Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  CHRISTIANS: 1, EVERYBODY ELSE: DEAD

  After three years of deprivation, disease, and death, the Christian soldiers were ready to celebrate their great victory. They did so by plundering Jerusalem and slaughtering its Muslim inhabitants. The local Jews had all rushed to the synagogue, but the crusaders were determined to make Jerusalem a purely Christian city. They burned down the synagogue and everyone inside perished.

  TUNE IN NEXT TIME

  The goal of the First Crusade—retaking Jerusalem and most of the Holy Land for Christianity—had been achieved. No future crusade would enjoy as much success. (Oh, you thought it was over? No, there’s lots more blood to be spilled.) During the next two centuries the original conquests in the Holy Land, including Jerusalem, were gradually lost.

  Cleopatra’s father, two brothers, and oldest son were all named Ptolemy.

  PAGANINI HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

  * * *

  Chicks dig violinists. At least they did when Nicolò Paganini was the hottest ticket in music.

  Nicolò Paganini was a gifted virtuoso who may be the greatest violinist in history. Fans worshipped him. But Paganini fell victim to the darker side of fame—abuse, excess, and rumors of consorting with the devil.

  THE YOUNG PHENOM

  In the early 1800s, Nicolò Paganini was a superstar. Born in Genoa, Italy, in 1782, he was a violin prodigy who began touring at age 15. Soon he was famous for his extraordinary, almost supernatural, skill. Unlike famous predecessors such as Bach or Mozart, Paganini was never a court musician living off an archduke’s patronage. He played the concert circuit and survived on ticket sales. In 1828, he began an epic six-year tour of Europe. The great capitals fell under his spell: Vienna, Berlin, London, and Paris.

  A PASSION FOR PAGANINI

  Despite outrageous ticket prices, Paganini’s concerts could be life-altering experiences for fans. Ladies swooned, men cried, and the reviews were fabulous. The Paris papers exhorted their readers to “sell or pawn all their possessions to hear Paganini.” And one reviewer wrote, “Woe to him who lets (Paganini) depart unheard.”

  As his legend grew, stories spread that Paganini had acquired his talent by selling his soul to the devil. His appearance played perfectly into this tale. Paganini suffered with poor health most of his life, making him deathly pale and gaunt. But his tortured appearance only made him a more devilishly romantic figure.

  PAGANINI PRESLEY?

  He sometimes wore a black cloak that swirled around him like wings, while his long, black hair flew wildly. When performing, his lean legs twirled him across the stage and his flexible hands fingered the frets in a way that no other violinist could duplicate.

  For four days, Nazi Rudolf Hess became the last prisoner in the Tower of London.

  REACHING THE BREAKING POINT

  Paganini would sometimes play a game of breaking three strings on his violin, one after another, and finish a flawless concert using only one. Such theatrical foolishness enraged establishment critics who dismissed him as all style and no substance, a musician of mediocre talent and garish tricks.

  Critics also derided Paganini as “an acrobat, a mountebank, a woman-hunter. . .and disgustingly rich.” Rumors described a legion of women, young and old, common and aristocratic, that dallied with the maestro. Vast amounts of money rolled in from concerts.

  THE DARK SIDE OF FAME

  Yet Paganini often ran short of cash. He was a heavy gambler, and not a very good one. He also had to support a growing crew of hangers-on, including an agent and a biographer. Pressures took a toll on the violinist as the tour progressed. His health suffered, and he sometimes canceled concerts due to illness. Cancellations also sprang from the fact that sensitive Paganini was easily insulted—even by a minor slight. After he canceled a concert in Ireland, an angry mob gathered outside his hotel, forcing him to play as scheduled.

  THE DARKER SIDE OF FAME

  Turning away from touring, Paganini was drawn into a grandiose scheme to build a fabulous Casino Paganini in Paris. He sank a lot of money into the venture, but the Parisian casino was a colossal failure. After years in court suing his former partners, he never recovered one franc. He envisioned launching a stunning comeback tour in America, but before it could begin, his health failed catastrophically.

