Read Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
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VERDICT:
The foundation settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed amount.
PLAINTIFFS:
Sue Storer of Bristol, England
DEFENDANT:
The Bristol City Council
LAWSUIT:
Story was deputy headteacher at Bedminster Down Secondary School in Bristol until she resigned in 2006. She then filed a lawsuit, saying that she had been harassed at the school—especially by being forced to sit in a chair that made “farting noises.” She claimed that all her requests for a replacement chair were ignored. “It was a regular joke that my chair would make these sounds,” she said, “and I regularly had to apologize that it wasn’t me—it was my chair.” The lawsuit asked for $1.9 million in damages.
VERDICT:
Storer lost. The court ruled that there was no evidence of harassment, and that as headteacher, she could have replaced the farting chair herself.
* * *
AN ILLUMINATING ORIGIN
It was so dark and rainy on the first day of the Woodstock festival in August 1969 that concert promoters passed out candles to the crowd. Folk singer Melanie took the stage in near darkness and a total downpour and the concert’s announcer told the audience to “light a candle to keep away the rain.” The rain didn’t stop, but as Melanie sang, little bits of light started to appear across the huge crowd. The next day, Melanie wrote the song “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” about the experience, and lighting candles during performances of the song became a tradition at her concerts. Within a few years, cigarette lighters replaced candles, and it became commonplace to hold up a lit lighter during a ballad by nearly any rock band. Lighters aren’t allowed in most concert halls anymore (they’re a fire hazard), so today people use flashlights or hold up their cell phones.
What? A CRICKET CANNOT HEAR ITS OWN CHIRPING.
In Part I (
page 94
), freed slaves moved west after the Civil War in search of land, dignity, and opportunity. But for those who established all-black towns in Oklahoma, their battles weren’t over. Here’s Part II of the story.
T
HE GREENWOOD RIOTS
In 1921 the town of Greenwood, Oklahoma—dubbed “The Black Wall Street”—was one of the most prosperous black communities in America. More than 190 businesses were licensed to operate in the community of 11,000 residents. (Tulsa at the time had a population of 70,000.) There were fifteen doctors, three lawyers, two dentists, and a chiropractor, as well as two schools, two theaters, several hotels, a library, and a hospital. Greenwood was a model of black enterprise and self-sufficiency.
It all changed on May 31, 1921. There are varying accounts of how it began, but like so many acts of race-related violence in the United States, it involved a white woman and a black man. Something happened in a building in downtown Tulsa between a 17-year-old elevator operator named Sarah Page and 19-year-old Dick Rowland. The most commonly accepted version of the story is that Rowland stepped on the girl’s foot. When she started to fall, he tried to catch her. She screamed, and he ran away. Word quickly spread through the white community that Rowland had “assaulted” the girl. When a local paper ran an inflammatory head line encouraging local whites to “nab the negro,” events spiraled out of control.
CHAOS AND DISASTER
Whites gathered outside the courthouse where Rowland was being held, demanding that he be turned over to the mob. Meanwhile, worried blacks came together in Greenwood, determined to stop the lynching. The crowd at the courthouse swelled to 2,000. About 75 blacks went to the courthouse, and in the confrontation that followed, a shot was fired. Within seconds the street erupted in a gunfight. The outnumbered blacks retreated to Greenwood, pursued by a rampaging mob that looted and burned stores and homes along the way.
In Sweden, it’s against the law to teach a seal to balance a ball on its nose.
Violence raged for the next 16 hours. Bands of whites drove through the streets of Greenwood, shooting any black person they saw. One black man tried to escape by running into a theater; the mob caught and murdered him on the stage. Many blacks fled the city. Those who stayed behind were rounded up and placed in internment camps. When the National Guard finally restored order, Greenwood was in ruins. At least 150 people were dead and 1,200 homes and businesses had burned to the ground. Aside from the loss of life, property damage was estimated at $1.5 million. The black community never recovered from the disaster. No arrests were ever made, and some months later the case against Dick Rowland was dismissed when Sarah Page chose not to press charges.
SURVIVORS
The financial crash of 1929, followed by the hard times of the Great Depression and agricultural losses of the Dust Bowl, brought an end to those early glory days of black self-sufficiency in the Midwest. Many black township residents fled west to California or north to Chicago, looking for work or a better way of life.
Today only 13 of the 29 predominantly black towns in Oklahoma still exist: Boley, Brooksville, Clearview, Grayson, Langston, Lima, Redbird, Rentiesville, Summit, Taft, Tatums, Tullahassee, and Vernon. They remain a living testimonial to the courage and grit of the former slaves who founded them, and the American Dream they hoped to find out West.
* * *
MORE SPICY FACTS
• Cinnamon and cassia were essential ingredients in the embalming methods of the ancient Egyptians, as were anise, marjoram, and cumin.
• The famous legal code of King Hammurabi contains numerous regulations controlling the use of spices in Babylonian medicine.
• When the Visigoths besieged Rome in A.D. 408, they demanded (and received) a ransom of pepper, along with gold and silver, to call off their attack.
Chewing gum can help improve your memory (but you have to remember to buy the gum).
Even in a world of science, some things still can’t be explained.
P
OISONOUS PRIEST
According to the
United News of India
, Hindu priest Biswanath Kanwar of Jharkhand was bitten by a king cobra in 2005…and the
cobra
died. The priest was feeding milk to the 3½-foot-long snake, something he did regularly at the Nagdevata temple, when it suddenly bit him on the hand. The cobra immediately became very still, started vomiting, and then died. Kanwar was taken to a local hospital, where doctors said he was fine.
