Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  A large reward was offered for the capture of those who had dared to even try to steal from the Scottish taxpayer. John Brown decided to turn king’s evidence. He told the disbelieving authorities that the man behind the raid was none other than the highly respected Deacon William Brodie. The police were dispatched to Brodie’s apartment—but only so they could officially discount the preposterous suggestion that he could be involved.

  THE EVIDENCE

  But what they found there substantiated Brown’s accusation. Skeleton keys, a burglar’s black suit, and several pistols were catalogued and taken to headquarters for further examination. Brodie himself was nowhere to be found. He’d fled to Holland, intending to set sail for America. But as he boarded the ship (in top hat and tails), he was approached by two Dutch police officers. They escorted him back to dry land and extradited him back to Edinburgh to face his accusers.

  Dressed in a three-piece suit and top hat, Brodie gazed fixedly at his accusers. He answered questions with a haughty carelessness. He seemed completely untroubled by the fate that awaited him—death by hanging.

  THE EXECUTION

  As he stood on the gallows that he himself—in his role as city councilor—had designed, Brodie offered up his own prayer (which is too hypocritical for us to repeat). Then he bravely beckoned for the hangman to perform his task.

  A trickster to the end, Brodie had one last card to play. The night before he’d rigged his clothes with wire from neck to ankle to take the jerk of the rope; the silver tube he’d stuck down his throat was supposed to prevent his neck from breaking. However, the trick failed, and Deacon Brodie breathed his last on October 1, 1788.

  When Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar, Oct. 4, 1582 was followed by Oct. 15.

  MORE BOUNCE TO THE OUNCE

  * * *

  It’s hard to think of a substance more useful than rubber. It’s on the bottom of your shoes, in the tires of your car, and in the balloons at your birthday party.

  There’s a story that Christopher Columbus was the first European to discover rubber. When he was in Haiti, he noticed some boys playing with a rubber ball. The local people took Columbus into the forest and showed him how, when they cut the bark of certain trees, a milky white liquid (latex, to you) bled from the cut. When the latex dried, it was solid and spongy. Besides the balls the kids were playing with, the Indians also made waterproof shoes and bottles from the strange substance. But if he brought some of it back with him to Spain, he never mentioned it.

  RUBBER BOUNCES ALONG. . . BUT SLOWLY

  It was mentioned here and there by some Portuguese and Spanish writers in the 16th century. In the 1730s two scientists, Charles de la Condamine and François Fresneau, made an official report to the French Academy of Sciences on rubber’s characteristics and properties. Now the Europeans were curious enough to mount expeditions to the Amazon to try to find some more.

  INNOVATIONS

  In 1770 an English chemist named Joseph Priestly discovered that the substance rubbed out marks from a pencil—what the English came to call a “rubber,” and what Americans call an “eraser.”

  Then, in 1832, Scottish chemist Charles MacKintosh started manufacturing his soon-to-be-famous “mackintosh” raincoats. But rubber remained nothing more than a curiosity because of the way it reacted to the elements: cold made it extremely brittle, and heat made it sticky.

  A GOOD YEAR FOR GOODYEAR

  All this changed in 1839 when American inventor Charles Goodyear accidentally spilled a mixture of rubber and sulfur onto a hot stove. Now the rubber stayed firm, whether it was hot or cold. This process of mixing and heating rubber was called vulcanization, after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.

  The Roanoke settlers who vanished may have been massacred by Pocahontas’s father.

  THEY’VE GOT AN AWFUL LOT OF RUBBER IN BRAZIL

  The miracle of vulcanization made rubber a hot commodity. At first, almost all the latex was harvested in the Amazon Basin. Brazilian merchants were making a fortune, while the rest of the entrepreneurial world watched them hungrily.

  IT WASN’T REALLY STEALING

  That is until, in 1876, an English botanist, Sir Henry Wickham, brought some back to England. He told Brazilian customs officials that the 70,000 rubber tree seeds he was bringing to England were botanical specimens for the royal plant collection. And they were dumb enough to believe him.

  TRICKY, TRICKY

  But once the rubber tree seedlings were old enough, the English government sent them to Ceylon and Malaya, where they were plunked into the ground. By the turn of the 19th century, large rubber plantations in the Pacific Rim supplied most of the world’s natural rubber.

  NOT THE KIND YOU WEAR ON YOUR FEET

  Rubber changed the way people lived, not the least of which was in the area of contraception. In the 1860s, a medical entrepreneur named Edward Bliss Foote marketed a one-size-fits-all “womb veil.” At about the same time, the first rubber “caps” for men were manufactured. These innovations were soon followed by full-size condoms, known as “rubbers.”

  IS IT REALLY RUBBER?

  During World War I, when the Allied blockade prevented Germany from getting the rubber it needed for tires, German scientists set to work on an artificial substitute. By the time World War II broke out, rubber was even more strategically important, but good synthetics were still prohibitively expensive. When Japan seized control of most of the rubber-producing islands of the Pacific Rim, effectively cutting off the U.S. supply, the search for synthetics was fast and furious. Within a few years, good synthetics made from petroleum were in wide use. Today, it’s hard to find the real thing: Almost all “rubber” in manufacturing is synthetic.