  In 1840 in Nice on his deathbed, Paganini refused the last rites, believing he had longer to live. He guessed wrong. The archbishop issued an edict refusing him Christian burial, and even went so far as to notify the authorities in Paganini’s hometown of Genoa. His son sued, but while waiting for the court’s decision, the embalmed body was on display under glass. Thousands upon thousands are reported to have flocked to get a last glimpse of this first rock-’n’-roll style superstar. His body was not laid in hallowed ground until 1845.

  Weighing 332 pounds, U.S. President William Howard Taft once trapped himself in a bathtub.

  A TASTE FOR THE UNUSUAL

  * * *

  The crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer are well known, but there are other criminals with odd tastes that you may not have heard about.

  BEANE’S CANNIBAL FAMILY

  Some swear the tale of this Scottish cannibal clan is true. Others call it the ultimate urban legend, but the tales about Sawney Beane and his family refuse to die. According to the legend, Sawney Beane raised three inbred generations on the coast of Gallows in Scotland in the 15th century. He sustained his huge family by attacking, robbing, killing and eating travelers who passed by the family cave. At first Beane took only the odd traveler. But as the decades passed and his clan grew, the death toll began to rise.

  When local villagers discovered odd, preserved bits of bodies washing up on the shore near the cave, they hunted for the murderer. Beane and his family were discovered, and publicly burned for their crimes on the order of King James of Scotland. The story may be hard to believe, but Scottish and British kids know all about it. Their mums used tales of the Beanes to scare their kids into being good.

  LEWIS KESEBERG: DONNER PARTY DESPERADO

  In the winter of 1846, when the Donner Party was trapped and starving in the Sierra Nevadas they turned, famously, to cannibalism. Most of those who survived were forgiven. Society understood the terrible desperation of starvation. But nobody ever forgave Lewis Keseberg. Keseberg was one of the few Donner party survivors who managed to reach a set of lake cabins along with a woman named Tamsen Donner. Nobody knows exactly what happened next, but Keseberg is suspected of murder. Rescuers found him at the cabin, boiling parts of Ms. Donner’s body in a pot on the fire. He calmly admitted eating her and that he found her delicious, the best flesh he’d ever tasted.

  Keseberg wasn’t convicted for his suspected crime, but his life went badly anyway. (Surprise, surprise.) He briefly opened a Sacramento restaurant. (What a career choice!) But the restaurant was soon burned to the ground. Keseberg lived out his life in shame and poverty—despised.

  Tony Blair was once in a rock band called Ugly Rumours.

  ALFRED PACKER, THE COLORADO CANNIBAL

  Officials at the Los Piños Indian Agency on Cochetopa Creek, Colorado, in April of 1874 couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw Alfred Packer stumbling sick and half-frozen into their offices. And the survival story he told them was pretty wild. Seems Packer and a party of six left on an ill-advised trip in the fall of 1873 and got trapped by winter storms. According to Packer, while he was away, scouting out a route home, a fellow traveler killed everybody. Poor Packer returned to find the killer roasting human meat, and was forced to kill the cannibal in self-defense. Trapped in the wilderness, Packer then had to live on the bodies of his murdered companions.

  When officials went to the campsite and found the murdered, hacked-up, half-eaten bodies of Packer’s former companions, they didn’t believe his story. Packer was jailed briefly. He escaped, was recaptured and imprisoned for 17 years. After his parole, Packer lived the remainder of his life in Colorado in relative peace. He died—get this—a devout vegetarian.


  PUTTIN’ ON THE RITZ

  So while we’re talking people-as-food, let’s talk food named for people. Escoffier, world-famous chef at the Ritz-Carlton in London, created several treats inspired by important ladies of the day: Peach Melba for opera diva Nellie Melba; strawberries Sarah Bernhardt for the famous actress; and Cherries Jubilee to celebrate Queen Victoria’s 50th year on the throne. But then, he had a little help from an absolutely killer kitchen staff.

