Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader (61 page)

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Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute

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OH, CALCUTTA!

At first, the idea of shipping ice to India was absurd. Calcutta, the Indian port closest to Boston, was 16,000 miles away, and a four-month journey by ship. When Tudor announced his intention to send a shipment to India, people thought he was either joking or out of his mind. He wasn’t. On May 12, 1833, Tudor watched from the pier as his crew loaded 180 tons of winter ice on board the brig
Tuscany
and set sail for the Orient. Boston wags started taking bets on how big a loss Tudor would sustain this time.

The
Tuscany
sailed into the Ganges estuary in September. When the ship docked in Calcutta, there were still 100 tons of marketable ice in the hold. For the next 20 years, Calcutta was the most profitable destination for Tudor’s ice ships. By 1840, the Tudor Ice Company had icehouses in Madras, Bombay, and Singapore, and the profits rolled in. Tudor died in 1864, when the ice-cutting business was at its peak.

CLEAR BLUE

By the end of the Civil War, having ice in the United States was no longer a luxury but a fact of everyday middle-class life. The first icebox for home use was sold in 1861; by 1865 two out three homes in Boston had ice delivered to them every day. The expansion of the railroads made the distribution of ice faster and less expensive. Ice companies (and ice wagons) became a fixture in communities across America.

Prices were determined by the purity of the frozen water used. River ice was the least valued because it was often milky. Still-pond ice was best. Blocks of “clear blue” were always in highest demand. Clear-blue ice from Wenham Lake near Boston became world-famous for its exceptional clarity. It was especially popular in London, where at one time no dinner party was considered a success if it didn’t have Wenham Lake ice.

… “a film so funny it was banned in Norway.” (It really was banned there.)

FREEZE-OUT

“Ice famines,” caused by unseasonably warm winter weather, put a cramp in the ice trade in 1889 and 1890, but it remained a lucrative business into the 20th century. Even the invention of artificial refrigeration couldn’t slow it down. Primitive refrigerators had been invented as early as 1748, but they were too slow and too expensive to compete with natural ice. What brought an end to the ice-cutting industry? Pollution. As the Northeast and other centers of North American ice making became more industrialized, the rivers and ponds the ice cutters used became fouled with factory waste. Deliveries were constantly disrupted by the collection of contaminated water. In the meantime, electric refrigerators became cheap enough to deliver the final blow. By the 1920s ice houses had started to disappear from most cities. They hung on in rural areas through the 1930s, but with the end of World War II in 1945, the American Ice Age was history.

* * *

FIRST 20 VIDEOS PLAYED ON MTV

1.
“Video Killed the Radio Star,” the Buggles

2.
“You Better Run,” Pat Benatar

3.
“She Won’t Dance,” Rod Stewart

4.
“You Better You Bet,” the Who

5.
“Little Susie’s on the Up,” PhD

6.
“We Don’t Talk Anymore,” Cliff Richard

7.
“Brass in Pocket,” the Pretenders

8.
“Time Heals,” Todd Rundgren

9.
“Take It on the Run,” REO Speedwagon

10.
“Rockin’ the Paradise,” Styx

11.
“When Things Go Wrong,” Robin Lane and the Chartbusters

12.
“History Never Repeats,” Split Enz

13.
“Hold on Loosely,” .38 Special

14.
“Just Between You and Me,” April Wine

15.
“Sailing,” Rod Stewart

16.
“Iron Maiden,” Iron Maiden

17.
“Keep On Loving You,” REO Speedwagon

18.
“Message of Love,” the Pretenders

19.
“Mr. Briefcase,” Lee Ritenour

20.
“Double Life,” the Cars

First man-made object to reach the moon:
Luna 2
, an unmanned Soviet spacecraft, in 1959.

WORD ORIGINS

Here are some more of our favorite stories behind words we use every day.

C
UE
Meaning:
A signal for an actor to speak or do something
Origin:
“A cue, in its theatrical use, was used in Shakespeare’s
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
: ‘Pyramus, you begin: when you have spoken your speech, enter into that brake; and so every one according to his cue.’ Many etymologists believe that it was a phonetic spelling of the letter ‘q,’ a marking used by actors in their scripts as an abbreviation of the Italian
quando
(‘when’).” (From
The Story Behind the Word
, by Morton S. Freeman)

