Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (45 page)

What Happened:
Despite more than 100 years of lobbying by Esperanto devotees, the language has never taken hold. Still, today there are thousands of Esperanto speakers organized into clubs in 100 countries around the world—including special-interest chapters for vegetarians and nudists.

THE COMET KAHOUTEK

Glorious Prediction:
“Kahoutek will be the greatest sky show of the century, with a brilliance fifty times that of Halley’s comet and a tail extending across a sixth of the sky.” One Harvard astronomer even predicted that the comet’s tail length “might reach 36 times the apparent diameter of the full moon.”

Poll results: Twelve percent of American boat owners name their boats “Serenity.”

Background:
The comet, “a grimy lump of chemical ice some three miles in diameter” was discovered by German astronomer Lubos Kahoutek in 1973.

What Happened:
Nothing. On January 15, 1974, the comet came as close to the earth as it would get in 80,000 years—and no one on Earth could see it. One astronomer described the spectacle as “a thrown egg, that missed.” Where was Dr. Kahoutek? He and 1,692 other passengers were on the Queen Elizabeth 2, which had been specially chartered for the event. As
Newsweek
magazine put it, “The weather turned out rough and overcast, and Dr. Kahoutek spent much of the voyage too seasick to leave his cabin.” Two weeks later the comet did emit a burst of explosive color—but by then it was so close to the sun that only three people saw it—the astronauts aboard Skylab.

THE WORLD FOOTBALL LEAGUE

Glorious Prediction:
The WFL would become a successful alternative to the NFL by 1978. “The National Football League has grown arrogant and complacent,” announced the WFL’s founder in 1973. “The doors are open to a rival....The war is on!”

Background:
In October 1973, Gary Davidson, a Newport Beach lawyer, announced he had formed the World Football League. The league started with 12 domestic teams but predicted it would become the first international football league, with franchises in Tokyo, Madrid, London, Paris, and other cities within five years.

What Happened:
The WFL went broke in its first season, and collapsed 12 weeks into its second season more than $20 million in debt. Nearly all the teams in the league were bankrupt. The Florida franchise was so broke that the coach had to pay for the team’s toilet paper out of his own pocket, and the Philadelphia team had to fire its cheerleaders because it couldn’t come up with enough cash to pay them their $10-per-game salary.

But perhaps the worst embarrassment came after the 1974 championship “World Bowl” game between the Birmingham Americans and the Florida Blazers. Americans owner Bill Putnam owed the IRS money, and according to
Sports Illustrated
, “After the game, sheriff’s deputies moved right into the locker room to repossess the uniforms as soon as the champions took them off.”

According to a Yale study, you think better in the winter than in summer.

On page 118, we told you the dramatic tale of the “panic-terror” of 1000. Here’s the rest of the story
.

W
AS THERE REALLY A PANIC?

To put it simply, many historians think the story we quoted on page 118 is nonsense. Here’s why:

MAYBE YES, MAYBE NO

There’s no mention of millennial fears in any official documents of A.D. 1000—or in connection with any important events, such as the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 993 or Pope Gregory’s death in 999.

“The year 1000 sounds impressive,” says
The Book of Predictions
, but in the Middle Ages, people used Roman numerals. It would simply have been “M” with no magic properties attached to it. Furthermore, numerical dates had little meaning to medieval people. Their lives were guided by the feast and fast days of the church, not calendars.”

The “panic-terror” story implies that Europeans all used the Common Calendar and celebrated New Year’s on the same day. They didn’t. There were dozens of different systems in use.

On top of that, there were no printed calendars, and no mechanical clocks. Given these conditions, the idea that the masses rose as one and embraced the terror is a little hard to swallow.

ORIGIN OF THE MYTH

So where did the tale come from? Probably a book called
Five Histories
, written in 1044 A.D. by a monk named Raoul Glaber. His account of the panic-terror is compelling enough to be believable...but it was written after the fact, and there’s little evidence to support it.

Moose are very nearsighted. Some try to mate with cars.

The story really took hold in 18th-century France. According to
The Book of Predictions:
“Wishing to discredit the [values of] the Middle Ages, many writers such as Voltaire and Gibbon exaggerated the superstitions and credulous nature of medieval Christians.” Anti-Catholic politicians also used it for their own purposes, “spreading the rumor that priests had used the millennium to defraud people of their land and money.” Since then, it has been embellished and retold by dozens of modern authors.

