Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (99 page)

• During this time, Whitty writes, “young Roman men about 21 years of age were actually
required
to have their first shave. To celebrate this official entry into manhood, they had an elaborate party-like ritual.” Male friends were invited to watch, and brought gifts. The only Romans not required to go through this ritual were soldiers and young men training to become philosophers.

MODERN SHAVING

Razor House
reports:

• “Advances in razor technology changed shaving habits in the 20th century. In 1900, most men were either shaved by the local barber (your trusted confidante, wielding a cut-throat razor), or periodically at home when required, rather than regularly. The barber’s better-off customers would have personal sets of seven razors, labelled ‘Sunday’ to Saturday’.”

• “The first ‘safety’ razor, a razor where the skin is protected from all but the very edge of the blade, was invented by a Frenchman, Jean-Jacques Perret, who was inspired by the joiner’s plane. An expert on the subject, he also wrote a book called
Pogonotomy or the Art of Learning to Shave Oneself
. In the late 1820s, a similar razor was made in Sheffield and from the 1870s, a single-edge blade, mounted on a hoe-shaped handle was available in Britain and Germany.”

• “The idea of a use-once, disposable blade (which didn’t need resharpening) came from King Camp Gillette in 1895. It was suggested to him that the ideal way to make money was to sell a product that had to be replaced constantly—an early example of built-in obsolescence. However, producing a paper-thin piece of steel with a sharpened edge strong enough to remove a beard was a near technical impossibility at that time. Although patents were filed in 1901, it was not until 1903 that Gillette could go into business, with the assistance of his technical adviser, MIT’s William Nickerson. He produced a grand total of 51 razors and 168 blades in that year.

Q: What U.S. symbol was first used as a television test pattern? A: A dollar sign.

SHAVING AND THE PRESIDENCY

• Our presidents were clean-shaven for the first half of the 19th century.

• Lincoln famously grew a beard just before taking office in 1860, and except for his successor, Andrew Johnson, who was cleanshaven, and Grover Cleveland, who had only a mustache, beards held sway for the rest of the century.

• For the record, Rutherford Hayes (1877-81) had the longest beard, and the last bearded president was Benjamin Harrison (1889-1892). (The public health experts at the turn of the century believed that beards carried germs into the home.)

FEAR OF SHAVING

New York Times
in 1879 under the headline “Barbers Terrorize Public,” which begins:

“The records of our insane asylums show the fearful effects wrought by the conversation of barbers. No less than 78 percent of the insane patients in public institutions in this state were in the habit of being shaved by barbers before they became insane. If this does not mean that to be shaved by a barber is to incur the risk of being talked into madness, statistics have no meaning.”

HAIR FACTS

According to the
Portland Oregonian:

• “Human beings have three times more body hair than chimpanzees.”

• “Men’s whiskers grow 5 to 6 inches a year.”

• “The average guy devotes 2,965 hours over his lifetime to standing in front of a mirror and shaving—the equivalent of four months.”

• In the matter of total facial-hair follicles, “people from Europe and the Middle East are hairiest, Asians the least hairy and Africans fall somewhere in between.”

Taxi drivers and chauffeurs are more likely to be murdered on the job than anyone else.

Here are the stories of how two popular alcoholic drinks got their names
.

D
RAMBUIE

Originally the personal liqueur of Prince Charles Edward (history’s “Bonnie Prince Charlie”), who tried to overthrow King George II (1727-1760) in 1745. Charles’s Scottish troops made it to within 80 miles of London, but they were ultimately beaten back and Charles was driven into hiding. In 1760 a member of the Mackinnon clan helped the prince escape to France. Charles was so grateful that he presented the man with the secret formula for his personal liqueur, which he called
an dram budheach
—which is Gaelic for “the drink that satisfies.” The Mackinnons kept the drink to themselves for nearly a century and a half, but in 1906 Malcolm Mackinnon began selling it to the public under the shortened name Drambuie.

Historical Note:
The recipe for Drambuie remains a family secret as closely held as the recipe for Coca-Cola—only a handful of Mackinnons know the recipe; to this day they mix the secret formula themselves.