  Pony Express couriers included Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok.

  IMMANUEL KANT TRIES COMEDY

  * * *

  A great philosopher tries to make you laugh.

  When philosopher Immanuel Kant claimed that human beings could never grasp the ultimate nature of reality, he changed the face of philosophy forever. That’s what they say, anyway.

  THE YUCKS

  When he wasn’t pondering the nature of reality, he spent a lot of time on the subject of laughter. In his Critique of Judgment, he said, “Laughter is an affection arising from strained expectation being suddenly reduced to nothing.”

  But then, he tried to prove it by telling some jokes:

  • An Indian at an Englishman’s table in Surat saw a bottle of ale opened, and all the beer turned into froth and flowed out. The repeated exclamations of the Indian showed his great astonishment. “Well, what is so wonderful in that?” asked the Englishman. “Oh, I’m not surprised myself,” said the Indian, “at its getting out, but at how you ever managed to get it all in.” (“At this we laugh,” added Kant, “and it gives us hearty pleasure.”)

  • Did you hear the one about the sailing merchant who had to throw all his goods overboard in a storm? He “grieved to such an extent that in the selfsame night his wig turned gray.”

  • A wealthy man died, and his heir had difficulties conducting his funeral. Complained the heir, “The more money I give my mourners to look sad, the more pleased they look.”

  Hang on to that day job, Immanuel.

  During World War II, German U-boats sank 23 vessels in Canada’s St. Lawrence River.

  IT’S ALL GREEK TO ME

  * * *

  Ten Greek Philosophers Worth Knowing

  So, there you are at the Philosophy Department mixer at your local university, trying to make small talk. Don’t panic: you can impress that bookishly cute graduate student with the knowledge of ancient Greek philosophers you’ll learn about right this very second. It’s quick, it’s easy, and no one needs to know just where you got the info. Ready? Here we go.

  Thales: Regarded by most philosophy types as the “First Philosopher,” this guy (c.625–547 B.C.) did it all. He was a statesman, an astronomer, and a mathematician—he predicted an eclipse and he suggested that sa
ilors use the constellation Ursa Minor to sail by (a good idea, since the North Star is in it). But his big idea was that everything was ultimately made out of water. The details are wrong, but the idea that there’s something that everything has in common is an important one—the first step toward a universal “theory of everything” that motivates scientists even today.

  Anaximander: Thales thought that water was the universal element; Anaximander (610–c.545 B.C.) said it was a substance called “apeiron,” a sort of weird nothingness out of which certain qualities (hot or cold, wet or dry) could be extracted. This is a freaky, abstract kind of thought, and that’s precisely why it’s interesting—it’s an attempt to describe nature using theory, rather than something that can be explicitly touched and seen. Anaximander also suggested humans evolved from fishlike creatures, beating that smug twerp Darwin by a couple of millennia.

  Pythagoras: Yes, that Pythagoras, the one whose theory about triangles gave you such a headache in geometry class. So it should come as no surprise that Pythagoras (580–500 B.C.) declared that everything in the universe was fundamentally mathematical, right down to our souls, which he believed were exceptionally purified numbers. Imagine going to heaven and finding out you’re a “3.” No, it doesn’t make sense to us either, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t influential; if you’ve got a “lucky number,” you’re playing with a faint echo of Pythagoras’ teachings.

  The United States paid Russia just two cents an acre for Alaska.

  Heraclitus: Heraclitus (540–480 B.C.) gets credit for being the first Western philosopher to have the idea that opposites define each other—what is “hot” without “cold”? “Happiness” without “sadness”? Yes, you figured this one out in high school, while you were (ahem) “listening” to Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon.” But Heraclitus did it first, and he believed that interaction of opposites helped give the universe structure and balance. He wasn’t too far off—just ask Newton, who noted that “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” That’s not just an observation, it’s a law of motion. Duuuude.

  Empedocles: This guy claimed he was a god, and legend has it he jumped into a volcano to prove it, at which point, of course, he died a painful, flaming, screaming death. The legend isn’t true, but the guy’s dead now in any event, so there goes that whole god thing. Anyway, Empedocles (490–430 B.C.) is the fellow who gave us the four “classical elements”—earth, air, fire, and water—from which everything was supposed to be made, in varying amounts. This was incorrect, but people kept believing it, more or less, for the next couple thousand years. Empedocles is also considered the father of rhetoric and of medicine.

  Democritus: Democritus (460–c.370 B.C.) was, along with his mentor Leucippus, an “atomist”—a proponent of the idea that everything we can see is made of countless little bits of matter we can’t see, and that these little bits were ultimately indivisible. As it turns out, Democritus was pretty much exactly right on all counts (it’s not a coincidence we call the smallest bits of organized matter “atoms”), although it would take another two millennia until chemist-philosopher John Dalton made any headway into explaining the details. Blame it on the Dark Ages.

