Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (47 page)

Nobel's timing could not have been better. The mid to late 1800s was an era of unprecedented public works projects, as countries all over the world constructed bridges, tunnels, dams, roads, railroads, mines, harbors, and canals. Dynamite was up to eight times more powerful than black powder, so wherever there was solid rock to be blasted through, it became the explosive of choice.

The military applications of dynamite were obvious, and although Nobel had pacifist tendencies, where profits were concerned, he was decidedly apolitical; he gladly sold explosives to just about any combatant who asked for it. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), for example, he made a killing—both figuratively and literally—selling explosives to both sides.

Nobel became one of the wealthiest men in Europe, and his name became a household word. But if he assumed that wealth and fame would also bring him respect, he received what must have been a rude awakening when his brother Ludwig died in 1888. As we told you in
Uncle John's Absolutely Absorbing Bathroom Reader,
many newspapers mistakenly assumed that
Alfred
was the one who had died and wrote scathing obituaries attacking him as a merchant of death and “bellicose monster” whose contributions to science “had boosted the bloody art of war from bullets and bayonets to long-range explosives in less than 24 years.”

When Alfred Nobel died—this time for real—from a cerebral hemorrhage on December 10, 1896, the world was shocked to learn the details of his will: With the exception of a few small personal bequests, all of his assets were to be liquidated and the resulting cash invested in interest-bearing securities. Each year, the interest earned would be divided into five equal amounts and “awarded in prizes to those persons who shall have contributed most materially to benefit mankind during the year immediately preceding.” The awards would be presented in five categories: Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and Peace.

So, why did Alfred Nobel, “merchant of death,” instruct that his estate be used to fund a Peace Prize? “Most of Nobel's biographers,” writes Burton Feldman in
The Nobel Prize,
“feel that he was greatly influenced by his brother Ludwig's death—or rather, the inaccurate obituaries that followed it.”

Today the annual award of the Nobel Prize is taken for granted, but in 1896 the picture was far less clear. For one thing, Nobel's relatives were determined to fight his will so that they could claim a share of the estate. Not only that, the French government wanted to claim Nobel as a legal resident so that it could tax the estate. Either contest to Nobel's bequest would have left little money remaining for prizes. Both the Nobel family and the French government were eventually beaten back, but other questions remained.

The will stipulated that the prize winners would be chosen by the Swedish Academy of Sciences (Physics and Chemistry); the Karolinska Medical Institute (Medicine); and the Swedish Academy (Literature). The Peace Prize winner would be chosen by a committee of five persons appointed by the Norwegian Parliament. Would these organizations even agree to take up the tasks Nobel assigned them? The will said that all of the money would go toward prizes, but made no mention of how the organizations would be compensated, if at all, for their work. If even one of the parties balked, the entire will would be voided and the Nobel Prizes would never come to pass.

In 1897 it was finally decided that 20% of the interest income would go toward expenses; the remaining 80% would be awarded as prizes. That did the trick—on June 11, 1898, the last holdout,
the Swedish Academy of Sciences, approved Nobel's will. The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, on the fifth anniversary of Nobel's death.

So how did the Nobel Prizes become so famous? They were the most valuable prizes of the day, but that alone isn't responsible for their fame. The credit goes to Marie Curie.

Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre, shared the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics for their pioneering work in the discovery and study of radioactivity. When Pierre died in an accident in 1906, Marie carried on their work. A few years later, in 1911, she was being considered for a second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, for discovering the radioactive elements radium and polonium.

At the same time, Curie was caught up in a public scandal involving her affair with French physicist Paul Langevin, who was married and had four children. All of the tawdry details of the romance—including death threats, duels, and steamy passages from the couple's stolen love letters—were published in newspapers across Europe for the world to see. And then she won her second Nobel Prize.

“Because of Curie,” Feldman writes, “newspapers around the globe changed their way of reporting the Nobel Prize, generating endless publicity, and thereby finally changing the meaning of the awards.”

It was tabloids as much as talent, that made the Nobel Prizes as popular as they are today.

Want to win a Nobel Prize? Turn to page 312 to find out how.

The Swedish newspaper
Expressen
gave 10,000 kronor ($1,250) each to five stock-market analysts and one chimp named Ola. They were free to play the market as they wished, the goal being to make the biggest profit. The humans used their expertise; Ola picked his stocks by throwing darts at the financial page. A month later, Ola was 1,541 kronor ($190) richer and the winner of the competition.

What's stretchy and bouncy and comes in an egg? Silly question. Here's one of Uncle John's favorite toy stories: the origin of Silly Putty.

During World War II, Japanese invasions of rubber-producing countries in the Far East vastly reduced the availability of rubber in the U.S. In the early 1940's, the U.S. War Production Board asked General Electric for help in developing a cheap substitute that could be used in the production of boots and tires.

