Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader (53 page)

TELEGRAMS

Samuel Morse invented the telegraph in 1837. Electrical currents sent in a system of pulses and patterns (Morse code) were translated into words, forming messages, or “telegrams.” It was the first means of instant long-distance communication, decades before the telephone. It caught on fast. Western Union had a coast-to-coast network of electrical telegraph lines in place by 1861. Messages would be sent from one telegraph office to another, then printed or written out, and hand-delivered to the intended recipient. They lasted well into the 20th century, even after the birth of the telephone, but faded in the late 1940s as phone service improved and long- distance calls became cheaper. Western Union is still around, but they’ve switched their business to wiring money.

MENDING

Up until the 1950s, many mothers spent their evenings patching worn knees on pants, fixing shirt collars, and mending holes in dresses. Nothing was beyond fixing if money could be saved by not having to buy something new. Even socks were saved. The hole was stretched over a “darning egg” and a series of stitches filled the gap. But as women increasingly worked outside the home from the 1960s on, working mothers didn’t want to spend what little extra time they had mending holes in socks. At the same time, mass-produced clothing was becoming less expensive and more disposable. Today, rips in pants seldom get patched and holes in socks rarely get darned. The old garments just get thrown away.

UNANSWERED PHONES

For the first several decades of widespread phone usage, if nobody was around to answer the phone, the call was gone forever. Couldn’t get out of the bathtub? Gone. Couldn’t get the front door open in time? Gone. How many businesses missed an important sale? How many teenagers missed a big date? In 1960 Phonetel introduced Ansofone, America’s first practical telephone answering machine—a heavy, clunky tape recorder with two reels: one to play outgoing messages and one to record incoming messages. Simpler phone jacks and cheaper technology made the next generation of answering machines popular in the 1970s. Now computerized “voice mail” has outpaced answering machines in sales since the late 1980s.

The first answering machines weighed about 10 pounds.

DUBIOUS ACHIEVERS

Some awards we all hope not to get some day
.

M
OST MUGGABLE
. Reiner Hamer of Öberhausen, Germany, was in the restroom of a nightclub when three men robbed him of his wallet. Hamer immediately borrowed a friend’s cell phone, went outside to call the police…and got mugged again. Three different men held him up: the first took the phone; the second, his watch; the third, his cigarettes. Minutes later he was assaulted yet again, this time losing his jacket to a gang of five more muggers.

BIGGEST BEANEATERS
. British supermarket giant Tesco did a survey in 2004 to find out which British town bought the most cans of baked beans per household. The winner: West Bromwich. “So loved are beans in West Bromwich,” said Tesco spokeswoman Florinda Deiana, “that local shoppers buy an average 11 cans each week.” In recognition, Tesco dubbed the town “the Windy City.”

BEST NOSE-DRINKER
. China’s
Star Daily
newspaper reported on a man with a curious talent: Jin Guolong of Henan, China, can hold the rim of a glass up to his nose and “drink” through his nostrils. According to the report, Jin can nose-drink a full glass of orange juice in seconds.

COOLEST CLIMBER
. In 2004, 35-year-old Paul McKelvey walked 100 miles from Liverpool to the top of Mount Snowden (3,560 feet)…with an 84-pound refrigerator strapped to his back. The ex–Royal Marine completed the trip in four days. And though it may have been a dubious achievement, he did it for a good cause: he raised money for a children’s hospice called Zoe’s Place.

BIGGEST WINDBAG
. On May 25, 2005, lawyer Nicholas Stadlen finished his opening statement in defense of the collapsed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). In doing so, he broke the record for the longest speech in British legal history: 119 days. The newspaper
The Mirror
noted the event with the headline: “I Rest My Face.”

Number one cause of accidental death in the U.S.: car accidents, followed by falls.

UNCLE JOHN CLEANS YOUR KITCHEN

Spending your precious “reading room” time learning kitchen cleaning tricks may seem like a waste. But if it makes your chores pass more quickly, that frees up more time for the reading room, doesn’t it?

