Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (82 page)

But feminists complained that it was “too pretty.” So Gasparro drew a new portrait of Anthony, trying to approximate what she looked like in middle age. He gave her a square jaw, a hooked nose, a heavy browline, and a drooping right eye. Though he succeeded at his task (hardly anyone accuses the Susan B. Anthony dollar of being “too pretty” anymore), he had reservations about the final design. But the U.S. Treasury approved it.

DAMSEL IN DISTRESS

Introduced on July 2, 1979, the Susan B. Anthony dollar was an instant failure. Everybody hated it—people said it was too small to be a dollar and too ugly to represent the United States.

Twenty-five percent of U.S. prescription drugs contain compounds from plants.

But the biggest problem with the coin was that it looked and felt like a quarter. Many businesses refused to accept them, fearing that cashiers would mistake them for quarters and give them away as change.

STOPGAP MEASURES

Government officials fought hard to keep the coin alive, spending more than $600,000 on a nationwide campaign to increase public acceptance. Then they brought in a New York public relations firm to help—the first time in history that a coin had to be
promoted.
But it was hopeless. “Our job was to get the good story out about the coin,” said a spokesman for the PR firm,

FEMME FATAL

By the time production was halted in the spring of 1980, more than 840 million coins had been minted...but only 315 million had made it into circulation. “There is an extraordinary amount of resistance to this coin,” a U.S. Mint official admitted. “As far as I can tell, it isn’t being accepted anywhere.”

Esquire
magazine reported in April 1981 that, “Most Americans refuse to carry the coins. Bank tellers and cashiers in stores have learned not to even try to give them out as change; people won’t take them. People...don’t even like to touch them.”

The Treasury department suspended production in 1981, estimating they had enough of them on hand to last 40 to 50 years.

“I think we will just let sleeping dogs lie,” the Secretary of the Treasury said.

The world’s five smallest countries would easily fit inside of Walt Disney World.

We’ve all got an idea of what it was like to be a pirate in the 1700s—but a lot of it is pure Hollywood hooey. Here are a few of our most common misconceptions about pirates...and the truth about them.

N
ICKNAMES

Why did so many pirates have colorful nicknames like “Blackbeard” and “Half Bottom”? The main reason was to prevent government officials from identifying and persecuting their relatives back home. (How did “Half Bottom” get his nickname? A cannonball shot half his bottom off.)

WALKING THE PLANK

Few (if any) pirate ships ever used “the plank.” When pirates took over a ship, they usually let the captured crewmembers choose between joining the pirate crew or jumping overboard. Why go to all the trouble of setting up a plank to walk off? As historian Hugh Rankin put it: “The formality of a plank seems a bit absurd when it was so much easier just to toss a prisoner overboard.”

BURIED TREASURE

Another myth. No pirate would have trusted his captain to bury treasure for him. According to pirate expert Robert Ritchie, “The men who turned to piracy did so because they wanted money. As soon as possible after capturing a prize they insisted on dividing the loot, which they could then gamble with or carry home. The idea of burying booty on a tropical island would have struck them as insane.”

BOARDING A SHIP BY FORCE

It’s a scene from the movies: A pirate ship pulls up alongside another ship, and then the pirates swing across on ropes and storm the ship. But how realistic is this scene? Not very, experts say. Most ship captains owned their cargos, which were usually fully insured. They preferred to surrender the minute they were approached by a pirate ship, seeing piracy as one of the costs of doing business.

At one English bed-and-breakfast, visitors get to take home “a free bootload of manure.”

THE JOLLY ROGER (SKULL AND CROSSBONES)

Pirates used a variety of flags to communicate. The Jolly Roger was used to coerce nearby ships into allowing the pirates to board. But it wasn’t the only flag of choice—some pirate ships preferred flags with hourglasses on them (to let would-be victims know that time was running out); others used black or red flags. How did the Jolly Roger get its name? Nobody knows for sure—although some historians believe it comes from the English pronunciation of
Ali Raja
, the Arabic words for “King of the Sea.”

PIRATE SHIPS

In the movies they’re huge—but in real life they were much smaller. “Real pirates,” one expert writes, “relied on small, swift vessels and hit-and-run attacks.”

ROWDINESS

Not all pirate ships were rough-and-tumble. Pirates often operated under a document that had some similarity to a constitution. Here are a few of the articles from an agreement drawn up by the crew of Captain John Phillips in 1723.

The average office Christmas party is attended by 75% of a company’s employees.

More TV wisdom from
Primetime Proverbs: A Book of TV Quotes,
by Jack Mingo and John Javna.

ON FATHERS

Ben Cartwright:
“I’m not in the habit of giving lectures, and if I do, it’s because they’re needed. Might have been a good idea if your father had given you a few.”

Candy Canaday:
“Oh, he did.”

Ben:
“Obviously they didn’t have much effect.”

Candy:
“Oh, yes they did: I left home.”

—Bonanza

“I am your father. I brought you into this world and I can take you out.”

—Cliff Huxtable,
The Cosby Show

ON DREAMS

“The only thing I ever dream is that I just won every beauty contest in the world and all the people I don’t like are forced to build me a castle in France.”

—Stephanie Vanderkellen,
Newhart

ON FEAR

“Some people are afraid of the dark and some are afraid to leave it.”