CHAMPAGNE

Accidentally invented by Dom Perignon, a 17th-century monk in the Champagne region of France. Technically speaking, he didn’t invent champagne—he invented
corks
, which he stuffed into the bottles of wine produced at his abbey in place of traditional cloth rag stoppers.

The cloth allowed carbon dioxide that formed during fermentation to escape, but the corks didn’t—they were airtight and caused bubbles to form in the wine. Amazingly, Dom Perignon thought the bubbles were a sign of poor quality—and devoted his entire life to removing them, but he never succeeded.

Louis XIV took such a liking to champagne that he began drinking it exclusively. Thanks to his patronage, by the 1700s champagne was a staple of French cuisine.

Istanbul, which sits half in Europe and half in Asia, is the only city on two continents.

Remember those movies about World War II, when everyone in America pitched in together to fight the Nazis? Well, here’s some more amazing info from
It’s a Conspiracy!,
by The National Insecurity Council
.

W
hile most Americans were appalled by the Nazis and the rearming of Germany in the 1930s, some of America’s most powerful corporations were more concerned about making a buck from their German investments. Here are some examples of how U.S. industrialists supported Hitler and Nazi Germany.

GENERAL MOTORS

The Nazi connection:
GM, which was controlled by the DuPont family during the 1940s, owned 80% of the stock of Opel AG, which made 30% of Germany’s passenger cars.

Helping Hitler:
When Hitler’s panzer divisions rolled into France and Eastern Europe, they were riding in Opel trucks and other equipment. Opel earned GM a hefty $36 million in the ten years before war broke out, but because Hitler prohibited the export of capital, GM reinvested the profits in other German companies. At least $20 million was invested in companies owned or controlled by Nazi officials.

THE CURTISS-WRIGHT AVIATION COMPANY

The Nazi connection:
Employees of Curtiss-Wright taught dive-bombing to Hitler’s
Luftwaffe
.

Helping Hitler:
When Hitler’s bombers terrorized Europe, they were using American bombing techniques. The U.S. Navy invented dive-bombing several years before Hitler came to power, but managed to keep it a secret from the rest of the world by expressly prohibiting U.S. aircraft manufacturers from mentioning the technique to other countries. However, in 1934, Curtiss-Wright, hoping to increase airplane sales to Nazi Germany, found a way around the restriction: instead of
telling
the Nazis about dive-bombing, it
demonstrated
the technique in air shows. A U.S. Senate investigation concluded, “It is apparent that American aviation companies did their part to assist Germany’s air armament.”

Playboy’s
Playmate of the Month was originally called the “Sweetheart of the Month.”

STANDARD OIL

The Nazi connection:
The oil giant developed and financed Germany’s synthetic fuel program in partnership with the German chemical giant I.G. Farben.

Helping Hitler:
As late as 1934, Germany was forced to import as much as 85 percent of its petroleum from abroad. This meant that a worldwide fuel embargo could stop Hitler’s army overnight. To get around this threat, Nazi Germany began converting domestic coal into synthetic fuel using processes developed jointly by Standard Oil and I.G. Farben.

• Standard taught I.G. Farben how to make tetraethyl-lead and add it to gasoline to make leaded gasoline. This information was priceless; leaded gas was essential for modern mechanized warfare. An I.G. Farben memo stated, “Since the beginning of the war we have been in a position to produce lead tetraethyl solely because, a short time before the outbreak of the war, the Americans established plants for us and supplied us with all available experience.”

• A congressional investigation conducted after World War II found evidence that Standard Oil had conspired with I.G. Farben to block American research into synthetic rubber, in exchange for a promise that I.G. Farben would give Standard Oil a monopoly on its rubber-synthesizing process. The investigation concluded that “Standard fully accomplished I.G.’s purpose of preventing the United States production by dissuading American rubber companies from undertaking independent research in developing synthetic rubber processes.”

HENRY FORD, founder of the Ford Motor Company

The Nazi connection:
Ford was a big donor to the Nazi party.