THE MIDDLE GROUND

If there
was
a panic, it was probably confined to a few local areas. Henri Foucillon, a respected scholar, suggests that there were “stirrings in France, Lorraine, and Thuringia, toward the middle of the 10th century.”

And maybe there were. But the interesting question is: Why do some people believe the story today?

HIGH ANXIETY

According to Peter N. Stearns in his book
Millennium III
, the reason is simple: anxiety about the millennium...which may not be a bad thing, if it “pushes people toward soul-searching.” He writes:

But he insists:

A plucked eyebrow takes about 90 days to grow back.

P. T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute”...then he proved it with his sideshows and circuses. He also wrote about it. In a book called Humbugs of the World, published in 1866, he delightedly catalogued some of die great hoaxes in history. This excerpt was one of his favorites. It took place in 1667 in France, when an ambassador from Persia arrived at the pampered court of Louis XIV
.

T
HE AMBASSADOR ARRIVES

It was announced formally, one morning, to Louis XIV, that His Most Serene Excellency, Riza Bey, with an interminable tail of titles, hangers-on and equipages, had reached the port of Marseilles to lay before the great “King of the Franks” brotherly congratulations and gorgeous presents from his own illustrious master, the Shah of Persia.

The ambassador and his suite were lodged in sumptuous apartments in the Tuileries, under the care and guidance of King Louis’s own assistant majordomo and a guard of courtiers and regiments of Royal Swiss. Banqueting and music filled up the first evening; and the next day His Majesty sent the Duc de Richelieu to announce that he would receive them on the third evening at Versailles.

THE AMBASSADOR IS WELCOMED

Meanwhile the most extensive preparations were made for the audience; when the time arrived, the entire Gallery of Mirrors was crowded with the beauty, the chivalry, the wit, taste, and intellect of France at that dazzling period. Louis the Great himself never appeared to finer advantage. His royal countenance was lighted up with pride and satisfaction as the Envoy of the haughty Oriental king approached the splendid throne on which he sat. As he descended a step to meet him, the Persian envoy bent the knee, and with uncovered head presented the credentials of his mission.

A grand ball and supper concluded this night of splendour, and Riza Bey was launched at the French court; every member of the illustrious court tried to outdo his peers with the value of the books, pictures, gems, etc which they heaped upon the illustrious Persian.

“The more outrageous a subject can get, the more I like it.”—Alfred Hitchcock

The latter gentleman very quietly smoked his pipe and lounged on his divan before company—and diligently packed up the goods when he and his jolly companions were left alone. The presents of the Shah had not yet arrived, but were daily expected, and from time to time the olive-coloured suite was diminished by the departure of one of the number with his chest on a special mission to England, Austria, or other European powers. In the meantime, the Bey was feted in all directions...and it was whispered that the fair ones of the court were, from the first, eager to bestow their favours.

THE AMBASSADOR’S PLANS

The King favoured his Persian pet with numerous personal interviews, at which, in broken French, the Envoy unfolded the most imposing of schemes of conquest and commerce that his master was willing to share with his great brother of France. At one of these tête-à-têtes, the magnificent Riza Bey, upon whom the King had already conferred his own portrait set in diamonds, and other gifts worth several millions of francs, placed in the Royal hand several fragments of opal and turquoise said to have been found near the Caspian sea, which teemed with limitless treasures of the same kind, and which the Shah of Persia proposed to divide with France for the honour of her alliance. The King was enchanted.

THE AMBASSADOR DISAPPEARS

At length, word was sent to Versailles that the gifts from the Shah had come, and a day was appointed for their presentation. The day arrived, and the Hall of Audience was again thrown open. Ail was jubilee; the King and the court waited, but no Persian—no Riza Bey—and no presents from the Shah!

That morning three men had left the Tuileries at daylight with a bag and a bundle, never to return. They were Riza Bey and his last bodyguards; the bag and the bundle were the smallest in bulk but the most precious in value of a month’s plunder. The turquoises and opals bestowed upon the King turned out, on close inspection, to be a new and very ingenious variety of coloured glass.

Of course, a hue and cry was raised—but totally in vain. It was afterward believed that a noted barber and suspected bandit, who had once really travelled in Persia, was the perpetrator of this pretty joke. But no one was sure—no one ever heard from him again.

White House meals were cooked over a fireplace until 1850.