Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® (80 page)

The Heart Line:
This line starts below the pinkie and crosses the palm horizontally.

• The heart line measures your potential for love and affection. A long, broad heart line means the person is very loving and idealistic; a short, narrow heart line indicates that they are selfish, and devoid of passion, and may even have a criminal mind.

• A heart line with many branches means that they will make a lot of friends in life, but if any of the branches cross the life line, some of the person’s close friends will die.

• If a person has no heart line at all, they are a bitter, manipulative person who takes advantage of others—a person without a heart line, according to some palmists, is a person without a heart.

The Head Line:
This horizontal line begins above the thumb, running horizontally across the palm.

• This line is supposed to be an indicator of intelligence: if it is well formed and conspicuous, the person has strong powers of concentration...but if it intersects with the life line, they are insecure.

• A long line means a person can concentrate well; a shorter line means they tend to focus only on subjects that interest them. A short, straight head line means they have a lot of common sense.

• If the person has two parallel head lines, that means they put as much energy into personal pursuits as they put into their career. And if the head line forks into two or more lines, it means they are capable of using their intelligence diplomatically—in other words, they’re a good liar.

• If the head line connects to the fate line, they’re prone to bad luck.

Whenever actress Joan Crawford remarried, she replaced all the toilet seats in her house.

The Fortune Line (Sun Line):
This line runs vertically from the wrist to the ring finger.

• A person’s fortune in life will be as clear and prominent as the fortune lines on the palms of their hands. If the line is prominent and well developed, they will never have to worry about money, and may even achieve great wealth.

• If they have more than one fortune line, they will have more than one source of wealth. A broken fortune line means that they will make and lose as many fortunes as there are breaks in the line. If the line remains strong, they will regain their lost wealth.

• If the fortune line runs alongside the life line, that means the person will inherit a large fortune from a relative… but if the fortune line crosses their life line, that means their relatives will take advantage of them and waste their money.

• If the fortune line starts near the head line, that means a person will only achieve great wealth after a lifetime of saving and hard work. If the fortune line is crossed in places by smaller lines, that means they will face obstacles as they build their fortune.

The Health Line (Mercury Line):
This line starts below the thumb and runs diagonally across the palm toward the pinkie.

• This line works differently from the other lines—the harder it is to see, the healthier and stronger one is likely to be. If it’s long and prominent, one’s health is likely to be problematic.

• If the health line is crooked, a person will likely experience many different kinds of health problems throughout their life.

• A broken health line means digestive problems; red lines crossing the health line mean frequent fevers; many little lines crossing it mean frequent headaches.

13 boxes of jello are sold every second.

The Intuition Line:
This line starts below the pinkie, arcs down and inward toward the palm, and then back out again, ending above the wrist.

• If someone says they’re not an intuitive person, don’t even bother looking for this line—only intuitive people have it.

• A person has to have an intuition line on each hand to be deeply intuitive—if they do, they may even be psychic.

• If only one palm has an intuition line, they are not making good use of their potential at the present.

•
Fingers in general.
Short fingers indicate that the person is impulsive, has trouble concentrating, and may be hyperactive. Fingers that bulge at each finger joint are said to mean that the person pays great attention to detail and may be overly critical.

•
Thumb.
A person with short thumbs is stubborn; a person with long thumbs has a strong sense of purpose. Straight thumbs indicate generosity; crooked thumbs indicate selfishness. If your thumbs are hairy but the rest of your fingers aren’t, you’re a genius. (If all of your fingers are hairy, you’re bad-tempered.)

•
Index finger.
A short index finger means the person is irresponsible; if it’s long, they’re domineering. If the finger is straight, the person is of good character. If it is crooked, the person has little or no self-respect.

•
Middle finger.
A long middle finger means the person is very cautious; if it’s short they’re always in a hurry. (If the person is gesturing with their middle finger, they’re aggressive and rude.)

•
Ring finger.
If the ring finger is long, the person is greedy and materialistic. If it’s short, they’re prone to gambling.

•
Pinky finger.
If the finger is long, the person will do well in life; if it’s short, they will have a difficult time making ends meet. A straight pinky finger indicates the person takes advantage of opportunities that come their way; a crooked pinky means the person lacks vision and will probably let those opportunities slip away.

The human brain can hold 5 times as much information as is in the
Encyclopedia Brittanica

Here’s a football trivia question: After football was invented in 1880, how much time passed before somebody figured out how to throw a spiral pass? Answer: 25 years. Hard to believe, but true. Here’s the story.

When the Intercollegiate Athletic Association met in January 1906, it instituted a number of reforms that they hoped would change the way football was played:

• The reforms cut the length of the game from 70 minutes to 60, dividing the game into two 30-minute halves; and they made it illegal for one player to hurdle over another.

• They required a minimum of six men on the offensive line of scrimmage, which made it difficult to use mass formations like the flying wedge.

• They created a “neutral zone” on the line of scrimmage: Instead of the line of scrimmage being drawn through the
center
of the ball, players now lined up along
either side
of the ball, and were not allowed to step into the neutral zone in between until the ball went into play. This was intended to reduce the bare-knuckled brawling that routinely broke out when opposing players lined up toe-to-toe; sometimes it took as long as 20 minutes to pull fighting players apart and resume the game.

