Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (60 page)

...And Now, Back to the World of Facts & Stats

• There are an estimated 5,000 foreign languages spoken throughout the world today—and nearly all of them have a dictionary translating them into English.

• The largest encyclopedia of all time was a 16th-century Chinese encyclopedia; it was 22,937 volumes.

• Do you know what “unabridged” means when it refers to English dictionaries? It doesn’t mean the work contains all the words in the English language; it just means that it contains all the words listed in earlier editions.

• The world’s first Mongolian-English dictionary was published in 1953.

• What language has the most words? Mandarin Chinese, which has an estimated 800,000 words. English is believed to rank second.

• In English dictionaries, the letter “T” has the most entries.

• Few English dictionaries agree on which word is the longest in the language. Two contenders:

floccinaucinihilipilification
(Oxford English Dictionary), “the action of estimating as worthless.”

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
(Webster’s Third International), “a lung disease common to miners.”

• Many dictionaries do agree on the longest word
in common use:
it’s
disproportionableness
.

• The oldest word in the English language that still resembles its earliest form is
land
, which is descended from
landa
, the Old Celtic word for “heath.” It predates the Roman Empire (founded in 200 B.C.) by many hundreds of years.

Different strokes: 50% of Americans say they
like
going to the dentist.

“East is east, and west is west, and never the twain shall meet” When we were kids, that seemed to make sense—except the ‘twain’ part. That wasn’t even a word, as far as we knew. Anyway, here are some examples of people you’d never expect to see together:

C
HARLIE CHAPLIN & MAHATMA GANDHI

When:
1931, in London

Who:
Chaplin, the “Little Tramp,” was the world’s most famous comedian. Gandhi, a tiny figure in a loincloth, was one of the world most revered political and religious leaders.

What Happened:
As they posed for photographers, Chaplin tried to figure out what to say. In his autobiography, he writes about his terror: “The room was suddenly attacked by flashbulbs from the camera as we sat on the sofa. Now came that uneasy, terrifying moment when I should say something astutely intelligent upon a subject I know little about...I knew I had to start the ball rolling, that it was not up to the Mahatma to tell me how much he enjoyed my last film...I doubted he had ever even seen a film.” He finally got up the courage, and the two men politely exchanged political views. Then Chaplin stayed and watched Gandhi at his prayers.

GORGEOUS GEORGE & MUHAMMAD ALI

When:
1961, at a radio studio in Las Vegas

Who:
Gorgeous George, with his permed blonde hair and purple robes, was one of TV wrestling’s original superstars. He sold out arenas wherever he played, and was named Mr. Television in 1949; but by 1961 his career was almost over. Cassius Clay (aka Muhammad Ali) was a young boxer who’d just turned pro.

What Happened:
In 1961 George made a wrestling appearance in Las Vegas. To promote it, he went on a local radio show, shouting, “I am the greatest!” As it happened, the other guest on the program was a young Cassius Clay, who was so impressed with George’s theatrics that he went to the wrestling match that evening. The place was packed. “That’s when I decided I’d never been shy about talking,” Ali remembers, “but if I talked even more, there was no
telling how much money people would pay to see me.”

Americans say microwave ovens are the best recent change in their lives, infomercials the worst.

NICHELLE NICHOLS & MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

When:
1967, at a party

Who:
King was America’s greatest civil rights leader, and the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Nichols was playing Lt. Uhura in
Star Trek’
s first (low-rated) season. She was considering quitting the show because Paramount wouldn’t give her a contract.

What Happened:
According to one source: “A friend came up to Nichols at a party and said someone wanted to meet her. She expected a gushing Trekkie...but when she turned around, she was looking at Martin Luther King...who actually
was
a fan. He said he’d heard she was considering leaving
Star Trek
, and urged her not to; she was too important a role model for blacks—and the only black woman on TV with real authority. ‘Do you realize that you’re fourth in command on the
Enterprise
?’ he asked. Nichols didn’t. The next day she checked and found he was right....She stayed with the show and finally got her contract the next season.”

HARPO MARX & GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

When:
1931, at the Villa Gallanon in the south of France

Who:
Shaw was “the most important British playright since Shakespeare.” Marx was part of the world’s most popular slapstick team.

What Happened:
Here’s how Harpo described the meeting in his autobiography: “I went down the cliff to the little sheltered cove we used for nude bathing, took off my clothes, and went for a swim. I came out of the water and stretched out on a towel to sunbathe....I was startled out of my doze in the sun by a man’s voice, blaring from the top of the cliff. ‘Halloo! Halloo! Is there nobody home?’