DON’T GO IN THE GARAGE
In November 2005, remote garage door openers in a section of Ottawa, Ontario, suddenly stopped working. Hundreds of them. “It affects a 25-mile radius,” said J.P. Cleroux of Ram Overhead Door Systems. “That’s huge.” According to Cleroux, there was a powerful radio signal—at 390-megahertz, the same as the signal used by the remote door openers—interfering with the devices. Where did it come from? A rumor quickly circulated that it emanated from the American Embassy, but the embassy denied transmitting the signal, and two weeks after it began…it went away. And, just as mysteriously, the doors started working again.
A LIGHT MEAL
Hira Ratan Manek of Kerala, India, claims he hasn’t eaten since 1995. Manek says he started studying “sun-gazing” after retiring in 1992 at the age of 55—and now gets all his nourishment from it. “Every evening, I gaze at the sun for an hour without batting an eyelid. This is my main food.” From 2000 to 2001, an international team of doctors and scientists observed Manek as he went for 411 days without food; NASA scientists observed him at Thomas Jefferson University in Pennsylvania as he fasted for 130 days. They verified that Manek went the entire time—more than four months—with only water and his sun-gazing technique. They now identify the mysterious technique with Manek’s initials, calling it the “HRM” phenomenon.
Venice gondola rule of thumb: If it isn’t painted black, it belongs to a high official.
If you’ve ever walked through a cemetery, you’ve probably noticed that many tombstones, especially older ones, are decorated with flowers, animals, and other symbols. Here’s a look at what some of them represent.
B
utterflies:
The three stages of the butterfly’s life—caterpillar, cocoon, and butterfly—represent life, death, and rebirth.
Daisies:
Innocence. Daisies are frequently found on the graves of children.
Sheaf of wheat:
A long and productive life. Frequently found on the graves of people who lived past the age of 70.
A woman holding a candle, lamp, or cross:
Faith.
Pomegranates:
Holiness, unity, love, and hope of immortality and resurrection.
Two hands clasping each other:
A married couple. Look closely at the hands—one hand will be masculine, the other feminine.
Curtains, doors, or gates:
Transition to the next world.
Elephants:
Strength and happiness. Sometimes it just means the deceased liked to travel to exotic places.
Pine cones:
Immortality.
A crane standing on one leg:
Vigilance; these birds are often found perched atop mausoleums and other monuments. (Legend has it the birds sleep standing on one leg while holding a small stone in the claw of the other leg. If they sleep too deeply, they drop the stone onto the other leg, which wakes them up.)
A human foot:
Humility (it’s the part of the body that touches the ground).
An empty chair, often with a small pair of shoes nearby:
The death of a child.
A broken Roman column:
A life cut short.
Acorns:
Prosperity.
An angel, a lion, an ox, and an eagle:
The authors of the four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in that order.
Coins:
Charity.
Chrysanthemums:
Longevity, immortality. (The plants are hardy and their flowers last well into winter.)
How’d they get there? Ancient Roman coins have been found in America.
A closed book:
A completed life.
A candelabra:
It’s lighting the way to the next world.
A woman holding a bottle:
The bottle is a tear bottle and represents the sadness of those who mourn the deceased.
Oxen:
Patience, humility, and hard work.
Snails:
Often used purely for decoration; sometimes they represent self-sufficiency. (Snails carry their houses with them wherever they go.)
A woman nursing an infant:
Charity. She can also be depicted carrying food or clothing for the needy.
Hummingbirds:
Purely decorative, they mean absolutely nothing, except perhaps that the deceased liked hummingbirds.
A crescent hanging from a scimitar:
The deceased was a Shriner.
An elk:
The deceased was a member of the Elks Club.
An ear of corn:
Fertility and rebirth.
Pelican:
Self-sacrifice. People used to believe that a mother pelican fed her young her own blood, taken from a gash she tore into her own breast.
A pair of dice:
The deceased was a Christian. After Jesus was crucified, the Roman soldiers cast dice to see who got to keep his undergarment. (Either that, or the deceased liked to gamble.)
A “Buddhist” or backwards swastika:
Sometimes seen on Japanese gravemarkers. Christianity was banned in Japan in the 17th century, so Christians who wanted a cross on their tombstone often disguised it by making it into a swastika.
A coffin and some shovels:
A
sexton
, whose duties included digging graves in this very cemetery, is buried here.
A nude figure:
Innocence. You’re born naked and you don’t get to take anything with you when you die, either.
* * *
“Is life not a hundred times too short for us to stifle ourselves?”
—
Friedrich Nietzsche
The letter combination “ough” can be pronounced in eight different ways.
Matt Groening (rhymes with raining) majored in philosophy in college…and then went on to create the world’s most popular cartoon
, The Simpsons.
“I grew up completely overwhelmed by TV, and part of the reason I went into television is as a way to justify to myself all those wasted hours of watching TV as a kid. I can now look back and say, ‘Oh, that was research.’”
“Of all the Simpsons, I like Homer the best because he is basically free of guilt. He loves what he loves, hates what he hates with every fiber of his being, but his addiction to heavily salted snacks and unrepentant laziness is something that I certainly relate to.”
“Animation is like being God, creating these living beings out of pen and ink and making them do your bidding and punishing them for their folly.”
“I think it’s a mistake for cartoonists to demand cartoons be treated as art. Cartoons are cartoons. I don’t care if you call them art, literature—they’re cartoons! They’re the most fun things out there! So what if you don’t get respect?”
“
The Simpsons
’ message over and over again is that your moral authorities don’t always have your best interests in mind. Teachers, principals, clergymen, politicians—on
The Simpsons
, they’re all goofballs, and I think that’s a great message for kids.”