MARGARITA

Meaning:
A popular tequila-based cocktail

Origin:
“The margarita was first concocted in 1948 by Dallas socialite Margarita Sames at a Christmas party. Margarita liked to play a poolside game with her guests: She would get behind the bar and concoct several drinks for them to rate. When she mixed together three parts tequila with one part triple sec and one part lime, everyone loved it. Named in her honor, the margarita travelled to Hollywood and then to the rest of the country.” (From
Why Do Donuts Have Holes?
, by Don Voorhees)

HURRICANE

Meaning:
An intense tropical storm with very high winds

Origin:
“The
Popol Vuh
(an ancient Maya holy text) relates how the world began as a watery waste, over which the god
Hurakán
passed in the form of a mighty wind. As the god of thunder and lightning, Hurakán was greatly feared. The now-extinct aborigines of the West Indies, the Taínos, called the evil spirit that brought tropical storms a
hurrican
. To the Carib Indians the word
hyorocan
meant ‘devil.’ The Spanish borrowed these names to create the word
huracán
, which they used to describe the storms they encountered in the New World.” (From
From Achilles’ Heel to Zeus’s Shield
, by Dale Dibbley)

All U.S. telephones were turned off to honor Alexander Graham Bell during his funeral in 1922.

DUMB CROOKS

More proof that crime doesn’t pay.

K
EEP THE CHANGE
“A judge gave Vickey Siles of New Haven, Indiana, just a suspended sentence and probation, ostensibly out of pity for the lousy job she did altering a check from Globe Life and Accident Co. Siles had tried to obliterate the ‘$1.00’ amount of the check by typing ‘$4,000,000.00’ over it, and then attempted to cash it at a neighborhood check-cashing store.”

—
Washington Post

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

“Police conducting a roadblock operation in Texas stopped a man for not wearing his seatbelt. During the stop, the police observed three silver pipe-like packages on the floor. The police began to question the man as to whether or not the objects were pipe bombs. That’s when the man blurted out, ‘Man, that ain’t no pipe bomb. That’s cocaine.’”

—
lwcbooks.com

IS THIS SEAT TAKEN?

“A thief in Munich, Germany, who stole a woman’s World Cup ticket from her purse in 2006 was caught after he sat down to watch the game…next to the victim’s husband. The unidentified 34-year-old numbskull mugged 42-year-old Eva Standmann while she was en route to the Munich stadium for the game between Brazil and Australia and came across the ticket in her bag. As he sat in what was supposed to be the woman’s seat, he was met by her hubby, 43-year-old Berndt Standmann, who promptly notified stadium security and had the crook arrested.”

—
Dumbcrooks.com

LIFE IN THE SLOW LANE

“The timing was off for a bank robber in Cheshire, Massachusetts. He pulled off his heist at 4:30 p.m. and tried to make his getaway through downtown North Adams. Stuck in rush-hour traffic, he was apprehended by an officer on foot.”

—
The Stupid Crook Book

Odds that a sports injury will involve the wrist and hand: 25%.

STRONG ARMED

“The man on the witness stand in New Orleans was in obvious pain. Moving his right arm ever so slightly caused him to wince. He had injured his arm six months earlier in a job-related accident and was suing his former company for permanent disability. After a series of questions his client answered perfectly, his attorney asked the clincher, ‘How high can you raise your arm right now?’ Straining, the man slowly lifted his outstretched arm to shoulder level. ‘And how far could you lift it before the accident?’

Without hesitation, the man proudly shot the same arm straight above his head, exclaiming, ‘This high!’ He was still holding his arm up when the judge slammed down his gavel and announced, ‘Case dismissed!’”

—
Crimes and Misdumbmeanors

* * *

“THE *@%#SONS!”

In 2006 Matt Groening, creator of
The Simpsons,
released these memos from network censors about the show’s content.

• “To discourage imitation by young and foolish viewers, when Homer begins to pour the hot wax in his mouth, please have him scream in pain so kids will understand that doing this would actually burn their mouths.”

• “Although it is only a dream, please do not show Homer holding a sign that reads ‘Kill My Boy.’”

• “When Marge worries that Bart may become jealous of newborn Lisa, Homer’s previously unscripted line, ‘Bart can kiss my hairy yellow butt!’ is not acceptable; we believe this crude phrase plays as especially coarse since it is directed at a two-year-old child.”

• “It will not be acceptable for Itchy to stab Scratchy in the guts and yank his intestine out and use it as a bungee cord.”

At the end of the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” there’s an ultrasonic whistle, audible only to dogs.

LOL (LOVE ON-LINE)

Single? Odds are that you’ve at least
thought
about trying an Internet dating site. Some of these may seem weird…or you might find one that suits you perfectly
.