• A fun (and better) way to clean a blender: partially fill it with hot tap water, add a little soap, let it run for 10 seconds.

• You can remove minor scratches from glassware by “polishing” it with toothpaste.

• Smelly garbage disposal? Throw half a lemon down the drain and grind it up; the acid will kill the odor and replace it with the lemon’s fresh scent.

• To clean chrome, use a damp sponge and baking soda. To remove rust from chrome, wrap your finger in aluminum foil and rub the chrome until the rust is gone, then wipe with a damp cloth.

• Denture cleaning tablets (Efferdent or a similar brand) can clean a smelly thermos. Fill it with warm water, drop in three denture tablets, let it sit for an hour, and then rinse.

• Eliminate coffee or tea stains in mugs by filling them with an equal mixture of table salt and vinegar.

• To clean a cutting board, sprinkle it with salt, then rub it with a slice of lemon.

• Washing an especially greasy load of dishes in the sink? Adding vinegar to the dish water will help cut the grease.

• Is grease making the drain in your kitchen sink sluggish? Pour in a cup of baking soda, followed by a cup of table salt, and then a quart of boiling water. You should notice an improvement right away.

• Does your microwave smell like fish? Pour a teaspoon of vanilla extract into a glass measuring cup and microwave on high for a minute.

• You know that an open box of baking soda absorbs bad odors in the fridge; a small bowl of vanilla extract will give it a nice scent.

• You can kill the germs in a damp sponge by putting it in the microwave for 30 seconds. As soon as you see steam, the germs are dead.

In Bram Stoker’s original novel, Dracula had a mustache.

THE SAD FATE OF MURDEROUS MARY

Here’s a look at one of the most bizarre episodes in American circus history
.

B
IG DAY
On September 12, 1916, the Sparks World Famous Shows circus rolled into the town of Kingsport, Tennessee. In the days before television and radio, life could get pretty dull in small towns and the day the circus came to town was an event. The entire circus—performers, animals, everything—paraded through the middle of town to where the tents were going to be set up.

The animals in the Sparks circus included five elephants. “Mighty Mary,” the largest of the five, was the star of the entire circus: she was featured on posters and billed as “the Largest Living Land Animal on Earth.” Their parade through town went off without a hitch and so did the 2 p.m. matinee show. But a trip to a local watering hole later that day ended in tragedy.

KIDS, DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME

A few days earlier, the circus had passed through St. Paul, Virginia, where a drifter named Walter “Red” Eldridge signed on as an assistant to the elephant trainer and continued with them to Kingsport.

It was Eldridge’s job to make sure the elephants were fed and watered, and when the matinee performance ended, he and the other assistants climbed atop their charges and set off for a watering hole about a half-mile away. Eldridge was riding Mary, who led the rest of the elephants in single file. The procession drew a small crowd of townspeople, who followed closely behind.

According to witnesses, when Mary stopped to nibble on a watermelon rind that was lying in the street, Eldridge prodded her with his “elephant stick,” a wooden stick with a metal hook at one end, to get her moving again. Mary ignored him and kept eating, so Eldridge whacked her really hard on the head.

The cruel blow was the last mistake Eldridge would ever make. Mary flew into a rage, grabbing Eldridge with her trunk and throwing him against a wooden stand. Then, while he was lying motionless on the ground, she walked over and stomped his head with her foot.

Sniffing Crayola crayons has been found to lower blood pressure.

MURDEROUS MARY

Terrified spectators ran for their lives as circus workers tried to calm Mary down. Today, if a mistreated elephant lashed out at an abusive handler, much of the public would sympathize with the elephant. That wasn’t the case in 1916. According to newspaper reports, when Mary calmed down, the crowd returned, this time shouting, “Kill the elephant! Kill the elephant!”

