Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (22 page)

In 1972 the Oregon Health Department discovered that the chunks in Hoody Chunky Style Peanut Butter were not peanuts, but rat droppings. Company executives were sentenced to 10 days in prison for health violations, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued strict new guidelines on the amount of foreign matter permissible in packaged foods. They include:

1. No more than 50 insect fragments or two rodent hairs per 100 grams of peanut butter.
   
2. No more than 10 fruit fly eggs in 100 grams of tomato juice.
   
3. No more than 150 insect fragments in an eight-ounce chocolate bar.
   

—Wrong Again!

Uncle John wants to know why Slinky is such a popular toy. Sure, it's fascinating, but let's face it—once you've “walked” it down the stairs a few times, there's not much more you can do with it. Never mind. It's a classic. We love it. It's Slinky!

1.
What happened when the Slinky first hit the shelves of Macy's department store in New York City in 1949?

a)
Sales were so poor that creators Richard and Betty James pretended to be customers and started buying Slinkys in the hope of drawing attention to their display

b)
Slinkys were so popular that they had to be removed from the store's shelves because the crowds of people were creating a fire hazard

c)
After several accidents where children became tangled in the Slinky's wire coils, they were banned from the store

d)
The weight of the metal Slinkys caused the shelves to collapse, leaving one salesman dead and two customers badly injured

2.
Slinkys were used to make all of the following, except which one?

a)
A pecan-picker

b)
Makeshift radio antennas for soldiers during the Vietnam War

c)
A therapeutic tool for stroke victims

d)
A device used to display toupees

3.
All of the following Slinkys were really made, except which one?

a)
A gold-plated Slinky

b)
Felt-covered Slinky Pets with animal faces and tails

c)
A novelty telephone called the Slink-a-Phone

d)
A slinky board game called the Amazing Slinky Game

4.
What company used the Slinky jingle in an ad campaign?

a)
Isuzu Amigo

b)
Hershey Kisses

c)
Pepto-Bismol Chewables

d)
North Face Sneakers

5.
In 1999 Slinky won what honor?

a)
Asked to appear on a U.S. postage stamp

b)
Received an honorary Oscar for numerous film appearances

c)
Awarded a Junior Nobel Prize for combining physics with play

d)
Sealy created a Slinky mattress in recognition of Slinky's outstanding work with springs

6.
How much wire is used to make a Slinky?

a)
30 feet

b)
55 feet

c)
80 feet

d)
112 feet

7.
How did the inventor come up with the name Slinky?

a)
He named it after his secretary's favorite black dress (it was actually his favorite dress, too)

b)
His wife found it in the dictionary—it took her two days of searching before she found a word that described the toy

c)
He was inspired by his out-of-work brother-in-law's nickname: “Slinky” Wilson

d)
The toy fell in the toilet and got stuck—the plumber had to use a tool he called a Slinky to unclog it

8.
Slinky has been to which of the following?

a)
Outer space—aboard a NASA Space Shuttle to test the power of a Slinky in zero gravity

b)
Egypt—to test its ability to “climb” down the side of the Great Pyramid at Giza

c)
Arctic Circle—to test the magnetic effect of the North Pole on a Slinky

d)
White House—a gift to President Eisenhower in 1953 as an example of “American ingenuity” a;

1.
b;
2.
d;
3.
c;
4.
a;
5.
a;
6.
c;
7.
b;
8.
a

Most families vacation in Florida because of the warm weather and abundance of theme parks. You can shake hands with Mickey Mouse at Disney World, feed the dolphins at SeaWorld…and duck and cover in New Vietnam. Well, at least that was the idea.

In 1975 Reverend Carl McIntire, a New Jersey fundamentalist preacher and pro-Vietnam War activist, began construction on what was to be “New Vietnam.” Spread out over 300 acres of land in Cape Canaveral, Florida, McIntire and his partner, former Green Beret Giles Pace, envisioned a theme park where people could get a glimpse of the Vietnam War.

What would the theme park look like? Here are a few of the attractions McIntire planned:

•
Sampan
ride.
A
sampan
is an Asian sailboat. Tourists would take a sampan ride around a moat that encircled a recreated Vietnamese village with a neighboring Special Forces camp.

