source of oil it directly controlled.
And they weren’t about to just let it happen.
By May 1952, the British had drawn up plans for invading Iran with 70,000 troops and seizing the oil fields and the Abadan refinery. But they were reluctant to do it without at least the tacit approval of their ally, the United States. President Truman was adamantly opposed and urged the British to resolve the dispute by negotiating with Iran.
BACKUP PLAN
Without U.S. support, the British scrapped their invasion plans. Rather than negotiate, however, they started planning a coup against Iran’s nationalist prime minister, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh. Truman refused to support the coup, too. When Mossadegh caught wind of it in October 1952, he broke off diplomatic relations with Britain and expelled all British diplomats from the country.
The coup had been thwarted, and Great Britain was even worse off than before. President Truman had no sympathy—he blamed the British government for refusing to negotiate. “We tried to get the block-headed British to have their oil company make a fair deal with Iran,” Truman wrote in disgust to his former ambassador to Iran, Henry Grady. “No, no, they could not do that.”
NASIR AL-DIN
President Truman did have sympathy for the Iranians as they struggled to gain control of their own natural resources. He was no fan of European colonialism, and British relations with Iran smacked of exactly that. They and the Russians had dominated and exploited Iran since the 1840s, when the country was ruled by an incompetent, despotic shah, Nasir al-Din.
Coincidence? Reported UFO sightings ar
e greatest when Mars is closest to Earth.
The court of Nasir al-Din was something to behold: He had a harem of more than 1,000 wives and concubines, and through them had fathered hundreds of princes and princesses. Each one was a drain on the national treasury, so to support them Nasir al-Din set taxes exorbitantly high, raided the fortunes of Iran’s wealthiest citizens, and sold government offices to the highest bidder.
After a while even these measures didn’t generate enough cash, so Nasir al-Din began selling “concessions”—exclusive rights to build railroads and streetcar lines, irrigate farmland, buy and sell tobacco, mine for minerals, print the national currency, and anything else he could think of—to foreign businesses, for a pittance.
Nasir al-Din’s successors continued the practice, and in 1901, his son Muzaffar al-Din sold what would turn out to be the biggest concession of all: the right to explore the southern part of the country for petroleum and natural gas. He sold Iran’s most valuable natural resource to a British businessman named William Knox D’Arcy for £20,000, plus 16% of profits realized from the sale of any oil that was discovered.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
The D’Arcy concession, which was later purchased by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later changed to “Anglo-Iranian”), didn’t attract much opposition at the time because oil had not been discovered yet in that area. What made Iranians really angry was when the shah tried to raise the price of sugar in 1905.
After decades of being sold out by their leaders and exploited by foreigners, Iranians decided they’d finally had enough when the price of sugar went up. Riots broke out in Tehran, and when a nationwide revolt seemed imminent, Muzaffar al-Din cancelled the sugar price increase and even agreed to a written constitution that would limit his power, as well as to an elected assembly (the Majlis) that would share power with him.
Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader Page 17
