Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader (7 page)

In 2005 Suzy Walker of Kirkland, Georgia, started going everywhere—even to restaurants and movies—with a life-size mannequin. And the mannequin sported a fake black mustache. She told reporters that she did it because the mannequin, so altered, looked exactly like her husband, a Navy sailor deployed on a submarine. “When I put the mustache on him, I couldn’t believe the resemblance,” she said. Her husband said he’d become the butt of jokes around the sub, but that he didn’t mind—he thought it was funny.

MUSTACHE PAY

In 2004 police in northern India were offered an extra 65 cents a month if they grew mustaches after a researcher found that officers with mustaches are taken more seriously. But superintendent Mayank Jain said that mustaches would be monitored…to make sure that they didn’t give any officers a “mean look.”

SPEED-O

In the 1972 Olympics, mustache-wearing Mark Spitz put on one of the greatest swimming performances in history, winning a record seven gold medals and breaking world records in all seven events. Years later he told
Time
magazine that a Russian coach at the Games had asked him about the mustache. Spitz jokingly replied that it “deflects water away from my mouth, allows my rear end to rise and makes me bullet shaped in the water, and that’s what had allowed me to swim so great.” The next year, Spitz said, “every Russian male swimmer had a mustache.”

First all-female fire department: Ashville, New York, in 1943.

A STASH OF ’STACHE FACTS

• In the 19th century it was illegal for British Army officers to shave their mustaches. The rule was repealed on October 6, 1916.

• According to the MGAA (Mustache Growers Association of America), October 6 is International Mustache Day.

• Medical researchers say mustaches first appear on adolescent males at the corners of the upper lip and then spread to cover the entire area above the lip.

• There are 27 words for “mustache” in Albanian.
Madh
describes a bushy one,
posht
is one that hangs down at the ends, and
fshes
is a long mustache with bristly hairs. (They also have 27 different words for “eyebrows.”)

• In 2006 author Dax Herrera (we’ve never heard of him, either) sold his mustache, called “the Captain,” on eBay for $105.

• A
snood
is a type of hair net used to protect and shape mustaches.

• Mustache quiz: How many of the Beatles have mustaches on the cover of
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
? (Answer below.)

• During the Victorian era, wax was often used to keep large mustaches in shape. That created a problem for men drinking hot beverages—the heat would melt the wax into the drinks. In 1830 Englishman Harvey Adams invented the “mustache cup.” The cups had a “mustache guard” across the rim, with a small hole that allowed mustached men to safely sip their tea. Mustache cups became popular all over Europe and the United States, and are still made today.

• Quiz answer: All four Beatles have mustaches.

• In 1991 Barbara Mossner of Mount Clemens, Michigan, was ordered to pay her ex-husband $2,800 for damaging his record collection…and for drawing a mustache on his Frank Sinatra poster.

If this page were a nose, these words would be a mustache.

KNOW YOUR PRODUCE

Tired of apples and peas? Need a break from prunes and brussels sprouts? Here’s a list of unusual fruits and vegetables to look for next time you’re at the supermarket
.

Burro Banana:
A 3- to 5-inch long banana with square sides that tastes kind of lemony when ripe. (There’s also an Ice Cream Banana—a creamy banana with a blue skin.)

Medlar:
A small fruit related to both apples and roses, the medlar is pale, freckled, and radish shaped. It takes so long to ripen that it also ferments, giving it a taste similar to wine.

Crosnes:
A caterpillar-shaped tuber with a crunch and flavor similar to a Jerusalem artichoke.

Cherimoya:
A green, bumpy tropical fruit that tastes like a cross between a banana, a pineapple, and a papaya.

Yuzu:
A yellow Japanese fruit, similar in size and shape to a tangerine, but with a flavor that’s stronger than a lemon.

Lychee:
The lychee looks so much like a nut that it’s also known as the lychee nut. Beneath the brown, bumpy shell is a clear or white fruit, said to taste like grapes and cherries drizzled with honey.

Durian:
A green prickly fruit from Southeast Asia that looks like a hand grenade and smells like stinky feet. It tastes so good that it’s known as the “king of fruits.”

Celeriac:
A root that looks like a turnip or a rutabaga, but tastes like celery.

Pomelo:
A green thick-skinned cousin of the grapefruit. It’s not as juicy as a grapefruit, but it can grow as large as a basketball.

Scorzonera:
A dark, almost black vegetable that has a taste and texture similar to an artichoke.

Chayote:
A pear-shaped light-green vegetable that tastes like a cross between an apple and a cucumber.

Kiwano:
Also known as the African horned cucumber and the jelly melon, the kiwano is a yellow-orange, oblong, spiky fruit with lime-green flesh that looks like kiwi fruit but tastes like a mix of lemon, banana, and cucumber.

Myth-information: The actual communication from
Apollo 13
was “Houston,
we’ve had
a problem.”

RESEARCH SHOWS…

Unusual findings from the world of science
.

F
IDGETING MAKES YOU THINNER.
In 2005 researchers at the Mayo Clinic put special movement sensors in 20 subjects’ underwear. Ten described themselves as “fidgety”; the other 10 were “couch potatoes.” Finding: Fidgety people are less likely to be obese; their extraneous movements burn an average of 350 calories a day, which could work off 10 to 30 pounds a year.

THINKING MAKES YOU STRONGER.
Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic found that imagining doing exercises (but not doing them) actually boosted muscle strength. The study: They had one group of people imagining moving their pinky muscles for 15 minutes a day for 12 weeks, and another group doing nothing. At the end of the study the second group showed no change, but the first group had a 35% increase in pinky strength.