•
Special Forces camp.
The camp would be made up of simple concrete barracks displaying weapons “used by the Commies in Vietnam.” Around the barracks would be trenches and mortar bunkers complete with sandbag walls and sham machine guns.

•
The perimeter.
The camp would be surrounded with row upon row of barbed wire,
punji
stakes, and fake Claymore mines to add to the atmosphere. “We'll have a recording, broadcasting a fire-fight, mortars exploding, bullets flying, Vietnamese screaming,” McIntire explained, while hired GIs shoot blanks at the enemy. Visitors would be encouraged to take cover in the barracks or station themselves behind a machine gun and get in on the action.

•
A Vietnamese village.
The village would be made up of 16 thatched huts and four concrete upper-class Vietnamese homes that would double as retail shops and snack bars serving traditional Vietnamese cuisine. So after working up an appetite manning the machine guns, park visitors could stop in for a bowl of rice and noodles. The village was to be completely authentic, with irrigated
paddies, water buffalo, cows, chickens, ducks, and palm trees.

•
Vietnamese people.
Vietnamese people—real refugees from the real war—would travel through the village in traditional outfits and make New Vietnam come to life. McIntire planned this as a make-work program for Vietnamese refugees arriving in Florida at the end of the war. “Every penny will go back to the Vietnamese. The Bible says love your neighbor.”

“They'll work anywhere for a paycheck,” Pace commented. “And this will be work that won't be in competition with anyone else. There's nothing offensive about it.”

The idea bombed and the park was never completed. Vietnamese refugees, having just experienced the horrors of a real war, weren't about to participate in a fake one. “My wife won't walk around that village in a costume like Mickey Mouse,” refugee Cong Nguyen Binh told reporters. “We want to forget. We want to live here like you. We don't want any more war.”

• The rare
red
coral of the Mediterranean is actually
blue
.

• The
gray
whale is actually
black
.

• Whale
bone
is actually made of
baleen
, a material from the whales' upper jaws.

• The Atlantic
salmon
is actually a member of the
trout
family.

•
Heart
burn is actually pyrosis, caused by the presence of gastric secretions, called reflux, in the lower
esophagus
.

• The Caspian
Sea
and the Dead
Sea
are both actually
lakes
.

• The horseshoe
crab
is more closely related to
spiders
and
scorpions
than crabs.

• The Douglas
fir
is actually a
pine
tree.

• A
steel
-jacketed bullet is actually made of
brass
.

• Rip
tides
are actually
currents
.

Here's some holiday trivia you may not have come across before.

In 1893 amid growing labor unrest, President Grover Cleveland sent 12,000 federal troops to stop a strike at the Pullman train car company in Chicago. The strike was broken, but two men were killed and many more were beaten. For Cleveland and the Democrats, the move backfired—the pro-business brutality only served to bolster the growing union movement.

To win back constituents, Congess passed legislation the following year making the first Monday in September a national holiday honoring labor. It was a presidential election year, so President Cleveland promptly signed the bill into law, hoping it would appease American workers. It didn't. Cleveland was defeated…but Labor Day was established for good.

February 2, the midpoint between winter solstice and spring equinox, has been celebrated for eons. The Celts called it
Imbolc
(
“
in the belly”—for sheep pregnant with lambs); Romans had
Lupercalia
, a fertility celebration. For other cultures, too, the day was marked by rituals of “rebirth” and hope for a bountiful new growing season.

According to Irish tradition, a snake emerges from “the womb of Earth” and tests the weather to see if spring has arrived. The Germans had a similar tradition, except that they watched for badgers waking from hibernation. If the day was a sunny, shadow-casting day, more winter weather was to come. No shadow meant an early spring.

When German settlers came to Pennsylvania in the 1700s, they brought the custom with them…but there were no badgers, so they substituted another hibernating animal: the groundhog.

Attempts to designate a national day honoring Native Americans have been made—unsuccessfully—for nearly a century. In 1914 Red Fox James, a Blackfoot Indian, rode 4,000 miles on horseback
in support of a national day of recognition for Native Americans. He ended the journey in Washington, D.C., where his proposal for the holiday was adopted by 24 state governments. The state of New York became the first to officially designate an American Indian Day, in May 1916.

While it has yet to be recognized as a national holiday, several states, South Dakota being the first, have officially changed another time-honored holiday to American Indian Day: the second Monday in October—Columbus Day.