G.E. hired an engineer named James Wright to head the project.

In 1943 Wright accidentally dropped some boric acid into silicone oil. Result: he created an unusual compound that stretched further and bounced higher than rubber. Not only that, it was impervious to mold, didn't decay the way rubber did, and stayed stretchy and bouncy in extreme temperatures. The only problem was that neither scientists nor the military could find a good use for the stuff. In 1945, G.E. mailed samples to scientists all over the world, to see if they could figure out what to do with it.

An advertising copyrighter named Paul Hodgson was at a party where one of the samples was being passed around. No one was coming up with any scientific uses for it, but they sure were having fun playing with it. To Hodgson it was clear: This was a toy.

It just happened that Hodgson was in the process of creating a catalog for a local toy store. He convinced the owner of the shop to feature what he dubbed “Bouncing Putty.” It outsold everything else in the catalog (except a 50-cent box of crayons). Still, the store owner wasn't interested in manufacturing or marketing it, so Hodgson bought the rights and went into business himself. He renamed the product Silly Putty.

In 1950 Hodgson bought 21 pounds of the putty for $147 and hired a Yale college student to cut it up into one-ounce balls and
put it into plastic eggs. Sales were slow at first, but Silly Putty's big break came several months later when it was mentioned in
The New Yorker
magazine. Hodgson's phone started ringing off the hook. He received 250,000 orders in only four days. A few years later, Silly Putty was racking up sales of over six million dollars annually—Hodgson was a millionaire.

Today, Binney & Smith, makers of Crayola, own the rights to Silly Putty and produce about 500 pounds of it every day. Over 300 million eggs have been sold since its inception—enough to form a ball of Silly Putty the size of the Goodyear Blimp. It now comes in 16 different colors including glow-in-the-dark, glitter, and hot flourescent colors. In 2000 Metallic Gold Silly Putty was introduced to celebrate the toy's 50th anniversary. There's even Silly Putty that changes color depending on the temperature of your hands. In 2001 Silly Putty was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, taking its place beside such classics as G.I. Joe, Lincoln Logs, and Monopoly.

• In 2000 Binny & Smith sponsored a “Silliest Uses for Silly Putty Contest.” The winner: replace your stockbroker by throwing a ball of Silly Putty at the stock page in the newspaper and investing in whatever stock it lifts from the newsprint. (Second place went to the woman who suggested it could be used to form a fake swollen gland to get out of an unwanted date.)

• One of the original Silly Putty eggs is on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.

• Silly Putty cost a dollar in 1950 when it was first introduced, and still cost a dollar in 1976 when Hodgson died. Price in 2002: still under $2.

• Why did Hodgson pack Silly Putty in eggs? It was Easter.

• In 1968 Apollo 8 astronauts used a new adhesive to fasten down tools during their voyage into weightlessness: Silly Putty.

• In 1989 a grad student at Alfred University wanted to find out what would happen to a ball of Silly Putty dropped from a roof. He dropped a 100-lb. ball from the top of a three-story building. The ball first bounced about eight feet into the air, but it shattered into pieces on the second bounce.

There's a story behind every item in your medicine cabinet. Here are a few.

• Before World War I, “Aspirin” was a registered trademark of the German company, Bayer. When Germany lost the war, Bayer gave the trademark to the Allies as a reparation in the Treaty of Versailles.

• Why do men wear fragrances? Isn't that a little “girly?” It used to be. But thanks to some clever marketing during World War II, Old Spice aftershave became part of the soldier's standard-issue toiletry kit and changed the smell of things.

• Hate taking care of your contact lenses? It could be worse. Early contacts were made from wax molds (wax was poured over the eyes). The lenses, made of glass, cut off tear flow and severely irritated the eyes. In fact, the whole ordeal was so painful that scientists recommended an anesthetic solution of cocaine.

• On average, each person uses 54 feet of dental floss every year. That may sound like a lot, but dentists recommend the use of a foot and a half of dental floss each day. That's equal to 548 feet a year.

• In the late 1940s, aerosol hairspray was a growing fad among American women. The only problem was that it was water insoluble, which made it hard to wash out. Why? The earliest fixative was shellac, more commonly used to preserve wood.

• Women ingest about 50% of the lipstick they apply.

• Ancient Chinese, Roman, and German societies frequently used urine as mouthwash. Surprisingly, the ammonia in urine is actually a good cleanser. (Ancient cultures had no way of knowing that.)

• Almost half of all men who have dyed their hair were talked into it the first time by a woman.

A whole page of gossip about famous people named Charles.

C
harlie Sheen.
When he was engaged to actress Kelly Preston, he accidentally shot her in the arm. She left him and married John Travolta.

Prince Charles.
As a child, he was teased so much about the size of his ears that his great-uncle Lord Mountbatten told the queen to surgically fix the “problem.” The queen declined. The prince's ears remain big to this day.