  On the night Germany invaded Belgium in 1914, Escoffier’s had a young Vietnamese assistant on staff named Ho Chi Minh. Escoffier saw something exceptional in his hardworking kitchen helper and later promoted him to pastry chef. However, Ho Chi Minh was more interested in politics than pastry. In the end, he had a whole city named after him. Escoffier has only a sauce—a delicious sauce, but just a sauce—as his namesake.

  Between the two rebellions he led against Canada, Louis Riel was a schoolteacher in Montana.

  DOUBLE-CROSSED BY A DEAD MAN

  * * *

  The British soldier who was crucial to the Allies’ capture of Sicily didn’t know a thing about it—he had already been dead for days.

  WHERE TO NEXT?

  After the Allies’ successful campaign in North Africa during World War II, British Intelligence planned and executed an elaborate deception to fool the Germans about where their next objective would be. Winston Churchill put it bluntly: “Everyone but a bloody fool would know it’s Sicily.” The island was the perfect base for an invasion of Italy, but its rough terrain favored a defender. The Allies needed a plan that would prevent Hitler from reinforcing Sicily’s defenses.

  EWEN AND ARCHIBALD’S BOGUS ADVENTURE

  To direct attention away from Sicily, the Germans had to be fooled into believing the Allies were about to invade elsewhere. First a bogus plan was prepared that involved an attack in the Balkans and the invasion of Sardinia. A method had to be found to allow German Intelligence to discover the plan, and that problem was solved by two junior British officers named—how British can you get?—Lt. Commander Ewen Montagu and Squadron Leader Sir Archibald Cholmondley. Both were members of the XX (Double Cross) Committee, the counterespionage arm of British Intelligence.

  THEY DON’T CALL IT INTELLIGENCE FOR NOTHING

  The idea was to disguise a dead body as a staff officer, to plant high-level documents with falsified invasion plans, and then allow it to fall into German hands. They considered dropping the body from a plane over German occupied territory with a partially opened parachute, but abandoned that idea since an autopsy would show that he had died long before. The Double-Cross team decided to make the corpse a victim of a plane crash at sea because he would be expected to have been floating in the sea for several days. Montagu and Cholmondley selected a man who had died of pneumonia because he would have fluid in his lungs, and if an autopsy were performed, it would appear that he had died of drowning. They eventually found a body of a man in his early thirties who had been physically fit until his death, and received permission from his family to use the body with the understanding that his identity would never be revealed.

  One of Thomas Edison’s lesser-known inventions: a device to electrocute cockroaches.

  MEET MAJOR MARTIN

  They created an identity for him: Captain (and acting Major) William Martin of the Royal Marines, born in Cardiff, Wales, in 1907, and assigned to Headquarters, Combined Operations. The corpse was outfitted in an officer’s uniform with service ribbons and appropriate military identification. To make his identity more credible, Major Martin was given a photo of his fiancée along with a couple of love letters and even a receipt for an engagement ring. He was also supplied with theater ticket stubs, pound notes, loose change, keys, a statement from his club for lodging, some bills, and letters from his father. They chained a locked briefcase to him with official papers that subtly revealed the fake invasion plans and showed that Major Martin was flying from England to Allied headquarters in North Africa.

  BURIAL AT SEA

  On April 30, 1943, the submarine H.M.S. Seraph surfaced about a mile off the Spanish coast. Spain was selected for the drop because of the German military intelligence network in place there, and Allied intelligence’s confidence in the Spanish government’s willingness to cooperate with the Germans. Major Martin, secretly encased in dry ice, was brought up on deck. The captain ordered everyone below deck except for his officers. They outfitted Major Martin with a life jacket, read a prayer, then dumped his body overboard. A few hours later the dearly departed was spotted and recovered by a Spanish fisherman.

