Uncle John's Great Big Bathroom Reader (28 page)

So who knows? Maybe every once in a while, Nostradamus really did tap into the future. To see what he predicted for 2000, check out “Nostradamus Today” on
page 390
.

BRI member Tim Harrower sent us these puzzles and dared us to solve them. They were a favorite in the BRI “research lab,” so we’re “passing” them on to you. See
page 461
for the answers.

1
.
A married couple goes to a movie. During the film, the husband strangles the wife. No one notices—and he’s able to get her body back home without attracting attention. How did he do this?

2
.
A man goes to a party, drinks some punch, and then leaves early. Everyone else at the party who drinks the punch dies of poison. Why didn’t the man die?

3.
One day Kerry celebrates her birthday. Two days later, her older twin brother Terry celebrates his birthday. How could this be, when they were born a half-hour apart?

4.
How quickly can you find out what is unusual about this paragraph? It looks so ordinary that you would think that nothing is wrong with it at all—and, in fact, nothing is. But it
is
a bit odd. Why? If you study it and think about it, you may find out, but I am not going to assist you in any way. You must do it without coaching. No doubt, if you work at it for long, it will dawn on you. Who knows?

5.
It’s the ninth inning. The pitcher delivers; the batter hits a deep fly ball. The outfielder starts to catch it—then deliberately lets it fall from his glove. Why?

6.
John’s mother has three children. The oldest is a boy named Herbert, who has brown eyes—everyone calls him Herb. Next youngest is a girl named Penelope. Everyone calls her Penny. The youngest child has green eyes and can wiggle his ears. What is his first name?

7.
Three men decide to share a hotel room for the night. The desk clerk charges them $30. They each pay $10. After they go to their room, the desk clerk realizes the room is only $25, so he gives a bellhop $5 to take up to the men. On his way up, the bellhop decides to
tip himself $2 for his trouble. In the room, he gives each man $1—which means that each guy actually paid $9 for the room.

So: 3 x $9 = $27; the bellhop kept $2; that adds up to $29. Where did the other dollar go?

What’s going on here? Why doesn’t the math add up right?

8.
An hour later, two women check into another room. The room is $30; they each pay $15. Again, the desk clerk realizes the room is only $25, so he gives the bellhop $5 to take up to the women. This time, the bellhop keeps $3 for himself and gives $1 to each of the two women. So each woman actually paid $14 for the room.

So: 2 x $14 = $28; the bellhop kept $3; that adds up to $31.

And that’s where the missing dollar shows up again.

9.
A man lies dead in a room with 53 bicycles in front of him. What happened?

10.
Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice all live in the same house. One night, Bob and Carol go to a movie; when they return, Alice is lying dead on the floor in a puddle of water and glass. It’s obvious that Ted killed her—but Ted is never arrested or punished. How could this be?

11.
A deaf-mute goes into a hardware store. He wants to buy a pencil sharpener, so he walks up to the clerk, sticks a finger in his ear and rotates his other hand around his other ear. The next customer is a blind man. How does he let the clerk know he wants a pair of scissors?

BAD PUNS

From
Best Book of Puns,
by Art Moger

• They say all sheep are alike—actually, they have mutton in common.

• Many folks believe that legalized gambling has made Atlantic City a bettor place.

• Adam and Eve lived appley ever after.

• A soldier hid inside a cannon to avoid guard duty, but he was finally discharged.

Here’s another installment of BRI’s Top Ten of the Year list.

1968

(1) Hey Jude —
The Beatles

(2) Love Is Blue —
Paul Mauriat

(3) Honey—
Bobby Goldsboro

(4) People Got To Be Free —
Rascals

(5) (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay —
Otis Redding

(6) Sunshine Of Your Love —
Cream

(7) This Guy’s In Love With You —
Herb Alpert

(8) The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly —
Hugo Montenegro

(9) Mrs. Robinson —
Simon & Garfunkel

(10) Woman, Woman—
Gary Puckett & the Union Gap

1969

(1) Sugar, Sugar —
The Archies

(2) Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In —
The Fifth Dimension

(3) I Can’t Get Next To You —
The Temptations

(4) Honky Tonk Women —
The Rolling Stones

(5) Everyday People —
Sly & The Family Stone

(6) Dizzy —
Tommy Roe

(7) Hot Fun In The Summertime —
Sly & The Family Stone

(8) Get Back —
The Beatles

(9) Build Me Up Buttercup —
The Foundations

(10) Crimson & Clover —
Tommy James & The Shondells

1970

(1) Bridge Over Troubled Water —
Simon And Garfunkel

(2) (They Long To Be) Close To You —
The Carpenters

(3) American Woman —
Guess Who

(4) War —
Edwin Starr

(5) Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head —B.J.
Thomas

(6) Ain’t No Mountain High Enough —
Diana Ross

(7) Let It Be —
The Beatles

(8) Get Ready —
Rare Earth

(9) I’ll Be There —
The Jackson Five

(10) Band Of Gold —
Freda Payne

1971

(1) Joy To The World —
Three Dog Night

(2) Maggie May —
Rod Stewart

(3) It’s Too Late/I Feel The Earth Move —
Carole King

(4) How Can You Mend A Broken Heart —
Bee Gees

(5) One Bad Apple —
The Osmonds

(6) (The Lament Of The Cherokee Reservation Indian) Indian Reservation —
The Raiders

(7) Take Me Home, Country Road —
John Denver

(8) Go Away Little Girl —
Donny Osmond

(9) Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me) —
The Temptations

(10) Knock Three Times —
Dawn

Here’s an interesting scenario: You’re climbing Mt. Everest, and nature calls. You find a cave, take out your
Bathroom Reader,
and are lost in “thought” when suddenly, a big hairy creature appears in front of you. It’s the Abominable Snowman! What do you do? Well, that’s up to you—but our advice is, go ahead and give him the book. You can always get another one back in the States, and he’s got nothing to read while he’s...uh...you know.
No
wonder he’s abominable.