“I wrapped the towel around myself and scrambled up the cliff to see who it was. It was a tall, skinny, red-faced old geezer with a beard, decked out in a sporty cap and knicker suit. There was a lady with him. ‘Who the devil are you?’ I told him I was Harpo Marx. ‘Ah, yes, of course,’ he said. He held out his hand. ‘I’m Bernard Shaw,’ he said. Instead of shaking hands with me, he made a sudden lunge for my towel and snatched it away, and exposed me naked to the world. ‘And this,’ he said, ‘is Mrs. Shaw.’ From the moment I met him, I had nothing to hide from George Bernard Shaw.” They became good friends.

Teenage boys use more shampoo—and less deodorant—than teenage girls.

They’re a big part of your life...but we’ll bet you don’t know how they got there. Let’s correct that
.

T
HE NATIONAL BROADCASTING COMPANY (NBC)

NBC is the oldest of the “Big three” American broadcasting networks. It was founded on September 13, 1926, by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), the world’s largest radio manufacturer, because they feared poor-quality radio broadcasting was hurting sales.

Spurred on by RCA president David Sarnoff, NBC quickly became the most potent force in radio. The demand for programming was so high that within a year NBC split its radio operations into two divisions—the Red and Blue networks. The two continued broadcasting side by side until 1943, when the U.S. government forced NBC to sell off the Blue network in an antitrust suit.

Meanwhile, RCA was experimenting with television (which Sarnoff called “the art of distant seeing”). In 1931 NBC built its first television transmitter, on top of the Empire State Building. Although development of TV was subsequently slowed by the Depression, regular TV service was started by NBC in 1939...and the first TV network broadcast ever was on January 11, 1940, from NBC in New York City to a General Electric-owned station in Schenectady, New York.

Because America was putting its resources into the war effort from 1941 to 1945, NBC couldn’t begin regular network TV broadcasts until 1945. RCA was the sole owner of NBC until 1985, when GE—an original partner in 1926—bought RCA for $6.8 billion.

THE COLUMBIA BROADCASTING SYSTEM (CBS)

In the 1920s, Arthur Judson was a talent agent whose clients included the New York Philharmonic. When NBC pioneered TV broadcasting in 1926, Judson cut a deal with them to broadcast several of his clients—but NBC reneged on its promise. Judson was so angry
that he started his own radio broadcasting network. He called it the United Independent Broadcasters and began signing up independent radio stations around the country.

Prune juice is the sixth most popular juice in the U.S.

Judson was too broke to run the company alone, so he joined forces with the Columbia Phonograph and Records Co. and changed the network’s name to the Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting System. It initially provided 10 hours of programming per week to 16 affiliates. But CPBS was losing money, and Columbia Phonograph pulled out. They sold their shares to Jerome Louchheim, a wealthy Philidelphia builder, who renamed CPBS the Columbia Broadcasting System. He, in turn, sold out to William S. Paley for $400,000 in 1929. Paley (whose father, owner of the Congress Cigar Co., was one of CBS’s largest advertisers) turned the ailing network around almost overnight. By 1932 CBS was earning more than $3 million a year in profits—and in 1939 it was doing so well that it bought its former owner, Columbia Phonograph and Records.

THE AMERICAN BROADCASTING SYSTEM (ABC)

When the U.S. government forced NBC to sell off its Blue network in 1943, Lifesaver candy manufacturer Edward J. Noble bought it for $8 million and renamed it the American Broadcasting Company. Ten years later, ABC merged with United Paramont Theaters—a chain of movie theaters the government had forced Paramount Pictures to sell—and went into TV broadcasting.

A perpetual “weak sister” to its larger rivals, ABC remained a second-rate network until 1954, when its gavel-to-gavel coverage of the U.S. Senate’s Army-McCarthy hearings made broadcasting history...and gave them newfound respectability.

ABC remained much smaller than its rivals, but made up for its lack of money and affiliate stations by producing more innovative TV shows than CBS and NBC. Some of its groundbreaking shows: “Disneyland,” “The Mickey Mouse Club,” and “Batman.” ABC also revolutionized sports coverage with shows like “Monday Night Football,” “Wide World of Sports,” and its coverage of the Olympics. The network used the profits generated from sports and miniseries shows to strengthen its news and prime-time programming—and in 1975 its overall ratings shot ahead of its rivals for the first time. It has been on equal footing ever since.

America has 1,103 drive-in movie theaters, more than any other nation on Earth.

A random sampling of authentic articles, dialogue, commentary. You are there
.

O
UTRAGE OVER ELVIS

In 1956, Elvis Presley appeared on the “Ed Sullivan Show.” We think of it as a great moment in TV history, but at the time, critics (and other grown-ups) didn’t. These comments appeared in the
New York Times:

“Last Sunday on the “Ed Sullivan Show,” Mr. Presley made another of his appearances and attracted a record audience. In some ways, it was the most unpleasant of his recent three performances. Mr. Presley initially disturbed adult viewers with his strip-tease behavior on last spring’s Milton Berle’s program....On the Sullivan program he injected movements of the tongue and indulged in wordless singing that were singularly distasteful....