HELL ISN’T SO HOT AFTER ALL.
A 2005 “study” determined the temperatures of Heaven and Hell. First, citing Isaiah 30:26, which says that in Heaven “the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days,” they did the math and found that heaven would be 525°C, or 977°F. For Hell they used Revelations 21:8, which describes a “lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” Their calculations determined that a lake of molten brimstone (sulphur) must be at or below its boiling point, around 445°C, or 833°F. The study’s conclusion: “Heaven is hotter than Hell.”

SPOONS HAVE LEGS.
Scientists at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne, Australia, secretly numbered 70 teaspoons at the facility and tracked their movements over a five-month period. Result: 80% vanished. They said the teaspoons may have disappeared through
counterphenomenological resistentialism
, a belief that inanimate objects have a natural aversion to humans. Or, they said, the spoons may have slipped away to a planet populated by “spoonoid” life forms (they really said that). They also said that people could have simply taken them.

THE PILGRIMS, PT. I: A CHURCH DIVIDED

This article started as a short list of facts about the
Mayflower,
the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America in 1620. But after doing a little research, we found ourselves immersed in a much more fascinating story than we anticipated—the tale of the Pilgrims’ journey to the New World and religious freedom. Here’s Part I, which begins more than a century before the Pilgrims ever set sail
.

U
NHOLY ROMANS

Most modern democracies regard freedom of religion as a basic human right, but if you lived in Europe in the late Middle Ages, it was a very different story. The Roman Catholic Church was the state church in most of Western Europe. Although there were periods of tolerance for other religions scattered throughout the era,
in
tolerance was largely the norm. But by the 16th century, things were beginning to change.

It all began with the Protestant Reformation, which traces its roots to the German monk Martin Luther, who in 1517 nailed his
95 Theses
to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg. Sharply critical of the corruption in the Church, Luther’s writings (which spread throughout Europe thanks to another new invention, the printing press) ignited the growing contempt for the Church in other countries. By 1534 the discontent had spread to England, where King Henry VIII cut ties with Rome and founded the Church of England, also known as the “Anglican” Church.

REFORM

But Henry had a personal reason for the break. Luther and the other Reformers broke from Rome on religious principals—they wanted a Church without a pope or bishops, not to mention corruption. The
bible
was supreme, they said, and they wanted it translated into common German (instead of Latin) so that common people could read and interpret it themselves.

Henry’s reason: The Pope wouldn’t grant him a divorce. His aging wife, Catherine, hadn’t given birth to any male heirs, so the king wanted to divorce her and marry his “consort,” Anne Boleyn. Henry defied the pope: he divorced Catherine and married Anne anyway…and was promptly excommunicated. So in 1534, he created a new state religion, the Church of England, proclaiming himself as its leader.

A yo-yo cannot “sleep” in zero gravity.

PURITANS AND SEPARATISTS

Henry VIII also had the Bible officially translated into English for the first time. (Seventy years later, in 1611, King James I commissioned a new English version—now known as the King James Bible.) But having the Bible in English just added more fuel to an already growing fire of dissent. Now that people could read the Bible for themselves, they questioned why they needed religious leaders to explain the Scriptures to them at all. By then, some English Protestants had already banded together to “purify” the church from its Roman Catholic traditions. Called Puritans by their enemies, they were shunned—often brutally. Yet they remained loyal to the Church of England, hoping to change it from the inside.

A few of the Puritans, however, saw the attempt as hopeless. For them, the Puritan movement was becoming just as strict and oppressive as the Church of England. These people only wanted to worship as they pleased and be left alone. Seeing no other outlet, they decided to “separate” from both the Puritans and the Church of England, forming congregations in the countryside where they secretly practiced their faith in basements and farmhouses. The punishment for being captured: imprisonment, torture, and in some cases, public execution. This group of religious refugees has been known by—and called themselves—many names: Separatists, Saints, Outcomers…today we refer to them as Pilgrims.

Their first spiritual leader was Richard Clyfton, a parson from Nottinghamshire, England, who spoke openly against the Puritan movement. More importantly, he publicly defied the Church of England. Two young men who attended Clyfton’s sermons would one day play very important parts in the settling of America. One was William Brewster, who would lead the Separatists to the Netherlands; the other was William Bradford, who would lead them to America. But before any of that could happen, these “enemies of the state” first had to escape from England.

To discover more about the Pilgrims, sail over to
page 215
.

Cost effective? It costs 8/10 of a cent to mint a penny.

WEIRD GHOSTS

You might not want to read this page with the lights out
.

W
ANDERING SOLES.
Employees at a store in Cornwall, England, claim a ghost has taken up residence in the shop. And the ghost, they say, is obsessed with shoes. “I was standing at the counter,” says a salesclerk named Helen Honey, “when the top shelf of the display began wobbling. Then a pair of deck shoes jumped off the shelf and landed next to each other. I ran out of the shop, screaming.” Locals say the ghost is a former owner of the shop, a butcher, who died in the 1800s.

MOO!
Residents of Culver, Oregon, have reported driving a winding section of Highway 97 at night and seeing phantom cows appear suddenly in front of them. The ghost cows have glowing green eyes, and the cars pass right through them. (
Moo
-ha-ha!)

SCARE-A-VISION.
Tracey Taylor of Lower Ince, England, is convinced that her television is haunted. She took a picture of her two-year-old daughter Faith dusting the TV set, and when she got the photos developed, she noticed a mysterious “face” on the screen…even though the set was off. It wasn’t a reflection because there was nobody else in the room. Who was it? When Tracey showed the photo to Faith, the child said, “That’s Ben.”

POLTER-BARF.
Indiana State University students report seeing a female ghost in their dormitory. What does it do? It throws up. According to folklore professor Nan McEntire, “Barfing Barb,” as she’s known, has been in the building for decades. Local legend says she’s the spirit of a student who died after a night of drinking.