Helping Hitler:
Ford allegedly bankrolled Hitler in the early 1920s, at a time when the party had few other sources of income. In fact, the party might have perished without Ford’s sponsorship. Hitler admired Ford enormously. In 1922, the
New York Times
reported, “The wall beside his desk in Hitler’s private office is decorated with a large picture of Henry Ford.” Ford never denied that he had bankrolled the Führer. In fact, Hitler presented him with Nazi Germany’s highest decoration for foreigners, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle.

Dream date: Anteaters can stick their tongues out at a rate of 160 times a minute.

CHASE NATIONAL BANK (later Chase Manhattan Bank)

The Nazi connection:
Chase operated branches in Nazi-occupied Paris and handled accounts for the German embassy as well as for German businesses operating in France.

Helping Hitler:
As late as six months before the start of World War II in Europe, Chase National Bank worked with the Nazis to raise money for Hitler from Nazi sympathizers in the United States

• Even after America entered the war, “the Chase Bank in Paris was the focus of substantial financing of the Nazi embassy’s activities, with the full knowledge of [Chase headquarters in] New York. To assure the Germans of its loyalty to the Nazi cause...the Vichy branch of Chase at Chateauneuf-sur-Cher were strenuous in enforcing restrictions against Jewish property, even going so far as to refuse to release funds belonging to Jews because they anticipated a Nazi decree with retroactive provisions prohibiting such a release.”

INTERNATIONAL TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH

The Nazi connection:
IT&T owned substantial amounts of stock in several German armaments companies, including a 28% stake in Focke-Wolf, which built fighter aircraft for the German army.

Helping Hitler:
Unlike General Motors, IT&T was permitted to repatriate the profits it made in Germany, but it chose not to. Instead, the profits were reinvested in the German armaments industry. According to
Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler
: “IT&T’s purchase of a substantial interest in Focke-Wolf meant that IT&T was producing German planes used to kill Americans and their allies—and it made excellent profits out of the enterprise.”

• The relationship with the Nazis continued even after the U.S. entered the war. According to
Trading with the Enemy
, the German army, navy, and air force hired IT&T to make “switchboards, telephones, alarm gongs, buoys, air raid warning devices, radar equipment, and 30,000 fuses per month for artillery shells used to kill British and American troops”
after
the bombing of Pearl Harbor. “In addition, IT&T supplied ingredients for the rocket bombs that fell on London...high frequency radio equipment, and fortification and field communication sets. Without this supply of crucial materials, it would have been impossible for the German air force to kill American and British troops.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower wore two watches on his left arm and one on his right. (Even to bed.)

Like many Americans, some of Elvis’s favorite toys were his guns. And when he wasn’t shooting, he liked to pretend he was a karate champ. Some details:

S
HOT OFF THE CAN

You never knew when Elvis might get the urge to engage in a little shooting practice, so it paid to be on guard at
all
times.

On one memorable night, Elvis and some friends were relaxing in the Imperial Suite on the 30th floor of the Las Vegas Hilton after his show. “The very elegant Linda Thompson [Elvis’s girlfriend] was sitting in the well-appointed and luxurious bathroom,” writes Steve Dunleavy in
Elvis: What Happened?
, “when her reverie was rudely interrupted by a resounding blast. At the same time, a tiny rip appeared in the toilet paper on her right side [and] the mirror on the closet door splintered into shards of glass.”

“I think Elvis was trying to hit a light holder on the opposite wall,” explains Sonny West, Elvis’s bodyguard. “Well, he’s a lousy shot and he missed. The damn bullet went straight through the wall and missed Linda by inches. If she had been standing up next to the toilet paper holder, it would have gone right through her leg. If it had changed course or bounced off something, it could have killer her, man.”

PLAYING IT SAFE

Elvis had hundreds of guns, and he liked to keep them loaded at all times. But he always left the first bullet chamber empty. “It is a habit he got from me,” says Sonny West. “I had a friend who dropped his gun. It landed on the hammer...fired and hit him right through the heart, killing him instantly.”