H
OW HE GOT HIS NAME

Abominable Snowman
is a great name, but it actually means nothing; it was a mis-translation.

In 1921, Lt. Col. Charles Kenneth Howard-Bury was climbing in the Himalayas when he spotted a number of “dark forms” moving about on a snowfield above his party. But they were too far away to tell for sure what they were, and by the time the climbers reached the snowfield, the animals were gone. All that was left was a trail of some very large footprints.

Barking up the wrong tree

Howard-Bury thought the forms were large grey wolves; the sherpas with him described the animals as M
eto-Kangmi
or “snow creatures,” a generic term used to describe a number of familiar animals that might have made the tracks.

Howard-Bury reported his findings to Katmandu, Nepal, and from there they were transmitted to London. In the process, something changed:
meto-kangmi
became
metch-hangmi
, which means “abominable snowman”—a meaningless, but intriguing phrase.

As Ivan Sandersen writes in
Abominable Snowmen
, “The result was like the explosion of an atom bomb. Nobody, and notably the press, could possibly pass up any such delicious term.”

Articles on the “snowman” appeared in newspapers around the globe, turning the abominable snowman from a sleepy regional mystery into something that people were talking about all over the world. Ironically, because the creature was popularly referred to as a
“snowman,” it was assumed that it’s white. Actually, people who claim to have seen it say its long, shaggy hair is reddish.

THE FIRST REPORT OF FOOTPRINTS

In 1889, Major L.A. Waddell, an English explorer, stumbled onto a trail of giant footprints in the snow while trekking through the Himalayas. The footprints were discovered on a mountain more than 17,000 feet above sea level. His native guides told him that they belonged to the
Yeti
, a vicious ape-like creature known to eat humans. The guides advised him to run downhill if attacked, because the creature’s long hair blocked its vision when it ran downhill.

THE FIRST EVIDENCE

Eric Shipton, a mountain climber, was flying home from an expedition to Mount Everest in 1951. The flight out of Karachi, Pakistan, was uneventful—until the stewardess notified him that a throng of reporters would be waiting for him when the plane landed in London. He couldn’t figure out what they wanted. Then he realized they were interested in some photos he’d taken on the Menlung Glacier and sent back home.

The photos in question had, in fact, captured the attention of the entire world. They depicted huge footprints in the snow—more than 13 inches wide and 18 inches long—that apparently belonged to a two-legged animal much larger than a human being. The only problem: no such animal is known to exist in the Himalayas. People speculated that Shipton had finally found proof that the Yeti, or
abominable snowman
exists.

RUSSIAN SIGHTINGS

• In 1958, Dr. Alexander Pronin of Leningrad University reported seeing a humanoid creature in the Pamir mountains near Kiev in the Soviet Union. He watched the creature for more than three minutes before it ran away, and then saw it again the next day.

• In 1988, the Soviet news agency TASS reported that some researchers had come within 35 yards of an abominable snowman in the Pamir mountains. After the sighting the researchers planned a second trip into the region, but no further sign of the creature was ever found.

THE HILLARY EXPEDITION

In the late 1960s, Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to conquer Mt. Everest, returned to the Himalayas to study human physiology at high altitudes. Before he left, he announced that he would investigate the question of the abominable snowman.

Sure enough, Hillary found some “Yeti tracks” in the snow. But as it turns out, they weren’t made by a Yeti. In the shade, the tracks were small and had clearly been made by a fox...but wherever the tracks emerged from the shade and into the sunlight, they melted into enlarged, distorted footprints, creating the illusion that they had been made by an animal much larger than a fox. Hillary also noticed that when he let his own footprints melt, some of them grew to nearly a foot wide and two feet in length.

Later in the trip Hillary borrowed a “Yeti scalp” from a Buddhist monastery and had it examined. It turned out to be from a goatlike animal called a serow. Then he examined fur purportedly taken from a Yeti. It was from a Tibetan blue bear.

By the time he returned from the Himalayas, Hillary was convinced that Yetis were purely legendary animals.

THE SLICK EXPEDITION

In 1958, explorer Tom Slick visited the Pangboche monastery in Nepal and photographed a large, shrivelled hand that was kept there.

In 1959, the thumb and other parts of the hand were smuggled out of the country. Dr. Osman Hill of the London Zoological Society performed blood tests that showed the skin was “not human or from any known primate.” Dr. Hill became convinced they were Neanderthal.

In 1991, the
Unsolved Mysteries
TV show had the fragments analyzed at the University of California biology laboratories in Los Angeles; these tests showed that the skin was not human, but that it was “close to human.” In May 1991, someone broke into the Pangboche monastery and stole a Yeti skullcap and what was left of the Yeti hand. The monastery burned down a few months later.