• They raised the number of yards needed for a first down from 5 to 10.

But the most important change of all: In 1906 the Association legalized the forward pass, largely on the suggestion of Georgia Institute of Technology coach John Heisman.

Heisman had witnessed his first forward pass while watching the North Carolina Tar Heels play against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in 1895. The score was tied, 0–0, late in the game, and the Tar Heels were losing ground. On the next down, the Carolina fullback ran behind his scrimmage line hoping to find a place to punt. No luck—there was no room to punt, so he just hurled the ball downfield in desperation; one of his teammates happened to catch it and ran 70 yards for a touchdown, winning the game.

Bad omen: In 1916 Cumberland College’s quarterback was knocked unconscious in the first play against Georgia Tech. They went on to lose, 222–0, the worst defeat in football history.

The move was illegal, and the Yellow Jackets’ coach demanded that the touchdown be tossed out. But the referee let football’s first touchdown pass stand—because he hadn’t actually seen it.

As concerns over increasing football violence mounted in the decade that followed, Heisman saw the forward pass as a means of cleaning up the game. He figured that if players could throw the ball over and past mass formations, defending players would have no choice but to spread themselves out across the football field, and mass plays would become obsolete. But he didn’t get his way until 1906, when Yale’s Walter Camp was finally shoved aside.

At first the forward pass was restricted: If a quarterback wanted to throw a pass, he had to move at least five yards to the left or right of center before throwing. To make officiating easier, football fields were marked with lengthwise stripes five yards apart, changing their appearance from a gridiron to a checkerboard.

If the ball hit the ground or was touched by an interior lineman before it was caught, possession of the ball went to the other team. If the receiver touched the ball but was not able to catch it, it became a free ball. All the defending team had to do to get possession was knock the receiver down or shove him out of the way so that he couldn’t catch a forward pass.

Making matters worse was the fact that nobody really knew how to throw a football. Some players threw it sidearm; others threw it underhand like a softball or even with both hands, like a medicine ball. Whichever way they were thrown, underhand passes were inaccurate, and the odds of successfully catching them were slim.

Few football coaches thought forward passes were worth the risk, least of all the established football powers in the Northeast. Mass plays had always worked in the past, and they saw no need to fix something that wasn’t broken, no matter what the reformers thought. As a result, it was the less-established football programs in the Midwest and West—with little or nothing to lose—who were the first to become proficient in the use of the forward pass.

One of the first such schools was St. Louis University. In the summer of 1906, coach Eddie Cochems took his team out into the countryside near Lake Beulah, Wisconsin, where they experimented with the move for more than two months.

Back then footballs were nicknamed “blimps”—they were chubbier than they are today—and Cochems had to figure out how best to hold and throw the ball. He instructed his players to grab the ball near the two lacings closest to the end, where it was narrowest, and to throw it overhand with a twist, as if they were pitching a fastball, so that the ball would rotate on its long axis.

Within an hour his players were throwing perfect spirals 40 yards downfield, and in the season that followed, St. Louis won every game it played, scoring a total of 402 points against opponents and yielding only 11. But the Eastern football powers did not take the teams of the West seriously, and continued playing football as they always had.

Football was growing rapidly, and so were the number of injuries and deaths. In 1909, 33 people died playing football, and 246 more were seriously injured. The NCAA pushed through another round of reforms in 1910:

• They outlawed aiding the ball carrier by pushing or pulling him down the field, and also banned “interlocked interference”—teammates grabbing onto one another to execute mass plays.

• They increased the number of players on the offensive line of scrimmage from six to seven, further discouraging mass plays.

• Flying tackles were banned, and defensive players were forbidden to interfere with the receiver, other than to catch or block the ball.

• Halves were split into 15-minute quarters, giving tired players a little more time to rest. And for the first time, players who were withdrawn from the game were allowed to return. In the past players who were taken out had to stay out; as a result, tired players tended to stay in the game rather than take a break, which increased the number of injuries.

• Most importantly, the NCAA lifted some of the restrictions on the forward pass. Now the passer was allowed to throw the ball anytime he was at least 5 yards behind the line of scrimmage (that restriction wasn’t removed until 1945), though it was illegal to throw a pass farther than 20 yards. The requirement that he move at least 5 yards left or right of center was removed, and the checkerboard playing field reverted back to the traditional gridiron.

• It was about this time that “head harnesses”—stiff leather caps with ear flaps—began to come into use, as did the first shoulder pads.

Most successful high school football team in history: De La Salle Spartans of Concord, CA. As of the end of the fall 2000 season, they’ve won 113 games in a row over 10 years.

Two years later, in 1912, the NCAA made some of the last major changes to football. They set the field size at 100 yards long by 53
⅓
yards wide, moved the kickoff from midfield to the 40-yard line, and created the fourth down.

They also lifted most of the remaining restrictions on forward passes, removing the 20-yard limit and establishing 10-yard “end zones” at either end of the field. For the first time, catching a pass thrown over the goal line counted as a touchdown instead of as a “touchback” that awarded possession of the ball to the defending team on their 20-yard line.