  BURIAL ON LAND

  After some delay and diplomatic shuffling, the Spanish government eventually returned Martin’s briefcase, apparently unopened. Once the documents returned to London, however, microscopic examination of the paper revealed the briefcase had indeed been opened, and the papers presumably photocopied. Major Martin was buried a few days later in Huelva, Spain with full military honors, surrounded by floral tributes from his heartbroken fiancée and family. Back in London, the June 4 edition of The Times noted Martin’s death in the casualty lists.

  In the 1980s, Prime Minister David Lange made New Zealand a nuclear-free zone.

  JOHN DOE REDEEMS HIMSELF

  The German intelligence operatives were completely fooled. “The authenticity of the captured documents is beyond doubt,” they reported. The Allied invasion of Sicily began on July 9, 1943. Montgomery’s British Eighth Army and Patton’s U.S. Seventh Army attacked the southern tip of Sicily and met limited resistance. Most of the Germans’ defenses were concentrated along the north coast. By the time the German High Command realized they had been deceived, the battle for Sicily was nearly over.

  After the war the deception was revealed and there has been a great deal of speculation as to Major Martin’s identity. It was never disclosed, but according to Montagu: “He was a bit of a ne’er-do-well, and. . .the only worthwhile thing that he ever did he did after his death.”

  TEN FACTS TO KNOW ABOUT WWII

  1. WWII officially started with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939.

  2. Adolf Hitler’s aborted plan to invade Great Britain was called Operation Sealion.

  3. The Battle of the Coral Sea was the first naval battle fought only between aircraft carriers.

  4. Okinawa was the last battle of WWII.

  5. Outnumbered Canadian troops surrendered Hong Kong to the Japanese on Christmas Day 1941.

  6. The heaviest tank of WWII was the German Tiger II.

  7. Russian forces fought and won the Battle for Berlin, bringing an end to the war in Europe.

  8. On D-Day, the Canadians came ashore on Juno Beach.

  9. The Japanese built the two biggest battleships of WWII: Yamato and Musashi.

  10. The last Führer was Admiral Karl Donitz.

  Technically, the first American president was John Hanson of Maryland.

  DIRTY SECRETS IN THE HISTORY OF HYGIENE (Part II): RUB-A-DUB-DUB

  * * *

  “Give us this day our daily bath” could be a motto of modern life. But bathing habits have changed drastically over the course of human history.

  The ancient Roman baths are legendary for good reason. They were huge marble and tile structures that weren’t just for bathing: The more luxurious ones had gardens, libraries, and even lecture halls. The grandest baths were named for the emperors who built them: the baths of Caracalla, for instance, covered nearly 28 acres.

  A SOCIAL OCCASION

  The Roman baths were gathering places for exchanging news, playing board games, or exercising with dumbbells and medicine balls. People would spend whole days there, like at Disneyland. Entry fees were low and children were admitted free (so they weren’t that much like Disneyland).

  RUNNING HOT AND COLD

  Bathers had the choice of several different types of baths. The frigidarium (brrrrr!) was the cold water bath. The tepidarium contained—as you might guess—warm water. The caldarium was hot, hot, ho
t. A bather might start with the tepidarium, get very warm in the caldarium before finishing his bath off with an invigorating plunge (ah!) into the frigidarium. Because the aqueducts supplied a constant stream of water to Rome, it was no big deal to empty and refill the pools with fresh water every day.

  ON GOOD BEHAVIOR

  During the time of Julius Caesar (100–44 B.C.) mixed bathing was prohibited. Later the rules were relaxed and the sexes bathed together. To keep order, there were rules. Rule number one was “Don’t stare.” The second rule was to behave as though fully dressed. And some people may have actually managed to do that. But as Rome declined, the baths became places for licentiousness and orgies. Maybe this was why the early Christians thought of bathing as sinful. In fact, after the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, bathing became rare.