—Beau Maverick,
Maverick

Caine:
“Of all things, to live in darkness must be the worst.”

Master Po:
“Fear is the only darkness.”

—Kung Fu

“The subject: fear. The cure: a little more faith. An Rx off the shelf—in the Twilight Zone.”

—Rod Serling,
The Twilight Zone

ON LEARNING

“What a wonderful day we’ve had. You have learned something, and I have learned something. Too bad we didn’t learn it sooner. We could have gone to the movies instead.”

—Balki Bartokomous,
Perfect Strangers

Boy:
“Teach me what you know, Jim.”

Reverend Jim Ignatowski:
“That would take hours, Terry. Ah, what the heck! We’ve all got a little Obi-Wan Kenobi in us.”

—Taxi

ON LIFE

“God forbid anything should be easy.”

—Hawkeye, M*A*S*H

Most expensive city in the world for grocery shopping: Tokyo.

More advice from a teen guidebook of the 1950s.

GOOD GROOMING FOR GIRLS

YOU’RE YOUR OWN SHOW!

Rest, relaxation, and good food all help keep a clear skin, shiny hair, good teeth and bones, but they aren’t the whole story
...

Let’s start with posture.
Think about walking tall; it’s surprising how much better clothes look! There’ll be fewer backaches, or even headaches, too. Don’t slouch as you walk, nor slump as you sit. Relax! Lift your head and shoulders, then walk as if you’re going
somewhere.

Look at yourself
in the mirror! Have you a regular nighttime, morning and weekly cleanliness program? Soon you’ll be at college or on your own; no family to remind you of the toothbrush, nail file, comb, or soap and water. Yet regular attention to teeth, nails and hair is a habit just as important to good health as food.

Give that room
of yours the “once-over.” Of course you meant to hang things up after last night’s party, but did you
do
it? It’s only smart to hang clothes in your closet immediately—they need less pressing and laundry care that way. And tidy, wrinkle-free clothing is an important part of the shined-and-polished look!

In actuality
, beauty is lots more than skin deep. Beauty is as deep as you are. Beauty is all of you, your face, your figure, your skin. More than any other part, though, your skin will be the barometer of your beauty weather. It will tell you how well you are keeping to a beauty schedule. A broken-out complexion is a sure sign that you have slipped up somewhere. It is an indication that you have eaten too many sweets or skimped on cleanliness. Be diligent in your daily habits, and your reward will be a smooth, silken complexion (and, not incidentally, a fine face and figure).

Just remember
, most of us wouldn’t take the first prize in a beauty contest. Yet it’s possible, with some time and attention, to improve the looks we have. So form good grooming habits
now
—for the rest of your life.

Q: What do you call a person who assembles the underparts of pianos? A: The “belly builder.”

You’ve used the products...now here are the people behind the names.

R
ALSTON-PURINA

In the 1890s, it was common for grain millers to separate wheat germ from the whole-wheat cereals of the day, because the germ tended to spoil rapidly. Then, in 1898, a Kansas miller discovered a way to keep it from rotting. But the stuff was still removed from the wheat, and no one knew what to do with it—at least until William Danforth, an animal-feed manufacturer and inventor of “health cereals,” decided to sell it as a breakfast food. Borrowing from his company’s slogan, “Where purity is paramount,” he gave his new product the name
Purina
and marketed it with the endorsement of Dr. Albert Webster Edgerly, who had written a popular health-and-fitness book called
Life Building
under the pen name Dr.
Ralston.

BLACK & DECKER

In 1910, twentysomethings S. Duncan Black and Alonzo Decker quit their jobs at the Rowland Telegraph Company and founded the Black & Decker company. They built and sold bottlecap machines, auto shock absorbers, candy-dipping machines, and other specialty equipment for industry.

They probably would have stuck with industry sales forever had they not seen a news item during World War II reporting a record wave of employee thefts of portable power tools from U.S. defense plants. Realizing that the workers in the plants had become hooked on portable power tools and would be hungry for them after the war, Black & Decker’s Post-War Planning Committee began designing a line of
home
power tools that premiered in 1946.

PARKER PENS

The modern fountain pen was perfected by L. E. Waterman, an American inventor, in 1884. But even
his
pens leaked once in a while, creating a cottage industry for “pen repairmen” like George S. Parker, of Janesville, Wisconsin. Parker got to know fountain pens so well that he designed an improved model and founded the Parker Pen Company in 1892. Business was slow until World War I, when the company invented the Parker Trench Pen and sent them overseas with U.S. soldiers so they could write home. The doughboys were so sold on the pens that Parker went on to become one of the best-known brand names in America.

The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows.

SPALDING SPORTING GOODS

Have you ever heard of Albert Goodwill Spalding? One of the greatest pitchers in history, Spalding played for the Boston Red Stockings and the Chicago White Sox in the 1870s. Between 1871 and 1875, he pitched 301 games and won 241, becoming baseball’s first 200-game winner. But he was unique for another reason as well: The baseballs he pitched were ones he made himself. When he retired in 1876, he opened his own sporting goods company and began selling them to the public. The National Baseball League was founded a year later and made the Spalding ball the official ball of the league.