Word of the death quickly spread beyond the town. Local newspapers covered the story extensively, giving Mary the nickname “Murderous Mary,” and reported rumors that she had killed as many as 15 men in the past.
Fifteen
men was certainly an exaggeration, but had Mary killed before? In those days when an elephant killed someone, it was common for the circus to change the animal’s name and quietly sell it to another circus. It’s possible that this had been done with Mary. Almost a century after the fact, no one knows for sure.

WHAT TO DO?

Given all the publicity, even if Charlie Sparks, the owner of the circus, had wanted to sell Mary to another show, it was doubtful he’d have been able to. Besides, Mary was the star of the show, the thing that people came to see more than anything else. Sparks wanted to keep Mary…if he could.

The summer touring season was nearly over; soon the circus would shut down for the winter. With any luck, by the following summer the furor would have died down. But if Sparks had hopes of keeping Mary with the circus until then, he quickly came to realize that it was impossible: Already the mayors of two upcoming stops, Johnson City and Rogersville, Tennessee, had sent word that if Mary was still with the circus it would not be allowed inside the city limits. As news of Eldridge’s death continued to spread, it was likely that other towns would drop out, too. There were even rumors that the governor of Tennessee was preparing to order Mary destroyed, and that a mob of vigilantes armed with a Civil War cannon was on its way to do the job itself.

Russian bricklayers have been known to mix vodka into their mortar to keep it from freezing.

Sparks had bills to pay, a payroll to meet, and animals to feed. To do this he needed money; to get money he needed to put on his circus. He considered his options…and realized he didn’t have any. Mary would have to be put down. What’s more, she’d have to be put down in a very public way, so that people would be satisfied that she really
was
dead, not just lying low until the heat was off.

HOW TO DO IT

Shooting Mary was too risky—a crowd would likely be on hand to witness the execution, and there was a danger that someone might be hit by rifle fire, or that Mary would go on a rampage if the first shot failed to kill her. Tearing Mary in half by tying her to two locomotives and sending them off in opposite directions was rejected as cruel and inhumane.

No doubt with an eye on publicity, Sparks decided that a public hanging was the best way to put Mary down. The nearby town of Erwin had a railroad yard with a 100-ton “derrick car” (a railroad car with a crane on it) that was used to load and unload lumber. It was strong enough to do the job, so Sparks had the circus make an unscheduled stop in Erwin the following day.

THE MAIN EVENT

On the afternoon of September 13, the Sparks circus put on a matinee performance in Erwin. Mary was not part of the show—she was chained to a stake in the ground behind the big top and, according to eyewitnesses, was nervously swaying back and forth while the show went on without her.

When the matinee ended the
real
show began. A mob of as many as 3,000 people crowded into the railroad yard to witness the spectacle; throngs of people climbed atop locomotives and boxcars to get a better view. A little after 4 p.m., Mary and the other elephants were marched single file into the railroad yard and alongside the derrick car that would serve as the gallows. Mary was chained to the railroad track to keep her from escaping. Then the other elephants, who were there to keep Mary calm, were led away so that they wouldn’t witness what was about to happen. As they walked away, Mary became visibly upset and once again started swaying back and forth. A circus worker placed a chain around Mary’s neck, looped it through a steel ring to form a noose, and attached it to the derrick arm.

Technically speaking, brides don’t walk down the aisle…they walk down the
nave
.

A GRUESOME END

When the signal was given, the derrick operator pulled a lever and the derrick arm began to rise. As it did the chain began to tighten around Mary’s neck. Her head was raised, her front feet lifted off the ground, and then the rear legs followed, until she was dangling in midair about six feet off the ground.

Suddenly there was a loud SNAP! and Mary crashed to the ground. The chain had snapped, and now Mary was loose. Terrified that she was about to go on a rampage, the crowd tried to run for it. But Mary didn’t move—she just sat there, stunned, on her hindquarters. She had apparently broken her hip in the fall.