  Protagoras: If you’ve ever met someone who likes to argue for the sake of arguing, you’ve met a spiritual descendant of Protagoras (c.490–421 B.C.), who’s gone down in history as the first “Sophist”—a breed of philosopher that argued there was no objective truth, and that everything had to be viewed through its relationship with man (“Man is the measure of all things,” is his famous quote). This sort of flagrant moral relativism (that’s what it was called) didn’t make Protagoras very popular; he was booted out of Athens for his beliefs (or lack thereof). However, that’s not the worst thing Athenians ever did to a philosopher.

  The Union Ironclad Monitor was the first ship to have a flush toilet.

  Socrates: Here’s the worst thing Athenians ever did to a philosopher—made him suck down a cup of poison. They did it to Socrates (469–399 B.C.), arguing he was corrupter of the youth of Athens because, you know, he asked them questions. And then they started thinking. Can’t have that. Actually, Socrates’ big innovation was that fact he asked questions—using them in a process known as “dialectic,” by which truth was to arise by critically examining the statements of those around him. It’s a process still used today. All we know of Socrates comes from the writings of his contemporaries, notably. . .

  Plato: The big cheese of Greek philosophy, Plato’s big idea was the concept of “forms.” These were perfect, totally realized versions of everything (horses, trees, sitcoms, bathroom reading material, etc.) against which the versions we actually see in our lives are but poor copies. Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.) communicated this idea in his famous “Parable of the Cave,” in which men chained to face one direction see shadows on a cave wall and think the shadows to be true representations of the world, when in fact they’re just twisted, flickering shadows (the idea being we’re all chained cavemen, the real world is flickering shadows, and the “forms” are the real objects). Theoretically you can be trained to perceive the forms, but it might take more time than you’ve got.

  Aristotle: The good news is that Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) was a dazzling thinker, writing exhaustively on subjects ranging from astronomy to logic to politics to theology, and he had a ton of really interesting ideas which continue to inform science and philosophy right to this day. The bad news is that he wasn’t right about everything, but was considered such an authority that Europe (or more accurately, the Catholic Church, which borrowed heavily from Aristotle for its brand of philosophy known as Scholasticism) more or less took him at his word on things scientific for right up to the Renaissance. Eventually they got over it, mostly, but we probably lost a few centuries spinning our wheels. And this is why you don’t have your own personal rocket car to the moon right now.

  America’s first nudist organization was founded by three men.

  WHAT A WAY TO GO! IMMORTAL, BUT DEAD

  * * *

  Strange and unusual events surrounding the deaths of famous people.

  Aeschylus: 456 B.C.

  The founder of Greek tragedy died when an eagle mistook his shiny bald head for a rock and dropped a tortoise on it to crack the shell. According to legend the shell remained intact.

  Attila the Hun: A.D. 453

  The King of the Huns died of a bloody nose. He ate and drank heavily at his wedding feast the night before. Sometime during the night he choked to death on the blood, some say probably from overexerting himself with his new young bride.

  King John: 1216

  This king of England was such a glutton that he eventually died of dysentery, caused by too much fruit and cider.

  Ivan the Terrible: 1584

  The notorious Russian czar saw a comet and believed it to be a sign that he would die. His body became swollen, but his doctors couldn’t find the cause. He died a short while later of his mysterious illness.

  Tycho Brahe: 1601

  The Danish astronomer was such a stickler for good table manners that it cost him his life. After a couple of hours of heavy drinking, he needed to relieve himself, but instead he sat down at the table for dinner with guests. He felt increasingly uncomfortable, but the etiquette of the day forbade leaving the table during dinner. His bladder burst, and he died 11 days later.

  Jean-Baptiste Lully: 1687

  The French composer was conducting his orchestra so vigorously that he stabbed himself in the toe with his baton. The injury became infected, but he would not allow his doctor to amputate the toe. After a few weeks the doctors told him they would have to amputate his entire leg in order for him to survive, but he refused that as well. He died soon after.

  The United States paid France just three cents an acre for the Louisiana Purchase.

  U.S. Major General John Sedgwick: 1864

  During the American Civil War, General Sedgewick was on the front lines, trying to calm his troop
s. “I tell you they cannot hit an elephant at this distance,” he said. Just then he was hit in the head and killed by a sharpshooter’s bullet.

  Chang and Eng Bunker: 1874

  The famous “Siamese twins” were really Chinese. When they joined up with P.T. Barnum, they became American citizens and took the last name, “Bunker.” When Chang died of bronchial trouble, Eng died of fright because he thought he would die, too.

  P.T. Barnum: 1891

  America’s greatest showman, known for his classic line, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” wanted to read his obituary before he died. The New York Evening Sun was happy to oblige and printed it under the title “Great and Only Barnum. He wanted to read his Obituary; Here it is.” The 80-year-old Barnum obliged by dying two weeks later.